Lone Star Noir by Bobby Byrd

Author:Bobby Byrd
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: akashic books
Published: 2010-08-07T22:00:00+00:00

DUCKWEED

BY GEORGE WIER

Littlefield

Carlos McDaniel was skimming duckweed when the two men came and shot him full of holes.

It was at his ex-wife’s uncle’s place, fifteen miles south and east of College Station, Texas, and it had a summer cabin on it, complete with air-conditioning and an ancient refrigerator always stocked with Cokes, cheap beer, and sandwich materials. The cabin stood ten feet from the edge of the one-acre lake.

The lake was little more than an overgrown duck pond, but it was all the water anyone could need on a hot summer day when the only breeze came from the flapping wings of wild waterfowl and even the water moccasins lay listless on the floating platform, unmindful of interlopers. It was a hidden spot, well away from competing salesmen and customers who gravitated to the two extremes: bored-stiff disinterest or unrealistic expectation. Carlos got more of those two kinds than any other as a real estate salesman. And when they got to be a little too much for a bright-eyed young man with all of life ahead of him and a ticket for this Saturday’s Lotto Texas in his pocket, he would climb in his ’77 Datsun short-bed pickup and head for the country and the cool, spring-fed waters of Hidden Lake. And his share of the beer.

When blacktop gave way to caliche gravel and a long-following geyser trail of fine, reddish dust spreading out like a comet’s tail, only then could he breathe deeply and begin to take in life again.

Hidden Lake, as his ex’s family called it, lay at the tail end of everything. The last county road doubled back on itself toward the north and west at the turnout of the lane to his ex’s family property. The property was the last customer on the water and electric line, and it was five hundred yards from the Navasota River, which defines the county’s easternmost border.

The family—the few that were left of them—hardly ever came out, and almost never in the middle of the week. Carlos would have some alone time. Some time to look at nature and think and let things settle out. Skimming the duckweed was a damned dirty job, and damned if he didn’t love doing it.

This day he hadn’t bothered locking the gate to the property behind him, as he more often than not did. Possibly things would have turned out differently if he had, but then again, who could know? There are no could-have-beens, should-have-beens, or would-have-beens to life, other than what we consider in the universe-wide space behind our eyes. There is only the moment right here and now.

Carlos looked up from the task at hand when he had the feeling he was being watched.

He had managed to get the floating landscape timbers in a fairly straight line and was just skirting the edge of the floating platform, whereon lay three large and completely still cottonmouth moccasins, when he felt it. There was movement there under the shade trees some thirty feet away. The sun was hot and bright overhead and he squinted.

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