by Catie Rhodes
Bunched muscles aching, I raised one trembling hand, knotted it into a fist, and tapped out the code Tubby taught me all those years ago. The door swung open, spilling out a circle of yellowed light. Bullfrog himself leaned out.
“You here to see the man, Peri Jean?” Bullfrog’s doughy, pockmarked skin, his massive beer gut, and the distant blur in his eyes made him seem safer than he was, but I’d seen him knife a guy several years ago. Bullfrog jabbed the knife into the guy over and over again, his arm moving like the needle on a sewing machine. The guy crumpled on the floor and a puddle of blood spread around him. Bullfrog wiped the knife on his shirt and went back to his beer. Maybe feeling my eyes on him, he turned, smiled, and blew me a kiss. A couple of his flunkies dragged the stabbed guy away. I never knew if he lived or died.
“He’s expecting me.”
“You a little long in the tooth for him these days.” His lips quirked into an almost-smile. Bullfrog was right. Tubby got older while his companions got younger. I never saw the same one with him twice. The smart ones probably figured out they were sleeping with Beelzebub himself and cut ties. Who knew what happened to the stupid ones? Nothing good, probably.
“That may be so, but he’s expecting us.”
Bullfrog stared at me. “What’s the magic word?”
Oh, come the hell on.
“Lick my armpits?” I forced what I hoped was a nasty smirk onto my face to let Bullfrog know I wasn’t scared of him.
He grunted and shut the door in my face. I heard his footsteps receding. The door swung open again, and Tubby Tubman himself looked out at me. I’d come to see him, but having him right in front of me sent my heart into overdrive.
Burns County was too small for us not to have seen each other a few times over the years since that awful night. I’d made a point not to get close enough to take a real look at him. This situation left me no choice.
He stood bare chested, jeans hanging low on his skinny hips. His perpetually bare feet were still bony. One of them sported a tattoo of a cartoon character. A fine layer of muscle covered his bony chest. His crafty eyes had deeper lines etched around them, and a few gray hairs had invaded his curly dishwater-blond hair. Tub took me in as I studied him, drifting over my body and finally landing on my face. He raised one ropy arm to lean against the doorframe, and rubbed a hand over his bicep.
“Well, well, well. We meet again.” His nasal baritone sent the wrong kind of chills running down my back. “Peri Jean Mace and Mysti Whitebyrd…” He squinted at Brad. “And her lackey.”
I heard Brad’s gulp and wanted to tell him not to react, but it was too late.
“Come on in.” He stepped aside. We stepped onto wood plank floors, stained black from a hundred years of dirty shoes. “My visit with Ms. Peri Jean is gonna take longer, so why don’t Mysti and her errand boy come on up, get paid, and we can be done with each other? You can go in the bar, Ms. Peri Jean.”
“I don’t want to go in the bar,” I said.
“Is it because of your association with Burns County Sheriff’s Office?” Tubby widened his eyes in mock surprise. I shook my head at him.
“I’m not playing this game with you, Tub.”
He laughed and motioned Brad and Mysti to go up the steps to the loft where he conducted business, turning back to me at the last moment. “Sit on the steps and wait then. I don’t care.” He went up the stairs, giving me a peek at the filthy bottoms of his bare feet. Nasty.
I brushed off the bottom step a few times, decided it was no use and parked my butt on it. Shouts came from the loft. I shot to my feet again and waited for the shit shower to start.
“I don’t have to do what you say. I don’t want to go down there.” The voice was female but not Mysti’s. The door at the top of the stairs swung open hard enough to bounce off the wall, and a slim, dark-haired girl was pushed out. She might have been eighteen, but she sure didn’t look it. She sneered at me as she thumped down the stairs. I stepped aside and watched her go through the door connecting to the bar. I sat back down.
True to his word, Tubby’s business with Mysti didn’t take long at all. She came out of his office, eyes wide with shock but tucking a thick envelope into her purse. I waited until she got to the bottom of the stairs to speak to her.
“You okay?”
“We’re square.” She pulled me into her arms for a quick, soft hug. “Thanks again for saving me, and please call me. I’d love to teach you.”
