“The artist fellow back there? Mr. Kidd? Could you come down here and talk to me for a minute? And Miz Atkins? Could you come down here, too?”
A buzz went through the crowd, and I thought about walking out the back, down to the boat, and leaving for St. Paul. I could dump the car in the used-car lot where I’d rented it, with a couple of hundred bucks under the seat.… But there was no way out, with everybody watching. Marvel had walked down as soon as Bell called her name, and I picked my way down the center aisle, trying to look puzzled.
“Come down this way,” Bell said to me. He let Marvel go first, and I tagged along behind, until we were in the hall, and then he led the way to the council offices. Ballem was there, looking frightened. Hill was with him, wild with rage but holding it in. St. Thomas was standing down the hall with Rebeck. The chief of police was there, with four or five men I didn’t recognize.
“Motherfucker,” Hill said, standing up when Marvel and I came in. “What’re you and this bitch up to?”
“You watch your mouth, Duane,” Bell said. His voice was like a knife, and I suddenly understood why Bell had done so well in the big-time farming business. He was not a man to fool with.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” I said to everybody in general. “What in the hell am I doing here?”
We were in the narrow hallway outside the tiny council offices, the only place there was enough space for us all.
“Duane, here, says you and Miz Atkins are involved in some kind of conspiracy to drag the city down,” Bell said. “He said all the weird happenings here the last few days are because of you.”
“Duane’s a fruitcake,” I said. Hill started up, and I braced my feet, but Bell put his hand on Hill’s shoulder and shoved him back down. “The first time I ever saw him was on the day I came to town. He came up and hassled me on old Mrs. Trent’s yard, where I was painting. Mrs. Trent came out and ran him off—says she knew him from the days he used to shoplift out of her stores—”
“I never,” Hill said.
“There’s a police record in juvenile court,” I said. “That’s what Miz Trent says anyway. Then the next time I saw him, I was down at the Holiday Inn, and he came after my ass; I still don’t know why. You were there, Mr. Bell. He called my woman friend a… four-letter word you don’t normally use on respectable women, or any kind of woman, for that matter, if you got even an ounce of breeding—”
“This is bullshit,” Hill said, twisting up to look at Bell. “Ask him about Atkins!”
Marvel looked at me and shook her head. “I saw the man only one other time, when Miz Dessusdelit and the others quit. I thought he was a friend—I only saw him from behind. I thought he was Lou Shaffer from the school—and I squeezed his arm, but when he turned around… I was embarrassed.”
Bell looked from one of us to the other, not quite believing.
Then I said, “Fuck it—excuse me, ma’am. But I’m getting out of here. You’re all crazy people. I’m taking the car back to Miz Wells’s brother, and I’m getting in my boat, and I’m getting out of here.”
Bell sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. He looked at Ballem and Hill. “Come on, you two. If you’re going to do it, let’s do it.”
Marvel and I left first, not looking at each other, and turned in opposite directions once we were in the hall. I walked straight down to the phone and said, “They’re all here: Ballem, Hill, St. Thomas, and Rebeck.”
“Go?”
“Go.”
I UNDERSTOOD from Bell’s comment as Marvel and I left the council offices that Hill and Ballem were ready to quit. I almost left after talking to LuEllen but decided at the last minute to stick around for the finale. When I went back to the city council room, people were packed in the hallway.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Duane’s saying something about his quitting,” said a yellow-toothed courthouse regular standing in the doorway. Hill stopped talking, and Bell said something I couldn’t understand, and Ballem started talking. Two minutes later it was done, and the two men walked out through the side door, leaving Bell at the council table, along with Brooking Davis and Reverend Dodge.
Davis was talking to Bell, and the yellow-toothed man turned and said in a panicky voice, “That Davis is asking about electing new members. Son of a bitch, there’s two coloreds against Lucius.”
There was some further exchange at the council table, and the gavel rapped, and Bell, Davis, and Dodge got up and walked out. “Lucius called a recess,” Yellow-tooth said. “By golly, this could be bad.”
