When the Women Come Out to Dance: Stories

by Elmore Leonard

  “You gonna blow up that church?” Sounding surprised, then in kind of a panic. “Boyd, we’re in the middle of fucking Cincinnati.”

  Now Boyd, in the back end of the Blazer, getting his Chinese grenade launcher unwrapped, raised his own voice to tell Jared, “You always have a secondary target, just in case.” He looked out the rear as Jared came to a stop. “This is good, I’m gonna have a clear shot.”

  “Boyd, there’s people on the street.”

  “I don’t see none. Just some niggers.”

  “They gonna see us. I.D. my car.”

  Boyd loved times like these he could show how cool he was under fire, so to speak. “You worried about your car, huh?”

  “They’s people right up the block, watching. Boyd, you see ’em? They watching us.”

  Even if this Jared wasn’t a snitch, which could be, he sure as hell wasn’t commando material. “Fuck ’em,” Boyd said. “We’re about to raise a whole lot of hell.”

  He had the RPG just about put together. He’d screwed the propellant cylinder to the back of the missile grenade and slipped it into the tube, sticking out now like a fat spear. Next, he removed the nose cap from it. Shit, he could do this in the dark drinking from a jar of shine. He pulled out the pin, the safety, and called to Jared to get ready.

  Now Boyd dropped the tailgate and slipped out to the street with his rocket gun, hefted it to his shoulder, flipped the sight up and took aim. He called out to no one in particular, “Fire in the hole!” Squeezed the trigger and that Temple of the Cool and Beautiful J.C. blew up before his eyes.

  III.

  Boyd got rid of the RPG crossing the Ohio River south, stuck his head and shoulders out the back end of the vehicle and flung the weapon out into the night. He told Jared to look for 275. That took them over to the airport, where he got Jared to follow the signs to long-term parking and find a spot a good ways from the terminal. “Over there toward the fence,” Boyd said, still crouched down in the back end.

  Once they were parked, Jared said, “Now what?” sounding like all his energy had drained out of him.

  Boyd didn’t answer. He had one of the Chink AK-47s unwrapped and armed with a magazine. He heard in his mind the familiar words lock and load and was ready for business.

  Jared said to the rearview mirror, “What’re you doing?”

  Boyd could see just the top of his head above the cushion on the front seat.

  “How’d you know where we was going?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” It was quiet in here, neither of them moving.

  “How’d you know we’s going to the federal building?”

  Now Jared’s voice in the dark said, “Was your brother told me. Him and Devil.”

  “You mean you heard ’em talking?”

  “Uh-unh, Bowman told me and then Devil goes, ‘But don’t let on you know.’ “

  “I think you spied on ’em.”

  “No sir—you can ask ’em.”

  “I think you listen in on things you shouldn’t, and then report it to who you work for. Is that what you are, a snitch for the feds?”

  Jared had his head raised to the rearview mirror.

  “Boyd, you got no reason to say that, none.”

  “I saw how you acted, I’m setting up to blow out that nigger church. You didn’t want no parts of it.”

  “They was people around, watching us.”

  Sounding like he was starting to panic again. Boyd asked himself, You want to argue with him or get ‘er done?

  He laid the barrel of the assault rifle on the backrest of the seat close in front of him and bam, shot Jared through the headrest of the driver’s seat—the round going through the fat cushion, through Jared, through the windshield, through the rear window of the car in front of the Blazer and through its windshield—Boyd discovering this once he was outside and took a look.

  From the terminal he called Devil Ellis at the Sukey Ridge church to tell him he’d arrive at the London-Corbin airport on the late shuttle. Devil was full of questions on the phone, but Boyd managed to satisfy him with, “Yeah, I had to let Jared go. I’ll tell you about it when you get me.”

  Now in Devil’s pickup, trailing its headlights along pitch-dark roads toward Sukey Ridge, Boyd filled him in: how he’d knocked out the nigger church—Devil letting out a Rebel yell—and then how, not taking any chances, he shot Jared, wiped down the Blazer pretty good where he’d sat, and stashed the rifles and extra RPG loads and parts along that cyclone fence there separating the lot from the airfield? They’d send one of the skins, see if he could pick ’em up.

  Boyd sipped from a jar Devil kept in his truck, then looked over at him with his dark beard and black cowpuncher hat Boyd allowed, the look being the man’s style, Devil’s devilish, go-to-hell image.

