Nobody would believe what it was like here. You could have a piece of farm ground one day and a lake the next. The wind had picked up some, and the boat was going pretty good, bouncing over the whitecaps. He was going against the current, the prow standing out of the water with his weight and the weight of the big Johnson offsetting the boat's balance. Suddenly there was a noise and the engine stopped dead. Had that fat shit monkey-wrenched him?
What now? He had the sinking sensation of being out of gas but when he looked he discovered he'd sheared off a freaking motherjamming cotter pin. He had nothing. He patted pockets, scrambled around in the recesses of the boat. He'd dumped the small nails he carried for that purpose when he'd emptied the water.
Any small piece of wire or whatever would fix it temporarily. Surely he could come up with a mere fishhook or paper clip? No. Nothing. It was starting to rain harder and he was freezing again and the current was taking him back to the big oaks. And he hadn't had any coffee, much less orange juice. And it was already noon. The day was half over and he was sitting in a boat filling with water out in the middle of what used to be his beans.
It took him fifty-seven minutes to paddle across. He was exhausted from paddling against the current and shaking from the cold. By the time he had pushed through the clog of willows on the other side he didn't have any strength left in his arms, shoulders, or back. He'd only thought he had a headache and neck ache when he woke up. This was a headache. It wouldn't have surprised him to see Chaingang waiting to snuff him.
He finally made it to the bank, reached his paddle out, and felt the wood strike good old solid roadway underneath, so he stepped out of the boat. Later, much later, he'd recount the incident and speculate that what he'd done was hit the bridge rail with the paddle. When Ray stepped out he also stepped off the Southeast Mark Road Bridge, dropping down thirty-seven feet in ice-cold water.
He was instantly traumatized. He'd never completely recall how he escaped the death grip of the wet poncho, only the vague sense of swimming into willows where he was found, clinging for his life, in shock, when Wendall Chastain came along and saved his life, hauling him into his boat and taking him back to shore.
“I'll be fine, Wendall,” he kept arguing with the man. “Just let Pee Wee Kimbro know and he'll fix my motor and bring it across to me."
“Bullshit, Ray. Now get in there and get dry clothes on before you catch your death. I'm going to run back across, but I'll be right back for you in about ten minutes. Now git!” the man commanded.
Meara didn't even thank him. He turned and trudged up the road, fighting a wave of nausea. What he wanted to do was fix a few stiff drinks and sit in front of his stove for about six days. He managed to get inside, change clothes, crack the seal on a half pint, and take a couple of shots with bottled water, although his well was sunk so deep he could have probably drunk the tap water safely. He was already sicker than any tainted wellspring could make him. He forced himself to pull a leather jacket on and went back out in the rain.
Chastain had just tied up and was starting up the road to get him when Meara came out of the house. Big pieces of the day would come back to him later as deep, dark holes, and this was one. He had zero memory of crossing back with Chastain or making his way to Kimbro's. He remembered ringing their doorbell.
One of their dogs, a strange-colored semi-hound, came barking out from behind the house and bit Meara on the back of the right leg before he could kick it away. He didn't even care.
“Hi, Ray,” Betty said, opening the door, and he sneezed in her face by way of answering. “You look like you're getting a cold. Come on in."
“Howdy,” Pee Wee's mother-in-law said. “Pee Wee ain't here."
“He had to go in to the blacksmith's, Ray."
“Can I have my keys, please?"
“Uh—I think Pee Wee's got ‘em."
“Oh.” He sneezed again.
“You're gonna give us your germs,” Pee Wee's mother-in-law told him sternly.
“I'll wait outside,” he said.
“I don't know when he'll be back. You know Pee Wee."
“That's all right."
“Say, Ray, your—uh—lady called and said to give you a message.” She went over to the phone. “Come on in,” she said as an afterthought, ignoring the look from her mother.
He opened the door. “Sharon? Sharon Kamen called?"
“I got a note here someplace,” she said, rummaging through loose scraps of paper by the telephone.
“Could I use your phone while I'm here, Betty?"
“Sure. Go ahead.” He picked it up and dialed the motel.
“Thanks,” he said, as the line rang. He heard Betty Kimbro's mother mumble something about how his germs would be in the mouthpiece of the phone and they should take Lysol to it.
Meara asked for Sharon's room number and listened to the phone ring over and over. Betty came over beside him and laid a crudely printed note down beside the phone. He could make out the word package.
“She left a package for you at the motel,” Betty told him when he eventually hung up. It brought another big shiver.
Ray thanked her and went to Pee Wee's barn and got some wire, jimmied his truck door open, and hot-wired the ignition.
“Reckon he found his keys,” Betty Kimbro said to her mother, as they turned the volume back up on the soap opera they were watching. Meara's truck could be heard starting up and roaring off in the direction of town.
“Better hope he didn't give us any of his germs,” her mother said, absentmindedly.
61
Bayou City
It was a pleasant night in Bayou City. No traffic. One cop car. Plenty of shadows. Chaingang's kind of scene.
A dainty quarter ton of avenger carrying a case full of happy surprises tippytoed out of the deepest pocket of darkness and penetrated a shabby storefront bearing the NEW AGERS emblem and the legend New American-German Enterprise for Reunification and Solidarity. The door had a cheap lock. What was there to steal inside, after all? A cruddy flag and some cast-off furniture? Who'd have thought someone would want to break in? Break out, maybe, but in?
Chaingang glided in soundlessly, a graceful clown bear easing in through the darkness, bearing enough plastique to blow a bridge.
He found an address sheet with the members’ names as soon as he gained entry, and was about to leave his surprise when a loud noise startled him and the homemade submachine gun's ugly snout automatically pointed in the direction of the sound. A human snore.
A closed wooden door. He'd assumed it was the club shitter, but as he carefully turned the knob and eased the door open a crack he saw three young men, two asleep on cots, one on the floor, the tiny crash pad awash in graffiti, Nazi symbols, and trash. The three biggest pieces of trash were sleeping so soundly, amid a couple of cartons of empties, that even as the door squeaked loudly they continued to slumber. One of them was really sawing logs, but he suddenly woke up, wide eyed, a size 15EEEEE bata boot having cut off his air supply.
The snorer began to thrash around until he saw the eye of a 9mm firearm a couple of inches away from his own right eye. His hands released their grip on the ankle of the massive boot, but his protesting whimpers woke the others.
“Hello, lads,” Daniel said, smiling his most dangerous grin. “Remember me?” Two of them had been part of the group that gave him his beating and only the weapon kept them from trying to rush him. All they could see was a ventilated barrel shroud, bore, and the front of a trigger housing, a long Parkerized-type magazine sticking from its underside. It looked like a Mattel or Hasbro toy, dwarfed as it was by the enormous paws that held it.