Poachers (5 page)

“Yeah.”

“Well, if Michael Corleone waded out in the ocean and fucked that shark, then you’d have old Roy.”

Later, as Jalalieh climbed out
of the loader, Glen stood waiting

in the shadows.

“A what?”

“Tour,” he repeated. “See, the Black Beauty, it’s a state-ofthe-art facility.”

“This dump?”

“With cutting-edge technology.” He grinned. “Get it?”

She folded her arms.

“Okay,” Glen said. “The unique thing about our grit is that no piece—”

“Has a round edge. So what?”

Nevertheless, she allowed Glen to lead her around the plant, explaining how the raw material from the loader fell onto a conveyor belt, then into a machine similar to a grain elevator. From there it rode up into the dryer, a tall cylindrical oven which used natural gas to burn the moisture out. Next, the dry grit flowed into the crusher, a wide centrifuge that spun the grit at high speeds and smashed the grains against iron walls, pulverizing any

outsized rock into smaller pieces. Finally, atop the plant, Glen showed her the shaker, a jingling, vibrating box the size of a coffin. Raising his voice to be heard, he explained how the shaker housed several screens and sifted the grit down through them, distributing it by size into the storage tanks under their feet.

Staring at the shaker, Jalalieh said, “It’s like one of those motel beds you put a quarter in.”

Every night and day the
dryer dried and the crusher crushed and the shaker shook, sifting grit down through the screens into their proper tanks. To keep pieces from clogging the screens, rubber balls were placed between the layers when the screens were built. Little by little, the grit eroded the balls, so they’d gradually be whittled from the size of handballs down to marbles, then BBs, and finally they’d just disappear so that, every two weeks or so, Glen’s day-shift guys would have to build new screens, add new balls. Since Glen had begun sleeping during the day, the workers had gotten lax again. While the grit clogged the shaker and gnawed holes in chutes and pipes and elevators and accumulated in piles that grew each hour, the day shift played poker in the control room, sunbathed on top of the tanks, had king-of-the-mountain contests on the stockpiles.

One morning, Glen was snoring on his desk when he heard something thump against the side of the office.

He rolled over, rubbing his eyes, squinting in the bright light, and he looked out the window at the plant shimmering against the hot white sky. Then he saw his entire four-man day crew and some tall guy playing baseball with an old shovel handle. There was a pitcher on a mound of grit with a box of the rubber screen balls open beside him. There were two fielders trying to shag the

flies. There was a catcher wearing a respirator, hard hat and welding sleeves for protection. The batter was Snakebite, and he was whacking the pitched balls clear over the mountains of grit, nearly to the interstate.

Glen closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Every night Glen scaled that
ladder up between the storage tanks—quite a climb in the dark, over a hundred feet with no protection against gravity but the metal cage around the ladder. At the top, catwalks joined the tanks. Out past the handrails, darkness stretched all around, and in the distance blinked the lights of radio towers and chemical-plant smokestacks. The Black Beauty had its own blinking yellow beacon on a pole high above, a warning to low-flying aircraft, the one light Glen feared shutting off—certainly that would be illegal. It blinked every few seconds, illuminating the dusty air, and Glen followed his flashlight beam from tank to tank, prying open the heavy metal lids and unspooling over each an ancient measuring tape with a big iron bolt on its end.

A few nights after Jalalieh’s tour, Glen climbed the ladder to take measurements. It was nearly dawn, and he’d just finished when he saw her. Hugging her knees, Jalalieh sat overhead, atop the tallest elevator platform, appearing and vanishing in the light. Glen crept over and scaled the short ladder beside her, the first faint smear of sunrise spreading below them.

“Pretty,” he said.

She shrugged. “Don’t tell that asshole you saw me here.”

“Snakebite?”

“Roy.”

Glen gripped the ladder hopefully. “You love Roy?”

She shook her head.

“So you’re with him because he…buys you things?”

“What things? My little brother owes him money. Roy and I came up with this arrangement.”

Glen felt a rush of horror and glee. Her affection suddenly seemed plausible. He hung there, trying to say the right thing. He wanted to explain why he hadn’t stood up for the armadillo—because pissing Snakebite off might be dangerous—but that made him sound cowardly. Instead he said, “What would Roy do to your brother if you didn’t honor your arrangement?”

Jalalieh glanced at him. “He’s already done it.”

“Done what?”

“He had that truck driver cut the toes off his foot with wire cutters.”

Glen was about to change the subject, but she’d already swung to the tank below. By the time he descended, she was gone. He thought of the armadillo again, the knives, how Jalalieh had barreled in and taken control. It reminded him of the first time he’d accompanied his second ex-wife’s father to a cockfight, which was illegal in Alabama. What had unsettled Glen wasn’t the violence of the roosters pecking and spurring each other—he actually enjoyed betting on the bloody matches—but that several hippie-looking spectators had been smoking joints, right out in the open. Later he attributed his discomfort to that being his first and only experience outside the law.

Until now. Now the Black Beauty was a place with power up for grabs, a world where you fought for what you wanted, where you plotted, used force.

It was just getting light, time to shut down the plant, but Glen stood under the tanks, watching the dark office across the yard, where no doubt Roy slept like a king.

“
Got-damn it, Glen,” Roy
said. “Ain’t I told you to get some damn cable in here?”

Glen stood in his sneakers and baseball cap, Jalalieh behind him in the office door. “This is a business, not a residence,” Glen said. “There’s problems getting it installed.”

“Then you better nigger-rig something by tomorrow night.” Roy rose from his chair behind the desk, which had two portable TVs on it. “What?” he said to Jalalieh. “The little girl don’t like that word? ‘Nigger’?”

