by Gerald Duff
“I’ll tell you what they are, Colorado, what job these here machines are doing for the Boss. See, they are today’s equivalent of a whole outfit of cowpokes keeping an eye on the herd every minute of the day. Back in the old West, see, the Range Foreman used his top cowboys to make sure none of the stock strayed off and no varmint came creeping in to take off a new calf, or a heifer walked off too far from the herd. But you don’t have to guess what the real danger was, do you, Colorado? I expect you done figured that out while you were counting these offerings for the Boss’s work. Tell me what that is.”
“You mean the thing to be most scared of?”
“Not scared, Colorado. But on guard. The cowboy ain’t never what you could call scared. He ain’t built that way. He’s just watchful. He ain’t to be fooled. But yeah, what?”
“Rustlers?” Colorado said, noticing that his hands had finished placing the final stack of counted bills in the last box he’d been working on. “Cattle thieves?”
“You got it, Colorado,” Jimbo Reynolds said. “I knew you’d figure that out by yourself. You wouldn’t need no help.”
Jimbo moved toward the bank of monitors, pointing directly toward one in the upper right quadrant of the display, labeled C Room A. “Looky here, Colorado,” he said. “What you looking at yonder is all there is to see outside the door of this room we in. What you see in it?”
“Nothing but some furniture,” Colorado said, stepping toward the bank of monitors for a better look. “That and some pictures on the wall.”
“Nobody there, right? No prairie wolves, no mountain lions, no stray Indians out on a hunting party, no strangers on horseback or afoot, nothing to raise the hairs on the back of your neck?”
“No sir.”
“Let’s get out there, then. See what Fulgencia’s got waiting for us to eat down yonder, and then get this chore finished for the Boss. We got to mosey on down to First American where the Boss keeps his money. They going to be open special for us, as a favor, see.”
Jimbo Reynolds flipped a switch on the door of the counting room, punched in four numbers on a pad set into the wall, waited until a buzz sounded and pulled the door open, stepping out into the anteroom with Colorado close behind him.
It wasn’t until both of them were fully through the door that Tonto Batiste put the muzzle of the .357 to the point on Jimbo’s face where the lower jaw hinges to the skull and took a tight grip on Jimbo’s right arm just above the elbow.
“Come right out, preacher,” Tonto Batiste said. “Damn, we been waiting a long time on you. What you been doing back in there? Holding a prayer meeting?”
“Here you go, Slick,” Earl Winston said, grabbing Colorado’s new cowhand work-belt just beside the buckle and pulling him to the side of the door facing. “You got to move so my buddy can get that chair stuck there in the door.”
“Gentlemen,” Jimbo Reynolds said, “that door has already been open long enough for the alarm to sound at the headquarters of the security firm. So your enterprise is doomed to failure even as I speak. Our consultants tell us not to warn you like that, but I always figure it’s better to be friendly and upfront. You know, let a man reconsider the merits of what he’s getting himself into. Give him room to back up.”
“You do?” Tonto said. “That’s mighty white of you, preacher.”
“Yeah,” Jimbo said, as Tonto led him toward one of the leather chairs in the ante-room, the revolver tight enough against his jaw to leave an impression, “so I’ll call up the security people and report the mistake I made in exiting the safe room, and everything will be just like it was before. Nobody hurt, all forgiven, you’re on your way out of here headed for wherever it is you’re going, and nobody’s the wiser. Not a soul will know or follow up on this. It didn’t happen.”
“He’s a talking son of a bitch, idn’t he?” Coy Bridges said. “Just like you said he was going to be, Bob.”
“Naturally,” Bob Ferry said. “The Reverend Reynolds is a minister of the gospel. That’s the way he makes his living. Explaining things and pointing out the right directions for people to take.”
“You want me to shut him up?” Earl Winston said. “Soon as I get this colored cowboy set down and cuffed to his chair?”
“No,” Tonto Batiste said. “I don’t. He’ll stop preaching in a minute or two here, all on his own. I’ll lay you odds he does, just like a wind-up clock running down.”
