by Rick Gavin
“You going to show us where?” Desmond asked.
That Greer just nodded. He said, “All right, but I ain’t got all day.”
With that he piled onto the backseat of Desmond’s Escalade. That Greer told us, “Come on, dammit,” like we’d been ballast all along.
We left Kendell at Pearl’s, and I probably would have checked in with Tula along about then, but I didn’t want to tell her what I was up to and who with exactly. She didn’t approve of Dale and wouldn’t have had much use for Luther. Throw in that Greer and Eugene and a hound in a Mandrell Sisters T-shirt, and I was riding around in her idea of shiftless hell on earth. And she didn’t like to be checked in with anyway in the general course of things, always took it somehow as constricting and more than a little nosy.
At least that’s how I’ve worked it out in my head ever since that afternoon. I let myself off for having not called her because she didn’t like getting called.
I thought we’d never get to that Greer’s daddy’s farm. It was way up the hell in the middle of no damn where. That’s saying a lot in the Delta where most every place is nowhere much. But this spread was well off the paved road, no asphalt near it for miles. It was up in Bolivar County somewhere in the vicinity of Rosedale. We rode right by that house in Beulah where we’d hauled that woman’s donkeys.
I was about to point it out when Desmond grumbled my way, “Shit.”
It didn’t help that Grady Greer didn’t seem to know where his daddy lived. He sent us down a road that ended in a hedgerow.
“All right now, wait a minute,” was all he said.
“Want me to hit him?” Dale asked us.
“Ain’t you wasted enough time,” Eugene asked Dale, “getting your sorry ass kicked?”
“There they are,” that Greer told us and pointed.
We could see a tin roof through the scrub.
“Got to go around,” that Greer said to Desmond. “Back to the junction and over. I had you turn a little short.”
A good four miles later we were easing up the track that passed with that Greer’s daddy for a driveway. I think his house had a trailer in it somewhere, one of those stubby single-wides that was probably the core of the entire structure. He’d just added on rooms and wings and breezeways as the mood struck him and the need arose. He had Tyvek instead of siding and blue tarp where there wasn’t tin.
That Greer’s daddy and his brother, the Uncle Flo we’d heard about, came out on the front porch when they heard us rolling up. Uncle Flo had a Buntline revolver shoved down in his pants. That Greer’s daddy was holding a rifle that looked for all the world like a musket.
“I ain’t getting out,” I heard Luther say.
“I’m all right back here,” Eugene told us.
We actively wanted Dale to stay in the car, but he had his door open before we’d stopped. He was a tip-of-the-spear sort of guy without the feel or capacity for it.
“What the hell’s all this?” Dale shouted toward the house.
Our Greer, of course, was still in the car, so those gentlemen had no earthly idea who we were or why we’d come. It wasn’t the Greer way to call ahead or to even have a phone. So there was an Escalade with a bunch of guys inside it and Dale out as our mouthpiece, and he looked as rough as a fellow could look. His face was scarlet and puffy. His knuckles were all skinned up, and he was filthy from rolling around on the ground while getting punched and scuffed.
Those Greer brothers did about the only thing gentlemen of their vintage could do. They both leveled their guns at Dale and warned him that they’d shoot him about a half a second before both of them fired and missed. Uncle Flo put a round in one of Desmond’s headlights while that Greer’s daddy scattered shot all over the place. It sounded like sand on the windshield and the hood. It might have been salt by the racket of it, but that didn’t make much difference to Desmond.
He threw open his door and rolled out of his seat to tell those fellows, “Hey!”
So now, in addition to Dale, there was a big black guy in their yard. Naturally, they trained fire on him as well. These were hardly the sort of men to much trouble themselves with consequences. This time the Buntline bullet hit the bumper, and that Greer’s daddy’s rifle smoked when he pulled the trigger. There was a fizzle somewhere back in the works, and then the thing caught fire.
“Throw it!” our Greer bellowed from the backseat.
His daddy did just that. He flung that rifle into the yard where it went off and hit the pump house. Then the stock fell off the barrel, and the whole thing came apart.
