Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet Read online

  “Yeah,” I said, sighing with relief that it wasn’t the Apes.

  Walt relaxed his grip on the shotgun. “The hell is that jackass doing?”

  I was curious about that myself.

  We continued to watch as the truck roared about the lot.

  Then it swerved suddenly; started rocketing towards the bar like a missile.

  “I’ll tell you what he ain’t doing …” I said.

  Walt said, “Yeah?”

  I said, “Stopping!”

  I threw myself on Walt like a Secret Serviceman, tackling him to the floor as Lester’s truck crashed through the window where we’d been standing in an explosion of glass. The truck bulldozed through the room, smashing tables and chairs to splinters before it slammed to a stop against the bar slab, and the horn honked like it was demanding service. A shower of leaves and dust rained down over the room. It went quiet real sudden.

  I staggered to my feet and helped Walt to his. Choking on tire smoke, fanning falling leaves from the air, we gaped at the truck, the hood crumpled against the bar. Then the driver’s-side door clattered open and Lester spilled from the cab. He thudded to the floor and started kissing it like he couldn’t believe he was alive, though the way Walt was staring at him, that wouldn’t be for much longer.

  Sometimes, and this was one of those times, it was hard to remember that Lester Swash used to be something like a local sports star. Back in the day he’d played reserve quarterback for the Baboons, before he turned his throwing arm into a drinking arm, and pissed away whatever God-given talent he’d had. He was a lanky dude with a mop of blonde hair and a mustache he mistakenly believed made him look dashing, and not like a South-East Asian sex tourist.

  Cradled to his chest was a video camera, but I didn’t give that much thought right away, on account of the truck being embedded where the bar used to be. Lester wobbled to his feet, but Walt seemed to prefer him where he was, because he slugged Lester in the mouth and put him back down again. I decided it was prudent to take the shotgun from Walt. He relinquished it reluctantly.

  “Shit-for-brains peckerwood!” Walt barked at him. “Look what you done to my place!”

  But Lester just started hollering, “It took him! It took Ned!”

  Walt glanced at me—I shrugged—he frowned at Lester.

  “The hell are you yammerin’ about?”

  “The skunk ape!”

  The look on Walt’s face, I was glad I’d taken the gun from him.

  According to legend, the Bigelow Skunk Ape stalks the great sprawl of woods beyond town that locals call the Sticks. He’s Bigfoot with body odor, I guess. Our town’s very own Fouke Monster, Scape Ore Swamp Lizard Man, or the Goat Man who stalks the East Texas Bottoms.

  My momma described him to me once. A shaggy-furred beast with devil-red eyes, standing tall enough to block out the sun; he could crush a man in his fist like Popeye opening a can of spinach. Momma warned me, if I lollygagged home from fishing the river, and was late back for supper, I might meet him myself.

  Now in the cold light of day, I reckon I knew she was pulling my leg. But as dusk started creeping in, it was harder to convince myself. The sun retreated over the horizon like it was telling me: Kid, if you’re damn fool enough to walk home at night with a skunk ape on the loose, you can do it alone. Before full dark, I packed up my fishing pole and my tackle box, and then hauled ass home in time to set the supper table, ignoring Momma’s smug smile.

  Years later, I learned the legend was started by moonshiners to spook folks away from the woods and their hidden whiskey stills. But even now people still sometimes talk about the Bigelow Skunk Ape as if he really is living out there in the Sticks someplace. Parents use him to keep their rug-rats in line. And maybe a guy in a bar will spin you a yarn about his encounter with the skunk ape, and if it’s a good one, you might shout him a beer for a tall tale well told.

  Unfortunately for Lester, Walt was not in the fucking mood.

  “Skunk ape?” Walt sputtered. “I’ll give you skunk ape!” But he gave Lester another punch in the mouth instead. “That goddamn skunk ape could prob’ly drive a truck better than you can!” I wrestled Walt into a bear hug before he could pop Lester again, and that’s when I noticed someone else in the truck.

  “Eliza?”

