***"Alright, boys in back, ladies in the cab," Brad smiled, tossing his keys into the air and snatching them back mid flight. "That was not as easy as I'd hoped, but some help is better than no help, " he thought to himself. He turned and strode to his pick up, unlocking the passenger side door before walking around the front of the car, waving to Mack who gave him a nod between glances at his functioning black and white television, and unlocked the driver side. He opened the door and flinched back. Rodney was already seated in the middle seat. "Kid, you are something else," he shook his head and began to climb aboard once again. Will's bicycle came to halt against the plastic rear window of the cab with a crack loud enough to make him jump a half inch out of his skin. "Come on, Will," he muttered, taking a breath, "she isn't new, but she's worth more than you," he sighed. Everybody was in. He turned the engine, reversed, and headed for his horse pens...***
"Please, just do it," the boys voice was small in the dim starlight of the cabin. He held a frayed length of twine in his closed white fist. "I would ask someone else, but I saw you when we went around the campfire at dinner," he did his best to whisper across the narrow space of the sleeping cabin to another boy in striped pajamas, occupying the top bunk opposite him. "Come on, Pete. You're scared of it too. I saw your face and you were whiter than a frightened ghost. I know you know what it is too." Pete rubbed his nose with the heel of a dirty palm. He stayed out as late as he could by the fire, but eventually the camp counselors rounded him up and made him put on his pajamas and it was up to the bunk cabin for him. He could still taste a bit of the sweat from his efforts in the corners of his mouth. "Please Pete?" He leaned as far into the cool evening air of the wood planked cabin as he dared, his white bed time tee twisting about his torso as he waggled his twine holding hand. "We all talked about what we're afraid of except you. But I don't need to ask you, Pete. Just take it and tie it around your finger and, if anything happens to you, yank it and it'll wake me up. Same goes for me." Pete blew a tired breath at the ceiling only a couple of feet in front of his face.
"Alright, Brad," he reached likewise and grabbed the end of the twine before they both fell back into the relative safety of their bunks. "This one time. And I wasn't scared." Pete twisted the rough chord around his index finger before tucking his dirt smudged hand into a fist. "Only girls get scared." The hairs of the twine stretched through the starlit air between the two top bunks on either side of the shoulder width isle of the cabin turned briefly as Brad secured the spool with a few quick twists around his wrist before tucking it beneath his shabby pillow.
"Jerry says it's okay to be scared sometimes." The counselor's lesson that night was about being nicer to the 2nd and 3rd grade campers. He told a ghost story that was a decent attempt at scaring everyone, but largely it only succeeded in scaring the 2nd and 3rd graders into teary stupors. The 4th and 5th graders did not hesitate to rain down laughter on their younger whimpering camp mates. Neither boy moved much as they waited for sleep's doorstep and the inevitable opening of the dreaming door. The night animals held their evening calls with tightly coiled breaths. Neither boy laughed at the younger children as they bawled, brayed, and hid their faces and the other counselor's laps. They both new what could await them if they closed their eyes a moment too long, or rested their little heads against a seat back, or even laid back on the lake's sandy bank alone. One of the boy's in a lower bunk near the door cleared his throat sharply. Brad flinched sharply. The boy, out of Brad's sight let out an easy cough before rolling to his side. "You still awake, Pete?" Brad whispered. "Petey?"
Brad's mind drifted back to the golden high grass rolling away from him to a copse of tall sycamores beginning to brown in the 3 acre field, and the good rabbit meat he roasted yesterday that lay atop a crooked wooden end table he tried to cut out of a single stump of wood. He still couldn't decide if he wanted to punch Bob Vila for giving him the idea that he should improve anything about his good Tennessee home, or Bob Ross for giving him the idea he should try to paint anything in his good Tennessee home requiring a brush any narrower than the back of his own hand. "That's what I get, watching television at the gas station." He didn't own a television. There was plenty of work at the horse pens and plenty of good upkeep to do on the cottage itself. The old ranch cottage could hunker down into the worst the elements could throw at it and the smell of the tar papered roof and the well sanded and varnished porch baking in the noon day sun still gave him goose bumps whenever he came in from the heat and the horse pens to fix himself lunch.
