Hey, you,” Peewee said. “What the hell’s your name again?”
The guy named Kyle Hazlewood shot Uncle Peewee a look from the back of the van and said, “My goddamn name is Kyle. I told you that fifteen times. Don’t you forget it again.”
“OK, Kyle,” Peewee said, sitting behind the wheel of his van, staring up the twisty gravel road to the house they were about to rob. “You sit here in the yard. Me and my nephew are gonna truck on up to the house. You better call if you see anything. I don’t want Johnny Law anywhere near my ass.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Kyle said. “Hold on one fucking minute. That wasn’t the deal. That wasn’t what we’d discussed with Mickey. The deal was you and me was going to the house. The flunky kid can sit down here in the van with his dick in his hand. That don’t take no special talent.”
Chase Clanton had had about enough of this bastard’s low talk. Dick in his hand? What kind of talk was that? He looked at the skinny dude, with that thin-ass beard, and said, “You hold on one dang minute. I ain’t no one’s flunky. I’m a fucking apprentice. If I’m going to be doing my apprentice shit, I got to watch my dang uncle break into this house. I got to see him bust this safe. Ain’t no apprenticing if I’m sitting in a van. Any bastard can do that.”
The fella Kyle raised up, tall as he could in the back of the van, and for a good moment Chase was pretty sure the old monkey was going to start swinging. But instead, moved on up to the front seat of the van, parked in the far corner of the big lumber mills. They’d snipped open the chain lock on the front gate and hung a new lock in its place. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a bitch.” He started to kick the shit out of the dashboard with his work boots, kicking so damn hard that the glove box opened up.
“What the hell?” Peewee said. “Shit, man. You’re fucking up my vehicle.”
“Y’all are going to fuck this up,” he said. “I’m gone. I’m out of here. I’ll walk home. I done my part. I got the guard drunk as a goat.”
“Wait,” Peewee said. “Wait. Hold on one damn minute. If you’re gonna be all pissed-off and shit about things, you can just go up there with us. I don’t expect it’s going to take long at all. We head on up together.”
“Someone’s supposed to watch the van.”
“If someone takes note, we’re screwed anyway,” Peewee said. “Right? I mean, we’re gonna have to haul ass on foot. If we got Johnny Law rooting around, I think a better place would be up on that hill. We got problems, we take that back road that ole Mickey was telling us about.”
“Leave the kid here.”
“Boy’s right,” Peewee said. “He’s supposed to watch what I do. We work together. He’s a fucking assistant. He knows my tools, my methods. Like a doctor and a nurse. It’s all precision work. You wouldn’t get it.”
“Shit,” Kyle said, the man not buying it. Chase started wondering why the hell this old dude Kyle was here anyway, other than babysitting him and Uncle Peewee. He offered not a damn thing to this job. He had no skills, no talents, other than bitching about who was going to watch a fucked-up old van in the lumberyard.
“We all go,” Peewee said, lighting up a smoke, fanning out the match. “All right? You all right with that?”
Chase didn’t figure on anyone noticing the van anyway, the whole lumberyard like a damn maze of logs piled up five stories high, and long metal buildings, open at both ends, where they kept the milled timber. They’d parked the van outside the building, but Chase didn’t see any reason why they couldn’t hide the vehicle inside. Uncle Peewee was right. You needed a man to watch the road, and he and the older fella could take turns outside the house. Watching the road would be a hell of a lot better up on that hill, looking down on the highway.
They backed up the van into the metal building and all piled out, night coming on cold and hard. Uncle Peewee opened up the back of the van and waited for Chase to grab the big bag full of screwdrivers, pliers, and crowbars. It was heavy, maybe twenty-five pounds, and it fell solid on his back as he lifted it up on his shoulder. Peewee crushed out his cigarette. Kyle lit up one himself, not being able to hold off until they got up the damn hill. The man smelled like a fucking ashtray.
“Hold up,” Peewee said, plucking the cigarette out of the man’s mouth and snatching Chase up by the front of his coat. He pulled them both into the shadow of the long building just as a car showed up at the mouth of the opposite opening and flashed a spotlight, crazy and wild, all over the timber.
