Catch As Catch Can
by Ed Lynskey
Ed Lynskey's mystery short fiction will appear in The Writer's Hood, Blue 
Murder Magazine, The Murder Hole, and Orchard Press Mystery.

Across the breakfast counter, I watched Frank, my older brother, draining his coffee. Although I'd arrived home and changed into my civvies, nothing between us seemed quite the same. I tried but couldn't put my finger on what was different. Maybe I was now too much a Leatherneck to put up with his crap. Frank's hazel eyes narrowed. Scribing a squeaky Magic Marker on a box of Wheaties, he drew up the floor plan to Mercer's Garage, the "X" denoting the cash register's location.
"We're in and out, slick and quick." Glancing up, Frank snapped his fingers.
"Strikes me as dumb and dangerous." My usual black, strong Maxwell House perking in Camp Lejeune's mess hall was eight hours by Greyhound bus to the south. I missed it. Lacing fingers together and extending out-turned arms, I cracked my knuckles, regarded him with suspicion.
"Nope. It's a cinch." Tapping my knee and winking, he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You see, Peanut has already unloosened the skylight's screws."
"Tell me, are Peanut's lobotomy scars healed? Like I said, count me out." Tipping the coffeepot, I replenished my mug.
"Huh, what's with you?" Frank's drawl was as long as Main Street.
"Look, I stand to loose too damn much." Features hardening, I returned his stare, this time not intimidated.
Frank worked his cud, a stick of Blackjack gum, with displeasure clouding his face, but in the next breath, pasted on that auctioneer's grin. "Think it over today. I need you on this one."
His keys dangling on a bent nail, Frank zipped up a leather bomber jacket, shoved out the side door. Through the clay-streaked window, one pane patched by a pizza box and duct tape, I saw him pulling off in a Plymouth. "I Fight Poverty! I Work!" a bumper sticker read. Frank had a knack for skinning by, like picking up odd jobs from lonely old widows having more money than sense. Earlier that morning, Mrs. Eicher had telephoned; her bathroom needed a fresh coat of paint.
"Sure, I can do that," Frank had agreed, grinning at me. Visions of jewelry and family silver danced through his mind. A happy mermaid tattoo rippled on his muscular arm used to lifting things. Without thinking, I'd reached around to check that my wallet was still in my hip pocket.
The giant oak I now noticed shading the snake fence was a dead ringer for the 350-year-old one shading the Marine base theater. Again, I caught myself thinking about what it'd taken to bust my hillbilly hump to get to where I was. In that interval, what had Frank been doing except ripping off other people's stuff? The bile creeping up my throat tasted acrid on my tongue. I was tempted to tip off Sheriff Stoneburner about Frank's plan to hit Mercer's Garage. On the other hand, I had my reasons to steer clear of the Sheriff, even to make an anonymous telephone call.
Like many juvenile delinquents, I'd entered the Marines as a last resort. With 14 miles of sand beaches, 54 live-fire ranges, 89 maneuver areas, and 25 tactical landing zones, Camp Lejeune had bowled over Mama enough to enroll me.
Two years and stripes later, just the day before Sergeant Belk had demanded an explanation for my tons of unused leave, an administrative lapse that the new colonel had dinged him on.
"So, well, let's see--uh, I hadn't realized it, sir," I stuttered.
"Malarkey," he barked, crossed eyes bulging from his fox-like skull. "Get lost for ten days. Hear me?"
"Yes, sir!" I saluted before making a beeline to the Greyhound kiosk to plunk down the cash I borrowed from Belk for the round-trip ticket home to Tipton.
Peculiar thing was, Frank had little curiosity about the Marines. In fact, after our shaking hands at the bus terminal, all the way back to his place, he'd acted as if I'd never departed at all. Instead, he'd went on peppering his conversation with recent weddings, deaths, and births--the topics Laurel County natives talked about.
"I learned karate in the Corps." We were turning into his driveway. "I earned a black belt, too."
"You don't say. Does that chop-chop make your dick harder?" Frank shoved the car into park. "You bring just the one duffel bag?"
"Yeah. That and a bottle of Wild Turkey," I replied.
Rasping a kitchen match on my belt buckle, I lit a kerosene heater to ward off the morning's dank chill. I left the dirty dishes in the sink, my bed unmade, a crusty flyswatter by the salt shaker. Mama's toenails were probably curling in her grave. Inside the fridge --its interior light busted--I only found a 3-pound sack of candy canes for Frank's sweet tooth. For chuckles, first, I browsed Frank's men's magazines-- months old issues of Sports Illustrated and Field & Stream--scattered over the butcher's block table.
