Distraction - Bruce Sterling [182]
Oscar arrived with impressive pinpoint accuracy—right onto the sloping roof of Fontenot’s wooden shack. He swiftly tumbled from the building, falling to earth with an ankle-cracking bang. The now brain-dead aircraft shuddered violently in the morning breeze, tossing Oscar like a bug.
Luckily Fontenot limped quickly from his shack, and helped Oscar subdue his machine. After much cursing and a finger-pinching struggle, they finally had Oscar unbuckled and freed. They managed to fold and spindle the aircraft down to the size of a large canoe.
“So it really is you,” Fontenot told him, puffing with exertion. He solemnly thumped Oscar’s padded shoulder. “Where’d you get that goofy helmet? You really look like hell.”
“Yeah. Have you seen my bodyguard? He was supposed to be here earlier.”
“Come on inside,” Fontenot said. Fontenot was not a man for metal trailer homes. His shack was an authentic wooden one, a broken-backed structure of cedar and board-and-batten, with gray wooden shingles on top, and spiderwebbed monster pilings beneath. The old shack had been dragged to the water’s edge, and reassembled on-site without much professional care. The door squealed and shuddered off its jamb as it opened. Inside, the crack-shot wooden floors dipped visibly.
Fontenot’s bare wooden parlor had rattan furniture, a large stout hammock, a tiny fuel-cell icebox, and an impressive wall-mounted arsenal of top-of-the-line fishing equipment. Fontenot’s fishing gear was chained to the shack’s back wall, and arranged with obsessive military neatness in locked plywood rifle cabinets. The nearest cabinet boasted a bright menagerie of artificial lures: battery-powered wrigglers, ultrasonic flashers, spinning spoons, pheromone-leaking jellyworms.
“Just a sec,” said Fontenot, thumping and squeaking into a cramped back room. Oscar had time to notice a well-thumbed Bible and an impressive litter of beer empties. Then Fontenot reappeared, hauling Kevin with one hand beneath his armpit. Kevin had been liberally bound and gagged with duct tape.
“You know this character?” Fontenot demanded.
“Yeah. That’s my new bodyguard.”
Fontenot dropped Kevin onto the rattan couch, which cracked loudly under his weight. “Look. I also know this kid. I knew his dad. Dad used to run systems for right-wing militia. Heavily armed white guys, with rigid stares and bad haircuts. If you’re hiring this Hamilton boy as security, you must have lost your mind.”
“I’m not exactly ‘hiring him,’ Jules. Technically speaking, he’s a federal employee. And he’s not just my own personal security. He’s the security for an entire federal installation.”
Fontenot reached into a pocket of his mud-stained overalls, producing a fisherman’s pocketknife. “I don’t even wanna know. I just don’t care! It’s not my problem anymore.” He sliced through the duct tape and peeled Kevin free, finally ripping the tape from his mouth with a single jerk. “Sorry, kid,” he muttered. “I guess I should have believed you.”
“No problem!” Kevin said gallantly, rubbing his gummy wrists and showing a great deal of eye-white. “Happens all the time!”
“I’m all outta practice at this,” Fontenot said. “It’s the quiet life out here, I’m out of touch. You boys want some breakfast?”
“Excellent idea,” Oscar said. A peaceful communal meal was just what they needed. Behind his pie-eating grin, Kevin was clearly measuring Fontenot for a lethal knife thrust to the kidneys.
“Some boudin,” Fontenot asserted, retreating to a meager gas-fired camp stove in the corner. “Some aigs and ershters.” Oscar watched Fontenot thoughtfully as the old man set about his cooking work, weary and chagrined. After