CENSUS_What Lurks Beneath Page 10

  The majority of the metal leaves had disappeared in their curving arc under the surface when a loud, ripping, metallic shriek filled the air. Jerry cursed something incoherent and threw his hat to the ground as he moved the various levers to shut down the hydraulic motors. He then immediately moved forward to grip the broken remains of the bottom

  portion of the thick metal support leg that had been holding up the front left side of the truck. The pressure being exerted to create the hole had worked backwards against the truck and found a weak spot via the metal leg, which resulted in an ugly, uneven break.

  Jerry reached inside the cab and shut the motor down. He then bent down and picked up thebroken-off, bottom portion of the heavy leg, which he hefted with the ease of those that have long known manual labor. He growled something, then opened an access door behind his cab and threw the leg inside. He opened another door and emerged with a hardened plastic case in the rough outline of a chain saw.

  As Jerry bent down to undo the plastic tabs on the case he inclined his head toward a large cedar tree that was doing its best to win a battle for water and nutrients with a post oak tree just inches away. “You care if I use that cedar for something?”

  Dave shook his head. Removing cedars was something the County wanted him to do in addition to the wildlife census, the mowed paths for the deer…

  Just a few minutes later Jerry wedged two segments of the still-dripping trunk of the cedar tree between the bottom edge of the truck and the ground, upon which he’d laid other pieces of cross-cut trunk from the cedar tree. Jerry wiped his gloved hands against his jeans. “That should do it.”

  Dave and family again took a step back as Jerry engaged different levers and the pointed ball of earth, now grasped between the wide metal leaves, began to track upwards, out of the newly created hole. The fresh-cut wooden braces did their job to brace up the front of the truck, and soon a ball of earth weighing roughly 10,000 pounds was held several feet above the ground.

  Jerry retracted the three metal arms supporting the truck and used a metal bar to knock loose the cedar trunk sections, which he then laid on the end of the truck’s frame.

  Jerry re-entered the cab and fired up the main engine, and soon the truck and the ball of dirt made their way slowly across the pasture toward the nearby woods where he had already picked out potential transplant can- didates.

  Adam raced toward the edge of the ten-foot-deep hole, restrained by the grasp of both Dave and Marilyn. All of them stared down at the amaz- ingly smooth-sided, deep hole with its color-coded series of Neapolitan ice cream-like layers. The predominant color, which ran from two inches below the surface almost to the bottom, was a dirty gray. Dave reached down and gingerly touched the side and was a little shocked to find that the dirty gray portion was clay, which meant that, at least on this portion of the farm, the ground itself was almost entirely clay. Slick, moist clay.

  “No wonder it’s so hard to grow anything out here.”

  Marilyn followed his gaze and nodded. Adam, caring nothing about the quality of the soil, saw only the potential for exploration. “Daddy, can I get in the hole?”

  Dave smiled and looked down at Adam, who was already attempting to pull out of his grasp and go over the lip of the hole.

  “That’s a long way down buddy.” “I’ll be careful Daddy. Please!”

  Dave looked again at Marilyn, who shook her head no, as she stared down into the hole. “Sure, but let me help you okay?”

  Dave lowered Adam over the side of the sloped hole while doing his best to avoid the death stare coming from Marilyn.

  “Dave,” Marilyn hissed, “No!”

  Bending and stretching to allow Adam to get more than a third of the way down while still grabbing his arm, Dave turned and hissed back. “It’s just a hole. Relax.”

  Dave turned his attention back to Adam. “Ok buddy, I’m going to let go of your arm in a second. Are you going to be okay to slide down the rest of the way?”

  Adam, already doing his best to wriggle out of Dave’s grasp as his ten- nis shoes slipped along the sloped clay surface, barely responded. “Fine Daddy. I’ll be fine.”

  “Ok, here we go.”

