A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  “Good advice, sir. I wish I could follow it. Most would. But sorry to say, I can’t.”

  Bob called the hospital to check on Nikki, called Idaho and saw that Julie had already left for the trip to Knoxville, and then started the drive out to Johnson County but soon found himself ensnarled in traffic. He pulled over, got out a map and investigated various alternative routes, but all seemed to take him too far to the west and then back around. He decided to bull through straight down Volunteer Parkway on the premise that once he passed the speedway, traffic would lessen considerably and he could make up for lost time and still get out to Mountain City by midafternoon, where he’d begin with Detective Thelma and maybe even get a chance to meet up with the hero, Sheriff Reed Wells, Silver Star winner and reformer.

  The traffic crawled along, and the closer he got to the speedway, the more festive Bristol turned. He felt like he was at some gathering of clans or tribes or something. There was a feeling of celebration in the air and no shortage of alcohol to fuel the glee. Pennants hung across the road, all the street lamps had been festooned with portraits of blasting Chargers or Fusions or Camrys roaring through clouds of dust, blazing bright with primal colors, looking for all the world like fighter planes hungry for the kill. Flags of a hundred colors flapped and danced in the wind against a bright blue sky. Every lawn bore a sign offering parking, and the cost increased hugely the closer he got to the speedway. The far hills were carpeted with Rec-Vs, SUVs, and tents, as a whole new population of occupiers and spenders moved in. They were like the Lakota Sioux just before the Little Big Horn, only in vans and sleepers instead of wikiups. Crowds thronged the walkways, and seeped into the slowed traffic. Everywhere, entrepreneurs had erected booths or tents, offering souvenirs of the fun, blankets, hats, posters, rental radio sets for eavesdropping on the chatter between driver and crew chief, food of every sort, drink of every sort—no problem with liquor licensing down here, everybody just sold whatever they wanted—straw hats after the famous beat-up Richard Petty configuration, neckerchiefs, sweatshirts, T-shirts charting the rise of the Confederacy. Damn, these folks knew how to party. No wonder they called it a nation. It was a hootenanny combined with Oktoberfest with an office party with a safe return from thirteen months in the land of bad things with a Chinese New Year with a hoedown with a rock concert and, oh yeah, the VJ-Day feeling his old man must have had after surviving—if barely—five invasions on five islands across the Pacific.

  He shook his head at the frenzy of it; the intensity seemed to have increased three-or fourfold since his visit with USMC Matt and his crew chief, Red Nichols, a few days earlier, and he saw that dropping by to see them now was all but an impossibility; they were sealed off by crowds and madness as the big day approached.

  Finally, he topped a low hill and saw his principal obstacle just ahead. It loomed gigantically, dominating all that was before or around it, and he saw it was situated a couple of hundred yards to the left of Volunteer Parkway. He would have to pass it to get beyond. The Bristol Motor Speedway looked like some kind of huge ship from space that had crash-landed in this part of the Shenandoah. It had a kind of familiarity to it he could not again place, but then it flashed clear. Some movie with Will Smith as a marine fighter pilot, but that wasn’t but a small part of it. It was about an invasion from space, and these huge ships came down and dominated the earth. The F-15s fired their Mavericks at it, and the missiles just popped on the perimeter because of some kind of magic shield. It was stupid, he realized, and wondered why on earth he’d wasted the time and money. Maybe the USMC fighter-pilot thing, but now he recalled after Will and the boys had put the old USMC boot up the ass of the whatever-they-weres from wherever-they-came, the big ships crashed and burned. That’s what it looked like, a giant space ship, all chrome and sleek streamline and immense scale and circularity, some kind of man-structure, too regular by far for nature, crashed and burning askew in some place where it didn’t belong, a green valley with whispers of blue mountain ridges to the east and the west.

