The man shuffled closer to her. She finished with the gas and returned the nozzle to its cradle. More words between them. Less space between them. She moved away from him and he grabbed her by the back of her shirt. Jack stepped from the curb and was walking toward them when the woman wheeled around and caught the man with the whip of a backhand. He retreated a step. Opened his mouth and stretched his jaw. He lurched to grab her again but it was Jack who caught him this time. Snatching his wrist and twisting his arm behind his back. Jack shoved him onto the hood of the El Camino as he yelled turn loose of my damn arm!
“You better settle down,” Jack said.
“Go ahead and break it,” the woman said.
“Let me go, asshole.”
“Not until you get still,” Jack said.
“Who the hell are you anyway?”
“The man who’s gonna break your arm,” the woman said.
The man kicked back at Jack and caught him in the knee. Jack gritted his teeth and twisted his arm higher and said she’s right if you do that shit one more time.
“I just got to talk to her,” he said and he gave up. No more squirming and no more kicking. Jack eased the tension on the man’s arm and asked her if it was okay to let him go.
“He doesn’t scare me,” she answered. “But me and him got nothing to talk about.”
“The hell we don’t,” he said.
“I’m gonna let you go,” Jack said. “But you get up easy.”
Jack released his arm. The man lifted himself from the hood of the El Camino. Rubbed at his shoulder. Then he told her again. We got to talk and I don’t care if Captain America does stand here and listen. You’re gonna tell me about you and Baron and what happened the other night. Or else.
19
THE DOOR OF THE CONVENIENCE STORE OPENED AND A STUMPY woman in camouflage pants and a camouflage t-shirt came toward them in a wobbly walk, calling for them to break it up right now or I’ll call the law.
“You don’t need to do that,” Ricky Joe said.
“I guess you would say that seeing as how you’re the one who started it.”
“We don’t need the law,” Annette said.
“You sure?”
Jack stepped back from them and then the woman looked at him and said hold on a second.
“What?”
She eased closer to him. Then began to shake her head.
“Son of a gun,” she said. “It is you. Jack Boucher. I’ll be damned. The Butcher standing right here in front of me after all these years. You know who I am?”
“I don’t seem to recall.”
“Andy Clark’s sister. You and him used to fight the same nights up in Memphis. We were all a lot younger then. You ain’t still fighting?”
Annette had been keeping her eyes on Ricky Joe but when the woman mentioned fighting, she turned her attention to Jack.
“Do I look like I could win a fight?”
“What you look like never seemed to matter. I watched you enough to know only God above has you figured out.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said.
“What the hell are you doing in Clarksdale?”
“I’m in that motel right up the road.”
“What for? What about that big old house? You still got it?”
“For now.”
The woman kept talking to Jack about her brother and some night somewhere when something happened and Annette studied him while she went on. His knobby knuckles. His scarred forehead. The way his mouth and neck shifted when he spoke as if it might hurt. While the woman talked and Annette watched, Ricky Joe was moving around to the driver’s side door of Annette’s truck. He eased up on the handle and inched it open and was about to slide in and look around when Jack pointed.
Annette came toward Ricky Joe but she was beaten to him by the woman in camouflage who stomped over and shook her finger in his face and told him he better get out of here right now or the next person he’d be talking to would be wearing a badge. Ricky Joe moved from Annette’s truck, his hands held up and backing away from the woman as if she might sink her teeth into his flesh.
When the woman was done scolding she turned back to Jack and slung her arms around his waist and hugged. He grunted and hugged her back and then she said I can’t believe I didn’t figure you out when you came in the store. I guess you look better from far off.
“We all do,” he said. “But for now I have to go.” He walked over to the curb and picked up the cigars and Tylenol and headed back toward the motel.
The woman turned again to Ricky Joe and Annette. “You better go settle this somewhere else,” she said and then she went back inside the store.
“I’m calling Baron,” Annette said.
“Good,” Ricky Joe answered. “Call him. And you can tell him what I’m telling you. I saw you and him out there at the wreck. I saw him pick up something and I saw you both study it and hide it away and I want to know what it is. Because I saw something else out there too. I saw someone lying on the ground. Maybe it was somebody breathing. Maybe it wasn’t. But whatever it was he told us to drive off and we left that person out there in the dark. You and him think didn’t nobody see. But I did.”
“You didn’t see nothing cause there wasn’t nothing to see.”
“You got a little secret. That’s okay. We all got those. I’m just interested in what it is. If you’re not willing to share then I’m guessing the local sheriff might listen to what I got to say.”
“Go ahead. I’ll drive you there. They’d probably lock you up for about a dozen other things before you could get your mouth open.”
“Come on then.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“That’s fine,” he said. And then he pulled a knife from his pocket. Snapped it open and stabbed the front tire of her truck. There was a pow and a hiss and he said you ain’t going nowhere at all. And you remember what I said I’ll do.