His two brown and white mottled hounds sat side by side to the left of his porch chair, crafted out of common sense, pressure treated wood from the hardware store several miles away in town, and good old fashioned respect for gravity. He kept reaching a hand out to pat their heads alternately, but their big noses and even bigger brown eyes wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Their floppy pink tongues kept slapping his palm and fingers expecting some of the sweet rabbit meat. "Alright now Rum and Wheat." Reaching his right hand down behind the end table, that threatened to upend itself as he scrounged, he pulled a small, hard chewed, barkless branch of tree and brandished it before their begging eyes. He pawed himself some of the rabbit and popped it in his mouth. Chewy, it almost had the consistency of beef jerky, but that was how he grew to like it once he realized he didn't have ten cents worth of patience to hang out in a kitchen and watch the stuff cook. Instead of swiping his hand on the seat of his jeans like he normally did, he rubbed the grease on the stick and then, "go get it you good bastards," he hurled it away between the thin porch posts into the bright afternoon golden leaves of grass.
With a satisfied grunt he sat down and moved the tin plate of meat to the security of his lap. "That," he sucked a few bits from an unexpected bone with relish, "is much better," he smiled. Rum and Wheat both made it to the stick's resting place several dozen yards out and grabbed either end of the stick. From where Brad sat he could see their tails bobbing back and forth over the wind swayed grasses like a pair of furry antennas as they wrestled and whirled, grunting and growling, over the stick. Taking his fill, he wiped the crumbs off of his palms on his shirt front and stood, nearly upending the shoddy end table once more. With a quick flick of his wrist the left over rabbit bones flipped and spun off into the grass beyond the porch. Rum and Wheat would find them later and grind them up in their big jowls, but he was none too worried. He'd seen what could come out of the back end of either of those boys and it was enough to raise the hairs on the neck back of a cockroach.
Brad laid the plate near the steps as an extra surprise for them to lick the grease off of when they tired of their tug of war and finished their scavenger hunt for the missing pieces they knew Brad never ate. He thought of the horses. More than a couple hadn't been ridden farther than a mile or two and he didn't want them to forget the fun of a good days trek. He went inside to get the keys to his truck. There would probably be a land smart youth or two milling around the market looking to make a few bucks for light work and he could use a hand getting as many of the horses out for the evening as he could. Rum and Wheat always took care of themselves and would tend the porch front without him needing to ask.
There was plenty of shade along the road into town as the Sycamore's seemed particularly keen on growing near the drainage ditches on either side of the road. Brad didn't bother was his cap and stuck himself to enjoying the slow balmy wind and the gentle bumps in the poorly kept asphalt. He didn't bother with his radio either. His hearing hadn't been very good in his right ear since his days at the camp in grade school when he was no bigger than a double tall shot glass. And he preferred, if he was going to hear anything at all, to hear whatever mother nature wanted to cook up for him with his good ear.
He rolled the big truck into the parking spot directly in front of the general store, got out, and dusted a few of the sycamore leaves from his lap that collected during the ride. The general store was a squarish white washed affair, with four big windows, and with a single aluminum stack in the back corner for the attached smoke shed for the good meat that came in three times a month. Adjacent to it was the small pumps of the gas station and beside that the open bays of the auto repairer's shed. Joe Grace's piece of junk still sat tarped and working on its dust coat in bay number two. A couple of younger boys and a girl tossed a baseball across the street in a game he knew should be called catch, but probably had some other novel name to it specifically to distance fun things from grown men like himself. On the opposite side of the street was the tool shop. Slipping the bent bill of his cap evenly over his eyes, he wiped his mouth and entered the store.
Instantly he was nearly bowled over by a pair of children, a boy and a girl skipping and jumping out into the parking lot, and then into the thin woods, heading toward where he assumed there was nearby creek. They both wore matching rain moccasins as they dashed and laughed, gripping and yanking on opposite ends of an old leather jump rope. "Hey Mack, someone lose a kid or two," he rubbed the back of his neck as he approached the counter, still peering through the dusty front glass of the store as he walked. "Mack?" He turned his attention to where he was going and nearly toppled a stand of cereal boxes. He caught himself and tried to jig himself sideways with a spin that might have impressed his ex-wife a few years ago, but still took a handful of boxes to the floor. "Damn," he bent to collect them, "Mack you see those kids?" He asked again as he worked. He could feel the palms of his hands beginning to sweat.
