by Rick Gavin
“I was driving all over looking for you. Come out and you were gone.”
“Hoyts,” I told him. “Six or eight of them. The one with the shovel mattered.”
“Was ours in the bunch?”
“Oh yeah.”
“And they took you straight to Shambrough?”
I nodded and jabbed a thumb at Larry. He was in the middle of describing to Kendell all the basement trouble we’d been in.
“So there’s some Hoyts we need to scuff up,” I told Desmond, “a ninja assassin we need in jail, and a Shambrough I’d like to kick around the yard.”
Larry was all for visiting vengeance on the bunch of them right then, but Kendell wanted to get the proper paperwork and arrange for suitable backup. Kendell was always a wait-until-daylight sort of guy.
I was too tired to care and even a little hungry by then. We all had eggs. We all had toast. We sat at Tula’s kitchen table. Pearl finally wandered in around midnight and found us sitting at the dinette.
“I must look a fright,” she told us. She was as right as she’d ever been. She looked like somebody had grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her through the yard.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“I think I fell in the bushes a little.”
“You okay?” Tula asked.
Pearl nodded. “That man startled me.”
“What man?”
Pearl country pointed. “Had a whole bunch of teeth.”
Desmond beat us all outside. He just went sailing across the front room, down the steps, and into the yard with me and Kendell and Tula behind him.
There wasn’t anything to see, but Desmond held up his hand to stop us all from talking. It turned out there was something to hear up the side road just west of Tula’s house.
I know cars well enough to recognize a carbureted Chevy V-6 grinding. Plenty of spark but not enough gas.
“It’s that damn Biscayne,” I said.
Kendell was the only one of us who had a gun, but we were all pretty well armed (even Tula) with unchecked indignation. If these were the Hoyts who’d snatched me and Larry, they’d need more than a camp shovel and a 20-gauge in seven pieces to hope to hold us off.
We just followed the grinding. Up the road and around a hedgerow. Hoyts were spilling out of the Chevy by then like yellow jackets from a hole in the ground. The ones who could run were bolting, including the boy who’d smacked me with the shovel. Kendell played his flashlight on the pack of them. I saw mine and tore out after him.
Goodloe was sitting behind the wheel pumping the accelerator.
“Hey, buddy,” I told him as I ran past.
He looked flabbergasted to see me. I had to think people they delivered to Lucas Shambrough rarely saw the light of day again.
The boy I was chasing couldn’t manage much running. That pack and a half a day wouldn’t let him draw the air he needed, so soon enough he began to flag and I closed on him and a cousin or something. They turned to meet me when they heard me coming and got into the spirit of the thing. They didn’t have a folding shovel between them, but one of them had a pocketknife, and the other one, my shovel boy, went to pick up a stick in the road that turned out to be a copperhead.
“Shit!” he told us. He had it by the tail and threw the damn thing at me.
I think I screamed about like Pearl would have. I don’t care for snakes.
That got them laughing. They seemed to believe a guy afraid of a reptile wasn’t a proper candidate to beat them both the hell up.
So they got bold and came at me, with one knife between them and enough teeth for four adults.
First I kicked the snake aside. He was aggravated by then and gathered up in a coil at the edge of the road to strike at anything handy. When the Hoyt with the knife came jabbing it at me, I caught his arm under mine, wheeled around, and flipped him over. I wasn’t aiming to drop him right onto that snake, but that’s where he ended up. Then he screamed kind of like Pearl would have as it struck him a half-dozen times.
The other one told me, “Shit,” again. That might have been all he had. He appeared uncertain if he should keep up the charge or turn around and run. That was all I needed to catch him. I lacked a shovel but had my fist, and I slugged him twice.
“Hit me with a damn shovel,” I reminded him.
“Weren’t personal!”
“Sure seemed it.” I hit him again.
