The Two-Bear Mambo (17 page)

"Can't help myself," Cantuck said. "I just plain don't like Reynolds. I don't like my secretary either."

"You don't like them, fire them," I said.

"Not that easy. Charlene needs the job. She's got them kids. And Reynolds, I didn't hire him in the first place. Town pushed him on me. Actually, Brown pushed him on me through the Mayor. That's the way politics are played, so I ended up taking him on. He's good enough at what he does, but he ain't all that fair about things. He's crafty, but he lets personal get in the way."

"You think Brown has Reynolds in his pocket?" I asked.

"Not his front pocket, right next to his dick, but his hip pocket maybe. Mainly Reynolds is just Reynolds. He does what he wants 'cause he wants to, and a lot of what he wants ain't all that good."

"Certainly nice of you to drop by and tell us all this, Chief," I said. "Why?"

Cantuck considered a moment. He laid his hands on the back of the chair and leaned back. As he did, a shaft of red sunlight poked through the curtain and landed on his left eye. He jerked his head from the light and leaned forward again, said, "Reckon I should have taken this colored gal's missin' more serious."

"And maybe you want us to feel so warm toward you we'll go home and forget all this mess. Just leave it to you. Trust you to do what's right."

"Could be," Cantuck said.

Bacon brought coffee in, two cups at a time. One for himself. He stood by the television and sipped his.

"What about all those guys jumped us?" I asked.

"Your word against theirs," Cantuck said. "Draighten and Ray say they got into it with you two on their own. Claim there wasn't no one else involved but them, and it was just y'all caused the ruckus."

"You believe that?" I said.

"Don't matter what I believe. We get through sortin' it all out, it'll come down to you two fought them two, and it'll be your word, and Maude's and her boys against all them other folks who saw it and say it didn't happen way you say it did."

"What if we press charges?"

"They'll press charges back."

"So what's next?"

"We put your asses in your car and send you home."

Leonard and I decided to wear our own clothes. Tim went out to Leonard's car and brought in our suitcases, then asked Bacon to drive him home. Bacon left with Tim, and I went into the bedroom and closed the door and changed clothes and helped Leonard dress. While I held him under the arm and he painfully slipped into his pants, he said, "You think the Chief is telling it the way it is?"

"I don't know," I said. I helped Leonard sit on the side of the bed, then folded up the clothes Bacon had given us and placed them on a chair.

I helped him into a shirt. He buttoned it slowly. He didn't look at me when he said, "I'm glad we're going home."

"Me too."

"There was a time when I thought I couldn't be broken, but I don't know now. I hear a sound, I get tense. I hear it twice, I damn near shit myself. I think it's that bunch coming down on me, all of them, and I figure right now, if I was solid and sound and they came, I might just ball up like a baby and let them have me."

"You wouldn't, Leonard. It's not in you."

"I wouldn't have thought that just a day or so ago, but I think now I've just been lucky."

"No one survives all you've been through and calls themselves lucky. Your problem is you've lost your boyfriend, taken a damn good beating, and everybody saw your dick. Not to mention you cut a fart and pissed on yourself."

"Thanks for reminding me."

"Trust me. You'll get over it."

"You comin' back here, Hap?"

"Come on, Leonard, let's go."

"Hap?"

"I don't know."

The Chief and I loaded Leonard into the back seat of the car with a blanket we borrowed from Bacon, and as a last thought, the Chief gave us his thermos. I took it inside and the Chief came in behind me. I poured what was left of Bacon's coffee into the thermos.

I said, "You wouldn't happen to have some sandwiches, would you, Chief?"

"You boys hit the road, and don't come back," he said. "You were fortunate this time. I see you again, and you get to stay at the jail a while. Like maybe till I retire."

"Been nice visiting your little town, Chief."

I took the thermos and went out to the car, the Chief walking behind me.

