"Baby, so what? You've trained people how to tend the crops. Other folks here have raised cows and grown gardens, and they can step in and take over. And again, if it's necessary, we come back and pick up where we left off. You need to let go of the idea you are giving this up. You're going out on the road awhile. When a king raised an army and went on a crusade, he was still king when he returned."
"Unless somebody rose up and overthrew the king's army while he was running around Jerusalem. Then they beheaded him as soon as his boat hit shore."
She nodded in agreement. "Yep. That's why you leave somebody you trust to rule in your stead.â€
He was quiet and lost in thought for a long time. She was right- once he rid himself of the notion he was turning his back on the community, but instead using it as a base camp he would always return to, it was hard to find an argument against her idea. He tapped her on the knee to get her attention. "Let me sleep on this, and mull it around. If we both feel it's a good idea in the light of day, we’ll talk to some other folks tomorrow. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," she agreed in a happy tone.
They laid back in the bed and he slipped an arm beneath her neck. "I can't figure out if you’re a crazy woman or if you just had the best idea I've ever heard."
She snuggled close to him. "Either way, it really makes you lucky to have me as your wife."
98
* * *
Clint laid on the small, lumpy cot in the corner of his cell, staring up at the swirls of color running through the limestone forty feet over his head. A metal food tray sat by his feet. This was his sixteenth morning locked away in the tiny cell, and the sixteenth time breakfast consisted of lumpy oatmeal, a hunk of jerky, and dry bread. The bread was homemade, the kind his Mee-Ma made when he was a boy. It was still a little warm in the center when the cop brought him his breakfast at a few minutes past seven every day. He gobbled it in a few huge bites, wishing he had some strawberry jam or at least butter to spread on top.
As for the rest of his breakfast, he saved the jerky to munch on later in the morning and the oatmeal always sat in its bowl untouched when the cop came back for the tray at around eight.
They fed him three times a day- plain food, nothing fancy, and in small quantities. He wouldn’t get fat on his prisoner rations. When he ate his meals, he couldn't help but think of the women they transported to the auction. Those gals became acquainted with hunger.
You never knew how long an auction run would take- 100 variables might alter their time spent on the road. The quickest trip they ever made took six days. On the other hand, they once spent ten weeks transporting a string of teens they purchased from a guy who ran a whore house across the state line into Kansas. Regardless of how long the run took, Guy always made sure his crew ate well. He cooked twice a day- a hearty stew in the evening made from game or fish they caught that day, and a big breakfast of eggs and leftover stew the next morning. He also kept a supply of beans on hand. If, as sometimes happened, there was no fresh game, he boiled a pot of beans and the crew spent the next two days bitching at each other about the smell of their farts.
Every other day or so, he took the prisoners a little bowl of stew or beans. Clint didn't care if the bitches ate or not- he sure wasn't going to feed them. They existed for two reasons, to provide him with something to fuck and to bring a good price at the auction.
Looking back at it now, though, he didn't understand why they kept the women hungry. Food was plentiful; most days after breakfast they just threw leftovers aside. But he'd do a lot of things different now if he could go back in time and get another chance.
99
* * *
Clint realized his fate was sealed his third morning in the jail when the black cop walked up and killed Garvey. The third man on the crew had pleaded for his life the night before, and Terrence told him whether he lived or died was up to the three women he and Al held prisoner.
That gave Garvey confidence. He spent most of the day and parts of the evening yapping at Clint about how well he treated the prisoners under his care. "I don't beat them, I don't rape them, and I make sure they're not hungry," he'd declared.
Clint felt like there was an unspoken "unlike you" to Garvey's words, but he was too tired and filled with self-pity to take the bait.
Garvey continued, bragging about the way he protected his prisoners, watched over them, made sure they had warm clothes and blankets in the winter, and carried around a little first-aid kit to tend to their bumps, bites, and bruises. From the way he made it sound, not only would the rescued women insist he live, they’d beg to go back under his protection.