  In fact, it looked like nature had somehow been scrubbed from the scene by the thing, so dominating was the man-made structure and so active the little city that had grown up in its shadows. But then he noticed, almost as an afterthought, a high foothill, carpeted in forest, rising above the speedway. It was about a mile off, on his left, separated from the speedway by a plain now peopled with a frenzied mob, where booths and exhibits and tents had been set up. Hell, you hardly noticed the hill at all—this big lump of verticality was all but banished from vision and notice by the hugeness of the speedway and all the frenzy it sustained. He thought, Wonder why they haven’t knocked that old pile of rocks and trees down and put condos in right there.

  Anyhow, he struggled down through the thick stop-and-go of Volunteer Parkway until he reached its closest point to the speedway itself, and saw that here too, everything was on an upswing. The grinding buzz of the cars qualifying inside—maybe his new pal Matt MacReady was on the track now, sailing along at about thirty-five degrees at 185 per—filled the air, giving every physical thing, including Bob’s rental car and his eardrums, a kind of vibration. Baby sister, the boys were burning rubber and high-test today!

  What was new today was that some kind of trailer park had been constructed in the immediate vicinity of the structure itself and proudly wore a kind of midway carnival banner that said NASCAR VILLAGE.

  It was all jammed up with pilgrims of the faith. He saw that it was a little neighborhood composed entirely of trailers, trucks, and vans that had the specialized capability of converting to retail outlet by opening up into a kind of high counter. From behind that counter, dozens of men and women, all in NASCAR regalia, sold yet more souvenirs, most all of it driver oriented, worshiping the cult of the guy that pressed the steel around the oval at speed and risked death in the process. He had time to examine the setup at length, because the traffic had stalled almost to a creep, and it wasn’t long before he noted the Matt MacReady trailer, just as big and busy as any of them, with young Matt’s face emblazoned everywhere and the USMC 44 digital-camouflage pattern spread everywhere.

  You couldn’t but think about the money. If it was a religion, part of the observance was the cash transaction, as dollars were traded for official NASCAR gear and the official stuff evidently demanded a premium over the Chinese crap that the imitators and hustlers sold in their little stalls across the way.

  Someone’s sure getting rich, he thought. All that damn money. Turns people to fools.

  Then at last the traffic cleared, and he sped away from NASCAR Village and the speedway toward the green mountains ahead.

  NINE

  Why, O Heavenly Father, why, he beseeched. Lord, how thou tests me. Lord, I am thy humble servant, please send me relief.

  God was busy. He didn’t answer.

  So the Reverend Alton Grumley was left to his own bitter devices, and they told him, goddamnit, things wasn’t happening as they’s supposed to. Curse that girl!

  He left his tiny office off the gym floor of the rec center of the Piney Ridge Baptist Prayer Camp and stepped out into the heavy, pressing heat of an August afternoon in Tennessee, and in a yard meant to accommodate Baptist jumping jacks and deep-knee bends, saw before him sweaty men struggling with an entirely different set of rigors.

  “Jesus Christ, no,” shouted Brother Richard to a gaggle of Grumleys who fought with a device at the base of a large truck. It was a graceful, but surprisingly heavy, steel construction that rode its own smallish steel wheels. It was called a hydraulic jack, and was used for lifting the left or right half of a vehicle off the ground. It was crude, old, disobedient, and annoyingly stubborn. It hated Grumleys and Grumleys hated it. What they had to do with it, they had to do fast. Getting Grumleys to do something fast was like getting cats to dance. It just hardly didn’t ever happen.

  “You monkeys!” screamed Brother Richard to all the sweaty, tattooed Grumley beef—the sun was high, the sky cloudless; bugs and skeeters, d
rawn by the stench of flushed Grumley flesh, swooped and darted. “You can’t do nothing right. You, balding guy, what’s your name again?”

  “Cletus Grumley, Brother Richard.”

  “You don’t come across when he’s trying to get the air wrench on the lugs. You wait till he’s got ’em coming out, then you git on around. It’s gotta work smoothly or you get all tangled up, the tires roll away, and many a race, in fact most races, are lost in the pits where the big muscle boys like you haven’t practiced enough, and it ends up looking like a Chinese fire drill.”

  “Yes sir. But Mosby stepped on my heel, Brother Richard, which is why I done spilled forward. Wasn’t going forward, wasn’t meaning to, just got tripped up by Mosby.”