"Hiya Bradley," Mack stood up from behind the counter. "Sorry about that, I was just messing with this old chord," he pat the top of the face sized, square boxed, black and white television. "Electrocution and all that. Something went and ran right through the old thing and I was trying to give it a good splice and all. Don't know what I'd do without the old thing on," he gave a clueless smile and continued, dusting his hands off on the white front of his apron, "what can I do for you, Bradley?"
Brad placed the last box into its wire cradle and rested both elbows on the counter. He poked an index finger into the bill of his hat to tip it back. "Mack, did someone just lose a pair of kids, or am I crazy?"
"Bradley," the name bobbed out on a torrent of laughter, "you're not crazy, Bradley. Those kids live a couple ways down the road at the old Spencer chicken farm. They let them go play all the time, but you never see them because you don't come around like you used to," he gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. "So what will it be today? Some good jerky? There's more heads of cattle coming in a few days. I could discount you for the good old stuff," he smiled. "Actually, I could discount you good for the bad old stuff too," Mack paused, rubbing his chin as he passed the numbers back and forth behind his eyes.
"That's alright Mack. Save your brain power. Just looking for some farm help, if you know anyone near here looking to make a few bucks for a few hours work," he stood back from the counter, resettled his cap, and pat his wallet pocket. A little plume of dust came loose in the still and warm shop air.
"Right, right. Okay. I think those ones in the street might know a good old thing or two about taking care of an animal," he suggested, pointing a burly arm toward the dusty store windows behind him. "I think the girl is actually from around here too. They came in earlier," his voice trailed off as he ducked behind the counter again. "They wanted jolly ranchers. I haven't carried a jolly rancher in almost a month," Brad thought he could hear live sparks being loosed out of his sight.
"Okay Mack, thanks. I'll be back in a few days for some of the good meat," he began to gesture to wave, but thought better of it. It was a strange thing to wave at a man who wasn't there. Brad jammed his fingers into his pockets and, turning to use his back to open the exit door, he walked toward the three youths passing the baseball. None of them had baseball gloves and a fourth rode a bicycle around them in a lazy circle at a pace that nearly caused the bicycle to fall over like an airless inner tube being pushed before a child with a stick. "Any of you know anything about horses?"
"Yeah, my dad's a horse rancher," the tallish boy in jeans and a tshirt with a thick pack of cigarettes tucked into his sleeve answered without stopping his ride that made Brad slightly dizzy simply to look at it. "Lives in Madison, up the street," he wobbled on completely uninterested in further elaboration.
"I'm visiting, Rodney," another boy offered, tossing the ball underhanded to the brown haired girl who was the second tallest of the four teens. "Rodney, don't know a thing about horses, but I know not to stand behind them. So that makes me second in charge."
"Third, dummy," the orbiting boy on the bicycle rejoined. "She's first," he said as he rode past the brown haired girl in blue overalls and dust stained white t-shirt he poked her in the shoulder. "She goes to horse riding camp in Rosewater. It's where rich kids go."
"Shut up Will, I'm not a penny richer than you."
"So you're rich. See. She's first, I'm second, he's third, and Rod's fourth."
"Why do I always have to be fourth?" The shortest of the three playing catch finally spoke up as he pitched the ball lightly to the tall girl.
"Alright well, how about this," Brad interrupted before the argument took off like a dust squall chasing the wind and he lost all of his labor and his horses went another few days becoming less and less friendly, "you can each have 20 bucks if you come down to my horse pens for a few hours and help me get them some exercise today." The cycling Will spat skeptically. "Got the money right here," he popped a wad of bills from his pocket. "Got some grub and spirits too if you want," it was unusual for the kids to sip too when the parents weren't watching, and from the looks of Rodney's shirt, he'd already spilled something on it he wasn't supposed to have.
"Deal," Will pulled his bike up hard in front of Brad, kicking a thin plume of dirt over his boot tips, "but I'm not riding."
