The Clearing of Travis Coble

By Jonathan Janz

Myers climbed out of the Volkswagen and wiped a sweaty wrist across a sweatier brow. Stretching his arms he glanced at the car and grunted. The mountain path had painted the silver Rabbit white. He ran a finger over the hot metal to make sure his car was still there under the dust. Wiping the finger across the pocket of his gray trousers, he took a deep drag of the morning air and felt its dusty heat baking his lungs. A colleague in Chicago had told him that Tennessee was a bad place to be in July, and now Dick saw why. A gang of mosquitoes hovered across the road, protecting their turf. Why, he wondered, would anyone live in such a place?

Walking along the packed dirt road in his ill-chosen loafers, he tried to ignore the sizzling of the Rabbit’s weary engine. The Volkswagen had never broken down on him before, but he’d never driven it up a mountain either. The task before him loomed formidable, and the thought of getting stranded up here was enough to bring a chill, despite the suffocating heat. What if he ended up like one of the characters in Deliverance? People always talked about the guy who got raped, but really, none of the guys made out very well. If that was what a man had to go through to learn more about himself, to hell with it. Myers knew enough about himself already. He needed no harrowing battle with crazed hillbillies to achieve illumination. His problem was that he had already achieved it, and what had been illuminated would have been better off left in the dark. While most men in their late forties came to a crossroads, he found himself at a dead end. He knew his days at the university were numbered.

Jesus, it was hot. If it wasn’t a hundred degrees, it would be soon. How did people live in this environment? What good was the shade, Myers wondered, if all it did was stifle the breeze. The leather satchel already hung heavy on his shoulder.

Myers stopped at the edge of the road. There was no name on the mailbox, but he’d followed Coble’s directions carefully. This must be the place.

He thought again of the man he was about to interview. What was it about Travis Coble that had captured the public imagination? Abandoned by his parents at the age of sixteen, he’d taken care of his younger brothers for three years before they too disappeared.

And though he was only nineteen at the time of his brothers’ disappearance, Coble was savvy enough to frustrate the reporters covering the case. Calmly, sardonically, he’d returned their questions with questions, and only the quickest-witted of them were able to return fire. Perhaps it was this quality more than any other that had made the case such a sensation. When the trial became national news, like everyone else Dick Myers and his colleagues in Chicago took notice. Killer or not, the teenager from the Smoky Mountains was a fascinating case study.

The twentieth anniversary of the trial was coming up at the end of the summer and writing a paper about the man, a kind of retrospective reexamination of the case and its effects on Coble’s life, seemed like a hell of an idea back at the university. But during the drive through the mountains, Myers’s excitement had turned to trepidation. Now, when he needed it most, his well of enthusiasm was drying up. Here in the mountains, he felt naked and ill-prepared.

He stole another glance at the mailbox. He though about taking out the Dictaphone and recording his thoughts, but he pictured himself standing beside a deserted country road speaking into a tape recorder and felt absurd. What could he say about the mailbox anyway? Early-model metal letter receptacle. Once black, now faded non-color. Stanchioned by a splintering oak plank. Weeds and crabgrass surrounding it in standard haphazard formation.

He felt like a bargain-basement private eye. The white polyester shirt with light green stripes seemed like a good choice back at the bed-and-breakfast, but now it felt ridiculous. Who could take someone who wore such a shirt seriously? He was a teacher, not a researcher. Sure, as a psychology professor a certain amount of grunt work was expected of him, but going out in the field made him feel incompetent.

Sighing, he took in the scene before him.

The yard was overgrown and littered. A rusty fishing reel lay discarded on the ground. A metal card table, its thin legs jutting up out of the weeds, reminded Myers of a fly desiccating on a windowsill. Broken toys, bleached pale by time, were strewn about the grass: a whiffle-ball bat with a circumcised handle; a limbless Barbie doll, her blonde hair caked with soil.

Dangling from a diseased elm tree Myers saw a bald motorcycle tire on a frayed yellow rope. It twisted slowly in the shade despite the absence of a breeze. Myers moved through the weeds toward the house.

He frowned. There shouldn’t be toys here. Coble never had children.

It was possible that they were from Travis’s own childhood, but how then a Barbie doll? There had been three brothers and no sisters, though Myers supposed a neighbor girl could have left the doll at the house.

His curiosity aroused, Myers took out his Canon and snapped a couple shots. In the morning shadows, Barbie’s skin looked leprous.

He snapped a shot of the house. He’d seen it in the pictures at the library, but the building before him looked nothing like the images. The microfiche pictures revealed a small place, not untidy, but not meticulously cared for either. The house before which he now stood was a monstrosity. It had been added onto in both directions and was twice as long as Myers remembered. What was once a normal country home was now an eye sore. He marveled at how a person could live in such a place. A broken screen door hung useless from one rusty hinge. The windows were warped and misshapen, and while some of them were patched with cardboard, others stared blank and empty as gouged out eye sockets. The roof sagged in the center, its curving mouth leering at him.

He slapped at a mosquito drilling into his spine. Adjusting the leather satchel on his shoulder, he glanced doubtfully at the house. Would people outside of Mellish County still remember the case? It had been national news at the time, but now it seemed the world was too fixated by death on a grand scale to be shaken by a measly double-murder in the Tennessee backwoods.

To hell with it. He was here now, five hundred miles from the university. Publish or perish, went the saying.

He hated that saying. His value as an instructor was great, he knew, though he wondered if the new head of the psych department agreed. Bill Jackson’s comment seemed innocuous at the time, just a random remark as they visited their mailboxes at the office, but in the weeks since then, it had taken on sinister undertones in the theater of his memory.

Nice article in the New England Quarterly, Bill.

Oh, thank you, Myers.

It reminded me of my early research on trauma patients.

Thank you, Myers. Of course, your strongest work was your essay on rapists and remorse. How long ago was that, five years?

Three, Bill. Three years ago.

Of course.

Three years wasn’t that long, surely. But Jackson had built his reputation by churning out articles every three or four months, while Myers was content to rely on the effectiveness of his classroom instruction and the quality of his occasional published pieces. Many ways to skin a cat, Myers was fond of saying; there was room in the university for all kinds.

But what if Jackson didn’t feel the same way?

He frowned. There were whispers about him, he felt sure, amongst his colleagues, and he was up for review next spring. The thought of facing the board without a new piece in print made him sick in the pit of his stomach.

He had to go through with this. The article must be written and it must be good.

