Quinn waited outside Bluebird Liquors for a half hour before Chester Pratt wheeled into the parking lot in his shiny black Mercedes. Pratt crawled out, looking bedraggled and disheveled, and headed straight for the front door as if he hadn’t seen the Ford F-250 painted Army green with a silver Tibbehah County Sheriff star. Quinn pressed off the tailgate where he’d been texting with dispatch and called out to the man’s back, “Hold up there, Chester.”
“Sorry, Sheriff,” Pratt said. “Was just about to get up with you. Been a whale of a day.”
“Getting a little concerned about Gina Byrd,” Quinn said. “Hope you might throw a little light on the situation.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Pratt said. “Her daughter says she took off with some new fella. That’s starting to sound about right. You know Gina. She’s a hot-blooded woman who sure likes to party.”
“You said you saw bloody clothes in a burn pile out back?”
“I don’t really know what I saw,” Pratt said. “Sorry to trouble you.”
“I was over in Parsham County this morning,” Quinn said. “The sheriff over there found Miss Byrd’s Nissan left abandoned on a back road. You know anything about that?”
“No, sir,” Pratt said. “But it sure as hell sounds like Gina is drinking again. Lord. She promised me a thousand times she was through with all that mess. I’m sure you know how low things got for Gina at one point in her life. Said if wasn’t for Jesus Christ Himself on the mainline, she wouldn’t be here today.”
“You told Deputy Caruthers that you thought she might be hurt,” Quinn said. “And you believed she’d been in some kind of fight with her daughter?”
“I don’t know about all that,” Pratt said. “Sorry to have worried y’all, but I need to get back to work. We’re two days late taking inventory on the merlots. Damn Christmastime about cleaned me out. Wonder how y’all did without a decent liquor store here in Tibbehah County all these years.”
Quinn studied Chester Pratt’s face. The man had been sweating, eyes bloodshot. His breath smelled like bourbon and breath mints. Pratt kept his hands on his waist and continued to nod, buzzing with the high energy of someone who wanted to break free of a situation or was in a bad way to get to a bathroom. Quinn scratched at his cheek and smiled. “Just a few more questions, Mr. Pratt.”
“Okay, then,” he said, rubbing his unshaven jaw. “Yes, sir. Whatever y’all need. However I can help.”
“When’s the last time you saw Gina?” Quinn asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe four, five days ago.”
“And where was that, sir?”
“She came over to my house for supper,” Pratt said. “I cooked two T-bones and made some twice-baked potatoes. We sat around and watched one of those movies she liked. Something about these two old geezers holed up in a nursing home telling stories to each other. You had to go through a bunch of shit and flashbacks just to learn that those two very people were husband and wife but were too far gone to know they were talking about themselves. It sure made Gina cry. But I didn’t care for it at all. I prefer a little more action and adventure in my stories.”
“Have y’all been having any trouble?”
“You mean fighting?” Pratt said. “No, sir. That’s not my style. My ex-wives may not like me anymore but they can never say I wasn’t any fun. Kind of hard to yell at each other during one of those weepy-ass movies. Just so you know and not for public consumption, but Miss Byrd stayed the night and we did have intimate relations.”
“Good for you,” Quinn said. “And did you speak to her after that?”
“Once or twice,” Pratt said. “Didn’t think too much of it. She’d gone over to some craft store in Tupelo. You know she’s been working over at that flower shop in town? DG’s Creations. She’s been making these fancy painted door hangings for Miss Donna Grace. I got one right there on my front door. See that wood and glitter thing that says Hotty Toddy? That woman sure had more than one talent.”
Pratt patted a little rhythm on his thighs, jangling at the keys in his pocket, and rocking up and down on his front toes. “I hope I’m not in any trouble,” he said. “When I called, I may have been drinking just a little. Sampling my own product. Maybe I was a little hurt she might’ve run off with a new man after we shared that romantic dinner at my house.”
“Watching sad movies and eating those T-bones?”
