Uncivil Seasons

by Michael Malone

  Now I was doing instead what Cuddy had long ago warned me detectives actually do for a living. I was walking, with a list of stolen property, into every pawnshop, secondhand business, and disreputable jewelry store in town. I was waiting for someone to give me a clue. Most of the stores are in East Hillston. None of the owners had seen any of Cloris Dollard’s property. Not unless they’d seen on their customers some of the used clothes she was always donating to Goodwill.

  The good will performed locally by Cloris Dollard and her friends, and by Susan Whetstone and her friends, was for the benefit of this section of town called East Hillston, which meant poor Hillston, which meant the area bordering the side of downtown Hillston that had gone out of business when Cloris and her friends had stopped shopping there twenty years ago and had driven off to the new malls and had never come back except for charity’s sake.

  Sister Resurrection walked fast along the streets of East Hillston, dawn to dark, the smell of her rotted sweaters as familiar as her stick with its wood cross taped to the top and her unsparing eyes that kept waiting for God to burn up the world. Men and women who worked the lowest-paid assembly line jobs at C&W Textiles lived here; so did most of Hillston’s blacks; so did the few Greek and Italian families, after three generations still known to their neighbors as “the foreigners,” who owned corner groceries and submarine sandwich shops. They lived here in all that were left of the massive Victorian frame houses built after the Civil War, when East Hillston had been the center of town. Boarded up or doled out as shoddy apartments, the old homes were rotting beneath layers of bad paint and cheap linoleum. Beside them, even shabbier little oblong boxes had been thrown up on what had once been big lawns where summer parties played croquet. These little 1940s duplexes, faced with stucco or aluminum siding, now hid behind all the pickup trucks and rusty Chevrolets scattered over the yards. The worst place to be from in Hillston was East Hillston. It was where Cuddy Mangum had grown up.

  The Mangums had lived three blocks from the old, shambling, two-story Gothic house that somebody named Pope had owned as far back as the town records went. Somebody named Pope had been on the police books as far back as those records went, too. At present, various assortments of Pope brothers and their wives lived in the house and were periodically arrested for stealing cars, hijacking cigarette trucks, and brawling in public. Long ago, their mother Edna had just picked up her raincoat and walked out of the house. She’d left when her youngest boy was twelve. She’d never come back. The boys’ father, T. J. Pope, had died while waiting trial for murder: he’d killed a mechanic who overcharged him.

  Cuddy said the Pope brothers were hereditarily unreformable, but their marauding was checked by a congenital stupidity (evidenced by their having hidden three thousand dollars belonging to Cherokee Savings and Loan under a junked bus in an old cardboard suitcase that had “Edna Pope, 1002 Maple Street, Hillston, N.C.” tagged to the handle), and so, at any given time, a few of them were likely to be sidelined by prison.

  Cuddy Mangum kept up with the Popes. He called me with the latest news shortly after I’d gotten home from East Hillston and was changing into a suit to go meet the psychic Joanna Cadmean out at Pine Hills Lake. His call came when I’d just hung up the phone and poured a drink after listening to my uncle Rowell Dollard tell me, again, to go arrest someone for killing Cloris. I thought the ring now was Rowell calling back. My uncle was persistent. He hated to lose. At fifty-eight he played squash twice a week, and he played and played until he won. If I beat him two out of three games, he’d pant, “Let’s make it three out of five.” Captain Fulcher was scared that if we didn’t find Cloris’s murderer fast, Rowell would do it himself, and then have all of us fired, as, long ago, he’d gotten V.D. Fulcher’s predecessor fired. Rowell liked to do things himself; he’d insisted on acting as a father to me even during the time when I already had one.

  The call, however, was from Cuddy, using a British accent, “Lawry Whetstone here, old boy. Understand you’ve been banging my memsahib. I say, bad show.”

  “What do you want, Cuddy? A part in our next play?”

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “Changing my clothes.”

  “You know, I wonder if you’re not some kind of pervert. There’s something un-American about the way you’re always playing the piano and changing your clothes. Want to get in on a real arrest; score with V.D.? Meet me at the Popes’ house on Maple fast as you can.”

