Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (4 page)

“Is that right?” Luke saw that the
young man’s hands were trembling and that he avoided making eye contact. “You
all right? You seem kind of twitchy.”

“Yes sir, I’m fine. Had a rough
night is all.”

“Had a few of those myself. Well,
you take care, Skeeter.”

“You too, Chief Chaney.
Mister
Chaney, I mean.”

Luke picked up a bag of onions,
then pushed his cart to the checkout. Midge Harmon flirted with him as she
scanned his items, but he didn’t rise to take her sugarcoated bait. He paid his
tab, loaded the groceries in the back of his truck and drove home.

When he pulled up in front of his
house, Hondo came bounding off the front porch to greet him. The big dog was a
bundle of wagging tail and happy whining as he twined about his master’s feet.

“Watch it, boy,” Luke said sternly.
“You trying to trip me? Come on and help me carry this stuff to the house. I
might have a butcher bone for you, if you behave yourself.”

After he put the groceries away, he
poured himself a glass of iced tea and sat sipping it in the front porch
rocker. Hondo was stretched out at his feet, chewing bits of raw meat from the
fresh bone Luke had given him.

“It’s a hot one, old boy,” he said.

Hondo responded with a guttural
groan as he gnawed his prize.

“Couldn’t’ve said it better
myself.” He reached down and ruffled the fur about the white German Shepherd’s
ears. Then he set his glass down, closed his eyes and settled back to wait for
nightfall—and for another surreptitious reconnaissance mission into Porch
territory.

Joe Rob saw it coming. There was no
way he could stop it—even if he’d wanted to, which he didn’t. The bastard had
been riding him all week, picking at him for no good reason, and he’d had
enough.

He called himself Ho Down, bragging
that “the hos stand in line to get down on my long black snake,” but his real
name was Curtis and he was a wise-ass troublemaker who was always lipping off
to anyone within striking distance.  A Def Jam badass Mac Daddy—whatever the
hell that was. And to make matters worse, the guy thought he was some sort of
slice-and-dice comedian, a black Don Rickles, and the cleverest guy on God’s
blue earth.

He had started in on Joe Rob first
thing that morning while they were bouncing around in the back of the pickup,
on the way to the construction site. There were six of them in the truck, four
blacks and two whites. Joe Rob was sitting with his spine against the back of
the cab, watching the two-lane blacktop unwind behind them.

“Hey, Blow Job,” the comedian
shouted at Joe Rob from his perch on the wheel housing. “You look like shit.
You up all night chokin’ the chicken?”

No, you asshole, I was up all
night because every time I shut my eyes I saw the face of a dead man looking at
me with his evil middle eye. So don’t fuck with me or I just might have to kill
you too.

“Leave the man alone,” said
Johnson, the oldest and blackest man of the six laborers. “He ain’t said
nothin’ to you.”

But Joe Rob found himself almost
wishing the loudmouth boogie would keep it up so he would have a reason to wail
on his black ass.
Push me just a little more and see what happens
, his
eyes told Ho Down. Something dark and venomous stirred in his belly, a coiling,
slithering rage. A long black snake of a different—and more dangerous—kind.

Ho Down must’ve glimpsed that
reptilian darkness in Joe Rob’s eyes, for a look of uncertainty appeared on his
mud-brown face and he backed off in uncharacteristic silence. He had nothing
more to say to Joe Rob until lunch break, his ill-chosen words a sharp stick
poking the snake of wrath.

“Blow Job’s off his feed today,” he
said. “Whasamatter, boy? Grandma wouldn’t give ya no pussy last night?”

    Joe Rob was sitting on a piece
of ply board, downing the last of his Gatorade when Ho Down said the words. He
tossed the plastic bottle aside, stood up, walked over and picked up a stray
two-by-four. Like a batter in the on-deck circle, he tested the heft of the
board, then made straight for his tormenter, cocking the two-by-four over his
shoulder.

“Hey, wait now,” said Ho Down,
stepping backward. “You ain’t—”

Joe Rob swung the sturdy board,
twisting at the waist and driving the impromptu bat right at Ho Down’s head.

Ho Down stumbled, trying to get out
of the way of the board, but it caught him on the shoulder and sent him
sprawling over a wheelbarrow and to the muddy ground.

The other men looked up from their
brown-bag lunches, surprise etched in their sweaty faces.

    Joe Rob cocked the board again
and slammed it into the downed man’s back.

Ho Down hollered out in pain.

Johnson moved quickly for a man of
his immense size. He seized the board with one hand and threw a powerful arm
around Joe Rob’s head. “Easy now, son,” he said softly in Joe Rob’s ear.
“That’s enough.”