Pounding Hoyts and people like them isn’t terribly satisfying. Though this boy didn’t pile up like Larry would have, he wasn’t about to become enlightened. He wasn’t going to come around to the view that he shouldn’t hit people with shovels. He’d been charged to do it by a Shambrough and blood relatives together, so it wasn’t like he could have kept from it even if he’d wanted to.
“Come on,” I told him and grabbed his shirt collar.
“What about him?” he asked me of the envenomated Hoyt on the road.
“He can come, too.”
“I’m bit,” that one told me.
“Then you’d better come on before you start swelling.”
He got to his knees. “Won’t nobody help me?”
“Snake’s coming back,” I told him.
That sparked him some. We didn’t gain on him until we were nearly to the car.
Desmond and Kendell and Tula had all of the rest of those Hoyts corralled by then. There were eight of them altogether, including my two. Three of them seemed to be women. Marginal females, anyway. They had higher voices and longer hair, but they were as rough and homely as the men. Even the one our Hoyt kept referring to as “my bride” looked like she had some Hoyt in the woodpile. She had bad Hoyt hair and a bad Hoyt nose and smelled just like a muskrat.
When she opened her mouth to yell at Tula and threaten her with a beating, she revealed a lot more snuff-stained gums than teeth.
“Honey,” our Goodloe kept saying to her the whole time that she raged.
Once she’d barked out, “Fucker!” Tula popped her good. Just gave her one flush on the chin with a vigor I admired.
It didn’t seem to faze that woman. She pointed at Goodloe as she informed Tula, “I was talking to him.”
“This one’s snakebit,” I told Kendell.
He had his radio on his belt, so I thought he might order up a rescue squad truck straightaway, but Kendell was always his thorough self, no matter the circumstance.
“A snake, you say?”
“Copperhead,” I told him.
The bit Hoyt had dropped to the road and was moaning. “I’m swelling up!”
“Where did it bite you?” Kendell wanted to know.
“Every damn where.”
“He kind of landed on it,” I said.
“You kind of made me.” He groaned some more.
“Heat of battle, you know?” I said to Kendell.
“And that one?” he asked me of the Hoyt I had in hand.
“Hit me with a shovel. Knocked me cold. All of them here put me and Larry in the trunk of that damn car. Crime enough for you?”
Kendell guessed it was. He keyed his radio mic and raised the Greenville dispatcher.
“Captain still over at Shambrough’s?” he asked, but the dispatcher couldn’t say.
“Saw his cruiser,” I told Kendell. “Some kind of diplomat?”
Kendell made his sour face, blew a breath, and nodded. “Thinks he can talk most anything smooth.”
“So he was upstairs with Mr. Lucas while she was downstairs working on us.”
“What can I tell you? They keep voting him in.”
“He know anything about police work?”
“About twice as much as Pearl.”
We walked those Hoyts over to Tula’s yard and had them all sit in a row. There wasn’t much to do while we waited for the cruisers and the ambulance other than listen to the snakebit Hoyt raise a fuss and chat about this and that.
“Heard about something with Jasper,” Kendell told me. “Some dustup over in Greenwood.”
“He’s always knocking into shit. You know how that goes.”
“Tripped, did he?”
I didn’t have to say yes. I didn’t have to say no. I just had to look at Kendell and smile.
Pearl came out once she’d heard us. Shawnica followed her with CJ.
“Might want to stay up there,” I told Pearl.
So she came straight down toward the road.
“He all right?” she asked of the bit Hoyt.
I nodded. “Bad clams or something.”
The rest of the Hoyts were all sitting in a row. Pearl took her time looking them over.
She soon said with delight, like I’d figured she would, “Goodloe, is that you?”
TWENTY-FIVE
The captain came out with the cruisers and the rescue squad. He was all brass and martial finery and cologne. I’d never laid eyes on him before, but Desmond knew him well enough.
“Greer,” he told me. “Went to school with him. Hasn’t ever been worth a shit.”
He was slick, though. I had to give him that. It didn’t surprise me to learn that he came from a family of funeral home directors. He had that bittersweet eulogizing way about him like he knew where you hurt and precisely how much, and he was feeling that way as well.
