“It will be,” said the thinner man.
“How the hell would you know?” said the short stocky one.
“You get so you know one kind of rain from another. This one is hard for a while, and then it’ll move on. Might be some light rain later, but when this is gone, it’ll gradually start to clear.”
“Listen to Farmer Brown,” said the short stocky man. “We grew up with him, but he’s got some special skills given to him by the angels or some such.”
“We’ll stay in the cabin until daylight,” said the big man, “then we go in.”
They were all standing together now, looking at the shore line. The one that knew about farming said, “There’s a boat on shore.”
“So what,” said the big man. “People leave them here all the time to go fishing. Lots of niggers live on this stretch, back beyond the tree stand. Probably one of their boats.”
Without saying a thing to one another, me and Leonard both stretched out and lay flat on the ground behind the big willow and the scrubs. We tried to make ourselves as small as possible.
The head man studied where we were for a while, then shined his light on us. He could pick up on Leonard real good.
He said, “There’s a nigger lying down there.”
“Run for it, to the left. I’ll go right,” Leonard said, lying in the pool of light. “They ain’t seen you yet.”
By this time the short stocky man had slipped into the cabin, and he came out with a rifle. He pointed it at the shore where Leonard lay. He had it lined in the big man’s flashlight beam.
“Better come out of there, nigger, or I’m gonna pop you,” said the short stocky man. “You can’t run faster than a bullet.”
Leonard stood up and dropped his knife on the ground. “I’m just out here fishing.”
“Are you now?”
The thinner’s man’s flashlight came on and the beam fell on me. “There’s another one on the other side. White boy.”
I stood up slowly. I thought I probably could make a run for it, as the grass and brush was high on my side, and there were some trees a little farther down, and it would be hard for them to get a clear shot. But I couldn’t leave Leonard.
Since their boat was close to shore, the man with the rifle jumped down and came over. He walked on the edge of the flashlight beam that was shining on Leonard. The other man kept his light on me. It was a strong light. I felt like I was part of a floor show.
When they were all three on shore, the big man said, “Fishing, huh?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Our motor broke down, and there came a rain storm, so we put in for the night.”
“Cheap ass motor is my guess,” said the one with the gun.
“I reckon that’s true,” Leonard said.
“You seen us looking over the side of our boat, didn’t you?” said the head man.
“Sure, we seen you,” Leonard said. “What you looking for?”
“Nothing that concerns you, nigger. Both of you, come down here closer on the bank.”
Leonard led the way and I followed up. I was starting to regret the both of us not trying to make a break for it.
The big man put his light in our faces, stared at us while we blinked.
“You know what’s down there, don’t you?” he said. “I can tell when someone has a secret, and I can guess at it damn good, know what that secret is. Been able to do that all my life.”
“Another one of us with special powers,” said the man with the rifle.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“The boat,” the big man said.
“Shit, August, don’t tell him?” said the man with the gun.
“Hell, they already know. I can tell by looking at them. They know why we’re here.”
“Haven’t a clue,” Leonard said.
“I know a liar when I hear one,” the big man said, the one called August.
“We’ll have to kill them,” said the one with the rifle. “They didn’t know, they know now, way you’ve run your mouth.”
The big man glanced at the one with the rifle, and the rifle man went silent. I think he knew there was a line he shouldn’t cross with the big man.
I thought: Shit, this is it. I’m going to die on the banks of the Sabine River, and here I was close to graduation and hoping I was going out into a wider world away from all these crackers, but instead I was going to die at their hands.
Typical.
“Can you boys swim?” August said.
“Like a goddamn eel,” Leonard said.
“You?” he said, indicating me, of course.
“Yes.”
August contemplated for a few moments, said, “What I’m thinking, is we have them swim down for us, have them get it, and we don’t have to get cold and wet and take a chance down there. Just the thought of my balls in that cold water makes me ill.”
“Only need one of them,” the man with the rifle said. “We could pop the nigger.”
“Naw, it’s heavy,” August said. “We need them both.”
I knew another sentence had stayed inside his head.
And it went like this: “And then we pop them both.”
They brought us on the boat and had us sit down on the deck. The deck was wet and I could feel it through my pants. It made my ass cold. Now that they weren’t shining the lights right on us, I could actually see them better. August was the biggest, and I took him for the planner. He had a way of leaning forward all the time, as if he was about to take off in a sprint. He was too big a man to get far that way, I judged, but he was certainly the right size for twisting your head off. The man with the rifle, the leanest of the three, had a nervousness that made me nervous. I didn’t like the way he handled the gun. His hair was cut short like the other two, so short I figured they might as well just go on and shave their heads. All three looked kin. Brothers or cousins perhaps, the thin one being the most different in size, but not in facial features.
“There’s some dead people down there in a boat,” said August, “but you know that. I can tell by looking at you. But what you might not know is they’re there for a reason. They been hauling off stuff that isn’t theirs.”