“Yes, sir,” Pratt said, grinning. “Sure was a special date. Set out candles by the hot tub and everything. I guess I’m just a romantic old fool.”
“Any idea who this mysterious other man might be?”
“You’re gonna have to ask Gina Byrd that question,” Pratt said. “Or maybe one of her girlfriends.”
“You have some names to check with?”
“Oh, hell,” Pratt said. “I don’t know. Miss Donna Grace. Diane Tull at the feed and seed. I think she kept in touch with Lillie Virgil. Did you know she’s now a damn U.S. Marshal?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Might’ve heard something about that.”
“Now that’s a nasty woman right there,” Pratt said. “She once pulled me over for speeding and gave me a talking-to with words I never heard coming out of a white woman’s mouth. She actually called me a rich, spoiled son of a bitch and to slow down or she’d put me in hot pants and send me along Highway 49 to pick up trash. I figure she was trying to tell me that truckers might get a real kick out of it.”
Quinn stood there and waited, not saying another word, letting Pratt fill in the silences and maybe offer a better explanation of why he had been so worried about Gina Byrd. Quinn didn’t know much, but he was pretty sure there wasn’t any mysterious boyfriend who took her away from the fast-paced life in Tibbehah County to race tricked-out Mules down in Louisiana.
“Don’t know what to tell you, Sheriff,” Pratt said. “I guess I’d figured Gina had gotten herself straight. That she’d gotten too old to put on a bikini and race around the mud. Damn if I don’t feel stupid as hell. I’ve been married three times and had more women than I can count to cheat on me. I’ve always been the trusting type. I figure when relations happen between a man and a woman that they got some kind of special bond. You know what I’m saying, Sheriff?”
“Have you tried calling her?” Quinn said.
“So many times my fingers’re nearly worn out,” he said. “Want to see my cell phone?”
Pratt reached into his pocket without being asked, thumbed through the Samsung and showed a screen with forty-nine calls to the same number and name. gina. Quinn looked at it and nodded, his own phone buzzing on his hip and showing a familiar number. He held up a hand to Pratt, stepped back toward his truck, and took the call.
“Some bad shit’s going down in Parsham County,” Boom Kimbrough said. “I came down to get Gina Byrd’s Nissan and had to help that sheriff out of some booger woods junkyard after he fired a shot at me. I don’t know what’s going on. Nobody will tell me nothing. But the county coroner showed up, along with three more deputies and a news van out of Tupelo.”
“Roger that,” Quinn said. “Headed your way.”
Quinn turned to Chester Pratt and said they’d have to continue the conversation later.
“Everything okay out there, Sheriff?” Pratt asked.
Quinn nodded and climbed into the Big Green Machine, heading back to Parsham County.
“Something’s a-matter,” Holly Harkins said.
“Nope,” TJ said. “Everything’s just fine and dandy.”
“Bull W. Shit,” Holly said. “Friends don’t lie to friends. If something’s bothering you, you better damn well spill it.”
TJ drove Holly’s mom’s beat-up Dodge minivan along Jericho Road headed toward Choctaw Lake, where Holly worked two nights a week at the Captain’s Table fish camp. She’d serve up fried catfish and hush puppies until ten o’clock when she’d come out of that cinder-block restaurant smelling like grease and nicotine. The poor girl had to wash her hair twice with Suave rosemary and mint shampoo to remove the stink.
“Why do you think something’s a-matter?” TJ asked.
“Hell,” Holly said, popping her bubble gum and watching the winter landscape roll by. Nothing but bare branches, dead weeds, and gray skies. “I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve been your best friend since third grade.”
“I thought you’d been my best friend since kindergarten.”
“We met in kindergarten,” Holly said. “But I didn’t really trust you until third grade. That’s when you stuck up for me with that Harris boy that kept on looking under my skirt on the monkey bars. I still can’t believe you put a dog turd in his lunch box.”
“Power Rangers,” TJ said, grinning. “The look on his damn face. It was worth it. Wasn’t it?”