Whatever was happening, I couldn’t change it. Time to go. I was out the door, crossing the street to the parking lot, when I heard somebody coming after me. Hill, I thought, and I pivoted. It was Marvel.
“Gotta talk,” she said in a harsh whisper.
“Jesus Christ, Marvel, if anybody sees us, the whole thing comes unglued.…”
“I can’t help it,” she whispered. I pointed to the other side of the car as I unlocked the door and said, “Lay down on the backseat.”
When she was in, I started the car and rolled out of the lot, turned away from the courthouse, and started around the block.
“What?” I asked.
“A problem we didn’t see.” Her voice was disembodied, floating over the backseat. “Bell caught on, of course, as soon as Davis suggested nominations for new members.”
“What can he do about it? He’s outvoted, two to one.”
“He can do two things that we didn’t think of. He can refuse to go back to the meeting. Without a quorum there’s no vote,” she said.
“Shit.” I gnawed at a thumbnail. “He can’t stay out forever, though.”
“And he can quit. That would do it. The governor would have to appoint replacements again, and there’d be three more white boys. And Bell’s talking about doing just that.”
“Goddamn it. Who’s he talking to? Everybody? Or just Davis.”
“Just me and Davis. I think he’s still trying to figure out what we’re doing. And he really doesn’t want to quit; that’d be the end for his precious bridge.”
I took a couple of more blocks, worrying it. There was only one out. “You gotta deal with him,” I said. “You. Or Davis. Somebody. You’ve gotta find a way to cut a deal with Bell.”
“How?” she asked. “He doesn’t even want to live here. He wants to live across the river, in a whole ’nother state. He’s here only because he thinks it’ll help him get that fuckin’ bridge.”
“Then get the bridge for him,” I said.
“I can’t. Everybody’s tried. And they’ve tried about everything they could think of.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Marvel,” I said. “If he walks out of that City Hall without going back to the meeting, the white pressure’ll get heavier and heavier, and he won’t be able to move. If he goes back tonight and you get elected to the council, he can always claim that it didn’t occur to him to boycott the meeting. If the meeting gets put off until tomorrow, there’s no way that’d work. By tomorrow everybody will have thought of it.”
“You got nothing for me?” she asked. “Nothing?”
“Man, I’m a technician. I can get you to a point, but after that… you’re the politician. What you need is a deal, to cut a deal.” I looked at my watch. “And I’ve got to take you back now. You’ve got about two minutes to get to Bell. Two minutes to figure out how you’re gonna get a bridge for him.”
“Ah, Jesus,” she groaned. “We’re so close. So close. What am I going to do?”
I DROPPED MARVEL in a pool of darkness a half block from the City Hall, hoping that nobody would see us or recognize us. She hurried away, not looking back. The outcome of our attack on the city was now in her hands. I had no ideas for her.
And I had LuEllen to worry about. She should have been out of animal control, but I had to check. I was supposed to keep track of Hill and St. Thomas, and in the encounter with Marvel, I’d lost them.
“Goddamn it,” I muttered. I smacked the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. LuEllen should have seen their headlights coming. But if she’d been inside, looking for a spot to hide Hill’s pistol, it was just barely possible that she’d been trapped. I went on down the road, parked, got a flashlight out of the glove compartment, and jogged back.
The night had cooled, and the smell of mud, road gravel, weeds, and something else rode on a river breeze. Goose bumps popped up on my arms as I ran, and I finally identified the “something else” as the stink of decomposing flesh, probably from Hill’s killing pen.
At the entrance to the animal control complex I slowed, cut a corner through the weeds, prayed that all copperheads were asleep, and stepped over a fence. The complex was in a flat, open area cut in the riverside brush. I skirted the open area, cut behind the pen where we’d seen Hill and St. Thomas killing the cats—the smell of rotting flesh grew stronger, and I started breathing through my mouth—and climbed the levee. Nothing; I was too far away to see whether or not the boat was tied to the wall. I started down the levee, picking my way along the nearly invisible game trail. The boat loomed up like a ghost in the night, just a light spot in the humidity, a trick of the eyes. In another fifty yards it had solidified. No lights, nothing moving around it.
