Moon Underfoot (28 page)

Jake had spent over an hour last night and then again this morning looking for Scout. She sometimes got confused, but it wasn’t like the old Lab to just wander off. He couldn’t help but think that she had been stolen.

As he looked around the congregation, Jake considered that no one knew of his problems. He was alone in a tough situation. He thought about the words on the napkin and imagined how cold and calculated the note appeared. A chill went up his spine when he thought about how close to his family Moon Pie had actually been.

As the lights dimmed and the preacher stepped into the pulpit, Jake whispered to Morgan, asking if he could borrow a pen. Briefly, she thought that he was going to take notes about the sermon, but then she realized he was going to make a to-do list.
As she opened her purse wide in search of the pen, Jake saw her pistol resting in a side pocket. He pointed at it, and when they made eye contact, she shrugged her shoulders. Jake was surprised she had brought a weapon into church.

He scribbled a note on the back of the bulletin: “Did you bring it on purpose?”

She took the pen from his hand and wrote, “Yes.”

Jake took the pen and looked up at the preacher, who seemed to be looking straight at him. When the preacher finally looked away, Jake pulled up his right pant leg above his boots so Morgan could see the handle of his pistol. “Me too.”

Morgan then wrote: “Good! Listen to the sermon. You need to set an example for Katy.” She underlined
you
and
example
.

Jake sighed and looked down at Katy, who was sound asleep, and then up at the preacher, who was hitting his ministerial stride. Jake folded his arms and crossed his legs in an effort to get comfortable.

When Jake realized that the sermon was about vengeance, he decided to pay attention.

A
S DAWN CRACKED
that Sunday morning, Moon Pie was leaning against a giant oak along the Tombigbee River in Monroe County, Mississippi. The property owner was a Columbus ER doctor who Moon Pie knew, through a paid source, was working that morning. Moon Pie intended to capitalize on the deer movement he knew would follow the storm front that had blown through that area the previous night. Everything in the woods was dark from the all-night soaking rain, allowing Moon Pie to walk silently on the wet leaves. He plumed his breath in front of him to check the wind and then pulled down a face mask and set off to walk a wooded ridge bordered by the river on one side and an oxbow lake on the other. This was prime ground, intensively managed, and nothing less than a 150 buck would excite him.
I only have about two hours before I gotta leave to meet those Gulf Coast gooks to make the trade
.

Moon Pie eased through the hardwoods, always careful to not walk on bare areas that could leave tracks. It was taking him fifteen minutes to stalk a hundred yards. He had seen several does and a couple of small bucks when a group of mallards flushed at the far end of the oxbow and flew right over him. He instinctively dropped, knowing that something had spooked
them. He positioned himself behind a cypress knee and patiently waited.

Within a few minutes, he noticed a hunter wearing an orange cap moving on the far side of the oxbow. Moon Pie found him in his scope and tried to determine who it was. The hunter’s face was partially obscured by a neck gaiter. Moon Pie then tried to study him with binoculars, but they weren’t as clear as his scope. When the hunter moved deeper into a thicket, Moon Pie leaned back against a cypress tree. Since he had a moment, he decided to check his phone. He saw an hour-old text from his informant, a janitor at the hospital: “Dr just left ER swapped shifts said he was going hunting U o me $50 or some backstrap.”

Moon Pie swore to himself. He appreciated the heads-up but was pissed at himself for not checking his messages earlier. He was caught up in the beautiful morning and ideal conditions. Moon Pie spotted the hunter again and cranked up his scope to twenty power. He was pretty sure it was the doctor—the same guy who had almost caught him poaching last year.

The doctor couldn’t have been hunting. He was walking at a steady pace. It was as though he were looking for something or somebody. Moon Pie realized that he was being hunted, and he loved it. He cautiously glanced around and knew he was trapped. The doctor had rounded the edge of the oxbow and would be on top of him soon. If he stood, he’d be seen, and the doctor probably had a radio like last time. He envisioned that the doctor was trying to drive him like hunters sometimes push deer—trying to force him in the direction of a waiting game warden.
They’ll never catch me
.

The doctor—with a high-powered rifle slung over one shoulder—was only 125 yards away and was walking in Moon Pie’s general direction. He was coming down the center of the ridge, completely silhouetted, while Moon Pie was hidden on the edge where the undergrowth was thick. Moon Pie scrunched up, making himself as small as possible, and pushed back against a tree.

Moon Pie knew he could take the doctor in a fistfight. The guy was well over fifty and obviously out of shape. With his right thumb, Moon Pie silently slid off the safety, just in case. He hated rich doctors and businessmen who bought up the land he had freely hunted since he was a kid. They didn’t even know how to hunt. Most of them just sat in heated shooting houses on the edge of food plots or power lines and shot whatever walked out.

When the doctor was at thirty yards, Moon Pie made a fist with his camouflage-gloved hand. He was covered head to toe in camo and coiled like a cottonmouth ready to strike as the doctor approached. At ten yards, he watched the doctor’s eyes. He seemed to be looking everywhere but directly at Moon Pie. Moon Pie was low but positioned to leap to his feet. If the doctor stayed his course, he would walk within five feet of Moon Pie.

