Black Water

by Bobby Norman

  “Hub? I know you’re bad disappointed, and I feel for ya. I do. A little. Thirty God Damn years, and then t’have it end like this must really hurt. But, you might as well accept it, ‘cause one way ‘r the other, your head’s goin’ back t’Oledeux. Now, it’s up t’you whether it goes still attached to your shoulders or carried back in a sack. I swear t’God, Hub, I’ll do it. Don’t fuck with me. I need proof I got you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll lug a whole, intact dead body back through what would be four or five days o’ swamp sluggin’, when I could carry out just your head in two, and I’ll bet these boys feel the same way.” The Southeastern Native American Aboriginals nodded their agreement. “I don’t mean t’rush you into a decision, but I’d appreciate it if you could make it now.”

  Hub lowered his hand. Ball gestured to One Ear and Two Dogs to guard him. They moved to Hub’s ten- and two-o’clock positions, far enough apart that if Hub was quick enough to get one of ’em, the other’d get him. They set their legs, raised their straight-arm gun hands to Hub’s face, and didn’t blink. Their intent told him he’d better not, either.

  Ball waggled his gun barrel to the ground. “Take off your pack. Slow.” Ball considered Hub not just a little dangerous, and if it looked like he was gonna go for the gun in his belt, he’d blow a hole right through him. He had no doubt ever move Hub made might be an attempt to get the jump on him, so he helt the .45 straight to Hub’s face. Hub wriggled out o’ the pack and set it on the ground. “Now, put your hands waaaaay up.”

  Pissed, Hub’s jaw muscles worked double-time as he raised his arms over his head. It was so embarrassing.

  His gun arm still helt straight out, Ball started towards Hub. When he got within ten yards, he stopped and nodded to Two Dogs. “Get the knife and the gun and chain ‘im up. Take your gunbelt off first. Lay it on the ground.”

  Two Dogs holstered his weapon, unbuckled his gunbelt, and set it on the ground. Then he slid the manacles off his shoulders, laid ‘em on the ground, and walked wide around to Hub’s back. He pulled Hub’s knife from the sheath and the .38 from the holster and laid ’em on the ground. The whole time, One Ear and Ball kept their guns trained on Hub’s face. They were so notched up, if Hub farted, he was liable to die.

  Two Dogs picked up the chains and, one at a time, pulled Hub’s arms down and behind his back. He snapped the manacles around his wrists and the second set around his ankles. Now that Hub was trussed up, Two Dogs thoroughly frisked him. Satisfied, he stepped back, took a deep cleansing breath, blew it out, and nodded the all-clear. Ball took his own deep breath, and he and One Ear holstered their guns. The relief was palpable. Two Dogs brought Hub’s .38 and the knife over to Ball.

  “Thanks,” he said, and then, “Well, Hub, I got bad news for ya. Medical news. I’m not a doctor.”

  “Really,” Hub said smartalecky, then, “You coulda fooled me.” Immediately he knew how stupid the statement was. He had fooled him. He imagined blowin’ Ball’s head off and shittin’ down his throat hole.

  “But, I got even worser news than that. You’re not dyin’. Unless, o’ course, you keep swallowin’ those pills. They’ll give you an awful bellyache. Make you feel like you’re dyin’.” He gestured to the Indians. “I told these boys all about you and the pills, and they just couldn’t wait t’meet ya. Whada you think o’ my actin’ like a doctor? Pretty good, huh? The only one’s in on it was Wade and the Warden. You remember the day I gave ya the bad news? Wade wasn’t there? Just you and me? That dumb son of a bitch was supposed t’be in the room with us but he’d got so worked up worryin’ about his actin’ abilities I had t’tell him t’leave. I couldn’t take the chance he’d give it away. He said he wouldn’t leave, though, unless I promised ‘im he could stay in the other room so he could listen in. The parole board didn’t even know. The Warden told ’em t’give you a bad time, but in the end, regardless o’ how they felt, they were to put their X’s to your walkin’ papers.”

  Hub was comin’ out o’ the ether. He grit his teeth, and the muscles in his neck roped up. “You son of a bitch!”

  Faking hurt, Ball put his finger to his chest. “Me? No no no no no, sir! You made things a lot worse than they had t’be. What’d I tell you about takin’ more than two o’ those pills a day? I said don’t do it. No matter what. Didn’t I? You took three both yesterday and today, so you got nobody t’blame but yourself.”

  It was then that Hub figured they’d been followin’ him. Watchin’ him pissin’ and shittin’ and pukin’ out his guts. Laughin’ at him.