The sky was dark again. All the red had bled out. The Chief said, "You start now, you won't get home late, and you might beat the storm. It's coming, but it'll be at your back, you don't fuck around. You've got a full tank of gas, courtesy of me, and you got hot coffee and I don't want the thermos back. I don’t want anything that'll have to do with me seeing you again. Comprende?"

"But we will get a Christmas card from you next year, won't we?"

"Sit out by the mailbox and wait on it. And, son, Happy New Year."

I opened the car door and tossed the thermos inside. A pillow had been laid across the ripped-up driver's seat, and I put my ass on that and started the car and turned on the lights.

As I backed out of the drive, the Chief lifted his fingers and waved bye-bye.

I drove until I reached the highway, then pulled over beside the road.

"What's up?" Leonard said.

"One minute," I said.

I got out and paused to look at the sky. It was dark all over, but behind us there was a greater wad of blackness, like soot-stained cotton, and it was balling and twisting and tumbling our way. The wind was cold and wet and smelled of lightning.

I opened the trunk of the car, got a handgun and the strapped Winchester and made sure they were loaded, brought them around, laid them in the front seat as I climbed behind the wheel.

"Thought you didn't like guns," Leonard said.

"Today, I'm trying to be more open and friendly toward them.”

"Let me have one for back here," he said. "As a pacifier."

I gave him the revolver and he put it in his waistband. I patted the stock of the Winchester on the seat beside me, said, "Good boy. Stay. Good boy."

As I drove, the sky grew black as the bottom of an ancient outhouse. The trees alongside the highway became little more than an outline and appeared to be sketched from charcoal. The storm behind us was rolling faster than I was, and I could feel it as it descended on us like a heavy, alien cloud. Rain splashed the windshield and the tires began to sing in the water; a nasty little song that hinted of blown tires, skidding machinery, and twisting metal.

It had been hard enough to see with the cracked windshield, but now, with the rain coming down the way it was, it was damn near impossible. I slowed, leaned forward, tried to make out the yellow line so I could hold the car steady. I really should have pulled over, but I didn't want to. Not until I had us and Grovetown many miles apart.

Another few miles and I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw lights. Then behind those lights, others. The lights were moving toward us pretty fast, much too fast for common sense in weather like this.

I watched the lights in the rearview mirror when I wasn't struggling to hold Leonard's junker on the road, and they were closing with a determined pace. I felt my bowels weaken, then the car was filled with the light. A big dark pickup was riding right on our bumper, so close, at a glance you might have thought I was towing it. The truck fell back, charged forward, fell back, broke around us and passed.

I glanced at the truck as it went around me. It was big and black and souped-up and rode on oversized tires that splattered the water on the highway with power and grace. You got the feeling that goddamn truck could ride on the surface of a lake. The windows were tinted and it had grown quite dark, so I couldn't see anyone inside. The pickup glided around us quickly, then way ahead, and I watched as its taillights bounced out of sight.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, saw the other set of lights moving forward, and there were lights behind those lights. I looked at Leonard. He was lying on his side, looking at me. He said, "Trouble?"

"I don't know."

I dipped Leonard's junker down into a drop in the road and a fog thick as the wool on a sheep's back clouded over the windshield. I inched forward and out of the rise, and at the top of it the fog thinned, and directly in front of me, pulled crossways across the highway, was the big black pickup, the lights poking toward the woods and a marshy pond festooned with dried weeds and cattails. There wasn't even a half lane between the nose of the truck and the marsh.

Behind me one set of lights rushed forward like a falling pair of meteors, rode my bumper. The other set filled the passing lane.

I wasn't going backwards, and I couldn't go forward. I thought about ramming the truck, but figured I tried that I'd move the truck all right, but what was left of me and Leonard wouldn't have been enough to pack a gnat's ass.

I decided I had only one avenue, and that was to swing wide left in front of one set of lights, try and race around the pickup, glance a blow off of it, get back on some free and straight highway.