  “Jared said you told him where we’s going.”

  “Yeah, me and Bowman.”

  Boyd took another sip of the shine. “Even thinking he was a snitch?”

  “Bowman figured Jared’d fuck up and you’d see he knew more’n he was supposed to and you’d get on him about it.”

  Boyd said, “Yeah . . . ?”

  “Jared’d say it was us told him and you wouldn’t believe it.”

  Boyd said, “Then what?”

  “We figured you’d work on him in your way and get him to confess.”

  Boyd said, “That he’s a traitorous snitch.”

  “Yeah, in the pay of the govermint.”

  “But he didn’t tell me nothing like that.”

  “You work on him?”

  “I started in but, hell, I knew he’d lie to me.”

  “I know what you mean—those people. So you put him down. I’d have done the same.”

  Boyd didn’t say anything to that. They drove through the dark in silence till Devil said, “You know how he was always talking about the Murrah Building, saying he was there like a minute after she blew? Me and Bowman don’t believe he was anywheres near it. Saw it on TV like everybody else.”

  Boyd said, “Was it you didn’t trust him or you just didn’t like him much?”

  Devil said after a moment, “I guess both.”

  They were coming to the church now, way up there where that speck of electric light showed on the ridge. Across the front of the property, coming down to the dirt road they followed, was a pasture, a good five acres of cleared land and no road leading up. It was around the next bend where the pickup slowed to turn into the trees past the sign that said PRIVATE PROPERTY—TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.

  Boyd said, “You watching for claymores?”

  “You think you’re funny,” Ellis said. “If I believed you planted any I’d move clear to Tennessee.”

  They followed switchbacks up through the trees finally to top a rise and coast into the barnlot back of the old church, not used for services since Ike was President. Boyd had bought it cheap, had it painted and turned into a dormitory for when his skinheads were here. Anybody complained it looked like a prison dorm, Boyd would tell ’em to go sleep in the barn—with a mean rat-eating owl lived there. He got out of the truck stiff, tired from riding.

  Three skins watched him from the back porch where a kerosene lamp sat on top the fridge. The two fat boys were locals Boyd called the Pork brothers. The one without a shirt this cool evening, his dyed-blond hair spiked, was a boy named Dewey Crowe from Lake Okeechobee in Florida. He wore a necklace of alligator teeth along with the word HEIL tattooed on one tit and hitler on the other, part of the Führer’s name in the boy’s armpit.

  Walking toward them Boyd said, “What’s going on?”

  It was Dewey Crowe who spoke up. “Your brother got shot.”

  The words came at Boyd cold, without any note of sympathy, so he took it to mean Bowman wasn’t shot any place’d kill him.

  But then Dewey said, “He’s dead,” in that same flat tone of voice.

  And it hit Boyd like a shock of electricity. Wait a minute—in his mind seeing his broth
er alive and in his prime, grown even bigger’n Boyd. How could he be dead?

  “Was his wife shot him,” Dewey said, “with his deer rifle. They say Ava done it while Bowman was having his supper.”

  IV.

  It was Art Mullen, marshal in charge of this East Kentucky Special Op Group, who had requested Raylan Givens, now seated in Art’s temporary office in the Harlan County courthouse. It was an overcast morning in October, the two sipping coffee, getting acquainted again.

  “I remember you were from around here.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “You still look the same as you did at Glynco,” Art said, meaning the time they were both firearms instructors at the academy. “Still wearing the dark suit and wing-tip cowboy boots.”

  “The boots’re fairly new.”

  “Don’t tell me that hat is.” The kind Art Mullen thought of as a businessman’s Stetson, except no businessman’d wear this one with its creases and just slightly curled brim cocked toward one eye, the hat part of Raylan’s lawman personality. He said no, it was old.

  “What do you pack these days?”

  “This trip my old Smith forty-five Target.” He saw Art grin.

  “You and your big six-shooter—born a hundred years too late. You ever get married again?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t mind some homelife. I can’t say Winona ruined it for me. I stopped to see my two boys on the way up. They come down to Florida every summer and I get ’em jobs.”

  There was a lull. Raylan looked toward the gray sky in the window, trees starting to change color. Art Mullen, a big, comfortable man with a quiet way of speaking, said, “Tell me what you remember of Boyd Crowder.”

