Free Lake Charles by Ed Lynskey Page A

again. My hands patted down my pockets. “Shit.” A Marlboro appeared over my shoulder, and I accepted it along with the matchbook.
    “Mull it over, Brendan, but her trail grows colder. A whole night is gone, and we can’t just sit on our thumbs. Do something.”
    Venting out the cigarette smoke, I suspected the sort of creeps with their portraits thumbtacked to the post office walls held her bound and gagged.
    “All right, we’ll do it your way.”
    Good thing the jolt of nicotine had sated my hunger pangs. I dropped the Marlboro butt and crushed it under my boot. I found Mr. X under the scrubby bushes. Eyes dull as twin lumps of solder he saw no light. His bowels had voided their shit. Experiencing death this close up left my gut to retch a vile, green crud I spat out on the sand.
    “You look rode hard.”
    “And you look up for digging.” I scuffed the ground with my boot tip. “This sand makes it easy.”
    “We haven’t got the time to bury him. Roll him up in your blanket. Add in the rocks for ballast. Ferry out his tied up bundle and chuck it into a channel. The carp will love you for it.”
    My small shrug said I couldn’t top his plan. Although I ignored looking at the blood-splotched bullet wound, Mr. X had a rusty odor mixed with the shit smell. He carried a pouch of Red Man and thirty-seven cents in loose silver but no personal ID. In case his wallet had spilled out, I scanned the area near him but with no luck. I spread out my largest blanket. Then Cobb lifted up Mr. X by his armpits. I latched to the ankles, and we trundled our bulky load to the blanket where Mr. X and his .223 rifle anchored the leading edge.
    We selected a dozen or so stones no larger than coconuts for the ballast, and I rolled it all up like a mummy. The lengths of bailer twine I cut up cinched Mr. X’s head, waist, shins, and feet. Then we unracked my bass boat, loaded on Mr. X, and launched it from the ramp. I slid beyond the crud zone to where my fishfinder radar measured an eighteen-foot depth. I toed off the mummy, and it plopped into the water. I also ditched the last bottles of our beer.
    “Shameful waste,” said Cobb. “The beer, I mean.”
    “Screw the liquor. Now we lock in and get Edna.”
    “Absolutely.”
    My bass boat fitted back on the trailer’s top rack. I nuzzled my cab truck and trailer over to park them behind a clump of sassafras bushes. I swung my hatchet to lop off some branches to thicken in the leafy screen. A constellation chart and a 1960s astrology text were the plunder from my tool chest. Neither had aided me in deciphering my dreams. The beef jerky sealed in its cellophane wrappers made for our breakfast.
    I stood on the T-dock, chewing the beef jerky and studying my dumpsite. Bubbles effervesced from there. Did Mr. X still breathe? A scarier question asked would he breathe in my dreams of Lake Charles. The bandana Cobb tied to his forehead was yellow, and I pocketed the red one he gave me. We poured on water and snuffed out the campfire coals.
    “How’s your bullet wound?”
    “Just a scratch,” I replied, divvying up his box of .44 cartridges. “We do one junket around. If anything screwy pops up, we’ll stop and check it out.”
    “My idea, too. Saddle up.”
    The old marina faded to our rear. Stealth wasn’t a priority as much as traversing the rocky terrain without blowing out a kneecap or twisting an ankle. We skirted the drying mud flats. Mr. X now in Davy Jones’ locker floated up in my thoughts, but I just kept tramping over the stones and sticks. Our effort worked up an appetite, but we didn’t slacken our grueling pace until probing a ferny hummock.
    “Can you picture what it’s like to live at Lake Charles?” I asked.
    “After all this, no thanks. I’ll stick to the trailer park. Before the TVA built Lake Charles, the ridge runners had the monopoly. Now growing ganja has replaced distilling corn liquor as the main local commerce.”
    “Two of the growers attacked us