Alabama is hot anyway, but it was sho’ nuff hot that August day. We got global warming ‘bout a thousand years before ever'body else did.
“Ain't that Avie?” Paw Jack asked, squinting at the yellow car. Being nearly blind from cataracts, he had got to where he couldn't hardly tell who nobody was, even close up. Just a day before, when Paw Jack saw his own reflection in the glass door at the drugstore, he said “hidey” to it like it was somebody else. I ‘bout died laughing.
“It sho’ is Uncle Ave,” I told him. Paw Jack depended on me a lot since his cataracts got so bad. I guess it's a good thing me and Mama moved in with him after her and my daddy busted up. If there was a rattlesnake on the floor, Paw Jack might mistake it for his belt and pick it up.
Paw Jack wouldn't never mistake a snake for a necktie on the floor because he didn't have a necktie. He had cut pulpwood until he got too old and started having eye trouble—he didn't never wear no necktie. Paw Jack said a necktie made his big Adam's apple itch.
As Uncle Ave slid his tall, lanky frame out of the Mercury, an old rusty pistol fell out of his baggy overalls pocket. He picked it up off the ground and slowly creeped over to where we was settin'. Uncle Ave never got in no hurry for nothin'. Paw Jack ain't got but two outside chairs, and he says to me, “Bremen, get up where Avie can set down.”
(Okay—about that “Bremen” business. My mama and daddy first met up when he stopped and changed a flat tire for her on the side of the road at Bremen, Georgia. Mama said it coulda been a whole heap worse—they coulda struck when she was passing through Pascagoula, Mississippi.)
“What kind of gun is that?” I asked. Uncle Ave and Paw Jack favor a lot, tall and lanky with big hands, but Uncle Ave ain't friendly like Paw Jack. So, it waddn't no great big surprise when Uncle Ave ignored me. He eased down in the green metal chair, still holding the skinny long-barreled pistol in his big pulpwooder's paw. The gun had been silver to start with but was now freckled with spots of rust.
Uncle Ave started right off talking. “I'm gone kill Sara Jim, if I don't never do nothing else the rest of my life,” he said to Paw Jack. I knowed he meant it—Uncle Ave didn't never joke about nothing. Uncle Ave didn't know what a joke was.
If Uncle Ave ever even laughed about anything, he must have done it off somewheres by hisself, so's folks wouldn't see him.
Paw Jack leaned forward in his chair and looked in Uncle Ave's general direction, trying to get him in focus. “Do what?” he said. “You better hush that stuff, Avie.”
“No. Sara Jim's gone die and it won't be long,” Uncle Ave said. He looked mad enough to bite a ball bat in two.
“What in the dickens has got into you?” Paw Jack said.
Uncle Ave glanced at me and said, “The boy don't need to hear this. He ain't old enough.”
“Hear what?” Paw Jack said.
“I just turned twelve,” I protested. “And my name's Bremen.” I get durn tired of folks treating me like a child.
Uncle Ave frowned at me again and then the whole story come a-gooshing out. His young wife Sara Jim had took off on him. He was gonna track her down and kill her. There was a young man who run off with her and Uncle Ave was gonna kill him too.
Uncle Ave didn't get married until he was an old man. He had worked hard all his life and everybody said he had the first nickel he ever made. He run three pulpwood trucks, owned a small country store, and had honeybee hives over on the Chattahoochee River, making money ever kind of way.
Hand over fist, Paw Jack called it.
If anybody knowed the real story about how Uncle Ave got hooked up with Sara Jim, they was keeping it to they self. But one day, about a year ago, there she was, wearing a big diamond wedding ring and smiling and calling everybody “honey” and “sugar” and hugging folks.
Uncle Ave bought Sara Jim a brand-new red Mustang, all new furniture for his house, which had long been paid for, and put her running the little country store for him. Before she snagged Uncle Ave, Sara Jim had been working in a cotton mill and living in a trailer park, between husbands.
Sara Jim seemed too friendly and happy of a person to be married to Uncle Ave. It was like they didn't go together. Sara Jim had a grown son who was in the navy, but she was still not near as old as Uncle Ave. She was young-looking and pretty, always laughing and flirting with folks; while Uncle Ave was mostly sulled up about something all the time, looking mad enough to run through a brick wall.