“You are a damn trip, TJ Byrd,” Holly said.
TJ took the old minivan up to seventy, after passing a sheriff’s deputy headed back the opposite way into town. TJ popped an AC/DC CD into the stereo, blasting “Highway to Hell” through the one speaker working up front. She planned to kick around the lake a little after she dropped off Holly, Ladarius saying he might join her to smoke a joint, maybe shoot some rats that gathered behind the dumpsters. She was down for whatever he wanted after he’d come up with the two hundred dollars she needed bad. That would be enough to keep the lights on at their trailer and pick up some groceries at the Dollar General for her and John Wesley.
“You’re quiet,” Holly said, brown hair scattering across her chubby, freckled face. She had on her sky blue Captain’s Table tee with Matthew 4:18 printed on it. “When you’re quiet, it means you’re thinking hard about something.”
“I’m just zoning out,” TJ said. “I ain’t thinking about nothing.”
“If you can’t talk about it with me, who can you talk with?” Holly said. “Ladarius? You really think you can trust that boy? Because I’m not so sure, TJ. I’ve been hearing some stories about him and that Rhonda Price. Something about those Sonic waitresses on roller skates just makes boys crazy.”
“Ladarius doesn’t give a damn about Rhonda Price or her fuckin’ roller skates.”
“Well, I’d watch my back if I were you,” Holly said. “You know that character Hot Stuff? That cute little devil that wears a diaper and carries a pitchfork? I heard that Rhonda Price got a tattoo of Hot Stuff right inside her left leg. I’ll let you study on the meaning of that.”
“I said I don’t give a damn about Rhonda Price,” TJ said. “Or if Ladarius hooked up with her. Or about some trashy devil tattoo near her cooter. I got lots bigger problems. Sheriff’s giving me hell. Momma’s gone missing. And I got to get to the Dollar General to get John Wesley’s fucking Cap’n Crunch.”
“You shouldn’t feed John Wesley that shit.”
“Holly.”
“Yeah?”
“You asked me what’s the matter,” TJ said. “And now I’m damn well trying to tell you.”
“Why’s the sheriff giving you trouble?”
“Why do you think?” TJ said. “Fucking Chester Pratt thinks I know where Momma has gone. But I know he’s just trying to make trouble for me because he doesn’t want to pay what I’m owed.”
“Where is your momma?” Holly said. “She’s not really down in Louisiana mud riding with some new man.”
“Do you really want to know?” TJ said. “ ’Cause if I tell you, that means you’re in it. You are damn well involved.”
“What happened, TJ?”
“You promise not to tell?” TJ said, slowing down in the final stretch of Jericho Road, the hills softening and the flat shimmer of Choctaw Lake coming up into view. It was late afternoon but had already grown dark this far out in the country, shadowed by tall pines and leafless trees, little cypress stumps poking up from around the shore. TJ drove to the crushed gravel lot around the Captain’s Table and parked far off from the other cars. She let down a side window, cold air rushing in, and fished out the pack of Kools. Say what you will about Ladarius McCade, but that boy comes in like a Marvel superhero in a pinch. What he did the other night, helping her clean up that mess and make things right. Damn. That’s a man in TJ Byrd’s book.
“Something bad happened, Holly,” TJ said.
“How bad?”
“Real bad,” TJ said. “So much blood that it took me almost an hour to clean up the mess.”
Quinn rolled up on the scene in Parsham County at 1700 hours. It was getting darker and colder fast, a light rain hitting the windshield as he reached for his shiny green sheriff’s office jacket with the Sherpa collar. Boom was hanging by his tow truck, the flashing lights of six cruisers and two ambulances flickering across the narrow dirt road. Quinn plugged a cigar into his mouth and surveyed the scene, glad whatever was happening wasn’t in Tibbehah County.
“Weren’t we supposed to have dinner with your momma?” Boom asked.
“We were.”
“Did Miss Jean tell you what she was making?”
“Salmon croquettes, mashed potatoes, and English peas.”