Kendell introduced us. “This is Nick Reid, sir.”
Captain Greer—his name was Riley—extended his hand while still looking at Kendell.
“Lucas Shambrough had him and that boy there”—Kendell nodded in Larry’s direction—“imprisoned in his basement when he was talking to you upstairs.”
Captain Riley had a tight smile for news such as that. He nodded sharply, turned and finally looked at me.
“Imprisoned,” he said. He still wasn’t prepared to think such a thing of a Shambrough. His people had probably been paid in full for burying Shambroughs for years.
“Shackled to a wall,” I told him. “You see a girl roaming around the house?”
“Brunette?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Plaid skirt.”
“Might have passed through the foyer,” he said.
“You know those beatings you’re looking into?”
He knew just what I meant. He nodded.
“Her,” I said.
Riley showed me his teeth. He turned and showed them to Kendell. “Just a child,” he said to Kendell. Then he turned and said it to me.
“Naw.” That was Desmond. He’d glided over.
“How you?” The captain said it like he couldn’t begin to figure how Desmond hadn’t been taken by heart failure or a stroke. He eyed Desmond up and down in a leisurely and disapproving sort of way.
“Wants folks to think she’s not but a girl, but she beats people up, and your buddy, that Shambrough, he watches and jerks off.”
You’d have thought Desmond had told the captain that Jesus was a cannibal.
“No!” Captain Greer told us all. “I’m knowing Shambroughs all my life.”
“Ain’t no count,” Desmond assured him. “Been making a mess of this place for years.”
The captain wasn’t the sort inclined to take the word of a civilian, so he gave Kendell a chance to contradict Desmond, but Kendell let him down.
“Bad seed,” Kendell said. “We’ve been looking the other way for too long.”
Captain Greer sputtered a little. Hauling Lucas Shambrough in was bound to be socially unsavory.
Nobody said anything for about half a minute. It turned out the captain had a grunty groan, too, that he finally uncorked. “See what Lucas has to say for himself?” He laid it out as a suggestion.
“Right,” Kendell told him, “but let’s do it with a warrant.”
The captain checked his watch. “First light,” he said.
“What if they bug out?” I asked him.
Kendell and Desmond both chimed in on that. I got a decisive “Won’t” and an emphatic “Uh-uh.” They agreed that wasn’t a thing a Shambrough would do.
“What about her?” I asked. “Ought to at least sit on the place.”
The captain couldn’t be immediately sure that was a bad idea, so I pressed the advantage and told him. “Me and him and Officer Raintree.” I pointed at Desmond. “Out on the road just keeping track of who goes in and out. Nothing happens until Kendell shows up with the warrants.”
“Where’s your badge?” the captain asked me.
“Used to be a cop,” Kendell told him.
That prompted some kind of aphorism about used to be and shoulda coulda. As tough as it was, I think I even managed to smile through that.
It turned out the captain was one of those guys you just had to wait out. He didn’t need everything done his way. He just had to seem in charge. So once we’d paid sufficient deference to his rank by saying nothing, Captain Riley Greer told Kendell, “All right.” Then he shook hands all around, even with Desmond, who smiled while he compressed a bone or two.
Once the Hoyts were tidied up and hauled off, both the snakebit one and the rest, Shawnica and Pearl volunteered to stay behind at Tula’s with CJ, and Larry proved keen to protect them, so we let him stay as well. Kendell went off to Greenville to catch a few winks at the station house and wait for a decent hour to call a judge.
For my part, I got to spend another night with Tula after a fashion. Tula and Desmond, anyway, in Desmond’s Escalade.
We parked out past the commissary building on the Geneill Road where me and Desmond had first stopped when he’d showed me Shambrough’s place. The floodlights were all still burning, and there were three or four vehicles in the drive.
I’d let Tula have shotgun with Desmond up front, so I was obliged to hang over the seat back like a kid.
