Cory would pee his pants if he had to climb that tree with both hands and a safety harness. That was the difference—one of the thousand—between Baer and Cory. Danger simmered in both men, but with Cory it was only likely to boil over onto a person or thing weaker than him. With Baer, Mae just sensed he was a handyman competent at any task he chose, including violence.
Maybe she’d ask him about a gun.
She held the door open. He placed his tools on the porch.
“I’ll have that chicken in twenty minutes. You can visit the girls. They’ve been through every room in the house looking for a window to see you on the roof.”
Baer glanced at the driveway.
“They aren’t going to be young forever,” Mae said.
“You hope.”
“Uncle Baer!” Morgan crashed past Mae’s legs and into Baer’s. He swept her up and stooped for Bree, immediately behind. He pulled them to his face and scruffed both with his cheeks at the same time.
Any other man only wanted to do that with tits. “Come in, Baer. Come on. Playtime.”
“All right girls, Uncle Baer’s going to teach you to fix a drain. Mae, you got that baking soda and vinegar?”
“Just a minute.”
“Grab a plastic lid, like from a tub of butter.” Baer deposited Morgan on the floor. “Run outside and find me a rock the size of your foot, okay?”
“Hunh?”
“Go on.”
Morgan bolted. Mae presented Baer a lid from the drying rack by the sink.
“Upstairs bathroom,” Mae said.
Baer tossed Bree over his shoulder like a sack of grain and carried the wriggling, giggling girl and the drain-cleaning supplies upstairs. Morgan raced inside with a rock.
Mae slapped a package of chicken breasts into a skillet. Washed collards. Laughter from above, then the rapid thud of footfalls as Baer bounded down the stairs. Only one set of feet, though. No doubt the girls rode his arms or shoulders.
If they weren’t going to have a father in Cory, or a grandfather in Larry, at least they had a great-uncle in Baer. At least.
How long would it take him to check off every item on her list, if he set about fixing the house?
He stood in the kitchen entry bearing a conqueror’s smile. Pioneer handsome. Rugged and focused. Appropriately smelly.
Virile.
“I was wondering,” Mae said. “When’s the last time you cleaned up for a formal supper?”
His face was still.
Shit.
“I mean, nothing against scruff and all… you’re welcome to the bathroom. I could run your clothes through the wash real quick—I know you spend all that time in the woods. I… oh, shit. I don’t mean anything by it. I’m just saying I’d like to do something nice for you and I don’t have a hell of a lot I can do, unless you want me to look at your stilling operation’s books and dig into your supply chain management. I’ll do a Six Sigma on your moonshine operation. Don’t look at me like that, Baer. I’m just trying to be nice because you’ve been so nice to me and I’m feeling about as dumb as I ever felt in my whole life.”
He stared at her, judging her. Mae looked back at him as plainly as she could, skewered by his eyes. He saw straight into her soul and in a moment would decide if she was worthwhile. She waited for an expression she could read, a twitch.
Nothing.
“You’re some kind of silly.” He came across the kitchen. Took her close, and squeezed like she was… what? Lost for a thousand years and they’d been lovers. She felt his ache through his arms, his broken heart through his chest. “Something else. You got to put on a saucepan of water. Get ’er to a boil, and in precisely thirty minute, pour it down your shower drain.” He was sized perfectly for her—his chest, shoulders, the spoon between, perfect for her head… he said, “Any clog you got’ll be gone. If it don’t drain quick, just have Morgan or Bree show you how I done it.”
He pulled away. Held her at arm’s length.
“You’re one helluva good girl.” He kissed her forehead. She smelled what? Sandalwood? Oats? She wrapped her arms around him and in that exact moment he withdrew. “You’re welcome for all this… fixing stuff. I’ll come by and work on your list, time to time. And you don’t got to do no man’s laundry, you hear?”
He stepped back. In a moment he’d announce he had to look after Fred.
“Baer!”
“Huh?”
“Don’t go! Stay! Please? Fred’ll be fine. I’ll drive you home to make up for the time you stayed for supper. Stay?”
