the Hot Kid (2005) (11 page)

Norm, on his knees, raised the stock of the Thompson, getting the front sight on the middle of the yard.

Now another row of Klansmen was coming from between the cars with their torches, forming behind the first row. Counting the ones still hiding back of the cars, Carl decided there were about thirty of them. He said to Norm, "Lay it down."

Norm fired left to right and with the clatter they watched the dirt kicked up about ten feet in front of the leading row, stopping them in their tracks, confused, pulling revolvers, turning into one another with their torches blazing, turning to Nestor behind his car. Norm was grinning, watching them come near setting one another on fire. He said, "They don't know whether to piss or run home, do they?"

They aren't a hundred feet away," Jack Belmont said, "and he can't hi
t
'em? I should've kept the Thompson." He raised the Winchester and sighted against the black cross on a Klansman's chest, telling himself, Your first one. Take a breath and hold it, start to let it out . . . "I think Carl just wants to stop them," Heidi said. "It looks like it did. They don't know what to do. Look at 'em." She was crouched next to Jack on the floor, holding the revolver he had given her. Jack fired and saw the Klansman knocked off his feet, the torch flying. "Got him."

He levered and fired.

"Got him."

Levered and fired.

"Another one. Shit, this is like fish in a barrel."

Levered and fired.

"How many's that?"

Levered and fired and handed the Winchester to Heidi. "You count - ing? Keep track while you load that for me." He took the revolver she was holding and the one on the floor by his knee and fired one and then the other at arm's length, moving his head from gun to gun, fired at the cars and the bedsheets squeezing between them. "Now they're running across the road. Look, they're out in that pasture, some cows grazing there." Jack raised the revolvers and fired at them long range until he heard the guns click empty.

Heidi said, "Jack," touching his shoulder.

"Let me have the rifle."

"I didn't load it," Heidi said. "Carl's here."

Jack turned to Carl above him looking out the open window at the Klansmen lying in the yard, none of them moving. Tony, his notebook open, was standing next to him.

Carl said, "I told you to quit shooting."

Jack said, "You did? I must not've heard you. I know I got those seven out there, maybe a couple more. I fired at some I could see through the car windows, and they took off across the pasture over there. I fired a few shots at them."

"You hit a cow," Heidi said. "See the one like it's limping? Look, quick, now it's lying down. I think you killed it."

"I have to admit," Jack said, "firing at those bedsheets was like a shooting gallery, but I stopped them, didn't I? Heidi says she lost count." He looked up again at Carl Webster. "How many is it you've shot in your life? Just the four I've heard of?"

Carl, staring out the window, didn't answer him, Nestor on his mind. Now Tony looked at the line of cars, steam rising out of a couple of their radiators, and made a note of it.

Carl said, "Where's Nestor?"

Jack looked out the window.

"Running, I imagine."

Carl said, "The ones in the pasture are all wearing robes."

"Then he's still behind the cars."

Tony got ready to speak as Carl said, "And the three boys with him? They didn't run. And if they're not lying out in the yard, where are they?"

It was quiet outside and in the room that smelled of gunpowder. Tony made a note of it and said, "I caught a glimpse of Nestor and those three--the ones with army rifles?--sneaking along behind the cars while Jack was shooting. They got to that last car and, I'm pretty sure they ducked into the trees."

Again it was quiet until Carl said, "So they're still around. Good."

Chapter
8

The
y followed the marshal downstairs, Norm with the Thompson under his arm, Jack behind him, a revolver in each hand, Jack thinking how easy it would be to raise one of the .38s and shoot Norm in the back of the head, stick the barrel in that thatch of dark hair. Stumble against him as he fired and say oh my God, it was an accident. Jack felt good and said to Heidi over his shoulder, "I want it known I didn't shoot any cow."

She was carrying his Winchester and said, "I saw you, you did it on purpose."

"It must've stepped in a hole, why it fell down."

He felt like talking, proud of himself shooting those dumbbells coming with their torches. Wasn't anything to it. Lever and fire and watch them get knocked off their feet. He'd have to wait for the right time to get Norm, now wanting Norm looking at him when he did it. He wouldn't mind getting the drop on Nestor Lott and plug him, too. Carl had the two bouncers with revolvers and pick handles at the front windows downstairs, on either side of the entrance, guys Norm had hired: Walter the fistfighter and the other one they called Boo, who'd been in a storage tank fire and was lucky to get out alive. From his lef
t
profile Boo could be taken for William Boyd, the movie star. He turned his head and Carl saw his right ear had been burnt off, the skin on his face red and shiny. One eye was gone and he wore smoked glasses day and night to hide his disfigurement. Carl had the feeling he knew him. Not since he was in the fire, before that, up to a year ago. And had the feeling Boo was watching him, biding his time. He asked Norm what Boo's name was. Norm said, "Billy Bragg. I hired him, he was selling whiskey his brother made, up in the Cookson Hills."

Carl was nodding. "I knew the brother, Peyton Bragg."

"You arrest him one time?"

"I shot him."

