The Milk Wagon Read online

  I tapped Hayden on the shoulder and pointed to his truck.

  “You mind if I jump in the back for a second?”

  “All yours, buddy.”

  Just the fact that he let me get in told me things were going to be okay.

  “Hey, everybody, my name is Matt Frazier. This idiot down here who won’t shut up is my good friend Lance Glenn. You may wonder how Lance and I know each other, and I’ll tell you. I went to Lyman – up in West Harrison territory – from third to sixth grade – probably was there when some of you were there – and I didn’t have one single friend for about three months. Lance must have felt sorry for me, because after a while he let me sit with him at lunch, and before we knew it, we were ruling the school.” A few snickers but still no converts. “He saved my ass, actually, and I have good memories from back then. But now he shows up here wanting me to pay him back by drinking our beer and stealing our women.” More laughter and a few whoops from the West Harrison side. It came to a head when Lance yelled out, “Damn Right!” and racecar girl pushed him away “So, to my classmates, I say – at least for tonight, treat these folks like they are one of our own.” I raised my cup, and I saw Andy and his circle of seniors follow. “And to the Red Rebels – welcome to Fish Feeders.”

  On cue, the music started, and within fifteen minutes, there was backslapping, laughing and dancing going on – the cease-fire had been declared. The bonfire brought everyone together, aided in no small part by the West Harrison boys emptying out whatever it was they had been carrying around in the back of their trucks and throwing it on the fire. Up until then, I had no idea people actually picked up road kill, much less kept it for special occasions.

  At around eleven-thirty, people started disappearing into back seats, and I went on the hunt for Emily. When she came over earlier and introduced herself to Lance, he about fell over himself trying to talk to her. I had to explain to him that no, she was not my girlfriend, although it wasn’t for lack of effort, and he was visibly disappointed. I continued to watch for her throughout the night, and every now and then, I caught her looking my way. I found her over by Marcia’s Celica, swaying to the opening riff to “Just Like Heaven” with her eyes half closed. I couldn’t have timed it better.

  “Hey, there,” I said.

  “Well, hello. I was hoping you’d make it over this way.”

  “I had to finish catching up with Lance. Thank you for coming by and speaking to him.”

  “He seemed nice. You two had a tense couple of minutes, huh?”

  “You could say that. Worked out okay though, right?”

  “Matt Frazier saves the day again.” When she said that she put both arms around my neck, and her dark brown eyes locked on to mine. She pushed me back against the car and let all of her weight tilt on to me. I realized right then it was going to happen, and I tried to lick my lips without Emily seeing it. Somewhere between “saves the day again” and her pinning me to the car, they withered up. She started to cock her head to the side in that pre-make out turn, so I closed my eyes and put one hand on her cheek to make sure I was on target. My lips grazed hers, and I could feel them part about the same time she squeezed my waist.

  Then she stopped me.

  “What?” I pulled back and she was looking just over my shoulder. She pushed off my chest with both hands and ran up to the front of the car. When I turned around, I saw why.

  It was Nate. He had made it, all right, but he looked like he had been through a meat grinder. One eye was partially swollen shut, the bridge of his nose was misshapen, and his upper lip was puffed up and purple.

  And he was smiling ear to ear.

  Chapter 27

  “What happened?” My first thought was that the West Harrison peace accord we had brokered had fallen through, and Nate was the first allied casualty. My second thought was that I should start marshaling the troops in the event our very first Fish Feeders ended up in a brawl.

  “Looks that bad, huh?” He licked a cut on his lip.

  “Do we need to get you to a doctor?” By now a few other people had come up.

  “You need to get me to a cold beer.”

  Marcia handed him a longneck, and he took a swig using the good side of his mouth, then rested his bad hand on my shoulder.

  “I finally did it, Matt. Just like you said.” He snorted. “My old man tried to square on me, but I would have none of it. Not this time. I whipped his ass.”

  Emily looked back and forth between Nate and me. She couldn’t figure out whether she should be concerned or mad.

  “Guys?”

  I was still trying to recover from my almost encounter with Emily and it took a few seconds to get my head around what Nate had said. “Good for you, buddy. I think. Well I hope he looks worse than you.”

  “Guys? Hello?” Emily wedged herself in between us.

  “Oh, he definitely looks worse than me, partially because I got him with this,” he held up his hand and wiggled two of the four exposed fingers, and then put his arm around me. Even after getting into a fight, Nate still managed to look cool – like Rocky at the end of his second match with Apollo Creed. “But what really got him is what happened after.”

  Emily finally had enough. “Nate, what are you and Matt talking about?”

  “After?”

  He took another swallow, puff-burped, then looked right at me. “The FBI raided his office today.”

  “The who? The FBI did what?” Emily asked before I could. “I don’t understand.” I didn’t either.

  “Raided his clinic and shut it down. Then they sent a different crew to my house and did the same thing.”

  “For what?” I asked. “I mean, why’d they do a raid?”

  “Not sure; I heard someone mention something like fraud, but I didn’t get it all.”

  “What’d your dad say?”

