WHITE ELEPHANT --- A short story.
Copyright 2015 by Rob Leininger.    Enjoy!


                                    WHITE ELEPHANT


        Pine Flat, Idaho, 1992.

      Woody Scoggin jerked awake.
      Duke was barking. Sid Pardi’s worthless mutt.
     Woody cursed and cracked an eyelid. The first morning rays of sunlight dappled the bedroom wall where the skin of a diamondback rattler hung over an old pine dresser.
      Woody clamped the eye shut.
   Frantic woofs. Frenzied yappings. Woody imagined flecks of spittle flying off Duke’s flapping jowls, puddling around him in Sid’s weedy yard. Crazy as a rabid duck. Shoulda been shot years ago.
      Woody pulled the pillow over his head.
      Duke howled.
     Woody’s eyes snapped open and he sat upright. “You stupid, good-for-nothing, sonofa . . . fleabag ho-­tel!”
    That’s when he smelled the ozone. Not much, just a whiff, but it was enough to make him throw the covers aside.
      Ozone.
    A jolt shuddered up his spine and his toes curled as his naked feet landed on the cold floor, which did nothing to improve his mood. He shuffled to the window. What he saw was something he hadn’t seen in all his fifty-eight years in Pine Flat, Idaho.
      “Aw, shit,” he said, and went to pull on his pants. He thought to get his old Mossberg bolt-action 12-gauge shotgun from the closet, but decided maybe not.