  I helped her from the truck cab. She was shivering, deathly pale and glassy eyed; leaves were tangled in her long blonde hair, and her arms and legs were viciously scratched as if she’d scrambled for her life through a briar patch. Of course, I noticed all that after I’d taken a moment to appreciate the fact that she was wearing a fuzzy brassiere and britches like Raquel Welch in 100 Million Years B.C. And the cavewoman costume looked as fetching on Eliza as it did on Raquel. She really was quite a gal, even all scratched-up and upset like this.

  I managed to unglue my eyes and told Walt to fetch some brandy.

  He didn’t move; he didn’t blink.

  “Walt!” I said, for the third time. “Brandy.”

  He dragged himself away to get the brandy. I sat Eliza down at the end of the bar slab. Thank god for small miracles, Lester’s truck hadn’t demolished my spot. Walt returned with the brandy and poured Eliza a shot. She gulped it down and then reached for the rest of the bottle. Walt poured her another shot instead. It went the way of the first. “That’s enough for now,” I told Walt.

  To Eliza, I said, “What happened, girl?”

  “I told y’all what happened!” Lester cried. He was pacing the bar with the video camera cradled to his chest like a babe in arms. “The skunk ape took Ned!”

  Walt reached under the slab for his shotgun, before remembering he’d given it to me. The best he could do was shoot Lester with a glare.

  Ignoring Lester, I asked Eliza again. “What happened?”

  She looked at me with teary eyes, her whole body trembling.

  “Sk-sk-sk-skuh-skuh-skuh—”

  “Skunk ape?” I suggested.

  She nodded, started blubbering.

  I glanced at Walt and saw him sigh.

  We watched as Lester continued pacing the bar.

  “Alright, Lester,” I said, “exactly what the fuck happened?”

  4.

  The greatest moment of Ned Pratt’s life was when he was picked as mascot for the high school football team, and got to wear the Boogaloo Baboon costume.

  Ned was no athlete, not like his buddy, Lester Swash. But with his hunched back, long dragging arms, and his strange waddling gait, Ned was only a tail short of being simian himself. So when it came time for the Baboons to cast a new Boogaloo—after the previous team mascot graduated—Ned was a dead cert to be the man in the monkey suit. And credit where it’s due, he did the costume proud. Clad in the shag-furred bodysuit, the long stiff tail swishing about the red cushion of his ass, the heavy baboon mask bobbling on his shoulders like a dashboard dog, Ned would caper up and down the sideline, firing up the crowd and imagining all the cheers were just for him.

  Ten years later, and it remained hard for Ned to let go of those glory days.

  Ned’s Boogaloo suit was retired when Ned left high school, out of respect for the best team mascot the Baboons ever had; not to mention Ned had sweated inside the costume something fierce—it reeked like a real baboon, or one of King Kong’s jerk-off socks—it was unlikely the next Boogaloo would consent to wear it. So Ned got to keep his old outfit, the coach of the Baboons presenting it to him like a retiree’s gold watch.

  Ever since then, Ned had worn that damn costume more than he did regular clothes, mask and all. You’d often see him doing odd jobs around town—a giant baboon mowing grass astride a Lawnboy was a common sight—or he’d come to The Henhouse with Lester, scuttling alongside him like he was Clyde to Lester’s Clint in Every Which Way But Loose.

  After awhile, it gets so you can see something weird-as-shit and not bat an eye. It hardly registers. It’s just Ned.

  But until Lester started talking, it had never occurred to me that Ned did his
screwing while wearing the monkey suit. Never mind that there were guys who would actually pay good money to watch Boogaloo Baboon banging a gal.

  “Porno movies?” I said, with a nervous glance at the video camera Lester was clutching.

  “Yessir,” Lester nodded. He was perched on his truck like a hood ornament.

  “Call me old-fashioned,” I said, “but who in their right mind’s gonna pay to watch a guy in a monkey suit banging a gal?”

  “Oh-ho,” Lester said, “you’d be surprised, Reggie.”

  “No shit,” I said.

  Lester went on to explain, in more detail than I would’ve liked, that ‘gonzo’ porn was a flourishing subgenre of the adult entertainment industry.

  “What’s wrong with Juggs magazine?” I protested.

  “Nothing,” Walt said, with the righteousness of a longtime subscriber.

  Lester shrugged. “Some guys like a little wackiness while they’re whacking it.”

  I just shook my head in despair. It takes all sorts, I guess.