No. Not good.

Sensational.

A thought arose ugly enough to stop him in his tracks.

What if the article weren’t accepted? The university publishing houses favored the prolific. Myers made no secret of his disdain for direction the business was taking and word traveled fast in academia. What if they refused his article out of spite?

Or worse, what if Coble refused to cooperate? He hadn’t granted an interview in years so what if his agreement to meet with Myers was only a mean-spirited joke? It certainly fit the mental profile Myers had constructed. Cunning. Mischievous.

But not stupid. No, that was the mistake the district attorney made during the trial. The court notes demonstrated that. Smug and over-confident, the Mellish County DA underestimated Travis Coble. The press bridled at the acquittal and the public’s need for a scapegoat cost the once-promising DA his job.

Myers started toward the front door, but thought better of it. The building needed to be razed. He’d check the back yard before knocking.

He gave the house a wide berth as he made his way around. It was silly, but a childlike fear was growing in him that Coble might leap out of a window just to scare the shit out of him.

Reaching the back of the house, he waded into a sea of weeds in the back yard and surveyed the grounds. Here and there were scattered elm and maple trees. Each one stood solitary, sequestered from the others, yet together, their spreading branches and leaves threw most of the yard into shadow. Of course, it was difficult to tell exactly where the yard ended and the woods began. Apparently, the property had never been cleared. The trees and tall grass went on for acres. Here and there jagged bolts of sunlight slashed through the shade. Intrigued by the effects of the light, he raised the camera and snapped a picture of the yard.

“Don’t you think you should ask before you use that thing?” said a low voice.

Myers jumped and glanced at the man sitting by the house. He’d no idea the man was there, camouflaged as he was by the shadows and the junk surrounding him. Nestled under an awning and surrounded by wooden barrels, he watched, his black eyes inscrutable.

Myers had worried that after so many years he’d be unable to recognize the man. But one look into those crocodile eyes and he knew that this was Travis Coble. 

“I hope I didn’t disturb you.” Myers said and looked for a hole to crawl into. “I hope you didn’t mind my taking a picture or two.” His words died in the air between them. Myers looked at the camera as if he’d been caught shoplifting.

The man went on as though Myers hadn’t spoken. “Downright rude to take pictures of another man’s property without permission.”

“Yes, well. I am sorry,” he said. Myers looked at the camera again and wondered if he should put it in his satchel as a gesture of good will.

The man watched him.

“Are you,” Myers stopped and took a hesitant step toward the man. “I mean, you are Travis Coble, aren’t you?”

“You the reporter?”

“I’m the man you spoke to on the phone. Professor Myers. Dick, you can call me if you’d like.”

“You sure you ain’t a reporter?”

Myers took another step in the man’s direction. This close to the object of his research, the thrill of a goal attained gripped him. He was afraid the man would disappear like a wisp of smoke. He imagined it was the way Margaret Meade must have felt when she saw her monkeys.

Dick Myers cleared his throat and turned on the charm. “No, Mr. Coble. You are Travis Coble, correct? No,” Myers smiled, “I am not a reporter, nor do I have any desire to sensationalize or capitalize on what happened to you.”

The man stared at Myers a moment longer, sizing him up. Then he nodded. “Come on over and have a seat then.”

“Thank you, Mr. Coble. I appreciate that very much.”

Myers approached and looked about him but saw only wooden barrels and a white plastic five gallon bucket. Coble sat in a duct-taped lawn chair that looked ready to collapse. Myers looked around wondering where it was the man meant him to sit. Thinking again of Deliverance, he prayed that Coble would not expect him to sit in his lap. Not for the first time that day, he reflected on his distance from home, his isolation.

“There doesn’t seem to be—”

In answer, Coble extended one steel-toed work boot and scooted the five gallon bucket in Myers’s direction.

“Oh. Well then.” He grimaced in the direction of the woods, unshouldered the leather satchel, and sat down on the plastic bucket.

Myers felt silly on the bucket and wondered if this humbling had been premeditated. It certainly fit the psychological profile. Sharper than the average rube. Fond of mind games.

He risked a glance at Coble.

With his protuberant forehead, stubbly beard, and deep-set black eyes, Travis Coble certainly looked capable of dark deeds. The black Jack Daniels shirt clinging to the thin, hardened shoulders was faded navy blue and chicken-pocked with holes.

Rooting around in his satchel, Myers asked, “Do you mind if I record our interview?”

“Would you mind if I minded?”

Myers stopped and looked up. Coble sat expressionless, his black eyes staring off into the woods.

The professor held up the Dictaphone. “If you don’t wish to be recorded, you need only say so.”

Coble’s triceps flexed. Myers waited.

“Guess it’s okay.”

Check, Myers thought. The article would be better for it. He’d never been good at shorthand and trying to write everything down would have distracted him from asking the right questions. Something told him he’d need all the focus he could summon to stay ahead of Travis Coble. Twenty years ago, overconfidence had been the district attorney’s mistake; Myers didn’t intend to repeat it.

Still, he could see how it could have happened. Sitting there on his broken lawn chair, the man didn’t look like much. His wardrobe was right out of the lost-and-found, and that forehead made him look like something from the left end of the evolutionary chart.

Of course, Myers reminded himself, his own purpose was quite different than that of the deposed district attorney. Instead of seeking a conviction, the professor sought the truth. He hoped Coble would come to appreciate that.

After the acquittal, the man had become a recluse. A latter-day Lizzy Borden. Like many tried in the court of public opinion, Coble was branded guilty and bore the stigma to this day. The woman at the bed and breakfast, the people at the public library, even the old men he’d solicited at the local diner; they’d all donned veiled expressions when he brought up Travis Coble and his missing brothers. It didn’t matter to them that he was a professor in town to write a scholarly article instead of some ghoul out to make himself rich off of the town’s skeletons. The subject was taboo.

Myers clicked the Record button and set the Dictaphone on the concrete between them.

Why, Dick asked himself, was he so nervous? Coble was innocent so there was no real danger in talking to him. Yet it was only with an effort that he kept his hands from trembling as he grasped his pen and paper.

Bill Jackson, no doubt, would be able to cut right to the heart of Dick’s tension. The arrogant prick was a self-proclaimed expert on everything. Jackson could write a paper on any topic, regardless of its insignificance. And the most troubling part of it was that the university funded him for every project he proposed, no matter how irrelevant. Jackson could request twenty grand for a study of the mating rituals of one-eyed sparrows and they’d eagerly cut him a check. Myers, on the other hand, had to go through reams of paperwork just to get his gas money reimbursed.