  “Not a word. Not much you can say when you’re handcuffed and being helped into the back of a cop car.”

  “They arrested him?”

  “Yep.”

  Wow. Even if Nate’s dad was a dick, this had to hit hard. “Sorry, man.”

  “Oh, no need to be sorry, Matt,” he said, “had it not happened, I wouldn’t have been able to get here to see all of y’all.”

  I still didn’t fully understand what he was saying, and as much as I tried to look like I was following him, Nate’s cavalier approach to it all puzzled me. Nate moved in to explain.

  “Remember that control thing you and I talked about?” Nate said, tapping the longneck on his forehead. I nodded, and Emily looked mad now that it dawned on her that she had, in fact, been left out of the loop.

  “Other than going to school, I haven’t been allowed out of the house. Not once. Nada. Several nights I’ve been locked in my room. This is the first taste of freedom I’ve had since we went to the movies.”

  “Yeah, but –”

  He held up his bandaged hand in the ‘shush’ position and leaned in a little closer, forcing the three of us into a mini-huddle. “Is this not Fish Feeders – the greatest party of all time?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, and Emily nodded her head.

  He stood up straight and clapped me on the back. “Then quit standing around looking like someone just stole your dog and tell me where I can find another one of those coldweisers.”

  I pulled another beer out of Marcia’s cooler and popped the top. “You sure you’re okay?”

  He grabbed the bottle and downed the entire thing, then turned his head upward and smelled the air. When he opened his eyes back up, they were as clear as the night sky.

  “I’m more than okay, Matt. My old man is in jail; it is a beautiful evening, and I am here for the first time ever with friends – real friends.” He surveyed the crowd, then put his arms around Emily and me.

  “In fact, this may be the best day of my li
fe.”

  Chapter 28

  It didn’t take long for the story surrounding Nate’s arrival to spread through the crowd, and for a short while a steady stream of onlookers strolled by to check him out. Three months ago no one had even met Nate, and now he was like Bono. Not everyone goobed out on him, though. Andy stopped by with his stacked girlfriend, Janene the Machine, who gave Nate a big full frontal hug. That certainly perked Nate up. Made me want to claim some kind of physical injury or moral victory myself.

  After about an hour, the novelty wore off, and everyone continued like nothing had happened. Physical appearance notwithstanding, Nate looked as comfortable as I’d ever seen him. He mingled in and out like he was running for office, the wheels of conversation no doubt lubricated by a full cup and the liberation that came from breaking free from whatever chains that had been keeping him down. As the night grew on, we congregated around Freddy’s trunk, telling stories and pumping the kegs until they floated. Soon the girls joined us, and a few of them regaled us with tales of their own, which fascinated Hop to no end – especially when the topic turned to sleepovers. Emily played it cool with both me and Nate, and I wore the same mantle of diplomacy with Chrissy. The moment had passed with Emily, and I was having too good of a time just hanging out to be worried about snaking. If either had thrown it on me, I would have, no doubt, but it didn’t feel right to go chasing it. Not really.

  Eventually, the parking lot emptied one by one until it was just me, Hop, Mark, Nate – and Lance, of all people. When he heard we were staying, he told Hayden to go on. Throughout the evening, he had progressively shed his clothes piece by piece. By the end of the night, all he had on was cowboy boots, a cowboy hat and a pair of grippers that were starting to lose the elastic around the leg. He said that’s how he did it when he went camping.

  I backed the Milk Wagon up as close as I could to the bonfire, and we opened up the rear cargo doors so Hop and I could sit with our legs hanging over the bumper. I showed Nate how to access the Trapper, and he was amazed not only that it was virtually unnoticeable, but also by the fact that there were still five beers inside. Mark and Nate wrestled the third-row bench out of the back and plopped it on the sand like a trailer park couch. Lance squatted on an aluminum beach chair with dry-rotted webbing and rolled an empty beer keg back and forth under his boot. By that time, everything was quiet except for the crickets, the bullfrogs and an occasional pop from the bonfire that shot whirling laser beams up in the sky.

  Over in the east, the sky was transitioning from jet black to a deep navy, which told me we were closing in on five a.m. Still, none of us mentioned leaving or going to sleep. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was because it was only the second time in my life I could recall staying up that late, and maybe it was the way the red orange glow from the coals lulled us into a trance, but we were all in a good place. Even Lance seemed to be enjoying his daze, although I suspected he was riding a second buzz, due in no small part to him nursing a dip of Copenhagen the size of a small mouse.

  Nate broke the silence.

  “You know, I saw y’all the other night.”

  “What?”

  “When I was running down the street outside my house. I saw y’all. In the Milk Wagon.”

  Hop jerked to attention, and I looked over at Mark. He glanced at Nate and then down at the ground, not quite sure what to say, and wishing he wasn’t sitting right next to him.

  “I had seen you pass by a few times already, and I tried to avoid you, but when you made that last stop, I had already turned and there was nowhere else I could go, so I kept on trucking.”

