The Bible Salesman

by Clyde Edgerton

  “Here. Put your arms through. Okay. Good.” Carson studied the clasp, then fit the ends together so they held.

  Henry raised his arms and turned in a circle. “What do you think?” He looked in the dresser mirror as he turned.

  “Pretty good,” said Carson. “They stuff them with toilet paper to make falsies.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  “Why wouldn’t they use handkerchiefs?”

  “Maybe some of them do. Now you got to face me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not going to be standing behind her, stupid. You think I’m going to sneak up on her or something?”

  Two taps on the door. Aunt Dorie’s voice: “What you-all doing in there?”

  “Nothing,” said Carson.

  She opened the door.

  PART V

  REVELATION

  1950

  An hour south of Tallahassee and a few miles north of Panakala lay the twenty-two-thousand-acre Palmetto Greens Plantation. The main house stood at the end of a long, wide driveway. Tall oaks grew out over the drive. Lawns were green year-round. The dirt-and-rock driveway, dragged periodically with a weighted pallet behind a tractor — years ago dragged with a weighted pallet behind a mule — was not the washed-out tan color of other sand in the area. It was, rather, the rich brown of a deer rump, kept that way by a clay mixture, added from time to time.

  Along the driveway, beyond the oaks, sat small barns, horse stalls, dog pens for the English pointers, and houses for the tenants and the overseer, all painted every fourth year. On the property were tennis courts, a golf course, and a train stop. A rail loop from the Seaboard Air Line Railway had been arranged. Several times a month during quail season, hunters arrived from New York or Washington.

  The plantation raised cotton and corn with tenant help, but its main purpose was to entertain quail hunters, mostly from New York and Washington, DC. It was owned by O. L. “Ossie” Greenlove, a prominent New York businessman and criminal. Greenlove had hired Teddy Lamont, one of Blinky’s lieutenants, to head his security force, not knowing Teddy remained on Blinky’s payroll. In Greenlove’s office, a five-foot-tall safe held antique handguns, gold coins, Confederate paper money, historical documents, and swords, all of which Mr. Greenlove enjoyed showing to guests. The safe also held acquisitions he never showed: cash, and rare documents that were to be sold on the black market.

  On a Sunday morning in late June, before daylight, Clearwater and Henry walked slowly beneath the plantation house — it was that high off the ground — Clearwater shining light from a flashlight onto the joists and underflooring along the approximate reverse route of the safe, especially on the porch, in order to determine if the floor would support the weight of a forklift and large safe, even though if all went well they wouldn’t need the forklift. Were the joists sufficiently close together and sturdy?

  Only certain kinds of angle problems might require use of the forklift — for example, if the incline from porch to truck bed was too steep for managing the safe by hand. Teddy Lamont’s written assessment suggested the loading job could be done by hand, using a hydraulic jack and minimal tools and equipment, but Blinky long ago learned to require a forklift and dump truck on-site for any safe job. He’d had them on hand, after all, since his and Clearwater’s creative thievery during the war. You never could tell when you might need them. Besides, they were a tax write-off.

  Underneath the house, directly below the safe, several two-by-six boards were already secured between and across joists.

  “Now why the hell is all that there?” asked Clearwater.

  “For support?” said Henry.

  “I suppose . . . I hope. Because if he’s” — he moved around, shined the flashlight at different angles — “if he’s got the safe bolted down, then we might have problems. But Lamont didn’t say nothing about that in the folder.”

  A few minutes later, Clearwater, carrying hammer, nails, and two of four sheets of plywood, entered through the front door. Lamont had supplied a key. A Ford Motor Company trademark was printed on each sheet of plywood, along with forklift counterweight.

  Henry stood in the truck bed, shined his light across two axes, a service station hydraulic car jack, two heavy forklift pallets, leather straps and ropes, plywood, iron-pipe axles, five small metal wheels, a large khaki-green canvas tarp, a block and tackle, three long lengths of logging chain, lengths of smaller chain, chain cutter, toolbox, metal lay-down tracks, sixteen-pound sledge hammer, two hatchets, other tools and equipment, and a pouch of twenty-dollar bills. Pushing the hydraulic jack in front of him, Henry started along one of the wide, iron-pipe-reinforced gangplanks from the truck to the porch.