“Just hold on here.” I was out by then. I turned and told our Greer, “Come on.”
He stuck his head up over the open back door, “Hell, Daddy,” he said.
It looked for a second there like Uncle Flo might draw a bead on our Greer. There wasn’t much doubt he wanted to.
“Shit, it’s Grady,” he told Grady’s daddy.
“Let him be,” Grady’s daddy said to his brother with weary resignation. He shook his head at the sight of his son. He dredged some phlegm and spat.
“What did you do?” I asked our Greer.
“We kind of fell out,” he told me.
That was a going local trend, as far as I could tell. Families went to loggerheads over every damn thing in the Delta, from “Why’s my wife in your house naked?” to “Where’d my pack of Old Golds go?”
“Money?” I asked our Greer.
He shook his head and told me, “Martha.”
“Don’t you even say her name!” Uncle Flo shouted our way. “Best damn squeeze I ever had.”
“You stole his girl?” Luther asked. He was out and standing by now.
“Wife,” our Greer confessed. “I was kind of gone on applejack.”
“Your aunt?” Dale asked him. There were lines Dale drew when it came to women, and apparently fooling with uncles’ wives was a fairly bright one for him.
For Luther too, to judge by his squawking. “She as old as him?” he wanted to know.
Our Greer hung his head and nodded. “I told you,” he said. “Applejack.”
“Maybe you can work all this out later,” I suggested to Uncle Flo.
He spat just like his brother had. “Ain’t so sure,” he said.
I could tell by the neck noises Desmond was making that he was building toward a conniption. The longer he got to study his car, the worse he felt about it. If I let him reach the point where he got indignant enough, somebody would have to die or at least suffer monumentally.
Desmond was sure to sail up onto the porch and grab whichever Greer was handy and pitch him around the property until he was fit for stew. If Desmond had any energy left after that, he’d go get the other one, and there weren’t enough muskets and Buntline revolvers around to even slow him down.
“I’ll get you another one,” I told Desmond, and I jabbed my thumb toward his Escalade.
“New off the lot,” Desmond said.
“All right.”
“Loaded.”
Me and Desmond still had most of the cash we’d taken off that Boudrot the first time around. We kept it in a toolbox on a shelf down in Pearl’s basement. I had to figure I had four or five Escalades worth of money left.
“You’re on your own for rims,” I told him.
“Using these,” Desmond said and pointed at one of his current gleaming, faceted specimens. “Ain’t nobody shot them yet.”
“Keep all them down here,” I said to Desmond as I moved toward the porch riser.
Dale made a move to come with me, but not a strident, decisive one. So all Desmond had to do was raise a hand and tell him, “Naw.”
“You got Percy Dwayne Dubois in there somewhere?” I shouted up to those Greer brothers as I mounted the stairs.
“Who the hell wants to know?” Uncle Flo trained his revolver on me.
“I do, shithead.” I cleared two risers.
“Far enough, buddy.”
The sight of that Buntline pointed m
y way just made me hotter still.
“Lower that damn thing.”
Uncle Flo chose otherwise. I heard the hammer click as he drew it back, like tumblers in a lock.
I’d had plenty of guns pointed at me through the years, in law enforcement and repo and even out in the natural world. A fellow with a gun usually felt like he was obliged to point it at something. If you’d shown up to arrest him or reclaim his Xbox, it might as well be you.
The worst thing I could do was stop or show even a hint of wavering. I couldn’t let the likes of Uncle Flo cow me with a gun.
“I’m going to shove that thing right up your ass.”
Among the threats I could have selected, that turned out to be a poor choice. I couldn’t have known about Uncle Flo’s history of hemorrhoids and various anal calamities. So I didn’t imagine that he’d be especially sensitive about what got shoved and where. For me, it was just something to say. There’s a world of places a Buntline revolver won’t fit with ease or grace, and a man’s bunghole is surely one of them.
Then I heard our Greer yell, “Don’t!”
