To Kill A Common Loon
by Mitch Luckett
Prologue
My playful guide led me through an underwater snarl of tree roots in the
river logjam. I had no trouble keeping up until I came upon some long
strands of kelp-like stuff. A faint pink color seeped from the black kelp.
My tongue tasted a sweet sanguine saltiness, drifting with the current. A
danger signal went off in my brain.
But it was too late. I got hung up in the stuff. That black kelp clung to
me like magnetic tape. Insistent, thick, cloying stuff hanging down about
three feet, sighing and sashaying in the vigorous current. The kelp was
anchored fast in a tangle of olive-green vine maple branches above my head.
My ears heard a noise like water whispering secrets. My animal instincts
suddenly recoiled. Warning! I needed air anyway, and about dashed to the
surface. But I couldn't suppress a certain curiosity.
Parting the dark, strand-matted path in front of me, I ran smack into a
blue-brown, naked nose.
I reared back, but not before I beheld the face of an Indian woman, with a
pair of stunned, onyx eyes. Those eyes, in the aqueous turbulence, cried
buckets of tears. The pink liquid seeped out of a jagged round hole above
her right breast. A bullet exit wound. Back shot. My heart fell to the
bottom of my malformed feet. I gagged. The long strands of turbid hair
closed around me like live octopus tentacles; whispering, squeezing,
imploring. A voice spoke in my mind, "Old one, find my killer. Avenge my
death."
CHAPTER I
Good Times and Breakdowns
"Faded Love," is a country-bluegrass tune with a soulful melody, and I knew
it by heart. I'd played a crowd-clapping rendition a thousand times before
on banjo or blues harmonica. I slipped an 'A' harmonica into a steel-framed
holder and carefully strapped the holder over my scalp scar tissue and bony
shoulders. "So," I said to Medusa, my dog riding shotgun, "Dr. Rothenberg
thinks he's a music critic. Well I'll show him. I'm gonna coax a decent
tune out of this little rascal this morning or die trying."
Medusa, a Tibetan terrier/pit bull mix, coughed a rank, meat-flavored alarm
in my direction.
At midnight, I'd left Portland, Oregon, heading north on Interstate 5. Near
Tumwater, Washington I turned left and followed the signs for Port
Townsend. I was still in that gray zone between dark and dawn traveling on
twisty Highway 101, skirting Puget Sound, an inland sea, on the eastern rim
of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. My headlight beams illuminated
several fireworks stands as I passed through the Skokomish Indian
Reservation. According to hand-scrawled signs attached to the plywood
stands, I could get rockets from ILL EAGLE, bombs from CUTTHROAT and M-100s
from MADDOG. I speeded up.
Dr. Rothenberg, a Veteran's Administration Psychiatrist, claimed playing
harmonica while careening down the road is a reckless and dangerous
attitude. Picking and driving doesn't mix, he said.
What did he know about attitude? I'd been playing music while driving the
highway since I ran away from home at age sixteen. It's simple, if I hadn't
played music while driving down the road I wouldn't have played much. It's
the way I learned. It's the way I lived.
Just 'middle-of-the-road' tunes, though. Nothing on the cutting edge.
Waltzes like "All The Good Times Are Past And Gone," cause you to lurch
down the freeway at 15mph in three-quarter time. Kick-ass tunes such as
"Foggy Mountain Breakdown" vibrated my old, blue VW Bus down the freeway at
warp speed threatening to sail asunder any second. Semi-trucks and
passenger cars tend to screech their brakes and blare their horns at you,
breaking your all-important rhythmic concentration.
Motorists can be so insensitive.
"Faded Love," was a perfect 35 mph tune for coastal highway 101.
Unfortunately "Faded Love" does have some devilish sharps and flats in it,
suggestive of long-legged shore birds chasing willy-nilly the outgoing
tide. You been to the sea shore, you've seen them in the sand weaving this
way and that.
That spring afternoon I'd received a package from my deceased friend's
lawyer.
The package revealed an oyster-colored plastic box containing Josh
Whittier's ashes, a sealed legal letter and a map to Josh's wilderness property on the Dosanomish River, the final destination for his remains.
Copyright ©2001 by Mitch Luckett
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