Burn What Will Burn

by C. B. McKenzie

  “Sorry about you missing lunch, Sir, but you was sleeping so sound I couldn’t see waking you up for jailhouse grub. Downtime pass quicker when you’re out of it.”

  I nodded.

  “So, I’m to understand I got arrested and jailed for trespassing on Sheriff Baxter’s property?”

  “Criminal trespass, yes Sir. And if that doesn’t suit you, Sheriff said he could press charges for breaking and entering besides and that might suit you.”

  I rubbed the bump on the back of my head.

  “I guess I’ll pass on that,” I said and moved toward the door. “Good-bye, Officer. I hope I won’t be seeing you again under these same circumstances.”

  “It’d be in your best interests, Sir,” the sheriff’s deputy replied. “We’ll wait and see.”

  I stopped at the door.

  “You know anything about a man found dead in The Little Piney this afternoon?”

  Deputy Lloyd wrinkled his forehead, frowned for a while and finally nodded, as if he had just made a judgment call.

  I wondered if he was supposed to be telling or not telling.

  “Sorry business, Sir. Drug-related, Sheriff speculates.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Used to be a local fellow.”

  “You know his name?”

  “Waiting for Dr. Williams to do the autopsy and next-of-kin notifying, so I couldn’t say, Sir,” he told me. “You know something about it?”

  I shook my head.

  The deputy nodded, advised.

  “That’s good, Sir. And if I was you, I wouldn’t say nothing to nobody about nothing for a while. A good little while. Maybe you could even take a trip, Sir. I understand you are partial to Hot Springs.”

  “Does that come from Sheriff Baxter?”

  “You said that, Sir, not me.”

  He settled into a chair, closed his eyes.

  “Let a word to the wise be sufficient, Sir.”

  I figured that as sound advice.

  But it didn’t exactly sit well all the same.

  CHAPTER 7

  The walk to the Holiday Inn was through downtown Bertrandville where most of the storefronts were boarded up, telling the regular story of small-town America, of family-owned and -operated establishments forced out of business by Wholesale Clubs and Supercenters ensconced on low-rent property in the suburbs, or into relocation at the Valley Mall where the sidewalks were inside and air-conditioned and the parking free and plentiful.

  I couldn’t care less.

  The downtown desolation didn’t bother me in general and neither did the B’ville Mall specifically as I didn’t shop much and when I did I bought sensible shoes through the mail, shoes that never seemed to fit but lasted a long time. So nobody was making much money off me anyhow.

  It was about a mile and a half to the Holiday Inn.

  My heel blister flared up again along the way. My sensible mail-order shoes had failed me yet again.

  * * *

  It was midafternoon so the Crow’s Nest was mostly empty, but for Professor Ford at the bar and a couple of regular businessmen still lingering over a very late liquid lunch or an early liquid supper. One of them bumped into me as I made my way toward the bar.

  * * *

  “Hello there, Fella, my name’s Hunter B. Briggs and I been with Tidy Chicken Industries for over three years and increased sales over four percent in my region in those three plus years I been with them which is over one percent per year and I don’t even have a business degree from college, Fella.”

  “That’s nice for you, Mr. Briggs.”

  I had heard this exact same spiel from Hunter B. Briggs a dozen times.

  “Fella, because it’s you, I will tell you my secret,” Hunter B. Briggs offered.

  I didn’t encourage him. Because I knew enough secrets.

  “Employ your predatory instincts, Fella. That’s the real secret to business life,” he confided. “Take advantage when advantage is there. Kick ’em when they’re down and then eat ’em right up. It pure piddly works, Fella. Believe me on this one.”

  “That’s good news to me, Mr. Briggs.”

  “I don’t tell everybody, Fella.”

  “I guess I’ll just mosey over to the bar now and jot that down, Mr. Briggs,” I said.

  “Pred-a-tory,” he whispered. “Hunter B. Briggs told you first, Fella.”

  “I appreciate you, Mr. Briggs.”

  * * *

  Having been reared in a peculiar, financially conservative environment, by a mother whose greatest fiscal indulgences were ankle-length denim housedresses and Bibles and a father who considered alcohol the only worthwhile expenditure to make on recreation, there were not a lot of luxuries I could allow myself without a mean guilt nagging me.

