Burrows Page 3

  “Well, it isn’t any one thing in particular. He seems to be out of sorts. His grades are slipping, and he’s always fooling around when he should be working. I swanny, that boy seems to think he’s hard as a brick-bat all of a sudden. He’s starting to puff up against a few of the older boys, and they’ll likely give him a licking real quick if it keeps up. But they all feel sorry for him after what happened. One of these days though, he’s going to make somebody mad and come home with another black eye, or worse.

  “I intended to jerk a knot in that boy’s noggin this weekend, so he’ll straighten up and fly right when he gets back to his lessons Monday morning. But I got to thinkin’ that if we came to see you…” He finished telling the old judge his idea.

  O.C. laughed out loud and slapped his bony knee. “You betcha. I’ll see you when you get here.”

  Ned hung up and called the Hugo courthouse. This time the phone rang straight through.

  “Sheriff’s office.”

  “Clayton Matthews, this is Ned Parker. What are you doing?”

  The young sheriff sighed. “I was getting ready to go home and eat dinner, but I bet you’re not hollerin’ at me for a visit.”

  “You’re right, hoss. I got a call about a body in the river. I’m heading down there in a few minutes. You want to meet me and Cody by the Sportsman?”

  “You’re supposed to be retired.”

  Ned sighed. “Don’t I know it, but folks are still in the habit of turning to me first when there’s trouble. Cody’ll meet us there.”

  “All right. See y’all at the river.”

  ***

  The Red River bridge was ten minutes from Ned’s house. He crossed to the Oklahoma side and turned right toward the cluster of dreary buildings perched on the riverbank, bumping over hard ruts until he got to a soft, deep beach-like sand bar. He shut off the engine when he saw Bill Caldwell standing beside his battered johnboat.

  Bill gave a half-hearted wave and started forward. “Hidy, Ned.”

  Ned held up a hand. There was no reason for Bill to walk to the car. They’d just have to go back to the boat. He slammed the door and joined him at the water’s edge. “You ready to go?”

  “’Bout as ready as I can be. Ned, let me tell you, it liked to have scared me to death when that feller come to the top.”

  Bill Caldwell was a legendary cat fisherman along the river. Any time he set his lines, it was a sure bet he’d return with a boat load of fish, sometimes giant blue or flatheads, or at the very least a wash tub full of eating size channel cats. He’d fished the Red River his entire life and knew where the big ones lay in the deep holes and under washed out banks. All three of the bait houses on the Texas side sold Bill’s fish, kept alive in large, aerated concrete troughs. Customers simply pointed to the ones they wanted and in minutes they were filleted and wrapped in newspaper.

  “I expected a big old snappin’ turtle, ’cause that’s how they feel, just heavy an’ still. I never imagined it’d be a body.”

  He stopped and glanced over Ned’s shoulder. Radio antenna whipping, a low slung Oklahoma sheriff’s car with worn out shocks cruised slowly past the beer joints and bounced to a stop beside Ned’s Chevrolet. Sheriff Clayton Matthews emerged from the car and adjusted his Stetson. “Hidy, Ned.”

  “You all right, Clayton?”

  Sheriff Matthews noticed the badge pinned to Ned’s shirt. “Yep. Can’t get away from it, can you?”

  Ned sighed for the third time that day. “Naw, I cain’t, even though Cody is the constable now. He’ll be here directly.”

  “They let you wear that badge after retirement over there in Texas?”

  “I didn’t ask. I figured I’d put it on to make this about half-official until Cody showed up.”

  Sheriff Matthews wasn’t sure he liked that line of thinking, but decided to hold his opinions. He squinted past Ned at the fisherman standing beside him. Ned nodded toward the old man. “Clayton, this is Bill Caldwell.”

  “We’ve not met.” Bill extended his rough hand.

  Matthews returned a firm grip. “Right. I’ve seen you on the river before, though.”

  “Don’t doubt it. I have my license…” he reached into his back pocket.

  “I don’t need it.” Matthews waved it away. “You can show it to the game warden when he gets here.”

  Bill was worried. “You called Homer Williams?”

  “Well, since you caught somebody on a trotline in the river, I figured the game warden needed to be here, too.”

