As I watched them, a tiny bell went off in the back of my brain, but it flickered and vanished as quickly as it had come. I shrugged it off and looked around. “You know, before we eat lunch, why don’t you show me where your fence got torn up?” If there was something nasty out here, I might be able to get some sort of energy trace on it and at least figure out whether it was a cow gone rogue, or something more sinister.
“Good idea. This way.” Jimbo led us past the jumble of fix-it projects sitting around the yard, to a field that spread out for a couple of acres. I inhaled sharply; his garden was more than a small patch of vegetables—it was huge, taking up the space of two city lots. Thick patches of zucchini and squash dotted the ground, and vine after vine of peas trailed up makeshift trellises.
When we came to the carrot patch, however, it looked like Bugs Bunny’s evil twin had come calling. The carrots were trampled, and a number of them had been uprooted and gnawed at, then dropped. A nearby corn patch had received similar treatment, the stalks bent and broken. I knelt down, looking at the footprints Jimbo had been talking about. Whatever had made them had been big, all right, and barefoot.
“Mur, what do you think?”
“Got a giant in the neighborhood? I’ve never seen prints that big, but they could be a hoax,” she said. “Lot of kids out here get bored during the summer.”
The raised beds had been torn apart. “Well, if it’s kids, it’s more than a prank.” I gauged the damage that had been done. “They really ripped up this section of the garden. But why did the culprit stop here and not rampage through the whole field?”
“Because I heard it, that’s why,” Jimbo said. “Roo was barking her head off so I came out with my shotgun. Thought it might be a coyote or a fox after the chickens. I told you five of my chickens went missing over the past few weeks. I saw something loping back into the woods, and it was moving fast. Big, running on two legs. Look at what it did to my fence.”
Though he’d already started mending it, the fence showed definite signs of damage. None of the wires had been cut, but instead had been bent, as if some large weight leaned against it until it was low enough to crawl over.
I looked for any sign of cloth or fur stuck to the wires but came up empty. Finally, I reached out to grab the fence where it had been mangled the most. As I touched the wire, a jolt raced through my fingers and I yanked my hand away. A thin red line rose where my palm had touched the barbed wire. “Damn it, why didn’t you tell me there’s juice running through this?”
Jimbo gave me a quizzical look. “What are you talking about?”
With Murray peeking over my shoulder, I showed him my hand. “This is what I’m talking about. The minute I touched the fence, I got shocked.”
“O’Brien, this fence ain’t electrified. I don’t have the bucks for that.” His eyes flashed and I thought I detected a hint of worry behind that gruff exterior.
Murray turned to examine the fence. “He’s right, no juice. Em, did you feel anything else?”
I closed my eyes, trying remember what had been running through my mind, but the only thing that stood out was the blinding flash of pain as it registered on my nerves. “No. I have no idea what happened, but I don’t like it. Okay, well, it’s obvious something came through here. I dunno what.”
“Bear maybe?” Murray said. “Bears are good for that sort of thing, when they aren’t trying to get in your car.” She gave me a snarky grin, as if I needed a reminder that a big ol’ bear had been cozying up to my late and lamented SUV.
Jimbo shook his head. “Bear would have gone sniffin’ around the garbage, not digging up carrots.”
“True enough,” Murray said. “What say we go get the groceries?”
We wandered back to the driveway and wrestled the food out of the Mountaineer. I looked over at Jimbo. “Where should I stow this stuff? Down in the clearing where the kids go swimming?”
“Yeah. Here, give me that.” He snagged the heaviest bags out of my arms, carrying them as if they were made of Styrofoam. Murray and I gathered up the rest of the supplies and set off behind him, with Roo hopping right alongside.
“You’re one heck of a doggie,” I said, stopping to pet her.
Jimbo glanced back at me. “Roo’s a keeper, all right. Found her out there on the road a couple years ago,” he said. “Some dumb-ass hit her with a truck and kept on going. I took her to the vet down the road and he amputated her leg. The bone was shattered, and he said it would be harder on her for him to try and fix it than to amputate it. She healed up just fine. I named her Roo ’cause she reminds me of a kangaroo.”
Yet another side of Jimbo that had only recently showed itself. He also had a couple of cats, Snidely and Whiplash; a couple of nanny goats, Billy and The Kid; and a huge pen of chickens. He only named the egg-layers though, never the ones culled for roasting.
As we entered the clearing, I saw that Jimbo had been doing some landscaping. The foliage had been cut away since the last time the kids and I were here. The shore was easily accessible now. The water was so shallow in this area that you could easily wade out till it hit your knees before the lake bottom dropped off suddenly, plunging to fifteen feet deep within a single step’s range. A couple of inner-tubes floated nearby, tied to a rickety walkway that led out to a rowboat. Canary grass, waist high, was sprinkled with thick stands of cattails and horsetail and skunk cabbage, whose brilliant yellow flowers filled the air with a fetid smell.
The day was shaping up to be hot—at least eighty degrees. I fished through the bags for sunscreen. “I’ll start looking around after lunch. I’d rather do it then, when I’ve eaten enough to ground my energy.”
Jimbo shrugged, looking a little disappointed. “Sure. Whatever works for you. If Scar’s dead, well . . . I guess he won’t be going anywhere. And if he’s not, then I’m back to square one.” He headed up the trail. “I’ll go check on the bird. It should be ready in a few minutes.”
As Jimbo disappeared toward the house, Murray and I spread out the blanket and arranged the food.
“Do you honestly think you’ll find anything?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Ten to one, no. My guess is that Scar took off, got freaked by the idea of fatherhood or something like that. He’ll probably turn up in a few days. I can tell that Jimbo’s a lot more worried about Scar than he lets on. But I have to say, it’s this mysterious intruder that confuses me. He’s right, whatever did it was big. And if it was a person, they’d have to be incredibly strong to bend that fence.”
The soft lapping of waves against the shore and the drone of buzzing insects lulled me into a drowsy state. I stretched out on the blanket, propping myself up on one elbow as I shaded my eyes. Across the lake, a scattered handful of homes dotted the shoreline.
“Those houses over there look expensive.”