Page 78 of Duke
I nudged Lola again. “You ever notice his southern accent comes and goes?”
Lola nodded. “Yeah, I have. I get the feeling he’s super smart, but he likes people to hear the drawl and underestimate him. Or maybe he just likes to mess with people? I don’t know.”
“Or maybe I’m just self-conscious about it and can’t ever quite get rid of it,” Puck said from ahead of. “By the way, I have excellent hearing.”
We reached the verge, then, where the hill leveled out a little. The mountainside angled off to our right and left, descending downward head of us. Puck plucked the cigar from his mouth and pointed with it: on our left and down the slope about a quarter of a mile, another hill rose up to form a nook where one mountainside met another, and tucked into that crevice was a tiny log cabin which looked every single minute of the hundred and fifty years Puck claimed it was. It was surrounded by trees, so that it was nearly invisible, and even after Puck pointed it out, I had a hard time keeping track of exactly where the little cabin was located. The age of the wood, the obscuring foliage, and the mountains rising up on either side all worked to create almost perfect camouflage.
We descended toward the cabin, Puck taking long, bouncing strides downward, the cooler swaying precariously on his shoulder, Lola and me not far behind. We reached the porch, which was just big enough to stand on, and accessible from the ground by a set of steps made from crumbling cinder blocks. The cabin itself looked snug enough, the logs thick and weathered, set closely together and sealed somehow. The roof had been re-shingled in the recent past, but the rest of the cabin, as in my initial estimation, looked exactly as old as it was. It didn’t even have a real doorknob, only the kind of lever you’d see inLittle House on the Prairie, or maybe old westerns. And, as Thresh had claimed, there was an actual outhouse. It was…well, I guess you’d call it a hut, just barely large enough to allow a grown man room to stand up in. It was down the hill a ways, and nestled against the side of the mountain.
Puck lifted the lever and kicked the door open with his toe, peering inside briefly before going in and setting the cooler down with a grunt. The interior, when I ducked in, was maybe a total of a hundred square feet, maximum. There was a fireplace on one wall, a wood-framed cot to left of that, a low table opposite the cot, sitting on a round, aged, hand-woven rug in the middle of the room. That was, quite literally, it. Well, except for a stack of milk cartons near the table, which contained some canned goods and bottles of liquor.
I stared at Puck. “A little rustic?”
He shrugged. “I come here to sleep on hunting trips, don’t need much else.”
“Is there even electricity?”
“Nope.” He waved his cigar in the direction of the outhouse. “There is a well pump down thataway, though.”
Lola just blinked, glancing around. “Well, for me, it won’t be much different than Dad’s place in the ’Glades. No water and different trees, but…the same basic lifestyle.”
I shot her a look. “The primitive kind?”
Lola shrugged. “Yeah, basically. My dad has lived off the land down in the deep Everglades since I was little girl, so I’m used to sleeping rough. This place has walls and a door, my dad’sfaledoesn’t.”
“FAH-lay?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“The Samoan word for our traditional home, which is a roof and some upright poles, and that’s it.”
The radio on Puck’s belt crackled. “Puck, you about ready for extract?”
Puck lifted the radio to his mouth. “Affirmative. Give me ten minutes.”
“Make it eight. Lear has updated intel.”
Puck hooked the radio back on his belt and exited the cabin, slapping the doorframe on the way out. “Well, lovely ladies, assuming all goes well, I’ll be seeing you in twenty-four hours or less.”
Lola and I had taken seats at the table—we waved goodbye, expecting him to leave.
Only he didn’t.
He just stood there, looking suddenly tense. “Now how the hell…?” he murmured.
“What is it?” I asked, not like the sudden tension in Puck’s shoulders.
Lola was closer to the doorway; she lifted up out of her chair and leaned to one side, peering around Puck’s shoulder, and then sank back into the chair, wiping her face with both hands. “Well fuck.”
“What? What is it?” There were no windows, so without looking out the door, I had no way of knowing what they’d seen.
Puck’s hand, resting on the doorframe, slid upward toward the lintel. Resting on a set of hooks over the door was a shotgun, but not a matte black tactical new one like Duke had used, but rather one of those with a wood-stock and a long metal barrel with a pump slide under the barrel. Probably used for hunting. Old, worn, but well-cared for, if I was any judge of such things, which I wasn’t.
“Oh,” I said, understanding what it meant when Puck reached for a gun.
Puck glanced at me. “See that box of shells on the table by your left hand?” he asked. “Hand ‘em to me.” I gave him the box of shells, and he dumped the entire contents into the cargo pocket of his pants.
“Get down, stay down, and stay put,” he ordered, his voice quiet, all trace of a drawl gone.
Lola and I both slid underneath the table and huddled together while Puck cracked open the shotgun, checked it, and slammed it closed again, but held it out of view of those beyond the door.