Percival Everett - Damned If I Do

“None of that language in here,” the waitress said, coming at us with the coffee. “Turn your cup over, Tim. I ain’t got all night.”

Tim did as she asked and smiled at her while she poured. “Why don’t you and me run away, Hortense?”

“So I can have that crazy girlfriend of yours track me down like an animal?” Hortense asked.

Tim shook his head.

“You live in the motel?” I asked.

“House burned down,” Tim said and sipped his coffee. “Staying there until we can get back in.” He called down to Hortense, “Tell Johnny to slap me on a grilled cheese.”

“Grilled cheese!” Hortense called back into the kitchen.

“I heard the son of a bitch,” Johnny said.

“Colorful place, eh?” Tim asked, offering his smile to me.

“Slightly.”

“What are you doing here? Forest Service?”

I looked at him. “Why do you say that?”

The waitress brought my hotcakes and stepped away.

He looked me up and down. “Give me a break. Khakis, double-pocket shirt with the flaps, lace-up boots. Halfway-intelligent eyes. You’re black.”

“Lot of black guys in the Forest Service?” I asked.

“Don’t know, but black people don’t generally show up in Dotson.” He put some sugar in his coffee.

“Anyway, I’m from Fish and Game,” I said.

“Same difference.” He grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and fiddled with it. “Sorry about all the commotion earlier. So, what are you doing here? Counting elk, deer? Redneck poachers?”

“Looking at water, that’s all. I’m a hydrologist.” I offered my hand. “My name is Robert Hawks.”

“Tim Giddy, pleased to meet you.”

“So, what do you do, Tim?”

“Everything. I chop wood, build sheds, drive heavy machinery. But there ain’t no more heavy machines around here. No building.”

“Why’s that?”

“You ain’t looked real close at your map. There is one road that leads into Dotson and it don’t go nowhere else. It leads out of town for a few miles on the other side and turns into an old mining road. This town was built for the mine and the mine is dead.” Tim’s sandwich arrived and he took a quick bite, wiped his lips with his napkin, and talked while he got the food situated in his mouth. “We’re a dead town, mister.”

“Rest in peace,” I said.

Tim laughed loudly, calling attention from the three men in the booth. “That’s funny. Rest in peace. I like you. You’re all right. Rest in peace.” He took another bite. “So, we got a water problem or something? Our wells drying up?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m just here to measure the flow of the creeks. Nothing special.”

“We sure had enough snow this year,” Tim said.

I nodded.

“You know, Muriel’s awright. She’s just a little high-spirited.” Tim polished off the last bite of the first half of his sandwich.

I watched him chew. “High-spirited,” I repeated his words and considered them. “She looked like she wanted to kill you.”

“Aw, that little ol’ knife? She didn’t mean nothing by that.” Tim got Hortense’s attention and pointed to his empty cup. “I just wish I knew what the hell she was signing at least half the time. She gets to going so fast.”

“Well, Tim, it was a pleasure meeting you, but I need some rest.” I put money on the tab and slid it to Hortense while she filled Tim’s cup. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

“G’night.”

I put myself to sleep as I always did, by imagining myself on a stream, fishing. That night I was on the Madison, fishing a stretch of pocket water that no human had ever seen before. It was about six in the evening in early August, a slight breeze, not too hot. There was no hatch activity and so I was fishing terrestrials off the far bank. I was letting cinnamon ants fall off the weeds into the water. I would cast, let the ant drift, and pull it back before it could get to a fat eighteen-inch brown I could see in the shallows. I wanted the fly to float to him just right. I casted again and again, until finally there was no drag, the ant simply floated at the end of the tippet with no sign of the slightest disturbance to the water behind it. The fat trout rose, gave the ant a looking over, and ate it. I let him sink with it a few inches and then I set the hook.

It was windy and cold the next morning. A light snow had fallen during the night and left everything lightly dusted. I rode with the deputy in his 4 × 4 rig, and my attention was immediately fixed on the radar unit between us. It did not look as high-tech as I had imagined. There were a couple of dinosaur stickers on the housing.

“I’ve never seen a radar thing before,” I said.

“To tell the truth, it doesn’t see much action around here.”

“Not on the way to anywhere, eh?”

“Not that. We just don’t care how fast people drive.”

I nodded and turned to the window as we veered onto Red Clay Road.

Harvey looked at me a couple of times and asked, finally, “Are you going to wait in the car?”

“Hell no.”

“I appreciate guts as much as the next guy, but I don’t much want to get shot at either.”

“Okay, I’ll hang back a few steps.”

“Aw, man.” He stopped the rig in the same place I had parked. “Please wait in the car?”

But I was getting out.

As promised I walked three steps behind him up to the door. He knocked, then knocked again. The door opened and we both jumped. It was the old lady.

“Give me the paper,” Mrs. Bickers said.

“I’m going to have to come inside and talk to you, Mrs. Bickers,” the deputy said. “You shouldn’t be shooting at people. You could have killed Mr. Hawks here.”

The old woman cut a glance at me. “I didn’t know it was him I was shooting at.”

I stepped into the house after the deputy. The house was freezing.

“You see, ma’am, that there is the problem,” Harvey said. “It could have been me at the door or the postman. You could have killed somebody. Why were you shooting anyway?”

“I got scared,” she said.

Harvey slapped his arms together. “What’s wrong with your heat? Your fire go out?”

“I reckon.”

“You got any coffee, Mrs. Bickers?” Harvey was looking around the hall and into the adjacent rooms.

I held off making any noise like I wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to linger there. I wondered why he wanted coffee.

“Could you make us some coffee?” he asked.

“I guess so,” she said. She gave me a hard look. We followed her into the kitchen. “You can sit there at the table.” She turned on an electric burner beneath a kettle. “All I got is instant.”

“That’s fine,” Harvey said. “Ain’t that fine, Mr. Hawks?”

“Fine,” I said.

“I’m going have to take your pistol, Mrs. Bickers,” Harvey said, matter-of-factly. He slipped in the line so casually I had a new appreciation of him. He was smarter than I had thought and I felt small for having let my preconceptions get the better of me. The woman complained with her expression and Harvey went on. “Like I said, Mrs. Bickers, that could have been anybody at the door. Mr. Hawks here wasn’t trying to break in or nothing, he was just doing his job. While we’re on the subject.” Harvey looked to me and put his hand out and I gave him the form I needed signed. He flattened the paper on the table, took a pen from his breast pocket, and held it in the air for the old woman. “Right there, ma’am.”

Mrs. Bickers took the pen and scratched her name at the bottom of the page. I didn’t get the satisfaction from watching her sign that I had imagined. She had the eyes of a cornered animal. I felt sorry for the woman, alone in this cold house, scared of noises, scared of me. Then I felt stupid for giving a damn.