So it was unnerving the next morning when the jigaboo sauntered up to Garvey’s cell wearing a big, insincere smile. He pointed at the prisoner. "Bad news, redneck. Those women said they'd be happy knowing you no longer walked the earth." Garvey's jaw dropped; the nigger drew his handgun and shot him three times in his chest.
Clint rushed to the side of his cell closest to his crewmate and pushed his face between two of the bars. The bullet’s impact threw Garvey to the rear of his cell. He clutched his chest and his eyes rolled. His mouth opened and closed, but the only noise he produced was a painful sounding wheeze as he tried to catch his breath. He coughed up a mouthful of blood; it ran down his chin and neck and mixed with the blood staining his shirt. He let out a wheezy sob, raised and lowered his left foot twice, and was still.
Terrence watched him die with a clinical detachment; then he holstered his gun, turned, and walked away. When he passed in front of Clint's cell, the redneck howled in fury and threw himself at the bars. Cursing and gibbering, he reached for Terrence with both hands but grabbed only air- the peace officer gave him a jovial grin from just out of arm's reach. Clint's face twisted with hate and he pushed against the bars with his left shoulder with all his might. He stretched his arm as far as he was able, spitting curses and every derogatory name for a black man he could think of, but he couldn't reach the object of his rage.
Terrence's smile never faltered. With a liquid speed that belied his size, his arm shot out and snatched Clint's hand. He dug his thumb into a spot below the redneck's wrist. A savage jolt of electric pain surged up Clint’s arm and his knees buckled. He forgot about Garvey, he forgot about his rage, and he forgot his desire to make the nigger pay; the only thing they existed at that moment was his wrist and the pain in his arm. He tried to jerk it back but Terrence's grip was like a vice. He begged for mercy between cries of pain.
The nigger squeezed harder for a moment — the pain was exquisite, unlike anything Clint knew existed, and he screamed a high-pitched wail of agony and terror. The cop let go. Clint fell to the floor, where he curled his body around his injured arm and sobbed. Terrence chuckled and ambled away without a look back.
Clint's right arm throbbed like a rotten tooth. Fifteen minutes passed before he gathered the strength to examine at his wrist. No doubt it was broken; he just hoped the cop hadn't crushed it and ground the bone into powder. He steeled himself, then pulled it away from his belly with his good hand. And gasped.
His wrist looked normal. No bones stuck out and it wasn't misshapen or even swollen. The only mark was an angry red welt the size of a thumb.
100
* * *
The wrist-squeeze broke Clint’s will.
He turned docile as a golden retriever. He rarely spoke when Terrence arrived and never made eye contact. When the peace officer moved him out of his cell so he could clean it, he followed every command as soon as Terrence gave it.
One afternoon the cop dropped off a box containing sports and car magazines and a couple of dog-eared paperbacks. After that Clint ate, spent several hours a day thumbing through his reading material, bathed, shaved, and brushed his teeth when ordered, and slept.
One week later to the day, the black man approached Clint's cell with a familiar cheerful grin. "Last night was a bad one for your boy Mikey."
Clint's gaze froze on his book.
"Yep." Terrence mimed shooting a handgun. "I put two in the back of his head and we burned his body this morning."
Clint looked up with a bitter grin. "He wouldn't help you, would he? I knew he'd stay strong."
"Au contraire mon frère. That's ‘wrong again, stupid’ in French, by the way. No, Mikey helped me a ton. I filled a whole notebook with the information he gave up. The location of the auction, the streets around it, the layout of the building, the number and placement of their guards. Hell, once he got started he couldn't stop puking up good intelligence."
Clint tilted his head and gaped at Terrence with wondering eyes. "But you said you would free the first person who answered your questions."
"Yeah, can you believe he was stupid enough to fall for that? The asshole helps steal a wonderful woman who is a dear friend of mine, assists in holding her captive for several days during which time she is raped, beaten, denied adequate food and water, and denied medical help, and takes your sloppy seconds at least twice… sorry, redneck. There are no circumstances whereby a person engages in that type of behavior and gets to live."
