By The River: Mule (2)

Simon stepped out of his blue Chevy crossover, the leather of his boots protesting as they crunched into the gravel. He did a slow, practiced pivot, his eyes scanning the wall of thick pines and the suffocating tangle of kudzu. Then, the sound hit him. It was the low rush of water. The river. It sounded like a growl.

At one point in his life, Simon had sworn that he was done with the sticks, done with the wild trees and rushing rivers. Yet here he was, standing in the middle of a God-forsaken green hell. A bluejay plummeted onto a nearby pine bough, letting out a sharp, mocking chirp. Simon stared it down, sure the damn bird was laughing at his misfortune.

He controlled his urge to give the happy bluejay the finger.

Phantom heat flared in his gut, right where the bullet had torn through him. Guarding Gareth should’ve been his last dance with this life. He rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen the knot of tension tightening at the base of his skull. His stomach did a slow, nauseous roll. Being here wasn’t just a bad idea. Yeah, being here felt like a haunting.

After being shot while guarding his client, Simon made the hard rule that he’d stay in the city where he belonged. Up to this very moment, he’d stuck to that.

Except...

Now, Simon stood in front of Cletus’s house.

As Simon began to walk toward the sizeable two-story barn-type structure, he considered that he was once more looking at the breathtaking scenes. The area of Grand River might be magnificent, but this view would always remind him of how he almost met his maker. Nothing would ever make him forget seeing his life flash before his eyes, and nothing on God’s green Earth would make him like this wild, untamed, unpredictable wilderness.

Tension made his stomach twist. This choice to be here was probably not wise, but he was here, so he might as well get it together. He took a steady breath.

“Sun’s already startin’ to dip, boy. Ya sure took yer sweet time,” Cletus called out, his voice as dry as corn husks. That wasn’t much of a greeting.

Simon’s eyes flipped from the gray clouds crowding the peaks to the older adult on the house’s porch. The older man emerged from his home and stood in the small area in front of his door.

Cletus spoke before Simon could climb the stairs up to the entrance. Next to the older man was a delicate-looking older woman. They rolled their luggage behind them. Then Cletus carried the suitcases down the three steps. The two older people headed toward Cletus’s truck with only a slight backward glance at him.

Simon followed the pair.

“Traffic on the interstate,” Simon said, though his eyes never stayed on Cletus. They flicked to the tree line, the shadows under the truck, the porch. Hypervigilance was a perpetual itch under his skin. There was nothing like having a bullet rip through the abdomen to make a man pay attention to every inch of his environment.

“Welp, yer here now, boy,” Cletus muttered, throwing the luggage into the back of his old pickup. The man didn’t say more. Instead, he whispered to his companion before he gently helped the lady get into the truck’s passenger seat. When the door was closed, Cletus waved Simon toward the back of the vehicle.

“I’m here, but I don’t know why.”

Trotting over to Cletus, Simon stood next to the taillights. Cletus scanned the messenger bag on his shoulder and the gun clipped to his hip before he sighed.

“I reckoned ya’d be a wonderin’ why I asked ya to come up to my vacation place.” Cletus drawled. He dug into the pocket of his faded overalls and produced a stick of gum, unwrapping it with slow, methodical movements before shoving it into his cheek.

“It must be important since you called in the life debt I owe you.”

At one point, a woman named Tammy shot Simon near here, and he had fallen off a bridge and into a freezing river. Simon would’ve died, but Cletus found him, warmed him, stopped the bleeding, and got him to a hospital before he crossed to the other side. If it weren’t for this strange old man standing before him, chewing gum, Simon would be six feet under.

Cletus pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen before he regarded Simon again.

“You said that you needed me. So here I am.” Simon glanced around. “In Grand River.”

When Cletus didn’t speak again, Simon pulled out his phone and checked the time. The clouds looked dark in the distance. He could smell the rain.