But all that would change upon publication of the article. For twenty years no one had thought to follow up on this mysterious figure. Myers would not only capture the man’s anguish at being ostracized for a crime he didn’t commit: he was going to clear Travis Coble once and for all. After the dust settled, Myers just might have Bill Jackson’s job.

Grinning, he began.

“I guess the first thing that I should do is get your full name, age and occupation.”

Coble stared down at the Dictaphone and spoke to it as though he were speaking into a television camera, “Travis Burton Coble. Thirty-nine years old. I work at Beatty’s.”

“And what sort of place is that?”

“Slaughterhouse.”

Myers fought to conceal his pleasure and tried to think of a polite way to frame the question. “Isn’t it...”

“Funny that I work in a slaughterhouse?” Myers couldn’t tell whether it was anger or amusement in Coble’s voice.

“Well, yes, I suppose.”

“Yeah, some of the guys down at Beatty’s ride me about it from time to time, but it’s all in good fun.”

“So, what made you apply for work at such a place? Was it because of the irony of it?” When Coble continued to stare at him, he went on, “By irony, I just mean tha—”

“I know what you meant.”

“Oh.”

“Next question.”

Rattled, Myers pulled his steno pad from the satchel.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to the night of your parents’ disappearance.”

Coble tilted his chin and studied the tree limbs veining the sky. “I applied at Beatty’s because I’ve always liked the smell of blood.”

Myers tried to calm his beating heart. He scribbled a few words in his notebook so he wouldn’t have to meet Coble’s black-eyed stare.          

“What’re you writing?”

“I just wrote, ‘Likes to change the subject.’”

“You’re the one who changed the subject, Professor. I’m just answering your questions.” 

“That’s a good point, Mr. Coble. Do you mind if I call you Travis?”

“If it makes you happy, Doc.”

Myers smiled and looked at his steno pad.

“Travis, I’d like to know if you and your brothers had any forewarning that your parents were about to leave you.”

“Mama and Daddy were sorta unpredictable.”

“Yes, that’s what the papers said. But what I’m curious about is whether or not you and B.J. and Ike had any idea that they would actually abandon the three of you. I mean, immaturity is one thing. Leaving one’s children—the youngest only eight years old—deep in the mountain woods to fend for themselves is quite another.”

“The two aren’t as far apart as you’re making them out to be.”

“How do you mean?”

Coble reached over and picked up a package of Red Man chewing tobacco. “They never provided for us boys in the first place. Oh, Daddy showed us how to shoot guns and trap, and Mama, she taught B.J. and me how to clean what we killed, but that was about the extent of their parenting. Most days and nights, they were out hiking.” Reaching into the pouch, Coble fished out a huge wad of black tobacco leaves and stuffed it into his cheek. Puffed out that way, the black stubble of his beard reminded Myers of a bloated tick.

“That’s rather unfortunate.”

Coble stopped chewing and stared at Myers. “What’s so unfortunate about it?”

“It’s just sad that boys as young as yourselves were forced to grow up so quickly, that’s all. You should have had time to be boys. And your father,” Myers shook his head ruefully. “A man should provide for his family.”

“This place ain’t like Chicago, Professor.”

“Yes. Well, going on. I’m going to assume that you knew nothing of their impending exodus.” He paused, but Coble remained silent. “And since you were caught unaware by their sudden departure, you must have had difficult time making the adjustment.”

“Wrong again, Professor.”

Myers didn’t like Coble’s teasing but it wouldn’t do to let on that it bothered him.

“Well, you know the situation better than I do. It just seems hard to believe that three boys—the oldest sixteen and the youngest eight—could take their parents’ leaving so casually.” He drummed on the note pad. “It just seems unlikely.”

“No one said you had to believe it.”

“I’m not saying that I don’t believe you, I’m—”

“Then tell me what you’re saying.” Coble’s eyes flashed. His flinty stare frightened Myers. The state’s allegations raced through his mind. What if they were true? What if this man were a cold-blooded killer?

With an effort, he kept his poise.

“I apologize, Travis. Whenever a psychologist is interviewing a subject, he brings with him his own set of prejudices, no matter how zealously he works to divest himself of them. I’m simply expecting out of you the same trauma that I would have felt had my parents abandoned me. But alas, the situations are completely dissimilar.”

“No shit, Doc.”

“Exactly. I apologize. So, where were we? Oh yes, your parents left you three to fend for yourselves. You didn’t call any relatives for help?” As he spoke, sweat trickled into one of his eyes. He rubbed it out with the heel of one sweaty hand. Christ, he was uncomfortable. 

“Didn’t have many relatives,” Coble said. “The ones we did have already had mouths to feed.”

“Yes, but wasn’t there an uncle...” Myers riffled through his steno pad, although he knew the name well. “Yes, here it is. Carl Lee Coble. Your father’s brother. He played an important role in your trial, didn’t he?”

“He tried to.”

“Yes. I don’t suppose you two are close friends these days.”

“You suppose right.”

“While we’re on the subject, do you know where I could get ahold of your Uncle Carl? He seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. The people at the County Recorder’s Office said he and his wife left town without telling a soul. Their car and most of their valuables were just gone one day, along with Carl and Elva Coble. And their children. No one has heard from them since.”

Coble leaned forward and spat a stream of brown juice; it landed an inch from the Dictaphone.

Myers stared down at the black pool of spit. “I take that to mean you don’t know where they are.”

Coble didn’t answer. Instead, he extracted a tobacco stem that had gotten wedged between his teeth. He contemplated the spit-covered stem for a moment before stuffing it back in his mouth.

Myers smiled pleasantly and asked, “What do you think happened to your brothers? Three years after your parents left, they went missing too. Hence, the murder trial that made you famous.”

“My brothers will come back.”

“Travis,” the Professor leaned forward. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but don’t you think they would have come back by now if they were indeed coming back?” He hesitated and then plunged in, “Do you have any reason to believe B.J. and Ike are still alive?”

Coble tensed and Myers could see his jaw flexing. He considered changing the subject but decided against it. If he was going to write an article about this man, it had better be a good one. His professional life might depend on it. If he could rattle Travis Coble, the piece would be better for it.

Coble turned and spat a thick stream of tobacco juice. It splattered on a nearby barrel and crawled down its wooden length.

