Lone Star Noir

by Bobby Byrd

  Course, Jack wasn’t gonna bend over and grease up for me. He wasn’t like that. He could be a problem.

  I got a paperback out of the glove box and read for a while. I couldn’t get my mind to stick to it. The sky turned gray. My light was going. I put the paperback in the glove box with the gun-cleaning kit. It started to rain. I watched it splat on the windshield. Thunder knocked at the sky. Lightning licked a crooked path against the clouds and passed away.

  I thought about all manner of different ways of pulling this off, and finally came up with something, decided it was good enough, because all I needed was a little edge.

  The rain was hard and wild. It made me think Jack wasn’t gonna be coming outside. I felt safe enough for the moment. I tilted the seat back and lay there with the gun in my hand, my arm folded across my chest, and dozed for a while with the rain pounding the roof.

  It was fresh night when I awoke. I waited about an hour, picked up the hatchet, and got out of the car. It was still raining, and the rain was cold. I pulled my coat tight around me, stuck the hatchet through my belt, and went to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk. I got the jack handle out of there, stuck it in my belt opposite the hatchet, started walking around the curve.

  The cabin had a faint light shining through the window, that in turn shone through the lined-up windows of the car. As I walked, I saw a shape, like a huge bullet with arms, move in front of the glass. That size made me lose a step briefly, but I gathered up my courage, kept going.

  When I got to the back of the cabin, I carefully climbed on the pile of firewood, made my way to the top of the lean-to. It sloped down off the main roof of the cabin, so it didn’t take too much work to get up there, except that the hatchet and tire iron gave me a bit of trouble in my belt, and my gloves made my grip a little slippery.

  On top of the cabin, I didn’t stand up and walk, but in stead carefully made my way on hands and knees toward the front of the place.

  When I got there, I peered over the edge. The cabin door was about three feet below me. I moved over so I was overlooking the Cadillac. A knock on the door wouldn’t bring Jack out. Even he was too smart for that, but that Cadillac, he loved it. I pulled out the tire iron, nestled down on the roof, peeking over the edge, cocked my arm back, and threw the iron at the windshield. It made a hell of a crash, cracking the glass so that it looked like a spiderweb, setting off the car alarm.

  I pulled my gun and waited. I heard the cabin door open, heard the thumping of Jack’s big feet. He came around there mad as a hornet. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He hadn’t had time to notice the cold. But the best thing was, it didn’t look like he had a gun on him.

  I aimed and shot him. I think I hit him somewhere on top of the shoulder, I wasn’t sure. But I hit him. He did a kind of bend at the knees, twisted his body, then snapped back into shape and looked up.

  “You,” he said.

  I shot him again, and it had about the same impact. Jack was on the hood of his car, then its roof, and then he jumped. That big bastard could jump, could probably dunk a basketball and grab the rim. He hit with both hands on the edge of the roof, started pulling himself up. I was up now, and I stuck the gun in his face and pulled the trigger.

  And let me tell you how the gas went out of me. I had cleaned that gun and cleaned that gun, and now … it jammed. First time ever. But it was the time that mattered.

  Jack lifted himself onto the roof, and then he was on me, snatching the gun away and flinging it into the dark. I couldn’t believe it. What the hell was he made of? Even in the wet night, I could see that much of his white shirt had turned dark with blood.

  We circled each other for a moment. I tried to decide what to do next, and then he was on me. I remembered the hatchet, but it was too late. We were going back off the roof and onto the lean-to, rolling down. We hit the stacked firewood and it went in all directions and we splattered to the ground.

  I lost my breath. Jack kept his. He grabbed me by my coat collar and lifted me and flung me against the side of the lean-to. I hit on my back and came down on my butt.

  Jack grabbed up a piece of firewood. It looked to me like that piece of wood had a lot of heft. He came at me. I made myself stand; I pulled the hatchet free. As he came and struck down with the wood, I sidestepped and swung.

  The sound the hatchet made as it caught the top of his head was a little like what you might expect if a strong man took hold of a piece of thick cardboard and ripped it.