“LuEllen? LuEllen?”
Nothing. Cursing under my breath, I turned back up the levee. I could hear somebody inside. A voice, a banging of drawers. There was a window on the far side of the building. If I could get to it, I should be able to see into the main work area.
I started around the clearing, staying in the brush as long as I could, then darted into the cage area at the rear of the main building. Most of the animal pens were simple wooden or wire cages stacked six high inside a chain-link fence, but there was also an open pen for puppies. A couple of half-grown spotted mongrels stood up in the pen as I went by, watching curiously, and I prayed for silence. One continued to watch me, its nose pressed through the fence, while the other one turned in its tracks and settled down again. Neither barked.
Standing in the darkness of the pens, I waited a second, listening, then poked my head out. A shaft of light came out of the window, onto the grass. Then a man spoke, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. I stepped out from the pen area, staying close to the building, moved up to the window, and carefully looked in, moving slowly.…
Hill was there, his back to me, stuffing paper into a plastic garbage sack. The file cabinets around him were standing open. He was cleaning the place out. That was OK, as long as they didn’t physically trash the computer. The voice I’d heard came from the radio, a local sports talk show about the high school baseball team. I let out a breath and started to step back.
“Don’t fuckin’ move.” The voice came from ten feet away and nearly stopped my heart. I turned my head, and St. Thomas was there. He was wearing loose, soiled khaki slacks and a light short-sleeved shirt, which was half open over his fat belly. With one hand, he fumbled with his fly. With the other, he pointed a shiny chrome pistol at my head. I froze.
“Duane, get your butt out here,” St. Thomas hollered. Then to me he said, “Picked a good time to take a leak, didn’t I?” Then louder again: “Duane, goddamn it…”
Hill came around the corner of the building and stopped, his mouth half open.
“God-damn,” he said. He broke it into two words, dragging out the God. He didn’t exactly smile, but he was delighted. “I knew you was the nigger in the woodpile.”
“I talked to the mayor before I came—”
As I started the sentence, Hill walked up to me and, before I had a chance to raise my hands, swatted me openhanded on the face. The blow almost knocked me down, semiblinded me, and the taste of blood surged into my mouth.
I put my hands up to defend myself, and St. Thomas screamed, “Put your hands down, motherfucker, motherfucker.…” He shook the pistol at me, and I was sure it was the last thing I’d see. I put my hands down, backing away, watching the gun, and Hill hit me with a left hook and then a right cross, hit me first in the eye and then in the nose. My nose broke with a crunch, and I went down, banging backward into the side of the shed, then dropping forward on my hands and knees.
“Busted my fuckin’ ribs,” Hill shouted. He grabbed the hair at the sides of my head, jerked me upright, and threw me back against the building. “You was the nigger in the woodpile, wasn’t you? You was the one what set this all up, this whole thing, nobody’d believe me, nobody’d listen.…”
He punched me in the forehead. My head banged back against the building, and I went straight down, to a sitting position, and he kicked me below the armpit. I rolled with the kick and crouched, ready to roll again, and Hill started screaming, “On your feet, motherfucker, on your feet.”
St. Thomas danced around beside me, giggling, waving the gun. “On your feet, on your feet…”
“What’re you looking for out here? What’re you looking for? Were you in that car? What were you doing, cocksucking faggot?”
