by Ace Atkins
He told me a few good stories about the general in charge of the command, a millionaire in the steel business from Birmingham named Crack Hanna. Hanna had recently told a local minister to go piss up a tree after complaints that the troops frightened the townspeople.
I smiled. “We once had a minister here who decided to go all out against the Machine. He laid out a thick Easter Sunday sermon about the immorality of drinking and gambling and harlots and all that. I’m sure you’ve heard that kind of thing before. It wasn’t but a few days later that some of the boys around here sent a prostitute to visit with the minister.”
“She screw him?”
“No. She ripped off her clothes and yelled rape, and it wasn’t but about thirty seconds later the doors busted down and in came Fuller and some deputies.”
“Fuller is a piece of work.”
“He’s no fan of mine.”
“I bet.”
“You think he’ll make a move?”
“Maybe.” Black shrugged. “I’d watch my back if I were you. You hurt his pride, and for a guy like that that means everything.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it pride.”
“He’s pretty much a single-minded shithead.”
“I bet you wish you were back in Birmingham right now.”
“I’d be out on patrol, same as here.”
“You like being a cop?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Didn’t figure myself on a desk job after I got out of the Army.”
The rain had just started and it pinged on the metal roof, and Black looked above him and then out to his open jeep and shook his head. The phone started to ring.
Black flicked the cigarette under his foot and crushed it.
I caught the phone, and ten seconds later I was out the door with my rain slicker and ball cap.
Black ran alongside me, saying he would drive.
He knocked the jeep in gear and didn’t even ask about the call till we were headed down Crawford. The jeep jostled and groaned as we took a hard turn up Summerville Road.
“Britton said he saw men creeping around his backyard.”
“How many?”
“He couldn’t tell. At least two.”
“Let me guess, he didn’t call the police.”
I shook my head.
He reached for the radio.
THE YOUNGBLOODS TOOK THE FRONT DOOR WITH A CROWBAR, and Johnnie picked the rear lock in seconds. Reuben followed, shining a flashlight across the kitchen and a little refrigerator. He heard the floor creak, and when he turned there was a huge boom and a big hole appeared by his head. Johnnie rushed the old man and tackled him and the shotgun before he could reload, and Reuben turned on the kitchen lights, his right ear deaf and buzzing. Hugh Britton was dressed in blue pin-striped pajamas, his black-framed glasses crooked on his head, and he was cussing up a storm.
The kitchen was a spotless, modern wonder of white appliances and a light green tile counter. Reuben set his gun on the counter and breathed.
No one said a word. Johnnie handed Reuben some rope, and he got down to the floor and hog-tied Britton, the old man fighting and flailing but quickly subdued. And then the Youngbloods, giggling and laughing in those sad, white-lipped clown masks, pushed Britton’s wife through the door, a large woman – maybe twice the size of Britton – in her nightshirt and hairnet.
She screamed and wailed and punched at the men with the flat of her tiny fists.
The Youngbloods forced her down to the ground and tied her the same way, before dragging the couple back to their bedroom and setting them in each of their single beds. One of the clowns, Reuben couldn’t tell who, leaned down and put a big, wadded-up panty in the woman’s mouth, and, as she screamed, kissed her on the head and told her good-night.
The overhead light was turned off, and Benefield was in the living room opening up his wood box and pulling out sticks of dynamite.
“You scared them,” Reuben said. “Let’s go.”
“We ain’t done.”
“You didn’t say we were keeping them here. Pull ’em out, goddamn you.”
Benefield looked up at him with sad ole Emmett Kelly’s face and pantomimed that he couldn’t hear him, and then he gave a sad-clown shrug and went back to work setting out the slug bombs and attaching a long fuse.
But then all the boys heard the door creak and they turned their heads. Reuben ran back to the kitchen, and the door buffeted against the stiff, hot wind and rain, but he saw no one. He shook his head and closed the door and walked back to the TV room, where the three men played like three boys as they set the charge.