  Around back, near the open back door, sat the Chrysler. Clearwater had both sets of its keys. There were two directions for a getaway. One, out the driveway to the main highway — to use if they finished as planned, before daylight — and the back way, in case they left after daybreak or due to some other unexpected problem. The back way would take them along a wagon path and onto a two-lane blacktop.

  Just inside the front door, Henry met Clearwater coming out. “The goddamned safe is bolted to the floor. We’re going to have to . . . I don’t know.” He looked at Henry. “This is not my doing.”

  After some hacking and hammering under the house, Clearwater exposed a couple of bolts and nuts. “Oh God, the nuts are welded to the bolts.” It crossed his mind that he was being set up. He walked out from under the house, stood, listened carefully for a full thirty seconds. No, it was that stupid Teddy Lamont. He never even checked to see if the safe was bolted to the floor. The idiot.

  Clearwater walked back. “We’re going to have to . . .”

  “We could probably do something with the block and tackle,” said Henry.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I don’t know without thinking about it.”

  “Block and tackle are not going to help us. We’re going to have to chop around the damn thing, free it, and let it fall into the truck.” He looked at Henry. “We can back under there far enough, I think. You got any better ideas?”

  “We could use the logging chain and pull it out — like pulling a tooth. Out through the window somehow.”

  “I don’t think we got enough logging chain.” How the hell did he get himself in a position to be listening to a boy for ideas? “Go get the truck. We’ll back it under here. Wait. We got to get the forklift out of the truck bed. Drive it off onto the porch. Can you do that?”

  “Sure, but what if we just drive the forklift up against the back of the cab — take off the tines? That would save time, and that still leaves room.”

  “Okay. Do that. Hurry up.”

  Now Henry had the truck in reverse and was looking through the big driver’s-side rearview mirror. Clearwater directed with his arms. Henry backed over a flower bed, up to the latticework.

  “Back on through it!” shouted Clearwater. He stepped under the house, said to himself, “We’re lucky them pillars are placed right.”

  Henry heard the lattice wood popping.

  “Come on,” said Clearwater. “Come on. Okay. Stop!”

  When Henry stepped on the brakes he could see Clearwater in the sideview mirror, bathed in red light, standing under the house. He climbed down from the truck, walked under. Clearwater opened the truck tailgate, got out an ax. The safe was above the rear of the truck bed.

  Up in Greenlove’s office, after they’d axed through the floor on the two sides of the safe that ran parallel to the joists, they started on the third side.

  “It’s almost daylight,” said Clearwater. “We got to get on the damn road.”

  Henry thought about how normal citizens had no idea what-all the FBI did. This was risky. Real criminals would get very upset at being robbed. He and Clearwater couldn’t afford mistakes. “What if the safe drops and then goes right on through the floor of the truck bed?”

  Clearwat
er stood, his hand on the ax handle, sweat dripping from his nose. “I don’t think . . . There were some fence posts piled out there. God almighty. Line the bed.”

  At about daylight, the safe started through the floor with a loud cracking sound, broke loose, and fell on its side onto the fence posts lying in the truck bed, bounced once. They covered it with canvas and tied it with rope. On the canvas, stamped in large letters, was forklift counterweight.

  Safely away, driving the Chrysler, following the dump truck northeast along the old Atlanta highway, Clearwater began considering his options.

  In a couple of hours, he and Henry sat across from each other at a small table with a red-checkered tablecloth. Clearwater was eating a waffle. Henry, pancakes, a scrambled egg, and grits.

  “One of the things I was thinking about when we drove away,” said Henry, “is why didn’t we have about thirty FBI agents helping us out, just in case? You know, just go ahead and act like a army instead of a couple of guys. Then I figured maybe . . . I don’t know, why not?”

