Twenty minutes later, he tossed the final bone out his window, finished his second beer, burped, then popped another can. All things considered, he felt pretty good. He opened the glove compartment to look for the antibiotics Cuffie had given him, but it was too dark, so he turned on the car’s interior light. That’s when he noticed that the skin on the back of his hand had turned somewhat yellow and scaly. Inspecting both arms, Crail noticed a couple of eruptions and some peeling and, for a moment, wondered what that was all about.
It would turn out that it was all about something called sulfamethoxazole, one of the ingredients of the Bactrim he’d been taking at twice the prescribed dosage. Sulfamethoxazole can lead to a variety of interesting side effects, including progressive disintegration of the outer layer of the skin, liver damage, and weeping eruptions around the mouth, eyes, and anus.
Rooting through the glove compartment, Crail figured that whatever had caused the skin problems would probably respond to the antibiotics if he just took enough of them. So when he found the bottle, he took two more and finished his beer.
Crail grabbed a flashlight from the backseat and took a look around the outside of the building. He didn’t see anything that looked like a security system, so he just busted out a window and climbed in. Cuffie had told him to look for any kind of papers with Pigfoot Morgan’s name on them. She also said to look for the tapes in case this lawyer had already found them somehow. There was nothing on the desk, so he looked in the drawers. That’s where he found a glass and a fresh bottle of Crown Royal and he got to thinking about how good that would taste on top of those ribs. So he filled himself a glass and began rooting through the filing cabinets.
It didn’t take him long to find several files with Clarence “Pigfoot” Morgan’s name on the tabs. One contained a copy of a letter Lynch had sent to Pigfoot at Parchman. It said he had read something about Pigfoot’s case and was interested in looking into the matter. But it was the contents of the other files that caught Crail’s eye. Jeremy Lynch had discovered these documents among the papers of the Washington County district attorney who had prosecuted the case in 1953. These hadn’t been destroyed in the courthouse fire because they had been kept in the man’s private collection and, upon his death, donated to the University of Mississippi law school’s special-collections library, where Lynch had tracked them down. Among the documents were what appeared to be transcripts of several lengthy interviews. At the top of this file was a handwritten note on Washington County letterhead that said, “DO NOT DISCLOSE.” Crail scanned the documents for a reference to the Blind, Crippled, and Crazy tapes, but they were never mentioned. Crail wasn’t sure what all the documents proved, but he figured Lynch wouldn’t have saved them if they weren’t important. So he fed them into the shredder next to the trash can underneath the desk.
Crail poured another drink and lit a cigarette before continuing. His persistence paid off when he slid back the panels on the credenza and found a safe. He stared at it for a minute, sipping the sweet Canadian whiskey, growing more convinced with each swig, and the time-release OxyContin, that the tapes had to be inside and wouldn’t Cuffie be proud of him for finding them. If he could only figure out how to get it open.
He went back out to his car and looked in the trunk. A few small tools wrapped in a rag, a can of gas, and a tire iron. He wasn’t sure how, but he figured some combination of these things would pop that puppy open, so he took them back into the office.
He poured another drink before he started trying to pry the safe open, but it was sturdier than it looked. It was going to take some time. If he could just make a small opening, he thought, enough to pour a little of the gasoline inside and let the fumes collect, he might be able to rig a fuse of some sort and blow the thing open. Hell yeah, he thought, damn good idea. He opened the paper shredder. Bingo. It was a strip cutter. It took him another hour, but he worked the tire iron into a spot and bent the door just enough. He pulled the ink cylinder from a ballpoint pen and used that to funnel some gas into the safe. It was a messy proposition, with gas spilling on his hands, but he was sure some of the fuel was getting inside. Next, using tape and his limited weaving skills, Crail braided some of the shredded documents together to make a fuse. During this process it dawned on Crail that with a certain amount of diligence, a person could actually reassemble the strips of shredded paper into their original form. He knew what Cuffie would say about that, so he determined that he had to destroy them more fully. But first he wanted to get a look inside that safe.
