Fair to say I look at Fred and I don’t think on Ruth.
Three blasts from a car horn filter through the trees and arrive at the still without a note of urgency. Someone’s waiting on the likkerman. Sounds like Pete.
I check the Smith on my hip and gander off through the woods before getting off my stump. I sit real quiet. If they’s a sniper out there, getting ready to move, I want to see him.
I shoulda fixed a whistle to that birch tree, or a string-pull firecracker so I wouldn’t all the time be wondering if it went off.
Come on the house from behind, enter through the basement. Up the stairs, through the front door like I’d been inside napping. A Ford with half the front fender rusted off sits in the drive. The bed’s intact and this’s Pete Bleau. He’ll be after a dozen jugs so I carry four on the first trip. He sits behind the wheel in a cloud of stogie smoke, and rolls down his window. He’s so fat if he was an inch taller he’d be round. I hold up the jugs. He nods. I rest em in the straw lining the truck bed. Nestle em down separate like they was nitro.
“The usual,” he says.
I bring four at a time, and snug em in. Finally I stand beside his window and he shells a handful of bills from a wallet looks like he pulled it from a shipwrecked corpse.
Bleau’s quiet a minute and his eyes glow red. “Henderson says you been cutting your likker.”
“Henderson’s fulla shit. Tell him I said so.”
“I know he’s fulla shit, but his shot house moves half this likker. He’s put the pressure on my price. Told him I’d ask if we could come down a notch.”
“You tell him if he’s cutting my shine he better not sell it with my name. Any more talk on the subject, I’ll raise the price. Fuck him. Fuck you too.”
I snatch the bills from Pete’s hand and static pops through me. I tuck the money in my pocket, and studying the red hue in his eyes, think to pull the green out and count it.
“All there,” he says. “Don’t trust me no more?”
I hope they’s a dollar or two missing because that’d account for the red and the juice. I hate to know they’s deceit and not dig it up. But the count comes out. So it’s something funny about him and Henderson. Or who knows what. That’s the point I hate, not knowing.
“Henderson says I cut my squeezins?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Henderson says?”
“He kind of danced around it.”
The hair on my arm stands. “He said me or you, one, cut it? That it?”
“What you saying, exactly?”
“I always trusted you because thieving’s work and you’s too damn lazy for it. But I was wrong. Shaving a little off the top each jug gives you what? An extra gallon? Two?”
“Hold on ’fore you say something you’ll regret. If you ain’t already.”
“More’n that, huh? Three? That it?”
“Come on. Easy now.”
“So you fuck him out of hundred-sixty proof, and got the gall to come jew me down on account a lying to him. I never see such optimism. But it don’t make sense, you and me to keep working together, Pete.”
“Hell, Baer. Don’t be so damn uptight. This is a misunderstanding is all.”
“Don’t think so.”
Pete drags on his cigar and the cherry burns hot. He exhales. Smiles. “Yeah, I cut it. Shit.”
“Now you’re saying you cut it.”
“Shit yeah I cut it, but I won’t no more. You got me. You got some wiles, is what. I dunno. But they ain’t no reason we can’t have a new understanding.”
“Like ’fore we had this conversation, we both understood you’d cut my likker and kick my name in the dirt?”
“That’s awful strong. I got the wife to feed.”
“It’d be a favor, make her miss a meal.” I step to the truck. Drop my hand at the open window, a few inches shy of Pete. Stare into his eyes. “You saying you won’t ever cut my likker?”
“Scout’s honor.”
I wait. Pete sweats, but his eyes ain’t red no more. “Guess I’ll see you end of the week.”
Pete sighs. Nods. “You’re a good man, Baer. And we understand each other now.”
If I didn’t work with liars and cheats, I wouldn’t have work. I slap the Ford’s roof and back away.
It’s four mile to Gleason—or two flask.
