Twenty Unusual Short Stories. Dr. Donald D. Hook
jumped to take the bait, and before many minutes had passed the four friends had pulled in three one-pound bass and two decent-sized crappies. “This calls for a celebration,” announced Captain Buford. “Break out the beer!”
Everybody helped himself to a beer, raising the number consumed since before breakfast to three apiece—that is, except for Buford, who had taken several substantial pulls on his hip flask while unloading the truck bed. It took a lot of booze to give him a buzz—he was, after all, one big specimen of a man—but he was beginning to feel it. James Alfred watched him warily because that “mean look” was suffusing his visage. Every now and then Buford would say, “I could gladly smack the shit out of them two mutants. After all, they hit on Southern womanhood, and that I won’t put up with.”
For the next hour the fishing continued good. They filled up two creels and tied two more good-sized bass to the boat with a spare line. “You womenfolk can cook us up a mess of fish for supper,” suggested James Alfred, “while we go for another case of beer. We’ll go to my place and use the grill in the back yard. In the meantime, let’s head back to the truck and break out the sandwiches for lunch. Okay, everybody?”
Buford began to row out slightly from the shore until he sighted the boat ramp about 500 feet up the way. To his dismay, James Alfred saw that the two other truckers were still around, although they appeared to be loading a few things into the back of their vehicle as if preparing to leave. It was hard to tell at this distance what they were doing. Buford was watching too and began to mutter under his breath. All James Alfred could understand was the pungent phrase “son of a bitch.” He took this as a sign of impending trouble and implored Buford not to resurrect anything. “Promise me?” asked James Alfred. The women chimed in with their entreaties to “cool it.” “We don’t need no more shit today,” announced Missy in her inimitably profound way. “We can mosey on down the road a ways and find a pull-off where we can eat lunch,” added The Sexy One. But for her, Buford might have nixed everything, but he suddenly agreed that they ought to move on and eat elsewhere. He started the engine and at low speed headed in a wide sweep back toward the shore. Killing the engine at the last moment, Buford, followed by James Alfred, jumped out of the boat and pushed and pulled it with its female occupants up slightly onto the ramp. In a moment Buford had reached the prow just as James Alfred was pulling the boat higher. They could now back the truck up a little and winch the boat up onto the trailer in a jiffy. Buford was already winding out the winch line. The women tumbled out of the boat, bringing with them the empty beer cooler containing now the string of bass.
“Let’s haul ass,” urged James Alfred. The girls dumped the cooler in the back of the truck with the second cooler containing the sandwiches and more beer and wandered off to the cover of some nearby trees to answer a call of nature. Buford and James Alfred did the same but in the opposite direction. When they returned to the truck in just minutes, the girls were not back. They took a seat on the corners of the rear trailer ledge and waited. Buford seemed to have forgotten all about the two New Yorkers. Their truck was still parked about 50 feet away, but the men were not in sight.
Although neither Buford nor James Alfred was given to philosophizing about anything, they must have somehow sensed that Evil was about to enter the picture, for when the girls did not return from their woodsy pissoir after 15 minutes, they looked at each other in puzzlement. Buford was the first to speak. “Do you think we’d better go look for them? They’ve been gone a lot longer than necessary.”
“Yeah, maybe they’re lost,” volunteered James Alfred, whose mind was tumbling with possibilities.
Suffering now from similar mind tumbles, Buford inquired, “Just where the hell are those two damn Yankee cretins?”
For most people “evil” actions originate outside of themselves, namely, in other people. This assumption greatly simplifies matters and means that you are never to blame, never the source of Evil, always the other guy. You are thereby relieved of all guilt; you can act to overcome the Evil in the other person with a clear conscience. But that is also the way the other person feels, thus creating a phenomenon that is bereft of Good. Evil is not the other side of Good, and Good is not the obverse of Evil. Both Buford and James Alfred instinctively understood this fact; only James Alfred wrestled with his conscience.
Buford was down-to-earth definite: “If they’ve harmed our women, I’ll kill ‘em graveyard dead!” Good buddy James Alfred advised: “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
But where to search? For one thing, James Alfred wisely suggested they look for a clump of trees not too far away; it was only logical the girls would find a spot close by. After all, they wanted to be on the way soon and knew that Buford and James Alfred were also ready to go. Reasoning that calling out in a loud voice might yield a response that would settle the question of direction, James Alfred bellowed forth the women’s names: “Missy, Edna Mae, let’s go. Where are you?” Buford then lent his mighty voice to the vocal search. Repeatedly, they called out the names.
For perhaps another 15 minutes or so there was no answer. Then, unexpectedly, weak cries of “Buford, James Alfred” wafted toward them from somewhere within the canebrake maybe a hundred yards away. They could hear crashing sounds as somebody seemed to be making his way through thick growth, stumbling along like a pack of wounded animals.
Then Buford and James Alfred saw them as they struggled toward them out of the thickets and river entanglements. They were bloody and bruised and hysterical, their clothing in disarray. “They used us,” screamed Edna Mae. “We couldn’t get away.”
In disbelief Buford and James Alfred rushed toward the women, surveying their injuries, questioning them, comforting them, reassuring them, swearing vengeance. This reaction struck James Alfred as curiously unlike Buford, who, hard as an old pine knot, seldom showed any compassion for anybody. By now the women were sobbing uncontrollably.
The sound of a truck engine roaring to life caught everyone’s attention. “Son of a bitch! They’re getting away!” Buford’s voice had the volume of a thunder clap, offset by the women’s clamorous cries, amidst sobs, of “No, no, Jesus Christ, no!”
To leave the area the truck had to swing by the four friends on its way to the one narrow roadway from the riverbank and out. “Shoot the lowlife! You’ve got your gun, boy. Use it!” Buford’s command to his sidekick had the authority of an avenging angel, even while the women screamed “No!” again and again, and James Alfred whipped out his .45 and fired two shots directly at the truck cab at a distance of no more than a dozen feet.
One heavy-caliber bullet crashed through the passenger window and struck the big Negro square in the face. As he fell first sideways and then forward, the second bullet slammed into the back of his head and spewed his brains out all over the driver. Justice was on the march.
Buford was ecstatic. Great shooting, he shouted, all the while on a dead run around the back of the vehicle and heading for the driver’s side of the truck. In a moment the driver tumbled out, ferocious hate overspreading his countenance. He screamed, “You rotten Rebel bastard, I’m going to take you apart piece by piece!”
This must have been music to Buford’s ears because, instead of being the least bit intimidated, cursing, he rushed full-tilt at “the damn Yankee” and swiped his claw hammer across the man’s face from left to right with such immense force that he yanked all his front teeth out with that one fell swoop. Gushing blood from his mouth, the man turned toward his tormentor just in time to catch a switchblade in the gut. “Finish him off, James Alfred!” screamed Buford. “Why in God’s name is this happening to us? He’s nothing but a lump of dog shit. Kill him, kill him cemetery dead! Do it now!”
The man lay writhing on the ground in front of James Alfred and Buford, but James Alfred began to walk away. “Let it be, Buford. It’s over now.” By this time the women were pounding with their fists on the backs of their boyfriends and slobbering out more “no’s” and “oh, Gods.”
And indeed it was over. A twitch or two and the man moved no more.
Not one of these four friends knew much of anything about how the universe operates, the promise of genetic research,