Chapter 17
Typically, Oats and one of the club members would clean up the mess that had been left by the boys at the clubhouse. It was around 10:00 AM when Tee drove up to the clubhouse to help with the task. Looking around the yard, he saw beer cans scattered on the ground and on the porch. He knew the party had gone late into Sunday morning. He also guessed that several of the boys shifted from beer and moonshine to Jack Daniels, which Oats saved for himself and a few of his best friends who stuck around late. He was surprised to see a shiny black Crown Vic’ in front of the house.
Tee got out of his pickup and walked up the creaky steps. Opening the door further, he reached to his left and flipped on the light. As he took a step, he almost tripped over it before he recognized a motionless body on the floor in front of him. Initially, he wasn’t concerned since it was normal for some of the boys to pass out after the club meeting or come back and spend the night. He started to give the man a gentle kick to wake him up. Then he saw it. There was dry blood on the man’s chest and in a puddle around him. He glanced around the room and saw Oats on the couch laying with his back to the room and snoring in short gasps. Then he looked over to the far wall and saw Al still sleeping.
“Git your ass up. What the hell has happened here?” Tee yelled at Oats.
Oats didn’t respond. Without verifying the man’s condition, he sidestepped so as not to track blood across the room, made his way to the couch, grabbed Oats by the shoulder and shook him violently. Oats rolled over and looked up. In a slurred voice he said, “What’s going on?”
Frantically Tee said, “Don’t ask me what’s going on. You better tell me what’s going on, you dumb shit. Who the hell is this man lying here? Did you shoot him? Why did you shoot him? When did it happen?”
Nervous and obviously concerned Tee kept asking Oats a string of questions over and over. With Tee, blabbering away Oats was now fully awake. The Sunlight was coming in through the windows. The room was fully lite. For the first time since the violent shooting, he seemed to realize implications of his actions. Then he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and yawned. With the casual air and small smile on his face, he said, “That son-of-a-bitch was trying to shoot me, so I wacked him first.”
“Yea, you bastard you whacked him alright, and you may be going to jail for it. Get up and let’s decide what we gonna do.”
Big Al hadn’t even cracked his eyes. He was still snoring away.
“What the hell were you doing when all this mess was happening?” Tee screamed at Big Al as he walked over and shook him.
“What you talking about?” the groggy Al said as he sat upright on the floor.
“Did you see what somebody did to this idiot laying on the floor over there?” pointing to the body of Bubba.
Al rubbed his eyes into focus and squinted in the direction Tee was pointing.
“Looks like a dead man to me. Either that or he has a hell of a handover,” said Al.
“You got that right, and somebody shot the shit out of him.”
Al didn’t care much to discuss it as he had a very sick stomach. He reclined again facing the wall and curled up into the fetal position as he mumbled, “good for whoever it was.”
Tee was finally calming down, but he was obviously shaken by the presence of a dead man and Oats and Al’s indifference to the body on the floor. Tee considered walking out the door and leaving the two to handle the situation, any way they wanted. Instead, he leaned over carefully lifting Bubba’s side and removed a black wallet from his pocket. Holding it with his handkerchief so as not to leave fingerprints he squinted at a picture ID card in the wallet and said, “Looks like he is a SLED agent. His name is Vandi.”
Then Tee put the wallet back in the dead man’s pocket, wiped his face with the handkerchief, coughed and blew his nose into it, and put it back into his own hip pocket, exclaiming, “Okay, let’s get this mess cleaned up. Out back, I saw a tarp. You go get it, Oats, while I mop up this blood. We’ll put him in the back of my pickup, take him down to your boat and throw him in the swamp.”
Oats slowly got up and followed Tee’s instructions. When he returned with the tarp, Tee had retrieved a mop, bucket of water, and was cleaning up, but blood was still oozing from Bubba’s wounds. Neither of them had checked Bubba’s pulse, and neither of them realized the significance of the flowing blood was a sign that he could be still alive. Tee spread the tarp out on the clean part of the floor. He and Oats lifted Bubba and put him on it. Then they tucked the ends in and rolled up the body. Oats having revived somewhat, finished cleaning up the visible signs of blood from the floor, while Tee did a sloppy job of wiping splattered red spots from the nearby walls and furniture. The job certainly would not have passed a forensic examination by modern crime equipment, which the men would sadly find out in the coming days. As they moved the body out the door, Big Al was still snoring away oblivious to the heinous drama that had just played out near him.
Tee got into the driver’s seat and reached back through the open pickup window to hook a chain to the door handle. The door, held closed by a screen door latch, was but one of several makeshift devices Tee used to keep the old pickup highway legal. A red handkerchief tied around one broken tail light and a bungee cord holding the hood down added to the faded blue pickup’s redneck persona. All its frailties aside, the vehicle carrying its two disheveled but confident occupants, responded with a quick dig in the soft dirt, as Tee put her in low gear and let out on the clutch. Down the two-lane road they went. Bubba’s body jostled around in the bed of the truck, indistinguishable from, and to Oats and Tee no more important than the other debris scattered around him.
Looking over to Tee Oats said, “We’ll stop at my place and pick up one of them cinder blocks out back. We can tie it around our friend when we dump him into the river.”
“Yea, OK,” said Tee.
As the vehicle came up to Flood’s Place, Tee pulled to a stop in the yard. Patrick was on the opposite side of the building picking up trash when the pickup stopped. Hearing the motor, he walked toward Tee and Oats who by now had gotten out of the pickup.
