“We’re out of this now, right?”
“You betcha.”
“Hap, not that I’m petty or anything, but I told you Uncle Chester wasn’t the one.”
“I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“I’m a good judge of character.”
“I’m proof of that.”
Leonard was silent for a moment. “Well, even I fuck up now and then.”
The All Black Carnival came to the East Side on a hot morning that threatened storm. The storm lay in the west, dark as an army boot, and the heavens rattled with poisonous thunder.
Our fear was the storm blew in, the carnival might be canceled, and if that happened, Hanson’s plan was gone with the wind, and the Reverend would have to wait for another night. Strike somewhere unexpected.
Me and Leonard were out of it, but we couldn’t resist the temptation to drive over to the fairgrounds early that morning and watch the carnival trucks pull in behind the tall chain-link fence, observe the machineries of fun going up: the Tilt-a-Whirl, the coaster rides, the Slingshot, as well as rides I couldn’t put a name to.
I kept wondering how Fitzgerald was nabbing those kids and getting them away from there to commit murder. He was a high-profile individual. People on the East Side knew him well and weren’t likely to forget him walking off with some kid, but somehow, every year, he was grabbing a kid and taking him up to that death house.
How was he choosing his victim? Was the kid someone Fitzgerald had been watching, someone who’d been attending church activities? Someone Fitzgerald knew would be going to the carnival? Someone whose home life was a disaster, or someone who had no home life at all? Someone whose past would indicate anything could have happened? Someone like the little boy under Uncle Chester’s floor?
I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my problem now. It was Hanson’s. We drove back home.
About two in the afternoon, Leonard and I went over to MeMaw’s, and Hiram helped us finish up the porch. There wasn’t a lot left to do. About an hour’s work. It was very hot. The sky was clear and blue except in the west, and from those brooding clouds there came a kind of mugginess that was almost overwhelming, and I couldn’t get my mind off the on-coming night and the carnival and what might happen. I hit my thumb with the hammer three or four times, dropped boards and nails, and cussed enough Hiram had to ask me to stop.
“No offense, Hap,” Hiram said. “But I don’t talk that way, and don’t want that kind of talk around Mama. She might hear you.”
I apologized, truly embarrassed for making Hiram uncomfortable. I hoped MeMaw hadn’t heard me.
When we had driven the last nail, Hiram said, “Come on in. Mama’ll want y’all to have some ice tea.”
“I need it,” I said.
Hiram went inside, and Leonard and I promised to follow, after picking up a few nails and boards. When Hiram was out of sight, Leonard said, “I’m fucking ashamed of you, all that cussing.”
“Yeah, well, you can eat shit.”
Then we heard Hiram yell for us from inside the house.
“Hap! Leonard! Oh, God! Come here, quick!”
We rushed inside. MeMaw was slumped in a kitchen chair, almost falling off of it. There was a pool of urine in the seat of the chair, dripping on the floor. Her walker was turned over, as if she had let go of it in the act of trying to rise.
The stroke had come swift and silent, lethal as a black mamba. She was alive, but comatose. We stretched her out on the floor and packed a pillow behind her head and called the ambulance. They came quick, hauled her off to Memorial Hospital. We followed after, Hiram in his van, me and Leonard in my truck.
At the hospital, we sat with Hiram in the waiting room while the doctors did their work. Which wasn’t much. The bottom line was MeMaw was old and it didn’t look good. All they could do – all we could do – was wait.
When we got the word, me and Leonard went into ICU with Hiram and looked at MeMaw. She was wired up like a spaceman and seemed to be smaller and frailer than was humanly possible. I was somehow reminded of those pictures you see of Mexican mummies, the ones that have been exhumed and put on display because the relatives couldn’t afford to maintain the burial plot. I noted the liver spots on her hands. Why hadn’t I noticed them before? They looked like old pennies viewed through weak coffee.
We stayed for a while, then Leonard said, “Hiram, we’ll check back. You need anything, just ask.”
“Yeah,” Hiram said. “Thanks. Man, I can’t believe this. I mean, I can. Her being old and all, but I can’t believe it either.”
“I know,” Leonard said.
“Need us to call relatives?” I asked.
“No,” Hiram said. “A few minutes, I’ll do that.”
We left Hiram sitting by MeMaw’s bedside, holding her hand.
37.
Late that afternoon, the storm in the west really started to boil, turned darker, and moved our way. We were sitting on the porch glider, watching it, when Hanson drove up.
He walked up on the porch with his cigar in his mouth. The end of it was dead, but I could tell it had recently been lit. There were ashes all over his cheap sports coat.
I said, “I thought you quit smoking.”
“I did,” he said, “and I just did again. Listen here, I wanted to tell you it’s going down. You deserve that much. It’s all over, I’ll tell you how it went.”
“We’d appreciate that,” Leonard said.
He nodded, turned, and looked toward the storm clouds. “Man,” he said.
“It’s moving slow,” Leonard said. “Things could still go all right, he makes his move soon enough.”
“Yeah, well,” Hanson said, “see you.”
He went out to his car, and I watched as he lit the cigar and took up smoking again before he drove away.