  “And, too, I went easy on you. The fellas ‘at gave me those things offered me some that’d give you the Hershey Squirts just for chuckles, but I turned it down. I figure you owe me for that.”

  “I owe you f’somethin’ awright.”

  “You’ll pardon me if I don’t get overly concerned. Got you wrapped up like a Christmas ham, and I don’t care if it takes a month t’get back”—he pointed to the leg irons—“those things ain’t comin’ off. If it’s a case o’ you drownin’ if they stay on, then you’re drownin’, boy. Glug glug glug.” He took another deep breath and laughed. “God Dammit, Hub, but you just made me the happiest man on Earth! I bet I get a promotion out o’ this!

  “Okay, enough laughs.” He motioned a few feet to the side. “Move over there and siddown.” Hampered by the ankle chains, Hub shuffled a few feet to a fallen log. “Get the bag,” Ball told One Ear. One Ear retrieved the satchel and brought it to Ball. “Check ‘is backpack. There oughta be three or four hundred dollars in it somewhere.”

  One Ear rummaged through the pack and found the rubber-banded wad. Ball took it and counted out a hundred in tens and twenties and handed it to One Ear. “You boys split that. Little bonus. You did a good job.” He smiled at Hub and added, “We’ll just say he spent it showin’ the café woman a good time.” Hub’s eyes lit up. Ball noticed and stuck the rest o’ the wad in his front pants pocket. “Shit, Hub, you ain’t been alone since you set foot out the prison gate.”

  “What’d you mean by ‘gettin’ a promotion’?”

  Ball smiled and pulled a thin, folded wallet-like thing out of his back pocket. “Let me introduce myself officially,” he said, and flipped it open to a badge. “Special Agent Dexter Ball, Federal Bureau of Investigation. And you, Hubert Marshall Lusaw,” he flipped the little wallet shut and put it back in his pocket, “are under arrest for your part in the robbery”—he pointed out the satchel— “o’ that money from Southern States Security, and for your part in the murder o’ the two security guards, Jack Hoff and Randolph Snodgrass.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about no robbery ‘n I didn’t kill nobody,” Hub said. He chinned to the bag. “I found that settin’ on th’porch.”

  “The Komeses porch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d you think they made that kind o’ money? Raisin’ rabbits?”

  “I didn’t give a shit how they got it.”

  “Hub? I got you with the money. That’s all I need. Anything else is just hoohaw.” He looked through the trees at what little was left of the orangy-red glow in the west and told the trackers, “We’re not gonna start back t’night. How ‘boutchu boys set up camp and fix a little somethin’ to eat.” They moved to make camp and Ball told Hub, “It’s gonna be a long night. Dang, I wish I’d brought my Brownie.”

  Long after nightfall, their butts planted on the log, Ball and the Seminoles were on one side o’ the campfire, sitting on a log, and Hub on the other, sittin’ in the dirt. Dinner was black beans, Spam, and pan biscuits. Hub was still chained, but his hands were now in front so he could manipulate his tin plate and spoon.

  “So, I was given an old unsolved case to look at,” Ball was still ridin’ high, ramblin’, between smacked-mouth bites. “A robbery slash murder.” He’d been goin’ on for a while, braggin’ about his quest, equatin’ hisself with other supposedly big-name FBI guys Hub’d never heard of. Ball thought he was big shit. Hub thought he was, too.


  “Fifty thousand smackers gleeped, two guards murdered and mutilated, and neither the money nor the perpetrators ever found.” Then, nodding to the top o’ the rise, “I think that was probably Hoff’s and Snodgrass’s dicks you so casually flipped away up there.” He wiped his sweaty forehead on his shirtsleeve and looked at the Indians. “You boys like ’em spicy, don’tcha?”

  They nodded. They thought all white men were pussies, but they paid pretty good.

  Ball took another bite and continued. “New bills, consecutive serial numbers, but nary a one ever turned up.” He took another scoop, waved the spoon around in a futile attempt to cool it off. “So… if the money didn’t show…was it still hidden somewhere? Had it been lost? Had the robbers maybe died before gettin’ the chance to enjoy it? If not, they had the patience o’ Job.” He popped more beans into his mouth and ignored the rule about talkin’ with your mouth full. “Lookin’ through a newspaper o’ the time, I found a story about a fella beatin’ a couple o’ brothers to death.” He stopped just long enough to suck some cool air over his burning lips. “Boy! They’re good tonight, but sure as shit I’m gonna regret it in the mornin’. Anyway, they’s killed the same day as the big robbery.