Joe Rob relaxed in Johnson’s
headlock. He felt strangely secure there in the crook of the man’s massive arm.
Secure in the knowledge that he couldn’t kill anybody as long as he was
swaddled like a fussy baby in a blanket of dark muscle.

“You cool?” Johnson whispered, his
deep voice a soothing rumble.

“Yeah,” he answered.

Johnson released him.

Ho Down was writhing on the ground,
cursing and moaning that his arm was broken.

“Uh-oh, here come the boss man,”
Johnson said.

Mr. Threadgill planted himself in
front of Joe Rob and stood there with his hands on his hips. “You know my rule,
boy. You fight, you walk. I want you off my site. We’ll mail you your last
paycheck.”

Joe Rob nodded. He picked up his
tool belt and slung it over his shoulder. Mr. Threadgill turned his attention
to Ho Down. “Stop your crying, boy. You ain’t bad hurt.”

“He tried to
kill
me. Crazy
muthafucka.” Ho Down got to his feet, nursing his injured shoulder.

“You can press charges if you want
to,” Mr. Threadgill told him. “But you do that on your own time.”

Joe Rob walked away, leaving his
job behind, and started along the blacktop for home. The blistering sun made
mirages on the road ahead: dark ghosts dancing on shimmering black pools. There
was no breath of wind.

“I wanted to kill him,” he said as
if explaining it to himself. “I’m almost sorry I didn’t.”

***

The mystery car cruised past the
supermarket parking lot as Skeeter was climbing into his truck. The same
primer-black Firebird with tinted windows and no visible driver.
It was
waiting for me
, he thought. 
They’re onto us.
   

His hands shook as he started the
engine.

All the way home he monitored the
rearview mirror to see if he was being followed, but he saw no further sign of
the mystery car. He parked in the shade of the big maple tree, unlocked the
door to the small cinder-block building behind his parents’ house and entered
his living quarters. It was a one-room affair with fireplace and a tiny
bathroom with a toilet and a shower the size of a phone booth; he’d been living
there since his graduation from high school. For Skeeter the place represented
a step toward independence and a move away from his father’s stifling
authority. He could come and go as he pleased as long as he obeyed his old
man’s three basic rules: No booze, no drugs, and no girls on the premises.

He wanted to call Joe Rob and alert
him to the fact that the Firebird had been circling the parking lot like a
shark circling its prey, but Joe Rob wouldn’t be home from work until after
six, so Skeeter had an hour to kill. He turned on the stereo and tuned it to
his favorite country music station, then hooked a can of soda from the
refrigerator and flopped onto the lower tier of the bunk bed and downed half
the drink before stopping to catch his breath. He cut loose with a satisfying
belch. The window-unit air conditioner labored loudly, and Skeeter closed his
eyes, hoping to catch a few z’s, but the specter of the mystery car would not
let him rest.

It was out there somewhere,
circling, spiraling closer and closer....

The phone jarred him from his
anxious thoughts.

He snatched it up. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello!”

“Hey, asshole. Guess what.”

“What the fuck, man? You off
early?”

Joe Rob said, “I got canned.”

“You got
fired
? For real?”

“Yep. I lit into that Ho Down
motherfucker with a two-by-four. Threadgill gave me the axe.”

“No shit. Man, that sucks.”

“That sonofabitch asked for it. You
shoulda heard him crying and moaning. It was great.”

Skeeter took a ragged breath, then
said, “Yeah, well I got some news that ain’t so great. That black Firebird was
cruising the parking lot when I got off work.”

“You shittin’ me?”

“I wouldn’t shit you. You’re my
favorite turd.”

Neither of them laughed at the
tired old joke.

“That’s not good,” said Joe Rob.

“What the fuck do we do about it? I
mean, we gotta do
something
. Right?”

“We’ve got to find out who it is.
Then we’ll figure out what to do.”

“Hell, it’s one of
them
. One
of Odell’s brothers. You know it is.”

“Could be.”

“We’re screwed, man.”

“Chill out, Skeeter. This is no
time to panic. We’ll think of something.”

“Yeah. Right. Meanwhile they’re
right on my ass.”

“I’m coming over. You just sit
tight.”

Before Skeeter could say anything
more, Joe Rob hung up.

A throbbing headache was blossoming
behind Skeeter’s eyes. He left his cool lair, walked across the back yard and
entered the house through the back door. His mother was at the stove, stirring
a pot of boiling cabbage. The smell gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his
stomach and seemed to make his headache worse.

“Hi, Mom,” he said, massaging his
forehead.

“Hey, honey. Your father’s going to
be late for dinner, but if you’re hungry, you can go ahead and eat. It’ll be
ready in about ten minutes.” 