“Nice guy,” Leonard said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thing I like best about him is he took my woman and he sucks on a nasty old cigar. Asshole.”
We watched the storm some more, then got in Leonard’s car and drove over to the First Primitive Baptist Church, telling each other all the way over we were just going to have a look.
We didn’t pull up out front of the place but parked a block down. There wasn’t much to see from there, but before we parked, we drove by once, and I was able to see that the bus and the Chevy were still in the yard. I also noted that a block up from the church, parked on the opposite side of the street, facing the wrong way, was what looked like an unmarked police car. I didn’t recognize the balding white guy behind the wheel, but he looked like a cop and he had his eyes on the church. I thought it was a good thing Fitzgerald wasn’t expecting anything. This guy was about as inconspicuous as a pink pig in overalls.
We drove on by and went around the block and came back the other way and parked. From where we sat we could see the church and we could see the cop car. Gradually we saw less of both. It turned dark and the storm clouds from the west turned it darker yet.
After a while, lights came on inside the church, then outside of it, lighting up the driveway. An hour passed and cars began to pull up at the curb, and one, a tan Volkswagen, drove around back. Men and women and kids got out of the cars and walked up to the church, around the side of it, and out of sight.
Another fifteen minutes went by, and men and women came away from the church without their kids, got in their cars, and drove away. I thought about that. Parents bringing their kids to a safe place, the church. Leaving them with someone safe, the Reverend, assured in their hearts that their kids were off to have a good time.
And most likely they were. It wasn’t the loved kids the Reverend wanted, so just exactly what was the Reverend’s game? Figuring what he did want made my head hurt.
A minute or two later, the short bus came out from behind the church with its lights on. I could see the Reverend driving, glimpsed the shadowed forms of kids through the windows. The bus turned left and drove past the cop car and on down the street.
The cop car fired up quick and pulled around in the center of the street and went after the bus. Mr. Sneak. He might as well have been standing on a bucket, jerking his dick and singing a song.
Leonard cranked up and we followed after. Actually, neither we nor the cop had to be sneaky. The bus did what we expected it to do. It drove straight to the carnival, paused at the gate and went on into the fairgrounds. So far, things were going as expected.
Not having a special pass, we, along with the cop, parked outside of the fence, and walked up to the gate. When we got there, we were standing behind the cop. The guy at the gate, a black guy with a physique like the Pillsbury Dough Boy and black glasses with white tape on the nose bar, wouldn’t let the cop in because he didn’t have a dollar. The cop, a hard-boiled guy wearing what was once called a leisure suit, a style of clothing that went out of favor and production not long after the demise of the seventy-five-cent paperback, wanted to show him his badge and let that do.
“I don’t need a badge,” said the fat gatekeeper. “I need a dollar.”
“Listen, this is police business,” the cop said.
“You’re shittin’ me,” the gatekeeper said. “The carnival’s police business?”
“Here,” I said, handing the gatekeeper a dollar. “Let him in for heaven’s sake. You’re holding up the line.”
The gatekeeper took the dollar. The cop eyed us the way cops do, said thanks like he didn’t mean it, and went inside. The gatekeeper said to me, “Man, look at this, two white guys back to back, ain’t that some kind of lucky omen or something?”
“Two white guys, one in an ugly leisure suit, means it’s going to rain,” I said.
“I can believe that,” the gatekeeper said, “That guy, I don’t think he’s on cop business at all. I think he’s too used to free meals and shit. That might work uptown, but not here. And where’d he get that suit? What the hell color was that anyway?”
“Orange or rust or dirty gold,” Leonard said. “Take your pick.”
We paid and went inside. We saw the cop walking toward the lot where the permitted vehicles were parked. He walked wide of the lot and onto the pea gravel, went over and leaned against the fence where the carnival lights were weak, got a cigarette out, lit it, and tried not to act as if he was looking at the bus. He wasn’t very good at it.
The bus door opened and Fitzgerald got off the bus, and a line of loud, excited kids came out behind him, followed by a pretty, middle-aged black woman. I assumed she was one of the kid’s mothers, helping the Reverend out.
The kids, mostly six to ten years in age, evenly split between girls and boys, bounced on their toes and stood in a line that gyrated like a garter snake on a hot rock. The woman and Reverend Fitzgerald chatted amiably. He smiled. She smiled. The Reverend went back to the bus and leaned inside, then leaned out. I thought maybe he had said something to someone inside. T.J. perhaps. From where we stood, no one was visible, but the plywood window replacements in the back and on the side could have hidden them.
The Reverend smiled at the woman again. They spoke. Half the kids went with her, the other half with the Reverend. Mr. Leisure Suit followed after the Reverend and his charges. T.J., the walking eclipse, did not make an appearance.
Me and Leonard were trying to decide what we were going to do next, when Hanson walked up and surprised us. “You assholes,” he said. We turned and got a look at him. He was his usual pleasant-looking self, but he no longer had his cigar. I presumed it was in his pocket. I hoped he remembered to put it out before he put it up. “Didn’t I just see you fucks? I said I’d let you know.”
“I’ll say this,” Leonard said, “you walk light for a big dude.”