"Alright, boys in back, ladies in the cab," Brad smiled, tossing his keys into the air and snatching them back mid flight. "That was not as easy as I'd hoped, but some help is better than no help, " he thought to himself. He turned and strode to his pick up, unlocking the passenger side door before walking around the front of the car, waving to Mack who gave him a nod between glances at his functioning black and white television, and unlocked the driver side. He opened the door and flinched back. Rodney was already seated in the middle seat. "Kid, you are something else," he shook his head and began to climb aboard once again. Will's bicycle came to halt against the plastic rear window of the cab with a crack loud enough to make him jump a half inch out of his skin. "Come on, Will," he muttered, taking a breath, "she isn't new, but she's worth more than you," he sighed. Everybody was in. He turned the engine, reversed, and headed for his horse pens, Rum, and Wheat.
"I don't believe we've formally introduced," he struck conversation as the wind buffeted the little group and Will and his friend in the truck bed took turns seeing who could spit the farthest in front of the truck without it blowing back onto the hood. He set his cap on the plastic of the dash and reach a hand in front of rose cheeked Rodney to shake the brown haired, overalled, girls hand.
"I'm Dustin," she leaned forward and shook his hand, before leaning back again. The rode several meters more in silence before.
"Fine to meet you, I'm Mr. Capers," he remembered, abashed at his own poor manners. "I always do that, I'm sorry. I just forget courtesies some times," he chuckled, but was leery of turning his good ear to see if she chuckled too. "Yes indeed. Bradley Capers." He glanced in the rear view mirror to make sure the two knuckleheads in the back were not fixing to bail on him half way, but as he looked he realized that Rodney was sleeping like a dormouse in a matchbox full of cotton balls and Dustin's brown eyes were glue to him. He drove on, doing his best not to notice, but every hint he could gather told him her demeanor was unchanging. "I'm sorry, Miss, did I say something to upset you?"
"You wouldn't be joking about that now, would you?"
"Joking how?"
"My father worked grew up over in Wykopeg," her rich voice thinned.
"What exactly are you talking about?" He kept his eyes on the road.
"He worked at the camp." Accusation brimmed in her narrowing eyes. "Did you really," she hesitated as a bump in the road jarred Rodney to pig snorting wakefulness momentarily, "did you really have nothing to do with that boy who disappeared." Brad gripped the steering wheels, wringing it like a rag, but did not answer. His jaw worked, chewing through the truths he told all those years back, the ridicule, the things he was taught to say when asked about the incident there after. "I mean, did he really just vanish?"
Brad tapped the car horn lightly as the boys in the truck bed drummed on the rooftop demanding more speed. "Alright up there, fellas. This is as fast as it goes round here."
"My dad says all they found was his finger in the club house," Brad felt his tongue drying and swelling as she spoke. A cigarette would have helped. "I've saw the picture of it too." Pete's finger, a single strand of twine around it lay beneath one of the lower cots by the back corner of the bunkhouse. The force with which he was pulled from his upper bunk was enough to yank Brad bodily from his own bunk. Brad landed squarely on his side, but his head struck the wood planked floor hard enough to rupture his ear drum and knock him unconscious. He was incoherent for days afterward. Pete hadn't uttered a sound as he was taken through, but in the star light he could see that his eyes were wide open, the veins on his neck rigid and his mouth wide as he went into the darkness. The twine cut half a centimeter into Brad's wrist, but he wore a watch now to cover it. "He said that you used to say some crazy things, but that it was a bear that took Pete and that's why they ended up closin' it down."
"Yeah it was a bad time, back then," Brad mustered a smile in Dustin's direction though he didn't look into her inquisitive eyes. "But, thing's have gotten better since then. I was too young to know what I saw, you know?" He pulled the truck into his driveway and cut the engine. Dustin continued to watch him.
After a few tense seconds "I guess so, Mr. Capers," she unlocked her door and slid out, letting Rodney's sleeping body slump almost out of the cab before the fall woke him up just before he completely tumbled. Will and the visiting friend each leaped over the side's of the bed and immediately lit off for the back yard. Rum and Wheat began to wag their tails as Brad climbed out and let they heavy truck door close itself. First one then the other grabbed either end of the heavily chewed stick and awkwardly, but successfully, they managed to trot it out to him each clasping one end tightly. As reached down and took the thing from the hounds they released it simultaneously and he flung it far and wide of the porch. They bounded like two brown and white balls after before disappearing except for the bobbing tails into the high golden grass of the yard. Brad wiped his mouth, reached into the open window of the cab for his hat, and as he slipped it back on his head he felt in his back pocket for a small loop of twine.