  Being rich, in other words, is not the pleasure to someone like me that it is to a regular hedonist.

  I bought sensible but pricey mail-order shoes (which nonetheless consistently failed to meet my expectations for comfort). I ate my breakfast at a café almost every day (even though Miss Ollie’s cooking at EAT left much to be desired on the cuisine level, on the calorie level it was very cost effective). I could afford to pay Tammy Fay’s exorbitant rates for automobile repairs (even though these were ridiculously inexpert automotive repairs).

  I also had a running tab at the Holiday Inn and Convention Center in Bertrandville, prepaid enough every month to cover my bar and restaurant bills and room rent for when I was too drunk to drive home or came to town to use the swimming pool or watch TV with the Crow’s Nest contingent.

  As a Privileged Regular I also got to receive telephone messages at the bar. There were standard rates for this service—so much to say you were there at the bar, so much more to say you weren’t there at the bar, so much more even than that to pass on a fabrication about where you were.

  I had never had to avail myself of any of these telephone services.

  But, like the spider in my mailbox, I had hopes.

  * * *

  “Hey you, Mr. Jailbird.”

  “Hey you, Ladoris,” I replied to the day-shift bartender, a coal-black woman with shoulder-length hair plaited and segmented by colored wooden beads.

  “You don’t look so good.”

  When she shook her head at me her hair rattled.

  “Thanks for noticing, Ladoris.”

  None of the regulars but Professor Ford, three sheets to the wind already, were at the bar.

  I leaned over my fellow poet’s tweedy shoulder and read what he had written on a cocktail napkin.

  What I know of bears and their habits

  Informs my morning stroll.

  In the evening there are snakes on the road.

  “Sounds like a pretty ominous world,” I suggested.

  Ford crumpled up the napkin verse and tossed it to Ladoris, who dunked it into the trash can. He was always very competitive about his napkin poems and I hoped to construct one that would challenge that one.

  “Seems of late it might have been so for you,” Dr. Ford said. “Ominous and unpredictable for yourself, Laureate.”

  This moniker was a needle from the good professor who had once qualified for a National Book Award. Not recognizing who he was when we had first met many months before I had made the mistake of mentioning (just in passing, mind) that I had once received an EggCrate Award for a chapbook of poems I had more or less self-published. And that was the beginning of our civil unpleasantness.

  I sat down on my regular barstool two removed from the professor.

  The air in the Nest was thick with lingering cigar smoke, hairspray and cologne. Outside the plate-glass windows, poolside, a bevy of chunky teenaged girls shrieked as they practiced a complicated maneuver.

  Cheerleaders.

  “Our notable honoree here obviously needs a drink, Ladoris dear,” Ford said. “A heady Merlot, would be, I believe, most suitable,” he decided for me.

  It was early but I nodded.

  “Sorry to hear of you
r arrest, Laureate,” said Ford. “I know it is a burdensome task to labor under the freighted, dark cloud of criminal suspicion.”

  Ford had been drummed out of the local university for leveraging sex from students, had lost his tenure, been forced into early retirement and almost convicted of something egregious.

  “Apparently I got arrested,” I said. “But then released without charge.”

  “A pity, Laureate. But, as well, your story represents a version of classic tragedy, really. A dumbed-down version, to be certain, but a tragedy in the classical sense nonetheless. I think you understand me, as you are versed in the Classics.”

  I wasn’t, particularly, but I nodded.

  “How did you hear about my arrest, Professor?”

  Ford partook of an especially long draught of his Merlot, then burped a very liquid burp.

  “Our mutual acquaintance, Dr. Doc Williams, indulged us his company for lunch. He was our font of information. He was our oracle, Laureate. You understand me when I speak, don’t you? You do, of course. You were a Greek at some time. Scion of Hippocrates.”

  “Doc is,” I clarified. “A scion of Hippocrates.”

  I myself was a scion of simple upper-middle-class success or perhaps some old Stoics.

  Ford looked at me as if I had only just arrived and had perhaps taken the wrong seat. He was obviously more drunk than usual that day.

