Vengeance is Mine

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Mr. John gave us a grin and raised an eyebrow. “Ummm hummm. All right, y’all get in, since Miss Becky said it was all right. I got some milk in there that don’t need to get no warmer.”

  Even though I felt bad about Pepper lying to Mr. John, I didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t go, now that she’d gotten us a ride. I sent Hootie back up to the house, because he still wasn’t feeling up to snuff, and he went like it was his idea. Since he got chewed up, he tended to stay close and didn’t seem interested in going anywhere.

  We piled in the backseat and made room between the paper sacks of groceries. Mr. John put the car in gear and drove straight up to the house. Pepper’s eyes grew wide, because she knew what he intended to do.

  Miss Becky heard the car and came outside to lean in Mr. John’s open window. “John, did you arrest my grandkids?”

  He cut a look across the car at Pepper. “I ’magine one might need it ’fore long. Pepper, go ahead on.”

  Knowing she was had, Pepper didn’t have any choice. “Can we ride over to Miss Rachel’s house with Mr. John? We ain’t met her yet, and I want to go somewhere’s else besides this house and ours.”

  The adults passed one of those looks I hate, and then they took to nodding like one of them stupid bobbing dogs that people put on their dashboards.

  “All right.” Miss Becky patted Mr. John’s arm. “Don’t let ’em wear out their welcome.”

  “Yessum.”

  A minute later, we were on the highway. “Now ain’t that better, Miss Pepper, asking permission instead of sneakin’ off?”

  Pepper sulled up. “I guess.”

  Mr. John didn’t take his eyes off the road. “That’s right. Do things the right way and you won’t get into no trouble, and you won’t get others in trouble with you. Now, you don’t have to answer, but think about something on the way there. Nobody knew you was gonna get in the car here with me, but both you kids need to remember that we look different, and people might think I was up to somethin’ takin’ y’all off. Do you see what I’m sayin’?”

  Pepper didn’t look at him, but she nodded.

  “Times is changin’, but they ain’t changin’ that fast. Colored, white, it don’t matter to me, ’cause I love the both of y’all, but you don’t know what folks is gonna think or say, seein’ y’all with me. Now, if somebody asks, Miss Becky can set ’em straight. See?”

  “I didn’t think of that.” Pepper’s voice was small.

  “Y’all ain’t lived long enough to know. You’ll learn.”

  Less than fifteen minutes later, we pulled into Miss Rachel’s dirt yard. She was sitting on her porch in a cane-bottom chair, shelling peas into the apron in her lap. Two little girls about six or seven years old were playing with a toddler in the bare yard. They had a beat up old stewer and a couple of tablespoons for toys. The little girls dipped sand in the stewer, and the toddler used the handle to dump it out, laughing a deep, congested laugh each time. I’d never heard a baby with a voice so deep.

  Miss Rachel dropped an empty hull into the tall pile beside her chair. She waved. “Who you got with you, John?”

  “Couple of outlaws I found on the trail.” We started to slide out. “Uh uh. Y’all hand me them sacks befo’ you get out t’car.”

  I caught myself frowning at Mr. John’s voice. He never sounded like that around us, but with Miss Rachel, he changed the way he talked.

  “Bring them young’uns on up and lemme have a look at them little things. Boy, you po as a snake.”

  They sounded like Mr. John’s old aunt, Miss Sweet, who was a healer. If it wasn’t for her, I believe I’d have died one night from a bad asthma attack, but she mixed up a drink from leaves and roots that got me easy and opened my lungs up.

  Miss Rachel’s windows and doors were open to catch the breeze through the rusty, holy screens. Houses in our part of northeast Texas were built up off the ground with a crawlspace underneath, but Miss Rachel’s was taller than any house I’d ever seen and I could have walked underneath by barely bending over. I bet it had never seen a paintbrush. The steps leading up to the house were raw boards on a tall stringer.

