The bedside phone rang somewhere in my head. I looked at the clock: 4.24 a.m. I grabbed for the phone, dropped it, retrieved it from the floor.
“Rrrdr,” I grunted.
“Cold water,” the voice said.
“Hnnf?”
“Cold water, pogie. Go splash cold water on your face, then come back to the phone. It works; do it.”
I stumbled to the kitchen sink, splashed. The pipes on Dauphin Island weren’t deep and the heat seeped everywhere; the water was tepid. Still, the motion to and from the sink brought some blood to my brain. I stumbled back to the bedroom and picked up the phone.
“Danbury, if this is some kind of joke…”
I searched my sputtering brain; the name didn’t touch anything.
“I don’t know a Heidi Wicky.”
A pause. “That’s strange. You knew Carla Hutchins.”
“Are you working toward a point here?” I grabbed the pillow and blotted drips from my face and neck.
“I just got a call on my cell. That same plastic voice said, ‘Heidi Wicky in Elrain.’ That was all. Elrain’s in Florida, right? The Panhandle?”
“Not that far,” I said. “Two and a half hours, maybe less.”
“Who’s driving, partner?”
“So Danbury got another of these messages,” Harry said as I left my car in front of his house and climbed into his. It was 5.45 a.m. I’d called him directly after receiving the alert from Danbury.
“Something’s changed,” I said. “It’s an unknown name.”
He paused; thought. “Right. It’s been us knowing the thing, the info then going to Cu—, I mean, Danbury. Now things take a reverse spin.”
“Or maybe we missed something somewhere.”
Harry jammed the car into gear. “So we’re heading over to Elrain, check out this woman, that’s the plan?”
“Uh, one stop first. Got to grab a passenger.”
Harry made a sound I’d never heard before, like a dying trombone.
Danbury lived in a well-kept brick two-story downtown near the Oakleigh Garden District. It surprised me, expecting her to be a condo-in-the-burbs type. Bright flowers encircled the base of a foot-thick magnolia tree in the front yard, a half-dozen bird feeders hanging from its branches. Azaleas and myrtles bordered the house. Danbury was on the front porch sipping coffee when we rolled up. She wore a kneelength khaki skirt and a simple white linen blouse. White socks and running shoes provided a utilitarian air. I opened my door and stepped out.
“Sit up front,” I said. “I prefer riding in back.”
She gave me a strange look, bent to look in the door. “Is that Nautilus in there? Hi, Harry, been a while.” He moaned softly as she slid into the front seat. Danbury said, “You sound a little gassy, Harry. Need some Di-Gel? Got a bottle in my purse.”
Harry put the car in gear, climbed the curb, nearly clipped a phone pole, dropped down into the street. We were on our way.
“It’s kind of like the Three Musketeers,” Danbury said, winking. “Where’s my feathered hat, guys?”
We’d estimated our arrival at eight fifteen. At nine we were raising dust across half the roads in Florida’s western panhandle. It had been a quiet trip, Danbury trying to make small talk with Harry, him grunting responses. She finally said, “Is there something wrong with you, Harry Nautilus? You’re treating me like my cologne is eau d’ratshit.”
“How well do you remember our last encounter?”
She wrinkled her brow in thought for a few seconds. “A guy got shot over by Tillman’s Corner. I said, Who was it? You said Johnny Armstrong or whatever. I filed the story, moved on. Why?”
“I got cold feet, said drop it.”
“You made nervous noises. I don’t recall a hard-and-fast don’t.”
“I flat-out said not to run it.”
“You told me you shouldn’t have told me. That I recall. You putting the kibosh on the story, huh-unh.”
“Guys,” I said.
“I nearly got my ass transferred to ticket-writing limbo, Danbury.”
“Yo, guys.”
“Sorry about the misunderstanding, Nautilus. But not my fault.”
“Not your fault? Who else would -”
“HEY, GUYS!”
Harry looked in the mirror, Danbury turned in her seat. I pointed to a hand-made sign beside the road.
“Didn’t we pass a ‘Prepare to Meet God’ sign like that a few miles back?” I said. “Same bullet holes?”
Harry grunted. “A little help here, reporter lady.”
Danbury unfolded the map. She spun it one direction, then another. “Borg always reads the maps. These things confuse me. N is north, right?”
We saw a mirror-bright dot a couple miles down the road, an object seemingly constructed of chrome. Approaching, we discovered it was a gas station - or so they’re called - gleaming architectural whores screaming Look at Me!