Temporary fix. I managed that, then I could gun Leonard's junker all the way up to sixty, if the radiator didn't blow out through the hood or the tires didn't pop. That would keep us ahead of that souped-up truck for almost ten seconds.

One cliff at a time.

"Hang on, buddy!" I yelled at Leonard, and tried to put my foot through the floor. The car didn't exactly leap, but it surged a little. I saw the driver's-side door open on the pickup and a man wearing a white sheetlike outfit and a hood stepped onto the highway. He had a shotgun in his hands and he lifted it at me.

I jerked the wheel to the left as the air exploded with a sound like thunder, but it was shotgun thunder. Pellets tore through the black plastic side of the windshield and carried it away. I heard Leonard cuss and I cussed, then I was going around the front end of the truck, hitting gravel. There was a noise like a cherry bomb going off, and less than a second later I knew the left front tire had blown. The car made a weave, and I tried to turn in the direction of the skid, but couldn't figure out which way it was skidding, then—

—we were airborne. Went way up and out toward the marsh and the car hit the water and the water parted and came up high and washed through the windshield and cattails leaped out and away and the car rode up as if it might coast the water, then went down again, dipped its nose slightly forward. Water lapped through the windshield, over the dash and sloshed my legs.

Leonard said, "Go for it, Hap. Get out of here."

I climbed over the back seat and grabbed Leonard, tried to open a door. Couldn't. Water pressure.

"Let me go, Hap."

The car dipped forward again and more water came in, and Leonard said, "On second thought, drag my ass out of here."

"We're going through the windshield," I said.

Leonard helped all he could, and I got him tugged over the seat, into the front seat, which was half filled with water. I got hold of the rifle, which had fallen onto the floorboard, and used it to knock out what was left of the flimsy windshield, flung the strap over my head and shoulder as the car took a nosedive.

I got Leonard by the coat collar, pulled him straight through the windshield, and we went down, down into that cold, dark murk, and for a moment I couldn't figure if I was trying to break the surface or diving for the bottom, then realized the truth, pushed off from the car with my feet and changed direction, fought the tug of the sinking car.

I pulled at Leonard, but couldn't get much movement. He was too heavy and not able to do much. I actually considered letting him go, then tightened my grip and decided it was both or nothing. The darkness above me bloomed with light, and I broke the surface, yanked Leonard up behind me.

Leonard's head from the mouth up was all that came out of the water, and he bobbed like a cork. We gasped for air. The rain pounded on us. It was still dark, darker than before, in fact, jet as night and the air had a stench to it. Rotting vegetation, fish, mud. It was a strong, almost overwhelming reek activated by the blowing wind and the rain.

I readjusted my grip on Leonard, started to swim toward shore, then there was a crack and the water jumped like a frog leaping.

I glanced at the highway, the source of the lights, realized the lights were the headlamps of the pickup and the two cars that had been behind us. They had parked in such a way to use their head beams as spotlights. I realized too that someone had just tried to clip me with a thirty-ought-six.

There were several white-gowned and hooded shapes near the lights, and they had rifles pointed at us. Then that damn shotgun roared and the water popped all around us and a pellet went into my cheek, and almost simultaneously the sinking car created a delayed suction, and we were pulled back down into the depths.

Only I hadn't realized the depths weren't that deep.

We hadn't dropped far below the water when my feet hit the back of the car, which was nose down in the muddy bottom. I pushed off and swam laterally, got into a tangle of weeds and vines, panicked, nearly lost the rifle, floundered and split the surface.

As I bobbed above the water, gasping at the cold, throat-searing air, clinging to Leonard, I decided if I was gonna die I wanted a bullet in the head, not water in my lungs. Even though I was a decent enough swimmer, the idea of drowning terrified me, and it seemed nearly drowning was something that happened to me on a regular basis. Leonard once said if there was two feet of water within a hundred miles of me I'd find some way to fall nose forward into it. And probably take him with me.