I nodded even though I still wasn’t sure. Tubby beckoned to me from the top of the stairs. As soon as I stepped into his loft, the smell of dope and sex assailed me.
“Can we open a window?”
Without speaking, Tubby opened one of the windows and turned on a fan. “Better?”
I nodded.
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“Which of these chairs has the least bodily fluids on it?”
He laughed at that and went into the kitchenette and brought out a wooden chair. Then he returned to the tiny bar and fetched one of those sanitary wipes and cleaned the chair. The thing came away black with dirt. He motioned to the chair with a grand wave. “Your throne, darlin’.”
I sat. Tubby watched me get settled, one side of his mouth tilted in what might have been a smile. Having it directed at me produced the creepiest feeling in the world. I pretended not to notice him, and he shrugged and went into the kitchen and got another, identical chair and sat on it without cleaning it.
“I’d like us to reach an agreement,” Tubby said.
“I wouldn’t, but I would like to know how you came to have my daddy’s keychain.”
“We could bargain for the information.”
“I don’t dance with Satan’s stepson any more, Tub.”
“My step-dad’s name is Roger.” The expression on his face never changed. It was like being watched by a crocodile.
Impatience built in me, but I fought against it. Had to. No matter how long I stayed away, some things never changed. If he gave me anything, I’d have to give him something back, and he’d want something big. This could get bad fast.
Worst part was I had no idea what Tubby wanted from me. At the same time, I knew he knew exactly what he planned to ask of me. I flashed on things Tubby could want and came up with one thing. The Mace Treasure. He obviously had an interest in it. If he thought I could help him find it, he needed to go find another monkey and another circus.
“There’s nothing I can do for you, Tub. Can’t you help me for old time’s sake? I never tried to stick you when Chase was in a mess. I always paid up.”
“If Chase is your old time’s sake, you can lick my sugared ass.” He snorted. “You forgetting what came before Chase’s problems?”
I’d hoped it wasn’t memorable enough for him to bring up. The thought of those dark months chilled me, and I twisted my legs around each other, crossing my arms over my chest in the same motion. Tubby raised his eyebrows, this time smiling a real smile, the kind sane people ran from.
“You think I’m gonna give you a free pass and act like nothing happened? You ignored me for seven years. I don’t owe you shit.”
“We don’t need to rehash our friendship, Tub.”
“Friendship? Give me a fucking break. I kept you from falling off into the abyss after your husband dumped you—”
“Don’t say it,” I said. “If this had nothing to do with my father—my murdered father—I’d get up and walk out of here. You can talk shit to me all you want, but don’t you dare bring up Tim and what he did to me—”
“Fine. The end result was that you came back to town all broken and fucked up, and I helped you. Then, when you were done, you just walked off.”
“Y’all stabbed somebody down there in the bar.” Voice raising, I swung my arm at the door leading downstairs. “Plus, you were bored with me. You’d had enough and were moving on. I wasn’t so stupid and naive I couldn’t see it. It was time to end things before we hated each other.”
; “I’m the one who ends things, and I never told you I was finished.”
I rolled my eyes, ignoring the way his eyes flashed anger and his fist curled. This had to be the stupidest argument of my life. All these years he’d been angry because I walked away and didn’t give him the chance to dump me? I wanted to tell him to pound sand and walk out, maybe breaking something on the way. Had it not been for my daddy’s keychain, I would have.
“Tub, if you let me up here so we can rehash a fling we had when I was at the lowest point of my life, I’ll leave. We’re wasting each other’s time.”
“Naw. It ain’t why I let you up here, but I wanted you to know I ain’t forgot.”
For the first time in a long time, I let myself really think back to the spring and summer I spent with Tubby. This was the stuff I’d never tell Hannah if I could help it. I never spoke of those months to anybody—not even Memaw—and tried not to think of them. I saw a lot of things I shouldn’t have seen and did a lot I shouldn’t have done. Tubby did one thing right, though. He really saved me from falling off a bottomless cliff, just like he said. He paid for my divorce, too.
“I’m sorry I did you like I did, Tub.” I watched his face to see if the apology made any difference. He still looked the same to me. “We had fun, and you helped me.”