He climbed into the El Camino and shifted into drive and then he was gone, a blue cloud of exhaust trailing behind. The woman came back out of the store and stood next to Annette and said I saw it all. I’ll call the police now.
“Don’t,” Annette said. “He’s gone.”
“You got somebody who can come help you?”
“Yeah. I just need to use the phone.”
Annette followed the woman inside the store and around behind the counter. She waited in the open door of the office while the woman wrote down the store address on a slip of paper. Then she handed the address and a cordless telephone to Annette.
She dialed Baron and told him about Ricky Joe. About him sticking the knife in the tire and she asked for him to come to the Shell station. No, don’t send somebody else and no I don’t need help changing it. Get over here because we got to talk. And hurry up. She gave him the address and said I’ll be waiting with the truck. She set the phone on the desk and then returned to the counter and asked the woman for a pack of Marlboros.
“Let me ask you something,” Annette said. “That man out there before. How long have you known him?”
“I suppose twenty-some-odd years.”
“And he’s a fighter?”
“Was.”
“What kind?”
“The good kind,” she said. “At least when he started out.”
“No. I mean like boxing or what?”
“Boxing? Shit. He’s a fighter of the first kind. Nothing but air between fists and faces.”
“What’d you call him? The Butcher?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Boucher is his last name. You gotta say it just right. Boo-shay. That means butcher in French. He’d sure as hell carve you up with those hands.”
“Jack Boucher,” Annette said. “He’s from around here?”
“Yeah. But I don’t think he’s lived here for a while. At least I don’t never see him no more.”
“How far away is that motel he said he was staying at?”
“About a quarter mile. Why? You think you know him?”
“Nah. Just curious.”
“He’s a damn good man to get curious about. He’s been rode hard and put up wet but I guarantee you he’s got some stories to tell.”
“How old is he?”
She shrugged. “At least as old as me and I’m about to be forty-six come September.”
Annette went outside to the truck to wait on Baron, but she thought about Jack Boucher. A fighter. Easily old enough to be a father to a woman of twenty-three. She opened the glove box and took out a map she used to mark the towns the carnival had visited to help Baron avoid repeats. I was with him around Greenville or Greenwood or one of them wore out Delta towns, her mother had said. And he bragged his name meant something. She didn’t remember what. Annette moved her finger across the flatland of northwest Mississippi and found Clarksdale. Near the river. Close to the names of the towns her mother had mentioned and what she had seen so far of this place sure as hell fell into the category of wore out. She wished now she would have touched his back or shoulders to feel if they were hard like concrete, the only physical detail her mother had ever given about the man Annette had always wondered about.
Boucher means butcher, the woman in camouflage had said.
A name that meant something. The scratch of information from her mother less of a throwaway and more of a prospect now that there was a real man she could attach it to.
She set the map aside and got out of the truck. Walked out to the road and looked in the direction he walked. And in the distance she saw the motel sign.
She was a dozen steps along the roadside when Baron arrived and parked next to her. She returned to the gas pump and stood with him at the deflated tire and when he asked where she was going she only shrugged.
“What is Ricky Joe’s problem?” Baron asked.
“I don’t know but you need to listen. He knows about the body we left out there. I guess he got out and spied on us the other night at the wreck because he saw it all. You kneeling over it and then us finding the envelope. He doesn’t know if the person was dead or alive or what exactly we found but just that we found something and he wants to know.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything. But he’s acting crazy and he threatened to call the sheriff and tell about the body if we don’t let him in on whatever we found.”
“Damn it,” Baron said.
“I know,” she answered. “I don’t like this place. We got off to a bad start and we should’ve just kept going. A dead man and us holding on to this money and now Ricky Joe wanting a cut of whatever is floating around in his mind. But that’s not even the problem. The problem is him shooting off his damn mouth or at least threatening us with it until kingdom come. You don’t need that noose around your neck. You know what bad luck is as well as I do.”
Baron crossed his arms. Stared at the tire and huffed. “You sound like you think he’s serious.”
“Serious enough to chase me down. Serious enough to pull a damn knife out and stick it in my tire. Serious enough to make me think he might just do what he says. And you don’t need that shit, Baron. If he does call the sheriff you’ll be easy to find sitting out there in that parking lot. You and the rest of the convicts.”
“I’m not a convict. Not yet. And I don’t plan on starting.”
He stepped past her and leaned the bench seat of her truck forward. Took out the lug wrench and the jack and set them on the ground next to the flat tire and then he moved around to the truck bed. Knelt down and reached under and turned the lever to release the spare.
“I know you said you don’t need help changing the tire but let me do it anyhow,” he said. “Working helps me think.”
She nodded and stood back. Watched him crank the jack. Loosen the lug nuts. I won’t leave him now, she thought. Not tonight. Not until the show is on the road.
Changing the tire was an easy task for a man who had worked with engines and cars and carnivals and in only a few minutes Baron was done. They smoked a cigarette and Annette was about to ask him what he had decided when the woman stuck her head out of the store and asked them to get moving. You been blocking those pumps long enough today. And then she called out to Annette and said if you’re still wondering about Jack Boucher I wouldn’t go down to the motel.
