Dutch Curridge

by Bryant, Tim

  I saw no reason to doubt the story. It added up.

  "Why take him in?" Slant said.

  "I knew Stubblefield would run him out of town on a rail," he said. "I've seen it enough to know how it works."

  He suddenly looked tired, as if he'd aged in the amount of time we'd stood there in the darkened room.

  "And I just wanted him gone," he said.

  "You know what happened to Whitey after that?” I said.

  "Stubblefield said he gave the boy until sundown the next day to leave town, or else he would charge him with the murder of the baby.”

  "Stub knew it was Della's baby?” I said.

  "Sure he did,” Kimble said. "I'd said plenty by that point, most of it bad.”

  He looked at his watch as if he'd suddenly realized he was late for a date.

  "I'm sorry this all happened,” he said.

  Kimble lifted the gun up, turned it around, stuck it in his mouth and squeezed off a single round. It happened so fast I couldn't get a damn word out of my throat. The force of the bullet ripped the back of his head off and he slumped to the floor with what seemed to be a long heavy sigh of relief.

  There was a good bit of time where the gunfire just hung there in the room with us, and then it slowly faded away, leaving only the smell of powder.

  "Reckon we better call this in?” I said to Slant.

  We walked back out into the leaves, but they didn't seem nearly so loud anymore. My ears rang for the next two or three days. Course, I knew it was from that Colt. Those things are louder than God himself. Partly, though, I wondered if it wasn't from what Kimble had said before he used that final bullet.

  35

  I thought Stub was gonna go off his nut.

  "Dutch,” he said, "the last thing I needed was to find you standing around Kimble's place and him with a bullet through his melon. You understand me?”

  "You'd think if I'd pulled the trigger, I would have beat it,” I said. "I'm the one who called it in, if you understand me.”

  "Yeah,” he said, "but climbin' into the man's car and using state property probably wasn't too bright either.”

  Stub didn't know everything, but he did know that his partner had been shot through the mouth with his own gun. And he wasn't quite ready to accuse me of pulling off that feat.

  Kimble was buried in a corner of Rose Hill Cemetery, a place that already had a handful of dead cops in it. His paycheck paid off a modest little plot in a corner and called it squash. There wasn't a church funeral, partly on account of Kimble not being any kind of believer. Not many people showed up for the graveside service. Least that's what I heard.

  One of the people that didn't show up at Rose Hill Cemetery was Dandy O'Bannon. Dandy was still locked up in Tarrant County Jail and facing charges in the murder of Whitey Calhoun. I was watching closely to see if Stub would drop charges against him. God knows, Stub had made an art of dropping charges throughout his career.

  I was still convinced that his arrest had been a ruse to divert attention away from the real perpetrator. And now that that real perp was very likely planted in Rose Hill, I figured Stub might suddenly spring Dandy on lack of evidence. I'd certainly seen the type of thing happen before.

  Day after day passed and Dandy remained in lock-up.

  Playing bones at the Brickyard, Slant and me were taking Cisero and Big Rube to the cleaners. It was clear that Cisero's mind wasn't on the game, and Slant and I could play with our eyes closed.

  "Ever been to Terrell?” Slant said to Cisero. Terrell State Hospital, less than an hour east of Dallas, was the psychiatric hospital most of the local head cases were eventually shuttled off to. Just the name Terrell kind of made my blood back up. I'd never been there, but I'd heard stories.

  "Terrell's one of the best mental institutions in the United States,” Cisero said.

  "You been there?” I said.

  "As a visitor,” he said.

  Rube said something about a person getting three square meals a day there, and Slant said it was more than you could expect at the Brickyard Hotel. As a whole, things were clicking along like your average night at the Brickyard. Rube was serving the drinks up strong and everybody was in their usual place. Except for one.

  I couldn't help but notice how replaceable we all seemed. If I hadn't been there, if Kimble had decided to throw lead my way instead, how much difference would it have really made? Dominos would still fall.

  Things weren't the same old same old for Miss Vita. Whitey hadn't been so easy to replace for her. Didn't really seem like she had much of anybody left.

  We were in the last week of the federal grand jury being seated, and although we'd heard through Judge Lynch that they were most interested in roping in some of the gangsters that were entrenched along the Jacksboro Highway, we figured it would be real easy for them throw Dandy up on the stand before they called it a day. The fact that they hadn't confirmed a date with Cisero was pretty much business as usual.

  "I'm ready as I can be,” he said when Rube asked, "considering I'm working with a guy who's pretty much a hostile witness in his own defense.”

  When we split up that night, I pulled away from the Brickyard and pointed the Chummy straight at the moon. There was somebody I was wanting to talk to, and I figured I had just enough time to do it.

  36

  I parked the Chummy close to the creek bed and followed it up to the old mimosa tree with the rope swing. The swing, cut from an inner tube, was long gone, but half the rope remained. If anybody had wandered by the place, they'd be left to speculate whether something more sinister had once hung there.

