Memphis Luck

by Gerald Duff

  TWENTY-TWO

  Tonto, Bob, Earl, Coy, and Fulgencia

  “How long you think we going to have to wait, Tonto?” Coy Bridges said, leaning forward in a leather wingback chair in the anteroom area of the second floor of Jimbo Reynolds’s big house in the Nathan B. Forrest Estates, just outside the counting room.

  “How do I know?” Tonto said, without opening his eyes to speak. “We’ll wait as long as it takes for the preacher to get his business done and come out of there.”

  “It’s taking a long time to get her done, ain’t it?” Coy said. “We been here what? An hour anyway.”

  “He’ll be out when he’s ready to roll,” Tonto said, “and we’ll relieve him of all that burden of toting that money out of here.”

  “I wish now we hadn’t put that duct tape on Fulgencia before we came up here,” Bob Ferry said. “It’s got to be damned uncomfortable for her sitting there all this time.”

  “From what she says, it’d be a lot more bother to her later on if she wasn’t taped up,” Tonto said. “That’s the way she wants it. Fulgencia is thinking long term. She is one to hedge her bets, and she doesn’t want to have to leave here before she wants to. She’s been tied up before a lot worse than this, I do imagine. She’s probably enjoying a nap about now.”

  “I think I might go down there to the kitchen and see if the tape’s bothering her mouth or anything. Might be too tight on her somewhere, cutting off circulation and shit,” Coy Bridges said, standing up from the leather chair and beginning to stretch, getting a lot of motion in it as he twisted from side to side and bounced up and down on his toes.

  “You ain’t going anywhere,” Tonto Batiste said. “And you’re sure not going to be checking on Fulgencia. Set your ass down.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Coy Bridges said. “I might have to piss, you don’t know.”

  “And I might have to bust your head wide open, too,” Tonto said, opening his eyes now and beginning to lean forward on the sofa where he sat beside Bob Ferry. “You want to try me?”

  Coy looked out a window for fully half a minute and then sat back down. “The sun’s going down,” he said.

  “I hope it don’t get dark while we’re in this house,” Earl Winston said. “I want to be out of here while it’s still light outside.”

  “Why’s that, Earl?” Bob Ferry said. “You got an appointment somewhere?”

  “Thing is, see,” Earl said. “I know about old houses like this one is, and I just as soon be gone on about my business before it gets night time around here.”

  Nobody spoke, and nobody looked at anybody else, their eyes all fixed on their own private space just in front of their faces.

  “Old houses like this one is,” Earl Winston said, “is liable to be spooky after dark, if you get what I mean.”

  “This house is not old,” Bob Ferry said. “This whole estate, all these places in the Nathan B. Forrest development, every one of them was built in the last four or five years. It’s all brand new here, from the foundations all the way up.”

  “That may be,” Earl Winston said, “but let me ask you something, Bob. What was here before all these new places was put up? You tell me that.”

  “What was here was the equivalent of that old mansion we rented over there across the street. Just an old neighborhood of mansions and big houses where cotton factors and plantation owners and timber barons and bankers lived the good life a hundred years ago in Memphis. That’s what was here.”

  “All right,” Earl Winston said. “That’s what I’m talking about. What used to be here where this new house is standing now? What’s it built on top of, huh? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Probably on top of the location of some wonderful old Victorian or turn-of-the-century home just full of great hardwood floors and stair cases and moldings,” Bob Ferry said. “Most likely. So what? It’s gone now, like they always say, with the wind.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Earl Winston said, “and that why I want out of here before it gets dark. After the sun goes down every night, I flat-ass promise you this place is just eat up with ghosts.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Bob Ferry said. “Ghosts? What’re you talking about?”

  “If you ain’t had experience with one of them boogers kicking up a fuss, you ain’t got a damn bit of room to talk, Bob,” Earl Winston said. “I have lived with the fuckers in more than one old house place over in Middle Tennessee, and it is nerve-wracking to be around the sons of bitches. Ever one of them in that country was a goddamn consequence, much less what you’re liable to get in a big town like Memphis. They’ll be hell here, the goddamn ghosts will. They’ve had time to fester in Memphis.”

