Back Roads & Hat Check Read online

  “You’d look good with a beard,” she’d brushed her hand on his then only stubbly cheek and climbed into the tow truck sporting a pair of his gym shorts and an old LSU hoody.

  He hadn’t known when he finally worked up the nerve to call her that she’d stepped out on the balcony of her extravagant condo atop the MGM to take his call and set up their first date. He also hadn’t known her husband had been in the living room of said condo watching the races and checking his numbers.

  A couple of dates later, a sudden unexpected and oddly quiet, awkward meeting outside her condo’s bathroom door with her Mafioso-looking husband had led to an embarrassing towel-only run through the casino floor of the MGM.

  Teddy (the Mafioso husband) had come to The Peppermint Hippo escorted by Vinnie and Louie – apparently, those names did really exist for Italian bodyguards – and politely asked him to leave Las Vegas if he knew what was good for him. Which was exactly what Troy had been planning to do anyway. His bag was already packed.

  He took the 93 down to Kingman and hopped on I-40 and traveled east as far as he could hitchhike. When he got to Memphis two weeks later, he turned south on 55 and headed back home, to Louisiana. He had learned to drink to pass the time during that long crazy trip and spent the next ten alcohol-dazed years on and off shrimping boats off the coast of Louisiana. He made a lot of money and drank most of it up. Bought a boat of his own and became a bona fide businessman… with a bona fide drinking problem. An alcohol induced near-death experience in an overturned boat shook him out of that daze and he sold his boat. It made him enough money to set him up nicely for a while and keep him from hitchhiking to his new destination, wherever that would turn out to be.

  He took the first Greyhound bus out of town leaving the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal in his rear view.

  Hours later when he stepped off the bus into the hot sun, he was in Litchfield Beach, South Carolina. He spent the last of his money on an old, dilapidated beach house on Pawleys Island and had just enough left over to get a very nice fishing rod and reel.

  Watching the lazy creek water swim past his wooden dock, he thought he had just about seen it all. As he watched the abandoned, twelve-foot, aluminum jon boat drift in, he knew he’d been wrong.

  The boat itself was quite unremarkable. Hurricane Debby was probably responsible for the unpiloted craft’s lonely drift down the creek. It was old and salty, but only looked to be four or five years old. It was bluish gray aluminum with only a trolling motor attached on the back. Behind the black identification numbers SC-1971-LD it had large, sun-peeled green letters on the side saying: RENT ME. It bumped against the dock he was fishing from and he put his right foot out to push it back out into the current. Given his past with bad juju floating into his life, he was going to let this one float into someone else’s path. That’s when his eye landed on the hat: a beautiful, straw cowboy hat, its owner nowhere to be seen. He looked slowly up the creek and then down the creek.

  When he was certain he was alone, he reached down into the boat and picked up the hat. It was worn, but in good shape: no holes, pretty clean and expensive looking. It had a brightly colored plume of some kind stuck into the band on the back. Peacock maybe, he thought to himself. He sniffed the inside of the hat. Was that… Old Spice? It looked well taken care of and smelled clean, so he thought he’d be assured there were no bugs in it.

  He gently laid the Loki rod down on the dock, removed his ragged LSU cap and folded it into his back pocket. The cowboy hat fit perfectly. It rested neatly above his Costa Del Mar Pescador sunglasses. With his eyes so well shaded, he saw the immense shadow of what had to be a thirty-pound red drum swim out from under the dock.

  That’s a dang big fish, he thought as he saw it jerk his line and send his ridiculously expensive rod and reel flying into the creek. Suddenly, realization hit him and he leapt into action.

  “Hey,” he shouted and jumped into the water after it. The silver barrel of the reel glinted and he lunged after it, but the fish had other plans and took off. Unfortunately, the line was not reeling itself out, but holding fast and dragging his beautiful Loki away from him. He cursed himself for leaving the tension so high. He half-swam, half-crawled forward in the shallow water thinking he must look like he was drowning… or attempting a butterfly stroke – a very awkward butterfly stroke.

