| Mystery and Crime Fiction posted June 13, 2020 | Chapters: |
...7 8 -9- 10... 
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The guy's trip begins well...
A chapter in the book Looking for Orion - 2
The Arrival -- 2
by DeboraDyess
| Background Two years after the murder of his wife, Cody allows his brother, jack, to talk him into a camping trip. The goal was a weekend to get away and get their heads together, enjoy life without family respo |
As they were paying Cody glanced up at the TV, set above the cash register. A news bulletin began to flash across the screen, the banner read 'Senator Kidnapped'. "Will you turn that up?" Cody asked.
"Sure," the man behind the register said. His deep voice sounded like he was talking through a barrel of gravel. He increased the volume, then changed the channel.
"Hey!" Cody protested. "I was watching that."
"Now you're not."
"But -"
"Farm report's comin' on."
"But that's news!"
"So get a newspaper."
"It's breaking news!"
"So buy a newspaper tomorrow. This is the farm report." He turned his back on Cody, ending the discussion.
Jack paid and they walked out.
"Did you hear that?"
“Yep.” Jack tried not to laugh as the brothers slid into the car.
"It’s breaking news!" Cody turned on the radio, scanning stations, unable to pick up a clear signal.
"Guess you'll have to buy a paper... Tomorrow."
They arrived at the Deer Creek area of the state park thirty minutes later. The early fall breeze blew gently, whispering age-old secrets through trees that had graced the land for decades. Leaves, just beginning to change from greens of summer to golds, scattered inviting, breath-taking color through the hills. Feathery, light clouds promised to burn off by midday, assuring the men that the afternoon would turn hot. They sat in the car, looking through the windshield at what, until then, had been a long-ago memory.
"Wow," Cody breathed.
"Wow is right. Look around you, little brother. This weekend I'm not a cop, and you, sir, are not a private investigator." Jack donned a questionable Sherlock Holmes accent, which he always did when referring to Cody's new profession.
Cody laughed. "I think you're having an identity crisis."
"If that's the only crisis we have this weekend," Jack responded, wiggling his eyebrows like a second-rate Groucho Marx, "I'll be a happy camper. No pun intended, of course."
"Oh, of course not." Cody grabbed the cell phone he'd pitched on the leather seat when Jack picked him up that morning.
"You're not an overprotective dad, either." Jack made a quick snatch for the iPhone.
"Yeah, right. Nice try." Cody pulled his feet into the seat of the battered Bronco suddenly, lifted himself up and exited through the open window.
"You forgot to lock up!"
Cody had already made it around to the back of the vehicle, and was retrieving his gear. He shrugged. "Tell it to the squirrels."
"Irresponsible kid," Jack muttered loudly. He rolled up the passenger window, locked the doors and followed his brother.
They'd come here often as kids. They occasionally camped as a family, but more often they came with their father. His delight in being with his sons was unleashed on these ‘men’s weekends’. He intentionally created special memories with his boys,
"We need to bring the boys up here sometime, Jack. "
Jack nodded. “Yeah. How 'bout next month, if it doesn't get too cold?"
Dimples appeared in the center of Cody's cheeks. "I seem to remember you telling Dad that it never gets too cold for a real camper."
"Yeah? I’m the dad now. I can be a stick in the mud all I want."
"Wimp." The younger McClellan scanned the view before them, suddenly anxious to escape the Bronco and thoughts of home. "How far in did we set up camp with Dad?"
"Couldn't have been more than a couple of miles, right? Think we could still find it?"
"Well," Cody drawled, “if not, maybe we could find a cop."
"Or hire a detective."
It was an old joke, but the brothers hadn't quite tired of it. Cody opened his one-man agency four months after Pam's death. Publicity from the murder and trial, as unwelcome as it had been, provided Cody with his first set of clients.
"This whole detective thing is Leroy Brown's fault," Jack started as they began the hike away from the Bronco.
Cody frowned through his dark sunglasses. "Who?"