The car—Chase now seeing it was a dang patrol car—kept on moving, not driving into the building but circling on out, moving toward a back gate somewhere.
“I thought you changed up the lock?” Kyle said. “What the hell?”
“This yard got four gates,” he said. “I can’t change ’em all. They didn’t see us.”
“How do you know?” Kyle said.
“You see his flashers?”
“No,” Kyle said.
“Then he didn’t see us,” Peewee said. “Come on. Let’s go. We can see it all up top.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Chase said.
“Smart going,” Peewee said. “Now carry my shit on up that road.”
• • •
The extra girls, hired on just for the annual New Year’s Brews and Titties bash at the Booby Trap, had been trucked in from the Indian casino in the county south of Tibbehah. A ruthless old redheaded bitch by the name of Fannie Hathcock ran the whores down there and had been agreeable with Johnny Stagg on making a deal. Stagg could have a dozen girls who knew how to work the pole and a man’s rod for five hundred each. Stagg was pretty sure that Hathcock would be sending along her second-stringers as always but was pleasantly surprised to see a crop of not-bad-looking Mexicans and white girls unload off an old yellow bus he’d sent down, TIBBEHAH COUNTY SCHOOLS written along its side.
Ringold had driven the rig. He got down after the flow of girls walked across the blacktop, through the sleet starting to fall, and into the warmth and red light of the club. He had on a leather coat with the collar up, a green Carhartt knit cap on his bald head.
“You sure you got the right ones?”
“I bargained for the right talent,” Ringold said. “First ones she sent out wouldn’t do. Strung-out. Old and tattooed.”
“These girls speak English?”
“A few.”
“The thing I respect about the Mexicans is they know how to work,” Stagg said. “White girls do OK, but they got an attitude.”
“Maybe these girls have an attitude but you can’t tell what they’re saying.”
“Maybe,” Stagg said. “I guess I’m wondering what kind of deals Fannie Hathcock is making with those boys in Memphis. I feel like we’re being sandwiched here. She didn’t come across that talent by making a trip down to a Tijuana donkey show. She’s getting ’em trucked in.”
“I didn’t ask her,” Ringold said, both men standing in the parking lot, the neon glow of the sign of the mud-flap girl casting red, yellow, and blue over the slick pavement.
“She say anything about me?”
“Only talked money,” Ringold said.
“That’s Fannie.”
“You two have a history?” Ringold said.
“Oh, yes, sir,” Stagg said. “You could say that.”
The men walked in out of the sleet and through the front door of the club, pulsing with dance music. The club already filling up with college boys from Starkville, lonely truckers, and horny fellas from Memphis. They had clubs in Memphis, but the Booby Trap was known to offer more mileage from their girls than places in Shelby County. You made a deal with a girl at Stagg’s place and arrangements could be made for the hot pillow joint across the road that Stagg also owned. The air in the club smelled of smoke, sweat, coconut body oil, and money.
“You hear about that party they’re throwin’ for Colson?”
“Must’ve lost my invite,” Stagg said. “You think we should send some girls over in appreciation?”
“Maybe some Jack Daniel’s and barbecue, too.”
“Why the hell not,” Stagg said. “Get ole Midnight Man to drive over a bottle of booze and some barbecue. I got no more truck with that fella. I hope he does OK, now he’s unemployed.”
“I hear he’s leaving town.”
Stagg reached into his coat pocket for a fresh toothpick and set it between his teeth. “Damn shame.”
The Booby Trap had three main stages and then a special VIP Suite out past the toilets where you could hire a girl to sit in your lap and rub you for good luck. A dance cost twenty-five dollars per song, but you could get two for forty, which Stagg thought was more than fair. One of the new girls, a slender young Mex, had already taken to the main stage and was spinning down the gold pole upside down as if she’d been born to it. Maybe she had. Maybe she’d just popped out her momma’s cooch and took hold of it in some crib down in Nuevo Laredo.