"Better get to it with those horses," he thought to himself. The sun wouldn't last much more than another few hours or so.
"Please, just do it," the boys voice was small in the dim starlight of the cabin. He held a frayed length of twine in his closed white fist. "I would ask someone else, but I saw you when we went around the campfire at dinner," he did his best to whisper across the narrow space of the sleeping cabin to another boy in striped pajamas, occupying the top bunk opposite him. "Come on, Pete. You're scared of it too. I saw your face and you were whiter than a frightened ghost. I know you know what it is too." Pete rubbed his nose with the heel of a dirty palm. He stayed out as late as he could by the fire, but eventually the camp counselors rounded him up and made him put on his pajamas and it was up to the bunk cabin for him. He could still taste a bit of the sweat from his efforts in the corners of his mouth. "Please Pete?" He leaned as far into the cool evening air of the wood planked cabin as he dared, his white bed time tee twisting about his torso as he waggled his twine holding hand. "We all talked about what we're afraid of except you. But I don't need to ask you, Pete. Just take it and tie it around your finger and, if anything happens to you, yank it and it'll wake me up. Same goes for me." Pete blew a tired breath at the ceiling only a couple of feet in front of his face.
"Alright, Brad," he reached likewise and grabbed the end of the twine before they both fell back into the relative safety of their bunks. "This one time. And I wasn't scared." Pete twisted the rough chord around his index finger before tucking his dirt smudged hand into a fist. "Only girls get scared." The hairs of the twine stretched through the starlit air between the two top bunks on either side of the shoulder width isle of the cabin turned briefly as Brad secured the spool with a few quick twists around his wrist before tucking it beneath his shabby pillow.
"Jerry says it's okay to be scared sometimes." The counselor's lesson that night was about being nicer to the 2nd and 3rd grade campers. He told a ghost story that was a decent attempt at scaring everyone, but largely it only succeeded in scaring the 2nd and 3rd graders into teary stupors. The 4th and 5th graders did not hesitate to rain down laughter on their younger whimpering camp mates. Neither boy moved much as they waited for sleep's doorstep and the inevitable opening of the dreaming door. The night animals held their evening calls with tightly coiled breaths. Neither boy laughed at the younger children as they bawled, brayed, and hid their faces and the other counselor's laps. They both new what could await them if they closed their eyes a moment too long, or rested their little heads against a seat back, or even laid back on the lake's sandy bank alone. One of the boy's in a lower bunk near the door cleared his throat sharply. Brad flinched sharply. The boy, out of Brad's sight let out an easy cough before rolling to his side. "You still awake, Pete?" Brad whispered. "Petey?"
Brad's mind drifted back to the golden high grass rolling away from him to a copse of tall sycamores beginning to brown in the 3 acre field, and the good rabbit meat he roasted yesterday that lay atop a crooked wooden end table he tried to cut out of a single stump of wood. He still couldn't decide if he wanted to punch Bob Vila for giving him the idea that he should improve anything about his good Tennessee home, or Bob Ross for giving him the idea he should try to paint anything in his good Tennessee home requiring a brush any narrower than the back of his own hand. "That's what I get, watching television at the gas station." He didn't own a television. There was plenty of work at the horse pens and plenty of good upkeep to do on the cottage itself. The old ranch cottage could hunker down into the worst the elements could throw at it and the smell of the tar papered roof and the well sanded and varnished porch baking in the noon day sun still gave him goose bumps whenever he came in from the heat and the horse pens to fix himself lunch.
