by Ace Atkins
“What do you want us to do about it?” John said, standing.
I joined him.
“Just keep an open mind,” Hoyt said. “I hear you’re aiming for your dad’s spot.”
John nodded. “I am.”
“I understand,” he said. “I wish you luck.”
“You don’t mean that, Hoyt.”
The air smelled of chlorine and the gardenias and cow shit.
Hoyt smiled and kind of laughed, his face clouded in his exhaling breath. “Guess I don’t.”
“I haven’t been back in Phenix City long, but I know to watch where I step.”
“That’s not what this was about,” Hoyt said. “I just wanted you to know this isn’t my deal. I have no part in this. I didn’t leave my neck out for no misdemeanor vote fraud. We’re all hurting. Did you know the same night your daddy was killed, someone broke into my other house and blew a safe bigger ’an a truck? They ’bout cleaned me out.”
“What does that have to do with my father?”
“Everything,” Hoyt said. “You can’t trust a crook no more. There was a time when a man’s word meant something. This town has gone to hell.”
John simply nodded. He then looked over at Jimmie and said, “Good night.”
Jimmie gave a soft smile and both older men remained seated.
“You boys listen to me,” Hoyt said. “I will cut out my heart and place it here on the table if Bert Fuller and Johnnie Benefield didn’t have something to do with your daddy. Benefield is the most coldhearted, sadistic sonofabitch I’ve ever known.”
THEY FOLLOWED A LONG PATH INTO THE WOODS, PUSHING along a fat man in handcuffs, Fuller knocking him in the back of the head with a revolver when he’d slow down. The man wore pressed pants, no shirt, and a tie, his shirt torn away after they’d run his car off the road. Reuben walked between Fuller and Benefield, who wore a brown western suit with gold stitching.
There was a path, but it hadn’t been trod since hunting season, and Fuller swatted away branches that slapped back and hit Reuben in the face and eyes as he struggled along half drunk on Jack Daniel’s. He still carried the open bottle from Club Lasso, where he’d gotten the call, and quickly met the men in the woods.
Benefield had worked PC for years and had taken on jobs in Atlantic City and in Tampa for some Italian boys down there. He was a natural-born killer, loved the job, and had killed so many in Phenix City that Reuben had lost count. Benefield and Fuller were as thick as thieves, and, under Fuller’s protection, Benefield could do about whatever he wanted. The man’s eyes were black and soulless, and when Benefield smiled Reuben felt an icy prickle run along his back.
They wandered up a hill and through a rusted stretch of barbed wire that had been cut away by hunters. Most of the trees were young, planted on cleared land. In the glow of the fat flashlight Fuller carried, he saw a mammoth oak that seemed lost in the immature forest. The trunk as large around as an automobile, prehistoric and crooked. The men were drawn to it.
Reuben set down the bottle and stared up at the big tree and waited. Fuller pushed the fat man to the trunk of a nearby pine and lashed him to it. Benefield kicked up mounds of pine straw around the man’s legs, covering him up to his shins.
The shirtless man was breathing hard, his back and shoulders covered in acne. Fuller pulled a little notebook from the man’s back pocket and slapped him across the face with it.
The man’s head turned and he was slow to look back at the men before him. Reuben lit a match against a thumbnail and stared at the man.
Fuller took in an audible lungful of air and walked over to Reuben and held out his hand. Reuben handed him the bottle and Fuller took a drink. He walked back to the man and then stared up at the night sky, thinking, contemplating.
Benefield caught the edge of a cigarette from Reuben’s match.
“Why’d you put them lies in the newspaper?” Fuller asked.
“I didn’t write any lies.”
“I said admit it, goddamn you. You cain’t come to a man’s town and put them things in print. People think that garbage is the truth.”
The man looked away. Fuller reared back and struck the man in the face.
“You wrote in that rag of yours that I was-” Fuller looked to Benefield, who reached into his pocket for a piece of folded-up newsprint. Fuller took it and read: “‘The town bully. A common criminal who is a disgrace to the badge.’ Isn’t that your name at the top there?”