And damned if Uncle Flo didn’t pull the stinking trigger. I heard the hammer hit the pin with a dull thunk. Then I just stood there and waited to die, but beyond the thunk nothing really happened. Uncle Flo, as it turned out, went around with an empty chamber for safety’s sake, and the hammer just happened to come down on it after the several shots he’d fire. It was just dumb luck. That’s the only thing that spared me. I was maybe four feet away from him. He would have been hard-pressed to miss.
I didn’t give that fool the chance to squeeze the trigger again. I took the last two stairs in one bound and yanked the gun out of Uncle Flo’s hand. It was shortly thereafter that I got to hear all about his rectal troubles because I kicked him so hard in the ass that I sent him sailing off the porch. There wasn’t any shrubbery to break his fall. He landed on an ancient wheelbarrow carcass and a chunk of tractor tire.
“Hell, man,” I shouted down his way, “what are you thinking?”
He just stayed where he was and whimpered. I turned and hurled that Buntline revolver out into the weedy side yard.
That Greer’s daddy opened his mouth like he had a thing he wanted to tell me.
“Shut up,” I said.
He reconsidered.
“Where’s Percy Dwayne?” I asked him.
Whatever they’d been planning on, he knew it was all over.
“In here,” he told me, and I followed that Greer’s daddy into the house.
The place smelled like the inside of brogan in July, and the rooms were all piled up and heaped with clothes and junk and human litter. The whole place looked like the sort of nest a rat would build on a dare.
That Greer led me down his dingy hallway to what proved a closet door. He had a ladder-back chair cocked under the knob that he kicked out of the way. He flung open the door. That closet was in the shape of the rest of the house. There was one bare wire hanger left on the rod. Everything was down on the floor, including Percy Dwayne who was curled up asleep on about a foot and a half worth of junk.
“What’s the story here?” I asked that Greer.
Percy Dwayne groaned and turned his back to us, snored a little.
“Stole from us.”
“He steals from everybody.”
“It was shit we couldn’t have stole.”
In my experience with Percy Dwayne, he had an unerring sense of stealing shit people simply couldn’t have stole.
“You going to bring him back?”
“You really want him?”
“It’s Flo mostly. I’d have just kicked him around and left it at that.”
“You can kick him around now if you want to. I can give you a few minutes.”
But all the spark had gone out of the enterprise by then.
I poked Percy Dwayne with the toe of my boot. He groaned and stretched and rolled.
He looked at me. He eyed that Greer.
“Come on,” I said.
Percy Dwayne yawned and kneaded a shoulder kink. He asked me finally, “Why?”
* * *
We left our Greer at his daddy’s house to help nurse on his uncle who was sitting up by the time me and Percy Dwayne came out onto the porch. I got a dose of news straight from Uncle Flo about his various posterior complaints.
“Anything broken?” I asked him.
“Hell, I don’t know.”
If Uncle Flo had said he was all right, I think I would have kicked him a time or two just because. Instead I let “I don’t know” and a tender backside get him off the hook.
Me and Desmond and Dale and Luther and Eugene and Barbara and Percy Dwayne all piled in Desmond’s Escalade and backed out of the yard at breakneck speed. That wasn’t normally Desmond’s way, but he’d moved on to his new car already.
“I’m thinking yellow this time around. You know, that creamed corn color they’ve got.”
I didn’t know what to say for a few seconds there. “We talking Cadillacs?” I finally asked him.
Desmond nodded. “Black’s all right,” he said. “But awful hot in the sun.”
He was flat racing along the gravel road that led from the Greer farm to the blacktop. Rocks were pinging off the fender wells and dust was boiling up all over.
“Act like you still love her a little,” I told him.
“Can’t,” Desmond said back. “Don’t.”
We arrived at the junction by the blacktop in pretty much a full skid.
“What’s with him?” Percy Dwayne asked of Desmond. “And where are we going anyway?”
I swung around and told him over the seat back, “You’re welcome all to hell.”
