After looking at the map, I tentatively ruled out the north-south stretch of US 19 as the most likely section to look for Bunny. Too much traffic and too many people for a man trying to attract no attention to himself. That left Main Street east of the traffic light in Hudson. And because of Thirty Mile Swamp south of Main Street, it left Main Street to the north.
I took a pencil and lightly marked two points five miles apart, beginning at the edge of town. If I drove up every road leading north from Main in that five-mile stretch, I might not find Bunny but I might find a blue Dodge with Arizona plates. An automobile is hard to dismantle completely. Even the burned-out skeleton of a car could be a starting place.
I looked at my watch. I still had an hour of daylight. 'Come on, boy,' I said to the shepherd. He was up at once, hobbling but expectant. He was ready to jump into the front seat when I opened the car door, but I picked him up and put him in. 'We'll pamper you for a day or two,' I told him. He nuzzled my arm and sat down, dignified as a college president.
I went around to the trunk and hauled out knee-high boots, a machete for underbrush, and a steel-shafted number 3 iron for snakes. I'd seen enough of the side roads around Hudson to know I'd be doing more walking than riding. And I planned to cover every cowpath a car or a man could traverse in the five-mile area I'd marked off. I'd cover it a yard at a time, if necessary. Whatever it took, I was going to find Bunny.
We drove out Main Street, Kaiser sitting up as steady as a sergeant-major on dress parade. Me had a big head and a wicked-looking mouthful of teeth. His coat was mostly gray, flecked with brown, and he looked all business riding shotgun beside me.
The first two side roads I turned up weren't too bad. I checked them out without too much trouble. At the third one I took one look, pulled the Ford off the road, and changed into the boots. I didn't have enough daylight left to do much, but I wanted to get the feel of it. I found out I had a bull by the nose in the first hundred yards. Clouds of gnats and mosquitoes dive-bombed me. I lunged through knee-deep brush, chopping steadily, streaming perspiration. Only a few signs of recent car traffic lured me on to the end of the track. When the faint ruts petered out by an abandoned tarpaper shack, I turned around and slogged my way back to the road.
I emerged from the brush to find a two-tone county sheriff's cruiser pulled in behind the Ford. Kaiser was showing a handsome set of fangs to a uniformed man trying to look into the front seat. My brush-crackling progress had announced me, and the uniformed man turned to inspect me.
'Deputy Sheriff Franklin,' he announced curtly. 'You'd better keep that damn wolf on a leash.' I said nothing. Franklin was a stocky man with a red, weathered face. His gray trousers had red piping on the sides, and his khaki shirt was open at the throat. 'What's your business out here?' he asked me.
'I'm a timber cruiser,' I said.
'You're a what?'
'I'm scouting the area for a stands of second-growth black maple I heard is in here.'
He scowled. 'We're two hundred miles too far south for black maple. If you know your business, you know that.' He glanced at the weedy-looking trees in an area that had obviously been viciously slash-cut.
I made my voice firm. 'I had a drink with an old-timer who told me they took a million feet of black maple out of here fifty years ago. If the slash hasn't been burned over, then-should be a buck in it today for the guy who finds the right spot.' Franklin was studying me, frowning. 'I'm also working for Mr. Craig and Judge Carberry in town,' I added.
Whatever Franklin had planned to say, the names stopped him. He wasn't the type to bow out gracefully, though. He swaggered to the rear of the Ford and made a production of writing down the license plate number. 'We keep an eye on these badlands,' he said gruffly and stalked back to his cruiser. He backed out on the road at fifty miles an hour and roared wide open down the road.
I changed back to my cordovans, put boots, machete, and golfclub back in the trunk, then patted Kaiser's scarred head when I got back into the Ford. 'Good dog,' I hold him. He
It was full twilight by the time I got back to the motel.
I began to make a habit of eating my evening meal at the Dixie Pig. Jed frequently joined me, and we'd sit over a drink and talk. When the bar wasn't busy, Hazel sat in, too.
