The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

flesh ticks like a horse’s flank chasing a fly. The
skin is cold and almost grey. “We can take your truck.”
    “ Si,” Tesoro replies. “Mi
hermano.”
    Saul hesitates, breathing through his mouth
to avoid the smell. He looks at his fingers, imagines the skin
peeling away from scrubbing. Blood makes a stubborn stain. “First
the bleach. I will clean your clothes… the truck, and then we go.”
He stoops, gathers Tesoro’s shirt, and leaves the room without
another glance at his brother.

    4: A Plague from the Mud

    Oregon has always known plenty of rain, but
that particular summer was unusually wet. Those relentless rains
drenched Monument—a small scattering of houses swallowed by pine
trees in the John Day River Valley. It was a tiny town with a
population hovering around 150. They were loggers, mostly, or other
folks that enjoyed the solitude and security supplied by miles of
quiet evergreens. So small and nestled neatly into the valley,
Monument could just vanish, and most folks wouldn’t notice.
    One damp morning I sat in a small booth at
Pine Peaks Café, reading my newspaper, poking at the soggy remnants
of a short stack of pancakes, and trying to ignore a black beetle
scurrying across the restaurant’s “sparkling” floors. Over at the
counter, Randy Crouse, a bearded bear of a man who ran a small
logging outfit that usually did piecemeal work on contract, sat
sipping a cup of coffee. He perched on his stool with slumped
shoulders, wearing the look of a man who witnessed too many wet
days.
    “ Aw hell, Darla. You might
as well fill ‘er up again.” Randy pushed his cup and saucer across
the counter. “I don’t see as we’ll be cutting again today. Too,
wet, even for Oregon.”
    Darla Smith, a dark haired wisp of a
middle-aged waitress, poured him another cup of black swill. “Yeah.
This is a bit much.” She aimed her voice at my booth. “What d’ya
think Professor, we going to drown out here, wash away with all
this rain? Some kind of biblical flood?”
    I hated the nickname. Most everyone in town
over the age of twenty-five called me Professor because I taught
English at Grant County Consolidated High School. I was the only
teacher on the payroll who lived in Monument. “I wouldn’t know
really, but I figure these things go in cycles.” I straightened my
glasses and turned back to the newspaper.
    “ What do you mean,
‘cycles’?” Randy asked through his beard, sitting up on his stool
to show his barrel chest.
    “ The rain. Some years it’s
more; some years less.”
    “ Damn genius,” Randy
muttered. He looked down just then, spotted that little black
beetle, and crushed it with his size thirteen boot. “Hey, Darla.
Don’t call the health department just yet, but it looks like the
rain is driving ‘em inside,” he said, holding up the soiled sole of
his boot.
    “ Shut up, Randy,” Darla
said.
    “ Speaking of health codes,
why don’t you sell that bread anymore, the stuff you used to bake
right here in that big old oven out back? Somebody find a bug in a
loaf?” Randy asked with a wide grin.

    I saw Randy again about a week later. He
stood at the back of his of his dented Chevy, leaning over the
tailgate and talking to a couple of his workers: Pete Archer and
Manny Swick. Pete and Manny were Monument’s Laurel and Hardy. Manny
was the plump one with a constant smile lurking under his thick
mustache, and Pete had a pale face—long like it had been stretched
in a taffy machine.
    “ Hey Professor, get a load
of this.” Randy waved one big paw in my direction as I crossed Main
Street in front of Peterson’s Drug.
    The sky still hung in a damp gray shroud
around the trees, but Monument was as dry as it had been in weeks.
A quick thought shot through my head: Randy, Pete, and Manny should
probably be out in the forest cutting on a day like that,
especially during such a wet year.
    “ What is it?” I stepped
closer to the men huddled around the bed of Randy’s truck.