“What do you say to my offer, gentlemen?” Jimbo Reynolds said. “It’s getting a little late now. I got to let the security people know it’s a matter of human error, that alarm that’s gone off, or they’ll be here in less time than it’ll take you to get out of the house and back on the road. The time is now.”
“Preacher,” Tonto Batiste said. “I’m going to tell you one thing, and then I want you to shut the fuck up. If you don’t, I’m about ready to turn that man there with the two-pound .45 loose on you and let him do to you what he is the guaranteed best at doing. So tune in and listen.”
Jimbo Reynolds sat forward on the edge of the leather chair, not speaking now and beginning to pluck at the turquoise and silver watchband on his left arm, as though it was binding him.
“All that you’re saying about Guardsmark Security Service of Memphis would be right on the money,” Tonto Batiste said, “if you were dealing with your typical dumbshits from around here. But you ain’t, see. We have made some adjustments to your technological set-up here in this big old house, you understand. So we’re not worried about alarms going off in headquarters somewhere and people hauling ass over here in security vehicles and shit like that.”
“Your system’s subverted,” Bob Ferry said. “Turned inside out electronically. Every signal coming into Guardsmark from this location is reading situation normal.”
“That’s enough, Bob,” Tonto Batiste said. “The preacher don’t want to know another fucking thing. He’s heard enough. Hadn’t you, reverend?”
Jimbo Reynolds opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and nodded his head, holding out his wrists for the cuffs Tonto had pulled out of a black bag.
“You want to know anything else, or want to talk some more,” Earl Winston said, “just say it to me, that’s what Tonto’s talking about.”
“Set to your seat, Earl,” Tonto said, “and just watch these two cowboys while we see what’s waiting for us in yonder.”
“You ain’t got to worry about me,” Earl said. “I’m going to set here like an old mother hen guarding her eggs.”
“You do that, and that’s all you do. Hear me now.”
The cuffs on Colorado’s left wrist fastening him to the arm of the chair where they’d made him sit were the first real ones he’d ever seen. They were heavier than they looked, not really that tight, and cold enough to the touch in the air-conditioned room to make him shiver a little when he first felt them clamp around his arm.
The man who’d put them on him was the one the others called Bob, and he had looked directly into Colorado’s eyes as he pushed him back into the chair, trying by that to scare him, Colorado figured.
Bob was the boss of the outfit, Colorado guessed, or at least equal to the Indian, who was maybe a half-breed, a renegade certainly, separated from his own tribe and now part of an outcast band of white outlaws.
The Indian wasn’t wearing any feather stuck in his hair, though, and that was what surprised Colorado a little, causing him to think half-breed rather than full-blood as he tried to figure out what tribe the Indian was from. Too bad he didn’t have a headband holding his hair in place, since markings on a leather strap might help place him. Apaches would have lightning bolt representations worked into the leather, done by scarrings with an instrument, and Comanches would be likely to have some beadwork done by women, usually, to decorate the headgear of a warrior.
Colorado closed his eyes and tried to remember what patterns of design a Comanche brave might have worked through the arrangement of beads, but he couldn’t come up with anything. He ought to
have paid more attention to the Comanches he’d seen before, the ones hanging around the reservations in the winter, eating the white man’s beef in the cold time now that the buffalo herds were so few.
A cowboy ought to pay attention to everything he runs into, Colorado told himself, whether he thinks some detail is worth knowing at the time or not. That’s what separates a real hand from one just drawing his pay, having enough sense and presence of mind to store up what he runs across, not for just now but for later. That’s what can keep a cowboy alive, especially a black cowboy, paying heed and learning what you’re supposed to learn, for later on down the trail.
One thing I do know, Colorado thought to himself, speaking to that part of his mind deep inside his head where he was the only one able to visit, the man to worry about here is the Indian, not the other ones, not even Bob. They were drifters, smalltime, undirected frontier trash, on the move from failed lives behind them somewhere in the East. They would take your goods, they would cut out a few head of steers from a herd that didn’t belong to the outfit, they would get drunk in a low sorry saloon, and they might even shoot you if they thought they could get the drop on you from behind.