  “Mosby, you a cousin or a son? Or maybe both?”

  “Don’t know, sir. Heard it both ways. Not sure which gal is my real ma. Was raised by Aunt Jessie, who may have been the Reverend’s third wife, or maybe his fourth. I tripped on Cletus because someone, either Morgan or Allbright, pushed me.”

  “Morgan, Allbright, slow down,” said Richard. “Slooowwwww downnnn.” And he tried to indicate calmness, lack of excitement, craziness by a kind of universal gesture for calming, pressing both flattened hands down as if to say, “Bring it down a notch.”

  “It’s Morgan’s sweat,” said Allbright, “it stinks so it makes me want to throw up.”

  “Ain’t my sweat,” said the one who had to be Morgan, “it’s your own damn farts you be smelling, Morgan farts more than any white man in this world and most Negroes.”

  The issue was syncopation. An air-driven power wrench and the high-strength hydraulic jack had to be dragged sixty feet, set under the edge of the truck, and the truck jacked up. The power wrench had to tear loose the lugs. The old tires had to be yanked off and dumped, the new ones slammed on, the lugs power-wrenched tight. It had to be done fast, really fast, and the boys had been trying so hard. But maybe this wasn’t a Grumley sort of thing. There was no one else, though, time was short, and Race Day was approaching.

  “Okay, boys,” said Brother Richard, “you knock off now. We’ll do it again later when it’s cooler. And don’t let Allbright eat no beans tonight, or cabbage neither.”

  Richard, wiping his neck with a red handkerchief, came over to the porch where he’d seen the Reverend watching grumpily.

  “Well, sir,” he asked, “you tell me. Were these boys just raised by pigs or were they suckled by them too? Or maybe sired?”

  “You are the Whore of Babylon, Brother Richard. That wicked tongue will get you smitten, Brother Richard.”

  “Not till after you’ve had your Race Day fun, old man. We both know that. So I will amuse myself as I see fit until we have done our jobs, and by that time, you will be so rich you won’t have any thought for Brother Richard and his sharp tongue. Now, what’s going on with the girl?”

  “I have just heard,” the Reverend said, “that that daddy of hers has moved her.”

  “Damn!” said Richard.

  “Damn is right. She wakes up and starts singing, we are fried in batter. Maybe she won’t wake up before we move. Or maybe she’ll die or something.”

  “You can’t take that gamble. You know well as I do, that girl is trouble. She has seen my face and she knows enough to tip off your plan; she makes a single phone call to ask a single question to someone who knows a little something, and we are finished. You’re supposed to be a crime lord. Do something criminal.”

  “Well, son, that’s the problem. If we find her—she’s got to be in either Knoxville or Raleigh, as he moved her by ambulance, that much I know—if we find her and make sure, then we expose completely the idea that what happened to her was part of a plan, or a necessity to protect a plan. And maybe that makes all their security go up. And the plan is based on their overconfidence that no further security is needed, as you well know.”

  “I do know, just as I know,” said Brother Richard, “that the plan is damned smart. Don’t believe nobody never did what you’re trying to do the way you’re doing it before, so how could they figure it out? It’s so damned smart, I also know you, Grumley, didn’t think it up. No sign of a Grumley pawprint anywhere on it. Your ilk may screw it up if they can’t get the goddamned tires switched off fast enough and we become peas in a pod for the police shooters. But I think they’ll just manage it.” Like many men in his profession, Brother Richard had a clear view of what was necessary for his own survival.

  “No,” he explained, “you can’t just hope she doesn’t wake up or if she wakes up, she doesn’t remember. Even if she wakes up in six months, she may know enough to lead law enforcement straight to you, and I know you’ll roll over on me like a mangy dog with an itch. That, plus she saw my new face. I can’t have her helping a police artist by drawing a good picture of my new face. I spent a fortune on this face and it hurt like hell for months. I need a new face to operate, you understand? Old man, you have to act on this now and permanently.”

  “Mark 2:11. ‘Get up off your pallet and go to your house.’ Rise, you cripple, on the strength of faith in the Lord. Walk, pray, work, and triumph. If the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want.”

