by George Wier
She shrugged. I looked at Jennifer. She shrugged as well.
I closed the door and heard it lock behind me. So far, so good.
“Maybe this will be easy. Maybe Hank’s friend needs to borrow some money.” I whispered to myself, while stepping over the beat down grass and onto a makeshift sidewalk, little more than a split and battered eight-by-four foot piece of mud-splattered and dried plywood. I felt in my pocket for my checkbook, and reminded myself that all I had to do was make a notation in the bottom left corner of the check with Hank’s name to make sure that the accounting came out right, no matter the amount.
I rapped on the screen door with my knuckles, and a voice said, “Come on in here!” It was a woman’s voice.
I looked back at the Expedition, and faintly saw the wave of a hand through the lightly-tinted windows. I didn’t bother to wave back.
The screen door whined open upon a rusted spring, and I stepped into a slightly-canted floor covered in green linoleum. The linoleum was worn clear through in several places and peeled upward where it met the interior walls. I smelled boiled potatoes, onions and cabbage.
“What you want, slim?”
I looked to my right and through an open doorway and into the kitchen beyond. A matronly black woman of perhaps late middle age stood there, her hands on her hips. A broad apron covered most of her front, and I could make out what looked to be the leavings of fine flour where she’d wiped her hands on it.
“I’m here to find...uh...Cottonmouth Dalton.”
“Who are you to him? You some kind of process server or somethin’?”
“No ma’am,” I said. “He called a friend of his, Mr. Henry Sterling, and asked him to come. Mr. Sterling couldn’t make it, so he asked me to come in his stead. Apparently Mr. Dalton has got some kind of trouble?”
“Trouble? Trouble!? Let me tell you, you best get back in your fancy wagon out there and get back on the road, unless you want a big heap of trouble dumped in your lap, because that’s all Mr. Willard ‘Cottonmouth’ Dalton is worth. I’m Delphina, and I take care of His Majesty, Mr. Willard ‘Cottonmouth’ Dalton.”
“I understand,” I said. “Is he here?”
“ ‘Course he’s here. But you won’t listen, will you, Slim?”
“Not too well, ma’am. At least that’s what my wife tells me. I’m Bill Travis.”
“Well, Mr. Bill Travis, your wife is either a genius, or she’s stupid, because either way, she’s got you figured out.”
“That she has.”
“Mr. Willard Cottonmouth Dalton is holding court up those stairs over there. So if you’re bound and determined to see him, why, take yourself right on up those stairs. But before you do, you’ve been warned.”
“Woman!” a big, gruff voice shouted from somewhere up above, “you keep out of my business. Mister, come on up here.”
I nodded to the woman. She hmphed and turned back to the stove, where a gout of steam rose steadily into the air.
I turned to the stairs, appraised them with a mean eye, and went up.
CHAPTER THREE
T he old black man sat on a narrow, single bed, in a white tee shirt—the no sleeve kind with twin straps running up and over the shoulders—and dark blue Bermuda shorts. A young black man lay back in a grungy lounge chair opposite him, his eyes closed as if in sleep. The second floor of the place held several such little rooms, Willard Dalton’s being one in many, and I wondered how many of them were occupied.
“You ain’t Henry Sterling,” the man said to me.
I reached out a hand. “Hank sent me,” I said. “I’m Bill Travis.”
“Cottonmouth Dalton,” he said, shaking my hand reluctantly, before letting it drop.
“Hank couldn’t be here. He said you had a problem you needed help with.”
“Oh Laws.” Cottonmouth rubbed his eyes and then ran his large hands with their long, narrow fingers through his grizzled hair. His hair was more salt than pepper, in the process of becoming all salt. “Makes me wonder what a fellah’s life is worth these days.”
“Not as much as a woman,” I stated. “Apparently.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Hank couldn’t be here because a woman he likes has decided not to discard him completely. He couldn’t be in two places at once, so here I am.”
Willard’s face sagged and he studied the wooden boards between his outstretched legs. “Well,” he said, in a matter-of-fact manner of acceptance. “At least I know. Thank you for telling me the truth, Mr., uh...”
