Butcher

48

According to TV, the investigations into the “4 Corners Murder” of Brother Beauton, who ran the 4 Corners Gas Station, and the murder of Jerry Rice, had so far “yielded no leads.” The day didn't look too promising either. Meara, an early riser, had taken to leaving all his news sources blasting through the small farmhouse, and as he walked from bathroom to kitchen to living room, the scanner, big radio, and television fed news and weather snippets.

“—Bayou City schools are also closed—"

“—flash flooding, swelling rivers and overflowing drainage ditches, have become serious hazards for motorists. Many homes and businesses are finding themselves in deep trouble—"

“In deep shit,” Meara said back to the radio.

“Road banks are overflowing along the highways into Sikeston, Dexter, East Prairie, Bayou City, and many of the surrounding communities. A female reporter was doing a locally televised stand-up. “Captain Dave Vineyard of the Public Safety Department says it looks bad."

A uniformed man spoke. “It's the worst I remember it in fifteen years on the job. This is the only time I can recall when old Highway 61 was completely under water. If this keeps up, we'll start evacuating Sikeston in the morning."

Meara cursed and stomped out of the house.

The river stages looked bad. They were talking about how it was going to crest in twenty-four hours, but that was the standard meteorological line of bullshit. They'd predict a crest, then revise it upward, then predict another crest. They didn't know jack-o-logical shit about the river.

Water was already above the flood stage at Cairo and pushing in fast. A few more inches and the back way would be closed, and it would be a mess. Nobody could go in or out past Big Oak, even in a flatbed, yet it'd be too shallow to put a boat in.

The water was no longer just a silver gray ribbon along the far horizon. You could took way down in the fields to the south of the Meara ground and see that big silvery-blue-gray mass of water pushing in. That far away it looked as still as a sheet of glass, but up close it was powerful and always moving, the river currents making it slither like a million serpents, filling the low spots, coursing through the trees and over the ditch banks, all of it aiming at Raymond.

The stoutest bailing wire he had on the place was about the consistency of a steel rod. But he had a big loop of that new, triple-thick barbed wire, and he got down under the house and started working. He'd be damned if he'd let that river have the house.

It took him all day to sink four railroad ties wired to the foundation. Four of those big, creosoted crossties, each wound in three strands of triple-thick, the wire going up under the foundation and twisting around back under the ties, which he sank as far down as he could get.

It was rough work, with no room to use the posthole digger or get full movement of the shovel. He had to angle it and it took its toll in scratched hands and barked knuckles. Then there was the barbed wire. It was like razor wire, it slashed anything it touched, and when Meara crawled out from under the house he'd ruined the knees of his Levis, his shirt, and both new leather work gloves. On top of that, when he was pulling his tools and what was left of the wire out from underneath, he raised up too soon and drove a rusty nail about an eighth of an inch into his skull.

For about five minutes he didn't know whether to cry, cuss, shit, or go blind, he was in so much pain. He ended up sitting on the old wooden porch feeling his sore head and wondering if he should go in and get a tetanus shot, because the way the day was going, the way his luck was running, he'd have lockjaw by morning.

When he went inside, the telephone was ringing and he actually had a few seconds of fleeting hope. It seemed he had entered one of those sweepstakes and—no, there was no catch—he was being phoned long distance from somewhere in Arizona to be informed that he, Ray Meara, had just won a seventeen-foot fiberglass Chimera Jon boat, with seventy-five horse motor, and a new Superglide Trailer. No, he was told, he didn't have to buy a thing.

“As soon as you check in here at Rancho Hacienda we'll be validating your eligibility prize number and you're guaranteed that as soon as you take the tour—” To his credit he neither cursed nor broke the phone into tiny pieces.

It rang immediately, even as he was hanging up, and he picked up the receiver thinking the line had not been disconnected.

“I am not interested,” he said.

“Raymond Meara?” The woman's voice was muddied, the connection so bad he could scarcely hear her.

“What?"

“Raymond, this is Marsha at the bank?"

“Oh! I can't hear you too well, Marsha."

“You cashed a check recently for two hundred dollars. It was written by Doug Seifer? That check just came back. It's marked insufficient funds and we need you to take care of the discrepancy please."

“Insufficient? You mean it bounced?” The nail still hurt. Perhaps his brain was leaking out of the hole, slowly evaporating.

“That's right. We need you to make up the two hundred dollars, Ray, plus there is an additional ten-dollar charge for putting the check through. Did you want us to take that out of your account or do you want to come in and pay it?"

“Marsha, may I call you back immediately on this?” he asked. She said yes, and they hung up. He tried to reach Doug and got nothing. He dialed the operator and a phone company employee assured him the lines were still working. He tried the number again and got nothing. Calmly, one hand on his brain hole, he dialed O and this time got an A T & T operator.

“Could you try a number for me please? I'm having difficulty getting it to ring. Water in the terminals, I guess."

“Sorry you're having difficulty, sir. Glad to help.” The man told him this in a sincere, pleasant tone. Good ol’ efficient A T & T. They'd get this call through, even if the floodwaters were coming. The busy signal rang loud and clear, a fast busy, unlike the ones Meara was used to.

“Uh, listen, could you make sure that number's working? I couldn't get it to ring and, you know, now it's busy."

“You want me to verify if it's busy?"

“Yeah. Please."

“You realize you'll be charged extra for verification of a B-Y sir?"

“I'll be charged?"

“Yes, sir. There is an extra charge.” The man told him how much.

“You gotta be shittin’ me, Jack. I gotta pay extra to find out if a phone is in working order?"

“Yes, sir.” Meara told him never mind and hung up. Again he didn't break the phone.

The telephone rang. He hoped it would be Doug straightening the mess out. It was Rosemary, mad as a wet hen.

“Just who in the flaming hell do you think you are you two-timing—” Mercifully the phone lines were going out and he barely heard fragments of her cursing. The phrase “gutless, lying bastard” was an endearment that broke through the crackle. Her voice was suddenly loud and clear. “What kind of weasel are you, Ray?"

“What got under your saddle?” he asked, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.

“I'm getting goddamn sick of hearin’ about this bitch from Kansas City you're running around all over town with, and you and I are gonna get one goddamn thing straight and I mean—” She was really shrieking at him. It was like a series of poisoned darts entering his left ear, and he was afraid they'd poke through and meet the nail hole, and what little remained of his gray matter would leak out once and for all, so he pulled the phone straight out of the wall.

Rosemary James, A T & T, Sprint, Western Electric, Whatever Sweepstakes, General Electric, Ma Bell, siding salesmen, the nice lady at the bank, the weather girl, teleconferencing boiler rooms, and at least half the assholes working for the phone companies, the Army Corps of Engineers, Rancho Uranus, the Department of Agriculture, the VA, Doug Siefer—he threw the whole taco about a hundred yards out into the field.

Verify that.