“You get it tattooed on your elbow if you done time or killed some minority, Jew or a jigaboo.”
“Boyd, you know any Jews?”
“A few. I also know they run the economy, control the Federal Reserve and the IRS. I recruit skins don’t know any more’n you, have to show ’em why we have a moral obligation to get rid of minorities. Read your Bible.”
“It’s in there?”
“Part of Creation. Back at the beginning of time you got your mud people, referred to as beasts ’cause they don’t have souls. Okay, Adam jumped Eve and she begat Abel, the beginning of the white race as God intended. But then Satan in the form of a snake jumped Eve. She begat Cain and things got out of hand. Cain began fucking mud people, the women, and out of these fornications came the Edomites. And you know who the Edomites are?”
“Tell me.”
“The Jews.”
“You’re serious.”
“Read your Bible as interpreted by experts.”
“Are you born again?”
“Again and again.”
“I think you’re putting me on,” Raylan said, noticing silver chains now hanging from deer antlers, on the wall with photos taken of Boyd in Vietnam. Raylan walked over and Boyd followed him.
“They look like dog turds now, but they’s ears I took offa dead gooks I killed. After I got back I use to offer a pair to different women I was seeing.”
“No takers, huh?”
“It was like a test. A woman that won’t accept a pair and wear ’em proudly ain’t the one I’m looking for. We invite these little Nazigirls up to the church? Chelsea girls they’re called—shitkickers, hair under their armpits—any one of ’em would wear a pair of the ears, fight over ’em, but they’re not my type. I like a woman ain’t afraid of nothing but more feminine in her ways, more womanly.”
“Like Ava,” Raylan said.
“Listen, I called her up—” Boyd stopped and looked over at Devil. “Go on get us a jar and a couple glasses.” He raised his voice, “Clean ones,” as Devil went out to the kitchen. Boyd turned to Raylan. “He just got his release, so he’s looking for action.”
“I can tell,” Raylan said.
“Was down three years on a marijuana conviction—you know it’s grown all around here. Devil couldn’t convince the court what he had was for personal use. Four hundred pounds in two refrigerators.”
Raylan sensed a connection between Devil and the marijuana church in Cincinnati and said, “We were thinking to sell this house to a black man, see if it might bring you out in the open.”
Boyd said, “Your nigger would never’ve known what hit him.”
Devil came with a jar of shine no meaner-looking than water, a few specks of charcoal in it, his fingers in the three glasses he placed on the table.
Boyd shoved one of the glasses back to him. “This is me and Raylan’s party. You aren’t invited.” Devil seemed to want to argue, give a reason to stay. Boyd told him go on, get outta here.
Now he poured their drinks, a few inches of pure corn into each glass. “I don’t like him hearing things he’s liable to take the wrong way.”
Raylan said, “How you feel about Ava?” He took a sip. It was smooth, but caused saliva to rise in his mouth and made him swallow a couple of times.
“I called her up,” Boyd said. “I told her the only reason I didn’t take her out and shoot her, I saw she had no choice in what she done. I told her she showed spunk for a woman, not knowing what I’d do about it. I told her another reason was the Bible saying a man should see to the needs of his brother’s widow, and that I intended to take care of her.”
“Bless your heart,” Raylan said.
“Don’t get smart with me. I meant it.”
“Boyd, you use the Bible to get what you want, same as you use all this white supremacy bullshit to rob banks and raise hell, blow up a church in Cincinnati for the fun of it. See, I’m giving you the benefit you aren’t mental. I know you aren’t stupid enough to believe that mud people story.”
They stood facing each other across the table, the quart mason jar of moonshine between them, Boyd showing his size in a khaki shirt pulled taut across his chest. He appeared calm, his eyes showing interest.
He said, “Raylan, the whole world’s gonna become mulatta we don’t separate the races quick. I believe that much and it’s enough.”
Raylan only shrugged. “Then you’ll die for it or go to prison.”
Boyd looked at him now like he was trying to decide something in his mind.
