Crooked Trees
Finn Sinclair
Crooked Trees
Finn Sinclair
Klimt (Public Domain
The words of the wise gently said are heard more than the shout of the ruler among fools. (Ecclesiastes 9:17)
Chapter 1
“I’m gonna need new springs on my truck if I keep running these roads at night,” Doober said to his dancing hula girl on the dashboard. Maybe everyone else saw a half-ton Korean rust bucket, but the engine was solid and there were no rips on the seats. He glanced over to double-check the two six packs of pisswater that he had volunteered to run out to the store up by the county road. He got smart this time, using his tool belt to wrap the cardboard boxes together and then weaving the seatbelt through his tool belt to strap them down.
Home for the moment was a cabin down by the bayou although cabin was a bit of a stretch for an aging shack that needed a new roof and windows. He had his own room and shared the place with his three best buds, which was a bit of heaven if he was willing to ignore the disaster in the kitchen. After a long day of work at a construction site, being able to kick back with a couple of friends and crack open a few beers with no one complaining about feet on the furniture was a joy – until it was his turn to buy the beer and he forgot to pick it up on the way home.
He hated that damned convenience store for charging him four dollars more for the same beer he could have picked up at Bargain Liquors in town. Those four dollars were like a slow burn that gnawed at the edges his enjoyment of the evening. “Bet ya I won’t forget again,” he told the hula girl with a shake of his finger.
Every time he drove the backroads to the cabin after dark, Doober believed that he had memorized every curve, dip, and pothole in the dirt roads. Whenever he hit another hole or had to slam on brakes to avoid disaster, he cursed to the high heavens that he had again, fooled himself. Only once had he not worn his seatbelt and he had smacked his head on the roof above his seat. At first, he was surprised that there was a thin layer of foam above the cloth covering but then his skull ached and his neck throbbed. Now he buckled deliberately before he started the truck, making damn sure that the lock clicked in place.
Something squawked outside his window and that reminded him why he forgot the beer in the first place. He had gone back and forth all day in his head whether to call Mary Sue and fake an apology. The boss made clear that carrying a cell phone on your person while onsite was grounds for immediate dismissal. He was forced to wait.
Mary Sue could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. When that girl got a hold of his cock and balls, she was a non-stop vacuum cleaner. If he was moving too slow for her, she had a trick of creeping her finger up his crack to his asshole and then... Damn. She could stand to lose forty pounds or so, but she was an outright sex machine. When she asked for a pounding, she meant a pounding.
Then again, she was a mean and spiteful drunk who squawked like a chicken being strangled. She had yelled some crap at him last night and he had yelled some crap back. When he bellowed over her hollering, she stood up from the lawn chair and stormed into her trailer, making the frame shake when she slammed the door. He heard her lock it too. He was pissed, but he was not going to bang on her door or kick it in – too much work. She was too much work.
The going back and forth in his head all day had not mattered one whit. She did not answer her phone when he called after work. She always had her phone on her, texting her girlfriends like a demented typist. He had wasted a perfectly good day worrying about what he would say. Her rejection was just another slow burn that he stewed over as he drove home, trying to make the correct turns on the crossroads.
He saw the three crooked trees up ahead and knew he was at the last left turn with the bayou on his right and the cabin down just a bit on the left. When he pulled up, he left the lights on and the motor running for a moment longer, hoping that the sound, light, and smell would warn off the critters in the dark. God, he hated snakes and he had no idea why the good Lord saw fit to place them in the creation. Even his momma’s preacher could not answer that one.
There was no grass out front, just packed dirt. Doober undid his rigged beer carrier, leaving his tool belt on the seat. With a six pack in each hand, he walked up the three steps to the porch and the screen door. The world was a bit more quiet than usual, and it sent a chill down his spine, like a gator was waiting just outside the pool of light.
He was not too worried about gators because they were a bit lazy about hunting their prey. The nature shows would talk in hushed tones how the gator would lay in wait with just its eyes and nostrils above the water. Horseshit. They slept until the last possible moment, snatched whatever was small enough to fit in their mouths and got too close, and then went back to sleep. Wait until your food comes to you, how much lazier can a creature be? Unless they were horny. They let everybody know when they were horny though and gave plenty of warning to stay the hell away.