  “This whole operation — the big plan — has to stay so hush-hush a lot of the FBI people don’t even know what’s going on. And when these guys get arrested, people will never know the FBI was even involved.”

  “But idn’t this a different gang?”

  “Listen. They’re interrelated in ways I don’t know about yet. In ways Blinky don’t even know about. This is just like the army. You follow orders.” Clearwater sopped a piece of waffle in syrup. “You don’t ask questions. Somebody up above knows more than you. If they don’t, then you’re in the wrong army. And we’re in the right army. So we just do our job.”

  “Is there any chance we could stop in Jeffries for lunch,” said Henry, “or just stop and pick up some fruit?”

  “Your fruit stand? Your woman?”

  “Yes sir. Right close to the Night’s Rest Motel — just down the road from it — where we stayed. Maybe we could stay there tonight.”

  “We’re staying in Brownlee. At the cabin camp.”

  “Then maybe we could just stop for an apple or something.”

  “We’ll see how we do on time.”

  “A grape.”

  Clearwater was a little worried about returning to Brownlee — that truck stop and bar. He visualized the man turning away, his feet planted, the movement of his leg as he lay on the ground. But now the car jack was buried, and nobody had seen him. Nobody alive. And nobody could trace a car jack anyway. He remembered the waitress, red-and-gray hair. That’s what got him thinking about getting him some romance. He thought about Caroline’s neck, about her willingness, her weakness, her begging him to promise to never tell Henry.

  He thought about Blinky. One time Blinky said that thinking small was one of Clearwater’s problems. Blinky had always been a little too cocky.

  Marleen watched as a dump truck pulled in and stopped. It was late Sunday afternoon. Henry had called Friday night and said there was a fifty-fifty chance he might stop by — could she be at the fruit stand even though it was Sunday? She said of course. A car pulled in and stopped beside the dump truck. And . . . it was Henry stepping down from the truck.

  She walked out to meet him. They hugged and kissed.

  Clearwater stood in front of the Chrysler and called to Henry.

  “I’ll be right back,” Henry said to Marleen.

  “Okay, here’s the plan,” said Clearwater. “Here are the car keys. You know from the maps how to get to the cabin camp. I’ll take the dump truck. You need to come in the morning. Not before. Stay wherever you want to.” He looked at Marleen, smiled a little. He reached for his billfold. “Here’s a hundred and fifty on the gig, and you’ll get another one-fifty tomorrow. Show up at seven-thirty in the morning. Don’t be late. I’ll be sitting on my porch steps. If you don’t see me, just wait.”

  “Okay,” said Henry. “Don’t you want to meet my girlfriend, Marleen?”

  “No. I don’t want to meet Marleen. Get your stuff out of the truck. Seven-thirty sharp, now.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Just after dark that night, when Henry got to the wagon path behind the fruit stand, he stopped, felt in his pockets to see if he’d forgotten anything. He had preventatives, his flashlight, his small flask of whiskey, and the army blanket from the closet shelf at the motel. This was it. His legs felt weak. Besides all else, she was bringing him a poem.

  He met her on the path, saw her before she saw him, and stepped behind a tree that stood right up against the path. When she got there, he said in a hard whisper, “Marleen.”

  She gave a little startled cry and stepped away from him. She had on a long skirt and a blouse with the shirttail out — he couldn’t tell the color in the moonlight — and a purse on a long strap over her shoulder. He stepped into the path.

  “I brought us a blanket,” he said. “It’s a nice night out.”

  “I would have dressed up more, but my mama might have thought something. I’ll be glad when you can meet her — and the rest.”

  “Me too. Hold my hand.”

  Clearwater and Blinky sat on Clearwater’s screened-in porch at the cabin camp. It was dark, about ten minutes until nine. Blinky had time to look over the safe and talk over the next gig: the doctor down in Drain. The next morning he’d drive the truck and safe up to McNeill to get it opened.

  A pair of binoculars lay in Blinky’s lap. When Blinky arrived, Clearwater had told him about the woman over in cabin twelve. On the hour she would open her blind and stand there naked.

