Burn What Will Burn (3 page)

I dialed 911 even though I was in no emergency, just to take advantage of what my local tax dollars paid for.

The phone went, bzzz clickety click. Then nothing for a long time.

I hung up.

Taxes.

In the skinny directory for Doker, Arkansas, a little town just less than three miles east of UPUMPIT!, on Scenic Highway 7, more or less, I found the number for police, rummaged in my pocket for change, found a solitary quarter, slotted it, and called the nearest constabulary, which was manned, as far as I knew, by only one constable, an octogenarian who had not appeared outside his house for over a year.

The phone of the Doker Constable rang twenty-one times before I hung up.

Cops.

The phone ate my two bits.

I tried 911 again.

Just clickety click bzzz this time, or rather, nothing useful again.

Telephones.

The screen door to Pick's General Store and UPUMPIT! banged open and the proprietor's teenaged grandson, Malcolm Ray Pickens, yelled my name, more or less.

“Bob Reynold!”

Malcolm was even more undersized and anemic than me and some shy of a full load, but about the best adjusted person I had ever known, which said more about my dead family and lost friends than it did about Malcolm, I would hazard.

He leaned into the booth, seemed glad to see me. I wished I was in a better mood for him.

There was a bruise on his forehead, purple and uneven as a Concord grape smashed and rolled flat into raw bread dough.

When I tried to touch it he jerked his head away and then fingered lank hair over the injury.

“Your PaPaw been hitting you again, Malcolm?”

The kid shook his head, then shrugged, then nodded since the kid seemed congenitally unable to lie.

“Loan me some money for a phone call, Malcolm Ray.”

“You good for it, Bob Reynold?”

All I had to do was frown.

I gave Malcolm ten bucks a week just to feed the chickens on my front porch, which, apart from his snakeskin wallet–selling business, was all the money he ever got from the world.

He pulled a fistful of small change out of his overalls and handed it over.

“Just playing with you, Bob Reynold.”

“I'm not in a playful mood,” I said, which was not news.

I thumbed quarters into the phone box, hesitated, considered forgetting about it, the corpse, the dead man, Buck. But it seemed too late for that to happen. Wheels within wheels, cogs, that is, were turning and I was stuck up their works it seemed like, whether I liked that position or not.

“What you thinking on, Bob Reynold?”

Malcolm stood outside and pressed his nose against the dirty phone booth, smearing his sweet face into a malevolent mask.

I slapped the glass. Malcolm backed against the truck, hitched up his overalls.

“I's just asking, Bob Reynold.”

“I'm trying to think,” I said, with more heat than I had intended, I guess, because Malcolm's face drooped.

“I'm sorry, Malcolm.”

The kid nodded to accept my apology.

“I can see you upset, Bob Reynold. So I figure it's something eating at you. I can sure tell when it is and it especial is right about now.”

“You're a genius, Malcolm.”

The kid snuffed.

“I appreciate your concern, Malcolm Ray,” I corrected myself, sincerely enough.

Nobody else gave much of a thought to my condition save for Malcolm, so I needed to be grateful for that, difficult as his concern was to deal with sometimes.

“You know what PaPaw say about it, Bob Reynold—it's dangerous to think too much on a thing like you do, because all you own thinking it crowd out the message of the Lord. Thinking too much make you bad crazy, Bob Reynold. That's what's got my own daddy in such the state he be in—listening to his ownself and not to the Lord God. Turned my daddy into a dangerous elephant in this here communerty, what it did.”

“Dangerous element” was clear enough, but I didn't know what “community” Malcolm was referring to. What had once been the regular little town of Rushing, Arkansas, seemed to me to be reduced to Malcolm Ray and Mean Joe, Jacob, Faith Sue and their twins, and me and my chickens.

Joe Pickens Junior, Malcolm's daddy, a notorious, but small-time drug dealer, had not been around Rushing for years. The kid's mother was, reportedly, a dog track whore in West Memphis. His grandfather, Joe Pickens Senior, Mean Joe, the Right Reverend Pickens, had raised Malcolm insofar as Malcolm had been raised. It was speculated locally that the rest of Malcolm's family—grandparents, cousins, etc.—all no-goods by standard measures and with varying criminal degrees, had been disappeared by the Right Reverend Mean Joe Pickens Senior himself or by God Himself.