He fed the homemade fuse through the opening, then gave the safe a little pat on the top. He pulled a pack of matches from his pocket and struck one. Crail’s hands ignited immediately. Rushing for the watercooler, he knocked over the shredder and the match flew from his grip. When it landed in the pool of gas on the floor by the safe, Cuffie’s voice began to echo in his head: Sometimes I just can’t believe you.
After extinguishing the fire on his hands, Crail yanked the curtains off a window and got on the floor to smother the flames before they spread. What he failed to notice was the lit fuse. So, a moment later, when the safe’s door blew open, it knocked Crail out cold.
BUDDY HAD GONE over to Cleveland that afternoon to see his doctor. He did some more scans and X rays and they poked and prodded and said things had progressed as expected. Doctor didn’t say how long he thought Buddy had, and Buddy didn’t ask. He figured that knowing one way or the other wouldn’t change it. But he allowed as how it was starting to cause some pain and so they talked about drugs he could take to help cope. Buddy said he’d wait on that, never did like drugs much. He figured a stiff drink or two would ease the pain for now. Besides, he wanted to keep his wits about him as best he could, in case Pigfoot showed up.
Buddy was sunk deep into his Coup DeVille for the short drive back to Ruleville, his eyes peeking out from under the porkpie hat that floated over the dashboard. Straight ahead, a fat, peachy moon perched on the horizon, like it was sitting smack in the middle of Highway 8 and Buddy could just drive right onto the surface and ride it to heaven. Wouldn’t that be something, he thought, a fine way to leave this world and get to the next. He didn’t even realize he was nodding his head, thinking about how much better that would be than what he was really facing.
Buddy was tempted to keep driving, right past his turnoff, not so he could catch the moon and ride it to his reward but because he enjoyed it so. He’d seen a fair bit of the country in his day, traveling around, playing his music, but none was more beautiful to him than where he lived. And he didn’t know how many more nights he had left to appreciate such things. He thought it might be nice to let the window down and ease up a country road, take in the smells and sounds of the circumstance that was the Mississippi Delta. But the pain grabbed him again, twisted him, and when he reached his turn, he went on and took it, thinking that drink would do the trick.
Halfway up the dirt road to where he stayed, something caught Buddy’s eye and he did a sort of chin-up on the steering wheel to get a better look. He wasn’t sure what it was and he couldn’t see it now anyway. Figured his old eyes were starting to play tricks on him, that’s all.
Buddy parked the car and shuffled to the front door, everything right where it was supposed to be. He stepped inside, turning on the light and shutting the door at the same time. It was only when he turned to hang his hat on the rack that he saw the man sitting in his TV chair, holding a rifle. They stared at each other for what seemed like a long time, the only sound in the room a clock ticking. Buddy didn’t recognize the face but he knew the man. He wondered if the man recognized his after all this time. Finally Buddy said, “I figured you’d get here sooner or later.”
Pigfoot sat there, the Remington .280 not quite pointed at Buddy but close enough. He said, “Sorry to keep you waitin’.”
There was a moment before Buddy said, “Wasn’t in no hurry.” He revealed neither fear nor daring as he stood there weighing his options. His heart was pounding and he
could feel the blood pulsing in his teeth. He’d left his pistol and his razor in a kitchen drawer. Hospital and their damn metal detectors. There was no question, his tail was stuck in the gate. He knew he couldn’t get back out the door he’d just shut, so he started measuring the distance between himself and Pigfoot. He figured: you’re gonna go out, might as well go out trying.
Pigfoot could read his face. He said, “Nigger, yo’ bones ain’t thick enough to break on a man holding a rifle. You just gonna stand there till I say so or something happens.”
Buddy knew he was right. He knew when Pigfoot cut loose with that Remington, he was done for. It was gonna hurt too, but not for long. And there wouldn’t be any talking his way out of this, either. No, sir, it was too late to try and fix or patch it. Time to pay. He said, “You already find Willie and Earl?”
Pigfoot nodded without expression as he slid the bolt into place. “You can get on yo’ knees and pray if you want.”