His two brown and white mottled hounds sat side by side to the left of his porch chair, crafted out of common sense, pressure treated wood from the hardware store several miles away in town, and good old fashioned respect for gravity. He kept reaching a hand out to pat their heads alternately, but their big noses and even bigger brown eyes wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Their floppy pink tongues kept slapping his palm and fingers expecting some of the sweet rabbit meat. "Alright now Rum and Wheat." Reaching his right hand down behind the end table, that threatened to upend itself as he scrounged, he pulled a small, hard chewed, barkless branch of tree and brandished it before their begging eyes. He pawed himself some of the rabbit and popped it in his mouth. Chewy, it almost had the consistency of beef jerky, but that was how he grew to like it once he realized he didn't have ten cents worth of patience to hang out in a kitchen and watch the stuff cook. Instead of swiping his hand on the seat of his jeans like he normally did, he rubbed the grease on the stick and then, "go get it you good bastards," he hurled it away between the thin porch posts into the bright afternoon golden leaves of grass.
With a satisfied grunt he sat down and moved the tin plate of meat to the security of his lap. "That," he sucked a few bits from an unexpected bone with relish, "is much better," he smiled. Rum and Wheat both made it to the stick's resting place several dozen yards out and grabbed either end of the stick. From where Brad sat he could see their tails bobbing back and forth over the wind swayed grasses like a pair of furry antennas as they wrestled and whirled, grunting and growling, over the stick. Taking his fill, he wiped the crumbs off of his palms on his shirt front and stood, nearly upending the shoddy end table once more. With a quick flick of his wrist the left over rabbit bones flipped and spun off into the grass beyond the porch. Rum and Wheat would find them later and grind them up in their big jowls, but he was none too worried. He'd seen what could come out of the back end of either of those boys and it was enough to raise the hairs on the neck back of a cockroach.
Brad laid the plate near the steps as an extra surprise for them to lick the grease off of when they tired of their tug of war and finished their scavenger hunt for the missing pieces they knew Brad never ate. He thought of the horses. More than a couple hadn't been ridden farther than a mile or two and he didn't want them to forget the fun of a good days trek. He went inside to get the keys to his truck. There would probably be a land smart youth or two milling around the market looking to make a few bucks for light work and he could use a hand getting as many of the horses out for the evening as he could. Rum and Wheat always took care of themselves and would tend the porch front without him needing to ask.
There was plenty of shade along the road into town as the Sycamore's seemed particularly keen on growing near the drainage ditches on either side of the road. Brad didn't bother was his cap and stuck himself to enjoying the slow balmy wind and the gentle bumps in the poorly kept asphalt. He didn't bother with his radio either. His hearing hadn't been very good in his right ear since his days at the camp in grade school when he was no bigger than a double tall shot glass. And he preferred, if he was going to hear anything at all, to hear whatever mother nature wanted to cook up for him with his good ear.
He rolled the big truck into the parking spot directly in front of the general store, got out, and dusted a few of the sycamore leaves from his lap that collected during the ride. The general store was a squarish white washed affair, with four big windows, and with a single aluminum stack in the back corner for the attached smoke shed for the good meat that came in three times a month. Adjacent to it was the small pumps of the gas station and beside that the open bays of the auto repairer's shed. Joe Grace's piece of junk still sat tarped and working on its dust coat in bay number two. A couple of younger boys and a girl tossed a baseball across the street in a game he knew should be called catch, but probably had some other novel name to it specifically to distance fun things from grown men like himself. On the opposite side of the street was the tool shop. Slipping the bent bill of his cap evenly over his eyes, he wiped his mouth and entered the store.
Instantly he was nearly bowled over by a pair of children, a boy and a girl skipping and jumping out into the parking lot, and then into the thin woods, heading toward where he assumed there was nearby creek. They both wore matching rain moccasins as they dashed and laughed, gripping and yanking on opposite ends of an old leather jump rope. "Hey Mack, someone lose a kid or two," he rubbed the back of his neck as he approached the counter, still peering through the dusty front glass of the store as he walked. "Mack?" He turned his attention to where he was going and nearly toppled a stand of cereal boxes. He caught himself and tried to jig himself sideways with a spin that might have impressed his ex-wife a few years ago, but still took a handful of boxes to the floor. "Damn," he bent to collect them, "Mack you see those kids?" He asked again as he worked. He could feel the palms of his hands beginning to sweat.
"Hiya Bradley," Mack stood up from behind the counter. "Sorry about that, I was just messing with this old chord," he pat the top of the face sized, square boxed, black and white television. "Electrocution and all that. Something went and ran right through the old thing and I was trying to give it a good splice and all. Don't know what I'd do without the old thing on," he gave a clueless smile and continued, dusting his hands off on the white front of his apron, "what can I do for you, Bradley?"