We had come up in a thicket of dried weeds and cattails, and nobody had ventilated our skulls. It was starting to rain harder, and the rain came down in chilled pills and moved the water around us. I could see the car lights through the weeds, and they were hazy from the rain, and I could see the hooded assholes moving down close to the bank, looking around, chattering like squirrels. I realized they couldn't see us, at least for the moment.

They were fanning out to our left and right, around the marshy pond, and the pond wasn't all that big. I knew pretty soon they'd spot us, and when they did, it would be as easy for them as shooting decoy ducks.

My cheek stung where the pellet had gone in, and I was already a mess to begin with. My legs hurt from treading and I was so cold, my balls felt as if they had crawled up inside me for warmth.

But one good thing, I wasn't thinking nearly as much about all the pain the beating had given me. I was too concerned with freezing, drowning, not getting my head scattered like a rotten pumpkin. Just like they say, every cloud has a silver lining.

Leonard looked weak as a pup with distemper. He couldn't really tread. I was holding him up and it was about to do me in. I tightened my grip on his collar, pushed backwards with my legs, silently as possible, backstroked and dragged Leonard with me. It was a hard go, and I was swallowing that foul water and I almost decided to lose the rifle to make going easier, then thought better of it.

The weeds around me parted and rustled and I heard a voice out near the highway, then there were a couple of shots. They popped next to Leonard's head, and I looked at him. He was all right, just spitting water.

"Hang in there, buddy," I said. "They can't see us, just the weeds moving. They're taking pot shots."

He shook his head a little, cocked an eyebrow. "Ain't this somethin' for the scrapbook?"

I kicked on back, and pretty soon my feet were touching the bottom. I pushed up, rolled over and scuttled onto shore behind a blind of weeds and cane and cattails, dragging Leonard with me. When I had him on shore, I found I couldn't make my hand let go of his jacket; it was cold and cramped. I had to use my other hand to free it, work the fingers, press my thumb into the center of my palm and squeeze, try to bring my paw back to life.

I took a gander at Leonard. He lay on his back, shivering. He turned his head toward me. His teeth chattered. He said, "Hap, that goddamn Cantuck. He set this up. He sold us down the shit river. And I'm mad. Real mad."

I reached out, patted his shoulder. I thought that's right, Leonard. Get mad. Real goddamn mad, 'cause right now, that's all we got.

"Still got the revolver?" I asked.

He pushed his wet coat aside and lifted his shirt. The revolver was still in his waistband. He pulled it free and poured water out of the barrel.

"All right," I said. I looked behind us, trying to take in our position. The roots of great willows and oaks grew down from the bank behind us and wound their way into the water and knotted near our feet. Some of the roots were wrist-thick, and some of the thicker ones came down from where the bank was higher than where we lay. Above all this, falling down on the water like a blot of ink, was the great darkness of the woods. I was glad for that, but not ecstatic. Darkness cannot deflect bullets. A shotgun can clean out darkness as easy as light.

Out through the weeds I could see their car lights. Shadows, like goblins, moved in front of the lights. To our left I could hear someone tromping along the marshy water's edge, someone about as sneaky as a bull rhino on its way to mate.

Leonard very softly said, "Use the rifle. You know how you can shoot, Hap. I know you don't want to hurt nobody, but you know how you can shoot."

I squatted and hooked Leonard under the arms and got back in the water with him, pulled him toward where the roots were thickest. When I got him there, I whispered, "I can't pull you on shore far enough, get you hid in time for them not to see us. I go by myself, I can make it faster and I can get their attention and pull them away from here. Stay hid. No arguments."

"Hap. Use the rifle."

I shoved Leonard through a split in the roots, and the roots and the muddy overhang and the darkness from the trees and the blackness of his skin concealed him well.

We squeezed hands and I pushed away from him, scooped mud from the marshy bottom and rubbed it on my face and the backs of my hands as I went. I got hold of roots and pulled myself out of the water, crouched and tried to go along the edge of the bank quietly where there were some reeds and trees for camouflage.