     At thirty-two citizens, Pine Flat was Kootenai County’s forty-sixth largest town. Buried deep in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest, surrounded by pine-studded mountains, Pine Flat was once a meadow where Jim Bridger himself had set up camp for three days back in 1833. The meadow—-the Flat, as it was still called by some—-had since become Main Street, and now sported Roosevelt’s Hardware, Kitty’s Café, the Pine Flat Hotel—-now a boarding house, of sorts, with the town’s library in the cellar—-Mayanne’s Boutique and Laundromat, a saloon, and a few other ragtag establishments.
      Woody stepped outside into a September, red-sun morning. A frosty nip hung in the ozone-scented air.
      Still there. World War Two vintage, he guessed. About that. Keel had probably been laid down around ‘41, ‘42.
       His house was two doors down from Mayanne’s, set back a ways from the street—-County Road 17A—-that deadended at a gravel pit and landfill two miles up in the hills.
       Mayanne was out in a frayed, colorless bathrobe and mules, closer to the hull than the rest of ‘em, looking up. Mayanne always was a light sleeper. Sid stood in front of Finn’s Bar with Zeke Mueller and Gus Harper. Hizzoner the mayor, Finley Bell, came out of Finn’s, hitching up his trousers.
      Woody ambled over. Out behind Finn’s, Duke was still giving it all he had.
     “Someone oughta shet that dog up,” Woody said peevishly, adjusting his teeth, which he’d got in Boise two years back.
      “Nuff t’ wake the dead,” Zeke agreed
      Several of them turned toward the Pine Flat Hotel, where Udell Hicks’s body lay shrouded in the coat room, awaiting the mortician’s hearse from Bayview. Woody blew his nose.
      “It’s Sid’s mutt,” Gus said pointedly.
    Eyes shifted toward Sid, but then Finn said, “Let’em be. Easier than lightin’ off the siren, I reckon. We got to call us a meetin’ anyways, looks like.”
     That seemed to satisfy everyone except Woody, who took his teeth out and spat. The group turned just in time to see Mayanne draw back a foot and give the hull a sturdy kick.
     “It’s real,” she bellowed.
      “Reckon so,” said Gus. “It purely flattened Ethel’s outhouse back there.”
     The group craned their necks, but couldn’t see beyond the Pine Flat Hotel.
      For a moment there was silence. Finally Gus shoved a bit of dirt around with the toe of a boot and said, “Well.”
      “Yup,” Sid replied. “Well.”
     Traces of ground mist hovered in the street. Overhead, a hawk floated in the morning sky.
     Ed Zupp wandered over, holding a cup of coffee which he slurped noisily. Bone white whiskers stubbled his face.
     Zeke cleared his throat. “Run about twenty-seven hundred tons, I’d guess.”
      “ ‘Bout right,” Ed said. “Double-yuh double-yuh Two, MacKenzie class.”
       “Lookit those guns, will ya.”
       “Twin screws, uh-huh.”
       “Rusty sumbitch, ain’t she?”
      “Damn sight bigger’n Virge Logan’s Chris Craft down t’ Post Falls, an’ that’s the biggest boat around these parts. Just ask him.”
       They all laughed at that. At 2700 tons, this boat—-the Navy called ‘em ships—-was a whale of a lot bigger than any Chris Craft Virge Logan was likely to own.
    Mayanne was striding down the length of the ship, arms swinging, pacing it off. The group watched until she disappeared beyond the veranda of the Hotel.
      “Bet it’ll run three hundred feet,” Gus said.
      “Nearer three-sixty,” Ed replied.
     Finn wandered in the direction of the bow, and they all trailed along behind.
       “Number two sixty-two,” Zeke offered, gazing up at the flaking white number painted on the ship’s flaking gray side. A gaping, ragged hole was in the hull, starboard side.
       Kyle Posten’s oldest boy, Bill, was standing on the porch of his house when the group rounded the bow. Bill was squinting up at the warship, eating an apple. From this angle they could tell the ship had a slight list to port.
       “Lit down crossways acrosst the street,” Finn said.
     Well, they could all see that. Wasn’t anything going to move along Main Street until something was done. Exactly what could be done wasn’t yet clear.
      Bill pointed with the apple. “Pa’s pickup’s under there.”
    They looked. All Woody could see was a triangular-shaped wedge of blue sheet metal the size of a toaster.
      “Mashed it flatter’n a sheet of sixteen-pound bond,” Gus said.
      “Flatter,” Zeke said.
      “That’s what I said,” Gus groused.
      “Think insurance’ll cover it?” Sid asked.
   They all turned to Finn, who’d sold insurance part time down in Lewiston before turning up one day twenty-one years ago in Pine Flat as the new owner of Early’s Bar, which had immediately been renamed Finn’s.
      “Act of God,” Finn pronounced. “Clear-cut case.”
      Woody snorted derisively, almost losing his upper set.”Wait’ll Kyle tries to squeeze a nickel outta some goddamned back-Easter suit with this story.”
       Several heads nodded agreement.
      “Maybe oughta get a picture.”
      “Now if it’d been a tree . . .” Sid offered. “If we could just get that thing offa Kyle’s truck an’ under a tree—-”
       Clang!
       Everyone jumped
     “I knew it, I knew it!” Hector Thurgood rounded the bow of Number 262 holding a fat tome in one hand, his cane in the other. He swung his cane at the side of the ship. Clang! “I knew it!” His voice was triumphant.
    He swung the volume open and pointed. They all crowded in and stared at a picture of a warship, number 262 on her bow.
      “U.S.S. ­John V. Singleton­,” Hector announced. He paused dramatically. “Udell was on that ship.”