  “What would they do to you, Earl?” Coy Bridges said. “Kind of mess with you at night?”

  “Mainly at night, yeah,” Earl said. “You know, when I was by myself, but you’d get some in the daytime, too, now and then. The women ones, that’s the ones that’s active when the sun’s up.”

  “Why is there that gender difference, do you think?” Bob Ferry said. “You suppose it breaks down along work-role distinctions, Earl? That’d make sense, now that I think about it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Earl Winston said. “Why you figure that?”

  “Well, the duties of a female, particularly back when women were so place-bound, would center about the house, and women would be most active in the daytime. Males would be out and about, no matter what their line of work would be, but the women would be home all day. So if any kind of female supernatural manifestations would occur after death, it’s only logical they’d be active in the ordinary work day, maintaining the household and all.”

  “And the men ghosts,” Earl Winston said, “they’d be doing their shit at night because that’s when they was used to being at home when they was alive, right? After dark, when they got home from work. Sure, that makes sense. I believe I learned something today, sitting here talking to you.”

  “That’s a new development which I’m glad to be a part of, Earl,” Bob Ferry said, looking around the ante-room for signs of appreciation for what he’d just allowed.

  “Would they poke at you when you was asleep, Earl?” Coy Bridges said, “them ghosts in them old houses? Touch you and all?”

  “Naw, not usually,” Earl said, putting a hand to his chin as though to aid the progress of memory. “They’d most of the time just pop up at you or duck around a corner or something when they knew you’d seen them. It wasn’t no real touching or nothing. I don’t believe a ghost is got fingers, has he? He’s just usually head and shoulders floating when he’s moving around and all.”

  “Would you silly bastards shut the fuck up?” Tonto Batiste said. “Talking about ghosts and shit. Next thing you’ll be remembering how one day you met the Easter bunny.”

  Bob Ferry began to laugh in the way he always did, a dry chuckle which included rolling his eyes from one man to the next as he measured to what degree everybody understood how smart he was to be recognizing something was funny that they didn’t. The less other people laughed when he did seemed to give Bob great satisfaction, and that was another reason Coy Bridges added to the ones he was storing up for when he would get the chance to get way up on tiptoe and bust the living shit out of Bob. Let that time come, Lord, soon.

  “All I’m saying, Tonto,” Earl Winston said, “is that I’ll be damn glad when this deal is done, and I’m long gone out of this kind of place where it might be a ghost hanging around, waiting to fuck with me.”

  “I believe you’ve explained that to my satisfaction, Earl,” Tonto Batiste said, “and I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about it.”

  “I like to be in new buildings, put up on a piece of property where there ain’t been nobody ever lived before, that’s what I mean,” Earl Winston said. “What I really like is a trailer house put up on cement blocks out in a pasture somewhere. Then I know it’s just me and live people around. Not no spirits. Nothing ever been there before but cattle.”<
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  “You mean a unit of manufactured housing,” Bob Ferry said. “Not really a mobile home that’s portable. We aren’t talking an RV.”

  “I don’t make no distinction,” Earl Winston said. “Just as long as it ain’t no goddamn ghost slinking around the place.”

  “Why don’t we just go knock on the door of the room where the preacher’s getting his money together?” Coy Bridges said. “Just cut to the chase? Answer me that.”

  “Because,” Tonto Batiste said, “like Bob and me have told you, that counting room Jimbo Reynolds is in is a fortress. He built it that way, and if he suspects there’s anybody waiting on him, he is prepared to pick up a cell phone and have cops swarming all over the place in two minutes.”

  “Tonto’s right,” Bob Ferry said. “The only way to get to the reverend is to wait on him right here, just like Fulgencia’s told us, and we have to be patient.”

  “What if he sees us out here waiting?” Earl said. “What’s going to stop that phone call then?”