Road to Gleason—they’s places more eye pleasing than others. The bridge over the crick—the spill tube shoots water fast and heavy, and years of current’s opened a hole where trout grow the size of pond bass. They hang back in the shadows and watch. Wily, far as fish go. Rest the road’s just a place for cars to cut across a field or forest. On the left, most the way, is corn or wheat. Starts with Brown’s land. Craddock tills it, then goes on and tills his own land too. Mile and a half later is Werner’s land, then Sinkey’s. On the right they’s woods all the way except a quarter-mile stretch of cow pasture belongs to Sidell.
I’m in the post office. Slap six singles on the counter. Harry takes the letters I saved for Ruth. Seems dishonest to put more’n one to an envelope, and I speculate she keeps em separate, each with its own postmark, so she can find the one she’s looking for easy. I write the date by the return address, case it helps her.
Harry holds the stack edgewise, raps em on the counter, tosses em in a bin.
“How long ‘til they get there?” I say.
He grins, and says the same words as the last hundred times. “Couple day. Only going Mars Hill.”
“Right.” I push my stack of singles to him. He rings me out and drops the change in the jar for the three-year-old angel named Susan Wilkes, got the leukemia.
I nod.
“See you in a couple,” Harry says.
The Second National Bank’s across the street and down Main a few block. I watch the sidewalk and brood on them letters, and how they’s prob’ly four five I’d rewrite different. All these years I must’ve spent two thousand dollars on stamps. It’s no different’n being in the woods and saying “hello” to yourself, and saying “why, hello, how are you” right back. Ain’t nobody in the whole woods, and the trees don’t care. Them squirrel bark no matter what you say or do. Sending letters to Ruth is like that and I write things maybe I wouldn’t say at all if I knew she might ever write word one back.
Wonder if I’m writing letters to someone else—
I step into a man who don’t move.
Joe Stipe.
“Stipe—”
“Didn’t see you, Baer.”
“Had my eyes on my feet.”
“Glad I run into you. Wanted to talk about our misunderstanding last night, and it’s just providential you’re here, and I run into you just now.”
“Yeah. Something I might ask you, too.”
He lands his hand on my shoulder. Stipe’s the size of three mules’ asses and about as slow. His arm weighs like a bucket of lard and he leans as he talks. I got my eyes on his free hand.
“Let’s sit a minute,” Stipe says. “What are you looking at?”
“That awful sledgehammer you promised, I guess.”
Stipe pulls me to a bench and the three lugnuts he was jawing with hold back like our privacy was ordained. I’m thinking this is the bastard behind the bullets and the note but I got to play it cool.
“You come on us kind of sudden, in the woods,” Stipe says.
“Well—”
“We’re an exclusive group, you know, with the dogs… ”
“Picked up on that when you said you’d burn me down. Something change?”
“No, that threat’s good as gold.”
I twist the cap on my second flask and his eyes follow. I offer the shine and he pours it down his gullet; stops the flow with his tongue. He hands the flask back and I gurgle some.
“Lou Buzzard buys from you,” Stipe says.
I watch his face. They’s no juice running through me—he ain’t said nothing but fact.
“I talked to Lou,” Stipe says, “and he vouched f
or you. You got to come spend some time with your brothers-at-arms. Gimme another hit of that.” He takes the flask from my hand. “You got to come out with the boys, else I won’t be comfortable the way things sit.”
“Your comfort’s real important to me.”
“I want you there, and maybe you oughta fetch a jug o’ that shine.”
He gulps a half-hour drunk from my flask, takes the cap from my hand and screws it. I nod, but I don’t feel it. “Maybe next time Lou stops by, he can let me know when y’all are getting together.”
“No need. Every week, same night. You know the place.”
“I—uh.”
I ain’t good at untruth. Ever since I first got the shocks, I’d kife a cookie or raid Gramma’s garden and sense I was sending electric all over the place, and had red flames shooting out my eyes. Everyone’d know I was fulla shit. So I was the dumbass fessed every crush to every girl. I was the one told Deputy White we all knew he was gay as a jaybird. I was the one told my first boss his son was robbing him blind. It never settled in my head that no one else in the whole world sees red and feels electric like me, and most folks is happy with untruth, both telling and hearing.