    It was generally agreed that if Udell hadn’t fallen off that barstool yesterday afternoon, he’d be alive today. But Udell enjoyed his beer, and along about two in the afternoon he could be found over at Finn’s with a bottle in one hand, a Pall Mall in the other, munching from a bowl of beer nuts and grousing about Medicaid, taxes, and “hippies.” No one had the heart to tell him all the hippies had grown up, paid more in taxes than he did, and had kids of their own.
        At 4:17 that afternoon, Udell had pushed away from the bar, the stool tilted suddenly, and Udell took a spill. Ed Zupp had recorded the time, as Ed would. Udell struck his head on the pool table, lit on his back, and was out cold for six minutes.
      When he came around, he thought it was nineteen forty-nine and he’d just bought himself a used ‘42 Nash.
       He came out of it a few minutes later—back to 1992.
    Or so everyone thought. In the best of times, Udell could be a little strange, so if he thought it was 1949, well, that wasn’t outside the realm. Udell’s behavior had wide margins, and everyone in Pine Flat made allowances.
      Udell got slowly back on the stool, grumbling, and had another beer, on Finn. He even seemed to be tracking the ball game okay on the Sony high up in the corner, Mets beating the crap out of the Dodgers at Shea.
       Twenty minutes later, Milly Kotter came into Finn’s, looking for Udell, eyes darting, disapproving, gray hair in disarray. She’d turned on her old Maytag and blown a fuse. Udell had stuck new fuses in her power panel before, so she’d hunted him down, which wasn’t much of a feat.
     Off he went, cigarette in one hand, slouched, Milly leading the way. Five minutes later the Flat was roused by Milly’s screams. No one could cut loose like Milly.
      “Oh, Lord,” Finn said, throwing down a rag.
      Woody, Finn, Ed, and Gus bolted out the door, circled the hotel, found Milly and Udell out behind Milly’s house.
     Milly was wailing, Udell smoking, one hand on the power box, the other on the primary bus bar, vibrating, 220 volts passing from hand to hand.
     Woody grabbed a two-by-four, about to knock Udell loose, when Udell just toppled sideways and landed face down in Big Red’s water dish. Big Red was Milly’s Irish setter.
      Not a pleasant way to end seventy-one years, but endings aren’t often pleasant, beginnings either, and that’s life.
      They carried him over to the Pine Flat Hotel, sort of a tradition at Pine Flat, and laid him out in the coat room, a grisly smile frozen on his face--baked there, Woody’d said, but Woody wasn’t known for his sensitivity.
       Hector, of course, phoned the coroner over in Bayview.


       Now, this. The U.S.S. ­John V. Singleton.
     Pine Flat’s residents turned out at Finn’s, which is where most of the town’s meetings were held. By eleven that morning, the bar was full.
    Something like this could purely spell the end of Pine Flat, Woody predicted in a querulous monotone, turn it into some sort of Walt Disney tourist attraction like Knott’s Berry Farm or Six Flags, with water slides, pollution, noise, and—-he adjusted his teeth—-all the rest of it.
     There were murmurs of assent, a few laughs, a general rise in noise level, until Mayanne took off a shoe and banged it on the bar just like Khrushchev (looked a little like him too) and said, “What I want to know, is what’s it worth? As scrap. Way I figger it, most of that there fantail belongs t’ me.
      Nautical nomenclature was making a speedy comeback in Pine Flat—-two days ago Mayanne wouldn’t have known a fantail from the south end of a blue goose.
   Mayanne’s fiscal considerations started a round of speculation, interrupted when Bryce Reed, Bayview’s mortician, came in the door. He’d left the hearse in the street and circled the Singleton’s bow, gazing up with a frown that wrinkled the pallid skin of his brow. His naked dome reflected the light of Finn’s Budweiser sign. “Where’s the body?” he asked, not known for his sensitivity either.
       “Over at the hotel,” Hector intoned solemnly.
      Everyone grabbed their drinks and paraded on over to the hotel. The mortician glanced up at the aging destroyer as they went by.
       “Udell was on that ship,” Gus said.
       Bryce looked at him. “Who’s Udell?
       “The stiff,” Woody said.
       “Oh.”
       In the coat room, the stiff was as stiff as ever, a tiny bit charred as well.
    There wasn’t much ceremony in what happened next. Woody took Udell’s feet and Sid Pardi and Zeke each grabbed an arm, and they trundled Udell across the street with the sheet still over his body, rounded the ship’s bow, and set him on a gurney that Bryce had hauled out of the hearse’s cargo bay. Four men lifted, and Bryce shoved him into the gloomy black wagon.
       Everyone stood back, Bryce got behind the wheel, started the engine, and that’s when the gray sedan came roaring up the road into Pine Flat, raising dust, and slammed to a halt partway across the road, blocking what would have been the hearse’s exit.
       ­U.S. GOVERNMENT­ was printed on the sedan’s side. A man in a khaki naval uniform climbed out. A holstered .45 was on his hip.
       “Udell Hicks?” he asked, nodding at the hearse.
       “What’s left of ‘im anyways,” said Gus.
      The naval officer glanced up at the destroyer. Woody looked him in the eye, took out his teeth, and spat. “Lose somethin’?” he said.