"Leroy Brown. Remember him?" Jack smiled smugly as his brother shook his head. Cody fell into this one way too easily. "Oh, yeah. You spent a whole summer with him when we were kids."
"I don't know who you're talking about."
"You don't?" Jack peered at Cody over the top of his shades, a look of slight disapproval on his face.
"No. I've never known anyone named Leroy. I'm pretty sure."
Jack grinned. "Leroy Encyclopedia Brown." A rabbit dashed across the path ahead of them. "You read every 'Encyclopedia Brown' book on the shelves one summer. Pestered the dog snot out of me--""
"Did not."
"--asking 'How'd he know that, Jack?' 'Can you get this one, Jack?' The Mystery of the Missing Toenail Clippers, The Case of the Incredibly Dumb Cat Nabber, The Case of Why Did Jack Kill His Brother... Drove me nuts."
Cody smiled. "You even got one or two right."
The brothers argued and laughed as they hiked the estimated three miles into the park, but could not find the site where they'd spent the last few camping trips with their dad. After so many years everything, and nothing, looked quite right. They'd walked up and down the creek several times when Jack stopped, breathing hard in the heat of the morning. "At least we found the creek." he muttered dryly.
Cody grinned crookedly. The creek bubbled in over the dirt entrance to the park and eventually ran parallel to the road. Hiking in as they had made it impossible not to find the creek. "This could be it," he offered. He pulled his sunglasses off to critically examine the area and wipe sweat off his face. "I kind of remember trees. And there are trees here. And there was a creek... Check. I remember birds and listen! Looks like it could be the place."
"Real funny, funny man. That's what you've said about every place we've been."
Cody shrugged. "Well, the last time we were here I was what … twelve, right?"
"Yeah, it was the summer I turned 17, so that'd be about right." He watched the birds Cody had teased about as they evacuated one tree in favor of another. "You know that Dad was already sick on that last trip, don't you?" He waited, but Cody didn't answer. "He was going to tell us about the cancer then, but decided it wasn't the right time."
"There's never a right time for news like that." Cody thought about how he'd break the news to his children, shook his head and silently thanked God he didn't have to figure that out. Maybe he never would.
"It was a good last trip, though," Jack said. "That next weekend… you and me and Mom at the kitchen table … that was rough."
"I'd wondered for a month what was wrong with them," Cody remembered. "They'd seemed … off."
.
The conversation had gotten too serious, Jack realized, and could turn to Pam if he let it. He was trying to get his brother away from past tragedy, not dwell on it. Time to find a camp site."Hey," he said, pulling binoculars from around his neck to his eyes. "Remember that pine tree?" He began searching the landscape with renewed zeal.
"One specific pine tree?"
"Yeah ..." Jack glanced at him. "That really big one. We used it for target practice with bows and arrows. The one where Martin Craemer got caught --" His voice stopped as suddenly as if he'd hit pavement facedown and he slowly took the binoculars away from his dark eyes. "Or maybe that was Boy Scout camp."
Cody laughed. "I've missed a really great story, haven’t I."
Jack snorted and grinned. "Maybe when you're older … much, much older. Now … is this it or not?"
"Yeah, sure. I guess."
Jack dropped his load to the ground, put his foot on top of his dusty backpack and put his hand on his chest, like a modern-day Napoleon. "Then I claim this land in the name of McClellan," he stated in an unidentifiable nasally accent.
“Lord, help us.”
They made short work of setting up camp. Even after so many years the work felt good and familiar; the rhythm of it felt right. The area was perfect. Only a few yards from the creek, and well shaded, the site was as good as any they'd shared with their dad.
As Jack walked past Cody's open backpack, he glanced in and stopped, frowning. "You brought your Browning," he said flatly, staring down at the handgun in the backpack.
Cody raised his eyebrows slightly but didn't stop driving a tent stake into the ground. "What?"
"You brought your Browning into a state park, Code." Jack turned toward his brother, looking for exactly like the police officer he wasn't going to be for the weekend. "What the hell? It's illegal here."