I got up again, sputtering, blood running out of my broken nose into my mouth. I had my hands half up again, and said, “Listen, goddamn it, I talked to the mayor—”
“Fuck Bell. You hear me, cunt? Fuck him—”
Hill screamed. He screamed all the time, never dropped his voice, never laughed, always screamed. “Hands down, cocksucker. Arnie, you shoot the motherfucker in the nuts if he puts his hands up.…”
“I will,” St. Thomas squealed. “I’ll shoot you in the nuts, faggot motherfucker.…” He pointed the pistol at my crotch. Hill squared up again, and St. Thomas was squealing, and I dropped my hands, trying to edge away, but St. Thomas danced around in front again, blocking me, and Hill hit me in the nose again, and I went halfway down, trying to fall, and he hit me twice more, hard, in the right eye again and on the nose. The world went black and red, and I was down, nearly blind, feeling the grass under my hands, the blood running down my throat.…
“Get up, motherfucker,” Hill screamed, his face two feet from mine. “Get him around inside, Arnie, let’s get him around inside.”
I couldn’t get up. I tried but couldn’t. “Get up, motherfucker,” Hill screamed, and kicked me in the thigh. I tried and stumbled. He kicked me again.
“Kick him in the ass,” St. Thomas yelled. “Kick him in the ass, Duane. Kick him in the balls.”
Hill kicked me again, and I crawled some more, and he screamed, “Crawl, motherfucker.” I crawled another six feet toward the door, and he kicked me in the side, and this time I didn’t see it coming, couldn’t roll, and a couple of ribs went. You can feel ribs when they break because the muscles between them go into spasm. The pain can bend you in half.
I went down on my face and thought: Keep breathing. Keep breathing, keep your arms around your head, LuEllen’s out here somewhere; maybe she’s gone for help.… And I had an image of the Fanny slowly slipping off the revetment and downstream, LuEllen cutting the boat loose, satisfied that she hadn’t been seen.
When I went down on my belly, Hill flew into a fury, kicking me in the legs, the hips, and along the side. Most of the kicks to the side hit my arm. Somewhere along the nightmare crawl to the door, the arm broke below the elbow. I didn’t realize it until he kicked it a second time in the same place, and the pain ripped out as a groan out of my chest.
“That’s right,” Hill brayed. “Let’s hear it, motherfucker, what you done to us, you oughtta hurt.…”
St. Thomas was as excited as Hill, out of his mind, waving the pistol, and as Hill was kicking me, he fired a shot into the ground next to my head. Dirt blew
up into my face, embedding itself in my cheek, but by then I didn’t care.…
SIX FEET from the open door Hill, impatient, grabbed me by the hair on the back of my head and dragged me into the building. My broken arm bumped over the concrete doorsill, and I may have fainted.
Water splashed off my face. Hill was pouring it out of a paper cup. It was cold, out of a bottle cooler, and trickled off my forehead, down across my nose and chin onto my neck. I opened the one eye that still seemed to work, and found myself lying on my back on the concrete floor, my legs spread, my head propped up against the wall.
“Can you see, motherfucker? I want you to see,” Hill brayed. I could see and tried to say something. St. Thomas was there, still grinning, still waving the gun, though he didn’t need it. “Look at this. You see this? This is the vacuum chamber, motherfucker.”
Directly across from me was the Plexiglas door of the killing cage. Hill pounded it with his hand.
“The vacuum chamber. We put big fuckin’ dogs in there, boy. We put Doberman pinschers in there. We put German shepherds and rottweilers in there. Big, dangerous dogs, we can’t take no chances. Once you put a dog in there and close these latches, no way he’s gonna get out. If he got out, he’d tear your fuckin’ liver out, boy, so we built these latches strong. You know what we’re gonna do, boy?”
He waited for an answer, but I was in no shape to make one. He seemed vaguely disappointed.
“We’re gonna put you in there,” he screamed, smacking the plastic door again. “Then we’re gonna get a couple of lawn chairs and some beer, and we’re gonna push the button on you, and then we’re gonna sit here and watch you try to scratch your way out. Just like TV. Like a big-screen TV. I’m gonna do a little more work on you, cocksucker, because I want you to hurt before you go, but I ain’t gonna kick you in the head, and you know why?”
He turned to St. Thomas. “You know why I ain’t gonna kick him in the head, Arnie?”
“No. Why?” Arnie was grinning, the straight man in a comedy act.
Kidd and LuEllen: Novels 1-4 Page 44