But I wasn't as quiet as I hoped. I sloshed as I moved and my shoes made sucking sounds. I slung the rifle off my shoulder, backed into the woods about even of where Leonard hid in the roots just below the bank. I got positioned just as around a row of high reeds came a big bulky shape in a muddy white outfit and hood. The goblin was armed with a shotgun.

I thought, if you're trying to be sneaky, you dumb sonofabitch, you need to lose that Kluxer suit. It stands out like a white tent in a bombing raid.

He came along crouched. As he neared I felt sick and weak and scared. I could have shot him in the head effortless. He wasn't expecting me to have a gun, and he didn't know where I was. Maybe he thought I had drowned or was somewhere in the water. Maybe he thought he found me, killing me would be easy as stomping an ant on a piece of stale bread.

I waited on him, keeping an eye and ear out for others and not seeing or hearing them. When he was alongside me, I stepped out from the shadows of the trees quick-like and brought the Winchester stock around and hit him hard as I could in the side of the head. He had seen me move a second sooner than I hoped, so he reacted enough that the blow was a glancing blow and didn't knock him out, but it was still a good hit and he lost his peaked hood. It flew into the water, and in that instant, even in the dark, I could see it was the big bastard from the cafe that I had called Bear. Ray, his name was.

He stumbled toward the bank and the mud crumbled beneath his big feet, and one leg went off the edge of the bank so hard the other leg was forced to bend quickly to try to hold his weight. It couldn't. I heard his knee snap. The big bastard screamed, fell into the water, still clutching the shotgun. He floundered and splashed and started to yell, but suddenly the yell was cut, and I knew he had fallen near Leonard and Leonard had reached out and got him. Probably had that goddamn choke hold on him he did so well. Leonard could go either way with it. He wanted, he could end your life by strangling you, or he could use another version, shut off the blood supply to the brain. You'd be out quick that way and not wake up too soon, if ever, and you'd never know you'd been got, because it didn't take any strength to make either choke work, just skill and determination.

I slipped back into the woods and went along the trees, clinging to the shadows. The lights through the reeds and cattails seemed to die at the trees, and when I looked back at the marsh the lights made the water look dark blue, as if it had been dyed, and the rain moved the blue and it was oddly mesmerizing and beautiful.

I found an oak with a fork in it, slung the rifle over my shoulder, climbed up and eased onto a big limb that went way out to where I had a good clear look at the marsh and the highway beyond. The leaves were all gone off the oak, but the limb was thick and there were two big limbs jutting out from it like a Y and there were some little limbs too, and I figured they'd hide me pretty good if someone wasn't expecting me to be ten feet up.

I hooked my legs around the big branch and rested an elbow in the Y and sighted down the barrel. I knew even in the dark, if I wanted to, I could shoot clean across the marsh and give a frog a hemorrhoidectomy. No brag. Just fact.

There was one hooded figure over by the truck, waiting, using the rifle to lean on. He was probably there to make sure someone didn't come along and run the hell over the cars and the truck. I slung water out of the rifle barrel, hoped it would still shoot, then lined his head up in the sights. I figured I splattered his brains all over the place, the rest of them, wherever they were, might opt to head to the house, but I couldn't do it. It would have been an easy shot for me, but I couldn't do it.

Then I saw lights on the highway and the hooded man by the truck turned and looked in that direction, and I wondered, what you gonna do now, Bubba? How you gonna move the truck and two cars? How you going to explain this? Then, I thought, oh shit, he might not explain anything. He might just start shooting. He might decide not to leave witnesses.

The car came into view and slowed, and I could see now that it was Chief Cantuck's patrol car, and I thought, you double-talkin', big-balled sonofabitch. You set us up. You got us on the road, then you had us followed out, knowing our old wreck wasn't going to make much time. Had us followed because we were on to the fact that you hung that guy in jail or had it done, and you didn't want us to spread the word. That's why we hadn't been charged. That's why the snow job.