  They waited on the porch in the dark. Blinky lit a cigar, and they talked about the old times and the weather.

  “Okay,” said Clearwater. He looked at his watch.

  Blinky leaned forward, elbows on knees, pressing the binoculars to his eyes.

  Clearwater stood. “It’s about time,” he said. “Like I said, it’ll go pretty fast. I’ll be right back. Just watch, you ain’t going to believe it.”

  On his bed was his crowbar.

  They walked along the wagon path together until she took him by the hand, glory hallelujah, and led him off the path to a grassy area about the size of a room, on a knoll, with some big rocks around. He spread the blanket and they sat facing each other. She pulled a bottle of mosquito oil and a paperback book from her purse. “I got some mosquito oil here, and I can’t wait to read you this poem,” she said.

  “Me either.”

  “Okay.” She opened the book and pulled out a piece of paper. “Do you want me to read it? Or do you want to read it with your flashlight?”

  “Here.” He handed her the flashlight. “You read it.”

  “Here goes,” she said.

  If I was the bark upon a tree and you were the wood within, every morning when I woke up, you’d be under my skin.

  Or you’re a tree and I’m the grass below, and comes lightning and thunder too; then in the middle of the storm, I’ll be safe under you.

  Or if I’m a pea in the soup and you’re the butter bean, then we’ll always be together, even after the pot is clean.

  Or if I’m the bottom of the ocean, and you’re the deep blue sea, every morning when I wake up, there you’ll be, on me.

  So when we’re apart, I’m a bee without a buzz,

  If we take different paths, I’m a peach without the fuzz.

  “Gosh,” said Henry. “That’s just like if it was out of a book.”

  “It’s a love poem.”

  Henry felt his breath almost leave.

  “I started it with just the part about the peach fuzz because, you remember, we talked about that, and it kind of wrote itself backwards, and it was like somebody else was writing it, and so, here, it’s a gift.” She handed him the piece of paper.

  “I . . . thank you.”

  “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”

  “I knew I’d see you again.” Henry thought about all those grapes and fronds and things in Song of Solomon, the two Israelites visiting the prostitute. He was okay. Maybe he
should . . . He handed her the flask. Without speaking, she took a short drink.

  “I’m going to need some of that mosquito oil,” he said.

  She reached for the bottle, twisted off the cap.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Alcohol and castor oil. It’s what Grandma always mixed. Are all your grandparents alive?”

  “Just two,” said Henry. “Well, one now, that I know about. Maybe three. The other two that I’m not sure about used to live in South Carolina, but I never met them.”

  She lightly dabbed oil on her neck, arms, ankles, then leaned over and said, “Here, let’s get you. I’ll do it.” She dabbed his arms and neck, leaned close while she was doing that, and so he found courage to place his hand on her cheek like he’d seen Audie Murphy do, and kiss her on the mouth. Her lips opened readily and she leaned back, pulling him with her. She put her lips to his ear. “Will you be my teddy bear?” she whispered, and laughed her big laugh.

  She lay on her back on the army blanket, and he lay on his stomach beside her, his head over hers, kissing her. After a while of that, she pulled her head away from the kiss and put her lips to his ear and with one hand rubbed the back of his neck lightly. She nibbled his earlobe. He turned onto his side, got his hand up under her blouse, moved his hand around behind and found the clasp. She was staying happy. He pinched it like Carson had said. It remained attached. She reached behind and touched it and it sprang loose, and she guided his hand around to the front and onto a big breast and a nipple that was standing up, hard as a marble. And as big, it felt like. He was in the middle of some kind of carnival, some kind of state fair with all the horns blowing and balloons popping and crowds shouting. She was unbuttoning with an urgency.

  He placed his mouth on her neck. She gently pushed his head on down toward her breast.

  “Bite it,” she said.

  “Bite it?”

  “It’s okay. I bite it myself.”

  “Your neck’s that long?”

  “No. My titty’s kind of big.” She laughed her laugh, big and easy, like a waterfall.