  “We have reconnected the security system for him, Earl, like we told you. Fulgencia let us in to do it while he was preaching and praying at his big cowboy warehouse church. All he sees in there on the monitor is a continuous loop of this room as empty as Jesus’s tomb. As far as he can tell, it’s just another end of a fiscal year, business as usual, and Fulgencia’s down in the kitchen making quesadillas and shit like she always does.”

  “What if he just pops out the door on us while we’re sitting here bullshitting?” Coy Bridges said. “And he jumps back inside before we can grab his ass?”

  “As soon as he touches that inside release, this little buzzer vibrates and the light goes on,” Bob Ferry said, holding up for inspection an electronic device the size of a deck of cards. “Tonto’s got one too, and when the reverend announces his coming out party, we’re ready to welcome him home.”

  “It sure is getting dark outside,” Earl Winston said, looking out the window. “That damn sun is about sunk all the way into Arkansas, all the way to hell and gone. Look at them shadows how long they are.”

  “You think they’ll be cranking up, Earl?” Coy Bridges said. “About now?”

  “I expect they will, if it’s any of them around this part of Memphis,” Earl said. “From my experience.’

  “Shit,” said Coy, drawing out the word like a moan.

  “Say one more word about ghosts,” Tonto Batiste said, “and I swear I’ll kick the crap out of both of you.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Colorado

  Counting bills, putting them in neat stacks, slipping a paper band around each of these, placing the same number of stacks in separate boxes – all this work was not the usual chores for a cowhand, Colorado knew. What he’d like and expected to be doing after he’d signed on with the Big Corral outfit was a far cry from the first thing the Range Foreman had set him to do.

  But Colorado was a cowpoke belonging to an outfit that gave him a bed in the bunkhouse, grub three times a day, payroll every month, and work that helped make the enterprise go, and what that meant, Colorado told himself as he worked away at the job at hand, was that he was to undertake what he was assigned to do, he was to do it to the satisfaction of the Range Foreman, and it wasn’t part of the arrangement for him to worry about what it was he was told and set to do.

  You like that, Colorado heard a voice say in the middle of his head. You know you do. You do what you’re told, the Range Foreman picks out for you what chore he needs to have taken care of, and at the end of the day, you take off your cowboy work clothes and go to bed to get your rest so you can do what you got to tomorrow when the sun comes up over the mesa like it always does and the air smells clean and new.

  And if you’ve worked hard and done what the Range Foreman set for you to do, you won’t dream a thing in the night, and you won’t have to wake up and lie looking into the dark all around you. You’ll be too tired to do that, and if you happen to wake up because maybe a coyote’s howled and got the cattle to milling around, why you’ll drop right back off to sleep. And you’ll be dead to the world, and nothing will be working in your head to remind you of what you don’t want to be thinking about. Nothing will be behind you. It’s all in front, waiting for you to be there. And the square shapes all in lines and patterns won’t be pulling at you to stay where you’ve been put and wait until the hand moves you to the place it wants you to be. You haven’t got time for that. The Range Foreman has set you to a task that needs doing.

  Do this job here in the counting room of the ranch house, don’t mess up your numbers, don’t forget to keep your head down and your mind focused, and next thing you know you’ll be in the bunkhouse asleep.

  In the morning maybe the Range Foreman will have you tending to a different chore – out riding fence, maybe, or rounding up some strays that have got off from the herd on their own and need to be brought back to where they belong, or mending something’s that broke and won’t work right. But whatever it is, even if it’s just the same thing you’re doing right now in the counting room, you’ll do it, and do it right, and you won’t complain, and you won’t have to think about anything but what you’re doing.

  You’re Colorado, a new hand just signed on with the outfit, a good one, the Big Corral, and you’re doing the Boss’s work, and the Range Foreman shows you what part of that work to tackle next.

  “Colorado,” the Range Foreman said, “I see we’re getting down close to the end of what we’re doing here. These stacks of offerings have done shrunk up to a lot littler pile. Way we’re going here, it won’t be long until these offerings’ll be doing the Boss’s work like they’re ordained to do.”

