The cypress swamp that the water flowed into was black, black, and the gum trees were full of sleeping swamp birds, blue herons, and long-legged cranes and turkey vultures and snowy egrets and kingfishers.
He said, “Down in New Orleans, guess what I did. You won't never guess it in a million years. I'll tell you. I slept in a bed same day a man died in it, didn't even change the sheets.”
Then, what the hail?
At first Solon didn't quite know what happened.
Rain was blowing into the El Camino.
Where'd all that durn wind and rain come from? That was the first thought that come into his head. He checked his window, see had he rolled it up real good.
Then he said, “Oh.”
He said, “Oh, I see. Bobo has done struck out on his own.”
He thought, Well, I swanee. Ain't that the limit? We's just sitting here having us a friendly conversation, and first
thing I find out, straight out of the clear blue, that boy ain't even been listening. I knowed he was awful quiet, I ought to been done remarked on the rudeness of him letting me do all the talking, and goddurn it all if I ain't feeling the least bit foolish right about now, finding out he wont even-down listening. And you know what else?âthat door opened just easy as pie, didn't it? I didn't even hear it click. Wont one bit of trouble getting out that door, was it? Well, it's a new car, it's to be expected. Ole Dexter his ownself could have jumped out that door any time he wanted to, if he'd of just thunk of it.
In a way it was like going to sleep for Solon, when he caught on that Bobo had made his move, left the car. It was like finally dropping off to sleep, when you're just so durn tired you just bout to die. What a relief. That's what Solon was thinking. It's over. Thank-you-jesus. It's all over.
Solon wondered about Bobo, out there in the rain, in that gravel. Sharp rocks he's running on, just got to be. He hoped it was easier on his feet than it looked like, sho did. He spected that road gravel had clay in it, he spec ted Bobo had done sunk up over his shoes in red clay. First step, one shoe sucked off, next step, other shoe. That's what Solon was thinking. Cain't be no fun, dying without your shoes on, rocks on your heels, mud like quicksand, rainwater standing up on that bloody little meat-raw nappy
head of his like pearls, like a crown of jewels. Got to be uncomfortable, sho does, even for a nigger.
And you want to know something else Solon was about to mention to that boy before he showed this unexpected rude streak? He was about to say to him that, in a way, he wont sure quite how, Bobo reminded Solon a little bit of Jesus. Well, it was a compliment, if you looked at it in the right way.
It wont Jesus, exactly, that Bobo put him in mind of. It was one of them little plaster of Paris Jesuses, like you see sometimes riding up on the dashboard of a car. Now why do you reckon Bobo's gone remind Solon of a plastic Jesus, colored child like he was and Jesus white as the day is long? Solon didn't claim to have no analytical mind, he just meant to pay the boy a compliment, if he wanted to take it that way.
Seem like there was a song about plastic Jesus, wont they? Solon looked around in his head for the tune. He sang,
I don't care if it rains or freezes.
He couldn't remember the rest. Something about a plastic Jesus, though.
Well, sure, that was it. Bobo the Plastic Jesus, sho nuff. Solon wondered had anybody else ever noticed the resemblance.
So Solon sho did hate for Bobo to be out there behind the truck, scared half Out of his wits and cutting his feet
on sharp gravel, just because he was taking him out to kill him. It was a shame, a crime and a shame.
And dark out there, too, don't you spect? Pore thang, blind in that Delta darkness, don't you just know he is, cain't see a blessed thing, don't know where he's running to. Breathing like a bellows, like somebody tearing up clean rags in his chest.
That's what Solon thought, was thinking. Got to be awful for the boy, ready to breathe his last breath like he was, sho does, jess awful.
When's he gone realize it's over, Solon was thinking. When he gets around back to the tailgate? When he's laying out in a ditch, or a field, or up inside a hollowed-out gum stump, waiting for me to come find him? When he realizes they ain't no protection against this big pistol, down under the car seat, that well's to been born in this hand of mine?
Okay, so when the first bullet hit Solon in the face, it took him a minute to figure out just what the hail had done happened. Well, it was so durn fast, see, that was the thing. First he just sat there musing, like he was, and friendly thoughts, too, sho was, he liked the boy, now that he'd done spent some time talking with him, getting to know him.