  Raylan, nodding his head a couple of times, went back to that time in his mind. “Well, we dug coal side by side for Eastover Mining, near Brookside. Boyd was a few years older and had become a powderman. He’d crawl down a hole with his case of Emulex five-twenty and come out stringing wire. You’d hear him call out ‘Fire in the hole,’ to clear the shaft. She’d blow and we’d go back in to dig out the pieces. We weren’t what you’d call buddies, but you work a deep mine with a man you look out for each other.”

  Art Mullen said, “Fire in the hole, uh?” in a thoughtful kind of way.

  “I hate to say he was good at it,” Raylan said, and sipped his coffee, still back all those years in his mind. “I remember when we struck Eastover and Duke Power brought in scabs and gun thugs? Their cars’d drive in, Boyd’d be waiting to swing at ’em with a wrecking bar. He was put in jail twice. Then when he shot one of the scabs, almost killed him, Boyd took off and I heard he joined the army. Came out and what happened, he went to prison?”

  “Came out pissing and moaning,” Art said, “’cause we quit in Vietnam ‘stead of getting it done. He bought a truck and went to work hauling timber for the mines. Ten years never paid his income tax, refused to, claiming he was a sovereign citizen. The U.S. attorney sent him to Alderson. That’s where he got into what they call the patriot movement. You read his sheet?”

  “I’ve only had time to skim it so far,” Raylan said. “He’s been busy, huh? Has his own army now, bunch of serious morons sieg-heilin’ each other?”

  “More serious’n you think,” Art said. “Boyd’s got ’em making horseshit bombs, fertilizer and fuel oil. They drive to a town like Somerset, blow up somebody’s car to get the police busy and go rob a bank.”

  Raylan was nodding. “I saw it in a Steve McQueen movie.”

  “Well, these people aren’t movie actors.” Art leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. “Lemme tell you about this guy they found at the Cincinnati airport, sitting in his new Chevy Blazer shot through the back of the head. This is Jared, on file with the Bureau as some kind of Aryan knight. Oklahoma driver’s license and registration.”

  “You put him with Boyd?”

  “Lemme get to it,” Art said. “This is good. Just the night before, a black church in Cincinnati—they called it a street mission in the paper—was blown up.”

  Raylan was frowning. “It was a church? I caught only part of it on the news.”

  Art held up one hand. “Listen to me. Four witnesses say a guy got out of the Blazer with what looked like a bazooka and fired it into the church. But right before, you know what he said, yelled it out? ‘Fire in the hole.’ “

  Raylan straightened. He said, “Come on . . .” his interest picking up.

  “All four witnesses heard it. So now evidence techs go through the Blazer. They find this little cardboard cylinder you hook onto the back of an RPG rocket. It holds the juice, the propellant. One he must’ve missed.”

  “So you got the dead guy with Boyd.”

  “It would seem, huh? But first,” Art said, “we want to put Boyd and the dead guy at the church. What’s interesting, it’s only kind of a church. The pastor, it turns out, Israel Fandi, is one of the witnesses. Only at first he won’t admit who he is till people start pointing at him. Israel wears an African outfit, a dashiki and a little pillbox hat and talks like he’s Rastafarian. You know what I mean?”

  “Ethiopian,” Raylan said. “By way of Jamaica. I remember now on the news they said it was believed the people smoked ganja as part of the service.”

  “They smoked it, they sold it—the place was a dope store passing as a church. It blew,” Art said, “there was free grass all over the block. This was three days ago. Since then we got the Cincinnati police to loan us Israel Fandi. He’s in a holding cell downstairs, but claims he didn’t see the man’s face had the bazooka. I said to him, ‘Israel, you see him in a lineup, the man we know blew up your church, you might change your mind.’”

  “The power of suggestion,” Raylan said.

  “Without holding the marijuana over his head. We’ll save it. Next thing is to pick up Boyd, if he’s still around.”

  “What’ve you got on him otherwise?”

  “The U.S. attorney wants to collect indictments under a charge of sedition. That he did willfully and knowingly et cetera conspire to overthrow, put down and destroy by force the government of the United States.”

  “But what’ve you got you can take to court?”

  “Only bits and pieces of evidence.”

  “Then he’s most likely still around,” Raylan said.

