"No wonder you got a strained nut."
"Yeah. Well, maybe that's what happened. I do dearly love to fuck . . . My nut really look bad?"
"Well, I was you, I'd get a truss or something. Shit, man, don't that hurt?"
"Not if I turn kinda casual like."
"Not to dismiss a man's nuts too lightly, Chief, but where is Florida?"
"Hell, boy, it's gettin' cold out here. Let's you and me go sit in the car and talk."
I got in on the passenger side. There was a shotgun on a rack between myself and Cantuck. He cranked the car and turned on the heater. On the dash, and stuck all about the car, there was
every kind of charity sticker you could imagine. Muscular dystrophy. Diabetes. Cancer.
"You give to all those charities?" I asked. "Or do you just collect stickers?"
"I give," he said. "A dollar or two here and there. It ain't like I'm raking in the big bucks here, so I don't give much, but I give. I think it's something you ought to do. Christian charity. I had a son had MD. He died of it just last year. Since then, and even before, I can't stand to see nobody crippled, not even a nagger."
He sat quietly for a moment, staring at the MD sticker. "That boy of mine," he said. "Jimmy. He got so bad, only way he could get around was me totin' him. He was eleven. My youngest. Damn good age for a boy, but for him it was hell. Spittin' image of me. Good boy. Never did nothing but try and be good. Made good grades until he got so bad he just couldn't study. His body turned to jelly. Just goddamn jelly."
"I'm sorry."
"He was a good boy. He was a good boy right to the end, trying to cheer me up. Trying to smile. He died with me holding his hand. It was so little, I closed mine, you couldn't even see his. He hadn't had that shit, hell, he'd gone to college and made something of himself. God bless him."
"I truly am sorry, Chief."
"Well, don't whine about it. You didn't know him. Wasn't nothing to you. I shouldn't even have said anything to you about it ... now, this nigger gal."
"Florida."
"Yeah, Florida. She came to the jail, asked a few questions, left, and I didn't see her again, 'cept around town. Over at the filling station getting some gas in that little car of hers."
"A gray Toyota."
"That's the one. Real sporty."
"That's all you know about her?"
"That's it. I heard a few of the boys mention they'd seen her and that she dressed a little too rich, if you know what I mean, but had she been a couple shades paler, they might have taken her to church, and to a little social after."
I thought of Florida and her dresses. Mostly short. Mostly tight. I thought of the story Charlie told me. I had a sudden red-hot and angry vision of the Chief with an upholstery needle threaded with wire.
"Let me ask a couple of questions that don't have to do with Florida," I said. "This guy that hung himself in jail. Why?"
"Who's to know a nigger's mind? I wasn't even around. I was out of town."
"Lot of hangings in your little jail?"
Chief Cantuck studied me a moment. "You a reporter? The colored gal said she was doing some kind of article. Said she was a lawyer too, though I ain't sure about that."
"She was."
"If she was, then you just shit on yourself, pilgrim. She was a lawyer, then she didn't work for you, did she?"
"Well, she did law work."
"I think you're full of it, buddy."
I had been feeling superior and condescending to the old man, and he'd been baiting me all along. Dropping sugar in front of me until he got me close enough to whack with the swatter. His tone was different now. A lot less cracker. "You think you're so smart," he said. "Well, I got to tell you, you ain't that smart."
"I see that," I said.
He casually slipped the leather trigger guard off his revolver and shifted toward me in the seat, his hand resting on the butt of his pistol. A bead of sweat formed immediately on my upper lip and ran into my mouth.
"Listen here. I knew you and that smartass nigger were full of shit soon as I saw you. Ain't a word come out of your mouth that's even kin to the truth. There's nothing about you boys that fits, so I figure you're trouble. More do-gooders trying to come down here and check on our nigger trouble and make it into something it isn't. I haven't heard one do-gooder ask about the people this nigger killed. The white man this guitar plunker cut up for a few dollars."
"I didn't say anything about his guilt or innocence. I'm just asking about Florida."