But they wouldn’t be thinking about what they were doing, they wouldn’t plan to do it, and they wouldn’t even present much danger to a real hombre as a stray rattlesnake or a sudden sandstorm or a stampede might do.
The Indian was different, especially if he had some white blood in him from somewhere along the way. That made him unpredictable, that made him crazy, that made him dangerous. Mixed blood was bad medicine.
Colorado opened his eyes and leaned forward a little in his chair, enough so that the cuff bit into the flesh of his wrist, causing him to increase the pressure until the length of chain tightened against the arm of the chair where it was fastened. The chair arm gave a little.
“Be sure they don’t see you doing that,” somebody said.
He was standing in the corner farthest from the door to the room that three of the outlaws had entered. He was in the shadows, leaning against a wall, one leg bent so the heel of his boot rested against the dark wood facing. His hat was pulled low, causing him to peer from underneath the brim, and Colorado could see the whites of his eyes.
He was wearing gloves, and he lifted one hand and pointed a finger at Colorado in greeting, as though saying by the gesture you’re here, I see you, you’re a consequence.
“Ricky,” Colorado said. “Ricky Nelson. It’s you. Howdy.”
“Colorado,” the man said, shifting his weight forward as he nodded, the leather of his chaps and gunbelt creaking a little at the movement. “Howdy.”
“You’re the real Colorado,” Colorado said, pulling again at the cuff holding him to the chair arm. “I know that.”
“Not any more,” the man in the shadows said. “I reckon you’re Colorado now.”
“No, I’m not. I know I’m not.”
“Oh, I reckon we’ll see, here in a little while. I expect you might be Colorado after all, whether you know it right now or not.”
“Can he hear you?” Colorado said, cutting his eye toward the man they called Earl Winston, sitting on the leather sofa and doing something to the .45 automatic he held.
“I don’t reckon so, but I believe he might hear you pulling at them cuffs, if you’re not careful.”
“Oh,” Colorado said. “Thanks, Colorado. I’ll watch it close.”
“Call me Ricky for now,” the young cowboy in the shadows said, his eyes more visible now as he smiled at Colorado. “We’re going to see who gets to be called Colorado here in a while. We’re going to see directly who cowboys up and who doesn’t.”
TWENTY-FOUR
J.W. in the Home Country
It had been a good trip to Panola County. J.W. Ragsdale had got in a full day’s fishing on Sardis Lake in a bass boat he’d borrowed from Leon Butler, once the slowest linebacker ever to play for Batesville High School and now co-owner of Butler Chevrolet, he’d eaten the vegetable plate twice at the Cottage Café, he’d drunk most of a pint of Heaven Hill as he drove around every street he could remember in Batesville, and he’d avoided running into a single one of his cousins, aunts, and uncles during all his activities in his home country.
So as he walked into the front office of Sheriff Jimmy Seay in the government building to which was attached the Panola County jail, J.W. felt pretty good. No, he thought as he approached the receptionist’s desk with his Memphis Police Department ID out for inspection, he felt damn good, or at least good enough to face riding the ninety miles back to Memphis with a white supremacist baseball bat swinger in transport and chained to the D clamp welded to the frame of his ’92 Buick Century.
Maybe one of these days he’d invite Nova Hebert to accompany him on a road trip back down here, just as soon as he could face again the notion of re-entry into the Panola County version of reality in the Deep South. Nova was scientific and might take an interest in the specimens at large where J.W. was raised. Some of them might even raise up from the mud and let her take a close look at them.
“Do you want to talk to the Sheriff, Sergeant Ragsdale?” the receptionist asked him, looking up from the ID which J.W. had flipped open for her to read. “Or just have one of the deputies bring the prisoner for transport on out here?