  “Christ, what have the Popes done now?”

  “Charlene called up the station …”

  “Graham’s wife?”

  “Preston’s. Charlene is Baby Preston’s wife. Can’t you keep up? Old Graham’s wife gave him the heave while he was in the tank for trying to collect insurance on a semi he poured kerosene all over and lit a match to about the time everybody was getting out of church and strolling by his house to watch him do it. Whooee, I love those Popes! Graham’s wife’s the daytime bartender at the Rib House now, but she put on a lot of weight snacking on the job and lost her looks. Charlene called….”

  I kept straightening my bow tie. “Jesus Christ, Cuddy, how do you know all this?”

  “These are my people, white boy. My grandma’s sister married a second cousin of the Popes’. That’s why I don’t have the heart to go over there alone and arrest Preston for whinging off two of Luster Hudson’s fingers with an ax outside the By-Ways Massage Emporium, which is what hot-to-trot Charlene—who was whinging Luster, as was well known to everybody in East Hillston but Preston—just got through telling Sergeant Davies took place. Now, Officer Davies says we ought to close the By-Ways, says they’re showing obscene motion pictures in the back. I says, ‘Ummmm, are they ever! But doesn’t it make you so mad, Hiram, how they blip off every eighteen seconds, and you got to plunk in a few more quarters to get to the good stuff?’”

  Sergeant Hiram Davies was past retirement age and a rigid Baptist deacon. “Okay, Cuddy, force yourself to hang up, and I’ll be right over.”

  “I knew you couldn’t stay away. You love this low-life blood-and-lust detective work, doncha?”

  “That and the long lunch hours.”

  • • •

  When I skidded scared in the slush around the corner of East Hillston’s Maple Street, I could hear gunshots, and then I saw Cuddy hiding down beside his patrol car. I braked next to him and yelled, “Get out of here!”

  “They’re not shooting at me!” he yelled back.

  “Jesus Christ! Who are they shooting at?”

  He was twisting his arm around inside his neon-blue parka. “How the hell should I know? I just got here! Where the hell is my gun!” He didn’t always wear his revolver, and often couldn’t even find it.

  Up and down the snowy street, lights popped on in the duplexes. People cracked their doors and stuck their heads through. Cuddy hollered at them, “Will you folks please get on back!”

  I rolled out of my Austin, slid into the patrol car, and flipped its siren on. Mrs. Mitchell was hiding under the dash. In about five seconds, the shots quit. As soon as they did, a young woman ran out the door of the Pope place and jumped down the cinder blocks that they used for porch steps. She slipped face first in the wet snow and started to scream as loudly as the siren. Cuddy and I scurried to her. It was Charlene. She hissed at him when Cuddy asked her if she’d been shot, and then she went back to screaming. I’d pulled my gun from the shoulder holster I always wore, because once when I hadn’t, a drunk at a KKK rally had shot me in the calf and splintered a bone. I crouched, ran toward the porch, and yelled into the door. “Police! Come out of there!”

  I heard things banging around inside. From next door I heard a man call out, “It’s the police for the Popes.”

  A door at the back slapped shut and Preston Pope came running across the driveway, headed for a van that had white horses in blue moonlight painted on it in iridescent color. Shoving past the metal junk piled on the porch, I leapt down and got to him in time to grab Prest
on’s leg. He kicked like crazy, and we whipped back and forth in the snow until Cuddy ran up and shook him off me, yelling, “Preston! Cut this shit! I’m gonna hurt you!”

  The youngest Pope went limp then, so quickly Cuddy almost dropped him, and mumbled “Mangum, don’t listen to that bitch! I swear …” But he gave up the effort and just stood still. We were all three panting, and puffs of smoke from our breath blew all over the place.

  Charlene Pope was still out in the middle of the yard hugging herself. Charlene looked like somebody on the cover of one of the magazines you could buy in the By-Ways Massage Emporium. She had bleached white hair and black eyes and breasts hard as apples, and she was somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five. A black acetate bathrobe was slipping down off her shoulder; the only other thing she had on was one pink, fuzzy bedroom slipper.

