Too Far Gone

46

Leland’s mouth was packed with a large wad of Juicy Fruit and he was humming a song his daddy used to sing all the time. Something about me ho my toe down the bayou. Leland’s boat pulled the wardens’ piece of crap flat-bottom easily. Leland’s father had said his son had eyes like razor blades. That morning when he was leaving to check lines and get gas, he had spotted the tree camera because the sun made the thing cast a shadow where he’d never seen one. He had searched the bank and found the place where a boat’s hull had pressed reeds down and left the impression of its bow in the mud, so he followed the boot prints across the peninsula to the suspect tree and looked at the camera from the side.

He had known that whoever had put it there would come back for it, and when they did, he’d make sure they paid for invading his place and spying on him. He remembered now that he had spotted the game wardens several times in the past two weeks, far more often than he usually saw wardens. One had been the bastard whose name was something that sounded like pump handle. The bastard had ticketed Leland more than a few times over the years, so he knew him.

Nobody liked them wardens.

Nobody would miss them.

Even if one was a woman.

He had never made a woman disappear before.

Their boat was aluminum.

Leland truly loved his boat’s shallow-draft fiberglass hull, but he was suspicious that Doc was going to try to pull a take-back deal. Doc had told Leland not to tell anybody he owned the boat or where he’d gotten it. He couldn’t see why he should tell a lie about it, so he’d told Moody it was his on account he did a job to get it. Leland didn’t like liars. Well, you could lie to wardens, because they were sneaky bastards that thought they owned the birds, the fish, and everything else God put around the world.

Most people couldn’t be trusted to do what they said. They’d say they just wanted to talk to you, then they’d handcuff you, lock you up, and stick needles in you and say you were crazy.

Leland knew that he was only safe from being monitored deep in the swamp, because they wouldn’t ever dare come in here. He had fixed it so if they ever did somehow track him to his cabin, they’d never get a chance to tell any of the others about it.

The boat was his because he had done everything Doc and the woman with the dark hair told him he had to do for it. If they kept adding things onto the list as long as they felt like it, Leland would have no choice but to fix them both good.

Every time Leland turned around and finished one thing, they had this next thing that needed to be done, and Doc went on about how they only trusted Leland to do it right, and how much the boat was worth, like he wasn’t close to being even.

Doc said an FBI lady was fixing to make trouble, and what they might need to do about that, which meant what Leland might need to do. Doc said she could put Leland back in the hospital for keeps. Okay, if the FBI lady really had a mind to put Leland back in there and let them bastards shoot electricity into his head and all that, he’d knock her in the head. If need be, he would.

Well, maybe he could do one or two more things. It was a nice boat.