High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  Now Nichols might not ever call him again.

  Sunny started in on him. “JW, what are you doing? We gotta get Jesse to the hospital.”

  “Goddammit, woman, if I wanted your opinion, I’d ask it. This ain’t the fuckin’ time.” She stopped, took a step back.

  Then Jesse grabbed at him, pulled him down close. “That wasn’t all that Danny was sayin’, Daddy. He was talkin’ other shit, about you. Said we couldn’t trust you, that you had plans of your own. He was all kinds of clear about that.”

  Earl glanced up to see if Sunny had heard Jesse, but he couldn’t tell; her face was a mask. It was the same face she’d used to slip dope and other stuff into prison for him for all those years. He had no idea what she’d heard or what she was thinking now.

  “And what do you think about that, boy?”

  Jesse smiled, blood all over his front teeth. “He said all that shit and then I shot his traitor ass. But I did hear it . . . heard it loud and clear, and so did Clutts.” Jesse turned away, his breathing thin, his eyes not so focused on the far wall. He was slipping away, somewhere. “I did all right, Daddy, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, boy . . . son . . . you did. You did all right.”

  Earl stood up and pointed to Sunny. “You tend to him, see how bad it is. And I don’t want anyone botherin’ him or talkin’ to him, not even that bitch of his.”

  Then he turned to Cole Malady. “You come with me.”

  It was time to deal with Flowers.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE CAME OUT INTO THE LIVING ROOM, where his boy’s blood was still smeared all over the damn place. Flowers and Clutts were there, and Jenna, who had retreated from the bedroom. He wasn’t sure how much she’d heard, either.

  “This is bad,” Flowers said, “very bad. Marvin was telling me everything that happened. Jesse shot at cops, John.”

  “From what I hear, your boy Clutts didn’t shoot at anyone.”

  “It doesn’t matter. And if he hadn’t driven Jesse back here, your son would still be back there, dying. I’d say that’s a fair trade. We all need to be on the road now, we can’t stay here.”

  Earl nodded, as if seriously considering the idea. “And where the fuck do you think you’re gonna go? You wanted a goddamn war, I’d say you’re about to get one.”

  “Not like this. This isn’t what I wanted. We’re not ready, not now.” He stood up, straightened his glasses. “We’re going, John.”

  Earl pulled the Blackhawk from the back of his jeans and aimed it at Flowers’s heart. Like the room, it was sticky and hot with Jesse’s blood. He was too fast for Clutts, who seemed to have half a mind to still go for his own gun, but thought better of it, when Cole Malady stepped out from the shadowed hallway behind Earl, a shotgun leveled at everyone in the living room.

  Clutts took a half-step toward the door and then nothing else.

  “No, no you’re not. You’re not going anywhere. No one is. We’re gonna sit here and smoke some cigarettes and Jenna is going to get us some cold beers and maybe some whiskey. You and Clutts there can tell me all about this all-white kingdom you’re gonna build, and I’m gonna pretend I give a grade-A shit about it. It’s going to be real nice, like we’re all fucking family. That’s what we’re gonna do.”

  “This is insane, John. You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

  Earl laughed, bobbed the gun up and down but didn’t take it off Flowers.

  “Well, I guess we’re gonna see.”

  Surprisingly enough, it was Clutts who began to do the mental math, counting out who was standing in the room and who wasn’t. It got damn easy, when you started by figuring out who might have a gun aimed at you and who didn’t. He tossed one glance at Earl and his gun before flicking back the dirty curtain of the closest window. He looked back and forth through the darkened glass, whispering a goddamn that everyone in the room could hear.

  Flowers shook his head and sighed. “What was that, Marvin?”

  “Our van is gone, Thurman. The van is fucking gone. They tossed everything out of the back. It’s all just lying there, blowing around.”

  Flowers locked glares with Earl. “There was no need for that. I would have let you use the van, if you needed it. All you had to do was ask.”

  “That’s not all,” Clutts said, turning away from the window and staring down Earl’s barrel.

  “They took the tires off of my car. They’re fucking gone, too.”