“Gravy?”
“You know it.”
“Damn,” Boom said. “Now we’re freezing our nuts off over in Parsham County. How you like that?”
“I got some coffee,” Quinn said.
“And I see you brought Hondo.”
Quinn looked back to his truck, Hondo sitting up tall in the passenger seat, tongue hanging loose, calm and cool with all the activity going on around him. Quinn walked back to the truck, patted the dog’s head, grabbed his thermos, and poured coffee into the silver cup.
“What are you hearing?”
“Dead body down in that ditch,” Boom said. “That fat sheriff nearly shit his pants after seeing whatever he seen. Fired a shot when I first drove up. I think my prosthetic must’ve scared him.”
“Lovemaiden has had murders before,” Quinn said. “Need I remind you we are in Parsham County?”
“Yeah,” Boom said. “I got the feeling that Sheriff Lovemaiden doesn’t have many people of color working for him.”
“Maybe they’re on a different shift.”
“Yeah, right,” Boom said. “That must be it.”
Boom stood tall in gray coveralls and work boots with an old blue Carhartt hoodie up over a CAT trucker’s cap. He was a big man, six-foot-five and more than two-fifty. The right side of his face still showed the scars, across his cheek and down into his brushy black beard, from when his Hummer had hit an IED outside Fallujah, sending him and two other Guardsmen flying into the air. Boom lost his right arm while his buddies lost their lives. He seldom talked about it, making his way with a shiny silver hook and sometimes with a modern prosthetic that could be outfitted with a variety of screwdrivers and ratchets for his work as a mechanic.
Since they both returned from the service, Quinn and Boom had faced white supremacists, the Dixie Mafia, and even a damn tornado as they tried to clean up their own backyard in Tibbehah. They shared the same sense of justice to help make their home a better place. Not a vision of what had been but what could be. Quinn only wished Boom could be working as one of his deputies instead of fixing engines at the County Barn. It was more about his police record than his disability. Boom had more than a few run-ins with the law after his discharge. Assault. Drunk and disorderly. Vandalism of public property. Boom went through what he called a “period of readjustment.”
“They won’t let me take the car,” Boom said. “Not now.”
“I figured,” Quinn said. “Where’s Lovemaiden?”
Boom lifted his chin down the road where several deputies had gathered in a semicircle. Quinn couldn’t quite make out Lovemaiden but started walking up the gravel road in that direction. A few of the deputies looked his way and sussed him out. Quinn knew a hundred white men just like them, lean-faced and dark-eyed, slow with a greeting, only a flicker of acknowledgment as he got closer. Too tough or too stupid to acknowledge him. Soon the circle broke up and Lovemaiden was there, hands on his hips, stomach hanging loose, and looking straight down at Quinn. The man didn’t look good, his face drained of color and eyes bloodshot.
“What did you hear?” Lovemaiden said.
“Heard you might’ve found something.”
“Goddamn right,” Lovemaiden said. “I ain’t never in my life seen something like it. What’s down in that ditch wasn’t never meant to be found. Doesn’t even look human.”
“Gina Byrd?”
“If you say so,” Lovemaiden said. “Not a lot left of whatever it was. You’re welcome to take a look.”
“Want to come with me?” Quinn said.
Lovemaiden just stared at Quinn, lifting the Styrofoam cup to his lips and spitting. He didn’t nod or answer in any way but followed Quinn toward the hillside. Crime scene tape had been strung up on the ridge overlooking a narrow ditch filled with garbage and rusting metal. Quinn lifted the tape and walked down into the gully lit by bright work lamps like you’d find around a construction site, powered by a generator that hummed down in the ditch. Two deputies waited in the crevice, sitting on top of a junked pickup truck. One of them got up when he saw Lovemaiden and helped lift up another stretch of tape, Lovemaiden making great effort to bend under it and walk toward a group of blue plastic barrels.
“If it hadn’t been for the buzzards, I wouldn’t have seen it.”