“You’d shoot me, you get the chance?”
“You make me pull,” Raylan said, “I’ll put you down.”
Devil had the map spread open on the table again, the one with the circles and arrows. He said to Boyd coming back in the house, “You kiss him goodbye?”
Boyd said, “You want your jaw broke?”
“I’m kidding with you,” Devil said, waited for Boyd to sit down and hunched over next to him to point out on the map. “Here, we take 421 down across the Virginia line. East on 606 and we come to Nina, not an hour from here.”
“How many people?”
“Less’n four hundred. Nearest deputies are at Big Stone Gap. Hit the town, the bank, the stores, bang bang bang, any place there’s a cash register. Run up the flag . . . Which one?”
“Rebel battle flag.”
“That’d be my choice. We show how a town can be taken over and secured with fifteen militia. How, the time comes, it can be done all over the Jewnited States.”
Boyd put his finger on a line Devil had drawn. “I don’t see a road here.”
“It ain’t on the map, Boyd, it’s a four-wheeler trail through marijuana country, one of many the growers use. It takes us up to near 38 and we’re back home.”
Now, as Boyd studied the map, Devil said, “Why’d you let him go? I could’ve put him away, easy.”
Boyd looked up. He said to Devil, “Stick to your recon.” Looked at the map again and said, “What I do with Raylan’s my business.”
Boyd had come outside with him to stand with his hands in his pockets, nodding toward the crest of a slope that had been strip-mined and stood bare against the night sky. He told Raylan they were cutting the tops off of mountains and letting the slag run down to ruin the creeks. Shaking houses to pieces with their blasting. He reminded Raylan how their dads had dug coal ten hours a day for eighty cents. How “me and you” would go into worked-out mines and chop into the pillars of coal holding up the roof, and run like hell if she began to cave. Remember? It was called robbing the mine. And how they stood on the picket line the year they struck Eastover and watched the courts back the company scabs and gun thugs. “Whose side’s the govermint always been on, Raylan, us or the people with money? And who controls the money and wants to mongrelize the world?” That was his argument, why he felt he could rob banks and kill anyone wasn’t white. There was no talking to him.
Raylan said, “You’re gonna stand in a lineup tomorrow, Harlan County courthouse, nine o’clock.”
“What’d I do now?”
“You can show up or we’ll come get you.”
He made his way down the mountain and through Evarts past his high school, the Home of the Wildcats, going toward Harlan till he swung off 38 to follow dirt roads dark as pitch, no sign other than JESUS SAVES, and would have missed the house if a light wasn’t on—Raylan thinking that if he’d stayed he’d be living up a hollow in a house like that, a pickup truck in the yard. . . . But what would he be?
Ava hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek and held on bringing him inside, Ava wearing a loose sweater now with her shorts, wearing her hair in a soft wave that came close to one of her brown eyes and a nice scent that he liked—Raylan sitting with her on the sofa now, their drinks on the coffee table Bowman must’ve put his steel-toed workshoes on to get it scarred like it was, Bowman a presence, his wife until a few days ago sitting at the end of the sofa by the lamp shining on her hair.
“Did you see Boyd?”
“I told him he has to come in tomorrow. Boyd blew up a church in Cincinnati and we have a witness who’ll take a look at him.”
“Well, that was quick. Boy, you work fast,” Ava said, raising her eyebrows at him. “And I oughta know.”
Right there, Raylan knew he should tell her wait, he wasn’t making a move on her. But what he said was, “Boyd might not show up. Even if he does, I’m pretty sure he won’t be made, identified.”
“So you’ll be staying around? Cool.”