  “Top, Pepper.” Mr. John pointed at the kids coming around the side of the house. “Y’all meet Belle and Bubba. They’re the oldest of this herd. Those two gals ’bout closest to y’all’s age are Jere and Daisy. Now, let me see, the rest are Betsy, Frederick, Christian, Daisy, Josephine, Bessie, Myrlie, and Florynce.” He pointed to them one by one with a thick finger. “The baby there is Bass Reeves. He’s named after the first colored U.S. deputy marshal.”

  I knew they didn’t all belong to Miss Rachel. Grandpa told Miss Becky she was also raising her sister’s kids.

  Miss Rachel split another hull, ran her thumb up the inside to pop the peas free, and reached for another one. “You’ll be marshal one of these days.”

  Mr. John shook his head. “I don’t know ’bout t’at, Rachel Lea. Don’t know I’d want it if they’d give it to me. I got to likin’ hangin’ round this part of Lamar County.”

  She stood, gathering the shelled peas in her apron. “Let me get these on the stove, and I’ll see what else I can find in them sacks for y’all to eat.”

  A voice came from inside the car. “John?”

  Mr. John trotted over and picked up the microphone. “Go ahead, Cody.”

  “Go to channel ten.”

  It wasn’t unusual for them to switch channels so they could talk without so many ears listening in. Grandpa and Uncle Cody did it all the time. “Hold on.” Mr. John dialed the two-way. “I’m here, Cody.”

  “Where you at?”

  Mr. John’s eyes flicked toward all of us on the porch. “Rachel’s.”

  “Good. I need you quick. There’s been a wreck out here at Gate Five, and I need all the help I can get.”

  “Sure ’nough.”

  “It’s some of your people, John. They’re hurt bad, and more are dead than alive.”

  “Good thing the road is open over the dam. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Better make it ten. I need the help.”

  “I’m rollin’.” Mr. John hesitated.

  Miss Rachel had heard enough. “You go on. Get word to Mr. Ned that he can come pick the kids up when he’s ready. They wanted to stay and play anyway. Two mo’ won’t make no difference in this gaggle. Besides, we need to get to know one another.” She winked. “Don’t we, Miss Pepper?”

  Mr. John waved bye and left in a spray of gravel.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Not long after Mr. John left, me and Pepper were down in the draw a couple of hundred yards behind the house with Jere and Daisy. Bubba still had chores to finish, so that left me with the girls to poke around the crumbling banks, looking for stone war clubs or spearheads.

  Some of the younger kids wanted to tag along, but Miss Rachel put a stop to that, saying there might be snakes down in the draw and one of ’em might get bit. I wasn’t dumb enough to think those kids hadn’t spent their lives running the hills and hollers, but she did it to give the four of us some peace.

  Miss Rachel was one of those women who always knew the right thing to say or do. I could tell real quick why Mr. John had taken a liking to her, especially when she smiled. She had two deep dimples in the corners of her mouth that set off her sparkling eyes.

  It was one of those days when all the excitement about looking for artifacts dissolved the minute we got down in that miserable gully. Grandpa said this spell of weather reminded him of the drought that started back in 1947 and lasted for about six years. It usually cooled by October, but not this year. All the old men up at the store kept looking at the sky and wishing for the first norther to arrive.

  In my mind, it’d be easy to walk down there a little ways and pick up arrowheads like ripe persimmons. But the sun beat down on us like it was August. Dying vines
and brambles covered everything else around us. The humidity and the whole vastness of the area took the wind out of my sails and I knew we wouldn’t find a thing.

  My attitude put Pepper into a mood, too. “Well, Mr. Archiol…archol, dammit, how do you say it?”

  “Archaeologist.”

  “All right, Mr. Butthole Archie-ologist. You got us here. Now what?”

  I sighed and looked up at the high banks around us. A small tree had fallen, taking a good chunk of land with it. I kicked at a crumbling clod. A startled lizard shot away.

  Daisy looked down at her bare feet in the sand. She was a little on the heavy side, while Jere was all elbows and knees. “This air’s so thick I cain’t breathe. Let’s go back to the house so I can worsh my hair.”