Next, scanning a primer on small engine repair killed a whole five minutes. Finally, riffling the pages to a J. C. Whitney catalog, between the boxed ads for baby moon hubcaps and re-built carburetors, the name of Meredith Helms bobbed into my idle mind. Her home number-- DRExel-5015--flew off my tongue, but Frank's telephone was disconnected. Unlike a smart Marine, I impulsively decided to trot right down and pay my respects.
Meredith was the girl living next door to some boys, but not this one. I hoofed it the three miles to her stucco house situated pretty as a damn postcard. A herd of reindeers chain-sawed from cherry logs grazed on the lawn. Offhours, men pitched horseshoes in the green sawdust pits. Gazing through in-line windows, I spotted a strung up stove wire that pinkish feminine laundry was flapping on.
Nervous fingertips scratched from inside, then hurled the door wide before I was at the porch bottom step. Mrs. Helms, pinched and pale, squared her shoulders behind the screen door. Her gray eyes were a pair of grenade pins. I had forgotten until that moment the depths of disgust and rancor the mere sight of me stirred within her. I had been gone too long, or maybe not long enough, depending on how you looked at things. When Mrs. Helms snicked the screen lock, I knew enough to halt.
"Mister Joe Ecru," she uttered, fidgeting with a sheet of S&H Green Stamps. "My Lands, when did they parole you, boy?" The question was punctuated with a sigh, rolled eyes.
"They didn't. What I mean is I'm a U.S. Marine, ma'am," I muttered, piqued by her sarcasm.
"Meredith doesn't live here anymore," Mrs. Helms announced.
"Please, then, send her my warmest regards." My voice trailed off, flat and dejected.
"Fat chance." Smoothing down her apron straps, she sniffled, twice.
I summoned the gumption to protest. "Listen, Mrs. Helms, you figured me all wrong."
Shaking her head, Mrs. Helms' smile curled into a slash. "Nope, I pegged you right from the start. Riffraff, through and through, like decent folks whispered in my ear."
"I'm a corporal in the Marines," I repeated to her. "That counts for something."
Ignoring me, she continued. "Meredith, though, turned a deaf ear. What she saw in you, Ecru, I'll never understand. No matter, now. She's married to a good young man over in Riverton."
"Marty Milner?" My astonishment was genuine.
"Yep, one and the same. She has two little girls. Cute as buttons," Mrs. Helms talked over me. "You best move on, as before. Cut and run, show that wide yellow stripe running down your backside."
"C'mon. Cut me some slack. I didn't know what to do," I tried to defend myself.
"Thing is, I wonder how far you'll scoot this time." Mrs. Helms reached for the telephone in the foyer.
"Try to understand, we were just kids, scared and plenty crazy." My outburst caromed off her closing door; the deadbolt clicked into place.
Knowing Mrs. Helms, the Sheriff and his deputy posse, those Southern-fried savages big on peckerwood justice, were already en route. Scuttling down a cattle chute, staying low, I trotted over ragweed and bull thistle to reach the long section of road drilled through a granite-strewn knoll. A set of boulders, pried loose from the freeze and thaw of Virginia winters, easily budged free, tumbled to the macadam. Slipping, I managed to shove down six smaller chunks to jam up the passageway.
Scurrying to what late morning shadows the piney woods offered, I first detected the deep-throated, hog block engine rev to a gallop. Receding to shade, I jogged to a commanding ridge, where Frank and I had once hunted bucks, within eyeshot of the road. Heart banging in my throat, I observed the Sheriff's cruiser--cherry top flashing but no siren--hurrying from Tipton. It disappeared from view when locked brakes squealed, and a metallic thud sounded. I grinned to myself.
Sprinting down a shallow ravine, I paused under a loblolly, its spiky needles underfoot soft and spongy. Squatting on a fallen rock fence, head sagging between my knees, I fought for breath, but was wary of any timber rattler's castanets. Why did Sheriff Stoneburner have it in for me? As a teen-ager, I'd had the usual run-ins with the local law, petty rigmarole-- cat-fishing in posted ponds, pilfering a preacher's red velvet cape, and shotgun blasting billboard signs. The stuff psychologists, I believe, call rites of passage. Frank's transgressions, by way of comparison, left mine in the dust.