“Are you trying to be like that D.A., Professor? If you are, you can get the hell off my land.”

Myers felt vindicated. He had gotten the rise out of Travis he’d been after. Now be careful, he reminded himself. The trial transcript showed that when Coble got himself into these childish moods he either revealed the most or became the most evasive. It all depended on how he was handled.

“I’m sorry, Travis. I didn’t mean to imply that you were guilty of the crime of which you were accused. If a judge and jury found you innocent, then I’ve no reason to believe otherwise.”

“Watch yourself, Doc.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do, Doc.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion, Travis. But let’s not let this bog us down. Let’s go on, shall we?”

“I ain’t as stupid as you think, Professor. Don’t fuckin’ kid-talk me.”

Myers swallowed. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Travis. Honestly, I believe you to be quite intelligent.”

“Intelligent enough to beat a double-murder rap?”

“I never said you were guilty.”

“You never had to.”

“Mr. Coble, when I contacted you about this interview, I told you I was studying the manner in which an individual is treated by his community after he is found innocent. There’s a social and psychological precedent for this sort of thing. Lizzy Borden, for instance. She was acquitted, yet she lived out her life a pariah. You’ve experienced the same treatment, and I want examine how that affects a person.”

The black eyes studied him.

“That’s what you said alright.”

“And it’s what I meant, Travis. You were found innocent of wrongdoing by a jury of your peers, and that’s enough for me.” Heartened by his own argument, he went on with greater authority. “But it wasn’t enough for the people around here, was it?”

Coble smiled a little smile and nodded. “That’s right.”

“So that’s what this is all about. The jury found you innocent. I believe you’re innocent. But some people in town still look at you as the young man who got away with murder.” He watched closely to see if he’d penetrated Coble’s defenses. “Others, like your Uncle Carl, for instance, think you killed more than just your brothers, don’t they?”

“Could be.”

“Fine. Let’s cut to the chase, then.” He referred back to his notes to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He noticed one question that needed to be asked before he went on.

“You and your brothers lived out here alone for three years, correct?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So at the time they disappeared, B.J. and Ike were only...” Myers checked his notes, “...sixteen and eleven?”

“That’s about right.”

“Did they give you any indication that they too would be abandoning you?”

About to spit again, Coble stopped. “You pushing my buttons, Doc?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Myers noted with alarm that Coble was squeezing the arms of the lawn chair. The tendons of his hands rippled and writhed like snakes under a blanket.

“I’m not pushing anything, Mr. Coble. I’m simply trying to establish a pattern.” He leaned forward and spoke in his most compelling lecture hall voice, “It might be hard for the people around here to accept, but to be honest, it all makes perfect sense to me. Your parents had you when they were very young. Your mother would have just been starting high school had she actually gone to school. They were ill-suited for the job of rearing children. They wanted to escape and start a new life, and the only way to do that without financial and legal entanglements was to run away and never come back. Did it ever occur to you that the reason why they taught you to hunt and clean your own food was so you’d be able to survive after they left you?”

“You talk a lot but you don’t say much, Doc. They pay you at that college to ask stupid questions?”      

Myers shifted uneasily on his bucket. Why didn’t Coble give him something more comfortable to sit on? The bucket’s sharp circular edge was slicing his rump like a scythe.

“Look, I didn’t say this to you on the phone, Travis. I was afraid you’d refuse to talk to me. I was afraid you’d be hesitant to dredge up all the old talk about your brothers. But,” Myers took a breath, “my purpose for coming here to see you is two-fold.”

“So you’re a liar.” Coble’s said, his voice drenched in acid.

“No, Travis. I’m not a liar. I told you the truth about my purpose for coming here. The study of ‘innocent guilt,’ or the guilt that many innocent people experience after being acquitted, sometimes because of the suspicion projected onto them from their neighbors, but even more often owing to some deep-seated desire that was fulfilled by the crime of which they were not guilty, and the self-loathing they subsequently experience due to that satisfaction, is of great interest to the psychiatric community. Not only do I want to clear your name in the court of public opinion. I want to know the truth.”

He leaned forward to drive home the point. “Travis, I want you to help me solve these murders.”

Coble’s slitted eyes told him he’d missed his mark.

“You’re full of shit, Professor.”

“Books,” Myers went on without acknowledging the insult, “have been written about the subject. Take the Borden case, for instance. She, like you, was accused of a double-murder. She, like you, was acquitted. But no one solved the murders of her parents.”

“I didn’t kill my parents,” Coble said.

“Nor did you kill your brothers.”

“I never used no axe.”

Myers felt the hair on his hands tingle. He’s bluffing, Dick told himself. He’s trying to frighten you off course.

“No, of course not,” he went on, trying to regain his equilibrium. “Since there were no murders, at least by you—”

“What do you mean, ‘at least by me’?"

“I’ll get to that in a moment.”

Coble’s eyes narrowed.

“Since you were innocent of any crime, and since there were no bodies found—which, incidentally, is the crucial variation between your story and that of Lizzie Borden, and also, I might add, the reason why you are, to a certain degree, accepted by the townspeople, or at least, from what you say, at Beatty’s Slaughterhouse—while Lizzie Borden, on the other hand, was completely shunned. But as I was saying, since there were no bodies found, there is every reason to assume that you had nothing whatever to do with the deaths of your two brothers. And you’re right,” Myers went on before Coble was able to speak, “there is no reason at all to favor the murder theory over the theory that the two boys simply skipped town. Unless,” he raised a finger to signal his point, “unless one factors in the rancor of your Uncle Carl.”

“I’ve already thought about all this,” Coble muttered.

“I’m sure you have, Travis. And I’m sure you’ve come to the same conclusion I have.” He scooted his bucket forward, taking care to avoid the puddles of spit. “You know as well as I do that your Uncle Carl left town with his family a couple of months after you were acquitted. Why? He might have feared an altercation, but I doubt it. Putting it bluntly, Travis, your uncle was a horse of a man, more like your brothers. And you, well, you’re a well-built man, but Carl, as large as he was, had nothing to fear from you physically. And your brothers were gone. So why would he leave town without a forwarding address?”

“You tell me. You’re the one with all the answers.” Travis folded his arms like a little boy made to sit in the corner.