  “And what then has occurred to you lately, Laureate? You have won another grand prize, I take it?”

  “Sheriff Baxter arrested me for trespassing,” I explained again. “Criminal trespassing. But then he dropped the charges.”

  “Overjoyed to hear of it, Laureate. Overjoyed to hear that you have won your freedom…” He paused to gather some steam. “That you are free. Free to run, to win prizes more galore. To grasp Life by the throat and give it a good throttling.”

  Ford lifted a shaky hand toward the dropped ceiling.

  “The darkest of dark clouds have parted for you. And you, my noble Laureate, are free to run now into the light.”

  “You think so, Professor,” I said.

  I leaned down and felt the blister just inside the back rim of my left loafer.

  “Oh surely, my Laureate. It’s the silver lining saga. It’s all written in the book. Can’t you see it there?”

  He aimed an oscillating finger at a Styrofoam ceiling tile.

  “A silver lining on an ominous, ebony cloud. And you, Laureate of Laureates, running free under that bright silver lining. It is a happy ending. A happy, happy ending to a sad, classically tragic tale. A happy ending that warms the cockles. And I do so look forward to a story with a happy ending that I must thank you, my friendly poetic rival. Thank you for this story with this happy ending. Thank you.”

  Ford was even “drunker than usual” than usual.

  “Sure, Professor,” I said.

  I reached over the bar top for a pen and a coaster and wrote a short poem myself:

  I like the female

  Spider who eats her stale mate

  And then shits pure silk

  I slid the coaster in front of the poetry professor. He read what was written around “Coors Light,” then shook his hoary head dismissively. Still he was gracious.

  “Thank you for that, Poet Laureate. Whatever it was supposed to be. A haiku I can only imagine.”

  Ford began to scribble again another napkin poem and I was tempted to join him in this strange fray, to take up pen in this heated exchange of signs and symbols, and enter again this semiotic battle. But I was too tired to participate further.

  When he saw me slide my coaster and pen into the bar trough he took this as capitulation and put his own Montblanc away, sliding his extravagant pen into his unnecessary tweed jacket.

  “What do you know about Sheriff Sam Baxter, Professor?”

  “High Sheriff is a reasonable man,” Ford replied thoughtfully a longish moment later. “As are they all. All reasonable men.”

  “Is he?” I asked, pressing the point. “Reasonable?”

  “High Sheriff is a reasonable man if you precisely suit his purposes, Laureate,” Ford allowed. “But not many do precisely suit his purposes.”

  “I’m just glad to be out of jail.”

  “And I am glad for you, Laureate. But should the need arise again I am overly familiar with an excellent local investigator type. A student of mine from the old days. Fine private eye and impersonator and negotiator and not too shabby a performer in bed. Not much to look at, if you understand me, Laureate, but he has got a fearsome big dick. And he works sometimes for the sheriff’s department, as a snitch as they say, so he knows, as they say, the ropes.”

  Ford eyeballed me.

  “Thanks, Professor,” I said. “But I have some lawyers in Texas and elsewhere on retainer already. And I don’t think I need a snitch in local law enforcement or a private eye.”

  “Just a word to the wise, Laureate. If ever you need a local liaison. This fellow is well acquainted, as they say, with the ropes. You would not think it to look at this boy, but he knows all the law and all the lawmen.” Ford took a sip of his merlot. “Local matters can be prickly at times, especially when those matters touch on we Poetic Types, my Laureate. Prickly and peculiar about we inverted ‘poets’ can they be in these unenlightened parts.”

  “I appreciate the advice, Professor.”

  “Which is, I would imagine, preferable to being ‘depreciated’ I assume?” He asked this rhetorically, so I did not respond.

  The poet tossed a twenty on the bar and wobbled away without farewelling.

  Ladoris snatched the cash, set a shot of bourbon and a draft beer, my regular order (not Merlot), in front of me.

  I threw Jim Beam to the back of my throat, chased him home with Adolf Coors.

  Ladoris turned up the volume on the house radio when she heard her favorite Prince start explaining what happens when doves cry.