“Yeah,” said the one with the rifle. “They fucked up.”
“What kind of stuff?” I asked.
“They don’t need to know shit,” said the one with the rifle.
“It’s alright, Tom. I want to tell them. Besides, they knew the bodies were there, I promise you. Come on, admit, you knew they were there.”
We said nothing.
“That’s alright,” August said. “I’m going to tell you all about it.”
“Why the hell should you?” Tom said.
“Know what they’re looking for, that’s why.”
“You don’t have to tell them why, just what it looks like,” Tom said.
“I know that,” August said.
I could tell August was the kind of guy that wanted to brag on himself, thought he was a real top cat and wanted everyone to know it. I thought of a line Tony Curtis had in movie, a line about wanting to be Charlie Potatoes, meaning the big man. That was this guy. He knew too it didn’t matter what he told us. Later on we’d be in the river with the other three.
“What do you think it is down there?” August asked us.
“Your mother’s china,” Leonard said.
“Oh, nigger, you are not in a position to crack wise,” August said.
“Just making a guess,” Leonard said.
I had learned that Leonard, under the direst of times, couldn’t help himself with the smart remark. I’m not much better. I think it was the way we coped with intense stress, and maybe in Leonard’s case he just didn’t give a shit. I, on the other hand, gave a big shit, and didn’t want to end up with a bullet in my head with my body absorbing river water.
“That isn’t any guess. Them three down there, that’s the Smiths. What they called themselves anyway. You can call them dead now. Though
t they were going to be clever. Said they’d buy some smack from us, that they’d come to our place by boat, on account of we live on the river.”
“Best reason to come by boat,” Leonard said.
“What?” said August.
“If you didn’t live on the river, then they’d come by car, maybe airplane.”
“Keep it up, coon. Keep it up.”
“Shut up,” Tom said. “They don’t need to know any of this shit.”
“I like telling it,” August said.
August picked up where he left off. It was easy to see that telling us what a smart and bad motherfucker he was gave him great pleasure. The other two could care less, and we were a new audience. It gave him a reason to hear himself talk.
“Smiths had it in their mind they were going to rob us and take the dope, sell it to hippies some place. Dallas. Austin. Shit, I don’t know, San Francisco. They talked like Yankees, so I don’t know. But they been in this area for a while, and they been buying, a bit here and there, and I guess they were storing it up, going to resell it up north, and they heard about us. We met them at the feed store, and they said they had the money and we said we had the dope. So we made a deal.
“Know what they did?”
“You already told us,” Leonard said. “They robbed you.”
This didn’t deter August.
“They came down the river in their boat. They had guns. We did too, but they surprised us. Nice looking couple, and they had that kid with them. Quiet kid. Either trained to keep his mouth shut or quiet by nature.”
“Would have been nice had you been that way,” Tom said.
August ignored him.
“I figure they thought it made them look normal going down the road in a van pulling a boat loaded with dope, ’cause no one would think to look at them for such a thing. Shit, we were going to rob them and they outfoxed us and got the jump on us. So they got our stash. It’s wrapped in plastic and duct taped and in a cooler that’s taped, and they took off with it. They had us open it up, show what was in it while they held guns on us, then they had us tape and fasten it all up, load it on their boat, but, you see, they fucked up. They should have wrecked our boat, ’cause soon as they left we went after them. We got a better and faster boat. We caught up with them back river a ways. You know what we did to really hurt them. We shot that fucking kid right in the head. First thing. Bam. That made them scream, it truly did, didn’t it, Tom?”
Tom nodded, said, “They shouldn’t have put us in that position.”
“That’s right,” August said. “They put us there. Then we had some fun with the woman and we gave them a bit of a lesson with fire and such, shot them in the head. But you know what happened? I don’t even think they knew it. They had gone over some shallows and hit some rocks, and it took the bottom of their boat out, and it sunk with them on it, and us having to swim back to our boat right when we were about to bring the dope out. When it started going down, it went down fast as a fucking torpedo.”
“It was already going down,” said Tom, “but no one noticed. We were all busy.”
“That’s right,” August said. “But then we’re done with them and there’s water on our feet, and down the boat goes, and by this time it’s night, and we decided we’d wait until the morning. You see, we got their money back, but they had our dope. We figured going down in that water at night . . . Well, we didn’t know how deep it was, but we knew that boat sunk like a fucking stone. We knew too, come the next day we could check it out. We marked the place and went on home. Next day the sheriff, who I might add is running for election, which means he needs a good drug bust or catching someone peddling pussy to raise his profile, came around. We got a kind of rep for things the cops don’t like, so he chooses us, comes sniffing around our place with a warrant, having heard something from somebody about this or that. Thin evidence.”
“But they were right,” said Tom. “We were selling dope. It’s bigger money than pussy. Guy gets dope, likes it, pretty soon he can’t think about pussy anymore. He thinks about dope. And women, they like that dope just fine too. Like it good as anybody.”
