Vengeance is Mine

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Griffin sighed and checked the highway again. “Who came with guns?”

  “We don’t know who they were. I think Washington set up an ambush, but we got the hell out of there.”

  “Did they recognize you?”

  The couple exchanged glances. “They saw our faces, but they won’t know who we are.”

  Thunder rumbled. Griffin straightened to squint toward the towering thunderheads. There was barely enough to light to inside the car. “I still don’t get why y’all are here?”

  “We don’t have a map, and then when we did find the highway again, it was the same place where we caused the wreck. Every law in the county was there in the middle of the biggest traffic jam I’ve ever seen.”

  Ralph waved a hand. “It’s a wonder they didn’t see us, but they were all busy. We backed up, turned around like everybody else, and went looking for a way around Chisum, but that hasn’t worked, ’cause these chicken-scratch trails wind around so much we keep getting lost.” He squinted upward at the sheriff, sweating as if he’d run a mile. “I’m thinking we might need to let this one alone. They’ve already seen us.”

  Myrna leaned toward Ralph to better see the sheriff standing beside them. “Look, how about we give you back some of the money you gave us. That way we’ll be even and you can get someone else to do the job, probably better than we could.”

  Resting one hand on the roof, Griffin hooked his free thumb in his gun belt. It was a familiar pose that kept his hand close to his pistol. “What are you so nervous about, Ralph?”

  “I just…I’m ready to get this all over with and go home.”

  “Here.” Myrna opened the glove box and handed Griffin a packet of money. “Just take this and let’s call it even.”

  He took it and recognized a mark on the band holding the bills together. “We’ll call the whole thing off? You give me this and drive away and that’s all, huh? We call it even?”

  His face a blank mask, Griffin shifted away from the car and glanced around at the dark, empty pastures and roads. When he looked back into the car, Ralph’s expression in the glow of the dash told him that despite being a bumbling fool, the man had sensed what was about to happen.

  Ralph reached under the towel on the seat between them.

  Myrna’s face was one of shock. She grabbed his hand. “Wait!”

  Her interference was enough to give Griffin time to draw his .45 and shoot Ralph twice in the chest. The interior of the car flashed, freezing Myrna’s terrified expression. He shifted his aim and pulled the trigger again, then again. Red bloomed on her shirt. She fell against Ralph’s corpse, her head on his shoulder.

  Griffin pitched the counterfeit money into Ralph’s lap. “This is the funny money I paid you with, stupid.” He checked his surroundings and smiled. Gunshots in rural Lamar County were as common as mockingbirds.

  He reached in across Ralph’s bloody body and picked up the towel revealing a worn revolver. Griffin used it to wipe his fingerprints from the car door and the roof, then he pitched it back through the open window.

  “Now I gotta do it myself.”

  He drove away toward the coming storm. Their blood leaked through the seats and drenched the packets of real cash wrapped in butcher paper marked “Steak.”

  Chapter Fifty

  A lightning bolt slashed through the thick clouds overhead. I felt the thunder rumble deep in my chest each time a rolling boom followed the lightning bolts. Pepper and me were sitting out there with Mr. Thurman and Ralston, Miss Sweet’s nephew.

  Miss Sweet didn’t drive, and Ralston took her anywhere she wanted to go. The old healer served the poor folks in Lamar County with the folk medicine she’d learned from her grandmother. She was one of the colored folks Pepper told Miss Rachel about, who’d been in Grandpa’s house.

  Every light was on when Mr. John and Uncle Cody finally pulled their cars into the gravel driveway. Uncle Cody stopped behind Mr. Thurman’s beat-up old Willys pickup.

  Someone inside either saw their headlights or heard the car doors slam, and switched on the porch light. It spilled into the yard, making us squint.

  Mr. John waited for a second before he shut off his headlights. I imagine he was studying on why Mr. Thurman’s truck and Ralston’s sprung car were there. Any time the old woman showed up always meant that someone was sick or hurt. Mr. John came around to the porch. “What happened? Are y’all all right?”