Fuller hit him again. Benefield took back the piece of paper, folded it dramatically, and placed it back into his pocket.
“I stand by it,” the reporter said. His mouth bled.
“Say it to my face,” Fuller said. “You goddamn Communist.”
Fuller slapped him and the blow turned the man’s head quick to the side.
“I’m not Communist.”
“What would you call it when you come to a town and piss on the head of the law?”
Johnnie Benefield kicked up some more pine needles and checked the knot binding the man to the tree. He stared up through the branches of the forest at the summer sky and took a breath. The man spit out blood from his mouth.
Reuben took a long pull of the whiskey and then poured another out on the pine needles. Fuller adjusted the rig on his fat stomach and pitched his Stetson back with his thumb.
“How ’bout it, boy?” Benefield asked. “You gonna come to Jesus?”
“Excuse me?”
“Come to Jesus,” Benefield said, answering, and plucked the cigarette from his mouth and touched it to a book of matches. He smiled to the man, looking him dead in the eyes, as the match caught to the other matches and the entire book began to burn.
The portly, shirtless man started to cry.
Almost casually, Benefield pitched the book into the dry rust-colored needles at the man’s feet. The fire kicked up instantly, the needles starting to churn smoke and then crackle with flame. The man screamed and flailed and tried to pull loose from the lasso around his waist.
The fire caught in a ring about the reporter.
“I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” Fuller asked.
“Whatever you want.”
Reuben stood next to Fuller.
“Cut him loose,” Reuben said.
“Not yet,” Fuller said. “Say what you did.”
“I wrote lies.”
“Is that an apology, Reuben?”
“Oh, hell.”
“Are you, or are you not a card-carrying member of the Communist Party?”
The man was crying, wrenching his feet from the flames and crooking them from the burning earth, curling his toes for just an inch of space from the heat. His eyes looked as if they were about to burst from the sockets as he strained against the ropes.
“I am,” the man yelled. “I am a Communist.”
Benefield doubled over from laughter, his teeth like a rotten picket fence, as he searched for some dry branches.
Reuben spit and pulled out a fat bone-handled pocketknife from his pants. With one hand, he pushed at Fuller and went for the rope, but Fuller caught his hand and easily twisted the knife from his grip.
“Do you feel what hell is like?” Benefield asked, grinning. “Get used to it, boy. Hellfire, yes, sir.”
The reporter pleaded. He cried. He said he loved Mother Russia.
Benefield just added more pine needles to the smoking, curling mass.
There was a scream, a long, howling animal scream, the smell of burning flesh, and the piercing sound made even Fuller turn his head. He nodded with strong approval and threw the knife down at Reuben like you would slop to swine.
“Get him down from there.”
When the man was free, he turned and bolted from the tree like a loose cat. Just as he was about out of sight, jumping a warped run of barbed wire on cedar posts, Benefield leveled a.44 and fired off a hard, booming shot punctuated with a rebel yell.
The shot missed, and Benefield laughed, the pine needles
smoked and burned out into a perfect blackened circle. “That boy shit his drawers. Did you smell it? Did you smell it?”
THE NEXT MORNING, ARCH FERRELL AND SI GARRETT waited outside the short driveway leading to a little brick house in Cullman. Si Garrett leaned back in the driver’s seat, having given his man the morning off, and Arch slept one off in the back of the Oldsmobile, just coming awake. Garrett listened to the first morning news out of Montgomery, nothing but more and more reports about the killing of Patterson and his funeral and John’s announcement he was taking his slain father’s slot, and, as Arch sat up, he watched a man emerge from the simple white house with a mug of coffee. The man walked down the drive, careful not to spill the contents, and Garrett opened his door.
He handed Garrett the coffee.
Garrett turned down the radio.
“Mr. Folsom said to set up an appointment for later.”
“We already tried that.”
