“Okay, let’s get this started,” Deacon said, turning off the television. “I’ve been reading a lot of history lately.” The men laughed because they thought this was a joke. “I’m serious,” Deacon said. “I’ve been reading a lot of history, and there was this man named Marcus Aurelius who used to rule Rome. The big one, in Italy,” he added for clarification, lest his compatriots think he meant a former mayor of their town.
“I know that name,” one of the men said. “He’s the guy who wanted Russell Crowe to rule Rome, but his dickhead son murdered him.”
“None of that is true,” Deacon said.
“No shit.”
“Listen,” Deacon said, “what I’m trying to tell you is Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world, hired a man to walk behind him all day long whispering, ‘You are only a man.’”
The room considered this for a moment, and Marshall Ford said, “We should hire someone to walk behind Jackson all day whispering, ‘You are only a dipshit,’” and the room roared with laughter that slowly morphed into hacking coughs.
“Y’all laugh,” Deacon said, “but we need to remind the great Jackson Crowder he’s just a man, and we gotta do it now, before he goes and wins the damn state championship and becomes untouchable. Melvin, how are things going at the school?”
Melvin, the high school janitor, said, “I spoke to six teachers this week, and ain’t none of ’em wanting to go on record about changing grades. One of ’em told me they all want to help us, that Jackson had blackmailed ’em all, but if they came forward, they’d be implicating themselves, and that’s the sort of thing they can lose tenure over. Lot of ’em are close to retirement, and that would ruin ’em, you know.”
“We could pay ’em off,” Fletcher suggested.
“It would take a hell of a lot of money for someone to risk losing their pension,” Deacon said. “More than I’m willing to cough up, especially since we’d have no guarantee anything would come of it. Hell, wouldn’t surprise me if Jackson has the county school board in his pocket by now.”
A man in a tie who looked like he came to the meeting straight from his desk job said, “What about a young teacher, one who doesn’t have tenure yet? They might be willing to risk it for, say, a new car. Or maybe some help with their student loans.”
“That’s a thought, Bill,” Deacon said.
“What about Brinks?” asked Darryl Loder, the only confessing atheist in Rome and now editor of the Riverton Times. “He doesn’t have tenure, and he doesn’t even need the money.”
“I haven’t changed any grades for—”
“Now Darryl, Brinks is our guest tonight,” Deacon said, coming to my rescue, “and we’re not gonna ask him to do anything he’s uncomfortable with.”
“Look,” Marshall Ford said, “I know we’ve talked about this before, but I still don’t see no point in taking down Jackson if we don’t go after Silas too. If he gets the job, things won’t be no better for us.”
“Hell, things’ll probably get worse,” said Melvin the janitor. “Coach Carver is the brains of that bunch; without Crowder holding him back, they’s no telling what he could do.”
“But that’s my point,” Deacon said. “Silas’s crippled ass would fall outta his wheelchair laughing if we took down Jackson. He’d be so appreciative of us, things would be back to normal in no time. Now Fletcher, where are things with your plan, what’s it called ... Operation Triple X?”
For some reason, Fletcher Morgan stood to address the crowd and said, “I’m calling it the eXXXtravaganza now. With three X’s.”
“Whatever,” Deacon said, “where are you with it?”
“Well, I made myself fake Facebook, Snapchat, and Tweeter accounts, and I’ve friended a lot of the kids from Rome, but I’ll be honest, Deacon, half the time I don’t even know what they’re talking about. They don’t even use the alphabet, just those little ouijas.”
“Emojis?” Deacon asked.
“Yeah, emojis, or whatever the hell they call ’em. I need the damn Poinsettia Stone to translate that shit.”
Deacon sighed and rubbed his temples. “Well, keep at it, Fletch. I know it’s only September, but this stuff takes time. What else was there ... Zane, you were gonna look into Jackson’s financials for us?”
Zane, a short man who’d been smoking an e-cigarette all night, stood, pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, and read, “Jackson bought 2226 Amherst in June 2014, for $349,000. In August 2014, he sold 237 Virginia Avenue in Birmingham for $503,000. He also owns seven more acres on the Coosa River a few miles south of Rome, but I couldn’t figure out how much he paid for ’em or when he bought ’em.”