Sara Jim must have decided they didn't go together neither, ‘cause she took off in the red Mustang Uncle Ave bought her; left with the young fella who delivered bread to the store. The bread man had a wife and three pore little young'uns he run off on.
Uncle Ave sat there in the green metal chair, staring off into space and cocking and recocking his old pistol. “What do you call a gun like that?” I asked again.
Uncle Ave looked at me and said, “I call it the gun I'm gone kill Sara Jim with.”
“I ‘speck it's Avie's old Smith & Wesson thirty-two-twenty,” Paw Jack said, squinting at the pistol. “They don't make ‘em anymore. It shoots a small bullet. Lots littler than a thirty-eight.”
“It's big enough to do the job,” Uncle Ave snapped.
“Avie, you need to calm yourself down,” Paw Jack said.
“I'll calm down when Sara Jim's six feet under,” Uncle Ave told him.
* * * *
I was already in bed that night when Mama got home from her cashier's job at Slow Bob's Quik Shop. Paw Jack's house ain't very big, and I could hear her and Paw Jack talking about Uncle Ave, who was staying the night and sleeping on the half-bed in the little back room at the end of the hall.
Mama said she knowed Sara Jim was trouble the first time she ever saw her—too flirty-fied for a woman her age. She acted like a teenager. Mama said Sara Jim must have been twelve years old when her son was born.
Paw Jack said he'd never got that good a look at her. He didn't get a good look at nobody no more, ‘cause of his cataracts. But he agreed that Sara Jim used way too much perfume. “I can still smell,” Paw Jack said.
“I wish I was Sara Jim's Avon lady,” Mama said. “I wouldn't need but one or two customers like Sara Jim. I could quit that stupid job at Slow Bob's Quik Shop.”
“Any honest work is good work,” Paw Jack said.
“Easy for you to say,” Mama answered.
“What's that supposed to mean?” Paw Jack asked.
“Nothin',” she said.
Mama didn't argue with Paw Jack like her and my daddy did. Her and my daddy would get in a cuss fight at the drop of a hat. And they didn't care which one dropped it, neither. They took turns.
Uncle Ave was up and gone before day the next morning. When he came back a week later, he was pulling a U-Haul trailer behind his old yellow Mercury. It was filled with all his personal belongings, from a banjo to a bowling ball. Uncle Ave didn't play the banjo or go bowling, but he liked to collect stuff. And he didn't want nobody messing with it, neither.
After taking a big skint-up suitcase out of the jumbled pile in the trailer, Uncle Ave closed the U-Haul and locked the door. He glared at me and said, “I don't want to catch you bothering the stuff in this here trailer—don't nothing in it belong to you.”
“Who said it did?” I asked.
Uncle Ave took his mashed-up homemade cigarette out of his mouth and growled. “Don't get smart with me, boy.”
“Bremen,” I said. “My name's Bremen.”
Over supper, Uncle Ave told Paw Jack that he had already had a buyer for his house in Lee County and all his furniture. And he had his pulpwood trucks and the store up for sale.
“What did you do that for, Avie?” Paw Jack said. “You got to have a place to live.”
Uncle Ave said he wouldn't need no place to live after he killed Sara Jim, ‘cause they would put him in the penitentiary after that, or the electric chair. He said he would just sleep in Paw Jack's little back room until then.
Uncle Ave said he had went down t
o the river to check on his bee hives and all the bees was dead. He said that was a sign his life was over.
Paw Jack said, “Don't be silly. That's just a sign your bees died.” But Uncle Ave just looked sulled up and didn't say anything.
* * * *
Uncle Ave disappeared for several days again before coming back. He sat under the chinaberry tree and took his bag of Prince Albert from his bib overalls, rolled a cigarette, lit it, and leaned back. He was so skinny that both feet touched the ground when he crossed his legs.
He didn't say nothing for a little bit, but when he was good and ready, Uncle Ave told us how he had hired a private detective named Tankersly, from Columbus, Georgia, to track down Sara Jim and the bread man.
“Soon as Tankersly finds them and tells me where they are, I'm killing them both,” Uncle Ave said. “I'm gone kill the bread man first, and let Sara Jim see it and let her think about it awhile. And then I'm gone shoot her—right between her eyes.”