“Nah, I’m not hungry. I just want
some aspirin for this headache. I’ll eat later.”

“You sure?” She picked up her
cigarette from the ashtray by the stove and drew smoke into her lungs.

“Yeah. If I ate now I’d probably
puke.”

“Hard day at work?” She brushed a
clump of graying hair from her face. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of
her cooking.

“Pretty busy,” he said as he opened
a pantry door over the stove and found the bottle of aspirin next to the spices.
“Dad get a body?”

“Yes. Some poor girl got herself
snake-bit. She was a runaway from Browner’s. John Robertson found her out on
Nebula Road. By the time he got her to the hospital, it was too late. It’s so
sad.”

“Jeez.” Skeeter fumbled with the
bottle of aspirin. When he popped off the childproof cap, the bottled slipped
out of his hand and a handful of white tablets spilled out on the counter.
“Shit.”

“Language,” she scolded.

“Sorry.”

She gave him a glass of water. He
tossed three tablets into his mouth and washed them down with a big gulp.

“The girl’s family lives in
Vidalia,” she went on, “but they wanted your father to go ahead and prepare
her, then take her home in the morning.”

“What kind of snake was it?” He
leaned against the kitchen counter, feeling suddenly light-headed.

“I don’t think they know for sure.
John Robertson said it was probably a rattler.” She crushed out the cigarette
in the butt-filled ashtray, then she placed her fingers to his forehead. “You
don’t look so good. I hope you’re not coming down with something. Summer colds
are the hardest to shake. No fever though.”

“It’s just a headache. I’m all
right.”

“You should go lie down a while.”
She turned down the flame under the big pot of roiling cabbage leaves. The
bubbling, spitting drone of the boiling water was almost hypnotic.

“I’ll be okay. Joe Rob’s coming
over.”

“Well, you boys stay out of
trouble, you hear?”

“Yes ma’am.”

He went out the back door,
wondering if he should tell Joe Rob about the girl or if he should pretend ignorance
of the fact of her death—at least for the time being. He needed his friend to
be clear-headed, not distracted by any guilt he might feel over Jessica
Lowell’s death. He wasn’t sure he should tell him, but he was sure of one
thing:  They were in deep shit and had to find a way out of it before things
really got out of hand.

***

Driving across town to Skeeter’s,
Joe Rob cranked up the volume of the tape deck. The throbbing bass and
shrieking guitar of Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning” awakened the black serpent
in his belly, and he found himself hoping for a confrontation with the driver
of the Firebird—whoever the son of a bitch was.
Fuck with me, I’ll fuck you
up bad. I guaran-fucking-tee ya.

He remembered something his father
had taught him the same day the old man instructed him in the essentials of
street-fighting and basic-training hand-to-hand combat: “Yea though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I’m the
meanest motherfucker in the valley.” It was the dog soldier’s creed Dad had
learned in Vietnam, and it applied to street fighting, as well as armed combat.
“When the shit starts flying,” he had said, “you’ve got to bring smoke and
fire, without hesitation. You hesitate, you’re dead.” Unlike most vets Joe Rob
heard about, his father didn’t mind talking about the war. In fact, the old man
seemed to love talking about it, especially when he had a few drinks under his
belt. Except for a hellhole called Devil’s Valley. “That place lived up to its
name, I shit you not,” Dad had explained. “It was hell on earth. I wouldn’t
have been surprised to see the Devil Himself in that fucking valley. That’s
what the troops called it. Devil’s Fucking Valley. Some really bad shit
happened there.” And that was all he would say about Devil’s Valley. But Joe
Rob still remembered the haunted look in his father’s eyes whenever the old man
said those words.
Devil’s Fucking Valley.
It wasn’t the look of the
meanest motherfucker in the valley, that was for sure.

Fuck that
, Joe Rob thought
as he banged his hand on the wheel in time to the music.
Anybody fucks with
me, I’ll send ’em to Devil’s Fucking Valley. Like I did Odell.

***

Full dark settled over the
countryside. The leaves of the pecan tree in Luke’s front yard shifted restlessly
against the rising wind, and the fine wire mesh of the screen door whispered
windy prognostications of coming rain.

Luke stood on the porch, his gym
bag hanging from his shoulder and his exposed skin slathered with insect
repellent. He stank to high heaven, but the noxious fumes would keep the South
Georgia vampire mosquitoes from feasting on his blood. He looked up at the sky
and watched the quarter moon disappear behind scudding clouds.

Sitting nobly at his feet, Hondo
rolled out his tongue and licked Luke’s hand, then whined in protest as he
tasted the harsh chemical of the repellent.

“No, you can’t come with me, old
boy,” Luke said. “Where I’m going they like to shoot your kind.”