The man squatted, craned his neck toward the house, only one light on showing some movement behind a curtain. “He said he can’t miss his walk. You know how he is about that walk. And after that, he’s due in Montgomery.”
“We just need a second of his time.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Garrett,” the man said, looking into the backseat at Arch with a wry smile, the cocky sonofabitch, and turning to walk away. “Enjoy the coffee.”
Garrett cut the radio back on, watching the house with the single light on, tapping the steering wheel. More news about the killing and an interview with John Patterson coming on, piercing Arch’s head. Garrett turned it up after a commercial for Dobbs Buick in Alex City and ads for Vienna sausages and Bama jellies. The very men responsible for the condition of Phenix City are the ones running this investigation. The only true way we will see justice in this case is with the involvement of federal authorities. This whole thing is rotten all the way up to the capital.
Garrett tuned the radio to a hillbilly station playing an Ernest Tubb number called “Walkin’ the Floor Over You.”
From the backseat, Arch stared at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His hair was scattered wild, rat nose twitching and big ears pricked, as he ran a hand over an unshaven face, opened his eyes, and then closed them. He breathed in and coughed and opened the side door and vomited into a drainage ditch.
After some snorting and gagging, he sat up again and asked Garrett if he had some chewing gum. Garrett handed back some Black Jack gum, and the song changed and this time it was Alabama’s own Hank Williams – that’s the way the announcer said it – and Hank sang “Move It On Over.”
Arch started to sweat in his wrinkled dress shirt. He looked to Garrett, playing with the brim of his white Stetson that matched his suit, and then up at the simple brick house of the governor-elect, James E. Folsom, alias Big Jim.
“You ever think radio waves can get mixed up in your head?” Garrett asked him. “Sometimes I hear songs and I think they’re written just for me.”
Arch plucked a few more sticks of gum in his mouth. “I feel like death warmed over. Last thing I remember is that catfish house outside Opelika.”
“I wanted you to sleep it off. Get your mind off the worry. Worry will eat a man’s soul.”
“Think Big Jim will see us?”
Garrett didn’t answer.
“Si?”
“I’m not moving an inch till he does,” he said. “He owes us.”
Moments later, the door opened and out walked the big six-foot-eight, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound sonofabitch in khaki pants, plaid shirt, walking boots, and with a walking cane. Before Garrett could reach the door handle, Big Jim was striding down the road, reminding Arch of storybooks about Paul Bunyan, and Garrett cranked the car and followed loosely, just nosing along, and pretty soon they were beside the governor-elect.
“’Morning, Big Jim.”
Big Jim looked fresh, his hair slicked back, square jaw out, blue eyes clear and directed ahead on the narrow country road lined with oak and pecan trees. Cicadas started to click and whir high up in the trees.
“I thought Drinkard told y’all to find me later.”
“He did.”
“Well.”
“Can’t wait, Jim.”
The walking continued, Garrett moving alongside him in the Olds, Arch leaning between the front seats, feeling like a kid at a picture show. Garrett kept moving, the car idling and him smiling, trying to keep it affable and slow.
“We got real problems.”
“I’ll say.”
“They want me back in Birmingham next week,” he said. “They want me to testify on those votes before the grand jury.”
“Don’t see how that concerns me. I don’t take office till next year.”
“Just figured you could make some calls.”
Big Jim looked at Garrett and then over at Arch, who gave a self-conscious smile and a half-assed wave. The strides lengthened, but Garrett continued. Sonofabitch.
“You helped us out with Patterson,” he said. “You talked to him for us.”
“And where did that get us?” he said. “He was going to testify against you boys on Monday anyway. But I guess y’all know that already. Did you really think you could add seven hundred goddamn votes with no one noticing?”
“We’re only accused of six hundred,” Garrett said and leaned back in the driver’s seat, steering with two fingers, a boy on a country road following an insulted girl.
“Arch and the boys in Phenix City came through for you on this election,” he said. “You know that money gave you a big boost.”
