The Call of Distant Shores Page 7

  Jasper paid him no mind. He knew there'd be a short rush on the vegetables just before noon, and he needed to get them out and in place to be inspected, detected and selected, as his ol' Pap had used to say. No time for cockroach nonsense, nor for Bobby Lee himself, if it came to it. That boy needed any help, he'd have to holler for it.

  That call never came. Jasper plunked down into his old rocker, kicked up his boots like he'd done a thousand times before, and started rocking. Mrs. Tefft dropped by on her way back from dropping her kids at school and picked up two pounds of fresh tomatoes. Edna Johnson came by for her regular order of green beans and potatoes, and Sheriff Ben Grouse pulled up in his cruiser to grab a small basket of strawberries for his Missus. Jasper never charged the Sheriff for small things like the strawberries, and in return Jasper never got charged with anything himself. Like drunk driving, or illegal parking. Or running a produce stand without a business license. Things in the country had a way of working themselves out.

  All that while, Bobby Lee was out of site back behind the stand. None of Jasper's customers commented on it, though Sheriff Grouse eyed Bobby's old pickup suspiciously while he perused the strawberries.

  A couple of times Bobby Lee walked past to Jasper's truck, grabbed parts of the shed out of its long, corrugated box, and headed back out of site, but he didn't say a word. He was moving fast and he kept his head down, mumbling to himself all the time. Jasper figured it for cursing, but the one time Bobby Lee came close enough for his friend to hear, all that came across was some sort of rhythmic mumbo jumbo.

  "What you doin', Bobby Lee?" Jasper called after him. "Takin' up that rap music?"

  Bobby Lee didn't answer, and Jasper wasn't inclined to raise himself out of his seat and follow after to insist on it. Truth be told, he didn't rightly care what Bobby Lee was sayin' as long as he didn't say "Come on back and help me, Jasper."

  The noon rush passed, and Jasper was popping the top on his second beer when he finally started to feel guilty. Bobby Lee had been working quietly all morning long, since before Jasper himself had even arrived, and not a finger had been raised to help him. It was true that Jasper himself had provided the land, the shed, and all the moral support a fella could want, but it was also true that he'd agreed to be part of this cockamamie project. The least he could do was make a solid effort to pitch in and do his part.

  Besides, the pile of shed parts still left in the truck was getting pretty small, and Jasper was beginning to wonder just what the hell Bobby Lee was doing back there. They'd agreed to move the cockroach into the cleared spot first, then build the shed, but it seemed like Bobby Lee had changed his mind somewhere along the way and just started building. Hell, from the banging and clanking Jasper had heard, the damn thing must be just about finished, and that was a job. Jasper had built one just like it out back of his house for storing lawn tools and making home brew.

  Shifting his weight forward, he sat up, drained his beer, reached with practiced ease into the cooler and brought out two more. Then, with a long, drawn-out burp, he stood and headed around back of the stand.

  For the second time that day, Jasper Winslow stopped dead in his tracks. He felt the bottle in his left hand slipping free and gripped it very suddenly, stumbling back. Bobby Lee's truck stood off to the side again, but it was empty. The damned roach was nowhere to be seen, and standing smack-dab in the center of that cleared plot of land, the shed had taken shape. More than that, it was perfect. Jasper had had two cousins and his old lady helping, and he had not managed to get his shed up in near the time or manner that Bobby Lee had done this one by himself.

  Bobby Lee was nowhere to be seen, and Jasper, taking a deep breath for courage, stepped forward to the door, slid it aside, and stepped inside. The building's interior was shadowed. There were no windows, and even the sunlight that slipped in behind him through the door could do little. Jasper stepped forward, blinking, and ran smack into something hard after the second step. Something jabbed his cheek hard, something smooth and cool. Something hard.

  "Damn!" he grunted, stepping back. "Bobby? You in here? What in hell did you DO?"

  There was no reply, but Jasper could hear the murmur of voices near the rear of the shed. He reached out with one hand, letting the beer bottle crack gently into the side wall of the shed, and followed the left wall around, being careful not to move too fast, in case any more of the damned cockroach's double-D goddamned appendages felt inclined to give him a whack.