Jed was a complete extrovert, like most salesmen I've known. In a roomful of people he'd crawl onto Hazel's lap and talk babytalk to her. He had a high-pitched, infectious laugh that turned every head in a room. But he was still a sharp-witted kid who looked both ways before crossing the street.
Between them Jed and Hazel knew every living soul for fifty miles. I'd get them started and then listen while they rattled family skeletons past and present. I didn't Know what I was listening for. I just hoped I'd recognize it when I heard it.
Early in the game I introduced the subject of the post office. They both shook a few feathers loose from that bird, but I couldn't find anything meant for me. Lucille Grimes was the postmistress, widow of a postmaster deceased five years. Jed said the town wondered why she didn't remarry, since she didn't lack for suitors. He also said zestfully that she was a tall, leggy, cool-looking blonde.
Hazel had her own idea why the beauteous Lucille hadn't remarried. She hinted that the favored suitor already had a wife. Since Hazel, minus her usual spade-is-a-shovel outspokenness, failed to name him, I deduced that he was a Dixie Pig customer. Lucille Grimes wasn't one of Hazel's favorite people, judging from the redhead's attitude. Jed kidded her about it openly.
I wasn't interested in the postmistress' morals or lack of them, but that post office continued to bother me.
It took me eight working days to clean up the Craig and Landscombe properties. Evenings I got out and plowed up and down the side roads north of Main Street. I found nothing. Nobody remarked that I didn't seem to be knocking down stone walls looking for more work after I finished with the Craig and Landscombe properties. The sun coast of Florida is an easygoing place.
Jed Raymond led an active social life, even for a young fellow his age. The nights he didn't show for dinner, it came to be understood I'd postpone my own meal to seven-thirty, and Hazel would serve us both in the corner booth. We'd sit and swap stories about horses and horse-players over coffee and cigarettes.
The big girl was comfortable to be around. Once in a while she'd have to get up and tend bar, but not too often. The Dixie Pig did its real business from nine-thirty to two a.m. The talk was knowledgeable. Hazel had made the racetrack scene from Ak-Sar-Ben to Woodbine, and so had I. It's not the biggest club in the world.
Jed warned me once that she could be moody and her drinking a problem. So far I'd seen no sign of either. I felt she had a chance to let off steam with me that had been a long time bottled up. Blueshirt Charlie Andrews had died a few years before of a heart attack. Hazel had rushed into a no-good second marriage with a mystery man, Lou Espada, who had died as mysteriously as he'd lived. Andrews and Espada between them had left Hazel well off.
I liked her. I could tell she had guts. I was sure she'd spit in the eye of the devil himself, given provocation. I
enjoyed it, sitting around batting the breeze about racetrack used-to-be and might-have-been, but inside I was getting restless.
It wasn't why I had come.
We were sitting in the corner booth one night, waiting for Jed. He was in high good humor when he arrived. 'Made a sale today,' he informed us. 'Drink up, drink up. I'm buyin'. Got to keep the country's money circulatin'.'
Hazel went out back to put on the steaks. The bar became busy with before-dinner thirst quenchers, and she didn't come back. Everyone came in the back door. Hazel could have nailed up the front door and never lost a nickel's worth of business.
Jed broke off his highly-flavored account of his real estate triumph to lean toward the window which overlooked the back parking lot. 'Well, well, well,' he said softly. 'Here's company.' He stood up, a bright smile pasted on his face as a tall blonde walked in the back door. 'Here's Lucille now,' he said loudly enough to be heard by her. 'Maybe she'll have a drink with us.' He moved out of the booth.
I could hear his laughing cajolery as he intercepted the blonde. In seconds he was leading her toward our booth. 'OP Chet here's been admirin' your post office, especially the fixtures that aren't government issue,' Jed was saying. He winked at me as I stood. 'Lucille Grimes, Chet Arnold. Chet's a tree surgeon, Lucille.' He grinned at her.