He took a few seconds to consider what he might need to be grateful about. “Them?” he finally asked me and did a spot of country pointing. “I’d have gotten loose whenever I wanted.”
“They had you shut up in a closet.”
“They didn’t mean no harm,” Percy Dwayne insisted.
“One of them tried to shoot him,” Luther said.
“But for an empty chamber,” I told Percy Dwayne, “I’d be dead.”
Percy Dwayne gave that some thought as well. He seemed to believe he ought to say something sympathetic and compassionate, but he was too much of a thieving lowlife cracker to know what that might be. “Yeah,” he finally said my way. “Well.”
Desmond short-circuited the niceties directly after that. “Boudrot’s out,” he barked at Percy Dwayne without letting his gaze stray from the road. A good thing since we were roaring down the blacktop toward the truck route at about ninety.
“What Boudrot?”
“Fuckstick,” Luther told his uncle. “Run off from a road crew.”
“So?”
Eugene piped in from the way back, “Killed all my dogs.”
“What’s that then?” Percy Dwayne pointed with his nose at Barbara.
“She’s shot too, just not enough.”
“Whatever went with the Mandrell sisters? They in Branson or somewhere?” Percy Dwayne wanted to know.
“Hit him,” me and Desmond told Dale in two-part harmony.
Dale grinned and then winced because of his bruises and laid-open places. He drew back and punched Percy Dwayne in the ear.
We came out on the truck route over by Leland between Lusco’s and the Kermit the Frog Museum.
“Where are we going?” Desmond asked me.
That was a fair enough question, and I was working on an answer when my phone buzzed in my pocket. That’s when I got the voicemail from Tula. It was nearly three hours old.
“Which way?” Desmond wanted to know.
“Call Kendell,” I said.
“What’s up?” Desmond asked me.
“I think Tula found Boudrot.” I played her message for Desmond.
Desmond was trying to reach Kendell when a call came buzzing in on my phone.
I checked the screen. “It’s her,” I said. I answered the call, sa
id, “Hey.”
There was only car noise there at first and shitty country music.
“Hey,” that Boudrot finally told me, “fucker.”
FOURTEEN
Now the cops got profoundly interested. That’s the galling thing about police. They seem to hold back their fury and passion when just civilians are involved, but once an officer is in peril there’s hardly anything they won’t do.
“He’s got Tula,” was about all Desmond needed to say to Kendell.
“Let me make a few calls,” Kendell told him, and he was off the line.
“Got your girl,” that Boudrot had told me.
He was just guessing, as it turned out. Of course, I’d jumped right in and confirmed for him that Tula was something special to me. I’d described to that Boudrot in detail the way I’d take him apart if he caused her any harm.
He’d cackled. He had a heck of a cackle, an evil genius sort of thing. “Thought so,” he’d said and had added, “Catch you later.”
He’d cut me off in the middle of another animated threat. I’d been stewing ever since. I couldn’t help but figure I’d ratcheted up the danger on Tula. It didn’t help that Percy Dwayne was keen to tell us everything about that Boudrot that his wife had told him after that Boudrot had nabbed her a few years back.
“Sissy says he’s a hound,” Percy Dwayne informed us. “Always drinking them energy drinks. Got this Red Bull hard-on all the time.”
Knowing Percy Dwayne, I imagine he thought he was being helpful. He probably felt sure he was telling us stuff about that Boudrot we needed to know. So I didn’t hit him or even turn around and bark at him. I was consoled, to the extent I could be, by what I knew of Tula. She was just the sort of creature who’d snap a Red Bull hard-on off.
“Bag still at Junior’s?” I asked Desmond.
He nodded. “Get it?”
“Yeah.”
Junior was related to Desmond’s mother in some complicated fashion I’d never quite puzzled out. He was a cousin by marriage or a step-in-law. I was only certain that he had a storm cellar where me and Desmond sometimes stored our accumulated armaments. We had a big duffel full of guns that I used to keep in my car shed apartment until Pearl saw me fooling with it one day when she showed up to drop off a cobbler.