  “It ain’t wanting I’m worried on. It’s arresting. They git me, I go to the chair. Then it’s frying.”

  “You think you know all, Brother Richard. Even dumb old Reverend Alton knows it’s now a needle.”

  “Chair, needle, you still end up dead. I am the Sinnerman, as I have explained. I do not want to face a day of reckoning. I will run from the Lord and try and hide in the sea or the moon or the mountain all on that day. You, you’ve got no worries.”

  “I can face my Lord proudly.”

  “Of course. Because you were born a snake and someone put a mouse before you and you ate it. You liked it, and that was it. You became an eater of mice. More mice, please, that was your code and you never gave a damn about anything. More and more mice you ate, and you never thought of the family life of the mice, the culture, the fantasies and religious structures of the mice, the history, theory, and music of the mice. For you, it was an easy enough thing, it was your nature. You eat mice. End of story.

  “Now me, I chose to become a snake, for my own born-in-hell reasons. So I know that mice have as much right to life as I do, and that they feel every pain and fear and hatred that I do, love their kids, make the world go on, fight in wars, work in or build factories or houses. I empathize with mice. So when I eat a mouse, I know what agony I release in the world and knowing that, I take pleasure in it. Your code: More mice, please. Mine: I revel in the agony I release, and it suits a certain twisted-sister part of my brain, it fulfills me. That, Reverend, and I am proud to say it, that is sin.”

  “I cannot believe a blasphemer like you, Brother Richard, thinks it appropriate to lecture me on sin. You must wear the number of the beast somewhere on your body.”

  “No one knows less about sin than a Grumley. Y’all are basically animals. You may not even be mammals, I’m not sure. You just do what your instincts tell you, and in a funny way, it is God’s will. Lord, what snakes these Grumleys be.”

  “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here” announced itself for one moment, interrupting this important eschatological dialogue, and of course it was the Reverend’s cellphone, which he took out of the inside breast pocket of his powder blue Chinese suit.

  “Hallelujah,” he said. “You sure? Hallelujah!”

  He snapped the phone shut.

  “It seems that damn girl’s father has showed up and is asking questions. Oh, Lord, another test.”

  Fuck, thought Brother Richard.

  “I will send Carmody and B.J. to watch on him. If we have to, we’ll have to take him down. He is old and harmless, can’t hardly walk straight, his hair’s all grayed out, but you never can tell.”

  Another mouse, thought Brother Richard.

  TEN

  “Glad you came by,” said Detective Thelma Fielding, putting out a hand which turned out to conceal a s
trong grip.

  “Should have worn a gas mask,” said Bob.

  “Ain’t it the truth. You get used to it.”

  She was referring to a strong scent of atomized carbon that filled the air and left a sheen of grit on all the flat, polished surfaces. Clearly it had drifted over from the coal yard next to the sheriff’s department, which sat in the old train station that had been converted three years earlier when the passenger service closed down.

  “Nobody foresaw that when they started dumping coal there. Now we’ve had OSHA in here six days a week, and they finally decided to condemn this old building. A shame, it was a nice building once. Now it’s got grit everywhere and nobody can stand it. Next spring, we move into a new building across town.”

  “Well, that’s something. Must be hell on white glove occasions.”

  She laughed at his joke, which even he didn’t think was that funny. Then she said, “I have some news for you.”

  “That’s great,” said Bob.

  He sat at her desk in the sheriff’s department, seeing it was neatly kept with a stack of files in an ONGOING vertical holder. There were a couple of trophies as well, displaying a little gold man holding a pistol atop a plastic, imitation-marble pedestal, reminding him that Thelma had won some shooting competitions, which perhaps explained her fancy .45 in its strange plastic holster. He decided to try and get a gander at the inscriptions on them, but couldn’t from his angle. She was the same as before, khakis and a polo shirt, her gun held tight to her waist in that plastic holster, her arms oddly strong, as had been her grip. Her ducktail blonde hair had just been worked on and her face was tan, her eyes expressive.