  The kitchen door slammed open and Miss Rachel’s kids rushed to meet him as soon as they saw who he was. The oldest ones led the way and they swarmed Mr. John like ants, all chattering at the same time.

  Looking scared, Uncle Cody came around the front of his El Camino and we met him there. Pepper opened her mouth, but for once, nothing came out. Tears welled in her eyes. He put his hand on my shoulder. “What happened?”

  “The meanest folks I’ve ever seen came to Miss Rachel’s house and beat her, asking about Mr. John. The man hit the baby, too, when she wouldn’t tell them…”

  Mr. John raised his hand to the crowd around him. “Hush kids, so’s I can hear. Belle, is the baby hurt?”

  “I don’t reckon.” Belle waved a slender hand toward the house. “He’s inside with the women. We wanted to stay on the porch with Mr. Thurman and Ralston, but we’s told to go inside…”

  Uncle Cody glanced up to see the ancient farmer sitting with his back against the asbestos shingles. He gripped my shoulder and hugged Pepper to his side. “Mr. Thurman.”

  “Hidy, boy.” The old man’s watery eyes flicked over Uncle Cody’s shoulder. “Mr. Cody. Mr. John. They beat that little gal bad. Sweet say she’ll be all right, and the baby too.”

  Mr. John took the news deep down inside. He reached out and grabbed a porch post, and I was afraid it’d snap off in his hand. “Did you see what happened?”

  “Nawsir, Mr. John. I didn’t know a thing about it until Bubba come a-runnin’ to get me. They’s all in the house bein’ real quiet. I’m just settin’ out here a-waitin’.”

  “Why didn’t somebody call this in?” Uncle Cody wondered aloud.

  Mr. John shook his head. “Probably ’cause Rachel told them not to. They’re waitin’ on us. This is colored business, for the most part.”

  Uncle Cody studied the porch and Mr. Thurman with a paper-thin towel covering an old pistol in his lap. The .22 Uncle Wilbert loaned me was leaning against the door frame beside Ralston.

  Uncle Cody glanced down at me, and then back to Mr. John. “Is everybody inside? No one’s off anywhere?”

  “Yessir, uh, nossir. They’re all in there.”

  Mr. John’s voice rumbled deep. “All you kids get in the house, right now.”

  Mr. Thurman waved his left hand, but kept his right under the rag in his lap. “I’ll set out here and keep an eye out, Mr. John. But would you shut off this porch light? I don’t like bein’ all lit up like this.”

  Without another word, they followed us inside. The porch light flicked off, leaving Mr. Thurman in the dark. Ralston sat down at the table, facing the door as we all trooped past into the living room.

  Miss Becky’s quiet command of the room held everyone in a calm. I saw her face crack for a second like she wanted to cry when she saw Uncle Cody, and then she straightened her shoulders and told what had happened to Miss Rachel. Mr. John lifted the ice bag she held to her eye. His face hardened. “We’d-a been here sooner if you’d called us.”

  Miss Becky shook her head. “Heavens to Betsy, it don’t matter none. We weren’t going anywhere anyway. Sweet doctored Rachel while we waited.”

  Miss Sweet rummaged through the bag of medicines at her feet. “This child ain’t hurt bad, but she been beat good enough.”

  John took Rachel’s hand. “Can you see out t’at eye?”

  “Not now, but Miss Sweet said it’ll be all right, jus’ swole shut.”

 
“It looks bad.” John swallowed, torn between rage and the need to choke down the tears threatening to crawl down his cheeks. He ran his fingers gently along her cheek.

  “She got a beefsteak on it right off when she got here.” Miss Sweet shook some leaves out in her hand and dropped them into a cracked mug. “Then Becky found us an ice bag. That’ll help with the swelling. Miss Becky, is that water a-boilin’ yet?”

  “I ’magine.” Miss Becky went into the kitchen and came back with a kettle. She carefully poured some into the mug. “Here, baby. I swear, them kids is still eatin’ in there.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel began and struggled to rise.