  About halfway back, Jasper stopped. The shed had gone deathly cold. And quiet. The shadows, which shouldn't have been very deep in a building with open eaves and the front door slid wide, clung to him, blocking his vision. The mumble of voices had shifted to more of a drone, like a bunch of midge flies hovering over the swamp. The tone rose and fell in a steady, hypnotic pattern, but there was no sign of Bobby.

  Jasper turned and edged his way back toward the front. He had a big Halogen search light in the back of his truck he used for deer spotting. That would light this place up and show him what was what.

  Thing was, the further he slid along the wall toward where he knew that door had to be, the further it seemed he still had to go. He saw the cleared dirt outside, plain as day, but his breath was coming in short bursts, and he knew, without seeing it, that it was shooting out of his mouth like fog. It was cold enough Jasper felt the frost that suddenly coated the beers he held, and the burn of the cold glass against his skin. His toes were numb, and each step he took toward the door, and the light, was an effort he wasn't sure he felt like making.

  Then the sound stopped. A hand fell heavily on Jasper's shoulder and he screamed, jumping back against the pressed metal wall so hard it dented. He gripped the beers so tightly he wondered if they might shatter.

  The shed had grown lighter. Bobby Lee stood in front of him, grinning like an idiot, and holding out a hand for one of the beers.

  Jasper teetered. He leaned heavily on the wall, despite knowing full well it had been erected by the grinning idiot standing before him in about half the time the job should have taken. It held.

  "Hell, Jasper, what's wrong with you?" Bobby Lee asked, as though nothing was the matter. "You look like you seen a ghost. Or maybe," Bobby grinned, turning and raising a hand to the wooden monstrosity behind him, "a giant cock-a-roach?"

  Jasper heaved off the wall and lurched to the door, stumbling out into the late afternoon light. He took in several deep breaths, then turned back. All he saw was Bobby, sipping on his beer and staring back at him. The shed behind Bobby's back had no special characteristics, beyond being extremely well-constructed. There was no way to penetrate the shadowed interior from where Jasper stood, but he heard no soft voices and he saw no deeper-than-normal shadows. The air was warm, moist, and filled with mosquitoes.

  Jasper shook his head. He glanced down and noticed he was still holding his unopened beer. With a quick twist, he decapitated it and tossed down half the bottle.

  "Maybe you've been sittin' out in the sun too long, Jasper," Bobby Lee commented. "You don't look so good."

  "You didn't see, or hear, or feel anything wrong in there?" Jasper asked, eyeing his friend suspiciously.

  "Like what?" Bobby Lee scratched his head and took a draw from his beer. "I was in the back, tyin' down the straps to hold that big old money-makin' baby in place. I didn't see or hear a thing."

  "I don't reckon you want to tell me how you got that thing out of your truck, neither," Jasper observed, his eyes narrowing.

  Bobby Lee never blinked. "I backed her up and used the winch. How in hell did you think I got her in the truck, Jasper? I ain't no Superman."

  Jasper blinked. He hadn't expected such a simple answer, and if he could've gotten his body to contort to the right shape, he'd have kicked himself in the ass for not thinking of it.

  "Is there somethin' wrong, Jasper?" Bobby Lee asked.

  Jasper turned away and lurched back toward his seat, and his beer. He didn't say a thing until he was seated once m
ore in his old rocker, staring out at the dying sun and route 17 passing in the distance. He reached for another beer, tossed another one to Bobby, and closed his eyes, leaning back.

  "So," he said at last. "Just when did you expect we would start drawing in these 'Cockroach Suckers,'" he asked.

  Bobby was grinning when he opened his eyes, and the two talked well into the evening, watching the sun dip deep orange behind the line of trees that bordered the swamp. Finally, when the last of the beers had been emptied, Jasper rose shakily, heading for his truck. He left the produce baskets as they stood and grimaced at the expected tirade when he reached home without them, drunk. Didn't matter. For once, Jasper was convinced that Bobby Lee might border on human intelligence, and might actually, God forbid, be right about something. They were going to make them a pile of money, and it was going to start the very next day.

  Bobby Lee stood beside Jasper's truck and helped him up into the seat, slamming the door for his friend.

  "I'll see you tomorrow, partner," Bobby said. "Bright and early."