Buddy shook his head. “Man ain’t gotta be on his knees to pray,” he said.
“Suit yourself.” He raised the gun, leveling it at Buddy. “Things shoulda turned out different.”
“Yeah,” Buddy said. “For everybody.” He set his jaw and braced himself as Pigfoot squeezed the trigger.
CRUSTY WAS CURLED up in Lollie’s lap, snoring like one of the Marx Brothers. Lollie was at the reception desk at WVBR with papers spread out in front of her. She was scouring her notes, hoping to find a clue they had missed. On her left was a large coffee can with a couple of tamales still in it, on her right the box with Ruby’s photos.
Rick was in the studio finishing his shift with Skynyrd’s “Swamp Music,” J.J. Cale’s “Cajun Moon,” and Creedence Clearwater’s “Born on the Bayou.” He was signing off the program log when the request line lit up. He grabbed it, saying, “VBR.”
“Rick? Smitty Chisholm.”
“Too late for requests,” he said. “I’m on my way out of here.”
“I doubt you’ve got any of the songs I’d request,” he said. “But I gotta tell you, that one you just played with the line about the barking dog sounding like Son House singing the blues, that’s what reminded me to call.”
“Well, good for Mr. Skynyrd,” Rick said. “You got something?”
“Yeah, remember that Ole Miss professor? He sent me an address for Crazy Earl Tate. Said it was current, just outside Tchula.”
Rick took the address, then told Smitty about his conversation with Crippled Willie. He said, “When I asked about his leg, he told me this wild story about a patent medicine that was poisoned and—”
“The jake,” Smitty said.
“Yeah, that’s true?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Probably crippled a thousand men in Mississippi alone. I hadn’t thought of it before, but Crippled Willie would’ve been about twenty when it happened.” Smitty told the same basic story Willie had about the Jamaican Ginger Extract, but added some details. “These two guys in Boston had been making the stuff since the late twenties,” he said. “It was mostly alcohol, like most of those cures were, so the Prohibition Bureau passed a law requiring them to contain a certain percentage of solids.”
“Solids being the alleged active ingredients?”
“Exactly. To test for that, they’d burn off the alcohol to see how much was left. So the jake makers needed something to help them pass. These guys were looking for additives with high boiling points, stuff like fusel oil and butyl Carbitol. But they didn’t use any of those since they were all toxic, and who wants to kill their customers, right?”
“The tobacco industry springs to mind.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s slow poisoning. Some of these thing’s’d kill you before you could buy a second bottle. Anyway, these guys finally settled on this plasticizer with a chemical called tri-ortho-something-or-other-phosphate. It was supposed to be nontoxic, right? So these guys cut half a million bottles of the ginger extract with the stuff and shipped it all around the country,” he said. “In a matter of days, somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand men, mostly poor alcoholics, were showing up in hospitals and on the streets, some of them literally crawling. Some, like Willie, kept the use of one leg, others were permanently crippled. There’re fifteen or twenty songs about it. Tommy Johnson recorded ‘Alcohol and Jake Blues’ up in Grafton, Wisconsin. Ray Brothers had one called the ‘Jake Leg Wobble.’ ” Smitty chuckled a bit before he said, “The stuff also tended to cripple the middle leg too, so some of the songs have a line about how the man done got the limber leg and can’t do no lovin’.”
Just then the overnight jock came into the studio to take over.
Rick ended the call, then went out to the front office, where Lollie was hunched over the desk studying something. He said, “Hey, we got Earl Tate’s address.”
“Great.” She looked up. “Where’s he live?”
“Tchula.”
“Bless you,” she said. “Where is that?”
“ ‘Bout halfway between Yazoo City and Greenwood.” He looked at the stuff on the desk. Handwritten notes, a few of Ruby’s photos, articles from the Delta Democrat Times. “What’re you working on?”
Lollie pursed her lips and blew out a long breath before she said, “No idea.” She gathered everything and put it in the box, with Crusty on top like a paperweight, then headed for the door.