Paw Jack tried to change the subject and said he didn't know they had private detectives in Columbus, Georgia. Uncle Ave said they had most everything in Columbus, Georgia, if you didn't mind paying for it, and knew where to look. Uncle Ave said Columbus, Georgia, was a army town and them soldier boys was in the market for most anything.
Uncle Ave went on to say that he had now sold everything he owned and put the money in the bank. He said he had did it so he could pay the private detective and then pay for a lawyer after he shot Sara Jim and the bread man. He wanted Paw Jack to have what money was left, if there was any.
He said Paw Jack could use the money to have the cataracts took off so's he could see again. “Even if they don't put me in the electric chair, I still won't need much money in prison,” Uncle Ave said.
I laughed at Uncle Ave. I said, “They don't put folks in the electric chair no more—they'll tie you down and stick poison in your arm so you'll die real, real slow. And get up a crowd of folks to watch, too.”
Uncle Ave flinched and glared at me like he might kick me. I stepped back; Uncle Ave was hotheaded. He was subject to doing most anything before he caught hisself.
“Now Avie, I don't like to hear you talking like that,” Paw Jack said. “Sometimes you sound like you ain't got a lick of sense.”
“I must not have a lick of sense,” Uncle Ave said. “Or I wouldn't have got messed up with Sara Jim. I gave that sorry heifer ever'thing she wanted, and ever'thing she hinted around she wanted, and looked how she done me.”
“You might be better off now that she's gone,” Paw Jack said. “Did you ever think about that?”
“I'll be better off when she's got six bullets in her,” Uncle Ave said.
Paw Jack got up from his chair and walked over to where Uncle Ave was sitting. He put his big hand on Uncle Ave's bony shoulder and said, “Avie, I can't let you shoot Sara Jim.”
“How you gone stop me?” Uncle Ave said.
“Some sort of way,” Paw Jack said.
“Some sort of way,” Uncle Ave snorted. Paw Jack said Uncle Ave had always been butt-headed.
* * * *
School started, and before long it was November, and Uncle Ave was still sleeping in the back room. I would see him sitting on the half-bed through the open door, smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes and staring a long yonder way off. He wouldn't even notice when somebody walked by.
Sometimes, when Uncle Ave couldn't sleep at night, he would sit out in his old yellow Mercury and listen to the radio. Some mornings, when I come out to catch the school bus, Uncle Ave would be slid down in his car seat, asleep, with his old hat over his eyes.
When Paw Jack said that Uncle Ave was gonna run his car battery down listening to the radio all night, Uncle Ave said batteries didn't cost that much. Uncle Ave didn't like nobody telling him what to do.
At first, Uncle Ave would drive down to Columbus every few days to check with the detective, or the detective would call Uncle Ave on the phone. He would bark real rough-like, “This here is Detective Tankersly; I need to speak to Mr. Ave Burton on a matter of utmost importance.” He sounded like he was somebody. Or tried to.
Then Detective Tankersly started coming to the house pretty regular, to report on his search for Sara Jim, and to get more money from Uncle Ave.
He didn't look like no detective I had ever saw on TV. He was a short, sawed-off, bald-headed fat guy who wore one of them sporty straw hats with the colored band and a short-sleeve floweredy shirt.
His fat, hairy arms was covered with tattoos. The first time Detective Tankersly come to the house, Paw Jack looked at his arms and asked him if he had rubbed up agin some fresh paint.
Detective Tankersly didn't know Paw Jack was nearly blind with cataracts. He just frowned and said, “No.” He must have thought Paw Jack was messin’ with him.
Detective Tankersly and Uncle Ave would go out and sit in the detective's new black Oldsmobile for a long time. I could see the detective shaking his head and throwing his hands in the air and jerking around like a holy-roller preacher. Uncle Ave would sit there in the car, frowning and taking it all in, gritting his teeth.
Somehow, Mama sweet-talked Slow Bob into giving her a day off for Thanksgiving. She told Paw Jack she was gonna cook a big Thanksgiving dinner for us. She said maybe it would cheer us all up.
That tickled Paw Jack to death. He said it was the first real Thanksgiving we would have since Grandmama died. He said he couldn't wait.
