A Portion for Foxes Read online

  A Portion for Foxes

  Red Adept Publishing, LLC

  104 Bugenfield Court

  Garner, NC 27529

  https://RedAdeptPublishing.com/

  Copyright © 2021 by Daniel Mitchell. All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Streetlight Graphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  The Red Adept Publishing App

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Sign up for Daniel Mitchell's Mailing List

  Further Reading: Taking on Water

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  To the best mother a bookworm could have had, Laura Bess Mitchell. Without her, I’d have never learned the wonders of ransacking a public library for a better world than this.

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  Chapter 1

  Some of the best starts have the worst endings, and vice versa, I guess. A guy only has so much control. Great days can turn into monsters with one wrong word. Crap days can turn to gold with a cough, an accidental brush in the hall, or the perfect glance at the perfect time. You never know where the day will lead—maybe someplace you never imagined. Or wanted to.

  The sun was smiling down on a deserted stretch of beach called Fobb Bottom on Lake Texoma, and the only clouds were cotton balls spilled across the blue October sky. Our fishing poles hung from the rusty pole tree we'd driven into the sandy lake bottom, held firmly above the deep-blue waves, and all we had to do was wait. I thought my life couldn't get any better. I was right.

  The wind and water calmed completely before sundown, and my pole bent double. In those last thirty minutes before dark, we caught and strung three nice stripers and a channel cat before the dying light and our chattering teeth drove us back to camp.

  Mike built a roaring fire in no time, using the teepee method learned from my father in our Cub Scout days. Once the flames died down, I set a grill scavenged from Dad’s supply of camping gear across some forked sticks we’d shoved into the ground around the coals.

  Mike quickly scaled and gutted two of the stripers, wrapped them in tinfoil with lemon juice, butter, and chunks of garlic he figured his mom wouldn’t miss, and laid them on the grill. I did the same with two ears of corn snagged from the fridge on my way out the door and dumped several packs of hot chocolate into an old tin coffeepot I set in the coals.

  After fifteen minutes or so, we removed the fish, corn, and hot chocolate from the fire and scalded our tongues and fingers on them, grinning at each other through full mouths and cheeks shiny with grease.

  Mom used to say we were like day and night. I was chunky and dark, with black curls, and had been shaving for two years before I turned seventeen. Mike was fit, thin, and a head shorter at five feet seven or so, without even peach fuzz on his pale cheeks. His blond hair was buzzed short above ears that stuck straight out and had been the cause of several middle school brawls when somebody was dumb enough to mention them. We’d met in Cub Scouts at six years old and become fast friends. Things had changed a lot since then, but we still agreed on two things: heavy music and good fishing. He was an idiot sometimes, but so was I. The rest didn’t matter.

  A gentle breeze blew in off the lake. It ruffled our hair and sent the sparks from our fire twirling into the night sky. Because we were five miles down a dirt road, far from any electric light, the constellations shone bright. The names Dad had taught me over the years came to mind: the Kite, which was actually Orion’s belt and sword, the Little Dipper, the Big Dipper, the Seven Sisters, better known as Pleiades, Taurus the Bull, Scorpio with his claws spread wide and his stinger held high, and of course, the bright wash of the Milky Way slashing through it all, like foam on a wave, cresting across the universe.

  We sprawled in our folding lawn chairs, bellies bulging, hearts full of peace. Two hours passed with The Black Keys playing softly on the ancient boom box between us.

  “All right, man. It’s time to go catch some fish.”

  “Hell yeah,” Mike said, exploding from his chair with a maniac grin, his green eyes glowing in the light of the fire.

  We snatched up the minnow bucket and jogged back along the shore to where we’d left my yellow inflatable raft then cast off with headlamps firmly in place, searching for the floats of our trotline, far out in the bay.

  The big channel cats and flatheads came into these shallow waters at night, chasing smaller fish in from the depths of the lake, which was turning black and forbidding in the darkness. The moon was just rising full and red in the east, punching through storm clouds gathering on the horizon, the faint flashes of lightning silent in the distance. Once we reached the first of the floats, I knew we were in luck as it bobbed violently in the still water.

  In minutes, we had five nice fish on the stringer dragging behind the boat, had rebaited heavily, and were on our way back to shore, laughing and boasting wildly of our skill and the massive fish fry we’d convince our mothers to cook for Sunday dinner.

  Down the beach, someone started screaming.

  Mike joked, “Sounds like somebody’s having a good time,” but neither of us really believed it.

  We beached the boat, dragging it far up the sand and tying it to some brush for good measure. The night wind could carry an inflatable raft for miles. Tying the stringer to a limb I’d pushed deep into the sand, I stood listening. Another muffled scream pierced the night. A man’s laugh, deep and low, floated behind it. My feet dragging with short and uneven steps, I started up the beach.

  “Hey, Sam,” Mike whispered.

  I turned to look at him and wondered if my eyes were as huge and hollow as his.

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  “Back to camp.”

