by M. P. Wright
At the edge of the building was a wooden yeoman farm gate. I opened it up and walked on in. I looked about the yard and could see nobody. The rear of the house was boarded up and the dilapidated outside toilet had seen better days. I looked up towards the open fields beyond the property in front of me. In the distance, I could see the barns Milo had told me about. Feeling a little less apprehensive, I slowly let the revolver drop to my side and rest against my leg.
Then I heard the gentle click of metal catching against metal and the sound of leaves rustling over the concrete floor of the yard, followed by the gagging odour of men’s cheap cologne. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the polished edge of the butt of a pistol break through the air. I tried to raise my arm in defence and then instinctively snapped my eyes shut just as the weapon cracked against the side of my head. Then there was nothing.
35
I knew that I was alive because I could still smell the stink of cheap aftershave in the air. My head pounded with an intense pain that almost prevented me from opening my eyes. I was sat in a high-backed wooden chair, my wrists and ankles tied tightly to the arms and legs. I lifted my head and shook it, then forced open my eyelids and tried to focus. I was in what looked to be a fairly large pigsty, the brick whitewashed walls around me flaking and yellowed with age. The concrete floor seemed to be slightly sloping, giving the impression that I was about to topple forward onto my face at any moment. At the bottom of the wall in front of me, a deep gutter ran towards a drain at the foot of a rotting stable door. The room felt airless and was dimly lit. A low wattage bulb hung from a rope rose in the ceiling above my head. I could feel the sticky trickle of warm blood as it ran from the wound on the back of my scalp where I had been hit. It poured down my neck and along the side of my face and dripped slowly from my chin onto the floor, landing in red-dotted splashes by my foot. The fact I smelt the rank cologne again also told me I was not alone. I got the feeling that whoever it was that reeked so badly wasn’t standing too far away from me. I tried to arch my back off the chair and turn my head to get a better look behind me. The palm of a man’s hand suddenly struck me across the back of my head, sending a piercing wave of pain through my skull. My head whipped forwards and my ears rang with a high-pitched buzz.
A man’s voice spoke, the thick accent coated in a lazy drawl. “Don’t you go cricking your neck, nigger. There ain’t nuthin’ fo’ you to gawp at back here.”
I felt the room begin to spin around me. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to retain some sense of balance. More blood ran down the side of my face, dribbling down my neck and soaking into the collar of my shirt. The droning noise in my head suddenly stopped and was immediately replaced by the sound of hob-nailed boots clicking across the concrete floor. I tensed my arms and legs against the ropes as a man’s hand clenched hold of my cheeks and jaw and yanked my head backwards.
“This is what you need to be looking at, nigger.”
I opened my eyes and stared up at the face of my mystery captor. The man squeezed my jaw a little tighter and lowered his face closer to mine. He ran the tip of his tongue across his discoloured front teeth and grinned at me.
“We ain’t bin properly introduced yet.”
I coughed weakly and breathed in deeply through my nose. “I ain’t in no real rush to get acquainted.”
The man pinched underneath my cheekbones with his powerful fingertips, sending a wave of pain up into my temples, then pushed his face in closer towards me, the tips of our noses almost touching.
“You ain’t being very civil, boy.”
I felt the spittle from his mouth hit the top of my lip and his warm, sour breath wafted up my nose. Now I had the man’s halitosis as well as his rank scent to stomach.
The man increased the pressure on my jaw with his hand then snapped his fingers open and released his grip, pushing my head and neck backwards, then stood erect in front of me. He was all dense muscle and brawn, and I immediately recognised him as one of the American coppers I’d seen back at Lazarus’ place.
“My compadres in the military police corps address me as Sergeant Jardine. My late, blessed momma on the other hand, she used my God-given name o’ Nathan. An’ I got a redbone floozy waiting back home in Macon, Mississippi, who just calls me Mr Nate . . . I think it’s best you just call me sir, nigger.”
I turned my face away from Jardine in disgust. “I ain’t callin’ you nuttin’.”
Jardine swung the palm of his hand and backstroked me across the side of my head again. “You got yourself a lotta sass, Ellington.”