       Lieutenant Junior Grade Martin Poindexter was twenty-eight years old, with short blond hair, China blue eyes, and a chin dimple á la Kirk Douglas. His uniform was spotless, pressed, the brass gleaming, the shine on his shoes catching the bright morning sun, tie knotted tightly at his throat. The gun looked ominous, businesslike, melodramatic
       “Who’s in charge here?” he asked.
       Finn took a step forward. “Reckon that’d be me. I’m the mayor.”
      Bryce stuck his head out the window of the hearse. “You wanna move the car, lieutenant? I got a corpse here goin’ bad.”
       “Hicks isn’t going anywhere,” Poindexter said.
       “Say what?”
       “Unload him.”
       “By whose authority?” Finn asked.
     “United States Navy, of course,” Poindexter replied, taking a canvas bag from his car. “Official business.”
       It was a strange day, all right. Strangest one in the town’s history.


       Udell ended up at Finn’s, stretched out on the pool table, nose tenting the sheet above the lump of his face. Udell had a fair prow of nose on him. Just beginning to give off a faint froggy odor, too.
      Poindexter sized up the situation with a certain degree of expertise and decided that, all things considered, Finn’s was the logical place to conduct his business.
      First there was the paperwork. Didn’t really matter what the problem was, paperwork came first, last, and always, like some sort of grim, everlasting disease.
      Except that this wasn’t too bad, surprising even Woody. There were standard generic release forms, absolving the Navy of all liability “in any and all naval matters which might relate to the town of Pine Flat.” That required a vote, but Poindexter said it was necessary before the Navy would consent to make restitution for damages.
     “Restitution!” Woody snorted, catching his biters before they could land on the bar’s cigarette-scarred surface.
     “In full,” Poindexter said, making eye contact with Woody and a number of other doubting Thomases in the room.
       “My truck?” Kyle Poston said.
       “My outhouse?” Ethel Hess added.
       “In full,” Poindexter repeated. “Today only. No questions asked.”
      “My new Chevy pickup?” Sid Pardi said, and everyone stared at him. Sid’s last set of wheels was a Ford Galaxy he’d bought in Twin Falls back in ‘66.
       “Everything,” Poindexter said unequivocally.
     Poindexter set up right there at the bar. No questions asked, the naval officer had said, and one by one, as morning passed into early afternoon, the citizens of Pine Flat signed personal release forms and received checks for damages. This just didn’t happen; not with the U.S. Government. Poindexter was evidently a man with a lot of juice behind him.
    Everything went smoothly until a man by the name of Will Stebbs claimed a new, full-boat GMC Jimmy SLE with the big V8 engine, CD player, and custom Mag wheels.
    Poindexter gave him a piercing look and said, “Exactly how much damage, Mr. Stebbs? Maybe I oughta go have a look.”
      Stebbs looked away. “Weren’t the whole thing, sir. Just the paint on one side. And a . . . a fender.”
       “Two thousand cover it, you think?”
       “Sure, that’d be fine,” Stebbs said.
       Poindexter handed him a check, and from there on damages seemed to diminish some, except for Mayanne losing part of her back porch, fence, pump house, and a $700 mountain bike
        Poindexter looked at her. “Mountain bike?
        She gave him a steely look. “Yep. Navy got a problem with that?”
        Poindexter smiled, wilting slightly. “No, ma’am.”