A silver tarp had been spread over whatever it was that Lovemaiden wanted him to see.
“Sure you ready for this?” Lovemaiden said. “This shit’s on me now. Ain’t no medals for keeping this in your head, Ranger.”
Quinn nodded. He knew he’d seen lots worse, having once used a trowel and his hands to rescue the bodies of American soldiers hastily buried behind a hospital in Nasiriya. That had been almost twenty years ago, but the smell of it and the way those bodies had come apart in his hands was something that would never leave him.
Lovemaiden just stared at him, a most unpleasant look on his face. He spit into the cup again and grunted as he reached down and pulled up the tarp. Quinn turned on his Maglite and shined it onto the trash and weeds, seeing something that he couldn’t quite describe spilled out of a blue plastic barrel. The smell of it was almost as bad as those bodies he’d helped uncover years ago, only mixed in with the very strong odor of bleach.
“Whoever done this didn’t want it found,” Lovemaiden said. “Figured that bleach would eat everything down to the damn bone.”
“How long has it been down here?”
“You know the damn deal, Quinn,” Lovemaiden said and let go of the tarp. “Ain’t no such thing as no goddamn CSI North Mississippi. I got state folks rolling over from Batesville to see if they can put this jigsaw puzzle back together. But sure. I hear you. Don’t take much to note the proximity of that blue Nissan of your missing woman and this goddamn mess. How long has your woman been gone?”
“Three days.”
“Hmm,” Lovemaiden said. “Someone went to a hell of a lot of trouble to slice and dice and fill up this barrel with all that bleach. Why the hell leave the vic’s car on the roadside like some kind of flashing goddamn sign?”
“Maybe they lured her out here and then planned to move the car?”
“What’s her people saying?”
“They say she’s down in Louisiana raising hell with a new man.”
“You believe that?”
“No, sir,” Quinn said. “I sure don’t.”
“Know anyone who might want to do this woman harm?”
Quinn nodded. “I’m making a list.”
“See you share it with me, Sheriff Colson,” Lovemaiden said, closing his eyes and letting out a long breath. “I have a feeling me and you gonna be burning up the phone lines between here and Jericho for a while.”
Dusty and Flem Nix were often confused as brothers, although Flem was more than fifteen years older and was Dusty’s daddy. Dusty was thirty-four now, Flem about to hit that big five-oh. Them boys thick as damn thieves. Dusty was closer to his daddy than most sons, although old Daddy Flem sure could get on a man’s nerves. Whistling songs ain’t nobody heard of. Grunting instead of making words. They’d been working as roofers for as long as Dusty could hold a hammer. There wasn’t a roof pitched steep enough that he and Daddy couldn’t climb, repair, or cover in Kool Seal. Summer or winter. He and Daddy had fixed metal roofs so hot they’d scald the damn skin off your hands. And some so damn cold that you couldn’t stop your teeth from chattering loose. The Nixes took the hard jobs no one wanted, not even Mexicans, fair money for their hard work, taking what they earned and supporting the rest of the family compound on their ten acres over in Yellow Leaf right behind the Free Will Baptist church. Momma Lennie, who ruled the damn roost in their world, made sure Dusty’s twin sister and various cousins and uncles got tended to while Dusty and Flem took on most of the responsibility and the work.
Both men were coal-eyed, midget short, and dark complected, although Flem had grown a little more white-headed these last few years. His whole life, Dusty had to deal with people making jokes about him being born under the damn rainbow, calling him names like “squirt” and fucking “peewee.” The only way to get through it, as Daddy told him, Flem being only an inch taller than his son, was to get down and dirty with anyone who gave you some lip.
They spent most of the summers fishing and winters shooting deer, in and out of season. They Nix boys also owned their own processing shop out on their spread in Yellow Leaf. There wasn’t an animal they couldn’t bleed out and turn into the finest sausage you ever ate. Ain’t nobody in north Mississippi could make a jalapeño venison bologna like the Nix family. You killed it, the Nix boys could butcher it.