“Travis. Bill Travis.”
He nodded.
“I expect you’ve got better things to do. Where’d you come from?”
“Austin.”
“Thank you kindly for comin’ that far. I hope you have a good trip goin’ back.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “But I haven’t done anything yet. If I came down here and didn’t at least hear you out, I think Hank would be a little sore with me. So now it’s you doing me a favor. Tell me what your trouble is. Who knows. I might even be able to help.”
Willard rubbed his face again. “Oh Laws,” he said.
In the chair opposite him, the young man stirred, opened his eyes, looked up at me, then closed them again.
I waited. It was one of those moments where to do nothing was the best way forward and to say anything was to take two steps backwards.
Willard looked up at me. In a slow, sonorous voice, he said, “All you’d have to do is bring a dead man back to life.”
“Who?” I asked. “Who would I have to bring back to life?”
“This old sinner right here,” he said, and pointed at himself.
*****
Never once in my long years have I ever given a sermon from a hilltop, taken a loaf of bread and divided it to feed the thousands, walked on water, or raised the dead. But there’s another skill that is far more important than being two places at once, as Hank put it, and that’s to be in one place at once, by which I mean to be wholly and utterly in that place. To so hold a position in a space that one becomes the entire space.
From where Mr. Dalton sat on the side of his narrow bed, it wouldn’t have done for anybody to sit down beside him on that bed. Such a thing simply couldn’t be done, as it could be too easily taken for an invasion of sorts—the violation of an unspoken social contract. It was, however, the only thing I knew to do.
I sat down on the bed beside him, and not knowing where the words came from, except that they seemed exactly right for his reality—for the place in which he sat, for his background, which I could only surmise but which I felt was also exactly right, and from his life—I said, “Mr. Dalton, give me your testimony.”
And thus he began.
*****
“I’ve been playin’ and singin’ the blues since 1977. I come home from Vietnam a broken man in ‘73, after four tours. I don’t know anyone else ever did four tours, ‘cept maybe Henry Sterling. That son of a bitch is crazy as I am. Anyway, I come home a broken man and I couldn’t be fixed. I didn’t know no other life than killing. Sometimes I’m still there when I wake up in the morning. I’m still in the jungle, or waking up in my bunk at III Corps HQ in Saigon. But this ain’t about that. When I got off that C47 in San Diego, then hitchhiked my way back home to Houston, I took the long way down, first with cocaine and whiskey, plain and simple, then with something far worse: heroin. Somebody found my body in a dumpster behind this here joint over off of Lyons Avenue, just three miles from where we’re sittin’. You see, I was Fifth Ward, born and raised. But those people over there off Lyons didn’t know me, didn’t know my name. I didn’t have a wallet and for damn sure didn’t have no driver’s license. All I had was my dog tags, and the man who fished me out of that trash bin was a veteran himself. He took care of me, got me cleaned up and cleaned out, and it was pure hell. I wanted to die, but he wouldn’t let me die. I must have puked my insides out a hundred times. Take a sip of water, throw it right back up
. This was high summer, and maybe it was good it was summer, because I sure did sweat the days and nights away while I was recovering. That fellah nursed me, and he brought me back. It took him a month. There was times, though, during that, I couldn’t swallow a crumbled-up cracker. That’s when he gave me the name, started calling me Cottonmouth.
“I played harmonica in those days. Was pretty good at it. That’s when my friend and savior, Jimmy Atwell, asked me to set in on a performance at his club. The lead singer and keyboard man was John Lee Hooker. All I had to do was play that harmonica, and I did just that. Before I knew it, I was swept away on the music and even did a little solo part. I’d never in my life played before a bunch of people, unless it was the fellahs in my outfit.
“After that, I was hooked.
“Somebody asked me my name after that night, and Jimmy says to them, ‘This here is Cottonmouth Dalton. And don’t you forget it.’
