Memphis Luck

by Gerald Duff

  “By God, that’s the way I believe,” Earl Winston said. “You see something worth nailing, you go after it, if you got any sense. It might not never come back again, that chance.”

  “Praise Jesus,” Jimbo Reynolds said. “Amen and amen.”

  “What the fuck’re you doing, Earl?” the big Indian said, coming into the ante-room carrying two 30 gallon black garbage bags under one arm and holding one in his other hand. He had a revolver in the waistline of his pants, Jimbo could see.

  “It sounds like a goddamn prayer meeting in here,” the Indian said.

  “No,” Earl Winston said, “we just talking about normal pussy, me and the preacher, that’s all.”

  “Normal pussy? What do you know about normal pussy, Earl? What the fuck does that mean, normal pussy?”

  “Well,” Earl Winston said, “see, he was saying about Elvis Presley having a thing for women.”

  “Don’t tell me what the preacher’s been saying,” Tonto Batiste said. “Pick up your piece off the floor, and go see what Bob wants you to carry. We got a little over three more minutes to get this deal done, and here you are talking about normal pussy with a goddamned Jesus-jumper.”

  “He ain’t like most of them,” Earl Winston said. “That’s why I was talking to him.”

  “He is exactly like most of them, Earl. Exactly. Get in there with Bob.”

  Jimbo Reynolds shifted his feet to the side to allow the tattooed retard to get by his chair without having to touch him, hoping that the Indian would see he was being cooperative, and Earl went through the door into the counting room.

  “We were just passing the time of day,” Jimbo said to the Indian, “me and Earl. Nothing more than that, you know, sitting here waiting for y’all to finish in the counting room.”

  “You and Earl are on a first name basis, huh? See if you can pass this, preacher,” the Indian said. “Put it somewhere in your notes so you can get at it if you need help remembering. Shut the fuck up.”

  “I got you, sir,” Jimbo said. The Indian hadn’t noticed yet that Earl had left the .45 automatic still lying beside his chair, and Jimbo quickly looked away from it. What if the Indian saw him eyeing it and thought he was having notions about making a grab for the gun? He probably wouldn’t apply logic and realize Jimbo couldn’t reach the weapon, fastened as he was to the arm of the chair he was sitting in, and he might just slap Jimbo up beside the head with the revolver stuck in his belt just on general principles. The Indian was likely to be Old Testament in his take on the world and would judge the appearance of sin to be as much a cause for punishment as an accomplished act of transgression.

  What if he mentioned the fact that Earl had not listened closely to the Indian and had forgotten to take his weapon with him? Would that gain Jimbo any credit, or would the Indian just run roughshod over any rational way of acting? Jesus, what was a man to do when dealing with ethnics, especially what they called Native Americans these days? Blacks, that was different. If you could show one that there was a material gain to be made by taking some action, he was likely not to move beyond the present moment and the literal fact before him. He wouldn’t give a shit about proving something, most of the time. He’d just grab up the cash or the dope or the car keys and be on his way. Unless he had a new pistol in his hand which he hadn’t tried out yet. Then he might pop you just to see how it worked. That was the chance you always took with one of them, of course. That was the nigger way of doing.

  With this overgrown savage who let people call him Tonto, there was no predicting what he might do. Still, shit, you had to roll the dice, when that was all you had to work with. Throw something out and see will it stick.

  “I believe Earl has forgot to take something with him, sir,” Jimbo said, holding his head up and away from the back of the chair, thinking that if Tonto decided to backhand him it would be better to leave some give in his posture. You wouldn’t want to be jammed right up against the back of the chair and be held firmly in place in the event of somebody slapping the shit out of you. You wanted some slack in your neck.

  “I see he has, preacher,” Tonto said. “You want me to let you hold it? See if you got the balls to pull trigger on me?”

  “No sir, I don’t,” Jimbo Reynolds said, shaking his head back and forth with great resolution. “I’m a man of peace and a child of God. Praise Jesus.”