“But you know the answer, Travis.” Myers smiled. “Carl knew that suspicion would eventually fall on him. What’s the old saying, ‘Beware the accuser, for he is usually accusing himself’?”            “I wondered, when I read the court transcripts, why it was that Carl argued so vociferously for your conviction. You were, after all, the only nephew he had left. He should have loved you. He should have been the one person to speak in your defense. But he didn’t.”

Myers inched closer to Coble. “Perhaps the reason for the heat of his accusations. His...” Myers searched for the word, “...his vitriol was due to the fact that you were the only thing standing between the townspeople and the truth. You were his shield.”

“Or maybe he was just angry at me for killing his brother.”

Myers nodded, conceding the point, “Granted. But like you said, you didn’t kill your parents, and you didn’t kill your brothers. And now,” Myers lowered his voice, hoping he would convey the right mixture of sincerity and sympathy, “you have to live up here in the mountains by yourself. Like Constance Blackwood in the Shirley Jackson novel, you are shunned, a curiosity. You can’t tell me that the accusations aren’t the reason for your continued celibacy, Mr. Coble.”

“I do alright,” Coble muttered.

The professor suppressed a grin. He had succeeded. He had cowed the intractable Travis Coble. He had come out victorious where, twenty years earlier, the district attorney had failed.

“Ah, you may have the occasional lover, Travis. That’s to be expected. You’re a handsome man. But do you have a wife? Do you have children?”

“Do you?”

“I...”

“Do you have a wife, Doc?”

“I don’t think that’s relevant.”

“Maybe you’re not relevant.”

Myers opened his mouth but Travis cut him off, “You sit there with your fancy recorder and think you know everything there is to know about me. To you, I’m a dumb hick. Hell, you probably think I did kill my brothers and my parents. How do I know that Carl didn’t send you? You’re so goddamned interested in bringing him up over and over, what if you’re not a professor at all? What if you’re an investigator here to feel me out to see whether or not it’s okay for him to come back around?”

Myers’s mouth hung open.

“Don’t have nothing to say?” Coble laughed, an ugly, mirthless sound. “Which one of us is worse, the one who still gets laid even though ‘Half the town,’ as you put it, believes I killed my family, or the one who has a position and a title but still can’t get it up?”  

“I can assure you that—”

“Then why no ring?” Coble spat a gob of tobacco between his steel-toed boots and laughed. “Or are you the dirty old teacher that goes around chasin’ girls around the desks? Or maybe you prefer the boys, Doc.”

“Don’t call me Doc.”

Coble laughed and slapped his knee. “Hit a nerve with that one, did I?”

“You most certainly did not, Mr. Coble, you—”

“‘Most certainly did not, Mr. Coble,’” Travis mimicked. He rocked back in his lawn chair and crowed.

“Stop that.”

Coble continued to laugh, a brown stream of tobacco juice running down his cheek.

“Stop impersonating me,” Myers barked.

“Likes the boys, does he!”

“Damn you, Coble.” Myers stood up, fuming. The crafty little wretch had gotten the better of him. He had to regain control.

Travis stamped the concrete and hugged himself gleefully. Myers ran a hand through his hair and straightened his belt. He walked to the edge of the porch and stared out at the woods.

“Yes. Laugh all you want, Travis. Get it out of your system.”  Myers nodded. “I understand how lonely a man might get living way out here in the middle of the damn woods. You know, Travis, I’d get nasty too if I were in your shoes. Women afraid of me. Men distrustful of me. I guess I’d want to lash out too.”

Coble giggled and wiped a tear from his eye. “Aw, Doc, don’t take it so hard. It is kinda like you said. I don’t know why I said those things to you.”

He glanced at Coble over his shoulder. The man’s voice was contrite, but the grin still tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“I do like women, you know,” Myers said.

Coble spat and smiled.

“Hell, Doc. I know that. I was just messin’ with you.”

Myers nodded. “Okay, Travis. Fine. Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, I’d like to get to the real purpose of my visit.”

“And what’s that?” Coble asked, still giggling.

“I’d like for you to tell me how it really feels to be an outcast. To be a misfit.” Myers circled back to his plastic bucket but didn’t sit. “To be hated. Reviled. But not for any valid reason. Not for anything you actually did, but for something you didn’t do. Travis,” he sat on the bucket and favored Coble with his most benevolent smile, “I’d like to bring you back into the world of the living.”

Coble shifted in his chair but made no reply.

“Most psychologists want to know about the feelings and thoughts that their subjects experience. And to a certain extent, I am interested in what you’re thinking and feeling. But for a different reason. I believe that you afford a person in my position a unique opportunity, Travis. Did I tell you that I once wanted to be a detective?”

“Uh-uh.”

“I did. I did, Travis. But eventually I became convinced that the life of a detective wasn’t for me. Not enough money. Bad hours. And to be honest with you, I didn’t think I’d be any good at it. On every detective show, there’s a hint that gives away the killer’s identity.”

Coble watched him, interested.

Myers went on, “Well, I’d notice little clues here and there, many times before the detectives themselves would see them.”

Looking out at the forest, he crossed his legs and sighed.

“But I could never see the ending coming. I never knew how things would turn out.”

He glanced at Coble.

“Don’t you see? I could find the clues. Separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. But I could never put them together in the right way. I’d decide who the killer was and how he did it but I was never correct. Then, when I saw how things fit together at hour’s end, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t see it before.”

Coble eyed him steadily. Myers held his gaze a moment longer and went on.

“I think I know what happened to your brothers, Travis.”

Coble sat silent.

“I believe your Uncle Carl killed them.”

Uncrossing his legs, Myers rested his palms on his knees.

“That’s right, Travis. I believe your Uncle Carl killed your brothers because one of your brothers did something he shouldn’t have.” He paused to choose his words carefully. “Tell me about your youngest brother, Mr. Coble.”

Coble looked away. “Don’t wanna talk about Ike right now.”

“But don’t you see, Travis? It fits together perfectly. I don’t think it would be unfair to say that Ike was what one would call ‘slow.’”

Travis’s black eyes narrowed, but Myers forced himself to stare back. He went on slowly, “Ike was only eleven at the time. He probably spent a lot of time playing in the woods. Your uncle and his family lived on the other side of the mountain. In a house not much different than yours.”

Myers softened his tone.

“Carl had two daughters, didn’t he?”

“Uh-huh. Sadie and Kate.”

“And they were a little older than Ike, weren’t they?”

Travis nodded.

“Two girls in their early or middle teens would have been quite a temptation for a boy like Ike. Especially when one takes his…condition into account.”