“Stop for directions, Nautilus,” Danbury said. “Before we drive up our own tailpipe.”
“Me?”
“I’m not the one who took the wrong exit.”
“There was no right exit, Miss Danbury. They all dump you into this endless damn nowhere.”
“I’ll do it,” I said, hoping they didn’t kill one another while I was inside.
Of all the abominations contemporaneity has visited upon the South, one of the worst is the gas-station-cum-convenience-store-cum-restaurant. The old stores-slash-fill-up stations were magic places, shady and comfortable, a good ol’ boy or two hanging out, sipping a pop, stopped on the road between hither and yon. If you needed a stars’n’bars flag, a Jesus Saves bumper sticker, a decent machete, a box of twelve-gauge shells, there it was. There’d be a stack of melons outside, maybe some tomatoes and okra. If the pop machine stole your money, you always got it back.
They’re disappearing fast, the stores near the main roads nearly extinct. It seems like a huge mother craft floats softly through the night skies, searching for the remaining ones. When it spots them, it hovers above, makes a shivering electronic sound, and drops a sparkling new BP or Exxon or Shell station over the old store and whisks away for new conquests.
In the morning no one seems to notice.
I bought root beer for Harry, a Dr Pepper for myself and a Diet RC for Danbury, asked the sullen lady at the counter for directions, then hustled outside. Harry and Danbury stared out their respective windows.
“The lady at the checkout said she thinks it’s about five miles thataway,” I said, pointing and climbing into the rear.
Harry said, “She wasn’t sure?”
I shrugged. “Someone from the mother ship might have known, but they’re long gone.”
Danbury looked at Harry. “Mother ship?”
“You get used to it,” Harry sighed, putting the car in gear. Asphalt turned to gravel. The double lane turned single. We pushed forward another mile or so, slowing at a railroad crossing.
I said, “The woman mentioned tracks. We’re close.”
We slowed to a crawl and banged over the poorest maintained crossing in the Western hemisphere as a treeful of buzzards looked on. Danbury reached into her outsized bag and produced compact binoculars. She lifted them to her eyes and studied the leering creatures as we approached their roadside haunt.
“Turkey vultures,” I ventured.
“Black vultures, Ryder,” Danbury corrected. “Coragyps atratus. Smaller and darker. White wingtips, too. A lot of people get ’em mixed up. Check the heads: red on turkeys, bald on blacks.”
Harry drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Both are carrion eaters, Cars. But black vultures got a taste for live meat, too. The menu includes fresh-born calves, which doesn’t make them real popular with ranchers.”
Danbury turned to Harry, raised an eyebrow. She started to say something, but closed her mouth. His eyes didn’t stray from the road. We continued down the gravel lane at fifteen miles an hour, piney woods on one side, fallow field on the other. We took a slight curve and I glimpsed an old house trailer tucked into a gnarl of brush a hundred feet from the road. The battered mailbox said WICKY, painted in an unsteady hand.
“Who do you think Heidi Wicky is, Danbury?” Harry said. “Why did you get the call? Why do you get any of these calls?”
She stared uncertainly at the trailer and shuddered. “I don’t know, Nautilus. All I know is it’s got to be eighty-five degrees in this car and I feel cold.”
“Must be contagious,” I said. “Pull in and let’s see what there is to see.”
We edged into an overgrown yard. The screen door of the trailer hung open, half off its hinges. The door behind it was ajar an inch or so. We climbed out to a welcoming committee of hungry skeeters.
“I spent all last night growing new blood,” Harry said, slapping his neck. “There it goes.”
I walked to the trailer carefully, peeked in the front windows. Harry headed around back. Danbury skirted past me, up the steps of the trailer. She knocked, called inside.
“Hello? Anyone home? Hello?”
“Stay back from there,” I said. “Let me take a look.”
Danbury called into the trailer again, then pushed open the door and stepped inward. “Damn,” she said. “The place stinks like a -”
“Don’t,” I yelled. “Stay out until -”
Danbury screamed and exploded from the trailer backward, as if fired from a cannon. Black shapes hurtled through the door behind her. She tumbled down the steps and rolled into the weeds. The shapes resolved into shrieking
vultures winging furiously away. I ran to her.
“Are you all -”
“Yes, yes,” she gasped, jabbing a finger toward the trailer. “Inside, Ryder. Jesus! Look inside.”
She was shaken but unharmed. I climbed the steps, knowing too well the stench issuing from the door. Holding my breath, I stepped inside.