  “I expect you are,” Tonto said. “That’s what makes me not likely to give you the chance. Don’t say another word, Reverend, like I told you. You’ve done reached your limit on talk.”

  Well, I tried, Jimbo said to that part of his brain which he trusted for non-rational hints and indications, and now I’ll just leave it to the Lord to get me through this. If He will. If He can. If He gives a damn about a faithful servant just trying to get by and do the best he can to advance His work. Lord, I want to curse and blaspheme and howl, but it won’t help unless I can give it public utterance, and this heathen Indian has taken away any room for me to do that.

  A movement of the colored kid in the cowboy suit across the room caught Jimbo’s eye and was a fleer and a mockery to him. There the young punk sat, likely without a thought in his head, just glad to be inside a house with air conditioning in Memphis in July, his brand-new boots extended before him as though he was studying the way they looked on his feet, knowing without realizing he knew it that he was perfectly safe from what this gang of redneck and Indian thieves might do. They wouldn’t even bother to notice him in comparison to Jimbo Reynolds, and that grated Jimbo like a dull knife sawing into the palm of his hand. If I live through this, Jimbo promised himself, that darky there will be one fired motherfucker, no matter what kind of a job he can do counting and stacking money.

  Randall Eugene could see that the Range Foreman was looking at him now, and he had been doing that off and on since the members of the outlaw outfit had fastened the two of them into chairs with handcuffs. Maybe he was trying to give him a signal about what his plans were for getting them out of the fix they were in, but if that was true, Randall Eugene couldn’t figure out what it was the Range Foreman was trying to tell him. The things he was saying to the renegade Indian didn’t seem to make sense, and if Randall Eugene didn’t know better, he would have thought from what he heard the Range Foreman saying that he was afraid of the renegade Indian and was trying to suck up to him.

  Most likely the Range Foreman had something working, though, and all he was doing with the Indian was setting up a situation which he would use to advantage later when the time was right. Still, though, it was disturbing to hear the tone of voice the Range Foreman was using as he talked to the Indian. It sounded exactly like the way Randall Eugene’s mother told him to talk to white people, and that was the way he did use to talk to them before he learned who he really was, back in the dead time before that thing he did and talked to Dr. King about it and then met the Range Foreman and learned about the Boss and the Big Corral.

  Back in the corner of the room in the shadows where only Randall Eugene knew he was observing things happen, Ricky made a noise with his mouth, something like a little smack and an expulsion of breath. That meant something. Everything that Colorado did meant something, and he didn’t have to use words to get his meaning across, the way Randall Eugene had been told to do since the time he first realized he was separate from other people and things and what went on around him and that there was no connection to be made with anything and anybody else.

  Here is what Colorado meant when he made the little sound with his mouth. Here is what he is saying, Randall Eugene told himself. The first part of it, the smacking noise Colorado made with his lips said he was impatient and dissatisfied with the way things were going there in the room where the Range Foreman and Randall Eugene had been surprised and were now shamefully fastened by chains to pieces of furniture. The renegade Indian and the trash cowboys he controlled were in charge, they were taking the proceeds of the Big Corral away from the Range Foreman, and they were showing every sign
of disrespect for the Range Foreman and what he stood for that they could come up with.

  That was what Colorado meant with the first sound he made with his mouth, the smacking noise, tiny in the room to anyone who didn’t know how to listen but speaking clearly to Randall Eugene. He heard what Colorado said.

  The expulsion of breath, a sound something like puh, that was the noise that mattered most, Randall Eugene knew, and he looked over now at Colorado in the shadows of the corner of the room, slouching against the wall with one leg crossed over the other and his hat pulled low over his eyes. He looked back at Randall Eugene, Colorado did, from under the brim of his hat, and it was too dark to see his eyes, but Randall Eugene understood what had been communicated by Colorado when he made the little sound by expelling a puff of air from his mouth.

  All right, partner, he was saying, it’s getting close to the time to do something. We’ve waited long enough on these hombres, don’t you think? What say we let them know what it’s gonna cost them to mess with Colorado and Randall Eugene McNeill? Ain’t it time they understand that if they fuck with the bull they going to get a horn up their ass?