  "You done a piece of work today, Bobby," Jasper replied. "Maybe you should sleep in a bit. Won' t be any good tomorrow if you're all worn out, or hung over."

  Bobby winked at him, and something in that gesture, something sparking deep in his friend's eye, sent the cold air shiver and the murmur of distant voices caroming off his skull and ricocheting about his mind.

  "Don't you worry about me," Bobby said, his voice low. "I'll be here, ready to rock."

  Jasper turned the key in the ignition and brought his old truck to life. He punched down on the gas and shot out of the small gravel lot onto the feeder road without a word. He was shaking, and his skin was coated in sweat.

  "Damn beer," he whispered, gunning his engine and praying not to see a cop.

  Bobby Lee stood, watching his partner depart, then turned back. He didn't head for his own truck, but slid through the door of the metal shed and pulled it tightly closed behind him. Moments later, the night filled with the drone of a thousand mosquitoes, or the grating crackle of cicadas in season. The blood-red sun drenched the skyline and melted to black.

  Jasper saw the signs before he was within five miles of his stand. The first one was simple, square and white, black lettering.

  "LOOK - 5 MILES"

  Then they got progressively larger, and more explicit, as he moved along 17. Jasper didn't take 17 very often, but this morning he'd had to restock his beer cooler in Elizabeth City, so he'd come in the popular route - the way his customers would come in.

  "DON'T MISS OUT"

  "3 ½ MILES TO YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE"

  "2 MILES - THE WORLDS LARGEST AND HARDEST TO KILL"

  "ONLY ONE MILE, TURN IN ON LEFT"

  "½ MILE TO WORLD'S LARGEST COCKROACH! TURN NOW!"

  This last sign was subtitled with the words "Fresh fruit and produce, inquire within."

  Jasper turned down the side road and gunned his engine, spinning his tires and shooting dust and gravel into the air so thick he couldn't see the road behind him. He saw that even the dirt road itself hadn't escaped the signs. There were small ones and large ones, some proclaiming TOMATOES and others with large brown roaches, feelers raised high and eyes bugged out, starin'g at the road.

  When he pulled up in front of his stand, he saw that there was a walkway, flat river stones set into the loose dirt of the field, running around back of the produce stand. A huge, white wooden finger pointed the way around the corner toward the shed in back. Jasper climbed down out of his truck, slammed the door in case by some miracle Bobby Lee hadn't heard him, and followed where that finger pointed.

  The shed was transformed. Sometime in the night, Bobby Lee had brought in paint and turned the drab, beige-colored pressed metal into a gleaming, multi-colored monstrosity. The base was black, but there was orange trim, and there were pictures, cockroaches running this way and that, little roach motels in pastel, Miami-Florida sorta colors, and to the right of the door a large can of Raid with feet, holding a finger to its button and spraying toward the entrance.

  Jasper's jaw dropped, and his legs turned to rubber, but before he could collapse to the newly-lain stone walk, Bobby Lee hurried out the door of the shed and grabbed him by the arm, steadying him. Jasper gaped at his friend, who was wearing a button-down shirt, a clean pair of black pants, a damned belt.

  "Wha..." Jasper never got it out.

  "Mornin' partner!" Bobby Lee said. "I did a little sprucin' up, seein' as how this was our first day in business, and all."

  "Sprucin'....but..."

  Bobby Lee cut him off again. "Don't you worry about it partner. I didn't expect you to be here to help. I just got the bug, you know? Get it? GET IT?"

  Bobby Lee was shaking him, and Jasper wished it would stop. He couldn't decide whether he more wanted to collapse to the ground or puke, and the shaking wasn't helping him with the decision. Then Bobby had whirled back toward the front of the produce stand, supporting Jasper by the grip on his arm, and led him back to his rocker. "You don't worry 'bout a thing, Jasper," Bobby was saying. "Any customers show up, you send 'em around back to me. I'll handle it from there. You stay up here, sell the fruit, smile at the people, and watch out for ol' Sheriff Grouse. I expect we'll see him before the day's out. I got his paperwork all finished and signed in my truck, but I figgered I'd let him have the satisfaction of figurin' he's got us by the balls before I showed it to him."