  Dave slowly let go of Adam’s wrist and watched as his son slid quickly to the bottom of the conical hole. Once at the bottom, Adam began to take inventory of the sides of the hole around him, spinning one way and then the other, as his hands fumbled along the sides.

  “That’s great. Now how are we going to get him out of there? We can’t go down there or we’ll never get out.”

  Marilyn had walked around the hole to deliver this query at his side. Dave turned his gaze to take in his obviously angry wife, who stood clutching her arms and alternately lifting on one foot and then the other, as she stared anxiously down at Adam. He decided that the best course of action was to defuse her, and he unbuckled his leather belt, pulled it out of the loops of his jeans and held it in front of him to display its length.

  “We’ll be fine. I’ll lower my belt down to him and pull him up.” “And what if he can’t hold on or he slips off ?”

  Dave held back on a number of less kind things that occurred to him to say, and instead

  continued his attempt to pacify her. “I promise you, I’m not going to let Jerry put the transplanted tree on top of our son.”

  Marilyn pondered his words and was about to reply when Adam chimed in. “Daddy, you should come down here!”

  Dave peered again at Adam and smiled as he watched him attempt to dig a rock out of the side of the hole. “Sorry man, if Daddy goes down there he’s probably never coming out.”

  Dave looked sideways to see if Marilyn had unclenched while Adam grumbled something about him being no fun. The distant noise of Jerry’s truck revving joined into the action, as he had apparently found a place to drop the ball of earth, while he pursued digging up another tree to be transplanted.

  Marilyn still clutched her arms to her sides as she peered down at their son. It didn’t appear that she was going to relax until they were all to- gether once again on the surface.

  He was prepared to continue to ignore her when Adam called his name once again, this time with a panicky tone. Dave got down in his knees and gripped the edge of the hole with his hands, leaning over to get closer to Adam.

  “What is it buddy?”

  Adam, unable to speak, pushed himself against the far side of the hole while he pointed back at the side upon which Dave and Marilyn perched. Dave craned his neck, attempting to better see whatever it was that Adam was scared of. At that same moment the hundreds of fire ants that had crept up onto his arms decided that this was the optimal time to bite.

  Dave leapt to his feet, pain coursing through his body, as he attempted to sweep the ants from his exposed arms. It wasn’t logical, that something so small could be so debilitating, but these ants, with their extremely painful bites and coordinated attacks, could drive a full-grown bull mad with pain and rage. Dave was no bull, but as he pawed at the ants still clinging to his arms while trying to unbutton and remove his shirt and dodge the screaming Marilyn, it occurred to him that he was going to have to ignore the pain and push down his rage. His son was down at the bottom of the hole, and regardless of what else happened, he needed to get him out.

  Dave, short sleeve shirt now flapping around him, exposing his white belly and the fire ants that clung to it, ran the short distance around the hole, readying to make use of his belt. Disregarding further bites, he flung himself to the ground and, with the buckle-end clasped in his outstretched hand, he lowered his belt down to Adam. Marilyn, who had followed him over, continued to scream uncontrollably, and stepped on Dave’s back several times as she paced above him. Adam, terrified, kept breaking Dave’s glance to stare across the hole at the millions of ants that poured out the vivisection of their colony created by the tree transplanter.

  “Don’t worry about that buddy,” Dave entreated, “look at me.”

  Adam turned back to look up a
t Dave. Dave smiled to reinforce all the good feelings that he was not experiencing at the moment, and twitched the end of the belt hanging in front of Adam’s face.

  “Just grab the end buddy and I’ll pull you out. No big deal.”

  Adam looked again at the ants surging across from him. Marilyn threw herself down on the ground next to Dave, and appeared ready to scramble down into the hole. Dave used his somewhat-free hand to attempt to restrain her, and she slapped at his arm, while continuing to scream out their son’s name.

  Dave tried to muster a calm, assertive tone. “Adam. Grab the belt and I’ll pull you up.”