Some of the darkness left his face. He’d been making one of his awful hand-rolled cigarettes while we talked. He licked it and fired it up. He scooted his chair closer to me and took my hand.
“What I want from you, darlin’, in exchange for the conversation we about to have, is for you to keep me abreast of Deputy Dean’s investigations, let me know if he’s ever getting close to putting old Tub in jail. Ought to be no problem since you his girlfriend.”
I clenched my jaw, not out of fear, but to keep from honking laughter at him referring to himself in the third person. Had I not had the feeling I’d screwed up irrevocably, this whole thing would have been hysterical. My muscles twitched, begging me to get my hand away from him before he ate it, but I knew better. If he was angry about me killing our ending romance softly all those years ago, he’d pitch a wall-eyed fit if I didn’t let him manhandle me.
“Knowing where you got my daddy’s keychain isn’t worth it.” No point in saying I wouldn’t betray Dean. Tubby didn’t care about loyalty or doing the right thing. I tried to stand, and he tugged me back down.
“I got more’n info about the keychain. I know you’re looking for what got stolen from the museum and Eddie’s missing treasure notes. I got something might can help you.” He held onto my hand and smoked his cigarette, watching my face.
I wanted to tell him to forget it, really I did, but it was no longer just about finding the stolen Bruce heirlooms. It was about Eddie’s murder. It was about my father and saving him from an afterlife I couldn’t imagine. It was about revenge for whoever robbed me of my daddy and a normal childhood. Lastly, it was about what Priscilla Herrera could bully me into doing. Besides, I was still naive enough to think I could wiggle out of a bargain with Tubby Tubman. I nodded.
Tubby brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. I shuddered, stomach roiling, and pulled my hand away from him. He laughed and got up to get a backpack leaning against the wall. He sat back down, took out a generic laptop, and clicked a few keys.
A familiar face filled the screen. It took me a few seconds to place it, but when I did, my body went loose as jello, and I nearly flopped out of the chair. The face on the screen was my father. Next to him was an ancient African-American man who I’d bet every nickel I had was related to Hooty Bruce. The two sat side-by-side on a rickety, slightly familiar porch. Tubby started the video and everything changed again for me.
“It’s ready,” said a voice off camera. “Y’all start talking.”
The video was the blurry quality I associated with people’s old homemade VHS tapes, but there was my father, the man who’d been a mystery all my life.
“All right.” My daddy had a soft but deep voice, his thick accent drawing out the words way longer than they were ever intended to be. “If you got it going, Jesse, you come on around and sit with us in case you think of something to ask Mr. Bruce.”
Jesse ran around the camera and sat on the other side of what had to be Hooty’s grandfather. Even on such a low-quality recording, I could tell a difference between my uncle and my father despite their identical appearance. Jesse fidgeted constantly, tapping his legs, shifting around while my daddy sat stock still, his expression so serious I thought he was going to morph into Memaw any second and start shaking his finger.
“Okay, Mr. Bruce. You ready?” Paul asked.
“I am beyond ready, Mr. Mace.” Mr. Bruce had the kind of hoarse voice I associated with people who yelled and smoked a lot. “I always wanted to be in moving pictures when I was younger. Thought I was right good looking, but they didn’t have many parts for a black man back then. Figured I’d be better off raising a family here.” He laughed and sort of clapped his hands. “This goes to show you never know what you’ll get to do you live long enough.”
Paul grinned, and my breath caught in my throat. The smile brought back fragments of memories, the way my daddy’d played with me and talked to me. I forced myself to concentrate on his words. “Mr. Bruce, why don’t you tell us your name and age so we can have a record of it.”
“Awright. I’m Isaiah Bruce, and I’m 94 years old. Lived in Gaslight City all my life except for the time I spent in The Great War.” Isaiah Bruce might have been old, but a bright, sharp light shone in his eyes. He knew exactly what was going on and was excited to be part of it.
“Today is June 3, 1989,” Jesse leaned forward to talk to the camera, a smart-assed grin forming on his face. It made me think of his daughter, Rae, who died because of me. “Just for the record.”
“What have you got there in your hand, Mr. Bruce?” Paul asked.