Shifting on his bucket, Myers continued. “Ike wasn’t strong mentally, but his physical strength was extraordinary. He wouldn’t have understood how to express his desire for his female cousins, so he tried to take one of them by brute force. Maybe your Uncle Carl came upon them while it was happening. Maybe he saw his daughter lying on the ground bleeding. Whatever the case might have been, he became enraged. This house and your Uncle Carl’s are on the same mountain, but they’re separated by miles of trees. It would have been easy for a man in his state—furious and seeking revenge—to track down and kill Ike. Your little brother was powerfully-built, Travis, but he was only eleven.”

The wad of tobacco grew still in Travis’s mouth. Coble betrayed no sign of emotion or of even having heard the professor’s theory, but Myers was certain that Travis was thinking hard.

“As for B.J., there could be any number of ways in which he could have gotten involved in the incident. Perhaps he was hunting in the woods when Ike and Carl ran by. It could be that Ike had already been shot to death, and B.J. found his body. He would have been so overcome with wrath that he might not have thought to come back to the house to get you. So he embarked on a mission of vengeance.”

Myers let his voice go flat. “But Carl killed him, too.”

“It’s also possible that your two brothers were together when Carl found them. They might have been with both of their female cousins. The sex might have been consensual, which wouldn’t have mattered to Carl. Seeing his daughters coupling with their first cousins, especially when one of boys was mentally challenged, was too much to bear. Maybe there was only one of the girls but both of your brothers were there. Maybe the sex wasn’t consensual.” 

Travis only smiled and stared out at the woods. His grin said that Myers was all washed up. That he’d been chasing his own tail.

Myers scowled, furious. He couldn’t stand to be patronized by this tobacco-spitting hilljack.

“Might I ask what’s so funny?”

“Nothing, Doc.” Travis’s grin flared brighter. “Only that you’re still full of shit.”

“Fine, Travis. Explain to me where I went wrong.”

“Sure enough.” With one grimy index finger Coble scooped out the ball of tobacco and flung it into the yard. Pinching himself a fresh wad of Red Man, he settled into his lawn chair and began.

“It’s really good of you to come all the way here to study me and try an’ clear my name, but your theory about Ike and our cousins don’t hold no water. First of all, both of Sadie and Kate where there for the takin’ whenever anybody wanted ‘em. Weren’t known for playin’ hard to get, those two.”

Coble’s voice had risen in pitch and grown more jocular. Myers knew that Travis was playing a part now. He’d done the same thing at the trial. When he spoke this way, he was hiding something. Behind the country twang lurked something dark and manipulative. Myers hoped the Dictaphone wouldn’t run out of tape. He’d want to go back through it all later. In fact, his room at the bed-and-breakfast sounded very good to him now. The conditions up here in the mountains were unbearable.

“Heck, I even took a piece every now and then myself. I expect that Daddy did too.” Coble giggled, a high, ugly sound. “So there goes your rape fantasy, Doc. Can’t rape the willing, I always say.”

“Okay, Travis. They weren’t raped. That doesn’t alter the rest of what I said.”

“Rest was bullshit too.” He paused to glance at Myers out of the corners of his eyes. “Except for one thing.”

“And what was that?”

“I’m thinkin’ Ike maybe was snoopin’ round Carl’s house, and I’m thinkin’ maybe he did find sumpin’ he wasn’t s’posed to find.” Travis stopped, his lips parted slightly; inside the crafty mouth Myers could see the wad of tobacco bobbing like some larval insect struggling to break free of its cocoon.

“Well? What did he find?”

Coble shook his head and laughed. “You ain’t as smart as you think.”

“That’s entirely possible.” Myers smiled good-naturedly. He refused to play the fool again.

He frowned, shifting in the heat. A green-bottle fly lit on his arm to drink from the beads of sweat pooling there. The mosquitoes had found him, as well. They buzzed about his ears in the thin mountain air.

Travis said, “Maybe you got it backwards.”

Myers waited. He couldn’t endure the heat much longer. It took all his effort to sustain his smile.

“Maybe,” Travis said, “it was Carl doing the snooping. Maybe he found something that made him mad or maybe even scared.”

Myers’s smile faded.

“Could be Uncle Carl found out what happened to his brother and his sister-in-law, but before he could do something about it, some other body did something about it.”

Myers loosened his collar. It had to be a hundred degrees. He checked his watch. Christ, it wasn’t even noon yet. Paper or no paper, he needed something to drink fast. The heat was making him lightheaded. Mosquitoes tickled at his ears.

“Something wrong, Doc?”

Coble’s unctuous voice was maddening. He had to leave before he said something he’d regret. He couldn’t jeopardize the paper.

“Look Travis,” he said. “I haven’t been well over the past few weeks. I’ve had a cold.” He faked a cough. “I suggest we continue this conversation tomorrow. How about the restaurant I passed as I was leaving town?”

“The White Giant?”

Myers stood and leaned against a barrel to steady himself.

“I don’t know. I forget the name of the place,” he muttered.

Coble hadn’t risen. “Whatever you say, Professor.”

Myers cleared his throat. “Good. Noon tomorrow, we’ll say. Will you meet me there at noon?”

“Course.” Travis grinned amiably.

“Good. Well, it’s time I should be going.” Without shaking hands he turned to go. He was afraid he’d vomit before he reached the Volkswagen.

Walking briskly around the side of the house, Myers noted the way the shadows in the yard had diminished, the way the patches of sun had reformed and spread. Keeping his eyes on the ground ahead of him, he concentrated on controlling his gorge and moving forward. He sensed movement behind him. Was Travis following him?

No matter. He’d be on his way soon enough. Maybe he already had had enough for his paper. He’d need to go over the tape later.

Myers stopped, frowning. He patted his hip pocket. Swinging his satchel off his shoulder, he knelt and scrambled through its contents.

He’d left the Dictaphone on the porch.

Turning, he saw Coble ten feet away holding the recorder out to him. He took a step in that direction and stopped. Something was wrong. Turning back to the road, he realized what it was.

The Volkswagen was gone.

Myers stood, mouth agape, and stared at where his car had been. Coble hadn’t left his sight. The car couldn’t have been taken because there was no one out here to steal it.

His gaze shifted to the mailbox. He heard the Dictaphone click on. Coble approached.

“Somethin’ you want to ask me, Professor?”

Nodding, Myers reached out and caressed the mailbox’s dull surface. Myers’s eyes were glazed, distant.