"Don't take me for a fool 'cause I got swollen nuts and bad teeth and I eat too much. I'm on the dime much as you are, College Boy."
"Actually, I dropped out. And I'm way past being a boy."
"Well, you should have finished college, boy. Might have learned something. Let me tell you this, Swiftie. That little nigger came snooping around asking questions. She wanted to see if that boy was murdered. She figured the Caucasian Knights was in on it. Let me tell you something. The Knights are ripe in this town, and they're mostly nothing but a bunch of mean bastards, just like the Klan, which is really all they are, but now and then they do a good thing or two. There's folks need killin'."
"Then you're saying the Klan, or these Knights, killed the prisoner?"
"'Course I ain't. But I'm tellin' you this. The Knights take note of meddlers, and they don't worry much about a dead nigger, but they worry about the ones worry about a dead nigger. Understand me?"
"I believe I do. Your hand on that gun, is that some kind of threat?"
"Yeah," he said, taking the gun out of its holster and laying it on his knee. "It could be. And you see, sometimes, you wave one around like this ..." He waved the revolver in my direction and placed it back on his knee, "and you got your mind on something else, a gun can go off, even if you was just showin' it to a fella wanted to see it."
"That would be murder, Chief. My friend in the car wouldn't like that."
"And I wouldn't care. He might have an accident too. You and him both might end up in the ashes of that fire there, and them firemen might be settin' you on fire instead of puttin' you out. I'm not saying they would, but it could happen. I mean, shit, boy, you two look to me to be the type would like them plastic dicks and stuff. You might even have been with the white trash lives here, and say the white trash went out for some beer and left you two in the house, and you were fucking around with some kind of electric dick or something. Started a fire. I even like the idea of us finding them rubber dicks up your butts, you know, just for looks . . . But however it's played, we come up with a cooked nigger in a house where white trash lives, we could pin damn near anything on the trash lives there.
"As it is, they're gonna be leaving town, just because I'm fed up with them. They don't know it yet, but when I find them, they're gonna be leaving. And right away. It ain't like they're gonna need to pack. And if they don't want to leave, I'm gonna persuade them. I'm hoping I won't have to persuade you and maybe take them down with you to make things look nice and pretty."
"Me either," I said, and looked carefully at the gun on his knee. His fingers flexed against it, making me as nervous as a goat at a barbecue.
"Listen here, Swiftie. There's been folks worried about dead niggers before, and some of them ain't so worried now. About nothing. Get me?"
"You're coming across."
"Let me add something to that. Ain't a Klan member in this town or around it ever been convicted of shit. That sort of line your ducks up, Swiftie?"
"I believe it does."
It had started to rain again. The water ran in such thick rivulets on the windshield I couldn't see out. The car heater was too warm.
"One last thing," Cantuck said. "For the record. That gal. I didn't do a thing to her and have no reason to suspicion anyone I know did. Clear? But I wouldn't put anything past the Knights, and contrary to what you probably think, I found out they did something to someone didn't need it done, I'd come down on them."
"Sure."
"Now, you
get in the car with your pet nigger, and you two go back to wherever you come from, where you and him can eat and sleep together, or whatever it is you want to do with niggers. But, fella, don't get in my way again, and don't ever let me hear you mention my balls again. It ain't polite. And lastly, I ain't never fucked a chicken in my life, but I thought it was the sort of thing you'd expect. You fuck with me, Swiftie, you better be thinking two and three moves ahead."
"What about the pigs? Did you fuck them?"
"Get out of the car, Swiftie."
When I closed Leonard's car door, Leonard said, "Learn anything?"
"Yeah, you wouldn't believe the stuff the Chief knows about the political situation in Albania."
"Yeah, but I bet that fucker don't know their major imports and exports."
"That cracker isn't as stupid as we thought, Leonard. Mean. Dangerous. Ignorant. But stupid he isn't. And subtle he isn't. In fact, his very non-subtle statements about our temporary position in his community were so clearly stated, I'd like you to crank the car right now, and leave."