I squinted at the video and got a glimpse of the journal my father’s ghost had stolen from Burns County Museum what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“This was my daddy’s journal. Hezekiah Bruce was the first black business owner here in Burns County. I remember him writing in this book and books like it all my life.” Isaiah opened the book to a marked page. “Y’all want me to read about old Bert Holze lynching the witch used to live down the road there right now?” He stuck out one dark arm and pointed somewhere off-screen.
“Yessir,” both Paul and Jesse said at once.
Isaiah Bruce began reading the same passage I’d heard Hooty read on the board meeting video. He didn’t have Hooty’s training as a public speaker, but his dusty voice added a new dimension of horror to the story because, if my calculations were correct, he was old enough to remember the day it all happened and probably witnessed some of it. I glanced at Tubby, nodding to indicate I knew about this. He pressed pause.
“Hell. And here I thought this would be a surprise to you. Dayum.”
“Do I get my money back on our bargain?”
He grinned like a dead fish. “Let’s finish watching this here video. I think you’ll learn at least one thing you didn’t know.” He started the video playing again.
Isaiah read the last words of his father’s account of the lynching and closed the book. “One thing this book don’t talk about is the feller who buried poor Miss Priscilla. I don’t know why Poppa didn’t include it. I was right there when old Archie Mahoney told it.”
I jerked in my seat. This had to be the Mahoney on Eddie’s note. He’d known Julie was a descendant of this Archie Mahoney. Eddie must have wanted to ask Julie if she had any idea where the box ended up. She obviously didn’t, but I’d make a point to mention the name to her.
“What did old Archie Mahoney tell you?” Paul asked Isaiah on the video.
“Well-sir, old Archie was the county sexton.” He grinned a toothless smile at the expressions on Paul’s and Jesse’s faces. “He did all the county’s burying, don’t you know. That’s a sexton’s job. Mahoney told my daddy
he pulled all the gold teeth out of poor Miss Priscilla’s mouth and took the box out of her pocket.” Isaiah shook his head, a grimace puckering his wrinkles even further.
“What happened to the box?” Jesse asked.
“Greedy old so-and-so kept it. Tell you something spooky, though. Mahoney’s luck changed, starting the day he robbed that box off poor Miss ‘Cilla’s body. He fell into one of his own graves and broke his leg. Leg didn’t heal right, and he lost his job.” Isaiah knocked on his own leg. “Became the town drunk, Archie did. I could have forgot Miss ‘Cilla’s box on my own, but Old Archie wouldn’t let us forget. Every time he got on a toot, he’d go to talking about the box, how he was sure it’d lead him straight to Reginald Mace’s treasure. Old Arch tried everything to get the box open over the years, but it was stuck tighter than a Sunday school teacher’s knees.” Isaiah paused here, staring off into the distance.
“He never got it open?” Paul’s question seemed more to get Isaiah back on track than out of curiosity.
“Not that I know of. He finally died, and I guess his daughter got it. Beverly, her name was. She cared for Archie in his final years. Poor thing got killed in a gunfight with another woman over some worthless man. No telling where the box fetched up.” Isaiah’s eyes went unfocused again. Used to seeing the same look on Memaw, I guessed the old man was getting tired. His body and mind were worn out beyond what I wanted to imagine. Soon, he’d want to rest.
“But I almost forgot to tell you boys the best part,” Isaiah said. “Old Archie never made no mention of Miss Priscilla’s spelling stones.”
Paul cocked his head, looking for all the world like me when I’m surprised. “What’s that, Mr. Bruce? Stones?”
“Yessir. Miss Priscilla had her these stones she used to do her spelling. I wouldn’t know ‘cept my baby sister was born sick. Momma and Poppa was sure she’d die, didn’t have no money, so they called on Miss Priscilla. She come and laid out those stones, gave my sister something to drink, her whispering in some language the whole time. I was no more than a little boy, but it scared me right and good. We were churchgoing folks, don’t you know. I’d done heard what a witch was, and I knowed for sure I was seeing one that day.” He chuckled. “It’s funny how you get older and realize how ignorant folks can be. Whatever Miss Priscilla did worked. My sister got better. Grew up and married a nice young man from Florida. Still living there. Guess I won’t get to see her again.”