Coble spoke softly. “Think, Doc. Put the pieces together.”

Myers found that his mouth had gone dry.

“Whose house is this, Travis?”

Coble was also looking at the mailbox. Myers could see, under the years of dust and fading, where a name had been painted on the metal and later scratched out. In the blazing noon light, he thought he could make out one of the letters of the scratched-out name.

“This isn’t the house I saw at the library. Is it Travis?”

“I suspect not.” Coble watched him hungrily. “Looks sort of the same, though, don’t it.”

Myers forced himself to look away from the mailbox, from the letters that might have spelled Carl Coble.

His nostrils caught the scent of rotten meat. His eyes whirled and spun through the weedy yard. He was dizzy with sweat and the meat smell, and he knew he should be looking for something but he couldn’t remember what it was.

Then his eyes paused on the Barbie doll. The holes where its arms and legs should have been reeked of fly-blown meat.

“How did you kill them, Travis?”

Coble’s eyes also watched the dismembered doll.

“Pretty, ain’t she.”

Myers’s eyes fluttered. He took a step backward to brace himself.

“How did you kill your Uncle Carl?”

Myers saw Coble’s arm go up and pain exploded in his neck.

The professor landed on his stomach, his mouth opening and closing like a dying carp. He felt Travis’s work boot wriggle under his shoulder and he could smell the old leather as it lifted him and rolled him over onto his back. The smells of cooked blood and rotten meat grew overpowering and Myers started to gag and try as he might to cover his nose with his arms they only lay limp and useless at his sides.

Through his blurred eyes and the stink he could see three faces staring down at him and all three faces were different. There was Travis and there was a bigger, younger Travis, and opposite them was a drooling hulk of a man, his head and face pockmarked and tufted with red hair. The bigger Travis balled his hand into a fist.

Darkness fell.

He felt the ground biting his back and the sun searing his eyelids.

“Where am I?” Myers asked.

Travis grabbed him by the armpits and raised him to a sitting position. Blinded by the midday sun, Myers realized his hands and feet were bound. Panicking, he struggled to free himself, but the rope only bit his flesh harder. He stopped and stared at his wrists and ankles.  They’d ripped his shirt in half and used the pieces to bind him. He twisted and writhed but his bonds wouldn’t loosen.

Out of breath, he paused and stared out at the forest. He was in the center of a wide ring of trees. The searing heat turned everything white. Here and there, little steel rods poked out from the black earth and sparkled in the sunlight.

“What are you doing to me?”

“I’m giving you your exclusive interview,” Coble said, and as he spoke he peered over the professor’s left shoulder. Snapping his head around, Myers saw two men watching him. One of them was a giant.

“Professor Myers, meet B.J. and Ike Coble.”

Something clicked. He peeled his eyes off Ike’s gigantic pale form and watched Travis speaking into the Dictaphone.

“Daddy’s death was an accident,” he began in his hillbilly voice. “Mama an’ Daddy loved bein’ ‘round one another. They were always wantin’ to be alone, and I expect there’s worse ways two people can be. They’d gone up climbing, and there’d been a rockslide. None of us saw it happen, but Ike, who was only eight then, happened to be playin’ nearby when the mountain came loose. Apparently, Daddy’s neck twisted around like an owl as he fell and Mama would have been dead too eventually if Ike hadn’t found her first.”

Myers turned again and watched Ike. The man, who would now be in his thirties, was at least six and a half feet tall and had to weigh over three hundred pounds. He stood there huge and godlike. His skin glared impossibly white in the fierce sun.

Myers could imagine the mentally retarded giant finding his mother and father amidst the rocks and the dirt, his father already dead, his mother overcome by pain and grief.

Travis continued. “Me and B.J., we were huntin’ for squirrel. Ike was gone all day, so when it got close to sundown, we started to worry about him. Daddy wasn’t around much, but when he was, he always told me an’ B.J. to watch Ike. We didn’t want to make Daddy mad, so we set off to find him. A couple hours later, when the sun was goin’ down, we did.”

Myers looked down and saw that his hands were turning blue. He tried to pull them apart, but the polyester only dug deeper into his flesh. He peered up at the tape recorder in Travis’s hands. Somehow, Coble stealing his Dictaphone was worse than not being able to feel his hands.

Travis held the recorder close to his lips. He stared down at it so that his mad black eyes were slightly crossed.

“When B.J. an’ me found the three of ‘em, Ike had already eaten Daddy’s face. Mama had a broken back, and what she’d seen her boy do had ruined what was left of her mind. She’d gone crazier than a shithouse rat.”

Myers turned away to escape the sound of Travis’s laughter, but what he saw made his stomach sink. Ike was unbuckling his belt.

Myers turned back to Travis. “Please take me back to town.”

“Naw, it’s easier to do it here,” Travis said. “Don’t have to worry so much about clean-up.”

Behind him, Myers heard a thump. It was Ike’s belt, which had fallen to the damp soil. The giant started unzipping his jeans.

“Well, we couldn’t have momma screaming like that, no matter how far away from town we were. It just wasn’t Christian. So B.J. here bust her head with a rock.”

Pleased to be included in the tale, B.J. gave the professor a little wink.

“Course we buried what was left of Mama and Daddy out here in the woods. Ground’s soft, so it was easy enough to dig a hole big enough for them. And the truck.”

Myers glanced back at the steel rods poking out of the ground and realized they were radio antennas. At the far end of the clearing he saw a fresh mound of dirt and beyond it a back-ho.

Myers’s voice was barely audible. “You had the hole dug before I got here.”

“Pretty good, Doc. Maybe you shoulda been a detective.”

“Let me go and I won’t tell a soul about you three,” Myers said, trying and failing to keep the panic out of his voice.

“Can’t chance that, Doc. But you gotta admit, we got a nice set-up out here. B.J. and Ike, they live over here at Carl’s old house. I bring home good money from Beatty’s so we never go hungry. When we do get the cravin’ we take a weekend to find us some real food. We bury what’s left of all we kill.”

Against his will Myers found himself gazing about the clearing. He’d counted nine antennas when his face crumpled and the tears started to flow.

“Stop,” he moaned. “Don’t tell me any more.”

“No, I figure you ought to hear the rest of it since you were nice enough to come all the way up here. Of course, they’ll look for you at my place, and I’ll tell them you never made it. Unless you were smart enough to give them the directions I gave you.”

Myers could only rock back and forth and weep.