“Good morning, Mr. Oats. Where you going?”
Oats cut Patrick off before he could get near the pickup, and said, “Tee and me got some new shad nets we want to take down to the river and try out before the season opens up next month. We need to pick up one of those cinder blocks by the building.”
“Let me do it for you,” Patrick said and walked toward the pile of blocks.
Cutting him off Tee said, “No problem Patrick, I’ll take care of it.”
As the two men got back into the pickup and drove off, they waved to Patrick. He watched as they entered the main highway with the tarp covering the “fishing nets,” aka Bubba Vandi, rippled in the wind.
The pickup entered the open sandy area on the landing near the boat. The boat was 25 feet long and six feet wide, with a small homemade wooden deckhouse in the center. Oats used the boat to string nets in strategic parts of the river during the shad season. Tee put a line around the tarp at Bubba’s feet, making a slipknot to tighten it. Then he pulled the tarp out the back of the pickup bed, letting it hit the ground with a thump as it cleared the pickup tailgate. Both men lifted the body and threw it on the fantail of the boat.
Tee untied the boat and jumped into it. Oats slowly backed it into mid-steam, and they slowly headed up the river. Since it was Sunday, they passed several weekend fishermen along the way as they went north. After traveling about three miles, they met two young people riding on Ski-Doos. Then Oats pulled into a familiar cove where he had put his shad nets many times. The surface was glass calm as the boat slowly plowed through the tannin colored black water. Oats stopped the boat and cut off the engine. He and Tee looked around and listened carefully to make sure no one was around to witness what they were about to do. Then Tee picked up the tarp by himself and pushed it over t
he side. It floated near the surface briefly, before the attached cinder block jerked one end of the bundle downward. As it did, the light top end followed straight down to the bottom eight feet below.
Oats was about to wait to make sure that it didn’t come back up when he looked back toward the main river. The two kids on the Ski-Doos were turning into the cove with a stream of water spewing up behind them. To avoid suspicion Oats quickly started the engine and made a U-turn back toward the river. As the kids passed, they slowed down and waved. He was confident he had disposed of the incriminating evidence and that only he and Tee would ever know the fate of Bubba Vandi.
“That should get rid of your problems, Oats. This is the last time I plan to help you out of a mess, you old bastard,” said Tee.
“Yea, yea, you don’t need to tell me twice. From now on, I plan to keep clean. In fact, I may preach at the church this Sunday,” said Oats whimsically.
“Well, I hope the sermon is on the Ten Commandants, especially the one about thou shall not kill.”
They both had a good laugh at the last comment.
It took the men about 30 minutes to return to the moorings, tie up the boat, and depart the landing. As they approached the main highway, the old black man with a white fur ball hair that big Al saw earlier was standing beside the road. He gave them a friendly wave and broad smile. Both men smiled and waved back. Tee was doing his best to exude a calm façade, but deep inside, he was wound up as tight as a banjo spring, still troubled about Oats’ actions.
When they arrived back at the clubhouse, they were so consumed about disposing of the body that they suddenly realized they still had one more important job to do. Bubba’s car sat in front of the house. The late model black Ford “Vic” was a dead giveaway parked in front of the house where only old beat up sedans and pickups usually parked.
“Goddammit, we forgot to get the car keys from him. Now we gotta try to jump start it and get it out of here,” said Oats.
“No problem. I can start any car, truck or motorcycle ever made in five minutes flat. You got a tire iron?” said Tee.
“Nope, but I got a hammer under the seat. Will that do?”
“Perfect!”
Tee got out and went over to the car, hammer in hand. First, he shattered the driver’s side window of the locked car. Then he slammed the steering wheel column several times with the hammer. The exterior crumbled under the savage attack, leaving the locking mechanism exposed. Tee knew exactly where to crack it with the hammer. As he did, the steering wheel was freed to move back and forth. Several wires of different colors were sticking out of the column. He knew which colors to twist together but missed on the first try. His errant choice caused the horn to blow, but no one was anywhere near to be alarmed by the sound. Finally, he shorted out the starter wires, and the engine purred, ready to respond to its driver’s demands.
“Follow me,” Tee said to Oats, who was standing by the car watching with amazement as Tee expertly executed his illegal skill.
Tee put the car into gear and spun it around kicking up sand. He sped through the soft sandy area straddling the grassy rise between the well-worn ruts on his way to the main highway. The pristine black sedan was about to travel the last few miles of its car-life. About eight miles north, Tee came to the small bridge over Black Creek Run. The creek was one of many that emptied into the Salketcher. There was a popular fishing hole on both sides of the road. On the right was a narrow road that allowed cars to pull off and park. Luckily, no one was there today. Tee stopped the car about 50 feet from the water and checked to make sure Oats was waiting. He looked up and down the main road for anyone driving by. With only Oats as a witness, he jammed the accelerator to the floor by wedging the hammer between the pedal and the floorboard. The sound of the fully accelerating engine made a horrendous echo throughout the surrounding swamp. Standing on the ground with the door open, Tee poked his right arm through the broken window and jerked the gear into drive. The car jumped forward immediately, spinning its wheels and careening over the bank head first into the water ten feet below. The car’s front end hit the surface and flipped over on its top. Within five minutes, with all four wheels pointing to the sky, it disappeared into the black water.