  I hit him so hard his knees bent and hot blood jumped out of his head and hit my face. The hatchet came loose of my hands, stayed in his skull. His knees straightened. I thought: What is this motherfucker, Rasputin?

  He grabbed me and started to lift me again. His mouth was partially open and his teeth looked like machinery cogs. The rain was washing the blood on his head down his face in murky rivers. He stunk like roadkill.

  And then his expression changed. It seemed as if he had only just realized he had a hatchet in his head. He let go, turned, started walking off, taking hold of the hatchet with both hands, trying to pull it loose. I picked up a piece of firewood and followed after him. I hit him in the back of the head as hard as I could. It was like hitting an elephant in the ass with a twig. He turned and looked at me. The expression on his face was so strange, I almost felt sorry for him.

  He went down on one knee, and I hauled back and hit him with the firewood, landing on top of the hatchet. He vibrated, and his neck twisted to one side, and then his head snapped back in line.

  He said, “Gonna need some new pigs,” and then fell out.

  Pigs?

  He was laying face forward with the stock of the hatchet holding his head slightly off the ground. I dropped the firewood and rolled him over on his back, which took about as much work as trying to roll his Cadillac. I pulled the hatchet out of his head. I had to put my foot on his neck to do it.

  I picked up the firewood I had dropped, placed it on the ground beside him, and stretched his arm out until I had the hand with the six fingers positioned across it. I got down on my knees and lifted the hatchet, hit as hard as I could. It took me three whacks, but I cut the hand loose.

  I put the bloody hand in my coat pocket and dug through his pants for his car keys, didn’t come across them. I went inside the cabin and found them on the table. I drove the Cadillac to the back where Jack lay, pulled him into the backseat, almost having a hernia in the process. I put the hatchet in there with him.

  I drove the El Dorado over close to the pond and rolled all the windows down and put it in neutral. I got out of the car, went to the back of it, and started shoving. My feet slipped in the mud, but I finally gained traction. The car went forward and slipped into the water, but the back end of it hung on the bank.

  Damn.

  I pushed and I pushed, and finally I got it moving, and the car went in, and with the windows down, it sunk pretty fast.

  I went back to the cabin and looked around. I found some candles, turned off the light, then switched off the generator. I went back inside and lit three of the big fat candles and stuck them in drinking glasses and watched them burn for a moment. I went over to the stove and turned on the gas, letting it run a few seconds while I looked around the cabin. Nothing there I needed.

  I left, closed the door behind me. When the gas filled the room enough, those candles would set the air on fire. The whole place would blow. I don’t know exactly why I did it, except maybe I just didn’t like Jack. Didn’t like that he had a Cadillac and a cabin and some land, and for a while there, he had Loodie. Because of all that, I had done all I could to him. I even had his six-fingered hand in my pocket.

  By the time I got back to the car, I was feeling weak. Jack had worked me over pretty good, and now that the adrenaline was starting to ease out of me, I was feeling it. I took off my jacket and opened the jar of pickles in the floorboard, pulled out a few of them, and threw them away. I ate one, and drank from my bottle of water a
nd had some cookies.

  I took Jack’s hand and put it in the big pickle jar. I sat in the front seat, and was overcome with nausea. I didn’t know if it was the pickle or what I had done, or both. I opened the car door and threw up. I felt cold and damp from the rain, so I started the car and turned on the heater. Then I cranked back my seat and closed my eyes. I had to rest before I left, had to. All of me seemed to be running out through the soles of my feet.

  I slept until the cabin blew. The sound of the gas generator and stove going up with a one-two boom snapped me awake.

  * * *

  I got out of the car and walked around the curve. The cabin was nothing more than a square, dark shape inside an envelope of flames. The fire wavered up high and grew narrow at the top like a cone. It crackled like someone wadding up cellophane.

  I doubted, out here, that anyone heard the explosion, and no one could see the flames. Wet as it was, I figured the fire wouldn’t go any farther than the cabin. By morning, even with the rain still coming down, that place would be smoked down to the mineral rights.