“Uh.”
“It’ll mean so much to the girls.”
Baer grinned—almost a frown. He’d seen through her. It was barely a lie.
He pulled Morgan from the floor beside him. And then Bree. “Girls, you got to show your ma how we did that drain upstairs, okay?”
“Baer… you can’t go now. I wanted to show you all about the degree I’m taking. At Penn State. Online.”
He was still. My God! His eyes!
“I wanted to tell you about the program. The business program… it’s the best in the country. I mean so good that companies offer jobs just because of the university’s name. I get my MBA and all this… this house, these problems… go away. All that famous American opportunity is going to be mine. I want to show you the Internet. How I take classes from home. You have a couple of minutes, right?”
Somehow, he knew everything before she said it. She could see.
“You’ll finish that school,” he said. He kissed Bree on the cheek, then Morgan. Placed them on the floor and pushed them off toward the television.
“You prob’ly tops in class. I got to get back to Fred, ’fore all this… gets out of hand. You’re a good woman. And as to this schooling, you jest remember… I don’t know if it was the Bible or Darwin said it, but people is lower’n worm shit. They’ll lie and take what’s yours, and step all over you. And smile while they do it. So my advice is, you want to make a living in business, you own the business.”
He closed the step between them and dropped another kiss on her brow.
She clutched him, pulled, threw her chin over his lapel.
*
“Whoa, now!” I scoot back. Drag my sleeve over my mouth like I’m afraid she give me cooties. “Whoa, Little Princess. Easy. This ain’t what uncles do.”
Her eyes is full and bright, and sometimes you see a woman’s got something in her head so firm it’ll take an oxcart full of no’s to shake it loose. Mae comes after me again, without a hint of red or electric, and she’s shameless. It’s the most natural thing for her, and it don’t make a lick of sense—but I’m half snookered anyhow. She gets up close and instead of planting them pudding-soft lips on me buries her face in my jacket, and throws her arms around my back.
We’ve retreated, us two. Back to family-type salutations. This’s the familiar goodbye hug. Or could pass for it.
This’s wrong as two boys fucking.
“Mae, I got to go. That chicken needs flipped.”
I got to run. They’s people waiting in line to shoot me. Something. Shit.
*
He was gone, like that. Mae checked the chicken and the collards. The chicken was fine.
Chapter Fourteen
Colder’n most October afternoons, but the walk to Bleau’s has me hot. Pete Bleau cut my likker and said Henderson did it. Don’t know why I think of Bleau… whoever stole Fred and fought him was a man goes to fights, and knew I got a dog of the breed Stipe cottons to. Only a handful men knows I got Fred but don’t understand he’s a puss.
Pete Bleau’s one.
I’ve thought on the way he behaved, talking about cutting likker, and the signals he gave. Nothing unusual. I catch cheats all the time. Bleau knows Stipe, Larry and all them fight circle jerkers. His cohorts make him liable to know something about what happen to Fred.
Bleau being Bleau, he won’t volunteer information ‘til I shake it out him. So we got to have a prayer meeting.
> Bleau lives a mile out of town in a shack like the thirty beside it, tall skinny slum houses. I’m good and loose from a half-flask of my new apple brandy, and a little shook by Mae’s kiss. Took a quarter mile to walk off the hardon. Pete Bleau’s truck’s in the drive. Paint is cowshit brown, but I peek at the tailgate anyway. Circle and glance at the undercarriage, and all along the drive. No oil.
Got last year’s Christmas tree beside a row of trash cans agin the house. Stone steps up to a wide porch. Curled paint, wet-rotted boards underneath squeak like to snap. Wonder how Bleau ain’t fell through. I beat the door. Dog barks inside.
Porch boards rumble. Pete’s coming.
Lock slides. Chain dangles. Door swings open. Pete looks like he expected someone else. Behind, a German Shepherd growls hello.
“Shut up, Butch,” Pete says. “What you doing?” He looks beyond me to the yard, houses opposite the street. He spits in a potted plant by the door.