THEY WERE ALMOST back to the Vicksburg when Lollie said, “You don’t think Crazy Earl’s just going to give us the same story Buddy or Willie did?”
“Well, if he gives us the same story as one or the other, at least we’ll know who’s lying,” Rick said. “But if we’re going to do the reunion concert, we have to talk to him anyway.”
She nodded for a moment before saying, “What do you think about Pigfoot?”
“I’d love to talk to him too,” Rick said. “But he’s made himself scarce.”
“No, the fact he got out of prison just before my grandfather was killed. You think that’s just a coincidence?”
“At first I thought it made him a pretty good suspect,” Rick said. “Then I thought it was just a coincidence. Now? Well, you talked to both Ruby Finch and Henry LeFleur; which one do you believe?”
“My money’s on Ruby,” she said.
“Me too. Which makes me think faux Lollie and her partner waited for Pigfoot to get out before they started killing people.”
“To make it look like he was the killer.”
Rick pulled into his parking spot at the apartment building. “That’s my guess.”
They were standing in the lobby waiting for the elevator when Lollie said, “What about this? What if Pigfoot is faux Lollie’s partner?” She tilted her head to the side as soon as she said it. “Does that make any sense?”
When they got on the elevator, Rick punched 7 and said, “Not if we’re right about Ruby.”
Once they were in the apartment, Rick fed and medicated Crusty. Lollie flopped on the sofa, kicked off her shoes, and said, “I think we should try the martini-and-snoring experiment.”
“A capital idea.” Rick put on B. B. King’s Indianola Mississippi Seeds and poured the drinks. They made perfunctory talk about what they’d do if they actually lured faux Lollie and her murderous partner from their lair, but the way they looked at each other meant they were thinking about other things. When the opportunity finally presented itself, Rick kissed her. It was a good one too. When they came up for air, Lollie smiled and excused herself to the bathroom. A few moments later she came out and walked past Rick, casually unbuttoning her blouse. She said, “Pour us another one, then come find me.” She sashayed into the bedroom twirling her shirt over her head.
Rick mixed another round, then grabbed his cigar box and went looking for Lollie. Fortunately it was a small bedroom and she was right in the middle of the mattress wearing one of Rick’s T-shirts and a silly grin. They took a hit on the pipe and started fooling around. After a little of this, Rick paused. He gently brushed the hair from her eyes and lo
oked at her. She smiled at him and said, “What?”
He gestured back and forth between them, saying, “So. What do you think? Is this something? Me and you?”
“Sure. It’s something.”
“But, I mean, specifically. What do you think it is?”
She pressed her hips against his. “Who can say?”
“I was hoping you could.”
She put her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Do you really want to talk the life out of whatever it is?” Her tongue touched his lobe and he quivered.
Rick gave it a moment’s thought before saying, “You’re right. Forget I said anything.” He told himself to leave well enough alone. It was sex. Why try to turn it into something more than that? If it turned into something down the road, great. If not, it was still sex, and why complain about that? He disappeared beneath the blankets and commenced investigating the southern precincts with a great deal of enthusiasm.
At first Lollie giggled, but it wasn’t long before he heard her say, “Oh my God.”
Rick smiled, but he didn’t stop. He wanted to stay focused, knowing how critical technique is when you’re performing magic.
His confidence soared when she said it again, this time more intensely. “Ohhh my God.”
Rick paused long enough to say, “It gets better.” He tried to prove it.
“No … no … no …”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s true, but only if I don’t talk so much.”
“This is unbelievable.”
“Just wait.”
But she couldn’t. She nearly broke Rick’s nose when she threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. She seemed terribly excited about something, and Rick figured it wasn’t him when she said, “Do you have a magnifying glass?”
He mumbled, “Yeah, I was going to use it to find my penis.”
“You can do that later.” She tugged on one of his feet. “C’mon.” She went to the living room with Rick following. She grabbed Ruth’s box of photos and put it on the coffee table. After finding the magnifying glass, he joined her on the sofa.
Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5) Page 22