The two Negroes watched the back of the place from the kitchen, Franklin Madison and his grown son James, by an Indian woman. Carl had spoken to Franklin last night, learned the man had served on a frontier station out west and in Cuba in '98, the same war Virgil had fought in. Franklin had been married to a Chiricahua Apache woman, the daughter of a reservation jumper who'd been shipped to Oklahoma with Geronimo and that crowd. It gave them more things they had in common to talk about. Carl telling Franklin his grandmother was Northern Cheyenne, giving him some Indian blood. Franklin telling about the fight at Las Guasimas in Cuba where the Tenth saved Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders after he'd marched them into a jackpot. Carl had listened to him last night and got rifles for Franklin and James.

Outbuildings stood along the back of the property, what looked like a pump house, a tractor shed, a chicken house, then a thicket full of scrub standing behind the structures that became dense with redbud a
s
the hill rose to Bald Mountain. Then, in the middle of the lot, the line of seven cars parked facing the house. Carl said to Franklin, "You ever get a look at this Nestor Lott?"

Franklin said no, but he'd heard the man was evil, had those coal miners shot.

"He could sneak up behind the cars out there." They stood a good sixty feet from the back of the house. "I'll bet anything," Carl said
,
"Nestor won't want to go home till he's settled this."

"He's still here," Franklin said, "you won't have to track him."

Carl judged Franklin's age as close to seventy, a mostly bald black man with a sprinkle of white stubble over his jaw. They stood on either side of the kitchen window looking out at the yard, sunlight had given the cars a shine, but the sky closed in and now rain was coming down. Franklin said, "What about the dead people in front? I know they ain't going nowhere, but was it all right to shoot 'em like that?"

"I have to phone Tulsa," Carl said, "ask my boss about it. I came here with another marshal, but I don't know where he is, or what he's doing."

Franklin said, "What if the sheriff come along?"

"Then the county'll look into it. The coroner will say those fools out there died of gunshot wounds, making it official. Then the county prosecutor will want to know who shot them, maybe have Jack Belmont brought up on manslaughter. That's if the Klansmen want to testify. But if they shouldn't be here in the first place, maybe they won't say anything. If the judge is in the Klan, that's something else."

"Will you appear?"

"If they charge Belmont."

"What if they don't?"

"Then I'll take him to Tulsa," Carl said, "and get him charged with something."

Carl glanced at the True Detective writer standing in the kitchen doorway. Tony waiting until Carl finished before saying, "You won't be able to make your call, they cut the telephone line. I tried it a minute ago."

Carl said, "So he's close by."

"You sound like it pleases you," Franklin said. He called out, "James?"

And told his son to come in here.

Carl watched Franklin talking to him, James nodding, Franklin giving him an old converted Navy Colt from out of a kitchen drawer, winking at Carl. Now James took off his shirt. He walked through the bar to slip out the front in the cold rain.

"Gonna see if he can locate Nestor," Franklin said.

"He can do it," Carl said, "without getting shot?"

"James knows tricks from his mama's people," Franklin said. "How to stand almost in plain sight and you don't see him."

Nestor had picked Son to work around through the woods to where the telephone wire came out from the house. "Shimmy up the pole with a knife in your teeth, boy, and cut the wire, so they can't call anybody for help."

Son came back to the tractor shed with his arms skinned but had done the job.

Nestor looked out of the shed now to see the rain coming down hard to wash the cars parked back there and turn the yard dark. Man oh man, perfect. He could start making his move, not have to wait till night.

All three boys had been patient so far. Now they were acting restless and would voice their anger over the dead lying out front. Or they were putting it on, wanting to start shooting. Son telling him, "They's two of 'em show theirselves at that window," and raised his rifle to draw a bead. Nestor had to tell him to keep his pants on while he worked out what they'd do. How he'd set it up to take every last person in there. One of the Wycliffs said, "Some of 'em's women." "Whores," Nestor said.

Son was afraid somebody'd come along the road and see the bodies. Nestor said, "And keep driving, not wanting any parts of this business. Or going by they might only see the cars parked along the shoulder."

But the boy was right, they had to get her done pretty soon. He said to the Wycliff brothers, "You two think you could sneak out there, see if anybody left the key in their car?"

You bet they could, and slipped out of the shed to slither through the weeds, the cars between them and the back of the house. Watching them through a space between the boards, Nestor said, "You know their Christian names?"

All Son knew they was Wycliffs. Him and the brothers had never been close, other than when they were out burning crosses or throwing rocks at the Eyetalians, over in Sans Souci Park, the Eyetalians celebrating Mt. Carmel Day, whatever that was. Nestor said, "Those boys must've fallen off the turnip truck, but they sure can shoot."

The Wycliffs came back to the tractor shed soaking wet and grinning at Nestor. Yeah, the Ford Coupe on the end and that black car right in the middle of the row both had keys in them. Nestor, pressed to the slit between the boards, said, "I believe it's a thirty-three Packard, the new one. Has that sporty look, a spare tire on each side. You know what they say, 'Ask the man who owns one.' I bet a dollar it's Jack Belmont's, but I ain't asking him nothing."