  “Hush and lay back down, honey child. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant I like to see kids eat. John, I didn’t think it’d be a good idea to use the phone.” She nodded toward the telephone table. “Miss Whitney would have been listening in and everybody in the county would have known. I figured we needed to keep this quiet, at least for the time being, so I just called O.C. and told him to send y’all when you could make it, then we got aholt of Sweet. Anybody listenin’ in would have thought she’d come back out for Top and his asthma again.”

  “She’s right.” Miss Rachel’s voice was quiet. She tentatively sipped the steaming liquid. “John, this trouble’s ours.”

  He shook his head. “Naw, it ain’t. Now I’m thinkin’ this belongs to us all, but I know how to end it.”

  Pepper turned away, talking to herself. “God, I hate this shittin’ town.”

  Chapter Fifty-one

  When he had the full story, Cody went outside and reached through the open window of the El Camino to pluck the Motorola’s microphone from the dash. Wind nearly snatched the Stetson off his head as he keyed the mike. “Ned. You there?”

  The reply came only a second later. “Go ahead Cody.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Still in the parking lot here at St. Joseph hospital. That little one I brought in is in bad shape, and I’m just getting’ around to leaving.”

  Cody took a deep breath and spoke in Choctaw. “Listen, Ned. Abenili anukwa n ya.”

  Hurry home.

  He wasn’t sure the sentence structure was right, but it should be enough for Ned to understand.

  The shocked silence on the other end spoke more than words. Cody knew Ned was translating, and the use of Choctaw only meant one thing. There was news he didn’t want others to hear, especially Sheriff Griffin.

  Their grasp of the language was thin. Both were far from fluent, and only knew what Miss Becky taught them through the years. Much of what she knew came from her childhood and the ragged Choctaw Bible she inherited from her mother. The last time they used the dialect was when Cody, half Indian himself, was held prisoner in Mexico and they wanted to communicate in front of the crooked comandante of Las Células, the jail.

  Ned’s voice finally came back through the radio. “All right. I’m-a listenin’. What’s the matter?”

  “Abeka apistikeli, bo-a.”

  Tending the sick, beaten.

  “Good God. Can you say who?”

  Cody had the next one down. “Hatak lusa ohoyo.”

  A colored woman.

  Another long pause while Ned studied on the phrase. The only colored woman Cody would be talking about was Rachel. “Anyone else?”

  “No.”

  Ned stumbled, and then remembered the word. “Kat…katra…Katimma?”

  Where?

  “Aiilli.” Home. “Ned, ho-miniti!” Come on!

  The wind freshened, and the sporadic light-show overhead kicked into high gear.

  The old constable’s next transmission was garbled, but Cody heard one thing clearly. The roar of Ned’s engine.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Sheriff Griffin slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel as he listened to the Parkers speak Choctaw.

  “Shit!”

  He steered through the darkness toward Center Springs.

  It needed to be finished.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  I followed Uncle Cody into the wind and listened while he talked to Grandpa in Choctaw. I couldn’t understand it, but I knew Grandpa would be at the house pretty quick.

  It was time for me to help, because I knew stuff they didn’t.

  The porch light was still off over Mr. Thurman’s head and I caught Pepper’s attention. We stepped into the darkness around the corner of the house while lightning spread like bright tree roots in the roiling clouds above.

  “What?”

  I ducked my head back around to see where everyone was.

  She grabbed my shirt, yanking me around. “Hey, stupid. They’ll know something’s up if you keep peeking around the corner like that. Just stand still and tell me what you want.”

  I hated that I’d never be as good a sneak as her. “Did you hear what that man was asking Miss Rachel back at her house?”

  “No. I didn’t hear anything. All I saw was him beating her.”

  “Well, he was asking where Mr. John and Mr. Tony was.”

  Her hair whipped in the wind. “What did he want to know that for?”

  “How’m I supposed to know? All I can say is that he really wanted to know where they were.”

  “Well, we need to tell Uncle Cody.”