  Cuddy scooped her other slipper out of the snow. “Come on, Charlene. Let’s all go on back in the house and see what the problem is.”

  She had a high, twanging voice that got away from her when she raised it. “Y’all got to be crazy out of your minds! I want you to arrest his ass and get him out of here!” She shook both fists at her husband. “Goddamn fuckhead!”

  Cuddy said, “Now, don’t talk dirty out in the front yard in your nightgown, Charlene.” He, Preston, and I went inside, and finally she followed us, already with a cigarette in her glossy purple mouth.

  Local news was loud on the color TV, and Kenny Rogers was simultaneously singing a love song loud out of stereo speakers on the mantel above a fireplace that was used as a trash can. The Pope living room looked like a K-mart warehouse, like a cheap motel that didn’t care who came there or what they did there, and didn’t bother cleaning up afterward. Thin, green carpeting was oil-slick with grime and puddled with stains, and cluttered with bent Coke and beer cans, ashtrays, country-and-western tapes, electric drills, balled-up bags of junk like corn puffs and barbecued potato chips, and God knows what else. Foam stuffing poked out of the black vinyl couch, where a skinny orange dog lay on a beach towel. One shade was ripped in half and there were chunks gouged out of the plaster. On two walls were textured, color photograph portraits of various Pope boys and their brides, the boys in rented baby-blue tuxedoes with black piping. On another wall was an auto parts shop poster of a hefty blonde, naked and knee-deep in surf. On the floors along the walls were stacks of car stereos, CB systems, about seventy cartons of cigarettes, and five televisions—one with the screen smashed. I said, “So these are your Popes.”

  Cuddy said, “My, my, this is messy.” Two windows were broken and gunsmoke lay thick in the air. He poked open another door and peeked in; he looked down the halls and tilted over to see up the stairs.

  Preston picked a revolver up off the floor and handed it to me. “There ain’t nothing in it,” he said defensively.

  Charlene shrieked, “That’s right, you’d still be shooting if there was!”

  Wiry and sullen, Preston came at her, snow still white in his beard and on his jean jacket. She backed away, making faces. He said, “I wasn’t shooting at her, I was just shooting.”

  “Cleaning your gun?” I asked.

  “Blowing off. You know.”

  I said, “Not exactly.”

  Charlene said, “He is so stupid, I can’t stand it another second.”

  “Well, let me tell you this, this bitch here is a cunt.”

  “You dumb prickhead!”

  They started toward each other again, and Cuddy slid between and elbowed them both. He asked Preston, “Where’s everybody else, where’s Graham and Dickey?”

  “Greensboro. That’s where she thought I was too.”

  Charlene hissed back at him. “I came over here to pack up my own personal belongings that don’t belong to you.”

  I said, “In your robe?”

  “I was getting ready to take a bath. I can use the tub if I want to, I guess!”

  Preston was yelling again. “The hell you can, you can’t use nothing in this whole goddamn house, ’cause none of it’s yours, ’cause the goddamn water belongs to me and the goddamn TV belongs to me too!” He spun around and jerked out the TV cord, which just left the Kenny Rogers tape going at high volume.

  “I’m leaving,” she said.

  “You’re not leaving,” he said.

  “Yes, I am too!”

  “Go ahead and try!”

  “Well,” Cuddy said, “why don’t you at least go throw on a few clothes, Charlene.” He turned her toward the stairs in the hall. “What with all the windows broken, it’s kind of drafty.” Actually, they had the oil heat up to about ninety degrees; even with the ventilation, the place was so hot I decided to take off my overcoat and brush out some of the slush.

  Cuddy put his hand on Preston’s shoulder. “Preston, you need to calm down. You don’t seem to be paying attention to the fact that you’re getting arrested.”

  Preston said, “What for?” but he was watching Charlene try to go up the stairs while looking back down at us.

  I said, “Are you kidding? Assault with a deadly weapon?”

  “Charlene’s never gonna say that.”