Ava got up and went to her CD player. She put on Shania Twain and came back singing along, “’Men’s shirts, short skirts, oh, oh, oh, really go wild, doin’ it in style . . .”’ The phone rang. Ava turned down the volume on her way to the kitchen. Raylan heard her say, “Who? . . . Oh, yeah, I remember. . . . Listen, hon? I can’t talk to you right now, I’ve got company.” Now she was laughing as she hung up the phone. Ava turned the volume back up and joined Shania again singing, “’Oh, oh, oh, get in the action, feel the attraction . . .’ Fella name Russ. Can you believe he’s the second one’s called me? I kinda knew ’em from a Fourth of July party we went to. Couple of showoffs. They made a bet, see who could throw down a blue blazer the fastest. You know, you light a shot glass of whiskey? That’s a blue blazer. They both threw theirs over their shoulder and banged their shot glasses down at the same time, on the picnic table.” Ava shook her head, smiling at the memory. “Cute guys, I’d see them watching me. Now I’m single again they’re calling me up. You believe it?”
Ava fell into the sofa to sit low, her head bent against the backrest, her legs apart in the shorts. She turned her head against the cushion to look at Raylan. “Jealous?”
For a moment there, listening to her on the phone, the flirty way she used her voice, he did get a feeling he didn’t like. In his head and out again, but it was there.
She said, “Hey, I’m just teasing you. I know you have a life. You must, a cool guy like you? No, I just thought, you’re here, why don’t we party? I can still do those old Wildcat cheers I know you liked to watch. I still have all the cute moves. Get your motor turned on. You want, Raylan, you can spend the night. How’s that sound?”
VIII.
Six A.M. they brought Boyd Crowder down to the courthouse under guard, Art Mullen not trusting the man to walk in on his own. Raylan believed he would. Last night when he called Art, he said the idea of walking in past a gathering of law enforcement people would appeal to Boyd, the man confident he’d walk out again, after.
Raylan made the call from Ava’s house after telling her he wouldn’t be able to stay the night. She said if he had to get up real early she could set the alarm, it wouldn’t bother her none. She said she knew he wanted to. He said well sure he did—and it was true, he was tempted—but, see, an officer of the law wasn’t supposed to go to bed with the defendant in a murder investigation. Ava said oh, she didn’t know that. She said well, couldn’t they like just fool around?
It was hard to get out of there but he did.
Now he stood in the main corridor of the courthouse. Art Mullen motioned to him and Raylan went over to where Art was standing by an office door, the top part glass. He looked in to see Israel Fandi sitting alone in his dashiki, all different shades of brown with some orange.
“Izzy was telling us,” Art said, “how his family from Ethiopia goes back seven hundred years. I said I didn’t think Mobile, Alabama, was that old. That’s where he’s from originally. We turn the lights out in there and line up Boyd out here in the hall. We thought at first with some miners. But you know what Boyd looks like?”
“A cop,” Raylan said. “I see his buddy’s here, the one they call Devil? And a skinhead from Florida with dyed hair.”
“I saw them.”
“You let ’em hang around?”
“They raise a ruckus, we can bust ’em.”
It wasn’t long after, Devil himself strolled up, Dewey Crowe trailing him. Devil said, “What time’s the show?” As he looked in the office Art stepped in front of Devil and shoved him aside, Devil saying, “Hey, come on, me and Iz are buds.” Art told him to keep away from the door and Devil said, “He never saw Boyd up there in Cincy. Even if he says he did to please you, you know he didn’t. But why would he? Iz’s going down anyway for the weed.”
They brought Boyd along the corridor and stood him in line with three marshals and two ATF agents and turned out the light in the office. It was off a good ten minutes, the lineup standing in place, before it came on again. Raylan noticed Boyd was the only one didn’t move or fidget during that time. Now Art came out with the Bureau people who’d been in there with Israel and told Boyd he could go.
Boyd saw Raylan and came over.
“I’m gonna sit down with my lawyer when I leave here. They went through my house saying they had probable cause to look for guns. They tore up my posters and threw ’em in the trash barrel with my gook ears, burned up my private property.”
“It wasn’t yours,” Raylan said. “The house belongs to the Marshals Service. You can understand they don’t like all that Nazi shit hanging on their walls.”
“It’s some govermint can take a man’s house from him,” Boyd said. He looked up the corridor to where Devil and Dewey Crowe were waiting for him, then back to Raylan.
