The More Things Change...

The first week of the Brave New Year is finished and I still have the cold I got at Christmas.  I still need to shop, read my mail, and write The Great American Novel.  Nothing has changed and I'm here wondering what all the fuss is about on December 31. 

A brand-new start.  I hear it echo from the heavens, and I'm reminded that some cultures actually endorse tossing out everything and beginning from scratch at the start of a new year.  Could I do that?  Well, I could get along without most of my stuff, except some of the yarn I haven't knitted and my espresso maker and the antique armchair where I put on my sox in the morning, and anything I've ever written in my long, long life.  

There's a moral there; I invite you to point it out for me.  Sure, that novel I wrote in my tree house is juvenile and awful, but it's my first.  Sure, The Holoka Point is wretchedly entirely awful and without point, but it's my first serious attempt at fiction.  Ditto most of my poetry, and certainly ditto for my essays about getting ready for winter.  Most of my stuff is unedited dreck.  Three computers hold it, along with two shelves of other stuff I've printed out.  But I couldn't begin again from scratch, not on your life.  I hold the hope to my chest with a manic grip; someday I'll edit that. In fact, I hereby resolve...

So Here's Installment Two of Dead on Dutcher's Mountain.  Enjoy.  

Installment Two
Dead on Dutcher's Mountain

The two men’s complicity was so transparent that McCoy wanted to hug them.  He thumbed the corner of his hole card.  “Sometimes I wonder why they even bother with a newspaper up here,” he said.  “Yeah, we found some bales of grass close to the road, ‘way up in a pin oak.  But we couldn’t follow up just then.  It’s at the edge of my territory, anyway.”  He raised the bet with a chip.  “I’d like to personally catch this guy, though.  There must have been a couple of hundred pounds of it up there, still dry.”

“Can’t you?”  It was Brock, betting another red chip.

Yes, huggable fools. 

“Not personally, I’ve got two men sick.”  McCoy indicated Altstock with his head.  “The mine has a security man up there with a CB, though.  He and the others are watching the stuff.”  He assumed cockiness.  “Whoever comes for it will have to leave his vehicle somewhere near the road while he packs it out.  And there’s traffic up there all the time now, with the mine about to start up.”

Altstock nodded earnestly.

Brock asked, “Your men carry CBs?”

“Sure.  That way we hear the tourists when they get stuck in those bogs.”  He shook his head.  “That Dutcher’s Mountain is no-win territory.”

“What makes you say that?” Altstock drawled.  “It’s full of chromite, and now you say it’s covered with marijuana.”  He stood up, ready to quit, and grinning.  He scooped his chips into a pocket.  “I’ll buy you a drink when you’re through, sheriff.”

“With you in a minute.” 

McCoy circled the table to stand behind Brock, leaning over his shoulder and speaking low.  “I’d stay away from that mountain, Brock.  They’re very busy looking for you.”  Zuber and dealer listened without expression.

Brock got very still, holding his cards tightly.  “You trying to tell me something, McCoy?”

“Only that you’re a dumb gambler, and a dumb pot grower.  You’re betting heavily again, and that stuff in the tree was tied with your knots, just like the last time.  You show up within ten miles of Dutcher’s Mountain, I’ll haul your ass to jail.”  McCoy straightened and left the table, winking broadly at the dealer.

McCoy and Altstock hunched over drinks at the bar, paying with chips and talking about McCoy’s professional budget.  After a while the bartender moved to the other end, polishing glasses.  Brock left, returned, and left again.  McCoy put down his drink.

“Do me a favor, Altstock,” he said, low.  Altstock nodded.  “Take me to the Brookings cop shop.”

Altstock lifted his eyebrows.  “Of course.”

“You said your vehicle’s out front, didn’t you?”

“Every time, since that Jeep slid into the river from the parking lot.”

At the door McCoy told the hostess, “Back soon,” and gave her his chips.  “Keep these for me ‘till next week, will you?”

The men crossed the road in the rain, got into Altstock’s truck and drove without conversation up the coast road.  After a while Altstock asked, “What’s wrong, sheriff?”

“You saw all Brock’s activity at the back door, didn’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Pot farmer.  Probably owns that stuff we found on the mountain.  Mean little bastard.”

Alstock grunted.

McCoy explained.  “I think he was after my car.  I set him up, actually.  So if he did what I think he did, we have his fingerprints all over my hood and engine block.  Anyway, I’m a little nervous about driving fifteen miles of cliffs and curves before I get home.”

They stopped at Brookings’ only signal, drove for another block, and pulled up at the police station.  There the sergeant put McCoy through to the police chief, then took the phone and listened to instructions.  Within minutes a tow truck pulled up outside.

“I’ll take you back and the tow can follow,” Altstock offered.   “Maybe you can use some extra help.”

By the time they returned to the card room the rain was sheeting in heavy wind and the Smith River was audibly at the edge of the low parking lot.  McCoy slogged over to the tow truck; Altstock followed.

“That tan sedan,” McCoy yelled through the wind.

“Which one?” the driver yelled back.

McCoy looked again, squinting.  A car like his own sat next to the river bank.  “The one over by the building.”

Harry Zuber came out of The Whole Tribe, wrapping himself in a yellow slicker and running in an old man’s shuffle.  McCoy lifted his hand to salute, but Zuber didn’t see him; he hunched quickly into the other sedan.
A mechanical wail split the noise of the storm.  “Jesus!” the mechanic began through his open window.  “His transmission...”

He was cut short by the rest of the noise.  Zuber’s car slithered crazily forward, then sideways across the mud, accelerating with the engine at full bore and screeching.

McCoy ran toward the car.  “He’s going in!”  He dove for the bumper, missed and sprawled onto the muddy river bank.  With another squirm Zuber’s car dove into the water and kept going.  Then it bobbed, half afloat.

“Jump, Zuber!” McCoy yelled, scrambling to his feet. 

The car spun; the old man’s face was a momentary blur.  The engine roared; smoke rose from under the hood.  The tow truck approached.

“Back off!” McCoy yelled, waving at the driver.  “We’ll have to chock your tires!”

The truck stopped, its headlamps eerily lighting Zuber’s predicament.  The sedan was now a car-length from shore, one front wheel scarcely anchored by the river bed, and the river was running fast.

Altstock had been transfixed, but now he came to life.  “There are some timbers by the building,” he called, and disappeared into the rain.

“Get some men from inside!” McCoy yelled.  “We’ll make a chain!”

“Right!” he heard.

“Isn’t that Harry Zuber?” the mechanic in the truck wanted to know, and leaned out of his window to search through the rain.  “This won’t do his ticker any good.”

“Oh, Jesus,” McCoy said, and whirled again toward the river. 

There was a heavy crash and the crunch of splintering glass.  A ten-foot root system thudded across Zuber’s hood and shattered the windshield, then moved the car into mid-stream.

“Yeah.  Real bad heart,” the mechanic said, “And that’s not going to help it, either.”

Zuber’s car went under the tree, and the river poured through the windshield.  Men ran from The Whole Tribe, but they could never have beat the rising water in the car, or the swift, erratic tick of Zuber’s failing heart.