"You going to arrest me?" Cody looked up, smiling, but the smile didn't quite reach his pale eyes. For a second he wasn't too sure that Jack wouldn't arrest him. He met his brother's hard stare.
"You'd lose your license." Jack's voice and eyes were stone; as unreadable as a blank page.
"Yeah. At least."
HIs brother looked up at the sky and back down. "Geez, Code!" he stormed. "What are you thinking? You stood right there while I declared my weapon to the park ranger -- right there -- and didn't say a word! Don't act so stupid! It's not like you don't know the law!"
Cody shrugged lamely. "I just... I've carried one for so long ..." He shrugged his shoulders again.
"You know what kind of position you put me in?"
"You want to go home?"
"No. It took me this long to get you out here." Jack looked at his brother, the hard set to his eyes gone. "Leave it in the backpack."
"I am sorry."
Jack nodded. "Sorry don't get it done, boy." Both men heard those words often as boys. Their father used them to signify the end of a problem that he expected to never be repeated.
Cody nodded and went back to work. They finished, and Jack lay down, propped his head against an unrolled sleeping bag and pulled a baseball cap down over his eyes. A patch above the bill read, 'Older than Dirt'.
"Want to go fishing?" Cody asked. "We could try to find Ol' Frank."
"No."
"Hiking?"
"For Pete's sake, Cody, we just finished hiking!" Jack pushed the bill of the cap up enough to look at his brother. "You know, even when you were a kid we'd get here and you just couldn't wait to put the whole trip into the first 30 minutes. You haven't changed at all. You're worse than the kids. You're a pain in the neck sometimes, Cody." He pulled the cap down again. "Go entertain yourself. Quietly."
Cody looked at his brother in mild amusement, a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. Jack could've spent three days sacked out on his couch at home with an air conditioner, indoor plumbing and microwave popcorn. Instead he insisted they drive 94 miles to the middle of nowhere so he could relax on the hard, hot ground.
"And quit watching me," Jack ordered, his voice muffled by the cap.
"Sure," the man behind the register said. His deep voice sounded like he was talking through a barrel of gravel. He increased the volume, then changed the channel.
"Hey!" Cody protested. "I was watching that."
"Now you're not."
"But -"
"Farm report's comin' on."
"But that's news!"
"So get a newspaper."
"It's breaking news!"
"So buy a newspaper tomorrow. This is the farm report." He turned his back on Cody, ending the discussion.
Jack paid and they walked out.
"Did you hear that?"
“Yep.” Jack tried not to laugh as the brothers slid into the car.
"It’s breaking news!" Cody turned on the radio, scanning stations, unable to pick up a clear signal.
"Guess you'll have to buy a paper... Tomorrow."
They arrived at the Deer Creek area of the state park thirty minutes later. The early fall breeze blew gently, whispering age-old secrets through trees that had graced the land for decades. Leaves, just beginning to change from greens of summer to golds, scattered inviting, breath-taking color through the hills. Feathery, light clouds promised to burn off by midday, assuring the men that the afternoon would turn hot. They sat in the car, looking through the windshield at what, until then, had been a long-ago memory.
"Wow," Cody breathed.
"Wow is right. Look around you, little brother. This weekend I'm not a cop, and you, sir, are not a private investigator." Jack donned a questionable Sherlock Holmes accent, which he always did when referring to Cody's new profession.
Cody laughed. "I think you're having an identity crisis."
"If that's the only crisis we have this weekend," Jack responded, wiggling his eyebrows like a second-rate Groucho Marx, "I'll be a happy camper. No pun intended, of course."
"Oh, of course not." Cody grabbed the cell phone he'd pitched on the leather seat when Jack picked him up that morning.
"You're not an overprotective dad, either." Jack made a quick snatch for the iPhone.
"Yeah, right. Nice try." Cody pulled his feet into the seat of the battered Bronco suddenly, lifted himself up and exited through the open window.
"You forgot to lock up!"
Cody had already made it around to the back of the vehicle, and was retrieving his gear. He shrugged. "Tell it to the squirrels."