Leonard looked where I was looking. The firefighters were no longer fighting the fire. They were all turned in our direction, glaring. One of them was chewing a fresh Twinkie and the sticky white innards were covering his mouth like mad dog foam.
"I think maybe they ain't never seen anyone cute as us," Leonard said.
Chief Cantuck got out of his car and walked in our direction, stopped and waited. He had his gun in his hand, held by his side.
"He thinks we're cute too," Leonard said.
"Just start and go," I said.
"I hate being buffaloed," Leonard said. "And I hate a man thinks I don't appreciate Elvis."
"Yeah, but I hate more being dead."
Leonard fumed silently, fired up his junker and started to drive. Chief Cantuck leaned down and smiled tobacco at us through Leonard's rain-beaded car window as we went by.
When I looked back over my shoulder I saw him stooped by the remains of the house, working those wet, smoking Elvis cards toward him with a stick.
Chapter 9
We drove back into town beneath a churning black sky kicked open and brightened now and then by cruel bursts of lightning. By the time we wheeled into downtown Grovetown, Leonard had on a rockin' zydeco tape even I could appreciate. Those dudes were blowing accordion music hot as devil farts through Leonard's cheap speakers, melting down the wires, making me hungry for gumbo.
We stopped at the filling station and I got out and got hold of one of the serve-yourself nozzles. Before I was allowed to put in the gas, Leonard had to finish hearing out a song on the tape player, and since his cheap system didn't play unless the motor was running, I stood outside willing and waiting with my gas nozzle cocked and ready, tapping my boot to the jump of the music.
Acquaintance of mine, Gerald Matter, who used to own a gas station in downtown LaBorde, told me once, you never load in the gas with the car motor running, or you might get a little
spark, end up with your ass on the far side of the moon. "Safety first" was Gerald's motto.
'Course, Gerald lost the station for lack of payment back in nineteen seventy-eight, but he hadn't quite gotten the gas and oil business out of his blood. He did him a stretch in prison for trying to rob a filling station in Gilmer with a sharpened butter knife. Fat lady that ran the place came over the counter after him, got him by the throat, and beat the pure-dee dog shit out of him, took his knife away. She then proceeded to carve off part of his head before she could be subdued by a handful of shocked customers waiting on their free "crystal" dish with a fill-up.
Gerald has done his time and he's out now and he might even be a little smarter. But he's grown bashful, wears hats indoors and out to hide what's missing on top of his head, though except for a flap cap he wears now and then, it doesn't do a damn thing for his absent left ear. These days Gerald has abandoned gas and oil and has a little carpet-cleaning business and likes to go to bed early.
While I waited with the nozzle, the tall, pale-faced man we had seen earlier came out in his thick coat with his cap in his hand, picked up on Clifton Chenier calling out "Eh, Petite Fille," from Leonard's tape deck, smiled, sang a verse with Clifton, jiggled a little and flop-kneed on out to the car. His long body, pasty face, and gyrations made him look like an albino grasshopper on speed.
He reached the car dancing and grinning, stopped and laughed. "Damn," he said, "give an accordion to a redneck and all he can do is play 'Home on the Range' or some goddamn polka, give it to a coonass and he'll make the music crawl up your butt and play with your kidneys."
"That's right," Leonard said. He was standing outside the driver’s door, leaning on the rooftop, listening. When the song finished, Leonard cut off the motor, and I started pumping gas.
"How're y'all," said the pale-faced man. He had a grin as infectious as syphilis.
"Good," I said. "Cold and a little damp, but good."
"Well, accordin' to the weather report, we're all gonna get colder and damper. Air is blowing ass over tea kettle down from Canada, churning like pig feet a boilin', only the air ain't warm. There's penguins would faint they knew something like this was comin'."
"Damn," I said. "That bad?"
"Let's just say them suitcases you got in back of your car there better not be filled with Hawaiian shirts and sun hats . . . hey, speakin' of pig's feet boilin'—"
"Were we?" I said.