  The farm house was dark, and I couldn't so much see it as feel it looming. I backed up against the tree and sat down where I remembered sitting many times as a kid, watching the water trickle past and wondering where it might end up. Back then, I'd always imagined it growing wider and wider until it spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, at Galveston or maybe Corpus Christi. I'd still never seen either place, but I'd since learned that the creek eventually emptied into a drainage ditch south of Weatherford. I'm fairly sure it never got any closer to Galveston than I did.

  I must've sat there at the tree for several hours. Maybe even fell asleep a time or two, but next thing I knew, the Wild Turkey was gone, and, when I tried to stand, I had to hang on to the old rope for balance.

  I followed the creek until it turned west and cut across the field directly across from the house. Same field we used to work now looked as barren as my bottle of whiskey. About half of it was overgrown with trees and didn't look like it had ever been a field. I kicked at the dirt and remembered the smell of a mule fart.

  "Hey, brother.”

  Lizabeth's voice was as clear as the night sky. I looked up to see her skipping across the field in her sky blue feed bag dress, its colors, like her face, tamped down by the moonlight.

  "Lizabeth.” The voice seemed to come from outside of me, like I was thinking it instead of speaking.

  "Momma says you need to come back home.”

  "Reckon I got a little bit longer,” I said. I was half surprised to look down at my own hands and not see them suddenly young again. I moved the bottle around behind my back.

  "Got somethin' for me?” she said.

  "Maybe,” I said. She strained to get a glimpse.

  "Maybe just a question,” I said.

  "Shoot.”

  "You okay?” I said.

  "Of course I am, silly” she said. "Is that the question?”

  "I'm kinda sorry you haven't been around,” I said. "I've missed ya.”

  "You're the one hasn't been around, brother” she said. And she was gone, disappearing into the black silhouette of the house. Nothing but the rustle of weeds. Once again, no chance for a proper goodbye.

  I thought about Lizabeth for a short while, and then I thought about Whitey. It's funny how death changes everything and nothing. Days go on and on without them, as if life itself hasn't bothered to notice. Some of us stare at o
ur hands and expect to see a difference, as if the bones beneath our skin have been altered.

  On the way back down to the car, I lost my footing on a muddy patch and fell. The ground caught me real soft, and I was in no big hurry, so I laid there and looked up at the Milky Way. Funny, it was right where it had been all those years before, when I showed it to Lizabeth. If it was looking down at me at the same time, it probably couldn't see much difference in me either.

  I must have fallen asleep there for a good while. I woke up to the sound of the wind stirring the ground around me and thought I felt a few drops of rain. Later, I thought I felt someone come by and drape an old blanket over me. Stitched together out of patterned cloth, it was one I seemed to recall from my childhood. Had it been Lizabeth? My mother?

  When I awoke, it was nothing but my own overcoat. I got to my feet and walked to the car on two completely numb legs. Maybe Lizabeth had run off, thinking I was the ghost.

  I considered looking James Alto up sometime and asking him about the spirit world. I was starting to feel less and less a part of the real world.

  37

  Out at Crystal Springs, I asked if anybody had ever heard of Uncle Al Slatherly. A few of the men looked blankly at me and shook their heads, some just looked blankly. But I finally happened upon the manager, a guy named Samuel Cunningham, and he said, yeah, he knew him.

  "You used to find him over at WBAP radio all the time," he said. "But he retired a couple years ago. Someone told me he's moving to California."

  I thanked him and ordered a drink to show my appreciation.

  "What you need Al for?" he said.

  "Nothing important," I said, by which I meant to say that he was not in any kind of trouble. "Just wanted to ask him about a music group that he worked with."

  "The man worked with the best," Cunningham said. "Gene Autry, Roy Rodgers."

  "No shit?" I said. "Gene Autry?"

  I tried imagining a scenario where one man could be responsible for the careers of Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, as well as Verbal and Nobel Nu Grape. I suppose everybody has good days and bad days.

  I got the phone number for WBAP and headed toward the Brickyard. I had occasional phone privileges with Big Rube, so long as the call wasn't out of state, and if she wasn't in the mood for it, I could always use the payphone. It was early afternoon, so the bar was still slow. A good time to call.

  The operator didn't mention anything about Al Slatherly now residing in California. She just put me through to the daytime manager, who wasted no time filling me in.

  "I don't know who told you to call here," he said. "Al Slatherly hasn't been around these parts for near two years. Is there anything I can do for you?"

  "Well, it's a matter that concerns his work for the Columbia Recording Company, so I'm not sure you can," I said.

  "Maybe not," he said, "but I know someone who might. Have you talked to Peg McDermott?"

  "I don't believe I have," I said.

  "Let me get my secretary to give you that number," he said. "If Peg can't help you, you may have to track Al down in California, and I have no idea where he is out there."

  I waited for several minutes, and then the lady who took my call returned.

  "Sir," she said. "Mr. Broussard asked me to give you this number. Do you have something to write it down?"

  I took the number and thanked her.

  "Rube," I said, "you ever heard of a lady named Peg McDermott?" Because Rube has heard of just about everybody that is anybody in Fort Worth.

  "It's a local number," I said.

  Big Rube had no idea who she was. There was one old guy sitting at the end of the bar, but he didn't act like he knew anybody at all, so I went ahead and dialed the number on the paper.