"Irresponsible kid," Jack muttered loudly. He rolled up the passenger window, locked the doors and followed his brother.
They'd come here often as kids. They occasionally camped as a family, but more often they came with their father. His delight in being with his sons was unleashed on these ‘men’s weekends’. He intentionally created special memories with his boys,
"We need to bring the boys up here sometime, Jack. "
Jack nodded. “Yeah. How 'bout next month, if it doesn't get too cold?"
Dimples appeared in the center of Cody's cheeks. "I seem to remember you telling Dad that it never gets too cold for a real camper."
"Yeah? I’m the dad now. I can be a stick in the mud all I want."
"Wimp." The younger McClellan scanned the view before them, suddenly anxious to escape the Bronco and thoughts of home. "How far in did we set up camp with Dad?"
"Couldn't have been more than a couple of miles, right? Think we could still find it?"
"Well," Cody drawled, “if not, maybe we could find a cop."
"Or hire a detective."
It was an old joke, but the brothers hadn't quite tired of it. Cody opened his one-man agency four months after Pam's death. Publicity from the murder and trial, as unwelcome as it had been, provided Cody with his first set of clients.
"This whole detective thing is Leroy Brown's fault," Jack started as they began the hike away from the Bronco.
Cody frowned through his dark sunglasses. "Who?"
"Leroy Brown. Remember him?" Jack smiled smugly as his brother shook his head. Cody fell into this one way too easily. "Oh, yeah. You spent a whole summer with him when we were kids."
"I don't know who you're talking about."
"You don't?" Jack peered at Cody over the top of his shades, a look of slight disapproval on his face.
"No. I've never known anyone named Leroy. I'm pretty sure."
Jack grinned. "Leroy Encyclopedia Brown." A rabbit dashed across the path ahead of them. "You read every 'Encyclopedia Brown' book on the shelves one summer. Pestered the dog snot out of me--""
"Did not."
"--asking 'How'd he know that, Jack?' 'Can you get this one, Jack?' The Mystery of the Missing Toenail Clippers, The Case of the Incredibly Dumb Cat Nabber, The Case of Why Did Jack Kill His Brother... Drove me nuts."
Cody smiled. "You even got one or two right."
The brothers argued and laughed as they hiked the estimated three miles into the park, but could not find the site where they'd spent the last few camping trips with their dad. After so many years everything, and nothing, looked quite right. They'd walked up and down the creek several times when Jack stopped, breathing hard in the heat of the morning. "At least we found the creek." he muttered dryly.
Cody grinned crookedly. The creek bubbled in over the dirt entrance to the park and eventually ran parallel to the road. Hiking in as they had made it impossible not to find the creek. "This could be it," he offered. He pulled his sunglasses off to critically examine the area and wipe sweat off his face. "I kind of remember trees. And there are trees here. And there was a creek... Check. I remember birds and listen! Looks like it could be the place."
"Real funny, funny man. That's what you've said about every place we've been."
Cody shrugged. "Well, the last time we were here I was what … twelve, right?"
"Yeah, it was the summer I turned 17, so that'd be about right." He watched the birds Cody had teased about as they evacuated one tree in favor of another. "You know that Dad was already sick on that last trip, don't you?" He waited, but Cody didn't answer. "He was going to tell us about the cancer then, but decided it wasn't the right time."
"There's never a right time for news like that." Cody thought about how he'd break the news to his children, shook his head and silently thanked God he didn't have to figure that out. Maybe he never would.
"It was a good last trip, though," Jack said. "That next weekend… you and me and Mom at the kitchen table … that was rough."
"I'd wondered for a month what was wrong with them," Cody remembered. "They'd seemed … off."
.
The conversation had gotten too serious, Jack realized, and could turn to Pam if he let it. He was trying to get his brother away from past tragedy, not dwell on it. Time to find a camp site."Hey," he said, pulling binoculars from around his neck to his eyes. "Remember that pine tree?" He began searching the landscape with renewed zeal.
"One specific pine tree?"