“After that, I was a regular musician at Jimmy’s place—Nite Wing. This was from the fall of ‘77 all the way through the early ‘80s, when I went on tour. I even did a gig down in Waco, and called up Hank. He came out to watch me play and listen to me sing, and afterwards I spent the night at his place. ‘Course, the next day I was back on the road again. I played once at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, played at The Cotton Club in Harlem, even played at Carnegie Hall. And now I’m back home, and I ain’t nothin’.”
I sat there beside him and waited as I breathed in the scent of stale sheets, decaying old house, and misery. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to say another word unless prompted, the young man in the chair opposite us opened his eyes, looked at the old man, and said, “Tell him, grandpa. Tell him what Mr. Atwell wants you to do.”
Cottonmouth Dalton turned and looked at me, his eyes appraising. “Mr. Atwell wants me to kill a man.”
CHAPTER FOUR
B ubba!” Ms. Delphina called from the bottom of the stairs. “Willard! Stranger-man! Y’all come down here and get some lunch!”
The young man, Bubba, launched himself up from the chair like a rocket, and Cottonmouth thumped my knee—as if tagging me, You’re It!—and likewise arose and moved to the door. I got up and followed. The exodus downstairs was noisy; a herd of water buffalo tromping and echoing through the house.
Downstairs, I said, “I’ve got a couple of kids out in the car. Maybe I should take them to eat somewhere, then come back.”
“What?” Delphina asked. “I don’t know where you’re from, Slim, but here, we know how to treat company. Get those young’uns in here and we’ll have a sit-down meal, with some real soul food.”
“Better take her up on it,” Cottonmouth said. Sooner or later, I was going to have to sort out what to call him, if in no other place than my own head. “That woman knows how to hold a grudge.”
“I’ll be right back,” I said, and ducked out the door.
At the car, the window slid downward.
“What is it, dad?” Jessica asked. “Do I need to come shoot somebody for you?”
“Not just yet. These people are having lunch, and we’re invited.”
“What are they eating?” Jennifer asked.
“It’s soul food, honey. When I went upstairs before, I smelled onions and cabbage. Just now I could have sworn I smelled corn-on-the-cob and porkchops. I’ll bet they have sweet tea as well.”
Without further word, the rear door came open and Jennifer’s tennis shoes thumped down on the grass at the edge of the ditch. In a second, she hopped the ditch and was half way up the walkway.
“She’s hungry,” Jessica said, and turned off the car and climbed out. She came around the car.
“You’re hungry too,” I said.
“I’m...fine.”
“You’re lying. You smelled the food the second the window came down.”
“I do have a sensitive nose. I’m a legend in the Sheriff’s Department.”
“And so you are. Come on.”
*****
At the dinner table Willard and I made the introductions.
“This here,” he gestured to his grandson, “is Willard Jeremiah Dalton the third. That’s why we call him Bubba.”
“This,” I put my hand on Jessica’s shoulder where she had just taken her seat at the table, “is Jessica. She’s a Sheriff’s Deputy and she’s a crack shot with any form of firearm.”
“No shit?” Bubba ask her. “You’re the laws?”
“I am,” she said.
“My dad is the laws too,” Jennifer stated.
I stepped around behind Jennifer, put a hand on top of her head, “And this is Jennifer. She talks a lot. Don’t listen to her.”
“Dad!” Jennifer said.
“You the laws too?” Bubba asked.
“You hush, Bubba, and let your company speak. Then, when they’re done, you can have your turn.” She set a large platter of pork chops on the table, and Jessica’s and Jennifer’s eyes went to it. In fact, as I took my seat at the opposite end of the table from Cottonmouth, I noted that their eyes went round.
“It’s a far cry from what mom makes at home, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Jennifer said. “For reals.”
I noticed that Bubba was staring at me. I decided to answer him. “Bubba, I have a Special Rangers dispensation from the Department of Public Safety.”
“You’re a Texas Ranger?” Cottonmouth asked.
“Only when he has to be,” Jessica stated.
