Yellow Medicine Read online

  That’s when two beams of light sliced across the yard and front window. I blinked and switched off the lamp for a better look. A pair of headlights at the end of my driveway. They weren’t coming towards the house. Sitting there, burning, waiting.

  I lifted my pistol off the coffee table. The gun was always within reach. I lived next door to a boat launch and a decaying house that probably housed a meth lab. People would get lost or overshoot the meth house and use my driveway to reverse course. But the car out there at three in the morning, snow still blowing enough to obscure the make and a glimpse of how many people were inside, stayed put. I was drunk enough that even with clear skies and a telescope, I’d still have trouble telling who it was.

  I wondered if they could see me inside. I stumbled into the kitchen, flicked that light off. Back to the living room, killed the TV. I eased closer to the front windows and tried to focus. Somewhere in my head, a little voice said, You know you’re an easy target.

  I wasn’t thinking about bullets. The way I felt, they’d bounce right off my chest.

  Those headlights just sat there. I thought I saw movement, like the back passenger’s door opening. I ducked, eye-level with the sill. Checked the pistol to make sure the safety was off. I never put it on anyway.

  How long did I crouch like that? Forgot to check the clock later. All attention on those headlights. The cramps, the fear, the anger. I’d made some enemies, sure, but I never bothered them at their homes this late at night. Have the same fucking courtesy for me.

  Then the lights moved, retreated to the road and headed away.

  Plenty of explanations: teens looking for a place to make out, got a little freaked (it seemed too long for that and not long enough for fucking), or some guy got himself lost and needed to check his map (then why didn’t I see the interior lights?), or some drunk needed a few minutes to rest his eyes, get himself five minutes more sober for the trip home.

  That didn’t stop me from obsessing about all the other reasons. Like someone in the bar overhearing my conversation with Drew, pointing those outsiders my way before I found them first. Or the worst possibility—the friends of the gangbanger I shot in Gulfport after the storm finally tracked me down. I was pretty sure no one knew except Paul Asimov, my shift partner, but could be he sold me out for a piece of the profits. I’d rather he did that than let them torture it out of him. I dropped the big bad gangsta with a gut-shot, then we dumped the guy out in the woods north of Biloxi, an area hard to get to with all the downed trees, and let the animals have a buffet.

  It was a stupid thought. All that happened a thousand miles away. I was careful when I left, made sure the trail only led so far, very few of the people in my life knowing exactly where I had landed. Not even Ginny.

  Still, instead of going to bed, I sat up in my thrift-store recliner, gun in my lap, listening hard for footsteps on crispy snow, or fallen limbs snapping, or whispers. There were a few noises—crunching snow, probably rabbits or deer, and tricks of the wind. No one tried coming inside. I sat dead still at the ready until gray sunlight showed me the world outside again. Only then did I fall asleep.

  FIVE

  After waking up late in the afternoon and cleaning out the cruiser, I shot down to Marshall while listening to the HorrorPops on my MP3 player. They were a European psychobilly band. I’d been listening to more of the stuff since meeting Drew. We were both punch-drunk after fucking that first night and she lay sprawled on my bed smoking menthols and telling me all about this music she loved—a mix of punk, rockabilly, and horror flicks. Kinda like the soundtrack of my life. The HorrorPops had this chick singer, so I thought of Drew every time I let it blast.

  Flying down Highway 23 at about ninety, the trip takes fifteen minutes on the two-lane road, me taking chances by tailgating, passing the law abiders even with oncoming traffic. It wasn’t like the badges would dare pull me over, the only reason I was in the cruiser anyway. My first time through, driving my pick-up and hauling a small U-haul, a trooper lit me up.

  Guy was so mad he stuttered at first, wanting to lecture me. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is pulling a trailer that fast? Got some sort of death wish?”

  I handed him my Mississippi license. “I think you’d better look me up before you say another word, pops. Chill out.”