Stagg took a seat at the end of the bar as Ringold wandered to the house phone to call up Midnight Man about the pork plate and whiskey. The bartender brought Stagg over a Dr Pepper with extra ice and extra cherries. He sipped the drink as the girls danced and moved. A fat trucker, big and round-faced as a gorilla, had wandered up to the edge of the stage, fanning a big wad of cash. His goddamn head looked as big as a medicine ball as he grinned and tucked money into the Mexican girl’s G-string, some song playing overhead about chilling on a dirt road, him laid-back, swerving like he’s George Jones. Shit, that dumb-ass singing wouldn’t know the Possum from a possum’s pecker. Stagg got up and walked to the DJ stand and told the man to start playing “Tennessee Whiskey.”
“What?” the DJ said.
“George-goddamn-Jones,” Stagg said. “Play it now or you can go back to cleaning out truckers’ toilets.”
The boy found the song real fast and maybe it did slow down the mood of the party. Some of the younger folks griping, Stagg hearing them groan, but in all—full credit to the Mexican gals and even, he was glad to see, one white girl—they just rolled with it. Moving those slender hips and big ole titties to that sweet old anthem.
Stagg toasted them with his sweet Dr Pepper, taking a cherry from the ice and sucking it for a long while before it came loose from the stem.
• • •
The inside of the Southern Star was warm and crowded for Quinn’s farewell, packed with familiar faces of family and old friends. A beer appeared in his hand the moment he walked in the door. Someone took his ball cap and old jacket and he was led toward the stage, where Diane Tull sang the song he’d been named for, “The Mighty Quinn.” But she didn’t sing it fast and upbeat like Dylan’s version, but slow and melodic, like a version he’d heard from Kristofferson that he liked a great deal. Folks patted him on the back, they brought him shots of Jack Daniel’s and one tequila, and he accepted them all, not to be polite, but because he was a Ranger and he’d never known a Ranger to refuse a free drink. Diane launched into Waylon’s “Slow Rollin’ Low,” and then Quinn found himself cornered by his Uncle Van, who started telling him a long, elaborate story about how much his Uncle Jerry wanted to make it, too, but he’d been saddled with trucking some transformers over to Valdosta and wouldn’t be back to Jericho until the second. Quinn’s father was there and soon joined them, saving him from a story Uncle Van was about to tell about how mean their daddy had been. Although Quinn had never known his grandfather—the man died when he was two—he had to agree that no kid wanted to cross the old man when he was high on shine. The Colson family had been notorious moonshine runners back in the day.
Jason took his son by the elbow and moved him over to the bar, where he ordered two beers, acting as if he was buying, although Quinn knew all draft and wine was free that night. Someone had collected some cash for the send-off and Quinn was pretty sure it had been Lillie, maybe Diane Tull, or even Jean Colson, although his mother couldn’t make it tonight on account of watching little Jason. Quinn’s dad talked a lot about the farm as if it would be a salvation for both of them. And Quinn had a pretty good buzz going when Jason told him that he’d be bringing over the horses next week. There was talk of an early planting of collards and then tilling up another acre or two just for corn. Jason had plans for that corn, using most of it for feed for the horses and the chickens. Chickens? Yes, chickens. Guineas, too, Jason said. You know, they eat ticks. Best damn eggs you’ll ever eat, if you can find the bastards. Quinn nodding, sipping on a tall Yalobusha draft, feeling good, maybe not so bad about the new arrangement. He knew it was the beer or Diane Tull singing an a cappella “Hope You’re Feelin’ Me (Like I’m Feelin’ You),” and then being joined by J.T., who ran a local garage and body repair shop, and Uncle Van himself on bass.
Quinn glanced across the room in time to see Ophelia Bundren. She had her curly brown hair up in a loose ponytail, long bangs dropping across her eyes. She held a beer and was laughing with a man Quinn didn’t recognize. Over the man’s shoulder, Ophelia met his eye and gave him a weak smile. Quinn smiled back, recalling some really good times, thoughts of them moving in together, making a real go of it. He hadn’t seen her since that bad wreck in November when those Ole Miss kids got killed.
Boom was there, too. But his friend hadn’t talked to him yet. He was on the other side of the bar talking up a pretty young woman who worked at the courthouse. Quinn nodded to Boom and Boom nodded back.