One of the Wycliffs said, "We gonna ride off in the Packard?"

Nestor said, "Hell no, we gonna bust in the house with it."

He had all three of the boys grinning at him now. Jack Belmont wondered what they were waiting for, standing around in the semidark, Heidi next to him reloading his guns and placing them on the bar. The other girls were upstairs, the bartenders watching over them, and seeing what they could see from the windows.

"You want to tell me what we're doing?"

Speaking to Carl at the front entrance with the two bouncers, Carl holding one of the doors open, waiting for James to appear out of the mist. He said to Jack, "It's Nestor's call."

Jack held up his pocket watch trying to catch some light from the windows. "I can't even read my goddamn watch. He don't come pretty soon, I'm leaving. We aren't doing any business, those dead fools lying in the yard. I mean it, he don't start something, I quit. Come back when the sun's out."

Carl said, "You're going to Tulsa with me. You and that two-gun midget, if I can work it."

"You gonna arrest me? For what?" Like he couldn't believe it.

"There's seven people lying dead outside."

"Jesus Christ, what're you talking about--they're gonna burn down my place I didn't stop 'em. You saw 'em, with their goddamn torches?"

Sounding a bit frantic and had to calm himself down. Trying to think of a way to do Norm--counting on Nestor starting a gunfight to give him the chance--and now the goddamn marshal wanted to arrest him. Saying if he could work it. Telling him that. He glanced at Norm sitting on the stairs with his Winchester now across his knees. Then turned to Carl at the front door.

Carl pushing it open and Jack saw the colored boy, James, come in with his old-fashioned Colt pistol, hair lying flat on his head, his body glistening wet. Jack watched James give Carl a nod and now the two of them were walking past him, going to the kitchen. Jack followed behind saying, "You hear what I said? They're coming after me, with no right to do it's why I shot 'em. You know that." The marshal didn't comment on it.

In the kitchen James laid his pistol on the counter by the window where Franklin handed him a dish towel. James dried his face before looking up at Carl. "I see these two come in the thicket from the lot, like they been up to the house."

Franklin was shaking his head. "I'd of seen 'em."

"Now the other two come out of the shed," James said, "and they all behind it, the little fella with the pistolas on him asking the two questions. I can't hear what they saying, but the little fella, he seem pleased by what they told him."

Franklin said it again, "They came up to the house I'd of seen 'em."

"Or they were looking at the cars," Carl said, "see who might've left a key."

Jack got on that saying, "Nobody works here leaves a key in their car. You can't trust our patrons. They leave here drunk, with drunk intentions. The only one might've been the True Detective writer." Jack looked around. "Where is he?"

"He's upstairs," Norm said. "I 'magine talking to Elodie. He was asking me about her--can't believe that nice-looking girl's a whore. I said give her three bucks and see what she does for you." Norm stood in the doorway to the main room, turning his head to look at Heidi now, in there at the bar. Norm said to her, "How much he give you for loading his gun?" Now he turned and was looking at Jack Belmont in the kitchen.

Norm giving him a hard stare.

It told Jack his old buddy'd had enough of his fooling with Heidi and meant to do something about it. For a few seconds Jack thought of staring back at him, get it out in the open between them, but caught himself in time. Where was the advantage in doing that? No, Jack grinned like he'd thought of something and turned to Franklin at the window.

"Franklin? You hear the one, the woman of the house asks her colored girl Dinah if her husband is a good provider? Dinah says, 'Yessum, he's a good providah, all right, but I'se always scared dat niggah's gwine get caught at it.' "

Jack was still grinning, waiting for Franklin to laugh. Franklin nodded, looking like he was trying to smile. But now his gaze moved to the window again, Franklin saying, "They at the cars,"
h
is voice raised. "Sneaked up, getting in the one in the middle, the Packard. Backing out, behind the other cars now."

Carl, with him at the window, picked up the navy Colt from the counter, telling Franklin to fire through the windows of the cars in front, and they both began firing, not knowing if they were hitting the Packard or the ones in it. They paused and could hear the car's engine being throttled up, running high, and now they saw the black shape in the clear, streaking through the mist toward the trees on the far side of the lot and the drive that curved in from the road. But now it was slowing, starting to make a wide turn through the lot, churning up mud as the black Packard swung around to head toward the front of the roadhouse.

Son, at the wheel, began to brake coming on to the bodies lying in the empty parking lot. It turned Nestor from the windshield as the car came to a stop.

"What're you doing?" The man excited and showing it. "Roll over 'em, for Christ sake. They aren't gonna be any deader."

Son couldn't do it. He looked at the rearview mirror and told the Wycliff brothers to get out and pull the bodies out of the way, Nestor yelling at him, "Goddamn it, go on. You aren't gonna hit 'em all." Son shook his head. This time he turned to the Wycliffs in the backseat and told them to hurry up and get to it, drag 'em out of the way. The brothers felt the same as Son about running over the bodies. They hopped out of the car and started pulling them by the arms back toward the cars standing on the road. Nestor, watching through the windshield, quieter now, said, "You're giving 'em time to get ready for us."