  Mention of the sheriff broke Jasper out of his fog.

  "What papers? What did you do, Bobby Lee? Why would the sheriff..."

  "Well, you don't think he'll drive down 17 and miss those signs, do you?" Bobby Lee asked, keeping his voice low and slow, like he was talking to a recalcitrant mule. "I tried to get as many out there as I could. Got to rememberin' those signs for the biggest ball of string I was tellin' you about, and just let my imagination go, you know?"

  "When did you sleep?" Jasper asked finally. "My God, Bobby Lee, where did you learn to pain like that..." Jasper waved his hand back in the general direction of the shed and it's not-quite-dry murals, "over yonder? And where in HELL did you get a button-down shirt that had all the buttons?"

  Bobby Lee's grin never faded.

  "I feel like a new man," Jasper, he said. "I feel like this has been my destiny, you know? Everyone has to find them a place in life, and I reckon I walked into mine when I hit that flea market the other day."

  "You was born to rip off suckers on a giant wooden cockroach display?" Jasper asked, trying to sort it all out in his head. "That what you're sayin', Bobby Lee? You tellin' me your momma raised you and fed you and tried to put you through school just so's you could build a home for a giant bug?"

  Bobby Lee blinked. Just for a moment, Jasper thought he might be getting through, then the light in Bobby Lee's eyes faded out, and blinked on again, high-beams flashing. "That's exactly what I'm sayin', I guess," he replied. "You just send them folks around to see me," he added, "and don't forget to sell them their ticket first."Jasper glanced down to where Bobby's gaze had strayed, and noticed a big roll of paper tickets on the old wood table next to his cooler. The tickets said $5 ADMIT ONE. Jasper shook his head. He was about to comment further when Bobby Lee abruptly turned on his heel and marched back around the corner to his shed. Jasper thought about following to press whatever point was forming in his mind, but something made him sit tight. He didn't want to go into that shed again. He didn't know why, would have denied the sensation altogether if confronted with it, but there it was. He remembered those voices. He remembered the chill, the dampness, and the way his steps had slowed as if he were wading through butter.

  Jasper got up, set to work putting out his produce, and pointedly ignored the walkway leading behind his stand – until the people started coming.

  Over the next week, the produce stand had become something of a sensation. It seemed like everyone from the Outer Banks and Kitty Hawk to Raleigh and Durham had heard the news. There was a new roadside attraction, and
they were flocking to it in droves. Jasper's small garden had proven unable to keep up with the sudden demand for fresh tomatoes and strawberries, and Bobby Lee worked straight through one weekend to get pavers in to create a real parking lot. The road coming in from 17, which had been nothing more than a gravel and dirt side-road, more discouraging than inviting to anything with wheels, had been resurfaced by the county, who were quick to see what the new attraction was doing for the tourist trade and local businesses.

  The white signs on the freeway had been replaced by a longer series that ran up and down route 17 and onto some of the bisecting and intersecting roads with exits. In the middle of the bypass on the way to Virginia, there was a huge black sign with dripping green letters proclaiming.

  "STRAIGHT FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP. NO KITCHEN IS SAFE - NO TRASH CAN IS SACRED. HE'S BIG - HE'S THE BIGGEST DURNED COCKROACH IN THE WORLD - 18 Miles, South 17. FRESH PRODUCE - T-SHIRTS - SOUVENIRS - PEANUTS."

  The sign featured a giant, comical bug, crawling over the top of the letters, huge antennae blocking the long, flat view of cotton fields beyond. It was only one of many signs, and it wasn't kidding about a bit of it. Racks of t-shirts lined the front of the parking lot. The produce stand itself had grown, incorporating a double-wide trailer with siding that housed vats and bins of rubber and plastic cockroaches and giant mosquitoes, rubber snakes and bumper stickers that said, "I Saw It and Lived" and other such things. Jasper's mind was whirling so fast form one new thing to the next that he nearly forgot the shed out back, and what lay within.

  He sat out front every day, watching them come and go, curious coming and sort of dazed-and-glazed going. They bought the shirts, and the produce, bags of peanuts and handfuls of rubber bugs. Jasper had never had so much money in his life, and, for once there didn't seem to be a legal reason he couldn't keep it.