Nothing yet, terms of red or electric. “Ran apple last night. Some of my best.”
“I guess it’s that time of year.”
“High dollar.” I shove a flask to him. “Can you move twenty gallon?”
“More’n last year, huh?”
“Stepping up production.”
“I’ll move sixty,” he says. “Hell, a hundred and sixty.”
“Then it’s time to double the price.”
“At double price I’ll move half as much.”
“There you go, Sparky. I got ten now. Another run in two week. Ten bucks. Oh, and you cut my apple brandy… I don’t want to go there.”
“Nah, shit. We got an understanding now.”
“You know I got a dog?”
“Fred? Sure.” Bleau drinks.
“Who stole him?”
His eyes glow from the sides and the color’s hot. I get sparks between my fingers and if it gets worse I wouldn’t believe him if he said I got a ten-inch pecker.
“What?” Pete says. He throws the flask back and swallows a couple gulps.
“What I said.”
“That’s potent shit.” He wipes his mouth with his arm. “What’s this ’bout your dog?”
“Someone fought him at Stipe’s the other night. What you hear?”
“I don’t go to them fights.”
“You like that apple?”
“It’s plenty good.”
“I’ll knock you on your ass and pour it in your eyes ’less you get straight with me. We both know you’s fulla shit and I’m someplace you don’t want me to be. So you better un-ass some truth. What you know ’bout Fred?”
The charge goes from my skin. His eyes cool into white-lie territory.
“Stipe run out of dogs. Hard to have a fight every week when you run out of dogs.”
“How you know?”
“I talk to everyone.”
“So who stole Fred?”
“Dunno. Just got word to keep Butch locked up.”
“Who give you the word?”
“You wouldn’t know him.”
“Try me.”
“Don’t think I will. Don’t matter who said it—truth’s plain enough. Stipe fights ten dog a week, but only pits. Week in, week out. Even a dog that wins is licked for a while, and as many as five die each week. You got to have a lot of dogmen breeding them animals. And if you’re stealing ’em, you got to have a broad sweep to stay flush. Only natural he’d run out.”
“Step out on the porch with me, so your dog don’t run out.”
Bleau squints. Pokes his head outside and looks up and down the street. Steps to the porch in slippers and ragged jeans and closes the door. He takes another slam off my flask.
“Who give you the word, Bleau?”
“Don’t—”
I swipe my flask out his hand and shove him to the jamb. Got him pinned with one arm, leaning with all my weight. I hold the potion over his face. “You want to flush your eyes in hundred-sixty proof brandy? Or you want to say who give you the word?”
I pour a little on his forehead like to baptize him.
“Ahhh! Don’t blind me for chrissakes!”
He shoves hard and wipes his brow. We stand apart a few feet, me poised to throw punches and him trembling like a ten-year-old getting picked on by the big kids riding back of the bus. Likker won’t blind him—leastways not this likker—but he’s ignorant, confused with the wood alcohol.
Instead, I press my elbow to his throat and get him pinned again. Pour a handful of apple shine in my free hand and mash it into his eyes.
“Fuck, Baer!” Bleau heaves me back and twists into the house. That big dog slinks up. I trip Bleau and he drops. German Shepherd growls low and the teeth marks in my neck start to ache. I draw Smith and hold it on the dog, and he gets wise. Cants his head. The hair on his neck stands straight and he looks like a duffel bag of teeth.
“All right, Bleau. You going blind and your dog’s getting buried in the back yard. Who the hell give you the scoop on them dog fights?”
He shakes. Moans. I got to ask again. He says, “Cory Smylie.”
“Keep talking ‘til I tell you to stop.”
“Cory’s been working for Stipe. Gets his bait.”
“Bait?”
“Cats and dogs. Cory drives all over looking for strays or animals he can steal without any trouble.”
“Bait.”
“Yeah, bait. They throw em in with a bunch of fighting dogs. Keeps em edgy and looking to kill, I suppose.”
“And Cory give you the heads up when he’s doing the stealing?”
