Implication

A shaggy head poked out of the tent flap, the white hair and beard like old St. Nick.  His puffy, red-cheeked face scanned the perimeter and popped back inside. 

“All clear,” Scotty said.  “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hold on,” Buck said, straightening up the bedding strewn on the dirt floor.  “We’ll go when I say so.  Help me clean this place up.”

Scotty stuffed an armful of soiled clothes back into an orange crate.

“I know it’s here somewhere,”  Buck said, opening a rusted coffee can stashed behind the bed.

“You surmise it’s here.  Doesn’t mean it is.”

“Don’t give me that surmise crap,” Buck said.  “You saw him same as me.  Jake wears that T-shirt and gym shorts when he goes down for his bath.   No place on him to carry a stash.”

“But he’s too paranoid to leave something valuable unsupervised.”

“Maybe so,” Buck said, as he pulled a hunting knife from his belt and pried the lid off of a five-gallon plastic pail.  Inside were two books, some newspapers and a box of friction matches.  Closing the lid, Buck froze.

“I heard something,” he said.  

Scotty peeked outside.  “He just turned up the path.”

Slipping out of the tent they slunk from Jake’s clearing and followed the path away towards the railroad tracks.  

“That was close,” Buck said, wiping sweat from his red-rimmed eyes as the two men clambered onto the tracks.  “We best go into town and stay there for a while,”

“Hold on a minute,” Scotty said,  puffing.  “You think that’s a good idea, us going to town together?”

“Hell yeah.  If Jake notices somebody’s been in his tent, we don’t want to be nowhere around.”

“Think about it.  You and I don’t go to town together.  And when I go in I usually take my bike.”

“You’re right.” Buck rubbed his stubbled beard.  “You go back.  I’ll head into town.  That way nobody can put us together and we’ll each have an alibi.”

“I wouldn’t call it an alibi, not without corroborating witnesses.”

“Alibi or not, we better split up.”   

Scotty nodded. 

“Let me have a chaw for the road, would you?” Buck asked.

Scotty pulled a plug of tobacco from the pocket of his stained gray sweatpants.

“Thanks partner.” Buck reached for his knife.  “Where is it?”  he patted the empty sheath and searched his pockets.  “My knife -- it’s gone.”

He ran back to the spot where they had climbed onto the tracks and searched the path.  “It’s not here,” Buck said.

“Where did you have it last?”

Buck sat down on a rail and scratched his head.  “I slipped the knife in my belt on my way to take a leak this morning.”

“Did you have it at breakfast?”

“I used it to open that can of beans.  And then I…  I had it at Jake’s. Used it to get the top off that pail.”

Scotty blinked his eyes.  “And?”

“That’s when you saw Jake coming and we skedaddled.”

“You sure you didn’t put it back in the sheath?”

“I just can’t remember,” Buck said.

Jake trundled up the path from the river, his black brow a shelf over his ominous  dark eyes.  His rangy hair and scraggly beard gave him an unkempt appearance. But Jake was fastidious by local standards, faithfully taking his morning sponge bath.  He was the only man at the outpost to do so.   

The occupants of the tented enclave had adopted “the outpost” as a fitting name when Scotty had showed up five years ago.    He was good at finding the right words for things, a former educator, Scotty was the brightest of the dozen men that called the outpost home.

The outpost was perched on a wooded hillside a mile outside of town.  Just over the hill to the north was the interstate highway.  To the south lay the railroad tracks, a river below them.  The only way in was the rail bed, followed by a climb up a steep slope.

Jake halted at his tent.  The bottom corner of the tent flap was unhooked from a twig he had placed there as a security measure.  Had a breeze blown it loose? 

Just inside the tent flap Jake found a plastic cup on its side, spilling the twigs it contained.  The bed roll was too neatly laid out, the clothes crate sat at an odd angle.  Reaching for his coffee can, Jake stepped on something – a hunting knife.  Picking it up, he noticed a chink in the blade at the hilt.  He pulled a small brown wad from the chink, touched it to his tongue, then sniffed it. 

“Those bastards,” Jake croaked.  “We’ll see about this.”

Scotty made his way back up the hill.  Through the slanting rays of morning sun, wisps of smoke rose from the campfires of two nearby tents.  No one was stirring, just another quiet morning, with no sign of Jake.  Scotty ducked into his tent and stretched out on his cot.  His hands behind his head, he stared at the backlit, blue tarpaulin roof and  considered the situation. 

Better if I hadn’t heard about that check Jake got or seen him walk out of the bank with that thick envelope.  Ignorance is bliss, Scotty reflected.   Now a dangerous greed had been awakened and Jake was not someone to trifle with.

The outpost community knew only two things about Jake’s past.  One was that he came from out west, near Seattle, because he talked about the fish there.  The other was a story that came from a hitchhiker who had passed through a year ago.  This guy knew Jake from somewhere and had let on how Jake had been incarcerated ten years ago for manslaughter.  Jake was livid when he found out what the guy had been saying.  But no more was learned about it because the next day the man was gone and not heard from again. 

I should have kept my mouth shut, Scotty thought.  Once Buck got wind of Jake’s money, he wouldn’t let it go.  We had to go in there and toss the place.  Now Buck’s gone and lost his knife, Scotty scoffed, shaking his head.  If he left it at Jake’s there will be trouble, that’s sure.  But what if he lost it somewhere else?  We would be in the clear. 