I gritted my teeth in anger and glared back up at the muscle-bound lawman. Jardine stood back from me, and I watched as he raised his hand to his mouth and casually began to bite at a hangnail on the edge of his thumb. He nipped at the skin then spat out a wad of saliva onto the concrete.
“You sure been leading us on a right ole coon hunt, boy. Damn, I thought at one point we’d never sniff out your worthless black hide.” Jardine put both hands on his hips and kicked at my foot with his polished army boot. “So, where’s the girl?”
I looked down at the ground and whispered a reply. “She’s dead.”
“What’s that . . . Dead, you say?”
“Yeah, she gone.”
“Gone? Gone where, boy?”
“She fell, back when we were running on the moors last night.”
Jardine slowly nodded his head. “Fell. Where she fall?”
“Out by the cliffs, as we neared the gorge. It was dark, we were running, her hand slipped outta mine an’ she went over the edge.”
“Just like that, hey?” Jardine began to slowly circle around me, stopping behind my back. I felt his hands touch either side of my shoulders and start to massage at the muscles just below my neck. “You know, you an’ that other worthless old nigger, Fowler, gone an’ caused us a dung pile o’ trouble. Seems like me an’ my pardner bin trawling cross half this worthless goddamn country looking for that child, and now you’re tellin’ me she’s dead. Whadda I look like to you, coon, chopped liver?” Jardine pummelled my shoulder a little harder. “Now, I’m gonna ask you again. Where’s the damn girl?”
I slowly shook my head and began to repeat what I had just said. Jardine slammed his fist deep into the side of my guts. I could feel the searing pain sink all the way into the bone. I gasped in air and watched as Jardine came around to face me again.
“You better start spilling something I wanna hear, boy, an’ you best do it before my pardner, Mr Paxton, gets back. Where is the girl?” Jardine hammered another blow in my solar plexus then smashed his fist into my cheekbone and nose. My head and body flew sideways and I slumped at an angle in the chair. Jardine leant across me and pulled me upright. My head fell forward, my chin touching my chest. My breathing fell to a wheeze. Blood filled my mouth. I coughed a couple of times then spat out red-tinged saliva onto the floor. I raised my head a little but all I could see was the golden snake’s head belt buckle hanging just below Jardine’s flat stomach.
Jardine leant back towards me and stabbed at my forehead with the tip of his finger. “My pardner, he’s pissed at you, an’ he’s a real son of a bitch when he’s pissed. We lost three good men in that shoot-out with those friends of yours back at that old shack of a bar we ended up burning down. Beaumont, that limey asshole, he bought it too.” Jardine smiled to himself after speaking the dead policeman’s name. “Though I doubt anybody’s gonna be grieving that prick’s demise.” Jardine reached around to my head and squeezed at my neck with his fingers. The pincer-like grip brought tears to my eyes.
“Mr Paxton, on the other hand, well, he’s grieving. He don’t like to lose any men. Don’t like complications or loose ends. That nigger friend o’ yours back at the inn, he caused some loose ends and casualties in that firefight. Paxton took his bullshit kinda personal. He was still alive with his guts hanging outta his belly when we found him. Mr Paxton made him scream before he died. Made him tell us where you was heading. We ain’t bin but a gnat’s breath fr
om your black butt all the time you bin running with the child. But when you went to ground last night, Paxton decided he’d hotfoot it back to the airbase an’ round up a couple o’ dudes that have a special knack o’ tracking down uppity coloureds like you. Looks like he ain’t gonna need ’em.” Jardine squeezed at my neck again, only this time a lot harder.
I bellowed out in pain. “Look, man, I told you, the kid is dead. She took one heck of a fall, it was an accident.”
“Accident, my ass. You’re jiving me, boy!”
I spat out more blood down at my feet. “I ain’t jiving you, man, I swear. The kid’s dead. When she dropped over the edge o’ that cliff there was nuttin’ I could do. I searched ’bout in the dark a while, an’ when I couldn’t see her I came into the village to get myself picked up like I’d arranged.”
Jardine pinched at my neck and frantically shook my head back and forth then bent down so that his face was staring at the side of my own. “Picked up by who?”
I gasped in pain as Jardine kept my neck in a vice-like grip. “Just a dude I work with; he’s nobody.”
