CHAPTER FORTY
S tyles had disappeared. We gave him five minutes, then another five, and finally we walked back to the parking lot to see where he was. The Buick was gone.
We walked back to the village, and I checked my cheap Timex. It was going on four a.m. I could hear the faint sound of a radio or CD player, very soft, playing a Kenny Chesney song, and I remembered the tailgate party before his last concert in Lauderdale. Em and I had driven up, set up in a big parking lot, and ended up playing beerpong with a couple of college kids and some kid’s sixty-year-old mom.
I struggled to pick up the lyrics as we walked. Something about sitting around, wasting another day while he drinks another beer in Mexico.
“Where do we start?” Em surveyed the tents and campers. “We already know that he’s not in Bruce Crayer’s tent.”
“Yeah. If I knew which one was Stan’s I’d look there.”
“Stan lives here too? In the village?”
“I assumed he does. These guys are nomads. I don’t imagine they have much of a home base. Even though they’re full time with Cashdollar, I think they do carnivals and county fairs when he’s not traveling.”
“You could make a living like that?”
“Em,” I was whispering again. I didn’t want to wake everyone in the village, only one unit at a time, “there are thousands of these events. James did a search on the Internet and there are two hundred fifty-four counties in Texas alone. Like sixty-seven in Florida, maybe eighty-eight in Ohio, and everyone of them has some kind of event. And these things go on every day of the year. In every state in the Union. I mean, we could travel fifty-two weeks a year and never run out of places to go until we’re ninety years old.”
She was silent. Then, “You’re giving that some thought?”
I laughed. Silently. “No. It’s one of those things you just say when you’re putting it all together. We were just talking, that’s all.”
“Well,” she spoke in a hushed tone, “I’m not coming along if you do. If you ever do decide to travel as junk-food vendors, you be sure and let me know how it all works out. Okay?”
I didn’t always say the right thing around her. But right now, I was just hoping that my junk-food partner would still be around for tomorrow’s meal.
“I’m still not sure what you have in mind. Do you want to go up to each of these places, wake them up, and ask if they’ve seen James? Is that the plan?”
“Unless you’ve got a better one.”
“This seems so stupid and so pointless.”
She was right. And what was I going to do? Actually say, “Have you seen this guy, he’s kind of scruffy at the moment, old T-shirt, jeans, hasn’t been home in a couple of days.”
We approached the first small, aluminum camper. It was banged up, and two propane tanks were hung on the back. The dim light from the moon gave it an eerie silver-yellow glow, like maybe a ghost lived there. Someone had strung a laundry line from the camper to a scrub pine. A set of men’s underwear, a couple of T-shirts, and some cargo shorts hung on the line. As we got closer, the music got a little louder. Someone in the trailer had the radio on. Inside me, I rejoiced. Maybe someone was actually awake and I wouldn’t have to wake him. I did a quick look around, half expecting to see Crayer, with his pistol in hand.
On the radio Chesney had been replaced with Willie Nelson and Toby Keith singing “Whiskey for My Men, Beer for My Horses.”
“You’re going to knock.”
I was getting my courage up. And I was going to knock, but I heard rustling inside, like someone getting up and going to the bathroom. And then you could hear a stream of water, like someone using the toilet. These little campers offered not much in the way of privacy.
“Give them a minute.”
“Skip, this is embarrassing.” She backed off and stood about thirty feet from me. I can’t say I blamed her.
The noise stopped and for a moment there was just the crickets and the country music. Then there was a loud belch coming from inside the camper. I mean loud.
“My God, you can hear everything that goes on in these things.” Em was whispering from thirty feet away, but I could hear her. I hoped whoever was inside couldn’t.
I softly walked up to the wooden stoop and stepped up, cringing. In another few hours it wouldn’t bother me at all. It would be daylight, and everything would be fine. But in the middle of the night, it just didn’t feel right. In another few hours, who knew what would have happened to James.
I looked back and the darkness nearly covered Em. I could barely see her nodding her head in encouragement. I knocked lightly. There was no answer. I tapped again, just using my index finger on the door. Nothing.
I knew someone was inside, and there could be no question they heard me. So they chose not to answer. I wouldn’t either. How stupid to answer the door in the pitch-black of the nighttime. I glanced back one more time at Em. This time she’d disappeared into the gloom. There was nothing else to do but try again. Or give up before I got started.
I gave it one more try. A little louder this time. The songs switched and now Carrie Underwood was singing. “Save me from this road I’m on, Jesus take the wheel.” I thought about saying a little prayer right about then. I needed someone on my side and figured it couldn’t hurt. Just as I started to step down from the wooden platform, the door creaked open. The first thing I thought was that it desperately needed some oil. Slowly the door opened, the creaks giving a spooky sound and feel to the old camper. It was like an old horror movie.
I couldn’t make out the shadowy outline of the person behind the screened entrance. Whoever it was opened the door and started to exit. “Excuse me, I hate to bother you this early in the morning, but — ”
In the softest of whispers, the person interrupted. “Hey, pard. I was just coming to find you. Let’s get out of here.”
James carefully pulled the door closed and we stepped down to the ground.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
H e heated some coffee in the pot on the grill, and we sat on the edge of the truck bed, waiting for the sun to come up. Another hour, hour and a half. It had been another night with no bed, and in this case, no sleep. Em rocked back and forth next to me, and I’m sure she just kept repeating over and over to herself “what the hell did I get myself into?”
“I’m touched you guys were looking for me,” James was slurring his words, and my guess was that it was more from alcohol than lack of sleep.
“You’re touched, period.”
“Hey, Skip.” He was weaving a little and I hoped he didn’t fall off. “Amigo, Tonto, pard, I couldn’t just say ‘I’ve got to check in with my roommate.’ Come on, Dude. I’m a grown man.”
“I hear you.”
“Well, I may not feel like one all the time, like now maybe, but I can make my own choices.” He belched.
“Point taken.”
“James,” Em spoke up. “If Skip had been missing, if he hadn’t shown up in three or four hours under these conditions — under conditions where your lives had been threatened, where someone had taken a gun to the truck and stolen your money — ”
“What? Was your question?” There was no question. He was drunk.
“Would you have gone out looking for him? Wouldn’t you have been upset if he didn’t report in?”
He nodded for a while, and I got up and took the coffee pot off the grill. I poured some into his blue mug and handed it to him. I still don’t know if coffee actually sobers you up or if it just makes for a wide-awake drunk, but it seemed like a good idea. The only one I could think of.
James took a sip of the hot beverage and looked at Em. “Yes. To all of your inquiries.”
“What were you doing in that camper?” Em was back on the James conspiracy kick. I could tell by the tone of her voice. Maybe he was FBI. Maybe he’d been playing a game of charades this weekend.
“I have a perfectly logical explanation.”