  PART THREE

  SUNDOWN TOWN

  We started back for the boys when I saw a man coming towards the pen. We saw he was lost. He got within ten steps of me when I threw my shot gun down on him and told him his life depended on his actions. The moon was shining brightly and Jim Taylor had caught his bridle. He said: “John, for God’s sake don’t kill me.”

  I asked him who he was and he said: “I am your friend, but I am a ranger. We found your horses tonight and knew you were close by. They sent me to Comanche for reinforcements. By daylight you will have 300 men around you and escape will be impossible. If they catch you they are going to hang you.”

  I then said to Jim: “We had better kill him; dead men tell no tales.”

  He said: “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t kill me; I’ll never tell on you and will do anything for you.”

  After satisfying myself that he would do to trust I gave him a $20 gold piece to give to my wife and told him to tell her to go to Gonzales, where I was going to start for next morning. I told her not to be uneasy about me; that I would never surrender alive and that Jim and I had agreed to die together. That if either of our horses were shot down we would take the other up, but that we expected to be run up on before we got out of the country.

  —THE LIFE OF JOHN WESLEY HARDIN, FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT AS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF (1896)

  45

  Kasper thought it was strange that he only got more and more scared with each mile he put Killing behind him.

  He should have been happy, relieved, to be getting out of that place.

  But that’s not what he felt at all, trapped with T-Bob and Little B in Flowers’s old van, ripe with the smell of air fresheners and fast food. T-Bob was driving, but before they left he’d swiped a bottle of Teacher’s scotch he had hidden outside in the RV, and he’d been drinking it ever since with some serious determination. Little B was bouncing in the passenger seat, talking on and on to everyone and no one like he had the habit of doing, and both of them were ignoring Kasper in the back, where he was pushed aside by the tires they’d taken off Clutts’s car, and the two big rusted cans of gasoline they’d gotten out of the RV along with the booze. At his feet there was also a Remington 870 12-gauge and a Browning rifle. He wished they’d just pull over and let him out, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not until they got to Murfee and he hot-wired Mr. Earl’s car for him. If he kept his mouth shut and did it fast, Mr. Earl had promised T-Bob would give him two hundred dollars and leave him in Murfee, if that’s what he wanted. And right about now, that sounded like a good idea. Days ago Mr. Earl had tossed out the idea of stealing a car, making Kasper promise not to talk about it with Little B or even Danny, even though he’d said Danny would be in on it, too. But out behind the ranch house tonight, after Danny had ridden off on his Harley with Jesse and Joker following him, Mr. Earl had put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in close and said, Well, I don’t think Danny’s going to be coming back, and you don’t really wanna be here anyway, now do you? And it was the sort of question that really wasn’t much of a question at all, like his mom had been so fond of:

  Now, Tyler, you don’t want to go back to detention again, do you?

  Dammit, Tyler, you’re not huffing that fucking shit again, are you?

  Are you a faggot, Ty, is that what you are?

  How am I supposed to handle you, Ty? What the fuck am I going to do with you?

 
; For years, his mom had done nothing but ask him questions they both already knew the answer to, or that just didn’t have answers at all. He’d hoped things would be different with Little B and Jesse and Pastor Flowers and all the others—everything they were going to build down in Killing—but he had a feeling that in a matter of hours it was going to be broken to pieces before they ever even had the chance to put it together. Now he was trapped in a van that was starting to fill with the stink of cheap scotch and tire rubber and worse, leaking gas, and they were keeping their eyes outside the window for the red and blue lights of police cars. Both T-Bob and Little B had a couple of guns on them, and before they set out Earl had asked them all another of those questions that really wasn’t one . . .

  You boys don’t want to get caught, do you? I explained it all and you know what you gotta do for me, right?

  And they hadn’t said anything, because there was nothing to say.

  Kasper knew that none of this was quite right . . . that if Mr. Earl had had his way, it would have been Kasper and Danny making this run up to Murfee, and not T-Bob and Little B. But Danny was gone, and Little B would do anything for his father, and T-Bob would do whatever he was told.