“Well, zip-a-dee-doo-dah, he’s nobody, is he? You know something, Ellington, you’re starting to get so far up my nose I’m beginning to feel your prissy shoes on my chin.” Jardine applied some more pressure to my neck. “Nigger, just take a look around you. I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the severity of your situation. You’re about two minutes away from being a corpse. It’s time you started to wise up.”
I felt Jardine’s hand reach down and unclip something from his belt. I heard the slick gliding sound of a knife blade being smoothly drawn from its scabbard. Jardine let go of my neck and ran his fingers through my hair then knotted a clump of it in his fist and wrenched my head back.
He then let the side of his dagger drag along the side of my cheek before inserting the thin blade of the knife into my nostril. He held it there for a moment then ran the tip of the blade down across my lips and along the other side of my face and let it rest inside the edge of my ear.
“Why don’t you start again an’ tell me exactly where that fuckin’ child really is. No more crazy talk ’bout her being a stiff, you hear me?”
The knife sank a little deeper into my ear. I tensed my arms and legs against the ropes as Jardine tightened his grip on my hair then slipped the knife blade further inside.
“Nigger, you got ’bout twenty seconds to start tellin’ me what I wanna know or I’m gonna jam this knife so far into you head that you’ll be able to feel the end of it scratching on the inside o’ your worthless skull.”
I closed my eyes as Jardine tightened his grip again on my scalp and inched the razor-sharp blade closer towards my eardrum. I felt a scream begin to release itself from deep inside of me and surge its way up from my burning lungs towards my mouth. I could taste my own fear and felt it rise up into my throat like vomit. Behind tightly shut lids, my eyes rolled in their sockets and my strength ebbed away from me as if my very life force was being yanked from my spirit. I felt my head fill with a dull, arcing light then heard the stable door being violently kicked open and the thunder-like blast of a single gunshot. I felt the blade of the knife rush out of my ear and Jardine’s fingers suddenly release their tight grip on my hair. A warm, fast-flowing draught blew up around me as his muscular body flew backwards and was slammed against something hard.
My body sank in a heap and I gasped in the cordite-tasting air that filled the room. I slowly raised my head and saw Vic staring down at me, his hand steady, gripping a cold Colt .45 that was still aimed across my right shoulder. He took another step forward and looked down at the body of the man he’d just shot and killed, and spat at Jardine’s feet.
“Shit, that sour-assed honky sure did love the sound o’ his own muthafuckin’ voice.” Vic dropped the .45 a little. Still aiming it towards Jardine, he walked up to me. He picked up the knife from the concrete and began to cut the cords from my wrists and ankles. I felt the ropes drop to the floor then sank back in the chair and began to rub at the raw skin around my wrists.
I looked up at my cousin and the gun still poised firmly in his hand. “Vic, that damn knife o’ his coulda shot clean straight t’ru my head!”
Vic glared at me. “Hell wid da knife. What you talkin’ ’bout to dat fool, you callin’ me a dude? You sayin’ I’m a nobody? Do I look like nobody to you?” Vic stabbed indignantly at his chest with his thumb. “Who’s dis that’s just saved yo’ ass a’gin. Fuckin’ Santa Claus?”
I turned and looked at Jardine’s bloodied corpse, his arms flung out at either side of him, a gaping mush of bone, split teeth and charred, disfigured flesh where his face had once been.
My body sank low in the chair, my head throbbed and exhaustion started to take hold of every fibre of my being. I bit at my bottom lip and felt a tear fall from my eye and run down my cheek. Vic gently rested his hand on top of my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. I yelped like a child. He moved in closer then looked down at me and shook his head wearily.
“JT, evah since you was a pickney, I bin keepin’ your sorry butt outta trouble. I guess some tings never change.” He grinned at me and winked.
My head fell to the side and my bloodied cheek rested against the back of my cousin’s hand. I closed my eyes and listened to my heart as it pounded away in my chest. I was about to thank Vic when I felt him lash out and kick savagely at Jardine’s limp foot with his shoe. “Man, that cracker sure had a bucket full o’ brains to spray ’cross this wall. That damn drain back there’s gonna come in real handy.”