So, there we was, all of us sitting around the plastic dinette table in Paw Jack's old house, eating Thanksgiving dinner, when there was a loud knock at the door. It was the short, sawed-off Detective Tankersly looking for Uncle Ave. Paw Jack hollered for him to come on back to the kitchen.
It was cooled off some, and Detective Tankersly was wearing a black leather jacket that covered his hairy, tattooed arms. He stood in the kitchen door and said he needed to talk to Uncle Ave in private. But before Uncle Ave could get up, the fat fella sniffed the air and said, “Man—something sho’ does smell good in here.”
When Mama said, “Ain't you had no Thanksgiving dinner?” Detective Tankersly claimed he hadn't had time to eat, because he had been working real hard on Uncle Ave's case. So, Mama invited him to sit down and eat.
She didn't have to invite him but one time. I'm glad I waddn't standing between him and the eating table.
Detective Tankersly tore into his ham and turkey and dressing and casseroles like he hadn't had nothin’ to eat in a month. He gobbled the food until he was wheezing and beads of sweat broke out on his bald head. “Jesus, this is good,” he kept saying. “Hummm.”
After he finished his second helping of sweet potato pie and was slurping his coffee, he became more interested in Mama. Mama hadn't been there before when he dropped by and he had never seen her. Mama was still real pretty, even if she was thirty-five years old. She didn't have a bit of trouble getting boyfriends, but hadn't wanted one since her and my daddy busted up. She said living with Daddy had turned her into a man-hater.
Detective Tankersly was looking at Mama like he was hungry for something else. He asked Mama if her husband had already eat his dinner. I guess that was his detective way of finding out if she was married. When Mama said she didn't have no husband and didn't want one, his big round face lit up like the brake lights on a dump truck.
After he found out she waddn't married, Detective Tankersly started sho’ nuff talking to Mama. Even I could tell he was puttin’ on the dog for her. When he found out her name was Yvonne, but everybody called her “Flossie,” he worked her name into every sentence—Flossie this and Flossie that, ever other word nearly was Flossie.
Before the chunky detective left that night, he had told Uncle Ave that he was closing in on Sara Jim, and got some more money to hem her up; and he had made a date with Mama for the next Saturday night, two days away.
We learned his name was Sam Tankersly, Jr. But he didn't like nobody calling him Junior. He turned to me and said, “You hear that, boy?”
/>
“Bremen,” I said. “My name's Bremen.”
* * * *
Mama said Detective Tankersly spent the next two days hanging around Slow Bob's Quik Shop flirting and getting on her nerves. She said Detective Tankersly must think Sara Jim and the bread man might wander into Slow Bob's Quick Stop by accident.
Mama was about fed up with Detective Tankersly by Saturday night, but she was sorta lonely. She hopped in the bathtub as soon as she came in from work early to get ready for their date. She said she promised to go out with him and she always tried to keep her promises, even if she was wondering if she had made a big mistake.
Detective Tankersly was there to pick Mama up before she got out of the bathroom. He was wearing a fancy red cowboy suit and looked like a big round Roy Rogers pumped up like a balloon. When he took off his white cowboy hat the overhead light reflected off his bald, shiny head.
He sat in the kitchen with me and Paw Jack and Uncle Ave, shooting the bull, until Mama come out all dolled up.
When he saw Mama, Detective Tankersly jumped up and shouted, “Dollbaby, I hope you're wearing your dancing shoes!” He did a little dance on the worn linoleum kitchen rug.
Detective Tankersly mighta been short, but he was so heavy his little jig shook the house and rattled dishes in the cupboard.
Paw Jack grabbed the table and said, “Gawdamighty!”
Uncle Ave grunted.
* * * *
I was asleep when Detective Tankersly brought Mama home around midnight. They woke me up arguing in the yard. I slept in the front room and could hear everything they said. They was talking real loud. I could always tell how mad Mama was by how loud she was yelling. She was letting it roll that night.
I got up and spied on Mama and Detective Tankersly out the window. Paw Jack had left the dim yellow porch light on for Mama, like she was a teenager, and I could see them plain as day.
Mama shook her finger in Detective Tankersly's face. She said she had just got rid of one blame drunk and didn't have no plans to hook up with another one.
“And why didn't you tell me you was married?” Mama screamed at him.
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