  That left only Kasper, forced to go along with them because he was too scared not to, and now more scared than he’d ever been in his life, even if he’d stayed in Killing.

  He wished Danny was here with him. One of the worst parts of this whole thing was that Danny had ridden off without saying goodbye . . .

  * * *

  • • •

  ALTHOUGH EARL HAD INSISTED they not waste much time, Kasper thought T-Bob was taking damn plenty of it, waiting so it got later and darker, but really just nursing that bottle.

  They even had a map Danny had drawn of Murfee to help them find their way, but Little B crumpled it up and tossed it out the window.

  So instead they drove around the back roads for a while, almost lost, before finally circling into the town, no one stopping or bothering them, until they were cruising down Main Street. It wasn’t even all that late, but the place already looked turned down for the night. There was a Dollar General, a Pizza Hut, some restaurant called the Hamilton. They passed a few cars but no one paid them any attention at all; Earl had said no one would be on the lookout for a white van with Washington plates, anyway. Still, T-Bob steered clear of the Big Bend County Sheriff’s Department before heading to the far end of Main Street and turning into a neighborhood of a few older houses, although it wasn’t really what he was looking for. It was too close to the center of town for this other thing they were supposed to do even before he had to boost Mr. Earl’s car. Mr. Earl had insisted on it, and it was this other thing that had Kasper scared most of all, biting at his nails. T-Bob and Little B started arguing about it, as Kasper stayed quiet in the back, fingers in his mouth. T-Bob was mumbling that goddammit he’d only been to this shithole twice, and both times had been in the daylight and fuckin’ Danny had been driving, so he kept making random turns, circling back to where he started, until Little B took over, telling him how and where to go, and they left the town proper.

  They passed a little bar with a neon sign spelling out Earlys, which drew T-Bob’s eyes hard like a magnet, and then headed out to some railroad tracks, where beyond that, the lights of a lot of small houses tracked into the distance. They were squared together, none of them very big, and as they drove through the little neighborhood, there were dogs barking and music playing from some of them. They briefly pulled into the gravel lot of a small store where a handful of men soon walked out, shirts open; they stood around drinking beers, watching them and pointing at the van. With the window down, the Spanish they were talking to each other rose and fell, but he had no idea what they were saying. Little B grunted out Goddamn beaners under his breath and flipped them off, but smiled as he did it.

  He turned to T-Bob and Kasper and pointed over to the little houses all lined up on the other side of the street, like they’d been put there just for him.

  “And that’s what we need, boys, right there.”

  46

  Thurman Flowers knew that John Wesley Earl was shit-house crazy, no two ways about it.

  Jesse Earl had his own moments; his anger like a second skin, always exposed and hot to the touch. But Jesse’s anger made Thurman relevant, it was a pure energy all its own that Thurman and his coming kingdom needed. It was fuel, a purpose—an energy that through the years Thurman had figured out how to manage, direct, focus. He’d always need men like Clutts, who was a brutal and crude tool; forever a hammer as long as everything was a nail—and Thurman did see himself as a carpenter—but Jesse had always showed the potential to be so much more.

  A knife, a well-aimed bullet.

  He’d always been worth the risk.

  Earl was a different matter altogether, and when Thurman had learned Jesse was coming to Killing with his daddy in tow he’d almost bailed on the whole thing. He and Jesse had circled Thurman’s concerns through several tense conversations, but they were already too far down the rabbit hole and had too many plans in motion to seriously consider just letting it all go. The source and wellspring of so much of Jesse’s anger was his damn daddy—a need for the long-absent man that over time had curled into hatred at the edges, a ragged scar that had been cut deep, and that Thurman had picked at over and over again and had always used to his advantage. He’d needed those scars, and made damn sure they never quite healed. Thurman understood far too clearly that men like Jesse mostly followed him because of those old wounds, suffered at the hands of friends and family they believed had abandoned them, and not because they actually believed in the visions he had to offer or in his ability to make them real. In truth, it was the most brittle kind of power, but that had been Thurman’s life and he’d been smart enough to recognize his limitations early. He was well used to living on the thinnest of margins, and had known that having both him and Earl here in Killing at the same time would only cause conflict. It’d be like two devils playing tug-of-war over Jesse’s soul, and that’s more or less how it had played out.