Vic was right in his solemn reminiscence: some tings never do change.
36
Vic had been busy before he’d kicked in the gate door of the sty and saved my butt. My cousin wasn’t the kind of man to waste any time if he thought that trouble was on his tail. I listened to Vic cuss and moan as he dragged in the limp, lifeless body of one of Jardine’s compadres from the yard outside and dropped him unceremoniously up against the wall in front of me. “This muthafucka weighs a ton! You know whadda piss’ole of a joint this place was ta find? What is it wid you an’ hangin’ round old dosshouses like dis?”
I held my tongue and nodded down at the man Vic had just dumped on the floor. “He dead too?”
Vic looked at me in disgust. “Course he ain’t dead. You tink all I do all day is waste honkies? I clubbed the bastard wid this.” Vic lifted the pistol he’d shot Jardine with up in the air and waved it at me. “US army-issue Colt .45.” Vic kicked the man in the leg and pointed at him with the gun. “This bucked-tooth cracker here gone an’ wasted that other cracker layin’ on his ass over there.” Vic looked about him and sucked air in between the gap in his front teeth. “Way I sees it, it’s a simple open-an’-shut case. Just two honkies fallin’ out over who gets to live in this run-down pile o’shit!” Vic slapped the top of his thigh and began to howl with laughter.
He looked at me and saw that I wasn’t sharing the joke. I was in no mood for laughter. The only thing on my mind was Truth and if she was OK. I got up out of the chair and looked down at my wristwatch. It was just after 9.30 a.m.
Vic walked across to Jardine’s body, stuck his hand underneath his back and pulled my Smith & Wesson revolver from out of the dead man’s belt, then handed it to me. “He ain’t got no need for this.” Vic shoved past me and headed for the door. “Come on, let’s git the fuck outta here.”
As Vic and I walked across the yard at the back of the run-down old farm I found a stone cattle trough filled with rainwater. I quickly sank my head into the trough and threw some of the grimy water over my face. Vic sat on the edge of the granite crib, looked at the cut at the back of my head and sniggered.
“Shit! You had worse when we was foolin’ ’bout as pickneys. Don’t sweat it. We’ll soon git you cleaned up.”
I pulled up the front of my shirt and used the tail to wipe my face dry then stared at Vic. He looked real sharp and made me feel just like I looked, which was a damn mess. He was wear
ing his favourite black leather jacket, a black polo shirt buttoned up to his neck, and slim-fitting black denims. The only concession to his dour look were the short grey turn-ups at the end of the legs of his strides. I tucked my damp shirt back into my trousers and attempted to tidy myself up a little. Vic sniggered at me again then pulled himself away from the trough and walked off across the yard. He called back as he reached the alleyway at the side of the farmhouse. “Quit foolin’ wid that tatty shirt; you wastin’ time, cuz. Where’d you put that damn pickney at?”
Truth had been left for over three hours, sat in that old miner’s lean-to, alone.
I’d promised her that I wouldn’t leave her for long. I’d broken my word to the child and that hurt more than the cut on the back of my head. I followed behind Vic as he moved quickly down the alley away from the farmhouse and out of the cul-de-sac. Everywhere was thankfully quiet. At the end of the lane, Vic grabbed hold of my jacket lapel and pulled me to the right, into the old track road, and began heading towards the red Commer post van that I’d seen parked up earlier. I leant my hand against the bonnet and stared at Vic.
“What the hell’s this?”
Vic shook his head and swore under his breath. He walked around to the driver’s side door, stuck a key into the lock and opened up.
“Stop with the damn bitching: it’s a shitbox, I know. But this shitbox gonna git you and that pickney back to St Pauls without drawing too much attention.” Vic got into the cab and pointed at me. “An’ you know how I hate unwanted attention. Now, will you just git yo’ sorry black ass inside the damn ting!”
Vic didn’t waste any time following my directions back up to Black Rock quarry. I knew we didn’t have long before Paxton and his mob got back, and I didn’t want us to be around when the Yankee copper returned to the farmhouse and was greeted with the carnage that Vic had left for him to clean up. We drove at speed along the gravel road back towards the old limekiln. Vic pulled the van as near to the entrance of the mine as possible.