  “But what if that’s where they are?”

  “What else are we going to do?" I asked, shaking in my wet shoes. I tried to tell myself I was just cold. All I wanted was to get to the truck and floor it out of there. Mike stared at me for a full thirty seconds before following. I felt for the filet knife hanging in its sheath on my right hip, knowing how pitiful a weapon it was, but I was grateful for anything to hold on to.

  We moved slowly, crouched low, alert for anything out of place. Near the campsite, we dropped to our bellies, hoping to see the empty clearing we’d left behind. In the dim light of the dying fire, we saw nothing out of place, nothing new—just sand and thin patches of grass. The headlights of my Dodge, reflecting the last of the flames, were disapproving eyes in the darkness.

  Men's voices and more laughter came to us faintly on a gust of wind from one of the
campsites a hundred yards or so past ours. Another scream sounded, cutting off abruptly at the smack of a fist striking flesh, followed by drunken whoops of laughter.

  Mike turned to me. “Man, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “And do what? Call the cops? I can't get a signal here. We’re thirty miles from the nearest police station. Even if we could call, what are we going to tell them? We heard somebody scream? Somebody was laughing and screaming at the lake on a Saturday night, so we ran?”

  “What do you suggest, tough guy? You want to crank up the tunes and make freaking s’mores?” he asked.

  “We sneak up, see what’s really happening, and then we go for the cops.”

  "What if they see us? You want a piece of whatever the hell is going on down there?”

  I couldn’t fool myself into thinking I was some movie tough guy, but I could imagine the looks we'd get if we ran into the Madill Police Station, babbling about noises in the dark.

  “We get close enough for a peek, and then we haul ass.” He looked at me for a long time then shrugged with a strange little half smile, as if he knew something I didn't. We moved into the night, angling toward the road to the next campsite. The storm was closer, and flashes of lightning showed the way. Thunder growled in the distance.

  The first pull-off was empty and dark, but fifty yards farther, a fire flickered. Getting closer, I saw tunnels through the thick brush beside us, likely made by feral hogs, considering how many tracks we’d seen earlier. I turned into one and heard Mike close behind me. At first, we crawled on all fours then on our bellies, feeling carefully for sticks, trash, or anything else in the sand that might betray us with a sound. I crawled as close as I dared then motioned to Mike to wait, but he'd either stopped or turned down one of the side tunnels somewhere off to our right. I cussed him silently, sure he would give us away. Hearing low voices, I turned back toward the firelight on elbows and knees and eased forward until I could see who was there.

  Holding beer bottles, two men in jeans and sneakers stood partially turned away from me. The shorter one had a large knife on his hip but no shirt. Crappy homemade tattoos, black smears in the firelight, covered his back and arms. The other wore a ragged flannel shirt unbuttoned and flapping slightly in the growing breeze. Both had blond mullets. I couldn’t see their faces, but I was close enough to hear them.

  "So then the bartender says, 'I was talking to the dog'!”

  The taller one brayed, spitting beer across the fire to hiss and smoke on the coals.

  After their guffaws wore down to chuckles, the one with no shirt yelled, “Hurry up, pissant. We ain’t got all night! Give it to her or just admit you’re a faggot so we can go."

  My night vision was ruined by the fire, but in the dancing shadows on the far side of it stood a smaller man or maybe a boy, head shaved, in a white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

  The kid looked over his shoulder, just for a second, and I swore he was looking right at me. It was Randy Stangler, which probably made the two men at the fire his older brothers, Richard and Jesse. I hadn't seen them in years, but they weren't the kind of people you forget.

  Randy stepped a little to the right, revealing an Asian girl in her teens or twenties, unconscious and dirty, propped against a fallen tree. One lip was swollen and her face dirty and tear streaked. An old T-shirt was half ripped from her bony frame, and she wore nothing from the waist down. She was clearly visible in the light of the roaring fire—too visible. The bruises, dirt, and a lone smear of something black on her splayed leg showed Randy wasn’t the first to have had a turn at her. He didn’t look too happy. In fact, he looked more desperate to be somewhere else than I was.

  Off to my right, a stick snapped. I dropped to the ground, praying desperately that the Stanglers hadn’t heard, but their joking cut off instantly.

  Jesse said, “Got to take a piss,” and wandered out of sight down to the beach.

  Richard didn’t look around, but his hand dropped to the knife on his belt as he drained the last of the bottle in his hand and scratched his bare stomach.

  I crept backward, praying, Sweet Jesus, help us, over and over, nearly mindless with terror. I crept about fifteen feet before thrashing erupted in the brush near the beach. I didn’t know if Jesse had found Mike or if he’d just given in to terror and fled.

  I made it back to the road, miraculously not making any noise myself, and ran for all I was worth. When I reached the camp, Mike was already there, but so was Jesse, standing over him and laughing with a big chunk of driftwood in his hand.

  “You’re fast, kid, but not fast enough.” He chuckled. “Now, tell me where your friend is.”