  “Colorado,” Randall Eugene said in a low voice, “I hear you, partner, but I ain’t exactly right in my head about what to do next. I reckon I need to palaver with you some first.”

  “Who you calling Colorado? Are you talking to yourself?”

  “I appreciate what you saying to me, partner,” Randall Eugene said, hearing the smile in Colorado’s voice and knowing how it would look to see him if there weren’t the shadows to hide his face. Colorado’s smile would begin slowly, and it would grow like the light gathers as the sun comes close to setting across the Mississippi River in the late summer afternoons in Memphis, and the smile would mean without words having to be said, and it would mean strong and true. Randall Eugene, the smile from Colorado would say, we’re partners on the trail together, but we don’t have to brag about it or make signs to say it or call each other anything. We know who we are. We depend on each other, but we don’t have to say that in words they teach in school.

  “Ain’t we getting a little restless with what’s going on here?” Colorado said, his voice low in the room but clear to Randall Eugene. “You figuring it’s about time to throw in together on this thing? What you hankering to do about it?”

  “Well, partner,” Randall Eugene said, “I see a piece on the floor over yonder. Nobody seems to be using it.”

  “You mean that .45 automatic by the chair leg? Don’t call it a piece. That ain’t the way for a cowboy to talk about a firearm. It ain’t nothing but a tool, like a hackamore or a bit or a wire-stretcher or a horseshoe. It ain’t no magic in it. It just helps a hand do his job, that’s all it’s good for.”

  “You’re right, Colorado. I’m sorry for miscalling it.”

  “There you go, talking to yourself again, calling out your own name,” Ricky said, and Randall Eugene knew the smile was there on his face again, though he couldn’t see it in the shadows. That was all right, though. If you believed a thing was there and knew, you didn’t have to be checking on it all the time to see if what you knew was true was true. You could depend on it, if you believed it, and you could count on yourself to know what was real.

  “Well,” Randall Eugene said, “I’ll try to keep that in my mind, from now on when I’m talking to you.”

  “Partner, when you and me are talking, you don’t have to worry about who’s who, now do you? We think just alike, most of the time. Ain’t that right? “

  “I reckon it is,” Randall Eugene said, “except for when we might get into an argument about something. You know, get to jawing at each other in the bunkhouse.”

  Ricky Nelson laughed at that, and Randall Eugene joined in a little, keeping it low, so nobody from the outlaw bunch would hear him and start looking around to see who he was talking to. They didn’t seem to notice much of what was going on around them, not even the renegade Indian, and that was strange, given who he was and where he was comng from, Randall Eugene thought, but still, there was no use to draw attention to himself and his partner in the shadows just yet.

  “We might holler at each other some time, all right,” he said to Ricky, over in the corner being Colorado, “even get into a tussle now and then. I got to admit.”

  “That don’t mean nothing, Colorado,” Ricky said, “and you know it, partner. You and me, we stay the same we ever was. Hollering and fighting a little don’t change that. But back to this firearm that hombre left lying over there on the floor. What you figure to do about it?”

  “Damn, Colorado,” Randall Eugene said, “I don’t know. They got me hog-tied here in this fancy chair. I reckon I could drag it over there, carry it or something, but it’d make noise, and they about to come out of that counting room anyway in a minute or two here.”

  “You don’t think the Range Foreman could give you a hand with it?” Ricky Nelson said. “Do something to help out, I don’t know. Distract them while you take care of that little chore? What you reckon?”

  “I don’t know,” Randall Eugene said, looking at the Range Foreman across the room, sitting slumped in his chair now with his eyes closed. His lips were moving as though he was speaking to himself. “Appears to me he’s talking to the Boss right now.”

  “Praying?”