Sheriff Seay was hiring him a better quality representative to the public these days, J.W. noted, as he looked at the one behind the desk, a dark-haired woman with eyes that didn’t appear to need makeup, though that hadn’t stopped her from doing a paint job worthy of a Hollywood cosmetics expert on them. She didn’t look to be older than fourteen, in J.W.’s estimation, but during the last several years, he had reached the point that he couldn’t tie a number to a woman any more exact than ten years plus or minus. Hell, they all look the same now, he told himself, and that’s too damn young for me to think about messing with.
“Well, if Sheriff Seay’s not too busy to talk to me a minute or two, I’d like to say hello,” J.W. said. “If it’s not any trouble.”
“I don’t expect it would be,” the teenager or newly married woman or Cub Scout organizer or soccer mom or whatever the hell age lady she was said with a perky smile. “I’ll just tell him you’re here.”
Both statements she made ended with what sounded like a question mark, J.W. noticed, and that let him know she was not anywhere close to the upper range of the age category he had estimated for her. She probably was fourteen, working on an internship out of Batesville High School. Go Bulldogs.
“I’d appreciate it if you did that,” J.W. said, and in a minute or two he was sitting in Jimmy Seay’s office, ready for some hoorawing before he had to load up his sociopath for the trip to Memphis.
“Goddamn, J.W.,” Sheriff Seay said, rearing back in his leather office chair, “how long has it been since I had the chance to talk to you?”
“I don’t know exactly, Jimmy, but I expect it was when your receptionist out yonder was still sucking on a baby bottle.”
“Dawn? Hell, J.W., she’s older than she looks. She’s been working here for two or three years.”
“They all older than they look to me nowadays,” J.W. said. “Damn it to hell.”
“I know what you mean, J.W. I purely do. Why, I ain’t had nothing to do with a woman other than Myrlie so long, I wouldn’t know which way to turn her if I got hold of one.”
“She’d show you, Jimmy. They ain’t shy about that no more. These young’uns scare me to death. They know exactly what they want and if you can’t give it to them, they will flat tell you about it.”
“You still between wives then, huh?” Jimmy Seay said. “Not took the big step again.”
“I done took that big step twice, Jimmy, and I tell you I stubbed my toe both times I done it and about broke my neck. You still married to Myrlie Putnam, huh?”
“Hell, yeah. Sometimes it seems like I was born married, like everything before then never happened I just dreamed it.”
“Tell me
about it,” J.W. said. “I started feeling that way the third day of my second honeymoon.”
“You still catching them bad boys up in Memphis?” Sheriff Seay said, after laughing politely a little too long at what J.W. had just said. “Getting them straightened out and put on the road to moral rehab?”
“Homicide work in Memphis is like picking fleas off a red-bone hound, Jimmy,” J.W. said. “You know you ain’t going to do no final good, but you keep popping them on your thumbnail just to watch the blood fly.”
“This old boy you carting back to Memphis is a damn good argument for that, J.W.,” the sheriff said. “I’ll be glad to see the backside of that little son of a bitch for good.”
“He’s a bad’un, huh?”
“Let me put it this way. He don’t belong in Batesville. His rightful home is Memphis, Tennessee. He was born for the city life.”
“Urban shithead, you’re saying,” J.W. said. “I understand he swings a mean baseball bat.”
“Perry Lester does that all right, or used to before we relieved the little bastard of his Louisville Slugger.”
“How’d y’all get him here in Panola County? So dumb he ran here to hide out?”
“He’s plenty of dumb, all right. But it’s family connections, of course, like always, that brought him here after he killed that black kid up in Memphis.”
“Is this Perry one of them Lesters from out close to Drew? Leonard and Byron Lee and Junius and that bunch?”
“Perry is the grandson of old man Leonard Lester himself. His mama is that youngest daughter of Leonard, Estelle I believe she’s named.”
“Yeah, that’s Estelle. I used to ride the school bus with her when I was in the lower grades. She was half grown then. But tell me something, why is her son got the last name of Lester if she’s a Lester?”
“Shit, J.W., why not? It’s easy enough to tell who his mama was, but there’s no way to pin down the daddy’s identity. When you back into a spinning buzz saw, how can you tell which particular tooth bit you? So Perry is just another Lester, that’s all.”