 
        By two-thirty all the claims had been filed, and most of the townfolk had drifted away. Finn’s held only the regulars. Hector and Finn moved in closer. Finn said, “You know, Mr. Poindexter—-”
        Poindexter loosened his tie, smiled. “The name’s Martin. I wonder if I might get a drink, Mr. Bell.”
      “Uh, sure . . . Martin. Call me Finn. What’ll it be? Coke? Seven-Up?”
      “Bourbon. The best you got. Straight up. A double.”
   Finn smiled. Whatever else happened today was going to happen smoothly. “Comin’ right up.
       Poindexter downed the bourbon in ten seconds then ordered another. He stared out the window at the Singleton. Others followed his gaze: Woody, Gus, Zeke, Ed, Sid, Mayanne, Finn, Hector.
     Finn cleared his throat. “See, Martin, we still got us a fair problem here.”
       “Sundown,” Poindexter said.
       “Huh?”
       “I’ll have her out of here at sundown.” He turned, faced the bar again.
     Woody wiped a speck of drool from his lips with a sleeve.” How y’all gonna do that?”
       Ed said, “Thing’s gotta weigh twenty-seven hundred tons.”
       “Twenty-nine fifty,” Poindexter said.
     “Mr. Poindexter--Martin,” Hector said. “Even the Navy, with all its vast resources . . . well . . . this seems kinda more than—-”
     Poindexter drained his glass, gestured for another, then faced Hector. “I’ll handle it.”
      “Mighty god-awful damnfool place to put one of ‘em, don’t you think?” Woody jerked a thumb at the destroyer.
     Poindexter sighed. “We don’t send these things out, Mr. . . . uh—-”
     “Scoggin.”
    “Mr. Scoggin. Right.” He glanced at the warship, downed his bourbon, ordered another. “The Singleton’s . . . well, she’s a mite unusual.”
     “Uh-huh,” Gus said. “I see that.”
     “And,” Poindexter added, “sometimes she comes down a mite hard.”
     “I guess you’re a man with a story,” Hector said, leaning forward on his cane.
      “Not by choice.”


    After a fourth double, and twenty minutes to let ‘em take effect, Lieutenant (JG) Poindexter’s eyes were glassy, vague.
      “First time was Carter McCorkle,” he said, shoulders hunched, speaking into his glass. “New Mexico, 1977. McCorkle rolled a Jeep while hunting in the Cibola National Forest, San Mateo Mountains. Broke his neck. Search party went looking for him the next day, found the U.S.S. John V. Singleton down at the bottom of a canyon, right next to McCorkle’s Jeep.
      “Hell of a mess, that one. No one knew what the hell was going on, what do with it. Took us most of a week to get rid of it.
      “Then there was Ben Farley, 1983, Arizona, out near Shumway, south of Holbrook. Then Amos Kiley, 1990, north of Ozona in west Texas. By then, though, we had it pretty well figured out.”
       Woody snorted.
    Poindexter didn’t seem to notice or care. “McCorkle had served on the Singleton. Took three days to make the connection. McCorkle’s battle station was the forward five-inch gun mount; powder handler. Records like that aren’t easy to dig up, either.” He shook his head.
     “Then Farley died. Also served on the ­John V.,­ also part of that same five-inch gun crew.”
       “Ah,” said Hector.
      “Kiley too,” Poindexter said. “Same ship, same crew.”
       “And Udell,” Finn said.
     “Udell Hicks,” Poindexter intoned drunkenly. “Fourth man of a five-man team. Served aboard the Singleton­ from August of ‘42 till February of ‘44 when the old tub took a torpedo in the bow and managed to limp back to Pearl. By then the Pacific war was about under control, so DD 262 was decommissioned and used for target practice. Sunk off Oahu, September 1, 1944.”
       “Shoulda sunk her deeper,” Woody said.
       “She went down in eight thousand feet of water.”
      “Uh-huh,” said Gus.
      “So,” Finn said. “Now what?”
     Poindexter glanced at his watch. “Not much until about seven. There some place around here I can lie down a while?”