"Yeah ..." Jack glanced at him. "That really big one. We used it for target practice with bows and arrows. The one where Martin Craemer got caught --" His voice stopped as suddenly as if he'd hit pavement facedown and he slowly took the binoculars away from his dark eyes. "Or maybe that was Boy Scout camp."
Cody laughed. "I've missed a really great story, haven’t I."
Jack snorted and grinned. "Maybe when you're older … much, much older. Now … is this it or not?"
"Yeah, sure. I guess."
Jack dropped his load to the ground, put his foot on top of his dusty backpack and put his hand on his chest, like a modern-day Napoleon. "Then I claim this land in the name of McClellan," he stated in an unidentifiable nasally accent.
“Lord, help us.”
They made short work of setting up camp. Even after so many years the work felt good and familiar; the rhythm of it felt right. The area was perfect. Only a few yards from the creek, and well shaded, the site was as good as any they'd shared with their dad.
As Jack walked past Cody's open backpack, he glanced in and stopped, frowning. "You brought your Browning," he said flatly, staring down at the handgun in the backpack.
Cody raised his eyebrows slightly but didn't stop driving a tent stake into the ground. "What?"
"You brought your Browning into a state park, Code." Jack turned toward his brother, looking for exactly like the police officer he wasn't going to be for the weekend. "What the hell? It's illegal here."
"You going to arrest me?" Cody looked up, smiling, but the smile didn't quite reach his pale eyes. For a second he wasn't too sure that Jack wouldn't arrest him. He met his brother's hard stare.
"You'd lose your license." Jack's voice and eyes were stone; as unreadable as a blank page.
"Yeah. At least."
HIs brother looked up at the sky and back down. "Geez, Code!" he stormed. "What are you thinking? You stood right there while I declared my weapon to the park ranger -- right there -- and didn't say a word! Don't act so stupid! It's not like you don't know the law!"
Cody shrugged lamely. "I just... I've carried one for so long ..." He shrugged his shoulders again.
"You know what kind of position you put me in?"
"You want to go home?"
"No. It took me this long to get you out here." Jack looked at his brother, the hard set to his eyes gone. "Leave it in the backpack."
"I am sorry."
Jack nodded. "Sorry don't get it done, boy." Both men heard those words often as boys. Their father used them to signify the end of a problem that he expected to never be repeated.
Cody nodded and went back to work. They finished, and Jack lay down, propped his head against an unrolled sleeping bag and pulled a baseball cap down over his eyes. A patch above the bill read, 'Older than Dirt'.
"Want to go fishing?" Cody asked. "We could try to find Ol' Frank."
"No."
"Hiking?"
"For Pete's sake, Cody, we just finished hiking!" Jack pushed the bill of the cap up enough to look at his brother. "You know, even when you were a kid we'd get here and you just couldn't wait to put the whole trip into the first 30 minutes. You haven't changed at all. You're worse than the kids. You're a pain in the neck sometimes, Cody." He pulled the cap down again. "Go entertain yourself. Quietly."
Cody looked at his brother in mild amusement, a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. Jack could've spent three days sacked out on his couch at home with an air conditioner, indoor plumbing and microwave popcorn. Instead he insisted they drive 94 miles to the middle of nowhere so he could relax on the hard, hot ground.
"And quit watching me," Jack ordered, his voice muffled by the cap.
Sorry it's taken so long for me to post this portion of the book, y'all. I'm going to hatchet the diner scene, although it is one of my favorite. I'm just taking to long getting to the action, which is bogging down the reading for you. I wanted a clar picture of who these men are, what changed their situations and why they are where they are â?¦ but it's dragging too much. So â?¦ hatchet time.
I'm posting this, although it's going to be heavily edited before submission. I don't want to leave Y'all hanging any longer.
If you have any thoughts on this, let me know. :)
Thanks for hanging in there.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. I'm posting this, although it's going to be heavily edited before submission. I don't want to leave Y'all hanging any longer.
If you have any thoughts on this, let me know. :)
Thanks for hanging in there.
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