check on her intrusion into this sylvan paradise.
Maybe the purported snake problem up here is of the twolegged variety, Karen thought. She was suddenly glad it was morning, guessing that all the reptiles were still-in hiding.
She kept climbing in first gear, the road now showing less sign of use.
The lower tree branches were beginning to scrap’e against the top and sides of the Explorer, and the tire ruts were not so pronounced. Then the track just ended, or effectively did, because there was an enormous dead tree lying across the road. It had obviously been down for many years, but even half-rotten, the massive trunk meant that she would have to turn around.
She stopped but kept the engine running. This has to be the top of Slade Hill, or almost so,, she thought. She looked through the windshield to see if the road continued, but it didn’t look like it. She tried to remember what the postmaster had said about a house up there, but she finally decided to maneuver the Explorer around so that it faced downhill. Then she shut it down and got out, wishing she had worn the trousered working uniform I instead of the skirted variety. Her toes were curling in her dress shoes until she remembered that she kept a pair of Bean boots in the back. She changed shoes and then extracted her oversized bag, slinging it over her shoulder and then locking the car.
There was hardly a sound up here among the stunted trees and heavy underbrush, as if the native fauna had long since fled in disgust. There appeared to be the beginnings of a path on the river side of the clearing. She walked a few yards down the path before spotting the top of a trailer about feet off the road, back in a jungle of vines and weeds. e smell of a dysfunctional septic system competed with the odor of rotting vegetation and old tires at the edge of the dirt road.
Single-wide paradise. She could imagine some covert marijuana patches out in those_ woods, and maybe a meth boiler room down below at the double trailer. Above to the left, there was a ridgeline outlined by old trees, where patches of gray limestone appeared as silvery smudges against all the burgeoning greenery of spring. There might have been the ruins of a house back in those trees, but she could not tell. And no birds, she noticed. Not a peep from what should have been a hillside full of birds. Did snakes at birds?
This has to be the place, she decided reluctantly, although there was no mailbox or anything else with a number 4 on it. She started in toward the trailer along the dirt path, which was littered with an amazing variety of trash, beer cans, plastic shopping bags and ancient oily articles of clothing.
Stepping through the low underbrush, she wished she had a big stick to sweep the grass ahead of her. She felt a bramble bush put a good-sized tear in her right stocking. After about thirty feet, the path opened up into a clearing, where a badly damaged trailer lay half on, half off its cinder-block fqundations. The top of the trailer on one end looked as if it had been hit by a falling tree, although the tree was not in evidence. Electricity and telephone wires snaked down from a pole on the dirt -road to the comer of the trailer, so presumably somebody did live here. Off to one side, there was a motorcycle hootch built just like the ones at the trailer’s below. Battered packing crates constituted its sides and a plastic tarp stretched across some two-by-fours for a roof.
There was room under it for a couple of bikes, -but only one motorcycle was present for duty. It looked quite large, and it was partially covered by a moldy-looking shower curtain.
There was a mound of bags and clothes stacked to one side of the bike.
She wondered if that was the motorcycle she had seen at the church, but all motorcycles looked the same to her. She looked around for dogs. She heard a sound, and sure enough, two brown rats skittered out from beneath a pile of rotting mattresses and dived into a hole under some pallets. If there was a big snake problem up here, it wasn’t big enough, she thought. Time to go being on the door. She walked up to the front of the-trailer, kicked aside a white plastic bag of trash, and knocked on the front door. There was no response. She tried it again. The sound reverberated inside the trailer, as if it was empty.
She turned around and surveyed the littered yard. He hadn’t shown up for work, and he wasn’t answering the door. If this was his door, that is.
But the motorcycle rather made her think it was his place. The silence was a bit unnerving , though, and she began to imagine that someone was watching her. She went back to the door and banged louder, but there was still no response. She stepped back from the door to check the windows, but they were covered up inside.
She caught another whiff of sewer gas coming from under the trailer, an4 she stepped back out into the yard again.
A thought occurred to her. Suppose Jack was more than just a bit player in this business? There had been two people putting her into the cart and dragging her down to the river.
Suppose one of them had been Jack? As she stood there in the silence of the clearing, she began to think that being up here by herself might not be such a great idea. Then something moved in the pile of rags next to the motorcycle.
She walked over toward the motorcycle shelter,’being careful of where she put her feet. Then, to her surprise, the pile of rags itself moved, and a pale-faced Jack Sherman sat up groggily among the rags, a confused, disoriented look on his face. So drunk last night he’d never made it to the trailer.
He was wearing a filthy black leather jacket over an equally filthy T-shirt. His black jeans had been embroidered recently with the finished product of the brewer’s art. Karen could see the red of his bloodshot eyes from twenty feet away.
She relaxed: Jack was in no shape to give anybody any trouble. Just as long as Galantz wasn’t lurking nearby.
Jack swiveled his head around until he could focus on Karen. The bright light of morning was making him squint, and she wondered if he secretly needed glasses. He managed a liquid belch, and she decided not to get any closer lest the sight of another human provoke some even more distasteful bodily functions.
“Is that you, Jack Sherman?” she asked.
“Stop yellin’, man,” the derelict said, his voice thick.
“I’m hurtin’ here, man.” His eyes were closed now, and he held one hand up to his right ear, which Karen noticed was crusted with a thin line of blood. He made no move to rise from his nest of rags.
Karen moved a few feet closer, looking around to make sure Jack was alone. An admiral’s son, no less, she thought.
She wondered if this was a sight not unfamiliar to the admiral.
“Aren’t you a pretty specimen,” she said. “That man said there was a snake problem up here. This looks like a rat -problem.
“Snakes,” the kid mumbled, his eyes still closed, his head weaving with the effort to stay upright. Then he giggled as if he was still drunk. “it speaks,” she said. “Hard to believe this is an admiral’s son, but there’s no denying the facial resemblance, is there?”
The boy reacted to that, opening his eyes. “What’re you talking about, bitch? I ain’t no admiral’s son. Never was, never will be. -Fuck all admirals. And fuck you, whoever the hell you are.” . Karen moved a step closer. “You’re telling me that your father isn’t Rear Admiral W. T.
Jack rolled slowly all the way over in his bed of rags, squinting hard now, staring at her, pushing himself up on one arm to look at her, and then she saw a wave of recognition cross his face. “Hey, it’s you,” he said. “From the base. Where’s your bodyguard?”
“Not all that far away,” Karen lied. “But we thought we’d try asking our questions nicely, so he’s waiting in the car.
“Well, fuck that noise. I ain’t answering any ioddamned questions. Even if you do have a great ass.”
Karen cocked her head to one side. “You talk to all the girls that way, Jack?” she asked. “Or are you just attracted to asses in general?”
It went right over his head, and he waved a hand at her as if to make her just go away. He belched again, and for a moment, she thought he was going to be sick. But then he was looking at her again.
“Like I said, fuck you, lady. I don’t hafta talk to you.
Besides, you oughta be thankin’ me, man. He was gonna plug your ass before we dropped you in the river. Whadda ya think a that, bitch? Hey, you like your little ride in the river, huh?”
Karen felt a wave of anger swell up inside her chest. But Jack was getting up now, staggering to his feet, holding on to one of the two-by-fours.
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve got a great ass, lady, Commander, ma’am, sir, whatever the hell you’re called. I took a little look, see, right after my old man popped his flashbulb in your face. You don’t remember? I do.
