Minus Tide

had chosen to inhabit the talented body of a strangely beautiful woman who wrapped herself around him in ways he could have never imagined. He couldn’t believe she’d wanted anything to do with him after the night he’d driven her home and let her sleep on the couch. His mother hadn’t said a word against it either, was mostly out with his uncle somewhere anyway. Dawkins assumed Keri would hook up with some older guy out of his league and he’d never see her again. But to his surprise she said she only wanted to be with him, that she’d never met such a sweet boy before and couldn’t imagine anyone nicer. She then went on to explain what she was up against while her hand somehow ended up pressing his thigh. There were people back in Portland who’d be looking for her, she’d said. And they won’t stop until they have proof I’m dead or they get their money. The next morning he lent her two thousand dollars from his savings account.

They’d spent as many nights as they could up in the remote cabin that Dawkin’s father and uncle had built during their elk hunting days. For the first time in his life Dawkins found himself truly giddy in love. He could think of nothing else except when he’d see Keri again, what new lessons he might receive or be tested on. Would she like the cheerleader outfit he’d bought for her at the secondhand shop? It was practically brand new. His friends had tried to warn him that she might break his heart but he just wouldn’t listen, and yet on a crisp October night it happened without warning. Keri had been last seen hitching a ride with a trucker she’d met at the 101, a parking lot heavyweight named Skunk who was well known for his golden vocal chords and big hands. She needed to get back to the desert, Keri had said in a note he’d found left in his truck. She needed to get back to the sun.

He couldn’t let her go so easily. At first he’d holed up in his room and cried himself dry. When he knew his mom wasn’t coming home for the night, he got up and dressed, took his father’s hunting rifle and headed for the highway.

It had turned out to be easier to find them than he’d thought.

He’d only had to drive seventy miles south before he’d spotted Skunk’s semi outside a sagging motel in Colton. He’d pressed his ear to their room door and listened to the mattress music until he could no longer stand it before going back into the trees and shooting out Skunk’s tires. Skunk had come running naked at him and he’d shot him in the knee and the big man just crumbled to the ground with a sharp yelp. Sing me a song now you asshole, he’d said as the man quickly triaged his skinned penis before sliding under his truck like a translucent grub. Keri emerged from the doorway shrieking and for a few seconds Dawkins put her face in the cross-hairs before lights from other units began to flicker on and he had to turn and run for the truck before he got caught.

“Sheriff. I know you can hear me.”

Another wave of water sloshed against his face and this time some got up his nose and caused him to sneeze. “Are you trying to blind me?” he asked the flashlight bearer.

“Sorry,” said the voice of the man who’d been trying to wake him. The beam moved away from his eyes and resettled somewhere on his forehead. He realized then how bad of a headache he had, that he could taste blood. His hands were still bound behind his back-at least he thought he still had hands. He couldn’t feel a damn thing.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You’re still in the shack where the others left you. You have a wound to your head-a big bump. Do you remember anything about what happened?”

“Yeah. Bitch kicked me in the head.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the man said.

Dawkins listened to the man laughing softly and he felt his anger rise. “I really need a cigarette. Unless you’re planning to free me you’ll find them in my front pocket.”

“Fair enough, Sheriff. But I think we should leave your hands as they are for now.”

Rough fingers that smelled of liver found his pack and lighter and fumbled a cigarette into his mouth. When it thumbed the lighter he saw the face of Cyclops flash before him and his heart skipped. What the hell is happening? I know I was hard on those hippies I caught sleeping on the beach, but I never thought it would come to this. Whatever you do, don’t show this one-eyed Manson wannabe you’re afraid.

“Who are you?” the sheriff asked. He was distracted by music lifting out from somewhere deep inside his head, as if coming from a radio lying at the sticky bottom of a drying well. For a moment he dared himself to bring the sound into focus, and to his surprise he heard a scrotum-tightening chorus of all the women who’d ever told him to go to hell.

This was not the end Dawkins had repeatedly dreamed of. He’d dreamt of being ambushed by men totting AK47’s — assault rifles that the Mexican cartels fondly called their ‘goat horns’. The dream played out like an action sequence from a 1970’s grind house film, the kind his older brother would sometimes take him to see at a rundown theater in Portland instead of the latest Disney flick their parents had given them money for. A prickly keyboard and a creeping bass guitar provided the tension as the assassins moved in closer. Filmed behind a smoked lens. . you were supposed to believe that it was night although moonlight would never ping off gunmetal that brightly. When the muzzles began to explode he’d sit up in his bed and scream, reach out to a bottle for a couple of hits.

“My name is of no matter, Sheriff.”

“Have we met?”

“Not in person, no. But I know all about you.”

“And how’s that?”

“You helped with my business. That is until you decided to steal from me.”

“I’m sorry but you’ve got the wrong person. It was some other guy that ran off with your love beads, man.”

“I don’t have all morning, Sheriff. There are a couple of men waiting outside that you’ve come to know. Please don’t make me have them come in here. I’d hate to let it come to that, I really would. I just need you to answer a few questions. Once I have what I need, we’ll leave you and your sleepy little town be.”

“What do you want to know?” the sheriff asked. It finally dawned on him that the man was another Russian. He’d thought the guy’s accent sounded off. He wished now that he were dealing with a pissed off hippie. At least we’d still have music in common. Skynyrd. Creedence. Eddie Van Halen. And if they wanted some pot he still had some stashed in a footlocker back at the station. But these Russians-they’re from another world. He’d smoked the cigarette down to the butt and it was burning his lips. Cyclops gently took it from his mouth and crushed it out between his fingers.

“I’m only trying to clear up a little misunderstanding, Sheriff. If it hadn’t been for Duane Campbel, we probably wouldn’t even be talking right now. But now that he’s dead you’ve mistakenly come to the conclusion that your contract with me and my people in Portland has changed. Is that right Sheriff?”

“I guess so.”

“And instead of talking to me about renegotiating our contract, you chose to steal from me? Why?”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’ve got problems.”

“Do you still have the money?”

“Every bit of it. You’ll find it stashed under the old doghouse in my backyard…”

“And the product? What happened to it?”

“It fell into the bay.”

“And why is that?”

“I shot the trafficker who was carrying it. I thought they were going to try and rip us off.”

“And you’re instincts were right, Sheriff. I apologize. Those two turned out to be nothing but trouble for me. But what can you do? It’s just never enough for some people. They go and ruin a good thing for everyone. I understand an arm washed up on the beach?”

“It’s stashed in the freezer in my garage. Beneath last year’s elk steaks.”

“I’d like to see it before I go.”

“No problem, you can swing by and look after you get the money. I guess this is it then?”

“Pardon me Sheriff?”

“Now that I’ve told you everything, aren’t you going to kill me?”

“Come on, Sheriff. You must not have been listening. You’re too important to me to let go so easily. In the past, of course, it would have been different. Back then I would have had horrible things done to men like you so as to set an example. But it never works in the long term. No matter how many times you try to wipe it out it still