  Jere looked shocked. “You cain’t worsh your hair this week.”

  “I don’t know why not.”

  “’Cause you got your friend. You know Rachel says we don’t worsh our hair then.”

  It didn’t make any sense to me that they couldn’t wash their hair because we were visiting. “It don’t matter none to me.”

  The girls shot me a look from under their frowns. “We ain’t talking about you, little boy.”

  For a second, I saw sympathy on Pepper’s face, but then she giggled. “They aren’t talking about us, dummy. It’s Daisy’s time. Women don’t wash their hair then. I’ll be in the same fix pretty soon.”

  I scratched my sweating scalp. “Y’all are talking in circles around me.”

  They giggled and Jere chewed a thumbnail. “She’s bleedin’.”

  I still didn’t get it.

  Pepper finally came to the rescue, probably to show that she knew for sure what they were talking about. “Her ‘friend’ is that time of the month.”

  Blank look.

  “Period.”

  Another blank look.

  Pepper sighed. “You know that box in the bathroom cabinet that says Kotex? Miss Becky keeps it there for women who visit.”

  Then I got it, and my face felt as red as if I had a bad sunburn. I wandered over to the shade spilling over the steep bank and squatted down to poke at the dirt so they couldn’t see me. I was so embarrassed and listless that I wanted to curl up and go to sleep.

  They giggled for a few minutes and argued over washing their hair. Finally tiring of the conversation, they joined me.

  “What are we gonna do now?” Pepper waved her hands at the steep banks around us.

  “Keep looking.” I dug at the bank with my hand. Sand trickled onto my shoes. “Real archaeologists keep digging in the dirt until they find something.”

  Pepper picked up a stick and whacked the downed tree trunk. “Well, shit fire and save the matches. I knew you were gonna say that. Screw this. Let’s go back to the house. At least it’s cooler on the porch.”

  Daisy and Jere snickered. Jere twisted back and forth. “Shoot, gal. You cuss like Uncle Carter.”

  Pepper brightened. “Y’all ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

  “She’s right.” I examined some exposed tree roots, hoping for an arrowhead. “She gets her mouth washed out about once a month these days.”

  The girls hid behind their hands. “You don’t say!” They squealed and went off into gales of laughter.

  “Daisy cusses sometimes.”

  “Don’t do it.”

  “Do too.” Jere looked around, as if an adult might show up. She spoke from behind her hand. “This mornin’ she said…ball.”

  They shrieked, but it didn’t make sense to me. “What does that mean?”

  Daisy wrinkled her brow. “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  Pepper was silent.

  “Don’t y’all ever listen to the radio?”

  I realized pretty quick that Jere and Daisy liked to talk back and forth. It made me dizzy trying to keep up with who I was supposed to answer. “Of course I do.”

  “Y’all hear Little Richard?”

  I remembered seeing him on television one night, in his loose-fitting suit. “That the guy who plays piano and wears makeup and screams?”

  Jere jumped, clapped her hands. “That Miss Molly, sho’ do like to ball, whooo!”

  They shrieked again and Daisy finally took pity on me. “You don’t really know, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “It mean Miss Molly like to do it.”

  The blank expression on my face explained everything going on in my head, which was nothing.

  Jere hugged herself. “You poor thang, you don’t know nothin’, do you? Ballin’ means makin’ babies.”

  “Does not.”

  “Sho’ do! Miss Molly likes to have sex!”

  All I remembered about the song was the “good golly Miss Molly” part, and the “woooo” part. My face flushed, and I knew I had to get out of that draw right then, because those girls were way beyond me. I started back toward the house.

  “Ball,” Pepper said, sparking shrieks from all three of them.

  “Balls!”

  I climbed out of the gully while they dissolved into gales of laughter.

  Chapter Forty

  The phone rang beside Best’s massive bed. It was noon and he hated phone calls the first thing in his morning. He swallowed a bite of scrambled eggs and slapped the fork onto the mahogany breakfast tray straddling his waist. Coffee sloshed onto the linen napkin.