When the bullet split his jaw open and knocked out some teeth and cut off the end of his tongue, he wondered if he didn't look to Bobo a little bit silly, maybe a little self-satisfied,
thinking he was so well in control of the situation. He wondered if he didn't look to Bobo like he was saying, “Huh? What? Who done shot me in the face?” It was embarrassing, Solon didn't have no trouble admitting that much. It took him a minute or two to collect his wits, on account of being so durn surprised.
What Solon reckoned was, the boy must of found that durn pistol that Solon throwed out the car window, Bobo must of, that's what Solon finally started to figure out. Bobo must of had his sights on that pistol all the time, seen it glinting some place out there in the black darkness, in the weeds, Lord knows how, not even a nickel-plated pistol, and no moon at all, but he must of done that, somehow another, seen it out there in the weeds, or the ditch, and me sitting up here in this sissified car talking about fishing poles and boiled peanuts, and well don't I feel like a solid gold fool. I must be blushing, bound to be.
Up under the front seat, that's where the heavy pistol was laying, the German Luger. Solon had tucked it there when he got back in the truck at Uncle and Auntee's house. He reached down and touched it with his hand.
The second shot flashed out, back behind him, just over Solon's left shoulder, and this one hit him in the neck. He slumped down in the seat.
The third shot hit the door of the truck, and missed Solon altogether.
The next shot was worse, didn't even hit the truck, that boy's losing his touch.
Then the next one hit him high on the left side, and Solon thought, “Well, now I know what it sounds like when a rib breaks. It sounds like a banjo string, real bad out of tune.” This was the shot that turned him right over on the seat, flop.
Shock, it's not such a bad thing, really, shock ain't, medical terminology, you know, what you all-time hear about somebody going into when they get hurt real bad. It's an overused term, akshully, shock is. Somebody's all-time declaring, “I like to done went into shock!” Shock's not no mystery, though. It's about like most any other illness you might be unlucky enough to get. It ain't so bad. You don't feel nothing at all, once the shock gets going real good. The blood pressure, it goes way down, all of a sudden. Body temperature, the same. Breathing gets real slow, heartbeat, slow as molasses, liver function, kidney function, not much, I'm telling you. It's a way of protecting you from pain, you ought to be grateful for shock, don't be complaining to me about it, shock is your friend.
The problem with shock, though, see, is you can die of it, shock gets serious, after a while.
Solon, though, he didn't go into shock. Some do, some don't. Unpredictable, see, shock is. Solon always knowed there was some good reason for having that lightweight
little peashooter pistol of his. You can get shot a half-dozen times with that durn little popgun and you still won't go into shock.
Different story, now, with a heavy pistol, big caliber handgun like a Luger, sho now. You get shot one or two times with that sapsucker, you gone go into shock whether you want to or not.
Solon didn't look too durn good, with his teeth and tongue missing, the way they suddenly was, he wasn't denying thatâbut he didn't go into shock.
In fact, he got off a few shots his ownself, right before he passed out, in the direction of the flame that shot out of the little gun barrel, out there in the dark swamp, in the weeds with the rain still falling in sheets.
Long time after this night was over and done with, Bobo's mama, up in Chicago, out by the viaduct where the Blood Rangers wore berets and wrote their names in spraypaint on the viaduct, she wondered who Bobo was thinking about that night, those couple of minutes there in the swamp-grass, with bullets flying in all directions.
She wondered was he thinking about her, his mama, who raised him up and loved him and wiped his rear end and gave him some titty when he was a hongry baby, and fed him some Gerber's cereal and beets, and took him to the doctor when he was sick, and when he needed his booster shots, and looked all over Chicago for some little books to
read to him that had pictures of colored children in them, and went over his spelling words with him before the test, and taught him how to hold his fork and his knife, and cried when some sassy little bitch wearing a skirt with pink bows all the way around the hem wouldn't dance with him at the Valentine's party in the school cafeteria because he talked with a teeny-tiny little lisp.