  If a perp had ever talked to me that way, he’d be on the pavement while I searched his vehicle and called in the drug dogs. Pops didn’t do that. Seeing how his girth strained the buttons on his shirt, I understood. He was much less red after he called in and was told who I was and why I was in his state. He handed back my license and said, “How about keeping it down just a bit? Lot of semis through here can nearly blow you off the road. At last until you unhitch.”

  “That would’ve been fine, sir. But because of this stop, I’m running late. Gotta drive like the wind.” I pulled away. He didn’t chase me down. Since then I’ve never been stopped.

  I was on my way to see Drew’s boyfriend. Drew had told me Ian’s hangouts, whose dorm he’d been crashing, hiding out from whoever had branded him. He might try to hide from me, too, even though I was trying to help this time. Something squirrelly about that kid. Same with the whole story. I cleared my head and kept the churning music up loud while battling the winds that so desperately wanted to sling me off the road into the snow-patched soybean fields. In mid-winter the snow made the whole place look majestic, peaceful. In mid-summer the tall corn and the beans reminded you of the importance of our midwestern farms. But in early spring they just looked like shit.

  Past the university campus, squat-red brick buildings. Hung a right and circled the campus until I found the visitor’s parking lot, got out and followed my scribbled directions to the residence hall. Drew said Ian was staying with an art student in his dorm room. Pretty risky, could get the guy expelled if the university figured it out. I passed farm girls dressed in sweatpants and ski jackets, some viable candidates and some porkers, and some drastically plain. Mouthbreather guys, others with those haircuts kids get in their twenties and regret almost immediately. Found the right building, hung around the front until someone came out. I didn’t care that I didn’t blend in, thirty-three and hard like steel, a full mustache and ‘burns, something about the seventies’ look of my dad appealing in these days of shaves and waxes. I climbed the stairs two at a time to the third floor. Room 305. Pounded hard.

  No answer. Pounded again. This time I heard rustling, groans. I tapped my fingers on the door, a peppy rockabilly rhythm, until the kid inside got pissed off enough to fling the door open, muscles flexed, ready to wail. He was in boxers, hair sticking in eight directions. Sleeping all afternoon. Goddamn lazy kids. Not that I’d been any different, or even was now.

  “You Josh?”

  He nodded. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Looking for Ian.”

  “Who?”

  “Skinny pale kid, probably the guy you buy weed from.”

  “Hey, man, that shit ain’t cool.”

  “Is he here? I need to talk to him.” I wasn’t dressed like a cop—jeans, black CAT steel-toes, and flannel.

  He knew, though. Didn’t want to rat his source out. He pasted this lazy smile on and started to shut the door. “No idea, man.”

  The hall was clear. I stopped the door with my foot and palm, pushed him back by willpower alone. Inside, I closed the door and looked around. Mounds of clothes, smelling sour. Plus the weed. Plus the incense he burned to cover the weed.

  The guy balled his fists and wanted to bump chests, a hip-hop stand-off. I slapped him hard across the face. That put an end to the posturing.

  “I need to speak to Ian. He’s in trouble. I’m the answer to his prayers. You dig?”

  The guy was stunned, stoned, cheek flaring red. “Yeah, I dig.”

  *

  He was protecting Ian’s dirty secret, one Drew must have been blind to. I sneaked around the girls’ res hall until I found the propped-open back door. They had to have som
e way to let the boys get in at all hours. Second floor this time. I found the door and knocked politely.

  A chick’s sing-songy, “It’s o-pen!”

  Stepped inside just as the girl kept on, “What, did you forget your key again?”

  She looked at me, stopped smiling. “You’re not my roommate.”

  Her long hair cascaded over her shoulders as she sat Indian style on the bed, topless. Ian’s head was in her lap. The other bed was empty. When Ian saw me he began to jitter and say, “No no no, shit shit shit.”

  “Hey! Get out of my room!” The girl tried to cover her breasts with her hair. Almost worked.

  “Soon as Ian gets his pants on.”

  He was struggling into them, since I’d caught him in tighty-whiteys. Cheating on Drew. Didn’t surprise me. Ian thought he should act like a rock star but without playing music or having money. Would I tell her? If I thought it meant she’d get with me instead, then of course. But even the hint of obligation would spoil it for me—I wanted her to want me with no conditions. Besides, she had a bright future and I didn’t want to stand in her way. She needed to get out of the backwoods while I needed to hide in them.