Alligator tasted like crap too. If alligator tasted so good, then Food Stop would sell them in the case next to chicken burgers, turkey burgers and hamburgers. No one wants gator burgers, except some stupid tourists. Whatever, he pried open the screen door with his work boot and stepped inside.
Doober screamed holy hell.
Gary was thrown back against the couch with half of his face blown off, his brains dripping down the wall. Mucker was face down by the kitchen with a huge puddle surrounding him and his arms were laying funny. Dinty was sitting at the table with his chin buried in his chest, his shirt torn and brown-red with blood.
Doober bounced his eyes between the three over and over, trying to disbelieve what he was seeing. He bent down at his knees, placing the beer on the ground as silently as he could, although he did not know why. He wanted to see Dinty’s eyes and then he did not. The man’s chest was not moving.
Doober reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell. He watched his finger press 9-1-1 as if his hand was disconnected from his body. He listened to his voice speak to the emergency operator telling her what he was looking at and where he was. She could not find the road. With bile rising in his throat, he declared that he would meet the sheriff at Morgan’s Convenience Store at the top of the dirt road and guide them in. He hung up and stepped outside. He vomited in the dirt.
He had no clear memory of driving back to the county road. Three cop cars were waiting with their lights flashing oddly against the trees and tall grasses. He led them back, dodging every pothole and easing through every dip in the road. The three crooked trees appeared. He turned left and stopped just before the shack.
Two of the officers went inside and the third stayed with him. One of them came out and was talking into the microphone strapped to his shoulder. The sheriff standing with him took his statement.
“Do you own a gun?” the deputy asked.
“Yes,” Doober said. “All of us own a hunting rifle and they’re hanging on a rack on the wall to the right when you walk in the cabin.”
The man talked into his microphone and turned back to Doober. “The rifles are missing.”
Doober nodded sadly, trying to acknowledge that he had heard. He looked up and realized something else was missing.
“Hey, Mucker’s truck is missing. It should be parked on the side of the cabin.”
“We’ll make a note of the make and model, sir,” the deputy said.
“No, no, you don’t understand,” Doober said, “Mucker’s car has GPS.”
“Well, anyone can buy a unit, or you can just use your cell phone,” the deputy said as if Doober was a moron.
“Mucker’s boss installed a GPS unit on his truck so that he could track him when he made deliveries. He couldn’t speed on the highway because his boss would know. You can track his car right now if you call his boss at CPP Tool.”
His words got the sheriff’s deputy all excited, and he had to go in and tell his fellows. Doober opened the door of his truck, sitting down in the seat with his feet perched on the running board. Two of the deputies came tearing out of the cabin and hopped in their cars. They tore off back the down the road without saying a word.
An unmarked sedan with lights flashing arrived. A bald man with a big belly walked from the car to the cabin. A half hour later give or take, a van came around the corner. Two people got out with a bunch of bags and equipment. They marched over to the cabin.
Doober was fairly sure he fell asleep for a little bit. Another van came around the corner without any flashing lights; it was a white panel van. Two men brought out a gurney from the back and pushed it across the packed dirt and up the stairs. The first body bag emerged on the gurney and Doober thought he was going to be sick again.
The van shook as the first body was unloaded. The two men went back and returned with the second body bag. Then the third body bag came into view and Doober lost it, sobbing uncontrollably.
He stopped finally. He got out of the truck and paced back and forth a bit, wondering what he was supposed to do next. The fat man came out and introduced himself as a detective. He asked Doober several more questions like what time did he leave and what time did he return. Doober thought for sure that they were going to put him in the back of a sheriff’s car and haul him down to the police station, but they did not. The detective’s cell phone beeped with a message. The man read it and then ran to his car faster than Doober imagined a man with a huge gut could move. Without a goodbye, he left just like the two deputies, kicking up small pebbles from the dirt.
Dawn was breaking when the police van pulled away. The last deputy handed him a business card and spit in the bushes before he got in his car.
The morning bugs were starting to bite. No one had told him anything other than to stay nearby and do not go in the cabin. It was a crime scene and there was evidence, like he was moron who could not put two and two together.