Clint's eyes welled with tears. He dropped his gaze to the book before the black bastard saw them and waved him away. The letters on the page shimmered, and he swiped at his eyes with the back of his hands angrily as Terrence’s boot falls faded.
Mikey had been good people. He may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was loyal, dependable, and fearless. They had some good times over the years- camping in Noel and floating the Little Sugar, riding dirt bikes at the chat piles around Oronogo and Purcell, getting drunk and fishing for catfish off the Morrow Mill Bridge, hanging out at the Boobie Trap on Saturday nights. More than anything in the world, Mikey wanted a blow job from one of the dancers at The Trap. The later the hour, the more desperate he got, and more than once the night ended with both of them thrown out over his shenanigans. The dumb bastard always tried to charm and beg some action out of the girls, not understanding that for fifty dollars and a half a gram of dope they’d do anything you can imagine, and some things you can’t. Finally, Clint prepaid a stripper named Tracee on the poor guy's behalf. "Make him work for it, you understand?" he told her. "If you take him back right away he'll know something’s up. Let him tell you how pretty you are for a while, and let him beg for a while, then go earn your money."
It wasn't just losing Mikey that upset Clint. Guy had been a God to his crew, a Fu Manchu-wearing, dead-eyed ass-kicker to be feared and respected. He reduced men to quivering jelly just by fixing them with that stare.
Al and Garvey were good people, too. Garvey could be pompous and was more partial to books than fighting or getting dirty, but he always had a man's back when needed and good weed practically fell out his asshole. Slink, who died in the firefight, that tatted-up sumbitch loved three things- poaching deer, black pussy, and tubing. The man was the best tuber Clint ever saw. They'd go down to Grand Lake, tie an inner tube to the rear of a jet ski, put Slink in the tube, and drag his ass across the water for hours. They'd slalom, crack the whip, double back over their own wake, and twist and turn that inner tube like a leaf in a windstorm, and never once did he fall off. One time, he got air tubing behind a speedboat going fast and straight down by Afton landing; he rode that tube ten feet over the water's surface for a good twenty seconds before the boat slowed. When it did, he hit the surface, bounced twice, and kept riding.
Al wasn't a tough guy like Guy but he was a scrappy sum-bitch and smart as hell. He was the idea man, and Guy managed the crew to make sure they carried out the idea.
For sixteen months, they were the King-Hell badasses of Joplin, doing whatever they wanted and taking whoever they wanted. They dealt with anybody who raised up to them with extreme prejudice.
And then they took that blond bitch. Now Clint was the only one left, and his days were numbered.
It was sort of scary how fast her rescuers took them down. Garvey was filled with scared braggadocio their first night in the jail. He kept up a nervous patter most of the night, carrying on about what a bad man he was and all the revenge he’d claim once he got out. He commented several times that they finally ran into a crew that beat them, but it took fifty people to do it. Clint nodded along, but he didn’t buy it.
There might be fifty people in these tunnels, but only five of them came after the blond that night. Clint's crew saw themselves as untouchable. But in the end, fewer than a half-dozen shooters needed about four minutes to take them out.
And now Clint was the last of the rednecks, and he could die any day. He quit going to church with his Pappy and Mee-Ma back at the age of ten, and didn't pay much attention when he attended. He didn't know if heaven or hell existed. But he hoped there was something, and wherever it was, Mikey, Guy, and the others waited there for him.
He didn't think they had much longer to wait.
101
* * *
Mikey and the others only needed to wait one more week.
Clint was in his usual waiting-for-breakfast position- laying on his back, looking up at the top of the tunnel, and thinking about days gone by. That morning he was reliving his first handjob, when he was thirteen and Brandy Peoples gave him a rub and tug in exchange for a carton of Marlboro Lights he'd hawked from the Central Street Market.
