32

Before going to Ronnie’s, I went by my place to check on Goose. He was beside himself when he saw me, and it made me feel guilty about leaving him here by himself. I decided that when I had a chance, I’d see how Susan felt about a dog joining them.

I plugged my phone in to charge and called Ronnie while Goose continued to paw my leg to get me to pet him.

About an hour later, I pulled up to Ronnie’s place.

He met me outside and nodded toward his truck. “I’ll drive.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You want this to look legit, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let me drive.”

Maybe he had a point. My truck was standard issue, no frills, the kind of truck a man drove who didn’t have tattoos all over his body. Ronnie’s jacked-up piece of shit would lend an air of legitimacy to our visit. Reluctantly, I shut my truck off and walked over.

He lit a cigarette as he pulled across the creek and past the old church cemetery, toward the road. “Can I ask you something?” I said.

“I reckon you can do most anything your heart desires, Earl.”

“Why the jacked-up truck?”

“You’re kidding, right? That is a fine, fine piece of machinery. It’s a Ram body with Big O tires and a salvaged hemi that makes six hundred horsepower. I can’t even measure the damn torque. Hell, that truck will crush anything else on the road, and I do mean crush. As in roll over it. Damn, I get all evangelical just talking about it.”

“I’ll bet it’s a damn fuel hog,” I said.

“Hey, grizzly bears are food hogs, but that don’t make them any less fearsome. You gotta feed the beast.”

“But … I guess. How practical is it anyway? You’ve got to use a step stool to get inside. Either that or strain your back, and with you needing money all the time…”

He looked at me blankly, and I realized his feelings about that truck went beyond reason. Trying to get him to think rationally about that truck was akin to trying to make my father think rationally about his faith. It wasn’t going to happen.

After a quick stop at McDonald’s for some biscuits, we arrived twenty minutes later at the base of Small Mountain, where a trailer park I recognized was positioned on the side of the hill.

One of the trailers had a sign on top that said “Tatoo’s Here.” In the yard, another sign read, “Drank Machines for sell.”

Ronnie pointed at that one and giggled. I shook my head, not so much at the poor grammar as at the thought of someone actually coming out here to purchase a drink machine.

We climbed down from the truck and walked up the hill. I couldn’t help but glance over at the trailer I’d visited with Mary over a year ago. Inside, we’d found two people grieving the loss of a young girl who’d committed suicide years earlier. They’d acted angry at first and then shocked when they realized that Mary and I actually cared about them and the girl who’d killed herself. It was a good reminder as we approached the tattoo parlor: the people in this community were tough on the outside, but just as vulnerable as the rest of us underneath.

“You been here before?” I asked Ronnie.

“I get mine over in Chatsworth. I used to fuck a girl there. But you want to find out about Old Nathaniel, right?”

I nodded. “And how to get to the warehouse.”

“Follow my lead then. You can act, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Can you act like a piece of shit?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Good.”

He pushed open the door slowly. It looked like a regular trailer. There was a dingy couch sitting on top of dingy carpet in front of an old television. The TV was tuned to a local station, and Judge Judy was on, talking about her lack of patience for people who didn’t respect authority. Seated on the couch was a teenage girl wearing a tank top that revealed detailed and colorful ink on her shoulders and arms. She had a sucker in her mouth and seemed transfixed by Judge Judy’s monologue.

“Hey,” Ronnie said. “I need a tattoo.”

The girl didn’t turn around. She just pointed toward another doorway, which appeared to lead into the kitchen.

“Thanks,” I said.

She gave no indication that she heard me.

I followed Ronnie into the kitchen, where a man sat at a table, eating lunch. He was probably in his forties but took care of himself. He was as thin as Lambert described him, but not without a layer of roped muscle revealed by a loose tank top. Even though Lambert, had told us he didn’t have tattoos, it was still surprising to see his skin unmarred by ink. He nodded at Ronnie and me and put down his fork.

“One or both?” he asked.

“One,” Ronnie said. “Me.”

I didn’t realize Ronnie had been planning to actually get another tattoo, but I was glad for it now. This guy didn’t look like a man who would take kindly to questions or having his time wasted.

The man at the table glanced at me and then back at Ronnie. “What’s he—your daddy?”

“No, he’s my ride. Truck’s in the shop.”

The man at the table studied me carefully, as if there was something about me that he didn’t like. I tried to assume the role of a racist asshole and sat down across from him. “I don’t have long,” I said.

“That truck outside belongs to you?” he said.

“Yeah. You like it?”

“What kind of hemi does it have?”

I tried hard to remember what Ronnie had said, but had to guess. “Seven hundred.”

It must have been reasonable because the man nodded, satisfied.

“I work at my own pace,” the tattoo artist said. “If either of you are going to rush me, fuck off. Leave now.”

“Fine,” I said, pretending to be pissed at Ronnie for wasting my time.

Ronnie sat down. “I’m Ronnie,” he said. “This is Earl.”

The tattoo artist nodded. “I’m Anton. It’s Russian.” He looked at Ronnie. “Got something in mind?”

“Yeah. I want Old Nathaniel.”

“What do you know about Old Nathaniel?”

“I know he kills darkies,” Ronnie answered without missing a beat. He was convincing.

