Free Lake Charles by Ed Lynskey Page B

last night.”
    “Exactly. Something else. Lake Charles belongs to Uncle Sam. A high roller—his name slips my mind—deeded it over to score a big tax break.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “The newspapers rolling off the presses interest me.”
    “Since you’re so well read, will a corpse rot fast in the lake water?”
    “The carp will eat Mr. X. He can’t follow us.”
    “But his buddy sure can.”
    Cobb flashed his .44 and a grin. “Bring it on. We’re ready.”
    Doing this felt crazy, but I couldn’t think of a better way. Pulling back, we patrolled the higher ground, looking sharp for any cut jungle or terraced slopes, evidence of the pot farming and a clue pointing us to Edna. The sun had burned off the haze often veiling the hills and heated the morning into a Turkish bath.
    Sweat patched our shirts as the lactic acid tightened my hamstrings. Completing a circuit of Lake Charles before sunset let us enjoy one of a few rests. An acute need was potable water. I’d brought no canteen and dealing with dehydration or heat exhaustion interrupted our quest to find Edna. First, I brought up last night.
    “Cobb, what do you know about these people?”
    “Most dealers that I know are mellow, but we’re knocking these yahoos out of the box. They crossed the line, and I ain’t having it.”
    “Did they really grab Edna?”
    “Must be. What else is there?”
    “She fell in the lake and drowned.”
    He jutted his jaw at me. “She always wore her lifejacket, and she didn’t drown.”
    We resumed our trek and crossed several dry washes. Heat and bugs diverted my attention from hunger and thirst. An unexpected stroke of luck was running across a natural spring gurgling from the rock wall. Seeing it first, he pointed, and I nodded. We skated over the loose pebbles, fell on all fours, and scooped up the water in our cupped hands so icy cold it made my teeth ache. It slaked my thirst but not my mounting frustration.
    “We couldn’t find our asses with a damn flashlight.”
    His pupils shrank to hot beads. Anger was a rare emotion in him, but I saw plenty of it now. “Your negativity flat out sucks, you know, Brendan?”
    “Hey, I’m just being realistic.”
    “Think positive instead. We’ll get her and go home today.”
    “Did you forget about last night’s dust up?”
    “No, but give us my wife, and I’ve got no more gripes. What the dope growers do up is their shit, not mine.”
    “Your ex-wife,” I corrected him.
    “Not quite yet because I never signed the divorce papers.”
    “Actually that’s good to hear.”
    “We’ll work it out. You’ll see. Everybody will.”
    “Sure you will.”
    We saw the natural spring had allowed a homesteader to haul up the water probably in homemade cedar buckets. A dim trail through the grove of ancient black walnuts led us to a sunken rectangle that was lined with dry-fit river stones, the foundation to his house.
    Cobb tipped his head at the spillage of stones on the end. “The chimney?”
    “Most likely. They could probably erect one inside of a day.”
    “Doing stonework isn’t brain surgery. We could finish it in a day, too.”
    “Sure we could. Just a stroll in the sun.”
    The glass shards littering the ground came from the broken flasks of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound and Dr. Kilmer’s Female Remedy, the patent medicines women once took for menopause. Mostly alcohol, no wonder it left them feeling perkier. Tiger lilies and summer lilac blooming at the steps were a woman’s aesthetic touch. Living in the middle of nowhere, did the homesteader’s wife pine for female company? The regrets came up over my break up with Salem, and to be frank, I missed her. Or maybe I just missed the steady thing I thought we’d had going.
    The house’s square footage looked spacious enough to raise a tribe, and I debated their fate. Uncle Sam had no qualms to grab up more parkland by kicking the families out of their native homes. Or had the TVA’s earth