Within fifteen minutes, I closed the distance back to Frank's place. Kneeling to peer from behind the privy, I wasn't shocked to view the rotund deputy planted on the hood of his cruiser, a Creamsicle in one fist, a walkie-talkie in the other. Frank's Plymouth was nowhere in sight. The back screen door drooped off one hinge. Run off from the roof had spattered red streaks up the side of the house. Back in my footlocker, I had stashed Polaroid prints shot when the plank house was new. That was days before our daddy, a quiet and desperate sort, lit out for the turpentine camps, then somehow mislaid his map back home.
"Holding up?"
Nearly jumping out of my skin, twisting, I sprang into a combat crouch. Legs spaced evenly apart, Frank, like always, was grinning. His right hand gripped a .357 Magnum.
"Shhh," he said, his finger held to lips. "I'm here to help you."
Signaling with a raised hand, Frank guided me down ancient rabbit paths through blackberry bramble and staghorn sumac, his long legged stride light and nimble, weaving us deeper and darker into the thickening forest. We skirted the Confederate breastworks affording an excellent range for boys to target practice. In spite of my Marine training, after a mile or so, I was doused in lather, heaving for gulps of air. Frank had yet to break a sweat. Slacking the pace, he stopped to lean against an ironwood tree. From the splashy gush and gurgle of water, I judged us within a pebble's toss of the Rappahannock River. Flinging ourselves on the sandbar, we next rested a full minute before speaking.
"The sheriff wants you gone," said Frank.
"I've no idea why." I cringed. My tone sounded defensively shrill and timid.
He ceased picking his teeth with a pointy honeysuckle vine. "Meredith Helms is why."
"What's done is done." I shrugged my shoulders, pretending I didn't care.
"Meredith wasn't pregnant the morning you shipped out," Frank said. "At least not by you."
I gaped at him, but the grin never appeared. For once in his life, Frank was playing it straight. "How's that?" I asked.
"One night, a few weeks after you'd left, I was fixing a trot line under the bridge there. Behind the willows, I stumbled upon Sheriff Stoneburner's parked cruiser. Sneaking closer, I caught them red-handed. The sheriff was diddling Meredith herself against the front grille, out in plain view, the high beams switched on. What a sight they made."
"You three now have an arrangement, so to speak. You keep mum on his forking Meredith and he casts a blind eye to your illegal monkey business." My throat tightened, the enraged venom filling my heart before it died down. Coming home had been one big mistake I was beginning to realize.
"Your return has muddied the waters." Frank raked fingers through his long hair. "It's amazing, brother. Even after two years, folks are still pissed."
"What about Meredith's daughters?"
"Relax, you're not even in their gene pool. Her oldest, the blue-eyed towhead, resembles the sheriff. It's Tipton's best known secret."
"Any hope to recoup my money?"
"Nope." Frank, pulling himself up, retrieved my duffel bag from a hollow trunk and trudged to the river's edge to point. "You can flag down the two o'clock bus after the bridge. Face it, Tipton has nothing for you but heartbreak and more heartbreak. Sorry, bud."
"You are what you are," I said. "I'm a Marine bucking for sergeant."
"And I'm a two-bit hoodlum too lazy to lift a finger to make an honest living," Frank finished the thought.
Late that afternoon, I was back in uniform riding a Greyhound bus, the ticket wedged in my hip pocket for Daytona Beach, compliments of Frank. I would waste the remaining eight days of my leave lounging in the surf, sand, and sun. Well, maybe even meet a nice coed down on a spring fling. As we chugged through Ashland, with the pall of Richmond's smokestacks ahead, harsh images flooded back to me.
A tear-stained face, Meredith's, out at my truck with such astounding news. Panic-stricken, we reached that dreadful decision. The eighty bucks, re-counted out in 20-dollar bills, I deposited on the Helms' hi-fi. After three straight days in bed, Mama yanking me by the ear and marching me down to the Marine Corps Recruitment Station in the Tipton Post Office. Finally, Mrs. Helms' fierceness to protect her daughter's purity by vilifying me. Mama was right. Any kind of future I had was with the Marines.
By the time the Greyhound had glided a few miles south of Richmond, the harsh images began to dispel and dislodge in bits and pieces. As I crossed the Virginia-North Carolina border, a ray of sunlight pierced through and the first kudzu vines welcomed me back.