  A man answered the phone. I felt slightly uncomfortable asking for someone who might turn out to be his wife.

  "May I speak to a Peg McDermott?" I said. I figured if I made out like any old Peg McDermott would do, as opposed to a certain "Peg McDermott," he might take me to be some innocuous businessman.

  "You're speaking to him," he said.

  "You are Peg McDermott?"

  "The one and only. Expecting someone else?" he said.

  "Can you imagine that?" I said.

  "Yeah," he said. "They call me Peg on account of I lost my leg in Manila Bay, the Philippines. I have a wooden one. Like a pirate, you know."

  "That's very interesting," I said. "Is it true that you can still feel your leg, even after it's gone?"

  "Ghost limb," he said. "Yeah, that's true. Especially when the weather changes or sometimes when you first wake up in the morning."

  "Is it true that you know Uncle Al Slatherly?"

  "I'm the one named him Uncle Al. I guess I do."

  I gave the man a quick summary of everything I had been through, up until that point, in reference to Lester Freeman. He listened intently, or at least put on a good show that he did.

  "Let me get this straight," he said, after I had brought him completely up to date, including the part where I thought I was asking for his wife when he'd answered the telephone. "Are you saying that Al is in some kind of trouble? I'm not about to help you chase him down, half way across the country, so you can give him what for."

  I assured him that this was not the case at all, that I was merely wanting to confirm that Nobel and Verbal Whitaker were indeed the Nu Grape Twins, signed to the Columbia Recording Company some twenty or twenty-five years previous.

  "Look," Peg said, "this is not something that Al needs to be bothered with. He had nothing to do with it, other than maybe signing his name onto a piece of paper, as he probably did a hundred times a day. You want to know which one of these groups was the ones had that record out? It wasn't neither one. The Nu Grape Twins was just like a whole slew of negro groups they used to have running. Most of 'em was recorded in Atlanta, Georgia or maybe New Orleans. Columbia would put 'em out, then get three or four, hell, sometimes they might have a dozen different groups all goin' around the country under the same name. And Columbia making money off every last one of 'em."

  "And none of 'em knew about each other?" I said.

  "Some might of, but I seriously doubt it," he said.

  I thanked him for his time and assistance and asked how someone like Al Slatherly could have been behind both Gene Autry and The Nu Grape Twins.

  "It was an exciting time, back then," he said. "We were both working for recording companies, racing around the country, signing up talent before the other could get to it. Some of 'em was great. Most of 'em, maybe even. It was like tapping an underground spring. Seemed like it was unending."

  "It must have been a hell of a ride," I said.

  "For everybody involved," he said. "You know, I doubt even God himself knows who the original Nu Grape Twins were at this point. That's the way it goes sometime."

  The pirate was right about that.

  38

  Time has a way of blurring things. Even so, there are days that sober you right up and make themselves part of you. Like scars.

  The day my ex-wife left might have been one of those days. The day Lizabeth died. Another one was the day Dandy got hauled before the Tarrant County grand jury on charges of second degree murder. And I wasn't even there to see half of it.

  Cisero had ended up with a two day notice and came in with both guns blazing. In fact, he was getting a pretty good feeling that the jury wasn't going to hand down an indictment.

  "First two witnesses the state called,” he said, "both pointed him out. One said he'd bragged in every pool hall up and down Ninth that he'd been the one killed Calhoun. Trouble is, that was Noble Whitaker, all dressed up in a Sunday suit and go-to-hell hat, and there was at least a couple folks on the jury knew him enough to raise an eyebrow.

  After two witnesses, it looked for a minute like the state was gonna rest its case, but they brought in a couple doctors and started hacking away on the insanity thing. Now, I knew that a grand jury don't have no truck in m
aking an insanity call, but I also knew what their game was. They were going to force me into an insanity defense, so they could use that to get O'Bannon committed. I wasn't really keen on playing it that way. I decided I wouldn't call O'Bannon to the stand at all.”

  "So what the H E double hockey sticks happened?” I said.

  "Lynch asked him if he'd like to be sworn in, tell his side of things.”

  "That's not legal, is it?” I said.

  "Nowhere but Fort Worth, Texas,” Cisero said. "But then all hell really broke a-loose. Your buddy ends up asking if he can sack me, represent himself.”

  "He's crazy,” I said.

  The judge called for an hour recess, in order to talk to all parties. When the case resumed, Cisero was sitting two rows back and biting through his lip, having been warned that one more outburst would send him back to the slammer with Dandy.

  "Do you feel that you are capable of representing yourself?” Lynch said.

  "I've done it my whole life long,” Dandy said.

  "Are you fully aware of the charges against you and the possible consequences of those charges?” Lynch said.

  "I'm not afraid,” Dandy said. "I never done anything in this world that I wasn't asked to do by the person in charge."

  "And what, may I inquire, were you asked to do?”

  "Take care of Whitey Calhoun.”

  Cisero heared a ripple go through the jury and hung his head.

  "And what, Mr. O'Bannon, did that require?” Lynch said.

  "I had to find him first,” Dandy said. "Took me a good day or two, maybe three.”