“What’s on your mind, Creighton?”
“I don’t know about going to them fights.”
“That ain’t what I wanted to hear.”
“I didn’t want to say it.”
“Sunday next. Bring one o’ them jugs. Bring two.” Stipe braces his hands on his knees and rocks forward, wobbles. “That’s good shit. Gimme another slug o’ that.”
I hand him the flask. He empties it.
“You know, Stipe, I got a dog named Fred. White pit bull.”
“Bring him.” He passes the flask to me.
I glance back at his friends.
“Someone already brung him. Telling the truth right now, I’m liable to bust your party, if I come.”
Stipe smiles like he’s got his grandbaby in his arms. The fucker’s got secondary dimples, his cheeks is so fat—but his eyes got dirty mischief like a boy pulling wings off’n flies or sticking firecrackers up a bullfrog’s ass. He says, “Next I run into you, it won’t be friendly like the middle of town.” His cheek twitches but his smile holds. “I’m giving you a chance, but looks like if there’s a pile of shit on the floor, you’ll walk a country mile to step in it.”
“Which one your boys fought my dog?”
“White pit? Star on his chest?” He winks. “I never seen that dog.”
Chapter Six
Thought I could’ve kept myself pertineer sloshed, but Stipe stole my slosh and I’m exercising in the sun with no likker protection.
Stipe’s one of a handful of organizers this half the state. He arranges fights, makes book, and guards the sport. Dogmen take it serious as hell. Talk about dead dogs soldiering on in Valhalla.
I heard about him years back—rumors and lies—but he kept his fight business on the other side of town in a swampy draw nobody’d ever wander into without a gun to his head. Seeing that truck come out the woods and drop Fred cued me to his new location, and from the sight of it, new ain’t the word.
Been out the loop on those sorts a goings-on.
Running fights every week is only part of Stipe’s living. He got his fat hands on every form of commerce in the county, but the bulk of his dough comes from the trucking company. His fleet hauls from here to every city or crossroad-and-church in three states. He don’t get the big warehouse business, as they keep they own fleets, but every small company needs connected to the world, Stipe’s the connection. One of his drivers runs to Cincinnati and stays fresh on my shine, so I know a little about Stipe.
It’s six, eight mile from my operation to Stipe’s complex. Truck company sits cattycorner his house on a fifty-acre plot. The quarters sits back, and way off the side is a barn turned mechanic’s garage. They work on his semi trucks, and more trucks is parked in rows on a cement pad. All that, surrounded by wood and hills.
He keeps a few lugnuts at his side most the time; these boys do to men what Stipe’s dogs do to each other. They’s bruisers, wandering around here, somewhere. Maybe one of em was shooting at me from the Hun blind.
Stipe’s white GMC pickup sits beside the trailer he uses for an office.
Man could sit in one of these trees and plink bullets on that complex all hour, and the men coming up on him wouldn’t have a lick of cover. Man knew how to shoot a rifle’d cause all sorts of hell. But this thing burning in me ain’t about getting wicked on men guilty other shit. May as well find an old lady and slap her silly, the moral’s the same. Got to keep retribution correlated with the evil deserves it. They’s got to be accountability, but more on the part of the man setting things right. I got a rifle with a scope, and an eye that’d drill a piece of lead through a man’s ear at a hundred yards if I was sober, but I don’t want to wind up in hell over it, and sober just ain’t likely. So I brought Smith and a pair of binoculars.
I’m just here to reconnoiter. Last thing I want’s more trouble before I’m ready for it.
Don’t know what I thought I’d see. I watch through the field glasses and not a lot goes on. Stipe’s truck is white and looks brand new. I went back to Brown’s looking for clues the day after I found Fred, and found oil’d brushed off the truck’s undercarriage. Stipe’s trucks don’t likely leak oil—not when the man’s got mechanics on the payroll.
I’d like it if it was Stipe that stole Fred because I like him about the same as ass rot. But that ain’t the truck I saw. So I wonder how much strictly honorable hell I can park on this man’s porch. Sure he’s evil, but unless he gave the order to steal Fred he’s a secondary target.