  “It was my Uncle Hank gave me the idea,” Lester said. “You know Hank?”

  “By reputation,” I said, and Lester puffed up with pride.

  Hank Sanderson was another grade-A fucking moron like his nephew.

  I’d once heard a story about Hank that damn near beggared belief; the short version was he’d nearly killed his wife’s Jack Russell terrier with an overdose of industrial strength laxative.

  “Uncle Hank’s the one who sold me the camera for just fifty bucks.” Lester smiled at the outdated camera in his hands like he’d got a sweet deal on a magic lamp. “Hank says there’s good money to be made in porno, you just gotta find the right angle. Any damn fool can make a fuck-flick, he says. What you need is a hook to stand out from the crowd.

  “So Ned and me,” Lester said, “we rent us a bunch of stag movies to watch for research. Taking it serious, you know. We’re doing our homework in Ned’s trailer. Ned’s wearing his Boogaloo suit, like there’s a surprise. The trailer’s hotter than hell and Ned’s Boogaloo suit is stinking like the devil wiped his ass with it. Smells so bad, I can hardly concentrate on the movie. And the movie’s one of them ones with a plot—Rump Pumpers—I need to concentrate. So I say to Ned, ‘Open a damn window! You smell worse than the Bigelow Skunk Ape!’

  “And that’s when it hit me.” Lester mimed a lightning bolt striking down from the sky. “When it comes to ‘gonzo’ porn,” he said, “the Bigfoot porn market’s already pretty much cornered. But skunk ape porn? Well, that’s like an untapped oil field.”

  Lester grinned.

  “So now we got us our hook,” he said, “a leading man with his own ‘skunk ape’ costume.” I knew he meant Ned’s Boogaloo outfit, but Lester finger-quoted ‘skunk ape’ just the same. “All that was left was for us to find an actress.”

  With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I looked across at Eliza.

  She’d shrunk like a turtle tucking into its shell.

  “Don’t judge me, Mr. Levine,” she said.

  “I’m not,” I lied. Shit, and this was the girl I’d thought was out of my league. Bumping uglies with the village idiot. Mating with a moron in a monkey suit.

  “It was just a foot in the door.”

  “Of what? Hell?” I shook my head.

  She looked at me like I was looking at Lester, which is to say, like I was the idiot. “Showbiz,” she said. “Lester was gonna edit me a showreel to audition for Tryout Tramps.”

  “Christ, Eliza … You might’ve aimed just a little higher.”

  “Hey!” Lester said.

  “With all due respect to your talent as a pornographer, Lester.”

  He seemed satisfied with that.

  Walt was shaking his head gravely. “Moonlighting as a porn starlet,” he said. “I don’t like it. That’s the kinda thing that could give The Henhouse a bad name.”

  A little late for that, I thought. “Let’s let that lie for now, Walt.”

  I turned back to Lester. “So,” I said, trying to wrap my head around it, “you two jackasses took Eliza out to the Sticks to make a stag movie?”

  Lester nodded. “That’s pretty much the size of it.”

  “What happened next?”

  Eliza started trembling again.

  Lester held out the video camera towards me, shaking in his hands.

  “Maybe it’s best if you see for yourself.”

  I took the camera reluctantly, flipped out the viewing panel, pressed the play button, the contraption whirred, and then an image blinked starkly to life on the screen. Now I’m no prude. As a bachelor, I was even on nodding terms with some earlier volumes of Tryout Tramps. But skunk ape porn was a new one on me, and I might’ve liked a little foreplay to ease me into the idea. I didn’t get it.

  Eliza was splayed over a log with her butt high up in the air, her fuzzy cavewoman britches teased down to reveal her bare ass. That would’ve been something to admire under normal circumstances. Unfortunately the aesthetic was ruined by Ned as Boogaloo Baboon, hunched behind her with his paws clamped to her hips, thrusting away with his tail swishing merrily and his red cushion ass jiggling like a big plate of jelly. Lester’s shaky camerawork was giving me motion sickness, like one of those found footage horror flicks; the image itself was just making me plain sick.

  “Oh yeah, that’s it,” I heard Lester say off-camera. “Now slap her butt with your tail.”

  Boogaloo did as directed—Ned seemed happier than he’d been since his mascot days—and Eliza gave a shrill squeal of pleasure.