“Why not?” Annette asked.
“Because there he goes,” she said and she pointed toward the road.
Baron and Annette turned to see a dented gray truck and Jack behind the wheel, his arm propped in the open window. The splintered windshield. The bent tailgate. A dull gray Chevy like the one Baron had once owned.
“Holy shit,” Baron said. “That’s the truck. That’s the gray damn truck.”
“And I was just talking to the guy driving it.”
“Talking to him where?”
“Right here. Right before Ricky Joe stabbed the tire.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hell yeah I’m sure.”
“Holy shit,” Baron said again and he tossed the cigarette. “We got dead bodies and found money and now this. I’m not waiting to let it pile up any higher. If we hustle we can be gone by midnight.”
He climbed in the Suburban and she climbed in the truck. He pulled out before her and turned to the left, in the direction of the carnival. But she stopped before following him onto the road. She looked to the right and the busted pickup was being driven by a man called Jack Boucher and the truck had paused to wait its turn at a four-way stop. Be ready for it when it comes, she remembered promising herself as she stood outside in the dark and the rain. And the urgency of Baron’s voice and the sounds of the world around her faded into the background as she could hear the choir singing. She could hear the scripture being read. She could feel the pulse of the congregation and the strength of the holy church of coincidence that seemed to be once again delivering its message to her in a moment of need. To the left Baron sped away. To the right was a fighter whose name meant butcher and she knew she would never again be at peace with herself if she didn’t follow him. There were a thousand things to consider now. Baron putting his hands on a dying man and a son of a bitch like Ricky Joe who had seen it all and now the truck reappearing and she knew that the envelope belonged somewhere in the middle of it all. She allowed several cars to pass going in Baron’s direction while she watched Jack move up to the stop sign and then go on through. Several cars that put space and obstruction between her and Baron and he wouldn’t know she wasn’t following until too late. All the questions bounced around in her mind but there was only one she truly wanted to answer.
Could that be my father?
20
ON WEEKENDS THEY LOADED A PALE YELLOW VOLKSWAGEN van with Maryann’s creations and a table and two chairs and a tent and they drove to places like Winona and Yazoo City and Indianola and Grenada. Towns with arts or music festivals and they popped the tent and set up the table and some makeshift shelves and then the crowds came and moved along the streets, carrying snow cones and corndogs and holding the hands of children and they browsed what the artisans had to offer. She talked while they sat under the tent. Told him she was an only child and I know it gets boring out there sometimes but you can find stuff to do. She told him her parents had died and she was all that was left of a family that had been on that spot for four generations. The house built in 1840 by her great-great-grandfather. Some of those photos on the wall damn near as old as the house. The land accumulated here and there over the years until it topped out at two hundred acres. A measurement of space he could not comprehend.
When there was music he would go and sit on the ground near the flatbed trailer that served as a stage and watch as the bands sweated and roared. He liked the bluesmen who seemingly could not play a note or sing a word without some contortion of the face and body and it was in those moments of lyrical anguish that the boy felt his blood rush, weaving through his body with the grind of the
guitar and the call of the harmonica and he listened hypnotically and often his own face would mimic that of the bluesmen and shift in impulsive spasms. When the festival was done for the day they would break down the tent and load up the shelves and ceramics and he would hold his head out of the window as they drove the highway, the summer sun low in the sky and Maryann humming along with the radio and the peaceful land and sky of home waiting for them.
When he was seventeen years old he saw a flyer tacked to a light pole on a street corner in Water Valley. A Saturday of selling ceramics over and he had helped Maryann load the Volkswagen van and gone in search of a bathroom. Shops were closed along Main Street and he ducked into an alley and pissed behind a garbage can. Walking out of the alley he saw the flyer that read FIGHTERS WANTED.
He snatched it from the pole. The flyer had been written in sloppy script and photocopied and it advertised a local fighting event for the coming weekend and the event needed bodies. Anyone eighteen years old and willing was eligible. Three rounds. Bare knuckles. Cash prizes to the winners. He folded the flyer and stuck it in his pocket and returned to the van and as he and Maryann drove back to Clarksdale he was already figuring out a plan to get to the event.
The next Saturday he told her he had been invited to a party. She asked him what party and where it was and who was throwing it and he had all the madeup answers ready. He knew she would not argue because she would be both happy and surprised that he had such an invitation and then when Saturday arrived he drove off in the late afternoon as she sipped a beer on the front porch.
It took a little more than an hour to drive to Water Valley. He stopped at a gas station and asked directions to the local VFW and then he went into the bathroom and changed from the new button-down collar shirt Maryann had bought him for the party into a dingy t-shirt he wore working with her in the potter’s barn. He wet a comb under the faucet and slicked his hair back, believing this made him appear older. And then he found his way to the VFW.
The Fighter Page 12