“Here ya are,” Cletus drawled as he pulled an envelope from the back pocket of his overalls. Taking the documents, Simon tapped the envelope on his palm. He had no idea why he'd just been given paperwork.

“What is this?”

“This is a little task fer me. If ya do this, we’ll be square.” Cletus paused when Simon didn’t open the flap on the packet. “Look, boy, I ain’t normally one to call in a favor.” Cletus’s eyes dropped to the documents in Simon’s hand. “But that there is a problem I’d like ya to take care of. I ain’t got time to do it me-self. I gotta help my girl, Ginger. Her sister is sick, ya get it?” Cletus glanced back at the truck with the older woman still waiting in the passenger seat. “I ain’t able to be in two places at once, and this here is a little concernin’ to her.”

“This is a job?” Simon asked, sliding the papers out. A pair of hard, somber eyes stared back at him from a grainy photo. The stranger in the photo had a jawline like a granite cliff and was close to Simon’s age with shoulder-length hair. He had to admit the man was handsome and rugged in a wild mountain-man kind of way. The papers provided Simon with basic information about the individual, such as height and weight. The guy owned two lumberyards near here. The home address was close to Grand River.

The guy in the photo looked like the kind of man who’d rather chew on a nail than ask for directions.

As Simon scanned the typed pages, he knew he would say yes to whatever task Cletus asked him to do. He might not like being out of the city, but he would do this for Cletus. A life debt wasn’t something he would ignore.

“That’s the long and short of it. Yer a bodyguard, ain’tcha? Or at least ya got the hardware fer it,” Cletus said, nodding at the gun on Simon’s hip. “I need ya to be a shadow fer that boy. Keep an eye on Mule. He’s got a head like a cinderblock and a temper to match.”

Simon didn’t groan out loud, but he grumbled in his head. There were so many things that were wrong with that sentence.

First off, technically, he wasn’t a bodyguard any longer. After he got out of the hospital, it took him a long time to heal, and he’d quit the guarding people gig.

Second, the man in the picture might be handsome, but he had a grim, stubborn set to his eyes and mouth. He looked like an obstinate, inflexible... well… mule. The man appeared to have a serious set of muscles as well. There was no way the guy even needed Simon to guard him.

And third, all this made it sound like he would have to stay in the area. If this were a job with money involved, Simon would’ve told Cletus that there wasn’t enough cash in the world to convince him to stay by the river. But since this was a life debt, he would stay and help Mule. He owed Cletus.

His fingers flipped the corner of the pages. A part of him hoped to be back in the city by nightfall.

“I gotta get goin’.” Cletus glanced at the screen of his phone again. “Just do what ya do. Make sure Ginger’s nephew ain’t hurt. Protect him and look after him until I get back.” Cletus started trotting to the front of his truck. He opened the driver’s side door and paused. “Thank ya fer doin’ this, Simon. It’s mighty important to me.” The older man put his boot up into the truck as if he would climb in, but then he hesitated for a second time.

Simon watched him curiously.

“Don’t ya let Mule run ya off. Ya hear me?” Cletus held his gaze. “Mule’s gonna buck and kick, but he needs yer help, ya hear? Whether he’s got the sense to know it or not.”

“I understand,” Simon murmured as Cletus took a spot behind the steering wheel and closed the door. This situation wasn’t the first time he’d worked with a pigheaded client who felt like Simon was a babysitter. He would do as Cletus asked and stick around until Cletus returned.

Glancing once more at the papers, he wondered what he was guarding Mule against.

In a cloud of dust and a scatter of gravel, Cletus drove off, and Simon got into his Chevy Traverse. Once seated in his vehicle, he began reading about the young man named Mule. The man’s real name was Winslow Buford Handcock, the fourth.

That was quite the name.

“First things first, Mister Hancock,” Simon whispered to his empty SUV as he held up a photo from the file. The picture was of a mangled and gutted animal displayed on the hood of a green truck. “Who is harassing you?”