  He snatched the receiver from the cradle. “What!?”

  For a long beat, there was silence on the other end. “Mr. Best, this is Michael, from Kansas City.”

  The frown evaporated and Best exposed his fangs when he realized the call was from Chisum, Texas. “Did you do it?”

  He hesitated. “No, sir.”

  It was Best’s turn to be silent. His face flushed and the smile vanished as quickly as it appeared. “You better have a damn good reason.”

  “I believe we do, sir.” Michael continued before Best could start questioning him. “We had it all set up last night, but then we saw Anthony Agrioli. We figured you sent him for some reason, and we din’t want to get in the way, so we waited until I could call you.”

  Best jerked upright, this time sloshing fresh-squeezed orange juice out of the glass. “Are you talking about my lieutenant, Anthony Agrioli?”

  “Yes, sir. See, we know Anthony’s reputation and we didn’t…”

  “Say it again and make it clear. You are in that hick town in Texas, right? What did you see?”

  Michael hesitated. “Yes sir. We’re at the Holiday Inn, and let me tell you, this ain’t no place I wanna stay in again.” The curtains on the plate glass window were open and he watched a couple walk back from the detached restaurant in front of the motel. The guy looked slimy enough that Michael immediately disliked him. The woman, though, was built the way he liked them, big-chested and nasty-looking in a way that defied description. It was mostly those smoky eyes and the willowy way she moved next to the guy.

  With an effort, he turned his attention back to Best. “We were on the sheriff’s street last night when our headlights hit Agrioli. He was walkin’ down the street like he lived here, so we backed off until I could call you. We didn’t want to screw up whatever he had planned. Did you send Anthony, too?”

  Best studied the mess on his tray without seeing it. “Agrioli no longer works for me. He took something of mine and left. Are you sure it was him?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure. I’ve worked with Anthony before.”

  “I cannot believe our good fortune. All right. Here is what you do. You have two jobs now. I want you to rub that sheriff out like I said, and Agrioli too. I will pay you double for the job, but do it today.”

  Michael glanced across the motel room at Nicky playing solitaire at the table under the brown plastic swag lamp dangling from the ceiling. Joh
nny Machine was cleaning his pistol. His constant compulsion kept him busy and focused. “Mr. Best. I need to make sure I’m hearing you right. You want us to take Agrioli out for you, too?”

  “Right. He double-crossed me and the organization. He is now a wild card that needs to be eliminated. Who do you have with you?”

  “I got Nicky Crespino and Johnny Machine.”

  “Those are both good men. You guys finish this job, and I will arrange for you to stay out here a week.” He was so excited, his diction slipped. “How ’bout t’at?”

  “We’ll be happy to do it, Mr. Best. Any special instructions on how you want it done?”

  “Wet. Make it wet.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll call you when we’re finished.”

  “Wait a minute before you hang up. This is no reflection on your abilities, but I know Agrioli. I am sending you some help. Ray Marco is in Dallas. I will have him call you and get directions to where you are staying. He will bring some other guys, and you will coordinate with them. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Best.”

  “Good. Give me the direct number to your room and then call me when it is finished.” He jotted down the number and thumbed the disconnect button without saying good-bye, keeping the receiver to his ear. “Get me Dallas.”

  He didn’t need to say anything else. The line went directly to his personal operator, and she knew who he wanted in Big D. The guys in Dallas were strictly small time, and that’s why he’d opted for the boys in Kansas City at first. But now things were changing, and he needed backup and more firepower.

  The phone rang in an office high in the Southland Life building. “Lone Star Moving. We’ll take you from anywhere in Texas with a rate you won’t believe.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Ray Marco. Who’s this?”

  “Malachi Best.”

  A sharp intake of breath. “Oh, sorry, Mr. Best. I didn’t recognize your voice.”

  “That is fine, Ray. I need you for a quick job.”

  “Sure, Mr. Best. I can be there tonight.”

  “No, not here. You ever hear of a hick town there called Chisum?”