  Nate looked straight ahead, his voice a barely audible monotone. Lance looked the most confused of all, but he was quick enough to pick up on the fact that there was something deep going on, so he didn’t chime in. He pushed his hat back on his head and spit a precision stream of slurry onto an ember, sizzling it from pink to black to pink again.

  “You scared us pretty bad, you know,” Mark said. “At first we didn’t know who was coming our way. Looked like a crazy person.”

  “Then when we realized it was you, we thought someone might be after you,” Hop said, “but we never saw anyone else.”

  “That’s ’cause no one was out there but me.”

  “So why were you running, Nate?” I asked. “We drove around looking for you for a good thirty minutes. Even stopped at the front gate but were told to go home.”

  “Y’all came by the house?”

  “Yep.”

  “No one told me that.”

  “Sure did,” Hop said.

  Nate shook his head. “I was running because I saw something.”

  “Saw something? Like something in the woods?”

  “No, not in the woods.”

  “What? What did you see?”

  He took in a long deep breath through his nose. “Look, y’all know the dark side of my dad – some of you know more than others,” he said and glanced at me. “He is a mean, spiteful man who has said and done some things that can’t be unsaid and can’t be undone. For years now I have hated him. Hated his stupid rules. Hated that he remarried right after my mom died. Hated the fact that he hates me – for reasons even today I still don’t understand.” He poked at the fire with a stick. “But I never had a reason to be scared of him.”

  “What happened, Nate?” I asked. “Was he the one chasing you?”

  “No. He wasn’t even there that night.”

  “Then what? I’m not following you.”

  Nate squeezed his bottom lip with the thumb and index finger of his good hand. Then all of a sudden he popped up and walked over to his truck, continuing to talk.

  “Let me rephrase it. He was there when I got home from the movie, but he and Vicky were watching TV. As usual, he didn’t acknowledge my presence, so I went to the kitchen to get something to eat.” Nate opened the door, and I could see him reach into the glove compartment. “Then he got a phone call in his office near the den – which was weird, because I had never heard that phone ring. Not once.” He shut the door and walked back to the fire. “His office is off limits to everyone but him. Keeps it locked. Most of the time.”

  “Who was on the phone?”

  “No idea, but it must’ve been important because he took off as soon as he hung up.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Don’t know that, either, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he left his office door open. First time ever. So I investigated.”

  “Vicky?”

  “Not a problem. She was deep into the wine by that time. Even if she had seen me, she wouldn’t have remembered.”

  “Okay. So what’d you find?”

  Nate stretched out his hand and fanned a stack of Polaroids out like a blackjack dealer.

  “I found these.”

  The dawn sun provided just enough light for us to see without having to rely on what was left of the bonfire. I stood up to get a better look but stopped when the image of the one on top came into focus. It was a snapshot of a man wearing a tie lying on the side of a road. His right arm was extended above his shoulder disco style, and his legs were jacked out to the side. When I leaned in closer to try to see his face, I gagged.

  He was missing the back half of his head.

  Chapter 29

  “What the hell?” I flipped to the others. One was the remains of a man sitting on a couch. It was much worse than the first because there wasn’t much left above the chin. Blood and meat everywhere. The third was a hand with the thumb and finger cut off. The person in the fourth was beaten so badly you could barely tell it was a man. I couldn’t even look at the last one. I had seen enough.

  Everyone else pretty much had the same reaction. I had never seen a dead person – in real life or in pictures – and was surprised at how sick it made me feel. Lance was the only one who made it through th
e stack without commenting. He just adjusted his hat and walked back to the fire.

  “You found these in his office? Were they just sitting around?”

  “No,” Nate said. “When I first walked in, I didn’t notice anything. I opened a drawer or two. Nothing too weird. I did find a pistol under a pharmacy book, but I knew he had that anyway, just didn’t know where he kept it.”

  “So where were the photos?”

  “You may have noticed when you were over that everything in my house is always perfectly in its place. Silverware, dishtowels, furniture, you name it. It’s one of Doc Mayes’s many mandates. The one thing that caught my eye when I walked in was this painting he has hanging behind his chair. It was crooked. Not enough for most people to notice it, but I sure did. So out of habit I tried to adjust it, but something dragged on the canvas from behind. I pulled it off the hook, and there was a wall safe. And it was unlocked.”

  “Damn. This is like a spy movie,” Mark said. “I’ve never seen a wall safe before.”

  “Me neither. When I first opened it, I was pretty disappointed. No gold or jewelry like I was expecting. At first glance just some medical records and other paperwork. Then I took another look and tucked in the back I found a small, blank folder. I opened it up and there they were.”

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Uh, not really.”

  “Do you know these people?”

  “I don’t have a clue who they are. Thank goodness.”

  “Wow,” Hop said, taking a closer look. “Do you think your dad, you know, did this?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “Does he even know you have these, Nate?” I asked. “I mean, if he is such a stickler for details, he has to realize they’re gone.”

  “Funny you should ask, because I don’t think he suspected anything for a few days. I left the empty folder in there. It wasn’t until yesterday that he accused me of going into his office. Didn’t utter a word about the safe, but he stormed into my room and asked if I’d been in there. He was beyond livid.”