One of the Youngbloods held a flashlight over Johnnie’s quick hands, and Reuben looked to each of them inside their rubber masks to see if their eyes showed anything. He took a breath and reached for his gun, but then there was a hard, booming shot and Benefield got kicked back to the floor.
Reuben dropped to the ground, only a night-light burning in the long hallway.
Benefield crawled on the floor, holding his bloodied shoulder and moving across the light blue carpet trailing a long red stain.
BLACK WENT ON IN THE HOUSE AHEAD OF ME AND I trailed back through the kitchen, hiding behind a door as the man in the mask walked inside and then turned away. I had Black’s.45 cocked and locked, and I tried to control my breathing as I crept around Britton’s linoleum floor, the room smelling of fresh biscuits and bacon, and made my way into a small dining room with all-new modern accessories from the Sears Roebuck catalog. Britton had covered the floor with the best and newest wall-to-wall carpet – baby blue – and I was damn glad now as it muffled my steps as I rounded the table, past the big buffet filled with his wife’s china and a wall of sepia-toned photographs and new black and whites.
I moved into the living room, and it sat there empty and quiet, with a long green couch and little orange chairs and long bank of bay windows. On the floor was an open box, and I squatted down, seeing the dynamite sticks stuck down in a mud bucket. My mouth went dry as I stood and turned and faced a tall man in a clown mask holding a gun.
The light was narrow and dim from the back hallway, and he was just a shadow as he raised a pistol and I did the same.
REUBEN WAITED IN THE BEDROOM, WITH BRITTON AND HIS wife struggling in their beds. The Youngbloods looked to one another and then nodded, and then Ernest, the taller one, headed back into the short hallway, and Glenn, after checking his revolver again, followed. Reuben looked down at the two twin beds, the little round alarm clock between the couple and the big framed picture from a wedding back in the old days on the nightstand. Britton’s glasses had been knocked away, and as he kicked and squirmed on the bed he squinted up at the dim light.
Reuben ran for a side window and pulled it open and pushed through a jagged holly bush, cutting his arm, and rounded his way on the lawn. Out in the little lawn in the wet green grass, the rain looking like silver pins in the streetlight, he saw a bloodied Johnnie Benefield lighting a stick of dynamite he held in his teeth.
I SLOWLY MOVED TO MY FEET, AND THE CLOWN STRETCHED the gun out in his hands, pulling back the hammer, and then there was a boom, and the clack of a reload, and the clown was down on his back, almost comical in falling, like a cartoon clown with the rug swept out from under him, but there was a hole in the middle of his chest that was large as a saucer. A big, ugly sucking wound, and his voice sounded moist and wet and cracked as I stepped down to pull off the mask.
Black called out behind me, and I quickly pulled up my.45. In the hallway was another one running for me and the downed figure on the baby blue carpet, and as he raised a pistol with his hand, rushing for me, coming hard, I shot him three times.
Black walked up beside me and pulled me with him, as I tried to kneel and check on the men, and he told me to go back through the back door and that he’d take the front. And then the whole outside bay window exploded in a lightning of sharp yellows and blues, and the concussive force knocked us both down to the ground, burying our he
ads in our hands.
“COME ON,” REUBEN SCREAMED AS JOHNNIE LIT ANOTHER stick and pitched it toward the house with his good arm. Moon had fishtailed the Hornet on the slick street and barreled toward them, the big, round headlights looking like eyes as he zoomed down the road and fishtailed again, braking hard and throwing open the passenger’s door.
Johnnie touched the fuse and it caught and zipped, and he launched it up on the shingled roof and it rolled into a gutter. “Hot damn!” he yelled.
They heard sirens, and Reuben reached for Johnnie’s bloody yellow shirt and pulled, but Johnnie pointed a gun at him and told him to get to the car or he’d blow his fucking brains all over the street.
Reuben ran for the car, and, as he did, he saw a man coming around from the side of the house.