  I drove out of there, and pretty soon the heater was too hot and I turned it off. It was as if my body went up in flames, like the cabin. I rolled down the window and let in some cool air. I felt strange; not good, not bad. I had bounty hunted for years, and I’d done a bit of head whopping before, but this was my first murder.

  I had really hated Jack and I’d hardly known him.

  It was the woman that made me hate him. The woman I was gonna cheat out of some money. But $100,000 is a whole lot of money, honey.

  When I got home, the automatic garage opener lifted the door, and I wheeled in and closed the place up. I went inside and took off my clothes and showered carefully and looked in the mirror. There was a mountainous welt on my head. I got some ice and put it in sock and pressed it to my head while I sat on the toilet lid and thought about things. If any thoughts actually came to me, I don’t remember them well.

  I dressed, bunched up my murder clothes, and put them in a black plastic garbage bag.

  In the garage, I removed the pickle jar and cleaned the car. I opened the jar and stared at the hand. It looked like a black crab in there amongst the pickles. I studied it for a long time, until it started to look like $100,000.

  I couldn’t wait until morning, and after a while, I drove toward Big O’s place. Now, you would think a man with the money he’s got would live in a mansion, but he didn’t. He lived in three double-wide mobile homes lined together with screened-in porches. I had been inside once, when I’d done Big O a very small favor, though never since. But one of those homes was nothing but one big space, no rooms, and it was Big O’s lounge. He hung in there with some ladies and bodyguards. He had two main guys. Be Bop Lewis, a skinny white guy who always acted as if someone was sneaking up on him, and a black guy named Lou Boo (keep in mind, I didn’t name them) who thought he was way cool and smooth as velvet.

  The rain had followed me from the bottomland, on into Tyler, to the outskirts, and on the far side. It was way early morning, and I figured on waking Big O up and dragging his ass out of bed and showing him them six fingers and getting me $100,000, a pat on the head, and hell, he might ask Be Bop to give me a hand job on account of I had done so well.

  More I thought about it, more I thought he might not be as happy to see me as I thought. A man like Big O liked his sleep, so I pulled into a motel not too far from his place, the big jar of pickles and one black six-fingered hand beside my bed, the automatic under my pillow.

  I dreamed Jack was driving the Cadillac out of that pond. I saw the lights first and then the car. Jack was steering with his nub laid against the wheel, and his face behind the glass was a black mass without eyes or smile or features of any kind.

  It was a bad dream and it woke me up. I washed my face, went back to bed, slept this time until late morning. I got up and put back on my same clothes, loaded up my pickle jar, and left out of there. I thought about the axe in Jack’s head, his severed hand floating in the pickle jar, and regret moved through me like shit through a goose and was gone.

  I drove out to Big O’s place.

  By the time I arrived at the property, which was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and had driven over a cattle guard, I could see there were men in a white pickup coming my way. Two in the front and three in the bed in the back, and they had some heavy-duty fire power. Parked behind them, up by the double-wides, were the cement trucks and dump trucks and backhoes and graders that were part of the business Big O claimed to operate. Construction. But his real business was a bit of this, and a little of that, construction being not much more than the surface paint.

  I stopped and rolled down my window and waited. Outside, the rain had burned off and it was an unseasonably hot day, sticky as honey on the fingers.

  When they drove up beside my window, the three guys in the bed pointed their weapons at me. The driver was none other than one of the two men I recognized from before. Be Bop. His skin was so pale and thin, I could almost see the skull beneath it.

  “Well, now,” he said. “I know you.”

  I agreed he did. I smiled like me and him was best friends. I said, “I got some good news for Big O about Six-Finger Jack.”

  “Six-Finger Jack, huh,” Be Bop said. “Get out of the car.”

  I got out. Be Bop got out and frisked me. I had nothing sharp or anything full of bullets. He asked if there was anything in the car. I told him no. He had one of the men in the back of the pickup search it anyway. The man came back, said, “Ain’t got no gun, just a big jar of pickles.”