“Tom, shut up, I’m telling this. So there we were all day while the county turned over row boats, looked through this boat, searched our house and the sheds. They looked everywhere but up the dog’s ass. It took them some time to do it, but they didn’t find anything. All our dope was in that boat at the bottom of the river. Our family business with that goddamn family, and in a way they done us a favor. They took with them what would have gotten our dicks in a crack. We had just put it out for show, to get their money, and then they took it, and it worked out fine.
“So here were are, come to get the dope, and guess the fuck what? After all that shit with the cops, us waiting until they had their hands out of our pants, well, it’s night again. We brought some good lights, some underwater lights, and we thought we might go down and get it, but decided to just stay here until morning. Then we found you two. You’re like an answer to a fucking prayer, that’s what you are. You know what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “With us here, why wait until daybreak?”
“Now you got it. You know, you’re a pretty smart nigger.”
“I’ll tell my teachers,” Leonard said.
“What’s it look like, Jaret?” August asked, and now we knew the other guy’s name.
“Like water,” Jaret said.
“Come on, goddamnit,” August said.
“It ain’t as muddy as a bit ago,” Jaret said. “It ain’t clear, but it ain’t all that muddy either.”
“So you’re going to send us down there to get something out of a boat we can’t even see?” Leonard said.
Tom looked out at the water. “It’s stopped raining and the water is running fast. My guess is it’ll clear up some more in an hour or so.”
August studied us. “Well, boys, you got some time to sit there and think. You want to pulls your dicks, or one another’s dick, then now’s the time.”
He laughed at his own joke.
I studied the man with the gun. He was our main worry, but those other two were big guys, especially August, and from the looks of them, they’d been in a few brawls.
We kept sitting, and August kept talking. He was like a chatter box on speed. He just wouldn’t shut up. And then I got it. He was on speed.
August talked about himself. He talked about his family, and during the conversation it was made certain that those two guys were his brothers. He talked about his old man, and how he was working under a car on a creeper, just his legs sticking out, and how he had gotten killed when the jack holding up the car slipped and the car dropped and crushed him. Tom laughed when August told that story. It got funnier for Tom when August talked about the reason the jack slipped. August said he kicked the jack loose holding up the car and when it fell on his father it made a squishing sound and shit ran out of his father’s pants leg. Then there was a pool of piss and blood that oozed out from under the car along with the shit.
“Ah hell, we don’t know you actually kicked that jack,” Jaret said. “It could have slipped.”
“I kicked it,” said August.
“If you say so,” said Jaret. “I don’t think you have the balls for that.”
“You think what you want,” August said.
This bothered August enough for him to go quiet for a while, but alas, it didn’t last. He started talking again.
“Old man disrespected our mother once too often,” August said. “I had to take him out. Also, he beat our asses all the time. Mine especially. I think he liked how that belt sounded against my back or upside my head. I got a scar over my right ear where he hit me with the buckle. Had more light, I’d show it to you.”
“I don’t care to see your scars,” Leonard said.
August by now was ignoring Leonard. He had stories to tell and he was going to tell them if we were interested or not. He told us about a calf he used to get behind, climb up
on a stump, and fuck. He talked about that calf like it was a long lost girlfriend. I kept thinking a prom story would come up next. He told how the calf became a cow and he had to take a step stool out to the pasture to fuck it after a time because its ass got tall. Told us how once when he was laying the meat into it, his words, the cow shit and filled his pants, and how this happened one morning right before school and the school bus was coming, and there he was with pants full of shit.
He seemed to think that was a natural and funny thing.
Later, he and the family ate the girlfriend.
“Old man, before he was crushed, of course,” August said, as if we might not put that together, “used to say you got to break them calves in early on account of once the bull gets to them they get stretched out like sweat pants.”
And so it went. We learned everything about August but his shoe size, and I think that was coming, but Jaret said, “It’s pretty clear now. With a light, I think they can see what they’re doing.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “We got some divers’ masks in there and you can wear them. We were going to.”
“You still can,” Leonard said.
“No,” Tom said, “we got you. You drown or a gator eats you or a snake bites you, it don’t mean shit to us. But if we drown, that means a big shit.”
“Not to us,” Leonard said.
“I figure that’s right,” said Tom
“But no diver’s gear other than a mask?” I said, as if I had any idea how to use diver’s gear, but the idea of air tanks was appealing.
“The masks,” said Tom. “That’s it. Hope you can hold your breath good.”
“Let me get this straight,” Leonard said. “We go down there and get your dope, come back up, you’re going to let us go?”
“Sure,” August said.
“I don’t know that I believe that,” Leonard said.
“It don’t matter what you believe,” August said. “We plan to kill you, at least this way you got a little longer to stay alive, and you come up with our goods, who the fuck knows? Might feel happy enough to let you go. If not, well, you had a refreshing swim, didn’t you?”
Hap and Leonard: Blood and Lemonade Page 9