I MET ANOTHER CLOWN AT THE EDGE OF THE DRIVEWAY, but he had already seen me and had a gun drawn and pointed at my head, standing his ground, sirens in the distance. Then part of the roof exploded and cracked, and we were knocked off our feet, the house now catching on fire, and I couldn’t see or think but scrambled for the man and the gun, but he was on his knees, looking at me, the pistol still out but shaking. I put my hands up, and we both steadied ourselves. A man by a black Hudson yelled for him to shoot the sonofabitch and come on.
And he pointed the gun at me, the silver rain falling sideways. I could not breathe, fear sweating through my skin and across my face. I closed my eyes, and when I didn’t hear a thing I opened them and the figure was gone, piling into the Hudson and peeling away, dipping over the top of the hill, its red taillights shining and then disappearing over the ridge.
Black appeared from the front of the house, kicking down the front door and carrying Hugh’s wife, which, in kind terms, was a hell of an effort, and Britton was alongside of him in his pajamas and without his glasses and looking up at his house all torn away and battered and on fire, and he stepped over to me, squinting into the rain and the black, and said, “Lamar?”
“It’s me.”
“There are two dead men in my house.”
“I know.”
“Major Black says he got another, but we can’t find him.”
“I only saw the two.”
“You shoot them boys?”
“I shot one.”
“Good going. You saved the others for me, right?”
“You know it,” I said, and put my hand on the older man’s shoulder and stood out there, watching his perfect little home burn, until the Guard showed up and the fire trucks and the neighbors and, ultimately, the newsmen, who would take pictures until five o’clock the next day.
11
I’D CLOSED UP the filling station for the night, locking the pumps, emptying out the dirty oil in the drums out back, and finally restocking some of the candy shelves, when John Patterson drove up underneath the overhang and honked his horn. I met him outside by a big Texaco oil display, and when I noticed his pressed blue suit and tie I knew he’d been to Montgomery to see Governor Persons. He walked with me into the garage as I put up some wrenches, and he told me about the meeting, talking in fast gestures, his face heated with summer sweat and excitement. As always, his black beard was beginning to show on his square jaw.
“Is Britton doing okay?” he asked.
“House is a mess, but he’s fine.”
“You?”
“Nothing happened to me,” I said. “What’d the governor say?”
“How’d you know I’d been to see the governor?”
“You’re wearing your good suit.”
“Well, he used the same good words he’d had in the newspaper with us,” John said. “General Hanna went with me. Told us how tragic the situation had gotten and the sorrow he felt for Britton and his family. He even stood up from his desk and paced when I told him about Hugh’s wife and how half their house was gone.”
“You believe him?”
John shrugged. “I just keep thinking about that time when they blew up Bentley’s house two years ago. Remember how Persons flew in on that little helicopter and surveyed the damage and shook hands and gave that pensive look he gives. You know the one, where he softens his baby face, makes his eyes like slits, and pouts his lips.”
“He called off the investigation after a week.”
“It was only a day.”
I shook my head.
“Of course, we’re talking about the same fella who fired the football coach at Auburn as his first act in office. Don’t get me wrong, he listened, but he seemed more interested in showing off his gun collection. He was particularly excited about this big Nazi belt buckle he’d just bought. I guess he thought I’d be interested because I was in the Army.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Apparently, it was a real rare find. Persons said they only made twelve. He let me hold it and then asked if I thought it was heavy. And I said yes, and then he opened up the cover on the damn thing and it was a.32 caliber pistol made for officers. I told him that was nice, and that just egged him on, and he went into another room to show us a Chinese hand cannon, making a point that it was a replica so we wouldn’t think he’d spent the money on a real one.”
“Did he talk about Phenix at all?”