Brad placed the last box into its wire cradle and rested both elbows on the counter. He poked an index finger into the bill of his hat to tip it back. "Mack, did someone just lose a pair of kids, or am I crazy?"
"Bradley," the name bobbed out on a torrent of laughter, "you're not crazy, Bradley. Those kids live a couple ways down the road at the old Spencer chicken farm. They let them go play all the time, but you never see them because you don't come around like you used to," he gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. "So what will it be today? Some good jerky? There's more heads of cattle coming in a few days. I could discount you for the good old stuff," he smiled. "Actually, I could discount you good for the bad old stuff too," Mack paused, rubbing his chin as he passed the numbers back and forth behind his eyes.
"That's alright Mack. Save your brain power. Just looking for some farm help, if you know anyone near here looking to make a few bucks for a few hours work," he stood back from the counter, resettled his cap, and pat his wallet pocket. A little plume of dust came loose in the still and warm shop air.
"Right, right. Okay. I think those ones in the street might know a good old thing or two about taking care of an animal," he suggested, pointing a burly arm toward the dusty store windows behind him. "I think the girl is actually from around here too. They came in earlier," his voice trailed off as he ducked behind the counter again. "They wanted jolly ranchers. I haven't carried a jolly rancher in almost a month," Brad thought he could hear live sparks being loosed out of his sight.
"Okay Mack, thanks. I'll be back in a few days for some of the good meat," he began to gesture to wave, but thought better of it. It was a strange thing to wave at a man who wasn't there. Brad jammed his fingers into his pockets and, turning to use his back to open the exit door, he walked toward the three youths passing the baseball. None of them had baseball gloves and a fourth rode a bicycle around them in a lazy circle at a pace that nearly caused the bicycle to fall over like an airless inner tube being pushed before a child with a stick. "Any of you know anything about horses?"
"Yeah, my dad's a horse rancher," the tallish boy in jeans and a tshirt with a thick pack of cigarettes tucked into his sleeve answered without stopping his ride that made Brad slightly dizzy simply to look at it. "Lives in Madison, up the street," he wobbled on completely uninterested in further elaboration.
"I'm visiting, Rodney," another boy offered, tossing the ball underhanded to the brown haired girl who was the second tallest of the four teens. "Rodney, don't know a thing about horses, but I know not to stand behind them. So that makes me second in charge."
"Third, dummy," the orbiting boy on the bicycle rejoined. "She's first," he said as he rode past the brown haired girl in blue overalls and dust stained white t-shirt he poked her in the shoulder. "She goes to horse riding camp in Rosewater. It's where rich kids go."
"Shut up Will, I'm not a penny richer than you."
"So you're rich. See. She's first, I'm second, he's third, and Rod's fourth."
"Why do I always have to be fourth?" The shortest of the three playing catch finally spoke up as he pitched the ball lightly to the tall girl.
"Alright well, how about this," Brad interrupted before the argument took off like a dust squall chasing the wind and he lost all of his labor and his horses went another few days becoming less and less friendly, "you can each have 20 bucks if you come down to my horse pens for a few hours and help me get them some exercise today." The cycling Will spat skeptically. "Got the money right here," he popped a wad of bills from his pocket. "Got some grub and spirits too if you want," it was unusual for the kids to sip too when the parents weren't watching, and from the looks of Rodney's shirt, he'd already spilled something on it he wasn't supposed to have.
"Deal," Will pulled his bike up hard in front of Brad, kicking a thin plume of dirt over his boot tips, "but I'm not riding."
"Alright, boys in back, ladies in the cab," Brad smiled, tossing his keys into the air and snatching them back mid flight. "That was not as easy as I'd hoped, but some help is better than no help, " he thought to himself. He turned and strode to his pick up, unlocking the passenger side door before walking around the front of the car, waving to Mack who gave him a nod between glances at his functioning black and white television, and unlocked the driver side. He opened the door and flinched back. Rodney was already seated in the middle seat. "Kid, you are something else," he shook his head and began to climb aboard once again. Will's bicycle came to halt against the plastic rear window of the cab with a crack loud enough to make him jump a half inch out of his skin. "Come on, Will," he muttered, taking a breath, "she isn't new, but she's worth more than you," he sighed. Everybody was in. He turned the engine, reversed, and headed for his horse pens, Rum, and Wheat.