Chapter 2
Doober awoke in his childhood bedroom. The bunk beds were gone, and the daybed was uncomfortable because he could not stretch out his legs all the way. His mother had purged the childrearing stuff from the house, turning his old room into a knitting den. All her works hanging on the wall or thrown on the chairs and daybed had orange in them. His mother loved orange.
The house was a small tract home, a squat rectangular building sitting on a concrete slab. The yard was full of untamable weeds in between the blades of grass. A few scraggly bushes managed to survive despite the benign neglect. Once each year in late spring, Doober and his brother would come to the house with a pressure washer to hose down the outside of the house and wash the car. The afternoon was spent trekking from the house to the yard where they would purge the new fire ant hills with boiling water. Momma would make meatloaf special-like with the onion soup mix.
“I wanted to wake you up, but you looked just drained through and through,” she said. “It’s all over the news. There was a shootout on the highway and a highway patrolman was killed and two deputies were wounded. They were terrible men: murderers and thieves and rapists and who knows what else. They’re dead, now, thank the Lord.”
Doober glanced at the couch before sitting. He and his brother had learned the hard way to check out the furniture first. He lifted the plastic sheet that she draped over the cushions to keep them looking fresh and unceremoniously threw it aside. He knew she was giving him a dirty look, but at the moment he did not care. As he eased back into the cushions, he kept running his fingers through his hair from his forehead to the nape of his neck.
“Jesus, ma,” Doober said. “Gary, Dinty, and Mucker are dead. If I hadn’t gone for beer, that could have been me.”
“Yeah, you be thanking Jesus, boy,” his mom said. “If Jesus hadn’t been at your right side protecting you from harm, I would be planning another funeral today. You need to come to church and thank the Lord in person. Today is Wednesday and Pastor Greyson is having Bible Study tonight. You are going to come and get down on your knees, Douglas. I will be right beside you, thanking Jesus with you for protecting my son.”
“Thanks, ma,” Doober said. He had not stepped into a church since leaving home and he had no real plans to ever step in one again. Her minister, Reverend Greyson, was not a holy roller or a six-week Bible school graduate. He had a real college degree and all sorts of smarts, but he was also stiff and formal-like. Doober was confident that the man had never said anything offensive to him or his kin in the years his ma and pa attended the church, but Doober did not like the church stuff or most of the church folk. He was not going to say “no” though. A man had to hedge his bets, especially after a close call. If Jesus was going to give the holy word to anyone, it was going to be someone like Reverend Greyson.
“Are you going to call your girlfriend?” his mother asked. She was standing in the kitchen wearing an apron with bright yellow chickens with red beaks and combs across the front while she held a spatula in her hand.
“We broke up the night before last,” Doober said.
“Good to hear, son,” she said. “I know you don’t want to hear it now and now is not the proper time,” she continued with a deep breath. “That woman is no good for you. She is not just a whore, Douglas, she is a cheap whore with the manners of a pig. Lord knows she squealed like one. She is so loose I expect her innards to fall out through her hoohaw any time now. I pray to God you used protection.”
“Ma!” Doober said. “You don’t use the word hoohaw around me. You are not supposed to know about hoohaws, especially Mary Sue’s hoohaw.”
Doober was looking up at the ceiling in disbelief when he felt something thump his head. He turned around to witness his mother raising her spatula above her head again. “You don’t want sonofabitches and I don’t want sonofabitches for grandchildren. At least you got your brains out of your dick before this tragedy.”
She turned back towards the kitchen. “I hate to break the news to you, son, but your mother has a hoohaw too. I’m making biscuits and I got a chicken in the pot for soup.”
Doober grabbed the remote in its orange knit sleeve, popping on the television. He stared at the commercial for fabric softener with a quick breath of relief. He was not sure that he wanted to watch the story, yet he was compelled to follow it anyway. The commercial cut away and a pretty woman with perfect blond hair was sitting at the anchor desk while a big picture of the shootout scene taken from a helicopter floated behind her.
The highway was blocked in both directions with police cars, all with their lights twirling. When he registered what the lights were, he felt an intense hatred for them. “Damn lights,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
He almost forgot to look at the car in the center, a tan SUV, one of the small ones pretending it had horsepower, pick up, and pinpoint steering. Never having seen Mucker’s car from above because he had never been that stupid drunk to climb on top of it, he still recognized it. Even from the helicopter he could tell that the front and rear windshields were shot out.