  Adam turned back, and this time Dave held his gaze. Adam put both of his small hands around the belt just a few inches from its rounded end and nodded. “OK, Daddy.”

  Dave gathered himself, still trying to tune out the bites now taking place over all over his body, and finally managed to pin the squirming Marilyn down next to him. “Ok, here we go.”

  Adam braced his small feet against the sides of the rounded hole, and Dave used the arm trapping Marilyn to leverage himself to his feet, con- tinuing to smile down at Adam. Just the act of Dave standing brought Adam most of the way up, and he reached down to grab Adam’s arm, and gently pulled him up the rest of the way.

  Whatever good feelings might have then occurred were quickly dashed when Marilyn, with bits of grass and dirt clinging to her, pushed Dave back and picked Adam up in both of her arms—kissing him about his neck and face. “Oh, my baby. My sweet baby!”

  Dave, now almost numb from the bites, stood feebly picking the ants from his torso as Marilyn spun to him and sneered, “I told you, David Reynolds!”

  She then trotted back to the house, sobbing softly as she cradled Adam in her arms. It might have been Dave’s imagination, but it seemed like Adam was attempting to reach for him as she hustled him away.

  Within seconds Dave was back by himself at the edge of the hole. The pain had morphed from numbness to nausea. He slowly peeled off his already unbuttoned, ant-laden shirt and discarded it in the grass next to him. For good measure he threw the belt down as well. With ants still covering his pale torso, he stumbled slowly back toward the small house,

  his boots tripping among the weeds and the other ant piles, he began unbuckling his pants in preparation for dumping them on the porch as well.

  Nudity was going to be the least of his problems. Marilyn had been right

  —again—and in his attempt to be the cool dad he’d once again screwed up.

  Hours later, after an extremely long shower, he lay on the couch under a thin sheet, staring at the ceiling fan slowly spinning above him. The fan was partially illuminated by the light that they’d left on in the kitchen to ease any fears that might prevent sleep. Marilyn and Adam were cuddled together in the bedroom, the door of which was propped open to let the light in.

  Dave continued to stare at the ceiling fan, too uncomfortable from the welts left by the bites to sleep, trying to figure out the series of mistakes that had led him to this spot.

  Jesus Christ. How did all of this get so far off the rails?

  With no answers forthcoming, he shifted slightly, only to find the new position just as uncomfortable as the previous one. He tried to push the pain away by focusing on something else—anything else. Unfortu- nately, whenever he closed his eyes all he saw was the mass of surging ants pouring out of the earthen wall of the hole directly across from his son.

  No wonder the ant poison for the mound never does anything. Those bastards are buried eight feet down in the ground.

  He opened his eyes again, resigned to the fact that sleep was probably not going to happen. He adjusted the pillow behind his head and pondered the logistics of attempting to read while covered in welts, and laying on a small, uncomfortable couch. As he shifted again another unhappy

  thought occurred to him. The whole experience in the hole had taken less than two frantic minutes, so on one hand it should be easy to recall the specifics. That said, the frantic element had turned the memories into a staccato montage. Within those single frames of memory something else had bothered him.

  Had I seen another tunnel going down from the ant nest into another, deeper chamber? It seemed like that’s where the majority of the ants were coming from—but how deep did these nests go?

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Gas Station

  With the open glass door of the refrigerated case held open by her left shoulder, Deputy Evans, in civilian clothes, perused the potential op- tions available in the way of energy drinks. She knew they were awful for her, but found she needed an outlet for the compulsions she would otherwise assuage with food. She’d kept her weight down, but still bat- tled the internal calls for bread, butter, cheese, and all the other goodies she couldn’t allow herself. Nine-hour days driving around in a cruiser burned little in the way of calories.

  She narrowed it down to one selection, which promised zero carbs, ver- sus a competitor that purported to have no calories—trying to sort the behind-the-scenes math—when a voice behind her disturbed her mus- ings.

  “Deputy Evans? Is that you?”