Travis smiled. “That’s what I figured.”

“You can’t do this. They’ll come looking for me.”

“Who will? Your wife? Your kids? You think your college friends will give a shit about you turnin’ up missing? Hell, that’s just one less person to compete with. Anyways,” he said and gazed up at the trees, “this place is miles from my house. You’d given someone else the directions I gave you, I’d be worried. But like I said. You never told nobody where I told you to meet me. You only said you were going to Travis Coble’s. And that’s where they’ll look.”

“Don’t do this,” Myers whispered. “I came here to help you.”

“Naw, Doc. You came here to help you,” Travis said and cast a sidelong glance at his brothers. He smiled fondly at Ike. “This is a special day for us. We usually gotta go quite a ways to satisfy our cravings. We fire up my Ford and put the topper on her. Ike and B.J., they’re snug back there, but they don’t complain much. Mostly we go for families. Weird as it sounds, a missing family means less suspicion for a single man. Only time I got questioned was when we hunted too close to here and killed that hippie that was hikin’ by himself. Police figured, single guy, single killer. Plus, it was Mellish County so they came callin’ on me.”

Travis nodded sagely to Myers. “That’s the last time we killed a single man in our own county. ‘Til now, of course.”

Myers’s hopes rose. “So don’t do it. You’ve got the perfect situation here. Don’t ruin it. People know I was coming here. Even if they don’t know you lured me to the wrong house, they’ll know I came to this mountain. They’ll find me.”

“Sorry, Doc. Already promised Ike here he’d get himself a piece.”

Myers cast a frantic glance at Ike and tried to crawl away. B.J. ran over and gave him a kick in the small of the back. Myers grunted in agony. His kidneys felt as though they’d been harpooned. 

Travis resumed his tale.

“Me and my brothers lived out here for three years, and we was happy. Problem was, Uncle Carl believed I had somethin’ to do with mama and daddy’s deaths. Bastard never liked me. He’d come out here snoopin’ from time to time, but this here clearing is so deep in the woods that he never found anything.”

“Then Ike went crazy.”

Travis favored his youngest brother with a tender stare. “All he ever talked about was eatin’ more ‘pink.’ That’s what he called people. When he’d eaten the skin off of daddy’s face, he’d gotten a taste for the stuff. He drove me an’ B.J. nuts with it. Course, B.J. talked about pink, too, since he’d tried some of daddy after Ike got done.”

“I knew Ike would have to get him some more pink sooner or later, so we decided the best thing to do was for him and B.J. to go underground. They were to leave the county and stay gone for a while until no one asked about ‘em anymore. Then, they could come back and live in the woods and satisfy their cravings from time to time without any trouble.”

“Problem was, Carl called the damned cops on me.”

Travis stood and gripped the Dictaphone. “So that’s how I got to trial. Luckily, B.J. an’ Ike didn’t come back to our house until the trial ended, so it all worked out for us even if it was a pain in the ass. I knew they couldn’t convict me if they couldn’t find no bodies, and of course there weren’t no bodies to be found since my brothers were hidin’ out a couple of counties over.”

“I’d only been home for a couple of days before B.J. an’ Ike came back.” Travis’s eyes filled, and for a moment, Myers was sure the man was going to cry. “I can’t tell you how good it was to see them again. ‘Specially after hearin’ everybody talk about them like they was dead for so long.”

Travis laughed giddily. “You shoulda’ seen the look on B.J.’s face when I told him what’d gone on while he was out in the woods. He laughed fit to bust, but after he thought about things for an hour or so, he got mad at Carl for tryin’ to blacken the family name.”

“And Carl was a rotten bastard. He’d tell everyone who’d listen that I was a murderer. I got fed up with the son of a bitch saying things about me in town, so one night I called him and told him to come search my place himself if he didn’t believe I hadn’t killed my brothers. Sure enough, Carl was even dumber than that D.A.”

“When he showed up he acted like he was some detective. Like he’d find some sign of my brothers the police couldn’t find. Of course, there was no sign of B.J. or Ike because they were livin’ out in the woods. And he didn’t see the boys themselves because they were already over at Carl’s house. They’d waited outside his place for him to leave. he minute he left in his pick-up to come here, B.J. cut their power.”

“Then him and Ike went inside.”

Travis regarded his brothers fondly. “I didn’t know how well they’d get along at Carl’s house without me. Ike was huge even then, but like you said, Doc, he was only eleven or so. B.J. was strong, too, but he’s not much brighter than Ike. And there were four of them to deal with. Carl’s wife Elva and their three children, I mean.”

Ike’s jeans dropped to the soil. Myers looked at them in terror. The giant’s white legs were great hairless pillars.

“It wasn’t no trouble taking care of Carl. When he bent down to look in the crawlspace I cracked his skull with a hammer.” Coble bared his teeth. “And I gotta tell you Doc. It felt good. I wanted to butcher him on the spot, but I had to get back to Carl’s house and make sure that Ike and B.J. were alright.”

He regarded the professor proudly. “They were.”

“They’d already killed three of ‘em. Aunt Elva, her boy Lucius, and her youngest daughter Kate.” Travis grinned at the recollection. “Aunt Elva’s arm was chopped off at the elbow and shoved bloody end first up her female parts.”

“Please don’t do this,” Myers said, tears streaming over his face.

“Sadie,” Travis whispered into the Dictaphone, “the older of the two girls, was still alive though she was bleeding pretty good. I was glad of that. I got to have my fun too while Ike ate Aunt Elva’s tongue.”

The giant slid off his grungy underwear.

“Keep him away from me,” Myers begged.

“It’s alright, Doc. Ike just likes to play with his food first. You’re not as pretty as some of the others, but you’ll have to do.”

The drooling giant stood over Myers, one great paw slowly stroking his huge phallus.

“Oh God no,” Myers whimpered.

Travis leaned down, smiling.

“How does it feel, Doc? How does it feel to be innocent and condemned?” Coble’s grin became horrible. He shoved the Dictaphone into his back pocket.

“Don’t do this, Travis,” Myers pleaded.

As they rolled him over onto his stomach, he could hear Ike panting.

“Please,” he howled.

A great, sweaty hand tugged at the seat of his trousers. Myers screamed.

Travis chuckled. “You know how it is, Doc. A man’s got to provide for his family somehow.”

About the Author
Jonathan Janz is not the real author's name. His true identity will be revealed at a later date.

- Back to Fiction for the Month of January