  Frustration swelled in my chest. “No, I don’t think so. Something’s up, and they’re gonna stay here and talk about it for a long time, and then they might wait until Grandpa gets back from town before they figure out what to do.”

  “So?”

  “So it’ll be too late by then. We need to go tell Mr. Tony right now!”

  She shook her head. “I don’t get why we can’t tell Uncle Cody.”

  I was thinking about that machine gun I’d seen in the trunk of Mr. Tony’s car the first day they showed up in Center Springs. “Those people are after him ’cause I think he’s into something that might be a little against the law.”

  Pepper stood there in the window light, thinking. A strong gust rattled the windowpane. Finally she sighed. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “You don’t want to go help Mr. Tony?” I couldn’t believe it was me saying something like that. Since we were little, it was always Pepper who got us in trouble, but here I was, suggesting dumb ideas I’d have expected her to come up with.

  “I want to.” Her eyes welled, reflecting the light from the windows. She wrapped her arms around herself and I knew she was touching her burn scar. “But I’m getting a really bad vibe about all of this.”

  I couldn’t figure her out. Here was a perfect adventure. “Look, we’ll get our bikes and ride on over, tell him what we know, and come home. We’ll be back in twenty minutes, long before anyone misses us.”

  Angry, Pepper wiped her face dry. “You promise that’s all?”

  “Sure. What could be hard about that?”

  She squinted through the slit between the windowsill and the shade. Mr. John was on the couch, sitting with his back to us and his arm around Miss Rachel. She leaned in to him and said something in his ear. Before he could answer, Miss Becky appeared and lowered the shade all the way down, and then worked her way through the house, closing them all.

  “See? They’re gonna sit there and talk a while.” There was still enough light coming through the shade for me to see Pepper’s face. “They don’t know we’re out here. We can get to Mr. Tony’s and back before they catch us, and then we’ll be all right, so all they can do is get mad and holler.”

  “They might not catch us.” I couldn’t see Pepper’s face then, but her teeth were white when she finally smiled. “But this storm might.”

  “We’ve been caught in the rain before.”

  She wiped her tears away. “All right. I ain’t no titty baby.”

  Chapter Fifty-four

 
Ned’s car slid to a stop in front of the porch. He tracked around the hood. “Thurman, what are you doing here?”

  “Keeping an eye out, Mr. Ned. I brought these folks.”

  Ned climbed the steps. “What folks? Why don’t you come on in?”

  “I believe I’ll sit out here and watch the weather. I always did enjoy a good storm.” He paused. “Sides, I didn’t get a chance to clean up to be company, so I believe I’ll stay right ’chere.”

  “All right, then.” A stroke of lightning lit him up and Ned noticed the familiar outline underneath the rag over Thurman’s lap. He went inside and paused.

  Ralston was at the table loaded with dish pans full of peeled and sliced pears. Dirty dishes added to the cluttered the table and counter as the kids who looked like John cleaned up all the leftovers from the refrigerator. Norma Faye and Sam worked the table like waitresses, filling plates and bowls.

  Ralston swallowed a bite of cold cornbread soaked in sweet milk and ducked his head. “Mr. Ned.”

  “Howdy Ralston. What’s going…?”

  “In there,” Norma Faye pointed toward the living room. A revolver was tucked into the small of her back.

  “Are y’all…”

  Ned glanced at a shotgun lying on the chest type deep freezer. Sam smiled. “We’re fine.”

  ***

  He pitched his hat beside the shotgun and stepped into the living room. Rachel lay on the sofa, a folded rag across her forehead and over her eye. Miss Sweet rocked a sleeping baby. Two other little ones slept on a pallet in the floor.

  John stood beside the couch, radiating fury. Ned had never seen the man so angry. He was reminded of a watch spring wound far too tight. With Ned there, John sat on the couch and scooped Rachel against him. Cody leaned against the door to keep an eye on the doors and most of the windows.

  Miss Becky was sitting at the telephone table with her Bible open in her lap. Her shoulders slumped when Ned appeared, as if his very presence had removed a great weight. He stopped beside the television. “What happened?”