Cantuck stopped the car and got out. Across the marsh, floating on the night air, I heard him say: "You might as well go on and throw that rifle down, Leroy. I know who you are and know them other two cars, and I ain't gonna let you go on with things."

"It's a nigger," Leroy said, "an out-of-town nigger. And he's got that nigger lover with him."

"Put the gun down," Cantuck said, and I saw his hand go to where his holster hung.

I thought, now wait a minute, what's this? Then I saw to the left of the pond one of the Kluxers was sneaking around some reeds, and he squatted with his rifle across his knees, thinking he was hid. I saw to the right of the marsh that another Kluxer, or whatever those bastards called themselves, was easing up on that side. He slid into the woods behind a tree. I knew as soon as I saw him, even under that wet sheet, that it was Elephant. He was big and had an ass that poked out behind like . . . well, what Leonard had said. Like he was pulling a trailer.

"Throw down the gun," I heard Cantuck say.

The man at the truck said, "Can't do that, Chief. Can't go back with you. None of us can."

"I think you oughta," Cantuck said, and at that same moment the man by the truck used the toe of his shoe to kick the stock of the rifle up, tried to catch and pull it under his arm for action, like he'd seen in some cowboy movie, but Cantuck had seen the same movie. He drew his pistol and shot Leroy through the head and I thought I saw a shadow jump across the front of Leroy's hood but realized it was blood, then Leroy was down, on his back, his heels pushing at the highway, pushing so hard he went up under the truck about a foot and lay still, legs spread, knees up, as if accepting a lover.

Another shot cut through the night, and I realized too late it was the man at the left of the pond. He stood up and fired and the shot hit the outside driver's mirror on Cantuck's car and glass leaped from it and Cantuck let out a yell and jerked his head so hard his hat flew off. He stumbled back, grabbed his eye and fell down. The Kluxer fired again, hit the back of the car, near where Cantuck lay writhing, holding his eye.

I repositioned the rifle, sighted the shooter, and fired. My shot hit where I meant for it to hit. The peaked hood. It ripped it off his head, knocked it back and away.

The de-hooded shooter couldn't quite place where my shot had come from. He shuffled left and right, and across the pond I heard Elephant yell, "Goddamn, Kevin, you shot Cantuck."

Kevin, a middle-aged dark-haired man, was crouched, twisting left and right, trying to locate me. He said, "Shut up. That last shot was at me."

Elephant yelled, "What?"

"Shut up," Kevin yelled back, and I got a bead on the stock of his rifle, fired, knocked the gun back into him. He dove for the dirt and I put up a line of fire around him, snapping three shots near his head, making the dirt fly. He lay facedown, the rifle in one outstretched hand, the rain pounding down on him. He didn't look like he had any intention of moving.

While I was so engaged, Elephant came up from his side and located me. He fired a shot that shattered the limb I was resting my rifle on, and though the slug missed me, the sudden impact caused me to lose my balance and fall out of the tree. As I hit, the Winchester bounced away from me and fell into the wet leaves.

I was going to make for it when I heard the cocking of a rifle, looked around, saw Elephant standing just inside the line of trees. He had me in his sights. The hood was wetly plastered to his face, and I could see the outline of his nose and mouth beneath the material, clinging to him like wet baking dough.

He reached up and swept the hood off his head. He was grinning at me. "You nigger-lovin' piece of shit. I'm sending you to the devil."

I was still on one knee, waiting for the end, when suddenly there was a roar and a flash of red light. Elephant seemed to take a football kick at the sky with his right leg, only the leg was twisted funny and it went out longer than a leg ought to. The kick pulled his ass out from under him, and he came down with a scream that made my spine knot up.

Behind him, lying on the shore, looking as if he had just crawled through hell with the lights off, was Leonard. He was lying on the ground, holding Bear's shotgun.