  “Pickles,” Be Bop said. “You a man loves pickles?”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  “Follow us on up,” Be Bop said.

  We drove up to the trio of double-wides. There had been some work done since I was last here, and there was a frame of boards laid out for a foundation, and over to the side there was a big hole that looked as if it was gonna be a swimming pool.

  I got out of the car and leaned on it and looked things over. Be Bop and his men got out of the truck. Be Bop came over.

  “He buildin’ a house on that foundation?” I asked.

  “Naw, he’s gonna put an extension on one of the trailers. I think he’s gonna put in a poolroom and maybe some gamin’ stuff. Swimmin’ pool over there. Come on.”

  I got my jar of pickles out of the backseat, and Be Bop said, “Now wait a minute. Your pickles got to go with you?”

  I sat the jar down and screwed off the lid and stepped back. Be Bop looked inside. When he lifted his head, he said, “Well, now.”

  Next thing I know I’m in the big trailer, the one that’s got nothing but the couch, some chairs, and stands for drinks, a TV set about the size of a downtown theater. It’s on, and there’s sports going. I glance at it and see it’s an old basketball game that was played a year back, but they’re watching it, Big O and a few of his boys, including Lou Boo, the black guy I’ve seen before. This time, there aren’t any women there.

  Be Bop came inside with me, but the rest of the pickup posse didn’t. They were still protecting the perimeter. It seemed silly, but truth was, there was lots of people wanted to kill Big O.

  No one said a thing to me for a full five minutes. They were waiting for a big score in the game, something they had seen before. When the shot came they all cheered. I thought only Big O sounded sincere.

  I didn’t look at the game. I couldn’t take my eyes off Big O. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat. His head only had a few hairs left on it, like worms working their way over the face of the moon. His skin was white and lumpy like cold oatmeal. He was wearing a brown pair of stretch overalls. When the fat moved, the material moved with him, which was a good idea, ’cause it looked as if Big O had packed on about a hundred extra pounds since I saw him last.

  He was sitting in a motorized scooter, had his tree-trunk legs stretched out in front of him on a leg lift. His stomach flowed up and fell forward and over his sides
, like 400 pounds of bagged mercury. I could hear him wheezing across the room. His right foot was missing. There was a nub there, and his stretch pants had been sewn up at the end. On the stand, near his right elbow, was a tall bottle of malt liquor and a greasy box of fried chicken.

  His men sat on the couch to his left. The couch was unusually long, and there were six men on it, like pigeons in a row. They all had guns in shoulder holsters. The scene made Big O look like a whale on vacation with a harem of male sucker fish to attend him.

  Big O spoke to me, and his voice sounded small coming from that big body. “Been a long time since I seen you last.”

  I nodded.

  “I had a foot then.”

  I nodded again.

  “The diabetes. Had to cut it off. Dr. Jacobs says I need more exercise, but, hey, glandular problems, so what you gonna do? Packs the weight on. But still, I got to go there ever’ Thursday mornin’. Next time, he might tell me the other foot’s gotta go. But you know, that’s not so bad. This chair, it can really get you around. Motorized, you know.”

  Be Bop, who was still by me, said, “He’s got somethin’ for you, Big O.”

  “Chucky,” Big O said, “cut off the game.”

  Chucky was one of the men on the couch, a white guy. He got up and found a remote control and cut off the game. He took it with him back to the couch, sat down.

  “Come on up,” Big O said.

  I carried my jar of pickles up there, got a whiff of him that made my memory of Jack’s stink seem mild. Big O smelled like dried urine, sweat, and death. I had to fight my gag reflex.

  I sat the jar down and twisted off the lid and reached inside the blood-stained pickle juice and brought out Jack’s dripping hand. Big O said, “Give me that.”

  I gave it to him. He turned it around and around in front of him. Pickle juice dripped off of the hand and into his lap. He started to laugh. His fat vibrated, and then he coughed. “That there is somethin’.”