“Steada selling them drugs and beating the bushes like he been done, my daddy'd been better off turning it all over to the Lord Jehovah God, Bob Reynold. Putting it in the hands of Jesus Rising Star, like I do.”

That faith was all well and good for Malcolm, but did not help me much then or ever.

I waited ten seconds for a sign from God anyway—this stupid habit my momma had cursed me with, she being one of those gut-wrenching born-agains who seemed always on the point of absolute Despair or else absolute Rapture and never on any level ground, spiritual, intellectual, psychological or emotional.

But I loved her.

I guess I did.

She had been dead fifteen years December twenty-first next and

Heaven still, was empty,

Of signs, of clouds,

As Per Usual.

*   *   *

I dialed my favorite bartender.

“Crow's Nest. Smarty Bell, Proprietor, speaking.”

The Crow's Nest was the saloon in the Holiday Inn and Convention Center of Bertrandville, Arkansas, a small city eight point six miles north of Doker, my “hometown,” on Scenic Highway 7. Smarty Bell was head bartender and part-owner of the Nest, so he was there almost eighteen hours a day except for Sundays, when the Nest was forcibly closed by local ordinances and on Mondays when he was sleeping off Sundays. Or else was fishing for (only trophy-size, as he said) bigmouth bass in his rigged-out, high-gloss, high-octane-powered Skeeter boat. Or chasing after his girlfriend, a stripper who was even glossier, more high-octane and more high-maintenance than his fishing rig.

The constable was not answering his phone, 911 was on the fritz and my lawyers were in states other than Arkansas, so since Smarty Bell was as close as I had to a sensible acquaintance he got the call.

I pressed the receiver against my shoulder. “Could you go get my mail for me, Malcolm Ray?”

The kid nodded, lounged off toward the store.

“Hello,” I said into the phone. “It's Bob.”

“It's a little early for a liquor call, Buddy. Even for you. Need some 'shine to go?”

“No,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I surely do not.”

I had dispensed with a quart Mason jar the night before and would have been unable to hit a barn door with a thrown handful of dry beans from a foot distance most of the evening.

“You're going to kill yourself, Buddy.”

I had been warned about that before and that had not happened yet, for whatever reasons there were.

It's hard to kill cockroaches too.

“I need some advice, Smarty Bell.”

“Still got Tammy Fay Trouble, Bud?”

“No,” I lied. “I'm over that.”

Since I had first seen the young woman, almost ten months before, I had been seriously smitten by Tammy Fay Smith, hung around her place whenever she'd allow it, paid for unneeded and inexpert repairs on the old Ford truck she had oversold me for twice Blue Book value.

Tammy Fay was just the kind of woman you'd pay to watch sweat.

She had let me kiss her once, seven and a half months before, and that encounter in her garage had had all the trappings of a failed experiment, major head-butting and misplaced lips because of my diminutiveness. She shrugged me off like a fly when it was done and had not gotten as close as ten feet to me since, but not a day went by I didn't recall the incident.

Some women just make you forget what a smart fellow you are.

The mechanic girl had told me in no uncertain terms that I was not her type and never would be, even if my investment portfolio trebled, even if I got hair implants, even if I pledged my life to her.

Women.

But I could see the woman's point—which point poked both ways: If someone was someone I wanted then they were my type and me not being their type did not alter them being my type and what I wanted.

“What would you do if you found a body in The Little Piney?” I asked the bartender.

A vacuum cleaner whirred in the Crow's Nest in Bertrandville, a bar rag squeaked in a glass. My watch set the time at seven twenty-eight in the a.m. The world was waked up and tending to business as per usual. The quick of the world, at least, were tending to business. The dead? I didn't know what they were tending to, but maybe they were tending to their business too.

“Say again, Buddy.”

“It's a man,” I provided as a start. “Big fellow.”

“Colored or white?”

“Kind of grayish.” I described the waterlogged corpse.

“Say what?”

“Caucasian.”

“How old?”

“Late thirties, early forties maybe. But I'm just guessing. Why? You know him based on that?”