  “Is he kidding? What do you think your wife’s been saying?”

  “Forget her. Y’all got eyes. She’s out of her fucking gourd!”

  Charlene yelled from the top of the stairs. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you stupid asshole, you’re screwed, Preston! What are you gonna do now, huh? What are your big brothers gonna do for you now, huh? Huh, baby shithead?”

  He jumped. “Just let me go kill her, okay?”

  Cuddy said, “Whoa. Let’s not do that right this minute. Let’s have a talk, you and me, and this gentleman is Lieutenant Savile and that was his camel-hair coat you tore the pocket off of.”

  Preston said, “I’m sorry.”

  I said, “It’s all right.”

  Cuddy said, “Now, listen, Preston, you wouldn’t like to be moving in with brother Furbus for, oh, about a year, would you?”

  Furbus Pope, the eldest brother, and probably twenty years older than Preston, was in the state penitentiary on a larceny charge.

  “Okay, what’s the deal?” he mumbled.

  “Well, first of all, why did you shoot at your wife?”

  “Let me tell you something about Charlene….”

  “In a minute. Second of all, I’d hate to think for your health’s sake, you were going through—” Cuddy glanced over at the floor, “oh, six or seven hundred packs of cigarettes a day while you were sitting around watching all those TV sets.”

  Preston said, “You want one?”

  “And third of all.”

  Preston now slumped down onto the couch and pulled at his hair. The orange dog finally sat up. I’d decided it was dead.

  Cuddy wiggled his fingers. “Third is the matter of a couple of Luster Hudson’s fingers, which I hear rumors you took off him with an ax.”

  “Says who?”

  “Guess.”

  “Luster.”

  “Guess again.”

  “That bitch.” Preston dug his fingernails into the side of his face and started it bleeding.

  “Now you can tell me about Charlene.” Cuddy sat down. I stood by the door, where I could watch the stairs. The dog came over, sniffed at Cuddy’s leg, and then wandered back to the kitchen.

  Young Pope had gotten himself so depressed by now, he had to keep taking long breaths while he talked. “Couple of weeks ago I found out Charlene and Luster Hudson had something on.”

  “Couple of weeks ago you found out,” Cuddy said, and looked at the ceiling.

  “Well, it was Graham found them out, and he told me. So, Charlene, she says it’s a lie, but I don’t believe her because she’s on nights at C&W along with Luster and she’s not showing up home. And then Graham saw her and him dancing at the Tucson Lounge. So I said, ‘One of these times, Charlene, you’re gonna open that door and there’ll be a gun in your belly.”’

  “That’s telling her,” Cuddy
said.

  “So she said, ‘Don’t think I haven’t hidden your damn gun where no way you’re gonna find it.’ So I said, ‘I don’t need a gun to—’”

  I said, “Let’s skip to the part where you chop off Hudson’s fingers.”

  “It was Luster came at me with the ax.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “He had it in his pickup.”

  Cuddy said, “I think what Lieutenant Savile means is, what did you do to Luster before he looked in his truck to see if he had an ax handy?”

  Preston mumbled something.

  Cuddy took out a package of cheese crackers. “Come again? Seemed like you said, ‘Torched his bike.’”

  “Yeah.”

  “Torched his bike.”

  “I said, yeah. I’m looking for Charlene, and I seen his Harley outside the Tucson Lounge and so I look in and I see him and her out on the floor and so I take a rag and stuff it in his tank. And so I torch it.”

  “All right.” Cuddy nibbled tiny bites of the cracker.

  “So he comes for me at the By-Ways but Graham’s with me, so Graham ducks and comes up under Luster’s knees and I get hold of the ax and that’s when it got his fingers.”

  I said, “You just left Hudson lying there bleeding?”

  “He’s the one left, and he knew why, too. I chased his goddamn truck a block but I gave out and threw the ax at it.”

  “Good Christ,” I said. “What about the man’s fingers?”

  “Aww, shit, it was just the tips. Graham picked them up and looked and it was nothing but the tips.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re keeping them in a jar on your bureau?”