“Last night this marshal’s telling me how one time you gave this fella twenty-four hours to get out of town or you’d shoot him on sight. Is that true?”
“Was a gangster I saw shoot an unarmed man,” Raylan said. “I didn’t feel he deserved any special favors. I gave him the option and he turned it down.”
“Well, all the trouble you’re causing me,” Boyd said, “I thought I’d make you the same offer. Get out of Harlan County by tomorrow noon or I’ll come looking for you. That sound fair?”
Raylan said to him, “Now you’re talking.”
When he told Art Mullen Boyd had set this deadline, Art said, “It’s become something personal?” frowning, at first not liking the sound of it.
“That’s what it looks like,” Raylan said, “since Boyd and I go back, but it isn’t. You’re the one gave him the idea while you’re busting up his house last night.”
“Our house,” Art said.
They were having their noon dinner of steak and eggs at the Western Sizzlin Steak place out on the 421 bypass.
“I see you and him both cut from the same stock, born a hundred years past your time.”
Art had said it once before and it reminded Raylan of a woman named Joyce saying pretty much the same thing but in different words. He was seeing her at the time he shot the gangster in Miami Beach, and Joyce had trouble accepting the fact he had deliberately shot and killed a man. She told him he had an image of himself as a lawman, meaning an Old West lawman but without the big mustache, and he believed it might be true in some deep part of his mind. Another time Joyce said, “The way you put it, you said you called him out. What did you think, you were in a movie?” Her saying it caught him by surprise, because at times he did see it that way, as something he had borrowed from a western movie. He liked westerns a lot.
By the time they were into their flame-kist steak and eggs, both dipping toast into the yolks, Art had come to appreciate Raylan’s situation.
“We’re like big-game hunters, you know it? Only you’re the bait, like a goat tethered to a post. All we have to do is keep you in sight.” Art took time to chew up a bite of steak. “What’d he say exactly, he’s coming for you or we’re coming?”
“He said he was.”
“But we don’t know if he wants to shoot you or blow you up, do we?”
Raylan, mopping up his plate, didn’t comment, letting Art have his fun.
“Or, Boyd might jump the gun,” Art said, “do it ahead of time, when you aren’t looking. I was you I’d check under the car before you turn the key.”
He said later on when they were having their pie, “I knew bringing you here was a good idea.”
/>
IX.
Boyd didn’t hate Raylan any more’n he’d hated those dead gooks without ears. Taking Raylan out was like a military objective, better to look at with a clear head than get emotional about it. Up at Sukey Ridge he told the skinheads gathered for the raid into Virginia he was putting it on hold, there was a matter he had to settle first. The skins gave him their shrugs and popped open beers.
He had already put the two locals, the Pork brothers, up on that hill that was behind the Mount-Aire Motel, where Raylan and the rest of the feds were staying. The brothers had Russian binoculars, deer rifles, an AK-47 and a cell phone and were told to stay in the trees and watch for Raylan Givens. Call and report whenever his Town Car came or went, a big shiny Lincoln losing its shine. One of the Pork brothers said, “What if we get a clear shot at him?”
Boyd wasn’t sure they could hit the motel from beyond two hundred yards, but it gave him an idea. How to set Raylan up and get him off by himself. He told the Pork brothers to sit tight, he’d let them know.
He told Devil Ellis and the skin who wore the alligator teeth, Dewey, he was thinking of taking his shot that night. It was Devil said, “I thought you were giving him twenty-four hours.”
Boyd said what that actually meant was the next time you saw the person, not the next day to the hour. Hell, the guy would be dug in waiting on you. He said, “I know Raylan ain’t leaving, so I may as well hit him when it suits me.” He told them he had considered waiting across the road from the motel with an RPG and when the Town Car pulled in blow it to hell. “But there’s no cover over there to speak of, the mall close by,” Boyd said, “and I’d as soon plug him face-to-face anyway.”
When the Women Come Out to Dance: Stories Page 8