It had been a hard week, and after finishing up at sunset, Dusty and Flem headed down to Shooter’s pool hall to drink some beer and run a few tables before Momma came looking for them. Dusty knew Daddy would do his best to get good and drunk before Momma Lennie came to town and dragged that old man out by his damn ear. Right now, Flem Nix sat propped up in a corner chair, taking hits of a pint of Fireball from inside his paint-splattered Army coat. A cigarette hung loose out his lean face that reminded Dusty of a Halloween skeleton.
“Daddy,” Dusty said. “Get up.”
“Huh?”
“Get up,” Dusty said. “It’s your shot.”
Flem Nix grunted and got to his feet with much effort, catching the eye of a big, potbellied man in a gray sweatshirt cut off at the shoulders to show off his hairy arms and some bullshit tattoo of the Realtree deer colored in with the Confederate flag. The man’s gut hung far and wide over his work pants, lots of fat spilling from under his chin. The fat boy looked at Daddy and then back at Dusty and shook his head before leaning into the table and knocking two balls into a corner pocket.
“What you looking at?” Daddy Nix asked.
“Oh, hell,” Dusty said.
“Y’all brothers or something?”
“Who the fuck wants to know?” Daddy asked.
“Don’t get all pissy, little man,” the fat boy said, reaching up his fist to burp into it. “I just ain’t never seen folks built so low to the ground.”
“Do you know who the fuck I am?” Flem Nix said.
“Give me a minute,” Fat Boy said, rubbing the whiskers on his chin. “You kinda look to me like that little fella used to be on that show with Johnny Knoxville, always getting shot out of a cannon or having his nuts knocked with a sledgehammer.”
“Keep on talking like that and I’ll knock your goddamn nuts with my fist.”
Dusty ambled up by his daddy at the pool table and grinned, turning up a cold Budweiser. Thank the damn Lord that folks could drink in Jericho these days. He was already feeling good as hell after taking a couple of those back pills Momma give him and washing it down with some beer and a little cinnamon whiskey.
“Come on now, Daddy,” Dusty said. “This blubberbutt ain’t worth your trouble.”
“What’d he just say?” the fat man said. He turned to a black fella sitting nearby, smoking a long cigarette under a Bud Light neon sign. The black man’s eyes bugged out his head, his teeth as brown and crooked as an old rake. Although he didn’t speak, the black man blew out a big plume of smoke.
“I wouldn’t make my daddy mad,” Dusty said. “He may be little, but he’s fierce as a motherfucker.”
The fat man didn’t say a word, only walked around the table to size up another shot. His black buddy sat close to the far wall, leaning back in a chair, front legs off the ground and rocking up and down as if watching a damn reality show in motion. The air was smoky down in the basement pool room.
“Maybe you ought to apologize,” Dusty Nix said.
Their own table hadn’t been touched, the balls racked slick and still in the center of the scarred-up green felt. Dusty took a hit of the cigarette and waited.
“That’ll be the day,” the fat man said.
“You don’t have to mean it or nothin’,” Dusty said. “Just tell my ole daddy you’re sorry.”
“Y’all are the two weirdest mothers I seen outside the goddamn circus,” the fat man said, knocking the holy shit out of the cue ball and sending two direct and hard in the pocket. “Fuckin’ freaks. Both of y’all smell like someone shit their damn drawers.”
Daddy Flem shook his head as if the fat man was a sorrowful sight. Dusty knew his daddy could whip both of those boys on his own, but as his daddy leaned into the table to take a shot, he winced with pain. That’s when Dusty noticed the stitching and bandages had come undone on his daddy’s right side, dark blood staining through his work shirt.
“You okay, Daddy?”
Daddy Flem didn’t answer as he busted those balls with a tall and mighty crack, scattering all of ’em across the table, a couple solids into two separate pockets. He’d been playing soft and easy all night, but those boys and the pain of his unfortunate injury coming undone had pissed him off. Dusty finished his beer, knowing that hell was about to come if they didn’t get out of here and get home. His daddy had a look in his eye like he wanted to tear that fat boy apart like a field-stripped deer.