“Well, I finally had enough as he was playing with that hand cannon. I just said, ‘Governor, you’ve got to do something.’”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘We have done something. I’ve sent troops and the best investigators in the state. A governor can’t do much more.’ And then he turned back to the damn belt buckle and played with it some more. ‘Just genius,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it? To think a country so violent and mean could produce a work of art like this. It’s history. Just a piece of a culture that’s been destroyed for good.’ That’s when I told him to put the town under martial law. I had to say it, because General Hanna was standing there right beside me, and I think if Persons had kept showing off his trinkets Hanna would’ve leapt over the desk and choked him. Did you ever hear why they call General Hanna ‘Crack’?”
“I heard he was good with the pistol.”
“He was also good with a baseball bat when he was a strikebreaker,” John said. “He’s who the Birmingham fat cats called when the union bosses came to town. And as Persons kept talking, General Hanna took a deep breath and stood, his face turning red as a beet. You know, in the war he commanded a Pacific jungle unit that inflicted so many casualties he set Army records.”
“Persons will never go for martial law,” I said, dropping a wrench into a toolbox and slamming down the hood of a ’48 Ford truck.
John shook his head. “He said everything was going to be under control. He said you couldn’t judge the situation by some bumps in the road, and said he had great faith in the state investigators.”
“He can’t be talking about ole Smelley.”
“I told him what I suspected about Smelley. But he didn’t buy it. He said Smelley was a good man and was doing a hell of a job.”
We walked outside, and I closed the bay door of the garage, sealing it with a padlock. I found a spot on the edge of the platform of the gas pumps and sat down. My back ached; my feet ached. It was late, but there was still plenty of soft gold light. I lit a cigarette and stretched out my legs.
“So then he offered to send in more troops. But Hanna wasn’t satisfied with that. He knew that was what Persons was going to offer when we drove over this afternoon and was prepared. He knew it was just a political move to keep the newspaper boys off his back. And Hanna told him that. Hanna said he wouldn’t leave the governor’s office till he had a green light to bust up the rackets.”
“You want a Coca-Cola?” I asked John. But John said no. He looked more tired than me. His shirt was soaked through under the suit jacket, and despite his obvious exhaustion he paced underneath the overhang as he talked.
“So then Persons turned to me and ignored Hanna, as if I’d put Hanna up to this. He said, ‘I don’t understand what you want from me, John.
I send you the National Guard, and the full cooperation of state investigators. Our acting attorney general is devoting his full time to the investigation into your father’s murder. I can’t do much more. You even went to Washington to ask for help. That move embarrassed our entire state. And, like they said, this is a state matter.’ And that’s when I knew this was going to be a big old pissing match. He was absolutely furious that I’d gone to Washington. He actually said I’d embarrassed the state of Alabama. Can you believe that?”
“And that’s when Hanna let him have it.”
“You bet,” John said. “Hanna stood up as tall as that little fireplug could, those stars on his shoulders, shaven head, and leaned into the desk and said, and I quote, ‘Governor, I mean no disrespect by this but you don’t seem to hear a goddamn word of what’s being said. The local crew of cops in this town is about the sorriest gathering of bastards I’ve ever seen in my life. They don’t want us there, never wanted us there, and won’t get off their fat asses to help. They want Phenix City back to its wicked ways. And that’s fine if that’s what you want, too. But don’t go and blow smoke up our ass and tell Mr. Patterson here that everything is being done. Because, sir, it sure as shit is not. We’re sitting around with our thumbs up our assholes while these hoods and gangsters ride past us every day, pointing and laughing at us like they’re at the goddamn zoo.’”
“He said that?”
“He sure did. He told Persons, ‘They intimidate witnesses and blow up people’s homes. They aren’t scared of us in the least ’cause they all know we’re just there for the news boys to pose for some pictures. So, to the point, sir? Either use us to break this town apart or send us home. I don’t mean to be so frank. But here it is, Gordon. Either shit or get off the pot.’”
“Glad Hanna didn’t bring a baseball bat.”
“Persons couldn’t believe anyone would talk to him like that in the mansion.”
I smiled, finished the cigarette, and squashed it under the sole of my work boot.