      Minutes later, Poindexter tottered across the street to the Pine Flat Hotel with his bag and conked out on a sagging couch in the lobby.
       The afternoon wore on. The men nursed beers, the John V. Singleton leaked ozone, Udell gave off a mild horsey reek.
       At seven, Sid was dispatched to wake Poindexter. The sun was slanting through the trees over on Blue Devil Ridge. Long shadows stretched across Main Street.
       Bleary-eyed, unsteady and pale, Poindexter pushed through the door into Finn’s and had a shot of bourbon and an aspirin, shuddered, then straightened convulsively.
       “Time,” he said, color returning to his face. He took a flashlight from his canvas bag, walked over to Udell, grabbed the sheet and yanked it off him.
       Udell’s right eye was milky, the left closed. A crust of dried saliva was in a corner of his mouth.
    “Couple of you men want to pick him up?” Poindexter asked. He jammed his hat on his head.
      Sid and Woody hauled Udell off the table. Hector held the door, and they carried Udell into the street.
       “This way.” Poindexter marched off toward the destroyer.
     He paused at the hole in the ­Singleton’s­ bow, shined the flashlight inside, then said, “C’mon.”
       Sid and Woody followed with Udell. The others brought up the rear.
   The interior of the warship was black, dank and musty, humid, seaweedy, cool, full of echoes and the tang of ozone. Water dripped somewhere in the dark.
     They carried Udell up a couple of almost-vertical stairways. Ladders, Poindexter called them. Down a cavelike passageway, up another ladder, twisting up through the bowels of the ship.
      Finally Poindexter climbed a narrow ladder, spun a wheel in the middle of an overhead hatch, shoved it open.
       “In here,” he said, disappearing.
    They pushed and pulled Udell up the ladder. Woody climbed up through the hatch and he and Poindexter grabbed Udell under the arms and hauled him into DD 262’s forward gun mount. Finn popped up though the hatch and looked around.
       Three skeletons lay sprawled in the turret, one of them still with some flesh clinging to its bones, a sprig of gray hair. A rank salty odor filled the space.
       “Don’t touch ‘em,” Poindexter said.
       Finn recoiled an inch. “I don’t aim to.”
       They settled Udell in a steel seat with hand wheels and levers nearby, then Poindexter stood back.
       “Now what?” Finn asked.
       “Nothing,” Poindexter said. “That’s it.”
       “No last words?”
       “Not unless you’ve got any.”
       Finn shrugged, then went down the hatch. Woody followed, looked up at the last instant in time to see Poindexter stuff something into Udell’s mouth that looked like garlic cloves.


       The sun was down, the sky pink and purple as Poindexter stood at the ship’s bow and reached into his canvas bag. He pulled out a dark bottle of Bordeaux.
     “Grand-Puy-Ducasse, nineteen forty-two. Man, this stuff’s expensive,” he said to no one in particular. He turned and looked at the crowd behind him. “Ready, folks?”
    Heads nodded. A few men shuffled their feet. Poindexter faced the ship again, squared his shoulders. He raised the bottle, yelled, ­“Sink and be gone, you old bitch!”­ and smashed the bottle against the ship’s hull. He looked back at the gathering apologetically and said, “It’s worked in the past so it’s how we do it.”
      For a moment nothing happened.
    Then the ship began to lose color. A ripple passed over her, a wave of something, like heat. She trembled, then began to fade. The people of Pine Flat backed up a step. They saw misty shapes through the destroyer’s hull—-Roosevelt’s Hardware, a wedge of raspberry sky—-then there was no longer anything to look through.
       The U.S.S. John V. Singleton was gone.


    Only five of them remained at Finn’s: Woody, Finn, Hector, Gus, Poindexter. The town was dark, quiet.
      Poindexter shook Woody’s hand, Gus’s, Hector’s, Finn’s, then edged toward the door.
       “Hold on a second,” Hector said.
       “I really oughta be going,” Poindexter replied.
      “You said there were five men in that gun crew. Udell was the fourth to go.”
      Poindexter’s eyes looked pained. “Uh-huh.”
     “So the fifth man . . .”
     “Walter,” Poindexter said reluctantly.
     “Walter?”
     “Walter Banks.” He turned away.
     “Wait a minute,” Finn said. “Where’s this guy live?”
   “Sebeny-nife Stree,” Poindexter mumbled, head pulled down into his shoulders, wanting to leave, escape.
      “How’s that?”
   Poindexter took a deep breath. “Seventy-ninth Street. Manhattan—West side. He’s got a heart condition, refuses to move. We’ve tried. God knows, we have tried. Still are.”
       For a moment there was silence.
     Woody clicked his teeth. “Guess you still got a job on your hands, huh?”
      Poindexter gave him a pained smile, then slipped quietly out the door.