  * * *

  So, Deputy Lloyd had not divulged any news to me about the fact of the corpse in the creek except that the dead man was a “Local” of one sort or another. But “Local” could cover some ground. Local for Malcolm was only the several miles from The Little Piney to Goody’s Grocery Store in Doker. Local for most Locals meant from Doker or Bertrandville, which were “dry” towns that did not sell beer, wine or liquor, only as far as anyplace going any direction that was “wet” and did sell beer, wine or liquor. For Ladoris North Little Rock remained local for her since she had just landed in Bertrandville for college and stayed for graduate school. There were not a lot of black people in Bertrandville and Ladoris did not, frankly, have much interest in white people, local or otherwise.

  “You seen Smarty Bell, Ladoris?” I asked the bartender.

  “Out back in the Dumpster taking care of his moonshine delivery. He’ll be in shortly.” She glanced at me. “You okay, Hon? You don’t look so good.”

  I showed her the lump on the back of my head.

  She made a sympathetic noise but then went to the far end of the bar and started washing wine stems.

  Smarty Bell shoved through the service entrance after a while, with a wooden apple crate full of mason jars full of clear corn liquor.

  “Welcome back to the free world, Buddy.”

  Smarty Bell stowed the moonshine in a trash can, then gave my sore shoulder a squeeze.

  “I told you not to mess with Baxter, Bud.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll call you in a steak,” he said, picked up the house phone. “Medium rare?” he asked.

  I nodded, though I always ordered my steak well done.

  Smarty Bell relayed the order to the kitchen, recradled the phone. It rang immediately. Smarty Bell picked up, grunted a couple of times, hung up.

  “That was Doc Williams, Bud. Looking for you. I told him you’d be here for a while, so he can give you a ride back to Doker.”

  “Okay, Smarty Bell.”

  I went to the restroom and washed my face and neck, was
hed my hands for a while, returned to my barstool and ate my meal when it arrived, chewed every bite twenty times.

  Smarty Bell kept my beer mug filled, but apart from inquiring that once about my health he didn’t speak to me much, went about his regular business, as per usual.

  Outside the cheerleaders practiced indefatigably.

  I paid strict attention to them as long as possible.

  Then I lay my head on the bar and closed my eyes.

  * * *

  “Bob.”

  Doc was beside me. The TV was on. The jukebox was on too. The bar was beginning to fill up with Party Locals. The cheerleaders were gone from the poolside, seemed to have moved inside and morphed into their own big-haired mothers, smoking skinny cigarettes and drinking thick, colorful drinks.

  Smarty Bell put a cup of coffee in front of the doctor.

  “Are you ready to amble on back home, Bob?” Dr. Doc asked me. “You about made a day of it, seems to me.”

  “Somebody made a day of it,” I said.

  I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up.

  “They treat you all right in County?” Doc asked me.

  “I just slept mostly,” I admitted.

  “Ladoris said something about a lump on your head.”

  I showed off my injury.

  “Looks like a lawsuit,” Smarty Bell said.

  But then everything was pretty much a lawsuit for Smarty Bell, who always had several litigations ongoing. He sued his vendors so often he sometimes could not even get a bottle of beer and bag of chips delivered for a week. He sued his taxidermist for making his bigmouth bass look too small and for stealing points from the racks of his trophyized deer. He sued his ex-wives because they sued him. He had sued Professor Ford for, quote, “being a faggot in my business establishment and declining my profits.” He had not sued me yet, but only because I was still constantly apologizing to him for having once called him a “shrimphead.”

  “I don’t think Bob was considering suing Poe County, Smarty Bell,” the doctor said, as if he was quite sure about this. “Were you, Bob?”

  “I’m still not sure what even happened,” I said. “But no, I hadn’t thought of suing anybody. I guess I could though.”

  “I’d sue his ass off,” said Smarty Bell. “But it wouldn’t be wise for a fella like you, Bud.” The barkeep advised me, “Baxter could make hell for a guy like you. Alls he’s got to do is plant a gram of coke in your house or your truck and bag you like a crippled quail on crutches. Happens all the time to outsiders like you when they pass through here.” When he pointed at my face I thought he was going to call me a little foreign shrimphead as he sometimes did, but he just repeated himself in a friendly warning way. “Happens all the time, Buddy.”