Nothing Nefarious, Just General Badassery

by Daniel C. Bartlett

About the Author: Daniel C. Bartlett's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, descant, Iron Horse Literary Review, Chiron Review, 3:AM Magazine.

Excerpt

Something about being spotlighted by armed federal guards inspires some serious thinking about how you got where you are.

I signed on for this though. It’s my job to draw their attention while my old pal Jerry crawls through marsh grass and river reeds toward a spot where he swears he’ll find a buried trove of the pirate Jean Lafitte’s two-hundred-year-old treasure. We’re down by a bend in the river not far outside the town where we both grew up. Out on the water are retired ships that make up part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet. We’re not interested in their mothball fleet. But if the patrol boat heading my direction and sweeping a spotlight toward me is focused on me strolling along the bluffs, then they’re not paying attention to Jerry a couple hundred yards away, down in a pit he’s dug on the riverbank.

It’s pre-dawn, just a hint of early morning light. So it’s gray all around. Gray sky, gray river water. Gray ethical territory maybe.

Moments ago Jerry and I had debated whether the chain-link fence marked the perimeter of federally protected property or was there to keep people from falling off the crumbling bluffs.

“The ships they don’t want anyone near are way out across the water,” Jerry had said. “No, the fence is just because of the bluffs. I say if people are dumb enough to walk off a steep drop off, the species could use a little thinning of the herd, you know?”

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