"Well, I was," said the man. "I got some pickled ones inside that're peppered just right. Fifty cents a pig stump. You might like to try 'em. Just got 'em in. Can't keep 'em, they go so fast. Fellow I know out in the country makes 'em. Them buddies are so spicy, you eat one, you'll be able to do a push-up with your dick."
"Maybe I could use some of that," I said. "I was younger, I woke up and did a push-up with my dick without pickled pig's feet. Now, got to get enough sleep to do it, and then when I try to do it, I need sleep."
"Ain't that the shits?" he said. "Just when you get older and figure out what it's all about, what it's all about you ain't able to do."
"Say, listen," I said. "We're gonna get a couple of cans of oil too, but we're looking for someone. Main reason we stopped in here."
Leonard said, "Lady named Florida Grange."
"Oh, yeah. Nice lady. A looker too. She was around here a few days." He looked at Leonard. "You kin?"
"Nope," Leonard said.
"Boyfriend? Either of you?" He gave me a good hard look. "Though in this town, you better not say you are if you are."
"Nope," I said. "We're not boyfriends."
"She owe you money?"
"Nope."
"Y'all some kinda law?"
"Nope."
"Well then, let me say I tried serious hard and major purposeful to put the make on that little gal, but she wasn't havin' any. I think she has a thing about white guys. And not a good thing."
"Trust me," I said. "She does."
"Ah, so you tried her too?" he said.
"It didn't work out," I said. "You might say I'm an ex-boyfriend. But what we're lookin' for is to help out her current boyfriend who's worried about her. And we want to do it because we're friends of hers too. Sort of. Used to be."
"I see," the man said. "I think."
It grew very dark suddenly, then there was a crack of thunder and a sizzling race of lightning, and right after that it seemed as if a great tidal wave washed over us. The rain came down so hard it nearly knocked us flat.
"Goddamn," said the pale-faced man, putting his cap on. "There it is. Y'all come on in and we'll talk."
Leonard followed the man inside. I topped off the tank, hung up the gas nozzle, and damn near swam to the door. Inside, the store was warm and the lights were on, and the cold rain and midday darkness outside made the place seem tight and cozy.
The joint was stocked with pretty basic goods. Breads, crackers, a lunch meat cooler housing pressed ham, bologna, olive and liver loaf. There were soft drinks, peanuts, chips, that
kind of stuff. Cans of oil, transmission and brake fluids. A rack of John Deere caps. A few straw cowboy hats. A cardboard display of colored plastic combs, and on the wall a dusty calendar over ten years out of date with a gorgeous, big-breasted woman in shorts and a halter top holding a wrench and smiling; the logo above her read January, and above that Snap Tight Tools.
Next to the cash register were two large jars containing yellowish brine water, and by my standards, some rather nasty looking pig's tootsies. Didn't appear to me that before they pickled them little delights they had washed the pig shit out from between the hooves, but maybe that was just a concentration of black pepper and meat gelatin.
There was a homemade oil barrel stove in the middle of the room, and there were lawn chairs and wicker-bottomed chairs pulled all around it. Near a couple chairs were two tobacco-splattered cuspidors, and the floor around them, which was covered with newspaper, was also splattered. Beneath the stove there was a large square of scarred, fire-spotted linoleum, and on it were tufts of dust bunnies, a chewing tobacco wrapper, and something that looked like blue glass or plastic that caught the electric light and pulled it in and winked it back.
There was a small stack of firewood next to the stove and there was a hatchet stuck deep in one of the logs and a gray lizard lay by the hatchet, attempting to trick us into thinking he was nothing more than a wood knot.
At the back of the store was an aluminum Christmas tree covered in lights and colored ornaments. The lights weren't on, and the angel at the top of the tree was too heavy for the little tip, so it leaned to one side, as if it were about to be cast from heaven.
Leonard paid for the gas and bought some oil, and when he got his change back, the pale-faced man said, "Y'all want some coffee?"
"You bet," Leonard said.
"I got a pot goin' in back. Sit down."
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