“Who do you figure’s down there?”
“Cronies,” Desmond told me.
“Cronies?” Tula asked him before I could get it out.
Desmond looked at her. He looked at me. “Cronies,” he told us again.
“Like who?” I asked him.
“Her, probably,” he said. “How bad did you leave her?”
“Two hard rights. Larry wanted to brain her with her hammer.”
“Wanted you to brain her.” Desmond knew Larry.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Punching seemed enough.”
Tula just listened, looking back and forth between us. She let the chat fall off to nothing before she jabbed her thumb my way and said to Desmond, “Is he any count?”
“I’m sitting right here.”
Desmond eyed me in the mirror. “Mostly,” he told her.
“Mostly?” I said.
“Dependable?” Tula asked.
Desmond thought about that one. “On time and all, if that’s what you mean.”
“Trust him with your life?” she asked him. She looked at me while she did it.
Desmond laughed. “About every third day.”
“Tell her about that swamp rat,” I suggested.
Desmond’s hand went immediately toward the scar on his calf.
“Not the one with the gator,” I said. “The other one. Guy down by Yazoo with the Thompson.”
“That gun jammed,” Desmond told me.
“I didn’t know that.”
“True enough,” Desmond said. He turned to Tula. “He might have got all shot to pieces. Didn’t.”
“Just tell her I’m good in a fix and all right the rest of the time.”
Desmond eyed me in the mirror again. “What he said. I guess.”
The lights never went out down at Shambrough’s, and nobody came or went. No cronies got dispatched or sent for. Only Shambrough’s hound made a racket. About every half hour or so it would bark and bay for a minute or two but seemed to know enough to stop before the boot or the bullet came.
At around three, I switched places with Desmond so he could stretch out in the back. Or tumble over, anyway, and snore. Tula was dozing against her door by then, so it was just me sitting and looking. The moon was down. Even Shambrough’s browbeaten hound was asleep.
&
nbsp; Tula groaned and shifted my way. She grabbed my arm by the wrist and raised it, slipped in underneath, and laid her head against my chest.
“A Thompson, huh?”
“Full magazine. Guy didn’t know from gun oil.”
“Brave man.”
“Fool sometimes. Don’t want to keep that from you.”
“You haven’t,” she told me.
She stayed where she was anyway and went back to sleep.
* * *
We were all awake and ready for Kendell by the time he showed up. Ready for coffee, anyway, and Kendell being a decent Christian had brought some. Being a cheap, decent Christian he’d brought it from home, where he and his wife drank flavor crystals. I dumped mine when I slipped off around the derelict commissary to relieve myself.
The captain was bringing the warrants.
“Thought he ought to,” Kendell told us.
“He still think it’s all a big misunderstanding?” Tula asked him.
Kendell nodded.
A couple of other cruisers rolled up to join us soon enough. The sergeant from the Alluvian men’s room was driving one of them, and a beefy guy I’d never seen before but was happy to have along racked a round into his shotgun as he rolled out of his sedan.
“Bound to know we’re up here,” Tula said.
She hadn’t bothered with her uniform. Just jeans still for her, but she’d carried her service piece along and dropped the clip to check it.
“This’ll go quiet,” Kendell told us. Told himself, I think, a little as well. You had to admire the way people cling to pedigree in the Delta. Lucas Shambrough would be polite and go easy because that’s just what Shambroughs did. They were all so convinced of it I even let myself be convinced of it a little.
The captain finally showed up around eight. He had the paper, but he still lacked the conviction. He was wearing a different brassy uniform and a fresh dose of his piney cologne.
“Let me try this,” he said mostly to Kendell.
“Try what?”
“Go down. Have a private word.”
“Just you?”
He tugged at his uniform jacket and gave a curt nod.
“Don’t like it,” Kendell told him.
“Mind’s made up. I’m going down.”
“They’ve got a body on them already,” Kendell said.
“We don’t know that.”