Probably not, boy-child like Bobo, spote like he was, his daddy dead and gone. Bobo's mama reckoned her boy probably wasn't thinking about her a-tall, even though she was the one who would live a long time after this and would say words with meanings that her friends didn't have no way of knowing what they meant to her, like, “Be sure to put the milk back in the refrigerator so it don't spoil,” or “Somebody take that bone away from the dog.”
Bobo's mama thought Bobo was probably thinking about his daddy, who he never knew. Whose big gold ring he was wearing on his finger, that dark night among the gum stumps, in the rain, when the first bullet knocked out his eye and the second one dislocated his shoulder.
F
ROM THE
eye that Solon's bullet had knocked from its socket and that hung now upon the child's moon-dark cheek in the insistent rain, the dead boy saw the world as if his seeing were accompanied by an eternal music, as living boys, still sleeping, unaware, in their safe beds, might hear singing from unexpected throats one morning when they wake up, the wind in a willow shade, bream bedding in the shallows of a lake, a cottonmouth hissing on a limb, the hymning of beehives, of a bird's nest, the bray of the iceman's mule, the cry of herons or mermaids in the swamp, and rain across wide water. In this music the demon eye saw what Bobo could not see in life, transformations, angels and devils, worlds invisible to him before death.
He saw Solon wake up in the front seat of the truck spitting blood. He saw him struggle to sit up, to get his bearings, clear his head. He saw him leave the truck, limping in the rain with the heavy pistol in his hand, a bullet in his left arm, teeth missing. Bobo watched him check the body in the grass, Bobo's own dead body, the body seeing its own murderer from a demon and immortal eye.
He saw him turn away, enter the truck, drive away again, careless across the spillway waters, which foamed up white
against the wheels of the little truck, and the running board and the door with one bullet hole in the glass and two more in the metal, those heavy, tuneful, humorous waters that tugged at the little truck and tried to tip it into the stream and did not succeed, though for fractions of a second the truck rose up from the dam on dark liquidity and was supported only by swamp, the second time today Solon had walked on water.
Through the demon eye he saw Solon, tense behind the steering wheel, holding the truck on its true course until he reached the safety of the other side, rain still falling like pennies from heaven, dirty copper, the headlights, demon eyes themselves, laying beams like gangplanks on a pirate ship.
He saw Solon, a few miles further down the road, switch off the lights and ease the little truck into a farmyard, across a cattle-gap and through a fence, taking a chance on getting stuck in the mud out by the barn. Solon was stealing a weight, a gin fan, and a length of barbed wire to tie the fan to Bobo's neck, to sink the body in the stream.
Oh, there was music in the swamp, the irrigation pumps in the rice paddies, the long whine and complaint, the wheezy, breathy asthma of the compress, the suck and bump and clatter like great lungs as the air was squashed out and the cotton was wrapped in burlap and bound
with steel bands into six-hundred-pound bales, the barking of a collie-rat, a swamp-elf singing in a cabbage patch, an old man clogging on a bridge, geese arriving from Canada, a parrot ringing like a cash register, mosquitoes like violins, the wump-wump-wump-wump-wump of cropdusters, mourning doves in the walnut trees.
Solon let down the tailgate of the El Camino. He knew just where to find the gin fan, back in the tool area of the barn. It was a big, greasy, rusted fan, out of the Quito gin. It was going to be heavy, a hundred pounds or more, he was glad he had the El Camino. He'd hate to have to put that big motherfucker in the trunk of Poindexter's Cadillac, especially with a bullet in one arm and a serious dental problem. If he was in the Cadillac, he'd just have to call the whole thing off.
Solon had seen the fan when he was stealing refund gas from the farmer's tank a year or more ago. If he had had good sense he would have waited to kill Bobo until after they had this fan in the truck. Bobo could have done the heavy lifting, big boy like he was. Or they could have picked it up together, anyhow. It wont logical for a man Solon's age to be lifting a hundred pounds of steel when there was a strapping young man like Bobo nearby.
Bobo, dead, back at the spillway in the rain, where he waited for Solon, could see all this through the demon eye
upon his cheek, without fear or anger, or even a sense of injustice, but only with an appreciation of the dark and magical and evil world in which he had been killed.