  Thurman had seen all this coming, like a biblical prophecy, and still he’d gone through with it, for the simplest of reasons.

  He needed the damn money.

  * * *

  • • •

  “SO IS THERE AN ENDGAME, JOHN? Or are we just supposed to sit here at gunpoint and wait while a hundred other men with guns arrive outside.”

  Earl blew out smoke, almost a perfect ring, and took another drink of his Pearl. That girl Jenna had already asked a hundred times to go in the back to see Jesse, and Earl had told her each and every time with a smile to shut her fucking mouth. Clutts was still standing to Thurman’s right, by the front door and the window, and kept looking out the window as if their missing van and his car tires would appear again.

  Cole Malady leaned against a wall, swinging his scattergun back and forth, and just like Jenna, kept peppering Earl with questions: What had happened to his cousin? When was he coming back? When were they heading home to Arkansas? The simpleton, head as soft as a melon, didn’t quite get it and never would.

  These were the sort of men Thurman had always been forced to rely on.

  And all the while Earl kept checking his watch as if he had somewhere to be. He also had two phones in his lap, like he expected them to ring any minute.

  “Your son is likely dying back there, at least let’s get him to a hospital. There’s no reason not to do that. The women can drive him. We can get them clear of this place.”

  “You let me worry about my boy, Flowers.”

  “Well, that would be a first now, wouldn’t it, you the doting father?”

  “You have a smart mouth for a man with a gun pointed at his eyes.”

  Thurman took off his glasses, looked through them at arm’s length, and put them back on again. “Maybe it has something do with what Danny wa
s telling Jesse and Marvin about you. Is that what’s going on here, some agenda of your own? Something worth sacrificing all of us for, even your family?”

  Earl put the empty beer can down but didn’t grab another from the six-pack at his feet, unwilling to shift his eyes off the others in the room, even with Malady beside him. “Let’s not pretend you ain’t got angles of your own, Preacher. My boy don’t mean nothin’ to you, never did.”

  “Why, that’s where you’re wrong, completely wrong. Jesse meant everything to me. I trusted and believed in him. He’s the son I never had. I think in many ways I was the father he never—”

  Something dark and dangerous moved behind Earl’s eyes. “That’s enough, enough. I will shoot you, Preacher. You ain’t worth a damn nickel to me. Not a fuckin’ red cent.”

  Thurman smiled, glad for the small victory of getting under Earl’s skin; hoping to keep him off balance while he thought through what to do next. The room was too hot and too close and his glasses kept fogging up with his own breath.

  You ain’t worth a damn nickel to me . . . Not a fuckin’ red cent.

  Then it all made sense to him.

  “It’s about the money, isn’t it, John? From the beginning, that’s all this was ever about. You’re getting your money and running, aren’t you?”

  Earl snorted. “Like you’re any different? Goddamn you and Jesse and that damn money. You think if I had any money I’d be trapped down here with the likes of you?”

  “No, no, I don’t. And that’s the problem. You’ve been trying to get your hands on it. That’s what we’re doing right now, isn’t it? You don’t have it, not yet anyway.

  “But you will.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AND IN THE END, that’s how Jesse had got him to come around about sharing Killing with Earl, too: going on and on about all the money his daddy had tucked away somewhere, money Jesse thought they could get out of him or take from him if necessary. And Thurman had needed that money, not just to build his kingdom (Jesse had been the rock he was going to build that kingdom on), but for his own debts. He owed that fucking cunt of an ex-wife of his child support for the little boy she wouldn’t let him see, and she’d been very loud about getting it, even threatening to have a warrant sworn out if he didn’t come through with it, and he was months behind. There wouldn’t be much kingdom building if the pastor of its first church was locked up on delinquent child support, and it didn’t help that he was basically on the run, hiding from both her and the feds. In his darkest moments, he sometimes thought she was working with them, and fancied himself Lot, dreaming of his ex-wife looking back on the destruction of Sodom only to turn into a pillar of salt.