  Bill slumped sadly, as if a great burden had fallen on his shoulders. “I just want to get that feller off my line so I can go back to fishing.”

  Matthews nodded, understanding Bill was caught in a situation beyond his control. “How do you know he’s still there? He might have come off in the current.”

  “Naw, them big one-ought hooks are buried deep in two or three places, and I tied with a piggin’ string around his foot too, so he wouldn’t come loose.”

  They were interrupted by the game warden’s truck as it jostled across the rough parking lot. A flat-bottom johnboat stuck out over the lowered tailgate and rattled loud enough to make conversation difficult. He wasn’t as concerned about the soft sand, and plowed through to stop beside the water’s edge. The Sheriff met him, resting his hand on the open window. “Hello, Homer.”

  “He still in the water?” Homer wasn’t much for pleasantries.

  “That’s what Bill says.”

  Homer nodded as Ned joined them beside the truck. “What are you doing on this side of the river? I thought you was retired.”

  “Bill called me first because he didn’t know any better. Said he’d found that feller caught in his trotline.”

  Homer bit his chapped lip. “Trotline, my ass. Bill’s been netting this river for the past two months and I haven’t been able to catch him at it, yet.”

  All three men glanced toward Bill, who stood miserably beside his beached boat.

  “Lordy,” Ned said. “I hope he didn’t accidentally drown somebody in a net.”

  “Only one way to find out.” Still in the truck, Homer shifted into reverse and checked his mirror to make sure one of the new arrivals hadn’t parked too close behind him. Word was getting out. An increasing number of cars and trucks turned off the highway to drive past the beer joints and stop close to the cluster of men beside the river. “Let me get this boat unloaded and we’ll see.”

  Two men who’d drifted down to watch the activity helped lift the johnboat out of the truck, along with the motor and a gas tank. They carried it to the river and partially slipped it into the river. Minutes later, Homer stepped over the bench seats and hooked everything up. He wound the starter rope around the Johnson’s flywheel and gave it a yank. The engine started with a roar, throwing out a cloud of blue smoke.

  Cody Parker arrived and threaded his way through a crowd of loafers waiting on the sandbar. Back home from his tour of duty in Vietnam and recently elected as Constable of Precinct 3, Cody was something of a black sheep in his family.

  Miss Becky spent considerable time at the Assembly of God church across the pasture from the barn, praying for Cody’s salvation. She hadn’t seen much progress, but her faith was as strong as Cody’s free spirit.

  Despite her distress, Cody took up with a married woman and purchased the nearby Sportsman Lounge, drawing sharp criticism from the residents in Lamar County. Norma Faye soon divorced her abusive husband, married Cody and they moved to Center Springs. More eyebrows rose after the election when Judge O.C. Rains swore Cody in as constable, citing the young man’s experience in the military.

  “Hell, he was a soldier over there in that Vietnam. I reckon being in the army is training enough to do what we need done here. Besides, I’ve sworn in elected constables that haven’t done anything except milk cows before they pinned on a badge.”

  Proud of the young man with the tiny star on his chest, Ned motioned for Cody. “Climb in, Lawman. You and me’ll ride w
ith Bill.”

  Homer Williams and Sheriff Matthews exchanged glances, but they didn’t see the need to puff up to the old constable who had been around for decades.

  Ned stepped gingerly into Bill’s boat that smelled strongly of fish and gasoline. He settled onto the front bench seat. Cody made his way to the middle and they soon led the way upriver, followed by the sheriff and Homer in the game warden’s boat. Other boats followed the officials at a respectful distance on the wide river.

  Ned watched the riverbanks pass as they slowly motored upstream, water glugging and slapping underneath the boat’s flat bottom. Fall colors on the hardwoods lining the banks reminded Ned that he could be hunting squirrels instead of dealing with drowned people. This was what he wanted to get away from, but at the same time, he felt a little spark that he hadn’t experienced since retirement.

  Bill piloted the boat around a tree floating downriver. The Red often undercut the banks, toppling full grown trees and sweeping them along until they hung up against drifts on a bank, or against a bridge pylon.