  “Well, he’s got sympathizers. Half the people living up in the hollers around here,” Art said, “are on welfare but still don’t trust the government, won’t talk to census takers. Boyd’s mother and his ex-wife are in Evarts. His skinheads train at a place up on Sukey Ridge, what he calls his Christian Aggression Church. Signs on the trees say you approach at your own risk, as the road’s been mined.”

  “You let him get away with that?”

  “ATF swept it. There aren’t any mines. Another house, one he used to own up on Black Mountain? It’s been under foreclosure since he went to prison. We want to sell it to cover his back taxes, but Boyd’s put the word out, anybody buys the house, he’ll blow it up.”

  “I remember,” Raylan said, “they used to raise marijuana crops up there, acres of plants all the way down across the Virginia line.”

  “They’re still growing it, but that’s not our business, busting dopers.”

  “No, but what I was thinking,” Raylan said, “Israel being into weed, what if you sold the house to him? Say for a hundred bucks or so.” He had Art starting to grin. “And you let Boyd know a black guy’s living in his house.”

  Not a bad idea, Art saying yeah, that could bring him out. Saying then, “There’s another situation could do it. You know Bowman, Boyd’s brother?”

  Raylan saw him in a football uniform. “Sorta. He was a star running back in high school—this was after I got out. Boyd was always talking about him, how Bowman had the goods and would go on to play college ball and become a pro. I was never that sure.”

  Art said, “You remember the girl he married, Ava?”

  Raylan’s tone came alive as he said, “Ava, yeah, she lived down
the street from us.” He remembered her eyes. “She’s married to Bowman?”

  “Was,” Art said. “She ended the union the other day with a thirty-ought-six, plugged him through the heart.”

  It stopped Raylan. He remembered a cute little dark-haired girl about sixteen and how she tried to act older, flirting, working her brown eyes on him. He remembered her sassy cheerleader moves on the field Friday nights, the girls in blue and gold doing their routines, and his eyes would be on Ava the whole time. Too young or he would’ve gone after her.

  He said to Art, “You talk to her?”

  “She admits shooting him. Ava said she got tired of him getting drunk and beating her up. She was arraigned this morning. Her lawyer had her plead not guilty to first and second degree and she was released on her own recognizance. Unusual, but the prosecutor, knowing Bowman, would just as soon not bring her up. They’ll work out a plea deal.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Went home. I told her, you know Boyd’s gonna come looking for you. She said it’s none of our business. I told her it is if he shoots you. You want to talk to her?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Raylan said.

  V.

  She’d be fixing her face to go to work at Betty’s Hair Salon, and Bowman would say, “Who you think you are, Ava Gardner? You don’t look nothing like her.”

  Ava had quit trying to get it through his head no one ever said she did. The day she was born her daddy named her Ava on account of Ava Gardner saying she was a country girl at heart with a country girl’s values. He had read it somewhere and believed it and would remind her as she was growing up, “See, even a good-looking woman don’t have to put on airs.”

  She married Bowman a year out of high school because he was cute, because he was sure of himself and told her he’d never work in a goddamn coal mine. He’d wear the blue and white of the University of Kentucky and after that get drafted by a pro team; he wouldn’t mind the Cowboys. But colleges either wouldn’t accept his grades or didn’t think he was good enough. He blamed her for their getting married and taking his mind off staying in shape so he could try out at some school as a walk-on. She said, “Honey, if your grade-point average sucks . . .” Uh-unh, that had nothing to do with it, it was her fault. Everything was. It was her fault he had to dig coal. Her own fault he hit her. If she didn’t nag at him he wouldn’t have to. Unless he slapped her for the way she was looking at him. He’d start drinking Jim Beam and Diet Coke—ate like a hog and drank diet soda—and she’d see it coming as his disposition turned from stupid to ugly and pretty soon he’d be slapping her, hard. She ran way to Corbin and got a job at the Holiday Inn waiting tables. Bowman found her and brought her back saying he missed her and would try to tolerate her acting up. It was her fault she miscarried after he’d beat her with his belt. Her fault he didn’t have a son he could take hunting with him and his creepy brother. She told Bowman there were times he wasn’t home Boyd would stop by wanting a drink, and if she gave him one he’d start getting funny, “your own brother.” Bowman whipped her for telling him, kept after her with his belt till she fell and hit her head on the stove.