“Try ‘African American,’” she said stiffly.

“Fuck that,” he said. “I ain’t no got-damn African American. I’m
American
American!”

She turned in a clatter of braids and vanished.

“And you,” Roy said, “you got to clean this pigsty up.”

Glen went cold. “Oh, Christ,” he said. “When?”

“They flying in Wednesday night. Be here first thing Thursday.”

Ernie and Dwight.

So in addition to his other work, Glen spent the night cleaning his plant. He patched holes and leaks with silicon. He welded, shoveled, sandblasted. Replaced filters and built new shaker screens and greased bone-dry fittings and paid Jalalieh fifty bucks to straighten the stockpiled material with the loader. By daybreak the place was in sterling shape and a solid black, grimy Glen trudged over to the office. He hid Roy’s TVs in the closet. Sprayed Pledge and vacuumed the carpet and Windexed the windows and emptied an entire can of Lysol into the air. He flipped the calendar to—what month was it?—August.

No time to go home, so Glen showered in the break room, using Snakebite’s motel bar of Ivory soap and his sample-sized Head & Shoulders. When he stepped out, cinching his tie, it was seven, nearly time for the day shift to begin. He hurried to the plant to see things in the light. Perfect. Not a stray speck of grit. Gorgeous. In the office, he took out the ledgers and began to fudge. An hour later he looked up, his hand numb from erasing. Eight o’clock. They’d be here any second.

By ten they still hadn’t arrived. The day-shifters had clocked in and, seeing the plant clean, understood there was an inspection and were working like they used to. For a moment, staring out the window at the humming plant and the legitimately loading trucks and the men doing constructive things in their safety equipment, Glen felt nostalgic and sad. He grabbed the phone.

“I said don’t be calling this early,” Roy growled.

“Where the hell are they?”

“Chill, baby. I had ’em met at the airport.”

Images of Ernie and Dwight fingerless, mangled, swam before Glen’s eyes. “My God.” He sat down.

“Naw, baby.” Roy chuckled. “I told a couple of my bitches to meet ’em. Them two old white mens ain’t been treated this good they whole life.”

“Hookers?” Glen switched ears. “So Ernie and Dwight aren’t coming?”

“I expect they’ll drop by for a few minutes,” Roy said. “But Glen, if I was you, I wouldn’t sweat E and D. If I was you, baby, I’d be scared of old Roy. I’d be coming up with some got-damn money and I’d be doing it fast.”

True to Roy’s word, Ernie
and Dwight showed up in the afternoon, unshaven, red-eyed, smelling of gin and smiling, their ties loose,

wedding rings missing. They stayed at the plant for half an hour, complimenting Glen on his appearance and on how spicand-span his operation was. Keep up the good work, they said, falling back into their Caddy, and standing in the parking lot as they drove away, Glen saw a pink garter hanging from the rearview mirror.

Glen spent the rest of
the day and most of his checking account bribing one of his ex-wives’ old boyfriends, a cable installer, to run a line to the office. Then he went to apply for a home-improvement loan. Sitting across from the banker, who looked ten years younger, Glen stopped listening as soon as the guy said, “
Four
alimonies?”

Back at the plant, he hoped the new cable (including HBO and Cinemax) would ease Roy’s temper. He filled the hopper and fired the plant up early. From behind the crusher he saw Roy drive up, saw him and Jalalieh get out. They didn’t speak: Roy went into the office, carrying another TV, and Jalalieh stalked across the yard to the loader. She climbed in and started the engine, raced it to build air pressure. She goosed the levers, wiggling the bucket the way some people jingle keys. Catching Glen’s eye, she drew a finger across her throat.

Just after dusk Snakebite’s Peterbilt rumbled into the yard. It paused on the scales, then pulled next to the plant and stopped beneath the loading chute. Glen had the grit flowing before Snakebite’s boots touched the ground. He stuffed his trembling hands into his pockets as the trucker shambled toward him.

“I’m real sorry, Slick,” Snakebite mumbled, his eyes down. “It’s nothing personal. Have you got the money? Any of it?”

Glen shook his head in disbelief, which also answered the question.

“I’ll give you a few minutes,” Snakebite said, “if you wanna get drunk. That helps a little.”

Glen glanced at the dark office window—Roy would be there, watching.

“It won’t be too bad,” Snakebite said. “Roy needs you. He only wants me to take one of your little fingers, at the first knuckle. You even get to pick which one.” He jerked a thumb behind him. “I keep some rubbing alcohol in the truck, and some Band-Aids. We can get you fixed up real quick. You better go on take you a swig, though.” Snakebite had moved so close that Glen could smell Head & Shoulders shampoo.

He pointed toward the control room, and when Snakebite looked, Glen bolted for the ladder and shot up through the roaring darkness.

It was breezy at the top, warm fumes in the air from nearby insecticide plants. Backing away from the edge, Glen slipped and fell to one knee. He felt warm blood running down his bare leg.

“
Jalalieh
?” he whispered. “
You up here
?” Searching for a weapon, he found the measuring tape with the bolt on the end. He scrambled to his feet and watched the side of the tank as it lit and faded, lit and faded.

In one flash of light a hand appeared, then another, then Snakebite’s tiny head. His wide shoulders surfaced next, rubbing the ladder cage. On the tank, he wobbled uncertainly in his boots. He looked behind him, a hundred feet down, where his truck purred, still loading.

Glen let out a few feet of the measuring tape. Began swinging the bolt over his head like a mace.

“Slick!” Snakebite called. “Let’s just get it over with. It won’t even hurt till a few seconds after I do it. Just keep your hand elevated above your heart, and that’ll help the throbbing.”