  Back in the bar, Lester had climbed down from the hood of the truck and was now peering over my shoulder to watch, smiling proudly at his handiwork.

  “Back off, Lester,” I warned him, and he had the good sense to wipe the leering grin off his mug. I couldn’t help being pissed off that a goddamn football mascot had gotten friendlier with Eliza than I ever had. A fucking monkey, no less.

  Meanwhile, old Lou had crept up on my blindside and was getting an eager eyeful. “How much did you say these videos’d be going for?” he asked Lester.

  Before Lester could start haggling, Walt pushed him away. “Go home, Lou. Bar’s closed.” Looking like a scolded dog, Lou left the bar, crabbing carefully through the hole in the wall where the window used to be.

  I snapped at Lester, “How much more of this shit do I gotta watch?”

  “Coming right up,” Lester assured me.

  Walt said, “So’s Ned, by the looks it.”

  The performance was reaching its crescendo. Boogaloo was pounding away at Eliza like a giant clockwork monkey bashing an exotic drum kit. Ned was grunting and gasping for breath under the heavy baboon mask. Eliza was squealing with pleasure and adlibbing dirty talk that would’ve made a sailor blush.

  “I think I know how this one ends,” I said.

  “Keep watching!” Lester said.

  But I’d seen more than enough to scar me for life, and I was about to shut off the camera, when suddenly Eliza gave a cry of disgust. She pushed Ned away and squirmed out from under him. “Cut, cut!” she said, hoisting up her fuzzy britches.

  Lester said off-camera, “What the hell, Lizzie? This is the money shot!”

  Eliza punched Boogaloo’s arm; Ned gave a little yelp of pain.

  “It’s bad enough you two bozos couldn’t wash the suit before we started shooting,” she complained, “without this big dumb baboon dropping ass!”

  Boogaloo held up his paws to plead his innocence. “Wasn’t me—”

  Then Lester must’ve caught a whiff of it.

  “Christ almighty,” he wheezed, “that smells bad enough to gag a gut-wagon dog.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Boogaloo insisted.

  But Lester wasn’t listening to his leading man.

  “We’ll take five till the air clears,” he said. “Ned: Don’t lose that wood.”

  That’s when something burst from the brush in an explosion of leaves and a bellowing roar. Lester’s ca
mera whipped around for a split-second glimpse of a shadowy giant standing silhouetted against the sun. It had devil-red eyes, a matted shag of ruddy brown fur, a boulder-sized head and knuckle-dragging arms. With long, lunging strides that quaked the ground—Lester’s camera seemed to be attached to a paint-shaker—the giant stamped across the clearing straight at Boogaloo Baboon. Ned gave a muffled shriek as the beast picked him up like a plush toy and tossed him over its shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Then whatever-it-was turned and thundered back into the brush, bushes shaking wildly in its wake.

  The camera zoomed in on the bushes. “Nuh-Ned?” Lester said.

  “The hell was that?” Eliza said. “Where’s Ned?”

  “The fuh—the fuck should I know, girl?”

  The camera began tracking into the brush where the creature had vanished with Ned. Lester’s arm made a cameo appearance, raking branches aside.

  “Ned?” Lester cried, in a panicked voice. “Talk to me, bud! Ned?”

  “Slow down, Les!” Eliza called behind him. “Don’t leave me by myself!”

  A hellish roar stopped them in their tracks—

  And then they were running in the opposite direction.

  I didn’t blame them; even on the recording, that roar chilled my blood and prickled the hairs on the nape of my neck.

  The camera was still rolling. All you could see was their feet crashing through the undergrowth; all you could hear was their gasping breath and Eliza sobbing and Lester yelling at her to run faster—

  Then another blood-freezing roar behind them, and Lester must have bashed the camera against something, because the image suddenly exploded in a Hiroshima of static, and I jerked my head back from the viewing screen.

  “We—we made it back to the truck,” Lester said, “and hauled ass out of there …”

  “And then crashed through my fucking window,” Walt said.

  Lester glanced around the bar as if noticing the devastation for the first time.

  “Yeah. Sorry, Walt. I was pretty shook up, I guess.”

  “It didn’t occur to you to go see the law before coming here?”