“That all?” Deacon asked.
Zane flipped his paper over a couple times and said, “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I can’t just call the bank and ask how much money he’s got.”
“Bill, you work at the bank. Can you—
“No, Deacon, I can’t do that.”
“Okay, okay, I had to ask. Darryl, your girlfriend found out anything about Amy’s miscarriage?”
Darryl, who wore a fedora and a T-shirt featuring Jesus riding a dinosaur, said, “I asked her if she could look in Amy’s file for me, but she said that was illegal, and I was an asshole for even asking her.”
Some of the others laughed, and Darryl said, “I don’t understand why we can’t get Jackson fired on some sort of moral clause. Everyone knows he’s screwing what’s her name.”
“Now Darryl, that’s libelous,” Deacon said, “unless you’ve got any proof you want to share?”
Darryl shook his head no, and Deacon said, “What about the rest of you? Any of y’alls wives know anything about Amy?”
Around the room, men shook their heads no, and Deacon cursed and said, “Well, I’d bet my house Jackson made up that miscarriage story to cover his ass on the Mytilene loss, but I can’t prove it if y’all don’t help me out.” He hit his hand on the coffee table and took a deep breath and said, “Okay, well, I feel like we’ve taken a step back here. We’re gonna need to double our efforts. We all know the great Jackson Crowder is as crooked as the day is long, but if the rest of Rome don’t figure it out soon, he’ll be untouchable. Now, is there any official club business?”
“Mr. President,” Marshall said, rising to his feet.
“You have the floor, Marshall.”
“I propose we carry on with the Cow Patty Party as planned this spring.”
“Wait,” I said, “y’all still do that?”
“Now, Brinks,” Deacon said, “Marshall has the floor. They’ll be time for questions in a moment.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
The Cow Patty Party was, and apparently still is, a fundraiser where the Quarterback Club draws a 100x100-foot grid on the football field and sells each square on the grid for $100. Then, on a Saturday morning in the spring, they release a cow onto the field and everyone in town watches and prays the cow will shit in their square, earning them half the $10,000 pot. If the cow shits on the line, they split the money, obviously.
“Anyway,” Marshall said, “I think it’ll show the community the important role we play, and—”
“The community don’t give a shit about us; if they did, we’d—”
“Sit, Zane. You’re out of order,” Deacon barked. “Marshall, you were saying.”
“Well, I just think it would earn us a lot of good will, and it would let Jackson know we’re still here.”
Marshall sat and Deacon said, “We have a motion to conduct the Cow Patty Party as planned, any questions?” No one said anything, and Deacon said, “Okay, all in favor?” A few people mumbled ayes. “All opposed?” Zane offered a feeble “nay.” “The ayes have it,” Deacon said. “The Cow Patty Party will go on as planned.”
They went on like this, observing Robert’s Rules of Order, for the better part of the next hour, until the group ratified a motion to “Go on home and get the hell to bed.”
Deacon held me by the shoulder as
the other men left, and when we were alone again, he said, “Brinks, I know Rome means as much to you as it does to the rest of us. And I ain’t asking you to do something you might be uncomfortable with, but I just want to know if ...”
At that moment, I almost felt sorry for Deacon. He was once the King of Rome, and now he was just the leader of the biggest collection of kooks in Rubicon County. Hell, he kept a wolf in his backyard; he probably was the biggest kook of all. But even if I did feel a twinge of pity, and even if Jackson and I would never truly be friends again, Deacon was still an asshole, and I wasn’t about to join his ranks.
“... if we can count on you to help us get rid of Jackson?”
“No,” I said, “you can’t,” and walked to my car while Diana howled at the moon.
Rolling Stone: Can you talk about what led to the cancellation of the European leg of your tour?
Marcus Brinks: Talk about it? You mean with words?
Rolling Stone: Well yeah, preferably with words.
Marcus Brinks: No.