“What she means is, I’m not right this minute, and I’m hoping I don’t have to be at any given moment. All it really means is it’s hard for me to get a speeding ticket. Not that I ever try to do that.”
“Then Henry sending you here was the rightest thing he could’ve done.”
“Who’s Henry?” Jennifer asked.
“He means Hank,” I replied. Then to Cottonmouth, “What Hank didn’t tell you was that he’s now a Special Ranger too.”
“The hell you say,” Cottonmouth said.
“I’ll have no cussin’ at my table,” Ms. Delphina said, and set a bowl containing a veritable mountain of mashed potatoes next to the pork chops.
“What you folks waiting’ for?” she asked. “Dig in.” She turned and hurried back to the kitchen.
Ms. Delphina’s dining room was all hard wood flooring, a beautifully-finished table, and nice, cushioned chairs with a flower print motif, covered with a layer of protective plastic. The room was the complete counterpoint to the stairway and the rooms upstairs in that the area was free of dust, and apart from the mouth-watering aroma of the fare in front of us—and upon which everyone at the table was jostling to be the first to get to—there was the underlying scent of pine-sol, vanilla candles, and old wood.
When our plates were full, and everyone was eating, I decided to ask the question.
“Cottonmouth,” I said. “Who does Mr. Atwell want you to kill?”
“Whoa!” Jessica said. “What?”
“It’s why we’re here,” I told her. “It’s why he summoned Hank to come.”
Cottonmouth put his knife and fork down and pushed away no more than a few inches from the table.
“I’m sorry to bring it up in front of everybody,” I said, “but if I’m going to help you at all, I need to know what’s going on.”
Cottonmouth hung his head, nodded slowly with eyes closed.
“You answer him,” Delphina said. She stood a foot from his left elbow, as if she had been there all along; as if it were her rightful place. I still wasn’t sure about the nature of their relationship.
The moment stretched out. A moment missing the clank of fork, spoons or knives on plates.
“It’s okay,” Cottonmouth said, finally. “You young folks go back to eatin’ before the food gets cold.” He scooted his chair forward the two inches but then pushed his plate forward the same distance and propped his elbows up on the table.
“You see,” he began, “Mr. Atwell has a real problem, and he figures because he saved my life—b
asically brought me back from the dead—that I owe him...everything. That I owe him my own life. And he may be right about that...”
“Or he may be dead wrong,” Jessica said. “Sorry. Please continue.”
“And he may be that, too. His problem is with Dale Horner. Dale is his son-in-law, works for him. Runs the old man’s operations; his bank accounts and his books, his company and everyone who works for him. Dale is so connected up with Mr. Atwell that if he went to the cops, he says they would swoop in and take everything away from him when they got to looking at things. You know, going back through the bank accounts, talking to the employees, talking to the people Dale pays off. Some of them people are politicians. Some of them bank presidents. There’s people in foreign countries that may not be exactly friendly to America. Mr. Atwell figures if he puts the finger on his son-in-law, then the whole things gonna fall down like a house of cards. The only way to get himself out of the mess is to make the man...like he was never born. Make him disappear. Shoot, I don’t know. What he says makes sense, but I don’t know what to do. I would give the man my own life, if I had to. I thought about doing it. I thought long and hard about doing it. But I don’t believe I can.”
“That’s because you’re a good man, Cottonmouth,” Jennifer said. For an instant I was startled. It was something I would’ve said, if she’d given me the chance.
She looked around. “What? Did I say something wrong?”
“No, you didn’t, child,” Delphina said. “You said it just right.”
“I figure,” Cottonmouth continued, “that because I kilt all those Viet Cong, I should be able to kill a ne’er-do-well crook like Dale Horner.”
I poked Jessica in the arm. “Jess, tell him what’s wrong with his logic.”
“All right.” She wiped her mouth and put down her napkin. “Killing someone in war is government-sanctioned killing, and aside from an out-and-out war crime, it’s not illegal. Killing someone absent that, and without a compelling reason, such as self-defense or to protect other people in imminent danger, is murder. There’s a difference.”