Joe grunted, slipped his pistol into a leather gym bag under the cot, and sat up. He rubbed at his patchy brush cut with his right hand. People rarely tried to make conversation with him. For starters, it just wasn’t easy to look at Joe straight on.
Joe’s face looked like a Klingon special-effects mask-in-progress from Star Trek. Ridges of grafted skin had healed unevenly and there was a suggestion of fine belly hair on his cheek and forehead where they’d taken the grafts from his abdomen. The stitch marks looked like wrinkles stretched the wrong way.
And then there was his voice. He’d swallowed fire and the sound that came from his throat was somewhere between a grunt and a hoarse whisper. He’d scarred his vocal cords.
The little finger was totally missing from his left hand, along with the first joint of his ring finger. Snakeskin ridges mapped his arms and his neck. His black hair grew in streaks between furrows of scar tissue. He limped.
But he was something to watch. He’d been handsome once. Athletic. Now he was like a photo of his former self that had been ripped longways and sideways and then pasted back together. None of his edges quite lined up. Yet the injuries had the effect of making him heal stronger. Joe could come up on people real quiet.
Joe showed up one night last winter to pick up a load of whiskey at the Missile Park. He was driving an old border runner, a muddy, rusted-out truck without license plates. And that’s how Dale came to meet him, when Gordy Riker put him to work hauling contraband: whiskey and tobacco going north into Canada, meth precursor coming south.
Joe was the ideal driver. A Turtle Mountain Ojibwa, his treaty card gave him privileges crossing the border. Once he was known to local customs, they usually just waved him through. Dale understood vaguely this had to do with the Jay Treaty of 1794, which excused Indians crossing the border from paying duties on “their own proper goods and effects of whatever nature.”
But Joe didn’t fool much with formal ports of entry. He knew all the prairie roads in four counties.
And locally, people who were put off by Dale and Joe as solitary misfits approved of them as a pair. Maybe it was just that now that they had each other to talk to, it cut down the talking load on normal people. People said that Joe and Dale sort of found each other.
They found each other, all right. Meeting Joe turned out to be the most significant event in Dale Shuster’s life.
Next thing, Dale had stolen Joe away from Gordy to work for him. Gordy was still pissed about that. And now Joe and Dale had become something of a team.
Joe gestured vaguely with his good hand, cleared his throat, spit, and said in his feathery voice, “So how’d it go?”
“The rental haulers arrived on time. Irv took possession yesterday afternoon,” Dale said.
“In the fucking rain,” Joe said.
“In the fucking rain,” Dale repeated.
Joe shook his head. “He give you a check?”
“Sent partial payment. Called me and said one of the loaders ran a little stiff. He’s using that as an excuse to hold back on the balance.”
“Uh-huh. Just like we figured. And you told him what?” Joe asked.
“That I’d be happy to make a special trip to check it out. Him being such a good buddy and all,” Dale said.
“Good.” Joe inclined his head and carefully studied Dale’s bland face. “Okay. I got all your stuff. And the Minnesota plates. Some cash.” He reached under the cot and pulled out a briefcase. “There’s more coming later.” Joe gave a twisted smile and looked up almost deferentially at Dale. Then he pushed the briefcase forward across the concrete.
Dale reached down and picked up the case and hugged it to his chest. It was a pretty decent leather briefcase with a brand-new smell that was intoxicating, that new car fragrance.
Dale controlled his excitement. It was important to him to always appear absolutely in control in front of Joe. Casually he placed the leather case on the desk and said, “Gordy’s come asking again. Wants you back for something. And, uh, he got in a fight.”
Expressionless, Joe said, “Word travels. Was it about the woman who showed up?”
They stared at each other until finally Dale said, “Maybe.”
Joe blinked several times and scrubbed at his head with the knuckles of his right hand. He got off the cot and crossed the floor to the window over the desk, favoring his bad left leg, and stared across the highway at the Missile Park. After a moment, he said, “We should go have a look at her.”
“Okay, first we gotta load that digger attachment for Eddie Solce. After that, we’ll go have a look.”
Joe nodded and put on his jeans and boots. A minute later, a rumble and cloud of smoke filled the back end of the shed as Joe started up the solitary old Deere 644C loader that needed new tires. Dale had three 644’s and had given it his best try to get Irv in Minnesota to take them all. But Irv didn’t want to deal with putting a new set of tires on this one. And Dale wanted to sell it as is. So the deal went down for the other two. Dale hadn’t been able to peddle this beast at any price and was resigned to let it sit here for scrap.
Dale pushed open the tall sliding door at the back of the shed. While Joe maneuvered the loader through the open door, Dale collected two heavy lengths of chain.
The backhoe boom sat in the weeds along the side of the shed like a leg joint plucked off a giant yellow crab. Fortunately the ground around the shed was well drained, because the bald tires on the old loader would get zero traction in mud.
Gingerly, as Joe raised the wide bucket, Dale attached the chains to the bucket, then looped them down from the control tower on the boom and around the elbow joint by the bucket. Then they played with the tension, Joe raising the bucket ever so gently as Dale made sure the chain didn’t pinch any of the hydraulic lines on the tower. Satisfied, he gave Joe a thumbs-up and slowly the arm was hoisted in the air.
Carefully, Joe drove it around the shed to the apron of trap rock out front, where he lowered it, leaving just enough tension on the chains to keep the boom upright.
A few minutes later Eddie Solce showed up with a twenty-ton lowboy off the back of his Chevy dually. Nice trailer. Eddie welded the frame himself. Dale gave Eddie a good deal on the digger arm because Eddie had done some difficult custom metalwork for him on fairly short notice.
Eddie was a vinegar shrivel of a man with a silver mustache and a silver Trautman farm hook where his left hand had been. He’d lost the hand down around Oakes, working on his brother’s farm, when he reached in to clear the corn picker one too many times. Doing metalwork around loud machines all his life had taken most of his hearing, and he had a habit of shouting when he spoke.
The customary joking ensued, Eddie giving Dale his usual loud shit about leaving town, moving to Florida. They raised the arm and placed it level on the trailer bed, loosed the chains, and proceeded to ratchet it in place with chain-link tie-downs.
Joe remained in the cab of the loader, just a shadow in the dirty window glass. Eddie waved at him once in perfunctory greeting. Eddie found it hard to look directly at Joe. He had a thing about blown-up Indians, Dale figured.
Whatever.
“You sure you don’t need this old Deere?” Dale asked one last time.
“Sorry, Dale. Hell, my wife finds out I’m bringing this boom on the place she’ll skull me with the frying pan.”
“Shit, don’t see why. You’re getting it practically for nothing. Now, for a few more bucks you can have…”
Eddie waved Dale away with his hand and his hook. No.
They shook hands. Joe climbed down from the loader and they watched Eddie get in his truck and haul the boom away.
Joe came around from in back of the shed where he’d parked the Deere. He said he was going to get some breakfast. He’d be back in an hour to check out Ace’s new lady friend.