“It did,” Big Jim said, eyes still staring straight ahead, not even winded, walking with the stick up in his hand like a drum major.
“I just need you to call the dogs back.”
“It’s too late, Si.”
“It’s not too late. Goddamn Governor Persons is going to try to make this his big political send-off because he doesn’t care what bridges he burns. He’s gonna leave you a pile of flaming dog shit for you to clean up when you take office.”
“Too late,” Big Jim said. “I’m making an announcement later today that I’m supporting the Patterson boy.”
Si Garrett threw on his brakes and the big, clunky Olds skidded to a stop. He got out of the car and slammed the door behind him. Big Jim Folsom stopped and peered down at the much smaller man.
“You… you… this is going to break me. You know that? Do you understand what you are doing to my head?”
“You’re a sick man, Si. Get some help. But Phenix City is over. The sooner we all understand that, the better.”
“But throwing in with John Patterson. How could you do that? He’s not qualified or well-bred. He doesn’t have the qualifications.”
“Of someone like who? You, Si?”
Garrett stood on the side of the road, hands on his hips and shaking his head. He stayed there for several minutes, as Arch watched the sun rise high over a big, endless pasture bordered by a broken cedar fence and rusted barbed wire. Big Jim grew smaller and smaller down the long, winding road.
REUBEN AND JOHNNIE PLAYED POKER ON THE BIG PORCH of Fannie Belle’s whorehouse, a broken-down old mansion hidden way out in the county. They’d been drinking most of the morning, after shoveling down some grits and eggs a little colored girl had made for them, and now smoked cigarettes, a half bottle of Jack at their boots, as the heat broke up high through the weeds and little pine trees down the dirt road.
“Where’s Fannie?” Reuben asked.
“Asleep.”
“That woman is gonna screw you blind.”
Johnnie smiled, leaned into the table, and squinted at Reuben as if he couldn’t quite make out his face.
“Is it true she’s got sixteen husbands?”
“Oh, come on, now. It’s only a dozen or so.”
“She makes them fall in love with her and then she sends them overseas, collecting their checks like a good ole Army wife. I seen her sitting in the bar, writing all those horny le
tters to those boys, telling them all the illegal things they can do to her.”
Johnnie smiled. “Hell of a scam.”
“You know you’re gonna get yourself killed when one of those boys comes back to PC and sees you mounting their trophy to the wall.”
“Aw, hell.”
Reuben tossed another few chips into the pot. And behind them they heard the screen door creak open and slam closed. Fannie walked outside, naked except for a light green man’s shirt loosely buttoned. She played with her stiff red hair that Johnnie had mussed up pretty damn good and then reached for a cigarette from him. As she did, Reuben got a nice view of her right tittie.
“’Mornin’, boys.”
“Fannie,” Reuben said.
She was a green-eyed devil with fair skin and red lips, an upturned nose that some might say was pug but others might say pert. But she’d made her way with her chest, and even that early in the morning she made a big show out of taking in that first lungful of smoke, smiling in a lazy, careless way like she was still in a dream.
The door creaked again, slammed shut, leaving only her perfume and smoke on the wind.
“Be careful,” Reuben said.
“You be careful.”
“I ain’t never careful,” Reuben said.
“I’m sayin’ be careful ’cause you’re playin’ with my money.”
“The hell you say.”
“Where is it?”
Reuben fanned the cards in his hand and leaned back in the metal porch chair. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Thought we agreed on that.”
“Things gonna die down real soon.”
“Didn’t say they wouldn’t.”
“You know every time you tell a lie, Reuben, the left corner of your mouth turns up. I heard fighters got tells like that, too. Like before they ’bout to nail you with a sucker punch, a good fighter will know it.”
“That’s true.”
“So when you gonna skip town?”
Reuben looked over the fan of cards. On the backs were photographs of naked women with big old titties. He blew out some smoke and rested the butt of the cigarette against his temple.