Read Online Skunk Hunt by J. Clayton Rogers - Free Book Online Page A

her. If
there had not been the barrier of incest, Jeremy would have looked
like the guy who owned the yacht I imagined Barbara boarded for a
weekend of skinnydipping.
    "Oh my God," said Barbara, all but gaping at
her big brother. "What did they do to you in prison?"
    What anybody else would have seen as a vast
improvement she considered grotesque evidence of brainwashing, with
extra starch. I knew how she felt. When the gap between what you
expect and what you get was this wide, it could only mean something
had gone horribly wrong. I imagined a long line of jailbird
hairdressers ramming culture up my brother's—
    "What's wrong?" Jeremy asked, craning his
head downward. "Did I spill some of my latte?"
    There was a hint of posturing in his voice,
as if he knew perfectly well he was presenting us with a skewed
picture. The picture grew skewier when he took out a pipe.
    "What's that?" Barbara demanded.
    "A pipe. You must've seen one before."
    "What are you doing with it?" my sister
persisted.
    Jeremy looked at us, puffing furiously away
at our cigarettes, and cocked the pipe like a gun. "I'm just
joining in. Do I need permission?"
    I shrugged. Barbara shrugged. Our eyes
collided on a tobacco pouch that he drew from his pocket. After
testing a kitchen chair and finding it wanting, but the only one
available, he lowered himself cautiously, juggled a bit in his
seat, then sighed. He packed the bowl of his pipe, then took out a
shiny silver pipe lighter and lit up. It didn't look normal, the
flame coming out sideways like that. To me it smacked of inversion.
I recalled my earlier thought, that Barbara might think I was gay.
I wanted to get things back on track, but they kept swerving
further and deeper into the jungle.
    Barbara was gazing at Jeremy with horrified
rapture, as though he was some kind of man-eating guppy threatening
to leap out of its fish bowl. Flint Dementis was the only man we
knew who smoked a pipe, and we (meaning the original neighborhood
chumps) ascribed it to the fact that half of his brain was missing.
Unless it was employed for the honorable purpose of ingesting
illegal substances, no one on Oregon Hill considered pipes worthy
of respect.
    "If Skunk saw you he'd jump right back in his
grave," Barbara said.
    "After knocking your head in," I added.
    "He'd have to come back from the dead,
first," Jeremy answered, his head bobbing as he worked the lighter
over the pipe, like some kind of sage, or some kind of idiot. All
the while his eyes worked back and forth, as though he was scanning
the room for evidence of civilization. He drew the lighter away
slowly, thoughtfully, tested the embers in the bowl with a few deep
draws, then doused the flame. A cloud of thought combined with the
tobacco smoke. I half-expected him to summon up demons.
    "Don't give me that look, Mute," he said. "I
might throw you to the Matthews boys again."
    This was the Jeremy I knew, ready to foam at
the mouth when confronted by adversity. Or logic.
    "They're gone," I said. "Like most everyone
else we knew."
    "Mmmm..." Then the Jeremy I knew reverted to
the stranger as remorse emerged from the smoke. "I'm sorry I did
that, Mute. It was a shitty thing to do, especially when you were
just trying to help Sweet Tooth here."
    "Oh God," Barbara moaned, "you found
Jesus."
    "That's one of the hazards of prison life,"
Jeremy admitted. "But I haven't taken holy orders or anything."
    This was too spooky. I decided it was time to
get down to business.
    "You brought the letter with you?" I
asked.
    "I can't let you read it."
    "I know that," I said testily. "I just wanted
to make sure we all had our ducks in a row."
    "What's in the bags?" Barbara asked, nodding
at the nylon mountain on the table.
    "This is a laptop bag," Jeremy said.
    "Yeah?" said Barbara.
    "It has a laptop in it."
    "Yeah?"
    "And this is a printer bag."
    "With a printer in it?" Barbara ventured.
    "You got it, Sweet Tooth. Good girl."
    In the past, Jeremy had frequently been
cruel. Now he was