“Well, I don’t think Butch’d make a good bait dog. Nah. Cory said Stipe paid money—called it a finder’s fee—for anybody brought him a fighting dog. Cory didn’t want anybody else to make off with Butch.”
“How’s come you and Cory Smylie’s so tight?”
“Now that ain’t got nothing—”
I kick his belly flab. Pull back the hammer.
Bleau groans. “We got other business arrangements.”
My face is flat but I judge him with my eyes and he sees it. “You move his drugs to the shot houses.”
“I’m not saying any more. Pour that whole flask down my face, I don’t give a shit.”
“Or is it the other way around? You bring Cory the drugs from cities?”
“You dig much more, you’ll have men from all over hunting your ass.” Bleau eyeballs me. “I heard you shot Stipe’s dog.”
“That so?”
“Shot him in the eyeball. That dog was Achilles—Stipe’s latest, greatest champ. Stipe’s planning biblical retribution on your ass. So you want to add every kingpin in three hundred miles, you keep digging.”
“You hear something about Fred, better find me. Don’t make me come pour shine in your eyes again.”
Why not visit the Law?
“Chief Smylie, you know that fight the other night? That illegal fight you was at? Well, someone stole my dog and fought him… ”
Don’t think I’ll talk at the police chief just yet.
Chief Smylie and me got an understanding—the only way a fella in my line of work can keep from being fined broke or thrown in jail. Want the freedom to do whatever work suits? Pay the thug. That’s the way of things. Chief knows he can come by for a jug when he wants, and only swans over three times a year: first week of buck season, when he gathers his boys and they go to camp; July four; and his birthday in August.
Smylie joked one time he’d make Fred a law dog, what with the crooks smuggling dope through Gleason. “Our town is just a way station, a hotel and a party on the route from New York to nowhere. But since the drug men stop here, they sell here, and a dog like Fred has the demeanor and the nose for police work.” Had. That was chief shooting the shit and making nice after extorting a jug. Well, chief don’t have a white truck, and though he cozies up to Stipe, I can’t see him bringing a dog to the show.
Difficulty with Smylie—he knows I got the still. I make trouble, he makes trouble. Time being, chief’s
out the picture.
Got to see about Larry’s truck.
Don’t know why Larry’d steal Fred and fight him, unless it was pure spite—and that’s verydamn likely the case. If it was Larry.
Right this second, though, I’m thinking Cory Smylie.
Larry don’t need money. After he stole back Ruth he put himself through night school and wound up cooking books for men like Stipe. Works for Big Ted Lombo, the restaurant man connected to other fine restaurantoors from the cities. Larry buys a car every two years, has a boy mows his lawn every week whether it rained or not. Even had the fashion to ditch Ruth and scrounge a second wife—some girl I remember from school, was a few years behind and had a personality like wet burlap.
Time I get to Larry’s, the sun says midafternoon. He’ll be at his office making numbers lie. His woman Eve’ll prob’ly be in the house sucking a martini.
The house is plain vanilla with a row of daisies by the sidewalk. A tree out front, pruned round.
I come on the garage quiet.
Garage doors is glass at the top and I gander inside. Plenty dark, but I make his truck’s outline. Light color; can’t tell which. Truck is here because he drives a snappy sports car around town, looks like Snoopy’s nose.
I try the big door. Locked. Side door’s locked too.
“What you want, Baer?”
“Hello, Eve.” I face her. “What, you stand at the window watching for people to swing by?”
“Something like that.”
Her eyes is big and her stance is mousy. She’s either got a clamshell under one eye, or Larry’s corrected her. She holds a drinking glass looks like it’s full of barbershop comb disinfectant.
“Larry at home?”
“He’s at work. You oughta know that. Won’t be home for a couple hours. If he wants.”
Larry and me don’t talk and it’s been five year since I seen Eve. Downhill? Her looks fell off a cliff and left her standing on top. She wears shorts and even the fronts of her legs is pocked. Her nipples poke agin her halter, force a fella to speculate on whether them tits make milk or sour cream.
My Brother's Destroyer Page 8