“Who would have believed?” he said softly. He could not take his eyes away from the screen until he felt a hand rest on his shoulder.
“You can turn the sound on if you want,” his mother said. “I cut the sound to let you sleep.”
“I’m having a hard-enough time just looking at the picture, ma. I don’t think I wanna hear it yet. Buy a paper tomorrow or something like that; could be easier to digest.”
The timer on the stovetop went off making Doober start. “Biscuits are ready. Butter or jam, Douglas?”
They ate in silence although Doober’s brain would not stop running a full tilt. He remembered staring at his boots on the running board of his truck, feeling completely helpless. He looked up from his food and realized that he left the beer in the cabin. Then he remembered that there was yellow tape across the doorway barring him from his beer. He glanced at his mother’s fridge and decided that the last thing he needed was a drink.
He did not drink alone, not his way of doing things usually. He drank with his friends. His friends he drank with, they were dead. He dropped his head into his hands and sobbed.
“I called Martin’s parents this afternoon.” His mother’s words sounded like a bass drum thumping next to his ear. “They are coming to church tonight, too. I haven’t spoken to Gary’s mother in years, but Sybil said she would call her. I also called Daniel’s parents and left a message on their phone.”
“I don’t know if I can do this, ma,” Doober said. “Their sons are dead, brains blown to smithereens.”
He felt hands under his chin lift his head. He stared into her eyes. “Douglas, you are going to have to trust me. I know that you are all grown up and out of the house. I also know you don’t believe like I believe, but you still got a good heart. You need to sit in church tonight even if you don’t pray. There are loads of people who care about you, who want to sit with you even if you can’t talk yet. You sit in that pew, and you hold on to your momma. Grab the back of pew in front of you and hold on if you must.
“Reverend Greyson told me to bring you around to the back of building and he will let you in through the kitchen door. He’s concerned the media is going to show up and he wants to protect your privacy. I know this sounds crazy, but I want you in church tonight because I know you will be safe there. Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah, ma,” Doober said with a sigh. “He was Mucker, not Martin and Daniel was Dinty because of the bag of cans he brought on the boy scout camp-out when we were in seventh grade. It ain’t their Christian names but it’s their names. Names we all earned one way or the other.”
“When I use their Christian names, it’s like offering up a prayer,” his mother said. “I always call you Douglas and I always shall. It’s like calling down a guardian angel to protect you.”
“Really, ma? Really?”
“What did your daddy say every time you grabbed the keys and announced that you were going out?”
“Drive safe! I can hear his voice in my head, ma. Drive safe.”
“He meant it, Douglas. He thought that if he reminded you to be careful with the car, then bad things wouldn’t happen. He may have been pulling a superstition, but he meant what he said. You made it home safe, son, and your daddy would be pleased.”
“Am I going to be okay, ma?” Doober asked with great seriousness. “They’re dead, butchered.”
“Let me ask you a question: are you going to be okay for the next five minutes? Are you going run off and do something stupid?”
Doober shook his head. “Then son, for the next five minutes you are going to be okay. Then we will work on the next hour and continue after that. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Doober’s mom stood up and started gathering the dishes on the table. He returned to the couch, slouching forward to stare at the screen. They were showing pictures of his friends from the high school yearbook. They all wore stupid hair and dorky ties. None of them had worn a tie since their graduation as far as he could remember. Mucker’s fro was gone, and Dinty’s hair was no longer down to his shoulders. Gary with his round face still looked like Gary. Or he did. Doober reached for the remote and hit the power button. Curling up in ball, he lay on the couch and let loose a deep, long sigh.
Her Bible was on the shelf below the television, right at his eyelevel. She was the only reason left for him to remain in the area. His friends were no more; everything was mud and sweat and mosquitoes. Anyone with ambition left after high school; at least that is what they used to say. Most everybody knew they had dead end jobs and dead-eyed marrying prospects. Sitting on a couch with broken springs in the middle of a bayou had a certain sad poetry to it, at least from the outside.