  “Yeah, I believe so,” Randall Eugene said. “Like the Range Foreman says, the Boss’s telephone is never busy when you call Him up.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Ricky Nelson said, “but there comes a time, partner, when a cowhand’s got to do the Boss’s work here on the ranch. He ain’t going to do it for you, Colorado. When’s the last time the Boss showed up directly to ride fence for you or to round up a lost yearling and get him out of harm’s way? Tell me that.”

  “Well, never, Colorado,” Randall Eugene said. “I reckon He depends on me to do what He wants done here at the Big Corral.”

  “You ain’t just a wolfing about that, partner. So what you going to do? You know I can’t help you myself, much as I’d love to fling in with you and do it.”

  “Just having you with me is help enough, Colorado,” Randall Eugene said. “I don’t have to tell you that, Bud.”

  “Naw, you don’t,” Ricky Nelson said. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Did you ever take a look at my wrists, Colorado?” Randall Eugene said. “Close up? They mighty small to belong to a working cowhand.”

  “I never did notice that before,” Ricky Nelson said. “But you’re right. Show me what you about to do. Let’s get this thing started up.”

  “I’m fixing to, Colorado,” Randall Eugene said, beginning to move the fingers on his cuffed hand as close to each other as he could make them be. “Let’s see where the trail’s headed, up around that next bend. Looky here what I’m about to do.”

  “Damn, Colorado,” Ricky Nelson said from the shadows, “I sure ain’t never seen such a little wrist on a cowhand before. You’re getting it done. Now remember, that firearm ain’t a revolver. It’s an automatic with a slide action, but I reckon you know how to handle it just fine.”

  “Thanks for reminding me, partner. I believe I do.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  J.W. and Tyrone

  “The major hated to turn us loose by ourselves, didn’t he?” J.W. Ragsdale was saying to Tyrone Walker as they turned left off Union onto South Main headed toward the series of high-dollar residential developments lining the Memphis bluff. “He wanted to get himself something going big enough to get Ovetta Bichette’s attention. Make her know he’s about to deliver big time.”

  “You can’t blame him, I guess,” Tyrone said, “but sending a whole bunch out there to pick up one little murdering shitass wouldn’t make sense. Even Major Dalbey could see that.”

  “He couldn’t see it until you poked your bottom lip out and looked all hurt about it, though.”

  “I hated to do that to the Major, but I was down to my last card, J.W.”

  “That wouldn�
��t be the race card you talking about, would it?” J.W. said. “You wouldn’t a been dealing that one, would you?”

  “Call it what you want to,” Tyrone said. “I don’t believe in using it except when I have to, and that has to be in a good cause.”

  “See, Tyrone, that was just the argument that Mr. Perry Lester was making to me. That’s what he fears most from our African-American citizens here in this great nation. People trying to get by on being a certain color rather than on their own individual merits, like he’s always having to do.”

  “Norvel wouldn’t know a merit if it jumped up and bit him in the ass,” Tyrone said. “Merit ain’t nothing but a cigarette to that retard.”

  “Every day’s a Sunday to a preacher. There ain’t no rest for a minister of the gospel.,” J. W. said after watching a couple of abandoned warehouses and some upscale dwellings pass by the car window. “You reckon that’s going to influence the afternoon’s activities for this cowboy preacher that Randall Eugene McNeill is staying with? We going to find them at home, you think?”

  “I do know one thing about preachers, J.W.,” Tyrone said, “and what happens after they preaching a sermon or getting ready to preach. They eat them a big meal of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and pies and ice tea and shit, and then they go lie down for a good long nap.”

  “Sounds to me like what a sane man does after getting him a piece of pussy,” J.W. said, “that and smoking a cigarette or two.”

  “They are exactly the same thing, J.W., the religious experience and the sexual, and they require some downtime after an episode.”

  “Lord, I hope God don’t hear you saying that,” J.W. said. “He does not like everything getting all mixed up like that in people’s heads. It confuses them and makes openings for Satan to claw his way into the works. Your wasted years at Memphis State have led you down strange and wrong paths. They have twisted your head around, Sergeant Walker, and I pity you in the afterlife.”