  “No way to prove it, o’ course, ‘cause they’d been done in, but everbody figured one or both the guards was in on it. Supposedly their armored truck’d broken down, but when we went over it, there wasn’t anything wrong with it. There was speculation that the bad guys killed ’em to keep ’em quiet, and then, too, that woulda been two they wouldn’t have t’share the loot with. So I wondered, if the fellas that were killed…the brothers in the article in the paper…were the robbers, and if the fella that killed them went to prison…in that case you…was in on the heist….”

  “I awready toldju I didn have nothin’ t’do with it!”

  “…regardless…it still made perfect sense why none o’ the money’d never turned up. You can’t spend it if you’re dead and rottin’ in the ground or sittin’ out forty years in Angola. One and one’s two. The Komes did the heist, knocked off the guards, and you knocked off the Komeses. Bingo.” He took another bite.

  “You’re a real whiz bang, ain’tcha?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty proud o’ m’self,” Ball boasted. Then he laughed at another thought. “I got the best help from the ex-Mrs. Hubert Lusaw. I chased ’er down, and when I told ‘er I was gonna bring charges against you, she just laughed and said ‘good luck.’ Said if you did have the money, I’d never get it ‘cause you’d clam up out o’ pure ornriness. Well, naturally, I didn’t tell her, but I knew if I didn’t have the money, I didn’t have diddly-piddly. It still woulda been nothin’ more than my word against yours. That’s when I cooked up the cancer thing. I told ‘er about it and said if she’d help setcha up, she might even get a little somethin’ as a reward. I told ‘er, too, that if she didn’t throw in, I’d say she was part of it, and she’d go to the gray bar as an accomplice to murder and robbery, and I tossed in obstruction to justice just t’spice it up.” He snapped his fingers. “She turned rat pretty quick then.”

  He gnawed off a hank of biscuit and muffled, “I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t run into any trouble gettin’ out here, so that money she give ya? That was my idea, too.” He pruned up his face and swallowed the masticated wad of tasteless dough. “Nasty, vindictive thing, that woman, ‘n uglier’n a baboon’s butt. She come in handy, though. Yessireebob, boy. I played her, she played you.” He took another bite o’ spicy beans and shook his head, gigglin’.

  KAAABLOOEE!

  Looee…

  Ooee…

  ……thundered and echoed across the swamp, and ever critter for a mile in ever direction raised a holy-helly ruckus. Two Dogs’, One Ear’s, and Ball’s arms flew up, launchin’ plates, spicy beans, greasy Spam patties, hard biscuits, and two hats with feathers, everwhere. Their heads’d snapped back and their bodies jerked off the log like God’d yanked a rope tied at their necks, flat onto their backs. The thunder rolled and tumbled until finally dissolving into the night. If Hub hadn’t been lookin’ at ’em when it happened, he’da thought they’d just disappeared. The only thing left of ’em, visually, were the bottoms o’ their boots layin’ on top o’ the log.

  Whatever the Hell was goin’ on, he was in the thick of it—layin’ on his belly with his hands clasped over the back of his head. He’d jerked his arms up as he was goin’ down and forgot all about the wrist chain, and its rollin’ up his face damn near took his nose off. He looked to the dark woods, where the blast had come from, wonderin’ what was gonna happen next. Then, he heard footsteps off to his left, somethin’ crunchin’ through the woods, raised his head just enough to peek back over his left shoulder, and watched the foggy image of a man slowly coalesce in the scant campfire light. He was big, tall, probly mid-thirtyish, and smackin’ on a mouthful o’ gum like he was paid by the chaw. He filled out a pair o’ coveralls cinched tightly over a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, carryin’ a heavy .50 caliber Sharps rifle easily in his big right hand. Sharps were easy to recognize—more of a shoulder-mounted cannon than a rifle. Hub used to have one of his own.

  The big man was followed by another fella. Balding, potbellied, and short. He had a nasty scar over his right eye that cocked the brow cattywampus. His arms were slung out to the side like he was flyin’ or glidin’, like an eagle. Or more appropriately, a buzzard. He stirred up the dust, scuddin’ his boots across the ground as if makin’ like a locomotive. But he wasn’t goin’ chugga chugga chugga or choo choo choo as much as shwssshhh shwssshhh shwssshhh. He entered the camp and shwssshhh shwssshhh-ed past Hub, givin’ him little more than a sidewaysie glance. He dipped his left arm while raisin’ his right and circled the fire. Unlike his murderous partner, he wore pants with suspenders, and under them was a bright red, long-sleeved shirt emblazoned with a home-sewn “S” insignia. Also sewn into the back at the shirt’s neck was a dishtowel, hangin’ down his back, flappin’ in his wake. The fat son of a bitch thought he was Superman, skippin’ around the campfire like a two-hundred-twenty-pound fairy. The fact o’ the matter was, he’d probly just murdered Ball or one o’ the Seminoles.