“Don’t waste a good thing,” his father said. And Quinn looked at him, not knowing what the hell he was talking about. All he could think about was chickens, horses, and pig shit. God, had he said something about pigs, too? But his father repeated it at the edge of the bar and nudged his shoulder, Quinn looking in the same direction and seeing Anna Lee standing there, watching Diane Tull and her boys play. The neon light in the bar made her strawberry blonde hair seem more of a deep red, head cocked back, moving a little with the music, in a tall-collared white coat and jeans. She still had on those big diamond earrings she’d gotten from Luke. Quinn heard his dad talking more about something between him and his mother, Quinn wanting to hear what he was saying but was being pulled to the center of the bar. More hands on his back. “You done good.” “Sure gonna miss you.” “See you at church.” Quinn kept moving, spotting Ophelia across the bar again, her walking toward him. He smiled at her, turning full in her direction, wondering if things didn’t have to be so tough between them, and then found himself nose to nose with Anna Lee.
“Brought you something,” she said. “Set it on the bar.”
“Strychnine?”
“Ninety proof, seventeen-year-old.”
Ophelia saw them together and ducked in another direction, taking Jason Colson by the arm and laughing at something he said. She met Quinn’s eyes once more and then walked away and toward the front door.
“Didn’t expect you to be here.”
“How could I not?” Anna Lee said.
There was a lot of sound, a lot of movement, but Quinn didn’t hear any of it. Those big earrings sure could sparkle. Boom stood in the corner, blasted face shielded in shadow. He watched Quinn, shook his head ever so slightly, and turned away.
“People will talk,” Quinn said.
Anna Lee looked at him good and hard, chin lifted, eyes on him. “I don’t give a good goddamn,” she said. “How about you?”
• • •
Fuck, man,” Chase said, not feeling real good about what he was seeing in that closet. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“That cussin’ ain’t helpin’, son,” Peewee said, half-glasses on, studying the red digits on the big safe’s keypad. “Can someone go fetch me a glass of water?”
“What the hell you need water for?” Kyle said, rubbing his graying beard as if it were magic or something. “How’s water gonna help you open up that safe? You gonna try and flood that money out?”
“I need me a water for my damn dry throat,” Peewee said. “I got to be steady and cool about things. How about you just excuse yourself for a while? This goddamn closet is getting too cramped. How many fucking flannel shirts and overalls can a man own? I can’t even think on things with all this shit around me.”
“Think on what?” Kyle said. “Christ Almighty! We tried the combo Mickey gave us and it ain’t worth a shit. And now his expert safecracker, his backup plan, doesn’t know what the hell to do.”
“Did I say that?” Peewee said, getting up, slow and pained, off one knee, where he’d been studying the lock. “Did I say that? I said go get me a goddamn glass of water and let me get my mind right. You ain’t no more help than a dog licking his balls while you on a hunt.”
Kyle dog-cussed Peewee a bit and left the closet, Chase not knowing what the hell they were talking about the closet being small. The closet was twice as big as the damn room where he’d grown up in back in Gordo. Shit, it was still nicer than where he lived now. A big top section, with hunting shirts and flannels and dress shirts, and a bottom section, with Carhartt pants and fancy boots made out of snake hide and crocodile. Uncle Peewee went back to his knee again, just like football players did to pray after the big game, studying that dial on that gun safe. Chase couldn’t wait for that old boy Kyle to watch his uncle crack that son of a bitch and try to talk with a big helping of dog shit in his mouth. That sure would be something.
“You know you don’t have to wear that thing inside,” Peewee said. “Damn, son.”
“What?”
“The fucking turtle mask,” Peewee said. “I swear to you, I’m not so sure that we’re kin sometimes. I think you got too much of your daddy in you.”
“I don’t know why you’re saying all that mess about my daddy,” Chase said. “You said yourself you didn’t know him that well. He might’ve been a good man.”
“Lots of good men over in Kilby,” Peewee said. “And crooks dumber than shit, too.”
Kyle walked back into the closet, holding a plastic cup from Sonic. Peewee was sweating, hand a little shaky as he reached for it and told Kyle thank you, he didn’t mean to cuss him none. “I just get a little edgy when I’m trying to think without some weed. Hey, boy? You go down and get me a little smoke down in the van? It’s over the visor.”
Kyle stood in the doorway, mouth looking like it was about to hit the damn floor. “Wait one minute. Are you saying we all need to stick around in a house we just busted into while your boy goes down and fetches you a joint? Are you shitting me, man?”