“Better get you fixed up,” Dusty said.
Daddy Flem didn’t answer, leaning into the table again and knocking in an orange solid. He chalked up his cue and walked around the table, looking for a good shot, eyes switching from the green felt up to the fat man. The fat man must’ve seen it, definitely felt it, standing there with his arms crossed over his big gut, a smile on his face saying, “come on and get you some, old man.”
“Ain’t nothing,” Daddy said.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Just a busted seam.”
Fat Boy looked to the bug-eyed black fella and laughed. “The short ones always give you the most trouble,” he said. “Short ones always got the most to prove. Like a little runt dog nipping at your heels.”
Oh, hell. Dusty stood up, pretty damn sure that Daddy was about to run the damn table, but also knowing that he might break that pool cue against the fat boy’s skull. He reached out and touched his daddy’s arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s git.”
“Bullshit,” Daddy Flem said. “I paid my time.”
“Let’s go home.”
“Shit.”
“He ain’t worth it.”
Daddy breathed in a lot of air through his nose and nodded. He leaned into the table, surveying his options and decided on a shot that put his back toward the fat boy. The fat boy drank some beer and looked away, and that was when Daddy reared back the cue hard and fast right between the fat man’s legs. Damn, he got that boy good in the nuts. The man made a high-pitched sound, like a hurt dog, throwing him against his pool table and then coming full out on Daddy, Daddy turning the cue into a club and whacking that man hard and fast across his skull. Somewhere out front, the owner of the pool hall started to yell, saying he was gonna call the cops. But it was too late, the black man was out of the chair and on his feet heading toward Daddy with a malt liquor bottle raised over his head. Dusty saw him, too, and jumped up high on the man’s back, punching at the back of his head and biting a nice chunk off his ear. Dusty could taste the gristle and blood in his mouth, spitting it onto the floor, Daddy now having that big fat boy down on his knees where he kept on whacking and whacking like that fat man wasn’t nothing but the stump of a stubborn oak, the cue just an old mattock that would tear those roots apart.
The spit and blood went flying until that big ole boy finally fell. The black man already loose and free from Dusty. He had his hand on his bleeding ear, screaming that he was gonna kill both those short motherfuckers. The black man walked to the wall, going for the gun that was most surely in his coat.
But the man was too slow. Dusty had a revolver up into the man’s sweating neck, whispering into his bloody ear, “You damn blacks taste just like chicken.”
There was the fuck yous and all the threats about how they’d find them and kill them. Just a bunch of wind and bullshit. Dusty wasn’t in any mood to get down and dirty but that fat man had played it when he’d disrespected Daddy Flem.
The pool room was still and silent. You could hear the men shift on the old buckled wooden planks. The two or three other tables had stopped cold, all eyes on Dusty and Daddy Flem. Daddy having the grace to take the bloody and broken cue and place it neatly and orderly in the rack. The Nix boys slid into their coats, Daddy doing it with a lot of pain, so much blood on his right flank that Dusty knew the whole damn thing had torn loose. Smoke hung around the low-hanging lights. Whatever soul music had been playing on the jukebox was gone. It was like something out of one of those old-time Westerns Daddy watched before falling asleep in his La-Z-Boy.
“Momma will sew you up.”
“She always does.”
“You okay?”
They passed by all the eyes and the whispers, the black-as-night owner of the pool hall already on the phone with Johnny Law. They made it out back and into the night and the cold. Daddy leaned on the passenger door before Dusty helped him inside. The sky was endless and dark, a million pinpricks of light winking above.
“It wadn’t about him,” Daddy said. “I’m still mad as hell at that goddamn bitch who stuck me.”
“Do you ever get tired of teaching folks a lesson?”
“I reckon I don’t,” Daddy said. “Some folks just have it comin’ and I’m glad to send them on their way.”