A man crosses the lot from the trailer office and drives a rig to the barn. Nothing happens for a while, and I dwell on other things.
Stipe did say he’d burn me down.
I’ll burn him down. That’s his kennels, off the side his house, way in back. Lined up two-high, got his animals in wire cages where they prob’ly walk in they own shit. They must be ten brutes in there licking wounds, commiserating. Waiting somebody to do the right thing.
Cut em some slack.
Fella comes out the garage and looks this way. Pull your thumb out your yin-yang and get to work. Stipe don’t pay his boys to think. I adjust the binoculars and zoom in close. He ain’t shaved—prob’ly on account the mole on his chin. I had a mole like that, I’d cut it off. He turns and looks left, then right, across the field. Waves at somebody.
I gander rightward and they’s a man on the run, got a rifle. He vectors toward the wood’s edge. I zip back to the left, way, way over. Another man’s running with another gun.
Crack!
Wood bark stings my cheek. I drop the binoculars. Mechanic’s on one knee, taking aim for another shot. I duck and his rifle flashes again. I let go the tree and all of a sudden my shoulder’s got a sting like a nest of hornets picked one spot and dive-bombed it. Bounce off limbs and hit the ground. Knee smashes into my binoculars. Good shit, I can’t walk. I stretch along the ground sideways, extend my leg. Something pops and I think it’ll hold. Don’t make sense, them starting a skirmish right after I run into Stipe—unless he left instructions to kill me on sight, and didn’t have the brass to do it himself in town. Prick.
Noise in the brush off both flanks. Mechanic pops off another shot, and another. Walking bullets down the tree. Pin me down.
Dry leaves sound like thunder. I wriggle. They’s brush cover and these boys won’t see me ‘til they’s on me, sure as shit. But they ain’t stupid. They hunt buck, put on drives, sweep the woods and funnel animals so they got to run a gauntlet.
I’m game.
The crunching closes in, both side.
Maybe fifteen feet of brush and trees between me and the field that leads to the mechanic. Big old rhododendron thickets. I crawl best I can, not dragging leaves or making trail. Don’t let my shoulder leave a blood mark.
C’mon, you ragged-assed knee! They’s co
ming quick.
Rhododendron grows tight and low. I lead with my left shoulder so the leaves don’t drag on the right. Either way they’s noise. I bust through. Trunk’s only four-inch thick. I hide like a fat boy behind a flagpole.
Pull Smith and wait.
Sounds on the left stop. On the right they come closer. That’s right. You fellas shoot each other, and I won’t have to.
“He split!”
“Bullshit. I’d have heard him.”
“Well, he ain’t here.”
“Go in and see.”
Rifle clicks. I hunker down and a shot cuts leaves above my head.
“Wait! Don’t he carry a piece?”
They keep jawing. Don’t sound like Stipe’s lugnuts at all. They must yet be in town. These boys is damn near comical. Come dark I’ll bust out of here with six-inch flames out the Smith tube. They want to dance by God we’ll shake it up.
Another shot from the mechanic’s barn.
“Hey, Norm? Norm! What the hell you doing?”
“Well, you go in if you want. I’m loyal, but I’m a damn truck driver. I ain’t about getting shot.”
They’s quiet. Whispers. I get electric all through me.
“I guess we’ll just go on home, now. Nothing left to do here.”
“Yeah, he sure got away real good.”
Footsteps on leaves, first one, then the other.
They make sounds with they boots—hell, I can see one by his pant legs. He’s tramping up and down, quieter each time. Kind of grabs my cool by the balls. I brace Smith agin the rhododendron trunk and sight on the edge of his pants. Shot’ll cut a groove but won’t cripple him. The fella on the right stands still, waiting on me to come out I guess. I’ll test his conviction.
I squeeze. Slow. Don’t pull the trigger—with a pistol you can’t even think about breathing, or the shot’ll—
My Brother's Destroyer Page 4