  He plunged his head under and squinted in the distance. The glint of chrome winked and rushed away from him into the dark water. He planted his feet on the bottom and lunged. His bad knee caught what could only be described as a blade of rock jutting out of the creek bottom and pain knifed into his leg. He ignored what he felt sure must be another tear to his ACL and plunged forward.

  He stuck his head up and with a gasp of air and quick scan downstream he again leapt toward the rapidly escaping rod and felt the end of it tickle his fingertips, but then it was gone. He lurched again blindly flailing after it and his bad knee jerked him back in a shock of pain. He limped up to a standing position, now harder to hold with one good leg and peered into the current. There was no sign of the fish, the rod or the reel.

  “Dangit,” he slapped the surface of the water.

  He lifted his leg to examine the damage to his knee… no cuts, just a few minor abrasions. It was starting to purple, but didn’t look like he’d done anything more than bruise his knee, and his pride. He sat back down in the cool water; it felt good on his aching joints.

  As he massaged his throbbing tendons and watched the hypnotic current drift slowly down the creek, he wondered how he was going to eat tonight. He’s spent the last of his shrimping money on the Loki Lightning Redfish Rod (and a twelve pack of Coronas.) It was a greenhorn mistake, laying down his fishing pole unsecured. Harley, his shrimp boat first mate would’ve given him hell if he’d – his thought was interrupted as the newly escaped jon boat thumped him hard in the back of the head. He tumbled forward and swallowed what must’ve been at least a quart of salt water. Scrambling out of the path of the boat sent a new shock wave into his knee and he coughed harshly expelling the briny water. He gingerly stood up and the boat nudged him like a lost dog.

  “Double dangit,” he cursed as he shoved the boat past him down the creek, “stop followin’ me!”

  It drifted away finally seeming to look back plaintively. Troy flipped his hand toward it like he would’ve if it had been a stray dog, “Go’on, now, git!”

  Troy waded slowly, painfully to the creek bank and began to limp his way back upstream. Taking stock, he was sure his ACL was re-torn and an egg-sized knot had risen on the back of his head, but all in all, he was ok. He reached up to check the knot and was flabbergasted to realize the straw cowboy hat was still perched on top of his head. And there it would remain.

  His fingertips came away from the bump on his head with a small splotch of blood. Dang boat had split his skin, probably not bad enough for stitches. Salt water was supposed to be good for that stuff anyway, he thought.

  As he took stock, he was relieved to find his Leatherman tool still strapped to his belt, his Costas still on their croaky strap, but the LSU cap was long gone from his back pocket.

  Dang, he thought, lost my favorite hat.

  2

  Spotted Dick

  __________________________

  Deputy Chesney R. Biggins was the first on the scene after the tip had been phoned into the Garden City Police Department. His CB radio had squelched out the call and he’d been only too happy to leave the Keep Georgetown Beautiful rally and head out to Midway Inlet.

  “Dick, we got a hard one for ya out there!” the crackling voice erupted in snickering from his CB.

  Chesney (whose middle name was Richard) was the constant butt of jokes at the Georgetown PD. His very mature colleagues had discovered that his middle name, shortened to Dick, and his last name, Biggins, used together were far more entertaining than any of their old fart jokes. Chesney had heard it all before… in middle school.

 
“I’m on it, Todd,” he replied with no hint of emotion in his voice.

  “Thank you, Deputy Dick Biggins!” Todd’s boisterous reply was backed by howls of laughter. Chesney reached over and turned the volume down on his radio. Idiots, he thought to himself.

  He already had a full front and back page of scribbled notes with key details from the tip called into the station that morning. Holding the yellow pad in his lap he reviewed the facts as he drove:

  1) Two hikers – maybe joggers – had phoned in the tip at 7:02am.

  2) Both are medical professionals on vacation from Tennessee.

  3) Discovered dead body of a man while jogging out by Old Beach Road.

  4) Body was bloated and had apparently washed up on the beach. (Their medical opinion given the state of rigor was that the man had been dead less than twenty-four hours.)

  5) Being vacationers, they didn’t recognize the discovered man.