  “Yessir,” Colorado said, watching his hands tend to the chore without him having even to think about it or what to tell them to do, “it’s a lot bigger bunch of the ones that’ve been done than the ones that’re not yet finished.”

  “And you know what, Colorado?” Jimbo Reynolds said, pausing to stretch and rotate his head from side to side to get a crick out of his neck, “I give you the credit for most of that. I never seen a hand take to the work right off the way you have. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you used to work in a clearing house bank.”

  “No sir,” Colorado said. “I never have handled offerings before.”

  “But you like it, don’t you? I can tell you do.”

  “I do,” Colorado said. “But I reckon I’d like any chore you give to me to do, Range Foreman.”

  God Almighty, Jimbo Reynolds said to himself. I have found me a jewel here. Weird as he is, this colored kid is a working machine. I wonder how long it’ll be before he starts getting sticky fingers and that itchy neck, though, starts scratching that itch and letting green stuff fall down his collar and catch in his clothes. It ain’t long before the infection hits them, that’s for damn sure, not that I mind a little skimming during a count. But trust our African-American friends to steal more goods than they can tote off without their knees buckling. That’ll happen with this one, too. Matter of time is all it is, but that’s the burden I have to bear. You can’t find true loyalty no more. There ain’t a honest one in a trainload of the thieving bastards.

  “What makes a hand relish his work, Colorado,” Jimbo Reynolds said, “I’ve learned during my time of serving the Boss, is this one thing. If all that a cowboy wants out of his work is a way to fill his belly and a place to lay his head and enough money to throw away at the saloons in town, then it all turns to ashes in his mouth. I hope you’re learning that same thing here today taking on the first job I asked you to do for the Boss.”

  “I aim to, Range Foreman,” Colorado said. “I want that more than anything.”

  “We about to finish here, and then we’re going to go see what Fulgencia’s cooked for supper,” Jimbo Reynolds said. “Then we’re going to take these processed offerings to the Boss down to the bank where it’ll be put into service to His work. But first I want to give you a little test, see how you’re progressing her
e in your first day in the outfit. What I’m trying to get a notion about is what this first chore is doing for you. Ready?”

  “I hope I am,” Colorado said, looking up from the box into which he was stacking the counted packages of currency. “I’ll try, Range Foreman.”

  “All right, then. When you’re working with all this money, all these hundreds and fifties and twenties, what does it seem like to you you’re handling? Is it just paper?”

  Colorado told his hands to stop what they were doing for a spell, so he could look directly at the Range Foreman as he answered the question put to him, but they didn’t want to rest. They kept lifting, turning, placing, arranging, settling the stacks of bills. Nothing to do but let them go on about their business, he realized, and tell the Range Foreman what was in his heart as best he could.

  “It’s not just paper, no,” Colorado said, “any more than a saddle is just leather or a rope is just string wound all up together or a sixgun is just steel. This money here that belongs to the Boss, I figure it’s not what it is. It’s what it does. It’s the good the Boss puts it to.”

  “That’s the time, Colorado,” Jimbo Reynolds said. “I ain’t never heard it put better,” thinking as he spoke, I expect this one might last two or three more countings before I have to run him off or he leaves on his own with a backpack full of my money. He is as nutty as a boar hog drunk on rotten peaches.

  “Colorado, let me take a look here at the monitor, see how things are looking around the spread before we open up the door and go downstairs. I expect you been wondering what all these little TV screens are, while you been working away here.”

  Colorado looked at the bank of monitors against one wall of the counting room at which the Range Foreman was pointing, seeing them for the first time since he’d come through the door. Each of them framed a scene of a room, a doorway, a hall, a window, a parking lot, an expanse of lawn, and all were absent of any movement or human figures, not even a flicker.

  “I hadn’t noticed them, Range Foreman,” Colorado said. “No sir, I hadn’t.”