  Ian mumbled and moaned while zipping his torn-to-hell khakis. I took in the room—cleaner than the guy’s, of course, but not by much. The smoke detector was covered with a sub sandwich bag and duct tape. The window was open and the heat was blasting to compensate.

  The girl managed to pick her T-shirt off the floor with her toes without showing me any more nip. A tattoo of a vine ringed her ankle. Still indignant. “You can’t do this. I’m going to tell the RA right now. It’s illegal.”

  I made a show of sniffing the air. “Are you really so immune to the smell that you think potpourri works? While you’re off complaining, bring the RA down here so we can discuss what you guys are smoking.”

  She crossed her arms, wadding the shirt against her chest. Then a smile, slight, and a lift of the chin. “I have rights.”

  “You can have rights, sure. Just have to defend them in court, see if those rights will keep them from kicking you out of school. Looks to me like you’ve got a pretty sweet situation. Parents paying for classes and books and pot and condoms. Pretty sweet. But if you want to throw that away over rights—”

  “Fine, I get it. I’ll shut up.”

  I grabbed Ian’s shoulder and pulled him towards the door. “You’ll do more than shut up. What’s your name?”

  She didn’t want to tell me, but worked out that I’d learn it eventually. “Heather.”

  “Well, Heather dear, I’ll be back to see you later and we’ll try to work something out.”

  She swallowed hard, kept quiet. That was okay. After another couple of hits she’d realize how much she liked the dope and how much she’d like to keep things exactly as they were. At least she’d learn something this semester.

  *

  I dragged Ian’s scrawny ass outside and found a concrete ledge to sit on, one that lined a central area outside the administration building, near the flagpole. Ian shook a cigarette loose and offered me one. I shook my head.

  He looked at the ground, shrugged. “Whatever, man. Look, you can’t tell Drew about this. It wasn’t what it looked like.”

  “It looked like you were getting some strange. That hippie chick strange with the hairy armpits. Like you’re being led by your pecker and will fuck anything that makes a move on you first.”

  “Man, it’s just…look. I love Drew—”

  I took his cigarette. That shut him up. I turned it around, placed the lit end an inch away from his bottom lip. He pulled back. I grabbed the back of his head and held it, a shaky mistake waiting to happen.

  I said, “You don’t know what love is. It’s a goddamned verb, remember? It’s something you do. And you do it by not fucking around on the side. I would usually admire fucking around, but you seem so weak-willed that I can’t believe you think about it all that much.”

  “Billy, please.” Like a five-year-old.

  “You don’t love. You do what feels good at the moment. If it weren’t for Drew having a soft spot for you, I wouldn’t be here trying to help.”

  “Jesus!”

  The wind slapped us around and ripped the ash off, staining my fingers gray. I flicked the cigarette onto the pavement and let go of his head. “Goddamn telling me it’s love. You just like how different they are. Drew, nicely trimmed, sweet and innocent, a nice tight fit.”

  The look on his face told me he didn’t know I’d been with her. He shook his head, paled. “Can’t believe this.”

  “It was before you, and after that she gave me up quick.”

  “I’m going to be sick.”

  “Shut up.” I stood up and paced in front of him. Wanted him off-balance. “I won’t tell her about hippy chick, but you’d better come clean right now. These two guys leaning on you, what’s the deal?”

  “I don’t need you. I’ll manage.”

  “Sure, great. One more time, what’s the deal?”

  He shoegazed more, shoulders bobbing. For these kids, I don’t know was a goddamned way of life.

  I pinched his chin between my thumb and middle finger, forced eye contact. “This ain’t about you. This is about visiting players coming into my county wanting to change the rules. Where I come from that’s cheating. Nobody wins by cheating.”

  He jerked his head. I gave him space. Thinking it over, working it out. Weak kid, all it took was a little nudge.