  6) Man was dressed in a light-colored suit. Suit had some stains around the chest and neck… blood?

  As Chesney read the last word, his cruiser slammed into something and jolted him out of his thoughts.

  “What in God’s name!” he said as coffee sloshed sideways out of his thermos burning his right hand, “Great.”

  It only took a second for him to register what had happened. With his eyes down, his cruiser had swerved onto the sidewalk and run into a parked ice cream truck. Several startled children were staring in wide-eyed wonder at the police car now parked in the crumpled mess of the truck.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Chesney muttered throwing his car into park and wiping the coffee from his hands as well as he could with the yellow pad.

  He sighed as he opened his door and stepped out of the cruiser. Immediately, he recognized the old-timey round ice cream truck that belonged to old-timey Willie.

  One-eyed Willie, as the local adolescent crowd called him behind his back making a dirty joke that they probably weren’t old enough to really understand, was a bent up old black man from down in the deep south of Alabama; Chickasaw he thought the old guy had told him once. Said he’d been the on-call cook for events at the J.C. Davis Auditorium and the Charles E. McConnell Civic Center. Said he’d learned to make ice cream down there that no one, not no one could resist.

  He reminded Chesney of Dick Hallorann, the chef of the Overlook Hotel, as played by Scatman Crothers in the Stephen King movie, The Shining. He had that odd way of being the grandfatherly comfortable type and creepy as hell, at the same time. He only had one eye for God’s sake…

  Willie’s truck was a completely round vehicle with a pointed roof that was designed to look like some sort of circus tent. Bright blue and red diamond shapes attracted children from blocks away while hidden speakers warbled out such favorites as Pop Goes The Weasel and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

  The impact to the police car was minimal; a basketball-sized dent in the bumper was the extent of the damage. The ice cream truck, however, was not so lucky. The back end was caved in making the formerly round truck look more like a horseshoe or a crescent moon.

  Willie had apparently scrambled up on the coolers in the front of the truck to avoid the crash. He was still sitting there shaking in half rage and half fear; a nutty buddy ice cream cone in one hand and an orange crush flavored push up in the other. Both were halfway melted lumps of streaming, dripping goop sliding down on Willie’s formerly spotless white ice cream man coveralls.

  “My truck!” he yelled, coming to his senses, “Look whatchu gone ‘n done to my truck!”

  It wasn’t easy to look Willie in the eye; his only good eye anyway. The other was covered with an oddly painted patch that was supposed to look like a clown’s eye. The pupil didn’t quite point in the right direction giving him not only a crazy looking eye, but a lazy one as well.

  “Calm down, Willie,” Chesney held his hands up, “Don’t worry, the city will pay for the damages.”

  “Pay fuh the dam-a-ges?” the one-eyed ice cream man slid down off the coolers and slopped the two melted treats to the floor, “Do you know what kind a truck dis is?”

  “No, sir… I don’t.”

  “Isa fully ree-stored Merry Mobile ice cream truck!!” He said Merry Mobile as one word, murraymobeel.

  Willie lurched toward Chesney and the officer swore he could see the eye painted on the patch reddening with anger. Creepy, he thought to himself and shuddered back a step.

  “Look, Willie,” he raised both hands and eased toward his own car door, “Just go down to the station and file a report. This city will make sure you’re compensated for any repairs.”

  “Ree-pairs??” the ice cream man croaked, “Who you know dat ree-pairs nineteen-fifties ice cream trucks, huh?!?”

  Chesney said nothing, but inched closer to his cruiser. Willie took his ice cream man cap, the kind that looked like an old white sailor’s cap with a black glossy patent leather bill, off his head and smacked it to the ground.

  “And here it is, Satuhday… biggest day of da week fo an ice cream truck. Dagnabbit!”

  Chesney did not bother to reply, he quickly opened his car door, slid in and shifted it into reverse. The metal squealed as his bumper pulled torn pieces of the ice cream truck away as he backed up. Willie screamed again as frightened children, who would surely have therapy-requiring nightmares about this day, scattered in all directions. Clumps of ice cream splattered against Chesney’s back window as he pulled away.