  The Big One laid the Sharps up agin the log, stepped up on the same, overlookin’ what was left o’ Two Dogs’ carcass sportin’ a very neat little hole situated perfectly ‘tween his eyes. What used to be the back of his head and brains was splayed out over a wide arc in the dirt. The Big One clapped his hands together, threw up his arms in victory, and declared, “Dead Center! God Damn, we snuck up on Seminole trackers! Godddddd Damn!” He spat out the wad o’ gum and pulled a pack o’ Black Jack from a front pocket, unwrapped two fresh sticks, popped ’em in his mouth, chomped on ’em like there wasn’t no tomorrow, and stuck the pack back in his pocket.

  The other one, Superman, finally shwssshhh-ed up on the other side o’ the log with his legs spread, crossed his arms under his flabby tits, looked down at One Ear’s body, and hissed. What little that remained of the left side of One Ear’s head was badly mangled. He would henceforth be known as No Ear.

  The big fella tight-roped across the log to the caped Kryptonian’s end, perused the cranial damage, punched his cohort on the arm, and cackled, “You missed! Got ‘im in the eye. He he he.”

  Finally, out o’ the dark rolled the answer to Hub’s question to what’d happened. There’d originally been three sittin’ on the log. He’d only heard one combined blast, and unless one o’ the two loonies lookin’ over the log at their handiwork had sighted-up and fired from both hands, there had to be a third shooter.

  And there it was.

  Raeleen—in a dress that coulda form-fit a whiskey barrel, the hem fringed with dried mud—trucked into the firelight like a pissed off Marjorie Main lookin’ for a carousing Wallace Beery. She had a pistol in a holster belted around her waist and luggin’ a rifle in each hand.

  Hub rolled into a sittin’ position and declared, “Raeleen! Boy-howdy, am I glad t’see you!”

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sp; She strode past him with a hateful glare. “You just keep yr’mouth shut ‘n don’t move!” She stumped through the camp, straight to the spot on the log where Dexter Ball’s butt had recently resided, and looked over the edge. One Ear and Two Dogs’ spirits were already in the Happy Hunting Grounds sipping coffee. Their arms and legs flung out. Between ‘em lay Dexter Ball, and as Raeleen had hoped, still alive and scared shitless. Both his hands were gripped tightly around his blood-gushin’ throat.

  Raeleen set the rifles against the log by the Sharps, nodded over her shoulder toward Hub, and told The Big One, “Keep yr’eye on him.” Then she put one foot on the log, braced her elbow on her knee, and leaned into Ball. “I’m gonna letchu bleed t’death f’th’nasty things you said ‘bout me.”

  He wasn’t listenin’. He had more pressing things on his mind.

  She clenched her teeth and stepped over the log, straddled his gut, planting her feet ‘longside his hips, reached down, grabbed him by his blood-soaked collar, jerked him up, her nose to his, and screamed at him. “LOOK AT ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH! I wantchu t’know who killed ya! Baboon’s Butt? I’ll show you a baboon’s butt!” She shoved him off and his back thudded to the ground. “Bastard!”

  He still had a death grip on his gushing throat. She pressed her dirty right boot to his sternum for leverage, reached down and pried his hands from his neck. “No use draggin’ it out, you dumb shit, just let it bleed!” Blood spurted in florid jets from the wound. His hands shot to his neck the instant she let go. She jerked his shirttail from his pants and used it to wipe her blood-spattered hands. Then stood up and looked over her shoulder at Hub. “I don’t reckon he’ll get that big permotion now.” Then she turned back to Ball. “I sure wish you’da broughtchur Brownie.”

  He still wasn’t listenin’.

  She flipped her hands to the other bodies and told the boys, “Search ’em.” She stepped over the log and started in Hub’s direction, then stopped and snapped her fingers. She turned back, and while The Big One and Superman went through the Indians’ pockets, she stuck her own hand into Ball’s front pants pocket and pulled out the rubber-banded money wad. She tossed it in the air, caught it, kissed it, stuffed it in her own pocket, and told Hub, “He can’t buy ice water where he’s goin’.” She stepped over the log and stood by the fire.