  She recognized the voice but couldn’t place it as she turned to see Dave Reynolds. He looked awful, in a manly way, with his sweat drenched, dirt-covered jeans and work shirt, and his face reddened from exposure to the omnipresent September sun (summer would not end for at least another month). She didn’t know why exactly, but she felt somewhat exposed, nervous, talking to him out of uniform.

  “Yes Mr. Reynolds, how are you?”

  Dave rubbed his dirty hand against the sweaty, equally dirty leg of his jeans, and extended it to her.

  “Hot and dirty.” He immediately regretted that choice of words. It had been three weeks since the ill-fated family visit to the farm to watch the tree transplanting process. He had come back to the farm solo to bury himself in manual labor, and solitude. Spending the morning with his phone turned off and a weed-eater as his only companion had left him ill-prepared to have a conversation with a woman who typically left him tongue-tied even on the best of days.

  She took his hand somewhat awkwardly and shook it briefly, trying to figure out what the right amount of time was before she could politely turn back to what she’d been doing. That urge was juxtaposed by an odd desire to stand here and talk with him as long as she could. What the hell was she doing? She had a schoolgirl crush on a married man?

  Dave sensed some portion of her internal debate, but from where he stood she seemed more irritated than anything else. He understood. He liked to keep his personal life separate from his work, and unexpected collisions of those worlds was often uncomfortable for all involved. That said, he liked the way she looked when out of the mannish, polyester uniform. He hadn’t realized how long her legs actually were, or noticed the pronounced curves of her breasts that she must take pains to suppress under some sort of industrial bra while on duty. It could just be a sports bra. Marilyn had some of those for running, though she never ran…

  “Mr. Reynolds?”

  Dave realized that he’d been standing there an uncomfortably long time, just looking at her. How long he wasn’t sure. Apparently long enough. He countered with the first thing not involving her body that came to mind. “Please call me Dave.”

  The flush in her face competed with the cool air wafting from the still open door of the cooler. She noted the cashier staring at them—this was

  What Lurks Beneath

  the best entertainment available for someone chained to a register inside a rural gas station.

  She didn’t know if it was the leering man at the register or her distaste at her own impulses but she called an end to it all. “I think it best to stick with Mr. Reynolds.”

  She spun, grabbed a random energy drink from the cooler, and nodded nonchalantly as she strode past the utterly confused Dave Reynolds to the cashier. She set the can down on the counter and dug a $5 bill from the front pocket of what now felt like overly-tight and revealing jeans.

>   The cashier took the bill from her hand, and beamed a grin that she attempted to ignore in favor of something shiny in the parking lot—ex- tending her hand for the change. That just made the cashier grin even more, and he chuckled to himself as he counted the change out to him- self, and then placed it in her open hand.

  “Bag, Deputy?”

  She shook her head and shoved the bills and change back into her pocket, then fished her sunglasses from where they hung on the front of her shirt and made her way to the door. Dave cautiously turned from his spot in front of the same energy drink cooler and watched her exit, hoping for one last glance his way that never came. He did, however, note the amused look on the cashier’s face. The cashier nodded in a conspirato- rial way that conveyed that he too had struck out way more than he’d managed to get on base. Any base.

  The unspoken social contract between them required Dave to nod back, which he did, before turning again to stare at the energy drinks.

  Did he care that the cashier thought he was a loser? No. Hell no! Well… maybe a little. Did he care that the deputy had given him the cold shoulder? Yes, unfortunately, a lot. Why? Did he really think they were going to run off

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  together? They’d have so much in common and so much to talk about—for the first two minutes. Why did he, a married man, care one way or another how she felt, or didn’t feel?

  That internal debate settled, at least for the moment, Dave opened the cooler and grabbed the largest of the energy drinks available. He had several more hours of weed-eating and mowing ahead of him. He needed to fill his gas can, chug the drink, and get back to it. Anything else at this point was just a distraction.