—Rolling Stone, “Interview with Marcus Brinks,” January 11, 1999
Chapter Fifteen (1994)
During the tenth month of the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-four, as foretold in the book of Garth, the gods unleashed a plague upon Rome. Not a plague of frogs, or lice, or locusts—those would’ve been fine. The Coosa River did not run red with blood—that would’ve been okay too. No, the gods were not messing around that October, and they blighted our fair town with a pestilence of heel, toe, do-se-dos that seemingly afflicted everyone in school but Jackson and me. Like a zit, Dixie Dancehall & Taxidermy materialized overnight, filling the void of Main Street cruising with, perhaps, the worst recreational activity in the history of human recreation: Country. Line. Dancing.
“Should we check out Dixie Dancehall?” Silas asked Jackson and me through a mouthful of French fries.
It was Saturday night, and we were eating dinner on a picnic table outside the WigWam, two weeks after what I’m loosely calling my fight with Deacon at the raceway. My mom grounded me that night, mostly for coming home with alcohol on my breath, but also for refusing to discuss the origins of my swollen black eyes. I missed the Riverton game, a 63-7 shellacking (yes, Jackson gave up the only touchdown), and the succeeding Saturday night, in which Silas and Jackson spent six straight hours playing NBA Jam in the garage.
“Hell no,” Jackson said. He was in a pissy mood because Rome played a close game the night before, a 17-7 win over Koch, and he never saw the field after warmups.
“Well, I’m open to suggestions if you’ve got better plans,” Silas said, “but I’m not spending another Saturday night in the garage beating y’alls asses at Sega. Brinks, you up for some country line dancing?”
I took a sip of my grape milkshake (it tastes better than it sounds) and said, “Sounds bitchin’.” But when Silas didn’t laugh in reply, I said, “No, wait, for real?”
“Everyone from school will be there tonight,” Silas said. “A lot of people went last weekend and said it was fun.”
“Country line dancing?” I asked. “The only one of those three words that sounds fun is ‘line.’”
“Like I said,” Silas said, “I’m open to suggestions.”
Jackson and I looked at each other then back at Silas, who shrugged and said, “Dixie Dancehall it is.”
Dixie Dancehall & Taxidermy was in an old tire warehouse on the outskirts of Riverton. Most people just called it Dixie Dancehall, but Monday through Friday, they’d gladly stuff any dead animal you brought in. Silas told me it’s now a CrossFit gym. That night, the parking lot was full, so we parked next door at a carpet factory and joined the short line at the door, where a man in overalls took our five dollars and said, if he caught us with alcohol or “tobaccy” on the premises, he’d never let us come back.
“You promise?” Jackson asked, but the overalled man just glared at us, so we quickly went inside.
Dixie Dancehall was a bit Spartan in decor. A few deer heads hung from the walls but not much else. A mismatched collection of folding chairs was distributed randomly along the edges of the room, and the concession stand consisted solely of a woman in the corner selling canned Cokes from a cooler. Overhead, at Dixie Dancehall, was low. We each bought a Coke and gravitated toward the chairs against the wall and watched a few hundred kids kick left, kick right, kick left, heel shift, stomp, stomp, and kick ball change. I wanted to throw up.
“Should I worry that my ears are bleeding?” I shouted to Silas and Jackson over a particularly twangy number from Messrs. Brooks and Dunn.
“Yeah, this sucks,” Jackson said.
“You suck, and you suck,” Silas said, and after hitting us both in the shins with his crutches, he was on the dance floor, boot-stomping with the rest of Rome.
“To be on crutches and not know what he’s doing,” I said to Jackson, “he’s not half bad.”
“He could always dance,” Jackson replied with what sounded like a hint of envy. I know I was jealous, because within literal seconds of hitting the dance floor, a half-dozen girls surrounded Silas, helping him learn the moves. But one song wore him out, and by the merciful end of “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” Silas sat between us again.
“I called Warren G and Nate Dogg while you were out there doing whatever the hell you were just doing. They said they’re coming to regulate you.”
