Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

A FAT MAN wearing red suspenders that disappeared under his belly was waiting at the station in a tan Model T truck. The white-haired man got off the train and shambled over, grabbed a gallus strap in a fist and pointed toward Sam, who walked up and introduced himself.

“Cost you a dollar,” the fat man said.

“All right.”

“I’m just joshin’ you. Help me get them boxes out the last car and we’ll get on down the road.”

There were only six boxes of stove parts and ten feed sacks and a crated Victrola, and soon the fat man was at the crank starting the Ford. He got in with a whistle and asked, “Can I sing on the way?”

“Sure.”

“Funny. I never could sing before.” He laughed until his face was crimson, then set the truck off across the ruts of the station yard.

They rolled through the six blocks of Woodgulch out into a countryside of washboard hills stippled with gum trees strangled by poison sumac and catbriers. He could see no houses, and after a while the road grew sloppy and plunged into an old-growth cypress forest, the trees fifteen feet through the base skirt, blocky trunks rising like factory smokestacks into a spongy canopy. He looked into these waterlogged woods and hoped the boy hadn’t stumbled far into such a terrible place.

The fat man fought the wheel over the bad road and couldn’t talk much, except once when a sack of feed fell over the tailgate and they were forced to stop. Sam got out and looked around. “That’s some timber. Damn, that’s some timber for sure.”

“Yeah, it’s been bought and paid for. A Natchez mill is finally gonna cut it all out next year.”

“How much of it?”

“All of it, I hear. Thirteen thousand acres, out on the river south of here down to the prison and beyond.”

“Down by where the Skadlocks live?”

He loaded the sack and left his hand on it. “How you know about the Skadlocks?”

“I’ve run into them.”

“You ain’t no kin, are you? I’ll leave you here in the road if you are.”

“No. What’d they do to you?”

“None of your business.”

“Fair enough. You know how to get to their place from Zeneau?”

“Boat.”

“Is there a place to rent one?”

“No.”

Sam sighed and shook his head. “Horse?”

The man walked around to the front of the truck and leaned against the steaming radiator. “If you go overland, it’s about seven, eight miles due south, and you’d have to rent you a gorilla to tote you up and down them gullies. I hunted back in there when I cared about it, and I’m tellin’ you it’s a miracle I’m standin’ here.” He turned the crank, climbed in the cab, and let off the brake.

Sam got in. “How you know about them at all?”

“I deliver for the sheriff. The west deputy has a office in Zeneau. I seen that biggest Skadlock come in there and talk to him. Him and his dog.” The fat man looked over at him, and there was a sudden longing in his eyes. “I used to have me a little black-and-white rat terrier rode in the truck. Sat right where you’re at. He was smart. Like a little fuzzy person, he was. I was down deliverin’ a chair and box of supplies to that one-room deputy office when I seen Skadlock’s horse and his dog next to it. I went into the office and didn’t think a thing about it, but from inside I heard a squeak. When I went out my dog was dead under the truck and that German police was pissin’ on my front tire. I told Skadlock off when he come out, but he just dug in his pocket and give me a dollar. Then he got on his horse and rode off. I was mad as hell, but later I thought, you know, somebody like that can’t do no better.”

“You get yourself a new dog?”

He shook his head and geared down for the next hill. “Naw. That was the one dog.”

“Can’t replace him?”

The driver turned slowly. “Can you replace your mom?”

Sam rolled his head away and looked down the awful road. “Doesn’t seem like the same thing, exactly.”

The fat man shifted gears. “Bud, the older I get, I think ever livin’ thing is one of a kind.”

ZENEAU WAS A STORE, a deputy’s office the size of a big privy, five wood houses, and a mud landing. The driver let him off in front of the unpainted office, and he looked at it doubtfully before deciding to move on through the mosquitoes to the store, breaking sunbaked, puckered mud as he walked. It was after three o’clock, the day’s heat at its zenith. Inside the dim store three graybeards were sitting around an unlit stove, their feet propped on the fenders. The clerk was busy on the back landing, taking delivery off the truck.

“Hey, bo,” one of the old men said, a fellow wearing patched overalls and a long hound’s face.

“Hi. I’m looking for a big kid, fifteen years old. Anybody seen him?”

“Where you from?”

“New Orleans.”

“You don’t talk like New Orleans.”

“I was born in west Louisiana.”

“A Frenchieman,” the hound’s face called out. “Hey, talk some of that palaver to us.”

“Comment ça va? Brassez mon tchou, têtes de merde.”

A red-faced man dropped a foot off the stove skirt. “Ha, ha, listen to that! Sounds like a monkey with a mouthful of olives.”

“Have you seen him?”

“What you wantin’ him for?”

“His mamma sent me after him. He’s run away.”

“Oh!” the hound’s face exclaimed. “Whyn’t you say so? You know, I run away when I was a kid.”

The red-faced man slapped him on the knee. “But you never went back.”

“You know, you’re right.”

The conversation stalled at that point. Sam looked at the first man and said loudly, “The boy?”

“Oh. Yeah, he come in here yesterday, said he wanted to hunt turkey. Bought a huntin’ vest and some eats.”

Sam looked at him. “He doesn’t own a gun.”

“He didn’t when he come up on the porch. Talk to the clerk about it.”

After a while, the bald clerk came back inside, sweaty and sour-smelling. “Hep you?”

“I’m looking for a boy.”

“Who you, then?”

“Aw, he’s all right!” yelled the red-faced man.

“Well, sold him some cheese and potted meat and crackers and a toy compass. And a used shotgun.”

“Aw, hell. I was afraid of that. What kind?”

“A old double-barrel wore-out Parker. Ten-gauge with rabbit ears.”

“What kind of shells did you sell him?”

“Feller that traded it to me give me the shells, and I passed ’em on with the gun. About a dozen.”

“What size shot?”

“Hell, I don’t know. They was old goose loads. Maybe number-two shot with black powder under ’em.”

“Good lord.”

“It was none of my business, but I knew he wasn’t no hunter, least not much of one. Kind of a city-lookin’ kid.”

“Well, when did he leave?”

“I let him sleep on the porch out on the cotton. He left about a half hour after I opened up at six. Give him some syrup and bread for breakfast. I saw him start off due south into the woods.”

“Is there a trail?”

Everybody laughed, and the third man’s feet fell off the stove’s fenders. “Not much of one. We all pretty much stay out of the south woods. Louisiana’s got a state prison a few miles in there against the river and there ain’t no tellin’ who you could meet up with, if you know what I mean.”

One of the men said, “You goin’ after him?”

“I guess so.”

“You own a compass?”

Sam reached into his khakis and pulled it out. “I’ve been back in there before.”

“You got my sympathy,” said the hound’s face.

“I was on a horse.”

“Well, well,” the red-faced man said and spat into a box of sawdust next to the stove. “You got him now?”