  After a while, Bill let off the gas with the hand throttle and pointed out where one of his trotlines disappeared into the depths. He angled across the river against the strong push of water.

  “It’s tied off on that big ol’ root right there.”

  A large tree from the flood several months earlier lay half in and out of the water. Nearby, Ned saw a twenty-yard expanse of dark soft sandstone ledge pitted with half a dozen circular washtub-size holes full of water that he and Miss Becky used as play-pools when Top and Pepper weren’t much more than toddlers.

  Each hole contained a large, smooth rock that ground around and around when water submerged the ledge. Through the years, the strong current washed the rounded rock in circles, continually enlarging the tiny pools and keeping them open. It was community tradition to take the rocks out while the children played safely in the natural tubs, then replace them to continue the cycle.

  It never crossed my mind that I’d be here today, pulling a dead man from the water so close to where those babies played.

  Bill piloted the boat past a submerged tangle of roots and drifted back over the thick nylon cord disappearing into the river’s deep channel. He leaned over the gunwale and grabbed the cord with a calloused hand. “Give me a minute and I’ll have him up.” He grunted at the heavy mass on the line. Cody shifted to the same side, reached deep into the water, and held onto the cord to help fight the current.

  In the other boat, Williams held steady near the trotline disappearing in the red, muddy water. The game warden dropped a three-prong grappling hook straight down and hung the cord with the ease of a man who had inspected hundreds of trotlines through the years. He grasped the cord and raised it completely out of the water to see empty hooks dangling free. “Glad it isn’t a net, Bill.”

  Bill didn’t take his eyes from his end of the trotline. “I told you how he was caught. You ain’t gonna catch me lying, I ain’t that kind.”

  The body rose slowly, becoming clearer as it neared the surface. Cody and the game warden recoiled at the sight of a headless corpse. Cody shot Bill an angry glare. “You didn’t say he didn’t have no head!”

  “Well, I didn’t know if I should or not. I figured you and Ned would see that soon enough.”

  Ned snorted. “You oughta give a man some warning, Bill. Goddamn, I’d liked to have been ready for that!”

  Turtles and fish had been at the bloated corpse. Stiffened in death, his arms stuck out from the torso. Swollen fingers splayed like evil, white sausages.

  With its emergence into the air, a horrific stench enveloped Bill’s boat, causing everyone to recoil.

  “Can you tell who it is?” Bill pinched his nose closed.

  Ned had the unusual ability to use the velum, the teardrop-shaped flap in the back the throat, to close off the passages to his nose. He was one of the few people in the county with the ability to block smells with this conscious mechanical process, while breathing through his mouth and keeping his hands free.

  He leaned over the side and watched the water wash over the bloated figure. After a cursory examination, he leaned back. “Naw. Since he ain’t got no head and all swole up, I can’t tell if he’s anybody I know, but you can bet Bill’s off the hook for drowning him. Well, Sheriff, I believe you’ve got a murder on your hands.”

  “Wasn’t asking for one.” Matthews hadn’t even peeked at the body. He had a weak stomach and didn’t want to puke in front of the men.

  “There’s something wrong here besides what I can see and all.” Ned studied the body for a long moment. “Looky here, Homer.”

  The game warden shifted to better see the lines. “What, besides them hooks buried in this feller?”

  “Yep. Check the bait.”

  “There ain’t none.”

  “That’s right, Bill, there’s not a single piece of bait on any of these hooks.”

  “Well, I hadn’t gotten to this line since yesterday, so they got all my bait.”

  “Don’t feel any fish on here, either.” Any time a fisherman ran his trotlines, he knew if there was anything at the far end, because the line thrummed with the fighting fish. “Had you already run this line?”

  “Naw. Dammit, Ned. I didn’t have any luck in this hole at all. You think I had something to do with killing this feller?”

  “I didn’t say that, I was wondering is all.”

  “All right,” Sheriff Matthews said. “Let’s get off this river. Get us over there, Homer, and let’s get this thing done.”

  Raising nearly two hundred pounds of rotting meat into a boat was completely out of the question. Homer tugged a short piece of cotton rope from a ’toe sack lying on the bottom of his boat and used it to tighten the body fast against the side.