Scotty decided some reconnaissance was in order.

“Hey, Jake!” Scotty said, approaching the tent.  “You in there?”

“Who is it?” Jake replied.

“It’s Scotty.  I’ve got a new plug here and thought you might want a taste,”  he said, pulling the tobacco from his pocket and wiping spittle from his chew-stained Santa beard.

“Come on in,” Jake said.

Scotty lifted the flap and stooped into the tent.  Jake was sitting on his bed whittling something in his lap.

“Have a seat,” Jake said, indicating towards a plastic pail.

Scotty handed his tobacco to Jake and sat, the pail making three sharp snapping sounds as the lid resealed itself.  Jake’s head turned towards the sound with a faint  crooked smile.  Reaching into his lap, Jake retrieved a pen knife and cut off a chunk of tobacco, lifting it to his mouth with the blade. 

“Tastes pretty good,” Jake said, sniffing the plug and returning it to Scotty.  “What kind is it?”

“Cannon Ball.  Hard to get sometimes.”

“I like it,” Jake said, resuming his whittling. “You’re partner over there, Buck, you fellas been running together quite a while, haven’t you?”

“Almost three years.  That’s a while.”

“Know each other pretty well, huh?”

“I suppose so, as far as it goes, you know, rooming with a guy.”

“One the boys asked me, ‘What’s Buck’s last name?’  And I said, ‘darned if I know.’  I been here almost two years and I don’t remember hearing the name.”

“It’s Walker.  Buck Walker.” 

“So that’s it.  Well, mystery solved,” Jake said, continuing to carve, thin curls of wood dropping to the floor. “You guys are running mates, aren’t you?”

“I guess so,” Scotty said, growing uncomfortable.  He’d never heard so many words out of Jake at one sitting.

“Like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.  Find one, and the other fellow ain’t far behind.” 

“I don’t know, I go to the library three or four days a week.  Buck, he never does.  And he frequents that girly bar over on Broad Street, and that isn’t my thing.”

“I see what you mean,” Jake said.  “But besides that you guys are together a lot.  You eat together.  Go down to the river together.  Sleep together.” 

“What’re you getting at?”

“Nothing, just commenting.”  Leaning closer, Jake said, “Tell me, Scotty.  Are you Buck’s ol’ lady?”

“Huh?  What are you talking about?”

“Are you boys close like that, you know, homo?” he said with a wink, sitting back, his lip curling.

“Are your nuts?” Scotty said, rising to his feet.

“Calm down.  I’m just pulling your leg.  Here…” Jake said, reaching into his back pocket and producing a bottle.

“Take a pull on this,” handing the fifth of gin to his offended guest.  “No harm done.”

Sitting, Scotty took a long draft, draining a third of the bottle.  Jake picked up the wood he was whittling and examined it closely.

“I need a bigger knife to finish this,” Jake said.

Reaching into the crate next to his bed, he retrieved a hunting knife, watching for a reaction out of the corner of his eye.  Scotty fidgeted in his seat and blinked his eyes, reaching for his tobacco.

“Ain’t she a beauty,” Jake said, holding up the knife.  “Lucky me, I found it down by the river this morning.”

“No kidding?  That is lucky,” Scotty said, biting off some tobacco, his mind racing.  Buck wasn’t down at the river with that knife. 

“Well, I should move along,” Scotty smiled, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and pulling at his beard.  “Thanks for the drink.” 

Scotty ducked out the tent.

Laying down his whittling wood, Jake picked up the pen knife and began carving on the handle of the hunting knife.  When he had finished carving, he scratched a pinch of dirt from the floor, rubbed it into the carving and polished it with some chaw spittle.  Jake turned the knife to examine his work, the rosewood handle deeply engraved with: ‘BW’.

It was near dusk as Buck reached the outpost.  The air was smoky from cooking fires and there was movement throughout the camp.  Back at their tent, Buck found Scotty asleep on his cot, his back to the door, with a blanket pulled up snugly over his head.

Buck downed a couple of swigs from his water jug and said, “Scotty, where you got that tobacco, partner?” 

Scotty didn’t answer.  Buck helped himself to the pockets of a heavy flannel shirt he found hanging on a peg above Scotty’s bed, but found nothing.

“Wake up, would you?” Buck said, giving the sleeper’s shoulder a shake, with no response.

Shaking him again, Scotty’s body rolled towards Buck, his vacant eyes staring at the blue roof.  A prominence showed under the blanket a few inches below the chin.  Buck pulled the blanket down revealing a knife, the blade plunged to its hilt in the center of his best friend’s chest.  On the rosewood handle he read the initials ‘BW’.  

“What the hell?” gasped Buck, his throat constricting.

He felt the neck for a pulse and turned to leave.  In sudden impulse, Buck pulled the knife from the body.  He ran out the door to dispose of the weapon by tossing it down the hillside towards the river.  Buck turned to make sure no one was looking and he froze, his heart thumping in his chest.  Jake was walking across the clearing with two policeman in tow,  gesturing in the direction of Buck and Scotty’s tent.

Buck dropped the bloody knife behind him, kicking at it awkwardly.  It tumbled a few feet and came to rest on the edge of the path.

Buck sank onto a log outside the tent and sat, his head in his hands.

© 2012 Craig Roberts