  “N-n-nobody,” he stammered.

  “Don’t lie to me, boy. I’ll bash your fucking skull in.”

  “Nobody!” Mike kept shaking his head. “It’s just me, but my dad is coming any minute. He said he’d be here as soon as he got off work, and he always has a gun.”

  “Good try, kid,” Richard said as he stepped out of the shadows, “but I think you're a lying little shit. Now, I have to cut you.” He smiled and pulled a skinning knife from the sheath on his hip.

  I wanted to run up and save the day, to be a hero. Instead, I cowered behind my truck in the darkness, frantically feeling for the keys I’d hidden under the back bumper. Tears streamed down my face. I'd have given almost anything for that cell phone in the glove box and a signal.

  Richard knelt with one knee on each side of Mike's chest, pinning his arms, and stared at him for what seemed both seconds and years. Randy's voice came from somewhere in the shadows.

  "Please, Richard. Let's just go."

  Richard looked up at the sky, and I thought—just for a second—everything was going to be okay. We would get out of there, tell our folks, the cops, whoever, and everything would be fine.

  "That was the plan, Randall," Richard said, "but now, he knows my name." He looked back down at Mike, who was staring at him wide-eyed with his mouth open, shaking his head. "Boy," Richard said, "you got shit for luck."

  "He ain't nobody," Jesse said. "Let's just go."

  "Complete shit," Richard said. He rammed the knife into the side of Mike’s neck and ripped it out through the front.

  I heard a bubbling hiss and the rustling of Mike's legs kicking in the sand. Jesse looked shocked. There was a sudden flash and an immediate crack of thunder from all around. Blood fountained into the coals of our fire, pumping over and over in fading black rainbows.

  Chapter 2

  The rest of that night was blurry. I ran through the brush and briars, scared to use the roads, convinced the Stanglers were seconds behind me. When I finally burst out of the woods onto the highway, no cars were in sight. I spotted a dark convenience store down the road and used their ancient pay phone to call 911. Apparently, you don’t have to pay if you just punch zero and start babbling to the operator about bloody rape and murder at three in the morning. Forty-five minutes later, two deputies finally showed up in separate cars.

  I guided them to the campsite, but they made me stay in the car while they searched the area, guns drawn. My truck was there, but everything else was gone. The lawn chairs, poles, and even the fish were history. The pounding rain of the thunderstorm had erased our tracks. An hour later, they were pissed, and neither believed me. The younger one caught my eye and looked meaningfully at some empty beer cans in the brush near the edge of the campsite. He shook his head angrily as he trudged back to his cruiser. They didn’t even string up crime-scene tape.

  #########

  If this was a movie, I thought, I'd be in a windowless room with two chairs and an old table, all bolted to the floor. Two cops would take turns at me, one making threats and the other pretending to help. Apparently, crazy people got something entirely different. I got Eades, a little fireplug of a deputy sheriff with minty breath and a bad combover.

  “Somebody get the kid a Coke, would you?” he yelled out the open door.

  I was slumped in
a worn office chair, one of several around an old folding table. Heavy gray carpet covered the floor, and a line of windows looked out across the street to Mangram Park, where parents chatted on green metal benches or read books while their kids played on the swings. I’d never been there.

  The room had a faint smell of old coffee and stale armpits, badly covered by an orange-vanilla-scented candle burning on the windowsill. A cute, chubby redhead brought me a Dr. Thunder.

  “Sorry, kid, that’s all we had left,” she said before walking out with a sad look in her eye.

  Or maybe I just imagined that part.

  Eades cleared his throat and said, “Let’s go over this again.”

  “For the fifth fucking time," I muttered.

  “Sam, watch your mouth,” Dad said from the end of the table. He looked as tired as I felt. Simmering anger was building in his eyes as well, but I couldn’t tell if it was aimed at me or the cop.

  My stomach kept clenching like I was going to puke.

  “Look, Sam. We want to believe you,” Eades said, “but the fact is, there’s just no evidence but this crazy story of yours. You call us up from a pay phone in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning, reporting a rape and murder, and when we show up, nothing. No body, no rednecks, no mysterious Asian girl, and no boat. Nothing. Do you want to tell me what really happened?”

  “I told you already. The Stanglers—”

  “Have an alibi. They got ten witnesses swearing they were with them all night. All three of them.”

  “I watched those bastards kill my friend. I didn't see any other witnesses.” My voice broke, and the tears I’d been fighting all morning and last night rolled down my cheeks. “What about Mike’s parents? Did you even talk to them?”

  “All his stepmom knows is that he must have come by Friday, because he mowed the lawn and finished his chores, for a change. Said he spends most nights someplace else. Got the feeling she doesn't have any idea where he is and doesn't care. She didn’t see him go, and she didn't see you. His father won't answer his phone, and his voice mail is full.” With a heavy sigh and a glance over his shoulder, Eades said, “Mr. Gunther, would you close that door?”