  Bill opened his pocketknife and used his sharpest blade to cut the piggin’ string and the smaller drop cords tied to the large hooks buried in the man’s side. The trotline snapped back to the depths and they drifted free.

  “What are things coming to?” Ned asked aloud. He question was lost as Bill yanked his boat motor to life. A belch of exhaust spread across the slick river.

  Homer grunted, started his own outboard, and followed slowly in their wake. Matthews turned from the body only inches away and watched the Texas side of the river go past. The stench washed over him and he shifted to the other side, gagging.

  Minutes later they passed under the Highway 271 Bridge, motored through the shallow water, and onto the sandbar. Once they beached, Cody stepped out and grabbed the bow of Bill’s boat. He waded out, pulling them securely onto the sand. One by one, the men climbed out.

  Without a word, Sheriff Matthews pitched his life jacket onto the metal seat and trudged across the sand through a crowd of onlookers. He opened his car door and sat behind the wheel to shuffle through a dry stack of sun-curled papers in the dusty dashboard. Finding the one he wanted, he squinted at the sheet.

  He returned to the waiting men. “Well, I know who he is now. I have a paper here with the description of a convict who broke out from the mental institution up in Tulsa a few days back. He had a tattoo of a hula girl on his left arm with the name of Cora under it… like that one. That there is Kevin Jennings. I guess we ain’t looking for this escapee no more.”

  “Good god,” a wrinkled old farmer said. “It’s the Jennings boy from up on Boggy Bend. They had to send him to the nervous house years ago when he had some kind of breakdown.”

  “I remember that,” Jimmy Foxx Wilson said. He and his brother Ty Cobb had been loafing up at the store when they heard about the body and dropped by to see if they knew who it might be. “He went haywire one day when his family was at church and killed every cow, chicken, horse, and pig on the place. He was a-waitin’ on his folks to get home so he could kill them too, but a neighbor seen what happened and flagged the family down and warned ’em.”

  The men on the sandbar shook their heads in wonder. None of them understood how anyone
allowed themselves to go insane.

  “Wonder what he’s doing here in the river?” Cody wondered aloud.

  “He probably came back to hide out where he knows the country,” Ned said.

  “That don’t explain why he’s in that shape.” Sheriff Matthews rolled up the report. “He was broke out by them two fugitives who’d been killing folks in Nebraska and Kansas before they went back to get him. I heard one of them had been in the same nuthouse and got to know Jennings there.”

  “So they picked him up, and came down here.” Cody fished in his shirt pocket for a toothpick.

  Ned sighed. “Well, with this one gone there’s still two of those outlaws left and they’re close by.”

  The sheriff turned from watching the newly arrived ambulance drivers put the decomposed body into a bag for transportation back to Hugo. “Naw. I got a report in the mail this morning that that they found another body in the same shape not far from the Little River, outside of Cloudy, near two days ago. That was Albert Gantry, the guy Kendal Bowden started this murder trip with. With this one gone, that leaves Kendal.” He waved a hand toward the northeast. “I didn’t think much about it until this one showed up, but it appears to me the meanest of the bunch is cleaning house.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Cody cocked his head and worked his toothpick around. “What makes you say that, Ned?”

  “Because that’s what I’d a done. Now he’s on his own with nobody to rat him out.”

  “He’s a mean one, killing people during robberies and cuttin’ the heads off’n his own friends,” the sheriff said. “The laws have been chasing him a far piece.”

  “Well, this goes to show that some folks just need killin’.” Ned turned upriver. “He ain’t the kind to have friends, and that’s why this man is in the water. Bowden is finished with him and I bet you a dollar to a donut that he was headed here from the start. I imagine right now he’s somewheres close by with kinfolk. They’re the only ones that’ll have him.”

  Chapter Four

  Me and Pepper were watching Miss Carol’s Playhouse on the black and white television when Grandpa got back from getting that feller out of the river. Without a word, he passed through the kitchen and living room and went into the bathroom. He stayed in there a good long time, washing his hands over and over, before he came out. Miss Becky went in right behind him and spent a good five minutes drying the sink, wall, and mirror that he splashed.