The black guy's boots echo across the tunnel as he approached the cell, and Clint waited for the clang of his breakfast tray in the little slot in the cell door and then the fading clop-clop as the cop walked away. But today the only sound was that of the cop walking up to the cell and standing there. Curious, he glanced over. His stomach flip-flopped when he didn't see a breakfast tray, and his blood froze when Terrence grinned and held up a Bible.
He slid the Bible in the slot. "Today's the big day, redneck. We don't have a spiritual advisor, so I brought you The Good Book in case you have a favorite part or wanted to pray. And I didn't bring breakfast. I don't know what my girl has planned for you, but I figured you wouldn’t want to shit yourself on your way out the door. You have half an hour."
Clint nodded numbly. Terrence spun to leave and Clint stopped him. "T-T-Terrence, hold on. You have any smokes?"
The peace officer patted his pockets, then frowned. "I do not." He brightened. "The woman you raped over and over, her best friend is a heavy smoker. Do you want me to see if she'll let you burn one?"
Clint dropped his gaze and didn't reply. Terrence left. He picked up the Bible, thumbed through it, and set it back down. He paced back and forth in his cell, his heart banging like a trip hammer. No doubt a movie hero could figure a way out of this mess. But he was no movie hero, and he fought back tears as the minutes left in his life ticked toward zero.
In what seemed like considerably less than thirty minutes, a pair of boots clumped down the tunnel toward his cell. He sat on his cot, placed his palms on his knees, stared at the floor, and fought to control the yammering in his brain.
The footfalls stopped in front of his cell and the familiar voice of his jailer rang out in a jovial tone. "Hey, redneck… look here."
Clint looked up.
Terrence reached through the bars and tossed him a cigarette and a lighter. "Smoke in here. I don't want you walking around out there looking like you’re enjoying yourself."
Clint nodded. He lit the cigarette and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs, relishing the harsh, acrid taste. When he had smoked a little more than half, Terrence opened the cell door and pointed at it. "Put that out," he commanded.
Clint took one last drag, flicked the butt to the floor, stepped on it, and twisted. He stepped back and gave Terrence an expectant look.
Terrence pointed at it. "Pick it up. I'm not here to clean up after your slobby redneck ass."
Clint bit off a string of racist expletives, picked the butt up, and placed it in his pocket. Nerves and fear caused bile to rise in his throat and he s
wallowed the bitter acid back down.
Terrence pulled a zip tie from his back pocket. "Turn around and walk to me backward. And redneck… if you try anything, that hurtin' I put on your wrist last week will seem like a kiss from your sister compared to what I do to you this time. When I say, stop and put your hands behind your back."
Clint did as ordered and tried to control the shaking in his hands while Terrence held his wrist together and pulled the tie tight.
The jailer spun him toward the door. "Walk to the exit and stop. I'm two feet behind you the whole way. Don't be stupid."
They left the jail behind them and walked toward the light that framed the opening of the tunnel. It felt like his feet were mired in mud and his knees knocked against each other. "Can you tell me what will happen?" he asked in a shaky voice.
"Son, all I know is it’s to meet your maker."
They reached the exit and stopped just inside it. Acid rose in his throat again; he swallowed hard but couldn't keep the sour fluid down. He belched and warm bile ran down his chin and onto his shirt. He gave an involuntary sob.
Terrence guided him away from the opening. "Jesus Christ," he said in a disgusted tone. He dug around in his front pocket and came out with a red handkerchief. With an iron grip on the back of Clint's neck, Terrence wiped his chin and dabbed at his shirt. He sniffed the handkerchief, curled his nose, and tossed it away. Voices buzzed outside, and Terrence pulled him back a few more steps. "Look at me," he commanded.
Clint obeyed, his eyes rolling, sorrow and fear etched on his face.
Terrence loomed close and glared down at him. "Man… the fuck… up. You won’t be tortured or made to suffer; that's not who we are. Tara would be perfectly justified to take her time with you, match you punch for punch and pain for pain until you bled as bad as you made her bleed. But again, that ain't us. You committed a man's crime. Now act like a man."
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