“It’s my fuckin’ Indian blood. What you two doin’ here? I said you were out. You done more than you’re supposed to already.”
“And very well, I might add,” said Leonard.
“Don’t let your dicks get too hard,” Hanson said. “You did all right, but you had some luck.”
“So did you,” I said. “We came along.”
“You didn’t even know for sure you had a case before we showed up,” Leonard said.
“I still don’t know I got anything,” Hanson said.
“Bullshit,” I said.
“All right,” Hanson said, “you’re goddamn wizards of detection. Now go home or take in the carnival. I want you out of my way. I mean it now. I got men on the job, and they even know what they’re doin’. Well, they got an idea, anyway.”
We left Hanson and walked around the carnival. It was bright with lights and the sounds of voices and the cranking of machinery and the blasting of music, presumably conceived by ears of tin and played on matching instruments. There was the smell of sweat from excited children and tired adults, the butter-rich aroma of popcorn and the sugar-sick sweetness of cotton candy, the burning stench of fresh animal shit from the petting zoo.
We were over by the petting zoo when we came across Hiram. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking forlorn as a man who’d just prematurely ejaculated. He was looking at a spotted goat.
We walked up beside him. I said, “Hiram.”
He turned and looked at me, but it took him a moment to know I was there.
“Oh, hi,” he said.
“Surprised to see you here,” Leonard said.
“Mama’s with my sister. She drove down.”
“How is MeMaw?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Same. Doctor said she could stay like that awhile. A day, six months.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me too,” Leonard said.
“I had to get out, you know?” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “Nothing wrong with that. There’s not a lot you can do.”
“I just needed a break,” he said. “Even if I just end up watching a goat.”
Hiram turned back to watch the goat, and a little boy came up and started petting it. We stood there in awkward silence for a time, then said good-bye and slipped away.
“Too bad,” Leonard said as we bought cotton candy. “I like MeMaw and Hiram.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but she lived a full life. We all got to check out sometime.”
“It’s not dying I hate for her,” Leonard said. “It’s lingering. I think we embarrassed Hiram.”
“Yeah, he feels guilty. Like he ought to be with her, but there’s just so much of the deathwatch a person can take.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
“This cotton candy is making me sick.”
I guess we wandered around for a couple of hours. We saw the Reverend and his kids and their leisure-suited shadow a few times, but the Reverend didn’t see us. We saw Melton, aka Mohawk, walking with a young black girl who looked as if she had not long back abandoned her training bra and dolls. They went around behind a hot dog stand and we lost sight of them. We saw Hanson a few times. He looked as sullen as ever, as if the sight of us was causing his nuts to shrink.
As we strolled, a lot of blacks looked at me like I was an exotic animal, maybe belonged in the petting zoo. And in a way, I suppose I was exotic, least here and on this night. There were only a handful of white people at the carnival, and some of them were cops.
Another hour passed, and you could smell the storm on the warm night wind. It mixed with the other aromas and became a heady cocktail. You could taste electricity in the air. The machinery that wound around and around and took the children up into the sky and back down again, creaked and whined and groaned and squeaked and rattled bolts in its metal joints and made me nervous. Off in the distance, amid that swirling darkness, was the occasional flash of lightning, like a liquid tuning fork thrown against the sky.
Not long after the lightning flashes, the machineries stopped and the rides got canceled. All that was left was the petting zoo and the booths where you lost your money trying to throw softballs into bushel baskets or baseballs through hoops.
A half-h
our later they canceled the whole thing and disgruntled patrons were moving toward the gate. Before we got out of there, the rain blew in, came faster and harder than anyone would have expected. Through the sheets of aluminum-colored rain, the lights of the carnival were like winking gold coins at the bottom of a fountain, and now there was nothing to smell but the rain, and the rain was cold, and within seconds Leonard and I were soaking wet.
We made our way through the crowd and out to the car. We sat there and watched as people rushed out and cars pulled away. We watched as the short church bus came through the gate and drove off. We drove off after it.
The deluge was intense, and the bus drove slowly, and so did we, and so did Leisure Suit. He was following behind us. After a little bit, we decided to beat the bus back to the church, get our parking place. As we passed, Leonard said, “Hap, the Reverend ain’t driving. It’s that woman. I don’t see him at all.”
I drove on around, tires sloshing and tossing water. “Don’t mean he isn’t there. I didn’t see the woman when they left the church. He could be in back.”
“Yeah, but… I don’t know. Something sucks the big ole donkey dick here.”
We beat the bus, got our parking place, turned off the lights, and sat there and ate from a box of M amp;Ms Leonard had left in the glove box. They had melted into a colorful mess, but we ate them anyway. We were licking our fingers when the bus drove up to the church and stopped in the driveway.
“Reckon they’re staying close to the curb to help the parents out,” Leonard said. “Kids are already soaked to the bone.”
Leisure Suit drove over to the curb opposite the church and parked facing the wrong way.
“Cop is less smart now than he was earlier,” Leonard said. “I don’t think he’s even made us yet, ain’t figured we been riding around behind him and paying his way into the carnival. Mr. Sneaky, he don’t see any connection between us and him and the bus.”
Mucho Mojo cap-2 Page 22