“It’s not my favorite music,” Silas said, still catching his breath. “But I know N-A-T-E and The Warren to the G wouldn’t begrudge a brotha’ for mackin’ skirts by any means necessary.”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but they’re under legal obligation to cap your ass for calling yourself a brotha’, in general, and while country line dancing at Dixie Dancehall, in particular.”
Silas shrugged and said, “Yeah, that’s fair.”
We sat there, sipping our Cokes and watching our classmates dance themselves whiter, and after three or four more songs, Jackson said, “Can we go anywhere else?”
“Where?” Silas asked.
“Let’s go to Winona Mountain and see if we can hear the ghost baby cry on the haunted bridge.”
“You’re supposed to take girls up there so you can hold them when they get freaked out. I’m not going with you two.”
“He’s scared,” Jackson said to me, and I laughed.
“You guys aren’t leaving, are you?”
It was Becca Walsh, wearing boots, painted-on Wranglers, and a red and black checkered button-down shirt tied above her midriff. She somehow looked amazing and ridiculous all at once.
“Yeah, this blows,” Jackson said.
“It’s fun,” Becca said, hitting Jackson on the arm. “Have you guys even tried it?”
“I did,” Silas said.
“Marcus,” she said, reaching out her hand, “try this next dance with me. It’s super easy. I promise.”
We hadn’t really spoken since the fight. She said hello to me at school now, and I said hello back, but that was the extent of our post-ass-beating relationship. She did dump Deacon. Rumor was her breakup talk culminated in a swift knee to his balls, but this is unverified, and Deacon still strutted around school with the cockiness of a starting quarterback, not the shuffling limp of a dude with bruised testicles. I didn’t care either way. Not about Deacon’s balls. I never cared about Deacon’s balls. I didn’t care about Becca. Silas warned me she was a hall of fame tease, but I ignored him. I ignored him because, even though a girl this hot had never liked me before, I thought Becca and I had a connection—something special she couldn’t find with the other guys at Rome, and I followed her siren song into the rocky shore where her boyfriend beat the shit out of me. Becca was a careless person, and I didn’t care to do whatever it was we were doing any more.
“No,” I said, looking up so she could see my still-black eyes, “we’re leaving.”
“Oh, okay,” she said as I stood and walked past her. “You guys have fun. I’ll see you Monday.”
&nb
sp; Jackson and Silas may have said bye to her, but I’m not sure. I kept walking, out of Dixie Dancehall and to my car, where I blasted Soundgarden in a futile attempt to wash the Garth Brooks from my ears.
“Okay, now what?” Silas said as we left Dixie Dancehall, heading back toward Rome. Jackson and I knew Saturday night protocol required us to find something else fun to do, since we’d made the call to leave.
“Big Bertha’s?” Jackson asked.
“Where?”
“Big Bertha’s,” Jackson repeated without explanation, leaving me to envision a strip club I really did not want to go to.
“Okay,” Silas said, “but you are paying for my balls.”
This did not clear things up.
Big Bertha’s, thank god, was a dairy farm and converted driving range near Carthage. Bertha, an entrepreneurial farmer’s wife, bought ten thousand golf balls, set up some flood lights, and now people paid her six bucks to hit a hundred golf balls at the rusted tractors, dilapidated cars, and wooden cow cutouts doubling as yard markers in the pasture. The dairy farm’s real cows mooed at golfers behind a gigantic net over three hundred yards away, and though Marshall Ford swears he hit one once, Bertha says no one has ever come close.
“That was terrible,” Jackson said, teeing up a ball and slicing it into the net that kept errant shots from hitting passing cars on Highway 9.
“You’re a terrible golfer,” Silas said. “What did you expect?”
“I’m talking about the line dancing place.”
“There were a lot of hot chicks there,” Silas said. “I mean, the music sucked, and the dancing really sucked, but if you haven’t noticed, we’re now alone in a cow pasture on a Saturday night.”
“We’ve got Bertha,” I said, motioning toward the cigar-smoking woman sitting outside the little shed where she sold buckets of golf balls.
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