Forty Degree Day

The officer left, eventually. His name was Elvis. Like the football player, not like Elvis Presley or Elvis Crespo, he insisted. Leffer wasn’t sure which Elvis he meant. Elvis was about twenty years older than Leffer, so it was a different era of football players. Maybe it was an Albanian player, maybe he played for Kosovo? It didn’t matter, they had finished the six pack and found several more in the refrigerator. Officer Elvis—Leffer caught a last name, Rex-something, but wasn’t sure if it was the cop or the footballer—suggested so much beer meant the men couldn’t have expected to be in the interior for long. Why not take it with them?

Elvis insisted on walking Leffer back to the hotel. Leffer explained he’d be picking up his equipment from the harbor, but at this point they’d both had enough beers that the details escaped one and didn’t particularly interest the other. Elvis offered to drive Leffer in the police van for the equipment when he explained he’d rented a truck for the day.

Fortunately, he didn’t insist on that. Leffer didn’t want to push, but he didn’t want anyone round when he took the cargo. It had gone through the authorities, or had been marked as having gone through the authorities, at Nook.

Leffer didn’t feel inebriated, but he had had three, four beers, and it was one, twelve. The sun was somewhere, inching toward its highest point, which wasn’t all that high. He considered picking up the truck and driving over now. The ship would be there any minute.

He’d heard the horn blow, or he thought he’d heard the horn blow when they were at the table. If Elvis thought he was okay to drive, he’d think Leffer was too. They had had the same amount of beer.

But Leffer thought better of it. He walked through the empty lobby to his room. Someone had checked in next door and he could hear the scraping of a chair. Nevertheless, he laid back on the mattress and closed his eyes. The captain could wait.

He could go find Nanny in the meantime. The whole town was small, it would only take a few minutes to walk over to the east side. But would Elvis see him and start to tag along again? He’d given Elvis some money, the company always provided more currency than was necessary, the higher ups finding it difficult to wrap their heads around just how cashless everything had become, even though for many of them that had been a long-term goal for the new society. Even on the fringes you could tap cash somebody.

Cash didn’t leave a trail. Leffer didn’t want to risk Elvis getting in the way while he tried to look for Nanny, so he went out into the lobby and asked Dedrik, who was sitting in a corner, to call a taxi for him.

Dedrik looked at him kind of blankly, as if he had been napping.

-Any kind of ride, you know?

-Sure, yeah, Dedrik said, and got up to pick up a phone. Where to?

-I wanted to drive around the town a little to see it, the east side especially.

A few minutes later an older man in a station wagon showed up.

-Where to, boss?

-It’s a nice day out, right? Take me around. It was almost forty degrees, Fahrenheit, but still unheard of this early in the year just a decade ago. For most people, there’s not much to say about a forty degree day, but it’s still a different story when it gets to zero in the winter. I want to see people, Leffer added, looking around at the empty lobby.

-Yeah boss, we can do that, the old man said, opening the front passenger door for Leffer. I’m not a chauffer, he said by way of explanation. Leffer chuckled, but wasn’t sure if it was a joke.

In ten minutes they’d driven around the whole time twice. Leffer asked the old man to double back on the east side near the playground.

-What are you up to, anyway? Are you looking for someone?, the man asked, turning away from the playground. It’s nap time.

He hadn’t even gotten this man’s name but he decided to ask him about Nanny anyway.

-Oh you won’t find him in town. He’s gone to the interior.

-Missing, Leffer said to himself, remembering that he knew that.

-No, he’s out there.

-What?

-Missing? He’s not missing. The sun’s out. He goes out there. He hunts, he lives, he follows the sun. That back to nature crap the kids get into. They used to just grow their hair long.

-Hunts wolves?

-Sure, from packs, the old man explained, mistaking Leffer’s question for shock. Scared of wolves? Maybe of the amarok?

-That’s wolf in your language.

-Not just a wolf. The legend of the big bad wolf. Guys like Nanny buy into it. But wolves go in packs. And you can hunt them like anything else.

-How far out, how far into, the interior?

-The wolves?

-Nanny.

-Guy your size, couple of hours, no problem. But there’s no trails.

-Okay, okay, take me back. Do you know where the rental place is? The guy with the truck?

-Sure. He’s the only one.

The old man had a clock radio but Leffer wasn’t sure if it was right. It blinked 4:19.

-What’s the time?

-About three thirty the old man answered, instinctively looking at the clock radio. It keeps me rushing, you know. This car’s old. I never changed it the last time daylight savings time came for good. My wife died. What’s it mean up here anyway?

Leffer had stopped listening. The time didn’t matter. He knew the captain would be upset but the ship wasn’t leaving until tomorrow and the cargo didn’t require inspection because it already had it.

The beer had worn off but the sun was still there, somewhere. He picked up the truck with no problem. The captain wasn’t upset, he didn’t care at all. He offered a couple of the ship mates to help carry the cargo into the truck and Leffer gave them some of the hard currency.