“I heard Joe Pickens Junior jumped bail over in West Memphis last week. You know who I'm talking about?”

“Mean Joe's son, the dope dealer,” I said. “Malcolm's daddy.”

“Retard's daddy, right,” Smarty Bell said. “Friend of mine from college, Ricky Dale Hart, works for local law enforcement sometimes and he advised me I should keep an ear out, because it's a reward for information about Joe Junior.”

“Why? Is Joe Pickens Junior some kind of big fish?”

“Nope. But Poe County Sheriff wants Joe Junior bad and so there's bounty hunters after him too.”

“What did Malcolm's daddy do this time?” I asked.

“Joe Junior used to run a lot of very primo Arkansaweed, hereabouts and aroundabouts, and even pimped a bit over in Danielles.”

“Did Joe Pickens Junior get busted?”

“Joe Junior's gotten busted here and there and everywhere,” said Smarty Bell. “But mostly for minor possession raps or drunk and disorderlies that did not amount to minnow shit. But then Joe Junior got busted in West Memphis for possession with intent to distribute to minors, and on middle school property, what I heard from Ricky Dale. Being a multiple offender, and actually peddling on school property, Joe Junior's in a deep shithole now without a shovel or a rope. Then he jumped bail. And that's not the first time that's happened.”

“That all sounds bad for Joe Pickens Junior,” I said, thinking about the son of Joe Pickens Junior, Malcolm, who had enough on this plate to worry about without having his daddy on the lam. “Do you think Joe Junior is hereabouts?” I asked.

“He might be around, because dumb crooks always go home and Joe Junior is one dumb crook.”

“What will happen to Joe Junior if he gets caught?” I asked.

“Him getting caught is not the problem for him,” Smarty Bell said, elliptically, I thought.

“What does that mean, Smarty Bell?”

“It means Joe Junior might be bathing with the big-mouth bass if Sheriff Baxter is aimed at him. Baxter hates Joe Pickens Junior.”

“Why?”

“Could not say in particular,” said Smarty Bell. “I think Joe Junior looked at the sheriff wrong one day or threw up on him during a D&D arrest and that was that. Sam Baxter is one of those black and white guys. If Sam Baxter is ‘for' you, then you are golden. But if Sam Baxter's ‘against' you, you best just go away from this country and leave no forwarding address.”

I preferred not to deal with Manicheans myself, but the world was full of people who saw no shades of gray, not even on cloudy days.

“So you think this man I found is Joe Pickens Junior? He had a Semper Fi tattoo,” I said. “Real big fellow. Red cowboy shirt.”

“Not striking a chord,” Smarty Bell said. “Not Joe Junior, for sure. Wrong type. Joe Junior was never in any armed services and he's skinny as a rail. Maybe this dead fella was a fisherman?”

“Nobody fishes at that spot on The Little Piney but me and Malcolm and the Wells twins. Everybody else goes over the state park if they're fishing The Little Piney.”

It was too hard to get to the water at that location on the little creek and with no place to park and not much bank to sit on, too many snakes and turtles, not enough fish, it was definitely only a Local's spot an outsider wouldn't stumble on or stay in, a fishing hole without any advertisable attractions, where you went only if you didn't have anyplace else to go or because it was your own backyard. Not the kind of place you wound up in by accident.

“No ID on him?” Smarty Bell asked me.

“Nothing.”

I touched the gold ring that was under my shirt, depended by the gold chain around my neck.

“No car keys? Car?”

“Nope.”

“He was dumped then,” Smarty Bell said surely. “Somebody killed him elsewhere, drove to the bridge and tossed him in.”

“Is that a regular thing around here?”

“It's happened before. Not there exactly, but nearby there. In South Slough. Couple of years ago they drug out a tourist lady who'd been raped and then beat to death and left in the mud to drown. They had some suspicions about who done it, but never could make a case against anybody.”

“I was thinking my situation could have been an accident. Maybe the fella I found just slipped and hit his head, then fell in the creek and drowned.”

I was hoping someone could conceivably think this actually.

The bartender grunted, said nothing for a moment.

“Autopsy'll tell,” said Smarty Bell. He paused. I waited because I did not have much else to do. “But your fella, he didn't walk to The Little Piney. No regular people walk down there.”