  Cruiser number forty-seven was back on track, heading south on Ocean Highway – though now it was dragging a sparking piece of red, white and blue metal under its front end.

  

  Ocean Beach road ended in a sandy, gravel mix and Chesney’s tires crunched as he stopped his car. A man and woman were standing beside the road. The unlucky body discoverers, he thought to himself.

  The man looked to be in his late fifties with sandy-brown thinning hair and was marathon-runner rail thin. He wore almost distastefully small blue running shorts and a faded brown Life is Good t-shirt with a picture of a jogger on the front. Chesney noted that the man’s socks were pulled up high on his calves and wondered if the man knew that had gone out with the seventies.

  The woman appeared to be around the same age, but more appropriately dressed in a blue road race t-shirt that was emblazoned with the bright orange words: Knoxville Track Club Expo. Chesney couldn’t help but notice that while the man’s hair looked windblown and unkempt as if he’d been on a long beach run, the woman’s blonde hair appeared to look the same way it might have when she stepped out the door to go jogging. She was wringing her hands in worry and looked to be on the verge of tears.

  As he approached them, the man put out his hand and opened his mouth to speak, but the woman spoke before he could say anything.

  “You must be the officer we were told to wait for,” she said quickly and rubbed her arms as if she were cold, “We’ve been waiting for over an hour and it’s really starting to get windy. Well, at least it feels like it’s windier than it was when we got here, don’t you think so, Jack?” Jack opened his mouth, but she interrupted.

  She spoke, or rather tittered, rapidly and turned to back to Chesney, “but it could just be my imagination, what with all this excitement over the… well, over the…”

  “The body, ma’am?” Chesney helped her.

  Once again, the man, Jack, opened his mouth, but she started again.

  “It really took us by surprise,” she thumbed toward the man, “and he didn’t even see it. I’m the one who spotted it out here, which is really odd, considering I didn’t have my glasses and my eyes, ugh, they really are getting worse. I don’t know what I’ll do about it, just keep buying stronger reading glasses I suppose.”

  “I’m sure the nice officer doesn’t want to hear about your reading glasses, Dianne” Jack said with a grunt.

  “Jack and Dianne…?” Chesney pointed his pen back and forth from the man to
the woman.

  “Oh yes, Jack and Dianne Smith,” the woman said, “from Knoxville, Tennessee. We’ve been coming to Pawleys for over twenty years now…”

  She considered this for a moment and launched into it again, “Gosh, almost thirty years, I guess. We used to stay at the Dolphin House on the North end of the Island, but then we moved further south to a new house. It was ok, but I didn’t like the layout of that one. This year, we’re staying in a beautiful place…”

  Chesney scribbled a new note on his yellow pad as she continued to ramble on:

  7) Joggers are Jack and Dianne Smith

  It was all but inevitable that the song lyrics entered his mind… somethin’ somethin’ somethin’ bout Jack and Diane, somethin’ somethin’ somethin’ doin’ best they can.

  When Chesney looked up, he realized she was still talking about their various rental homes on Pawleys Island. Jack rolled his eyes and put his hand on her arm.

  “I don’t think this is what the officer wants to know.”

  “Well, of course it isn’t, but I was just being polite.”

  “It’s ok, really,” Chesney looked around them, “I’d actually like to have you show me the body.”

  Jack opened his mouth again, but she started speaking before he could get a word out.

  “Oh yes, oh yes,” she spoke as if about a new baby in the family or an exciting new restaurant she’d discovered and laughed uncomfortably, “It’s really incredible to find such a thing. I mean, we are medical professionals, well, he’s in the NICU and I’m… well, we have seen bodies, but… it’s not a normal thing for us to… And naturally, that’s why you drove all the way out here.”

  “Yes ma’am, it is.” Chesney snuck a glance at Dianne’s husband who said nothing but rolled his eyes. He had the feeling that he’d have to wade through the woman’s never-ending details for at least an hour, when he might’ve gotten the same information (sans asides) from the man in two or three minutes.