“You want me to think? Or not?”
“What I want is for you to admit that you don’t know jack shit about safes and that you tricked Mickey into thinking that you’re Butch Cassidy. You thought you were just going to kick open that back door, use his code, and walk out with some cash? How’s that deal sounding to you now?”
“Why don’t you just calm down,” Peewee said, tapping in some numbers. “Hell. I can’t even hear myself think. Both of y’all get out of here. I need to be alone with this baby. How we doing for time, Chase?”
“Been in here twenty minutes,” Chase said.
“Well,” Peewee said. “We counted on an hour. Them folks gonna be gone till tomorrow. If you hadn’t figured it out, this is Plan B we’re working on. Give me a second. Y’all just clear out and let the master do his thing.”
“Don’t you have a pair of them things a doctor uses to hear people’s hearts?” Chase said.
“You talking about a stethoscope?”
“I guess.”
“It don’t help if you don’t have no tumblers,” Peewee said. “Just get me a hammer and a chisel.”
“Oh my God,” Kyle said from the other room. “A fucking hammer? Are you shitting me?”
Peewee looked to be in pain on that one knee, glancing up from where he was working, nodding his head toward the other room. “Keep that bastard away from me, son,” he whispered. “This is professional work here. You understand? He’s messing with my mind.”
“Yes, sir,” Chase said.
Chase walked back out into the big room and sat down on the floor, where he could keep Kyle from coming in and out. They’d kept the lights off and he had to use his flashlight to read old copies of Field & Stream and Guns & Ammo. He found a section in the back of G&A about women with big titties shooting firearms to raise money for veterans. All the girls wore bikinis and got to shooting damn machine guns and bazookas and shit. He sure wished he could see them on video and get all the vibrating action of them pulling the trigger, recoil, and such.
“Hey, man,” he said to Kyle. Kyle sulking, leaning against a wall, smoking a damn cigarette in the dark. “You got to see this shit.”
“We been here almost an hour.”
There was the tap-tap-tapping sound of the hammer and chisel in the rich man’s closet. A few times Chase heard Uncle Peewee say “Shit” and once say “Hot damn.” But the “Hot damn” was soon followed by an “Oh, shit” and he knew he wasn’t getting any closer to opening that son of a bitch. About fifteen minutes later, Chase had moved on to reading an article, “Best Days of the Rut,” when Peewee walked out, mopping his face with a handkerchief, thick eyeglasses fogged all to hell. “God damn,” he said. “I ain’t seen nothing like it. That son of a bitch is thicker than I thought. Locked up tight.”
“It’s a safe,” said Kyle from the shadows, smoke all in the room now. “It’s what they do.”
“I never met a safe acted this way,” Peewee said. “I need some more muscle. This one is a like a woman who just don’t want to put out.”
“How much muscle?” Kyle said.
“Shit, man,” Peewee said. “I’m about tapped out. But I don’t think a man can do it.”
“Can you blow it?”
“You mean, like, explosives?” Peewee said, using his sweaty handkerchief to clean his glasses. “I ain’t got none.”
“Great.”
“How about a jackhammer or some shit?” Chase said. “Them things could bust that door wide open.”
“You know where to get one?” Kyle said.
Chase shook his head. He closed the magazine, a picture of a big fat doe staring up with big doe eyes, and got up off the floor. He looked at the time, knowing that Mr. Kyle was right. They’d just farted away a dang hour and hadn’t so much as budged that door. He sniffed and moved the turtle mask back over his face. He figured they maybe should be heading on to Gordo right now. He was too young to end up like his daddy.
“Fuck it,” Kyle said. “I got something will open it up.”
“What is it?”
“Ever heard of the Jaws of Life?” Kyle said, stepping up close to where he stood with Peewee. He blew smoke in both of their dang faces.
“Like firefighters use on wrecked cars?” Peewee said, pig-snorting a bit. “Shit. How the hell we gonna find one of them?”
“Because you’re looking at the chief of his volunteer fire department,” Kyle said, plugging another smoke into his mouth, lighting up. “You two Alabama shitbirds stay here and keep watch. I’ll be right back.”