"I don't believe we've formally introduced," he struck conversation as the wind buffeted the little group and Will and his friend in the truck bed took turns seeing who could spit the farthest in front of the truck without it blowing back onto the hood. He set his cap on the plastic of the dash and reach a hand in front of rose cheeked Rodney to shake the brown haired, overalled, girls hand.
"I'm Dustin," she leaned forward and shook his hand, before leaning back again. The rode several meters more in silence before.
"Fine to meet you, I'm Mr. Capers," he remembered, abashed at his own poor manners. "I always do that, I'm sorry. I just forget courtesies some times," he chuckled, but was leery of turning his good ear to see if she chuckled too. "Yes indeed. Bradley Capers." He glanced in the rear view mirror to make sure the two knuckleheads in the back were not fixing to bail on him half way, but as he looked he realized that Rodney was sleeping like a dormouse in a matchbox full of cotton balls and Dustin's brown eyes were glue to him. He drove on, doing his best not to notice, but every hint he could gather told him her demeanor was unchanging. "I'm sorry, Miss, did I say something to upset you?"
"You wouldn't be joking about that now, would you?"
"Joking how?"
"My father worked grew up over in Wykopeg," her rich voice thinned.
"What exactly are you talking about?" He kept his eyes on the road.
"He worked at the camp." Accusation brimmed in her narrowing eyes. "Did you really," she hesitated as a bump in the road jarred Rodney to pig snorting wakefulness momentarily, "did you really have nothing to do with that boy who disappeared." Brad gripped the steering wheels, wringing it like a rag, but did not answer. His jaw worked, chewing through the truths he told all those years back, the ridicule, the things he was taught to say when asked about the incident there after. "I mean, did he really just vanish?"
Brad tapped the car horn lightly as the boys in the truck bed drummed on the rooftop demanding more speed. "Alright up there, fellas. This is as fast as it goes round here."
"My dad says all they found was his finger in the club house," Brad felt his tongue drying and swelling as she spoke. A cigarette would have helped. "I've saw the picture of it too." Pete's finger, a single strand of twine around it lay beneath one of the lower cots by the back corner of the bunkhouse. The force with which he was pulled from his upper bunk was enough to yank Brad bodily from his own bunk. Brad landed squarely on his side, but his head struck the wood planked floor hard enough to rupture his ear drum and knock him unconscious. He was incoherent for days afterward. Pete hadn't uttered a sound as he was taken through, but in the star light he could see that his eyes were wide open, the veins on his neck rigid and his mouth wide as he went into the darkness. The twine cut half a centimeter into Brad's wrist, but he wore a watch now to cover it. "He said that you used to say some crazy things, but that it was a bear that took Pete and that's why they ended up closin' it down."
"Yeah it was a bad time, back then," Brad mustered a smile in Dustin's direction though he didn't look into her inquisitive eyes. "But, thing's have gotten better since then. I was too young to know what I saw, you know?" He pulled the truck into his driveway and cut the engine. Dustin continued to watch him.
After a few tense seconds "I guess so, Mr. Capers," she unlocked her door and slid out, letting Rodney's sleeping body slump almost out of the cab before the fall woke him up just before he completely tumbled. Will and the visiting friend each leaped over the side's of the bed and immediately lit off for the back yard. Rum and Wheat began to wag their tails as Brad climbed out and let they heavy truck door close itself. First one then the other grabbed either end of the heavily chewed stick and awkwardly, but successfully, they managed to trot it out to him each clasping one end tightly. As reached down and took the thing from the hounds they released it simultaneously and he flung it far and wide of the porch. They bounded like two brown and white balls after before disappearing except for the bobbing tails into the high golden grass of the yard. Brad wiped his mouth, reached into the open window of the cab for his hat, and as he slipped it back on his head he felt in his back pocket for a small loop of twine.
"Better get to it with those horses," he thought to himself. The sun wouldn't last much more than another few hours or so.
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