Anton looked at me, smiling slightly. “You two are into killing coons, huh?”

I nodded.

“Let me ask you,” he said. “How many coons have you killed?”

Ronnie cracked his knuckles. “This some kind of requirement to get a tattoo?”

“Just conversation,” Anton said, and that was the first time I picked up the very slight tinge of a Russian accent. He hadn’t been born in these mountains, but he’d been here long enough to replace the Russian accent with hillbilly. Mostly.

“I killed one last year,” Ronnie said. He sounded damn confident, so confident I wondered if maybe he had.

Anton turned to me. “And you?”

I swallowed. “I ain’t killed any, but I’ve killed a white man.”

Anton smiled. “A queer, I hope?”

I shook my head. “No, just an asshole.”

This seemed to satisfy Anton. “Okay,” he said. “To the parlor.”

He led us to a room off the kitchen where he’d set up a cot and his tattoo instruments.

“Where?” he said.

Ronnie lifted his shirt. “On my back.”

“Lie down.”

Ronnie, shirt still up, lay down on the cot.

Anton looked at me.

“So many people these days are wanting Old Nathaniel. It’s like he’s alive and well. Where did you boys hear about him?”

“Online,” I said. “And we know a guy who saw him. Said he got his tattoo from you. That’s why we came.”

“What guy is this?”

Ronnie spoke up. “Dude goes by the name of Pit. We go way back. Went to visit him at Hays the other day, and he spoke highly of your skills.”

“I remember the guy. Fucking lunatic,” Anton said, but the way he said it made it seem like a compliment.

“He said you could tell us how to get to a place we need to find.” I lied, figuring it was worth a shot.

Anton nodded, ignoring my last statement. “I’ve seen him too.”

I decided I could circle back to the warehouse later. “What’s he like?”

“He’s like…” Anton seemed to consider his words carefully. “He’s like an avenging angel, come down to set the world right. He’s like a white man who’s had enough, you know? So, he puts on a mask and only then can he become what he truly is, which is more than a man. He becomes a god.”

“When did you see him?” I asked.

“Back in the summer. Me and some buddies heard he likes to hunt on the full moon, so we went out to the cornfield. You know the cornfield, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Lane Jefferson’s place.”

“Right. We went to Lane Jefferson’s cornfield. We didn’t know what we were doing, so we just parked and stumbled in. We were there five minutes when I decided we’d never find him. It was a maze inside there. You think there’s going to be rows, but there’s no rows, just stalks everywhere you turn.

“I told the boys we needed to start trying to find our way out, but one of them—I think it was Drew—pointed at a light moving in the distance.”

“Light?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. It was the only part that didn’t make sense. The moon was so full … the corn was like on fire, you know? It was like being in a fire. But the light was there, and that was when we saw the long, clean row. And he was standing at the very end of it, a long way away. Some of the other guys took off running, but Drew and I stayed put. Why should I be afraid? I wasn’t black. So we waited and he moved forward, taking his time, big steps. He held a long knife, and you could see the full moon on it. You know, reflected.

“We stood there for a long time. The light seemed to follow him.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

Anton looked at me as if remembering suddenly that I was there. He shook his head. “I don’t care if it makes sense; it happened. Why are you so curious about Old Nathaniel anyway?”

“I want to see him. Me and Ronnie are thinking of heading out there one night.”

Anton nodded slowly, his face set, guarded. “Make sure there’s a full moon.” He picked up his tattoo gun and inserted a fresh needle. He turned it on and leaned over Ronnie’s bare back.

“We were going to hit the warehouse on Summer Mountain pretty soon. You know it?”

“I might. Why you going there?”

I waited to see if Ronnie might answer, but he was silent. “Um, Pit left something up there and wanted us to get it for him.”

Anton nodded. “What, drugs or something? You going to smuggle it in to him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the plan.”

“How much is he paying you?”

“A couple of grand,” Ronnie said before I could answer.

Anton whistled. “Well, shit. Why are you wasting time getting fucking tattoos? I’d already been up there and grabbed that shit.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s sort of our problem. We don’t know exactly how to find the warehouse.”

“You don’t? Why didn’t Pit just tell you?”

“He ain’t so good with directions,” Ronnie said. “All he could tell us was Summer Mountain, and hell, we already knew that.”

“So,” I said, “we been asking everybody we can. Figure we’d eventually stumble onto somebody that knows the place. And it looks like we finally did.”

“Here’s the thing, boys,” Anton said. “I don’t mind helping you out, but it seems like I should get a little cut for my services.”

I pretended to be pissed. “Shit. How much do you want?”

“Five hundred.”

“You get it after we get ours, not before,” Ronnie said.

“Of course,” Anton said. “But here’s the other part of it. I don’t finish the tattoo until I get my five hundred dollars.”

“Shit,” Ronnie said. “That’s harsh.”

“Deal or no deal?” Anton said, holding the needle close to Ronnie’s skin.

“Deal,” I said.

Ronnie groaned, but I couldn’t tell if it was out of pain as the needle broke the skin, or frustration, or both.

Anton didn’t speak again until he was finished and Old Nathaniel, from the waist up, stared at us from beneath a full moon.