  He huffed and finally said, “I didn’t know they were so hardcore at first. This guy I knew asked if I—”

  “Who?”

  “Hey, I don’t want to get him trouble.”

  I held out my fingers, waved them towards me like Give it.

  “Fine. But don’t say, you know. Guy’s name is Vis. That’s all I know, his last name.”

  I nodded, knew him. Tracy Vis. Hated “Tracy”, never answered to it. Getting to be about thirty-eight, not a successful criminal. He ran a lottery scam sometimes when he couldn’t get anyone to make meth for him. Fucker was too dumb to figure out what fifteen-year-old drop outs learned in twenty minutes off a website.

  “What did he want from you?”

  Ian said, “He wanted me to check out some places in Yellow Medicine County, guys working labs that might be interested in a bigger operation. Hook up with these two guys—they were both Asian, I think.”

  “You think?”

  Another shrug. “I dunno. Not, like, Japanese or Chinese, but not Nepalese like the foreign students around here. You could tell. They were all business. One spoke great English, barely an accent. None, really.”

  “Definitely meth, then? Not heroin?”

  “Yeah, like a franchise. They organize the labs, get the distribution in line, and take a big cut. But since there’s more stuff coming in than before, everybody wins.”

  Shit, and I hadn’t gotten one hint of it. That meant people thought it was a good enough deal to keep it secret, even though I paid them to keep me in the loop.

  I said, “Drew says you lost some of their product.”

  He grunted. “It wasn’t anything like that. I could’ve understood if I’d lost product.”

  “Then what was it?”

  Ian shifted his weight, probably thinking about the brand on his ass, itching now that he was watching that mental movie all over again. “I lost their trust. After talking to some guys near Wood Lake, they laughed at me. No need for a mob. The labs out here, like moonshine stills, they said. Thing is, they followed me after. Barged in on the next meeting with the Asians.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t expect what happened next, though. Soon as the guys said that this was their territory and that they didn’t appreciate being hustled out of business, well…”

  More wind. Biting me. I shoved my hands into my pockets. Ian bared his teeth.

  Then, “These Asians killed Trigger and Spaceman. You knew them, right?”

  Sure di
d. Both ran a red phosphorus lab upriver. Spaceman was in my pocket. I helped those guys out if he kept me informed. They should have come to me instead of getting all macho. Macho came easier for me because I meant it.

  “I knew them.”

  “They’re…dead, you know, on the floor and all. Guys shot them in the head. Then they blame me. I tell them I didn’t have anything to do with it. Doesn’t matter. I wasn’t careful. I needed to be reminded. Drew told you what they did.”

  “They had the brand with them? How did this go down?”

  Ian’s lips curled, staring off into space, students passing around us now between classes. “They put a bag over my head, put me in the backseat of their car and we drove. I don’t know how long. They left the bag on. I couldn’t see anything. I only heard, like, wind. Their jabbering. Then they bend me over…what was I supposed to think?”

  “Shit.”

  “Man, when that fire hit my ass, I almost did. I screamed. They didn’t mind me screaming, so we must’ve been, like, pretty far out somewhere. I screamed a long damn time. They didn’t hit me or anything. Just held me up by the arms. After, when I had calmed down, they told me it was a reminder to be smart. I’ve been hiding ever since.”

  More students, coming too close, smelled the cop on me. Girls in flannel pajama bottoms and fleece slippers going to class unwashed. Goddamn wind made it hard to think. Definitely sounded organized, all this honor-system bullshit. I wondered if laying low was really working, or if the Asians knew exactly where Ian was and would now end him for talking to me. Maybe they were watching us at that exact moment.

  Once the crowd thinned, I said, “Let’s see it.”

  The kid shrunk more. I thought he would fold in on himself. “See what?”

  “I have to see it to track it down. Don’t get all shy. I won’t even touch it.”

  “Not here.”

  “I don’t have time for a private peek show.” I probably did, but I just wanted to see if he’d drop his pants in public with icy winds swirling. Between me and the drug lords, I was hoping we would provide enough mental scars to set him on the right track. Sometimes being feared is an educational thing as well.