The doctor suddenly ducked under a large vine hanging at an odd slant. It was just enough to alter his course, which would now carry him close but not as close as before. Moon Pie held his breath. The doctor looked right through him as he walked within ten feet. Relief washed over Moon Pie as he watched the doctor walk down the ridge. Moon Pie knew he would not see any of his tracks, particularly when the doctor was looking off in the distance instead of paying attention to close details. Moon Pie mentally laughed at the doctor’s lack of woodsman’s skills.

When the doctor stepped off the ridge and into a depression about ninety yards away, Moon Pie began a silent escape pace that took him in the opposite direction. Within moments, Moon Pie was clear of the doctor’s sight and hurried back toward his truck, which he had parked in a public hunting area. He carefully picked his cover and was soon off the doctor’s place. At that point, he squatted down and pulled on an orange vest and cap. He then stepped out onto a gravel road and walked casually but briskly to his truck. He looked at his watch. He had been pinned down for almost forty-five minutes. It was nearly time to make
the trade. Feeling completely bulletproof, he called Levi to tell him that he was on the way and that he had a story to share.

Moon Pie had driven less than half a mile when he saw the game warden’s dark-green pickup parked on the side of the road. It had been just as he suspected. His daddy had taught him well and emphasized one thing: never get caught on another man’s land. His daddy’s words rang in his ears: “You can hide or you can run, but don’t ever get caught.” He was taught to understand the woods and recognize nature’s alarms. Some were audible, but most times they were silent. But that was all before cell phones, handheld radios, surveillance cameras, high-dollar hunting clubs, and good deer-ground leasing for more than farming rights. It was much tougher being a successful poacher today, and so far Moon Pie had kept his promise to his dying daddy that he would never get caught.

His satellite radio beeped an alert that his favorite song was coming on the country-outlaw channel. He clicked over and listened to Charlie Daniels sing “Uneasy Rider,” telling a story about a fight in Jackson, Mississippi, on a Saturday night. Moon Pie knew every word and sang along.

A
FTER ABOUT FOUR
hours of being counted and recounted on Sunday morning, all of the money was stacked neatly on Lucille’s kitchen table. They had chosen her place because no matter how small the risk, they didn’t want to be at Walter’s if the police happened to drop by to question him about Kroger, and the policeman last night had seen only three old guys. Lucille was totally off the radar.

There had been exactly $900,000 in the large black bag, and the boot boxes held a total of $332,876. With bleary eyes from little to no sleep the night before and the tedium of counting tens of thousands of bills multiple times, Walter and crew stared at the stacks of cash. It was more than any of them had ever seen or imagined they would ever see. Bailey, in her own world, quietly sat on her grandmother’s couch, intently listening and watching.

Walter announced with satisfaction, “Okay, kids, it’s official: one million, two hundred thirty-two thousand, eight hundred and seventy-six dollars!”

“I never thought I’d ever see a million dollars,” Bernard said in amazement.

“Everybody wash your hands. That money’s nasty,” Lucille said, prompting everyone to look at their hands.

Bernard’s hands looked like he had just changed a flat tire. “Now I know what they’re talking about on TV when they say
launderin’ money
.”

Walter shook his head and looked at Bernard. “What?”

“The reason for laundering money. I know why now. ’Cause it’s dirty.”

Walter couldn’t stand it. “Bernard, they’re referring to unaccounted money, like drug money, and the need to run it through a legitimate business, thereby making it clean so it can be deposited into a bank and used for whatever they want after that. Since the dirty money is now clean, it’s considered to have been laundered.”

“That’s what I mean; they’re cleaning it.”

“Bernard, it’s a turn of phrase. It’s not literal.” Walter shook his head and then threw his hands up. Frustrated, he looked at Sebastian and Lucille for help.

“I wonder if they put it in a washing machine,” he said as he washed his hands.

“Probably,” Sebastian said sarcastically.

After all had washed their hands and gotten something to drink, they stared like zombies at the stacks of money, as if it were magical. Just a few days ago none of them had had any extra cash, and they had slept like babies. Now they had serious cash, and not one of them had slept last night. They were so nervous they doubted they ever would again.

“Wadda we do now?” Lucille asked.

“Maybe we need to hire a security guard.”

“We can’t keep this in our litter boxes,” Sebastian reminded them.

“Where do you suggest we keep it?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe a climate-controlled storage unit,” Walter said.

“Who’ll keep the key?” Lucille asked quickly.

Walter looked at everyone slowly and noticed their eyes flashing with distrust for each other. He realized that he too was having the same feelings toward them. Overnight this amount of money had changed the dynamics of their group.

“Okay, let’s all calm down and talk this through. What do you guys think we should do?” he asked.

“We should put it in the bank, in a safety-deposit box,” Sebastian said.

“Again, who gets the key?” Lucille quickly asked. “And I think it’s too much to put in a safety-deposit box. They say you can’t put cash in ’em, although I don’t know how they would know.”

“We could divide it four ways, and each person guards a fourth,” Bernard added.

Bailey had a calculator on her phone and quickly did the math. “That’s $308,219 each.”

“Is that what you guys want to do?” Walter asked, but nobody responded. “What’s happened to us? We’re acting like we don’t even trust each other anymore.” He continued, “Sebastian, do you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you.”

“It’s me he doesn’t trust,” Lucille said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Okay, stop it.” Walter sighed and stared at the cash. “We started off wanting to do good. Help people. Start something positive. We can’t let a windfall like this turn us against each other.”