Damned in Dixie

by Ron Shiflet

  Then, if things weren’t bad enough, that’s when the sheriff decided to make an appearance.

  “Lee Roy? Hello? The door was open so I let myself….”

  Don’t know what surprised him more, me and Mary Joe going at it, or my dead wife watching us. Never did get the chance to find out, though. Before I knew what was happening, I heard three gunshots and once again passed out dead away.

  When I finally came around, I was pissed to find Mary Joe slumped on the bed in a pool of blood and the sheriff on the floor in just about the same state. Looked to me like my house was fast becoming an out-and-out rifle range. And those were our last good sheets, too.

  “Damn you, Vonda. Why’d you go and do a thing like that for? The Lord ain’t never gonna take you into Heaven now.”

  “Screw the Lord, Lee Roy. Can’t even get a seat in his house no more. Seemed the congregation wasn’t too happy with the way I stunk, and they asked me not to come back. Anyway, I’m glad. Least I got to take care of that whore of yours, once and for all. Though the sheriff wasn’t all that keen on me shooting her. Idiot plugged two more bullets in my belly. I’m starting to look like a block of Swiss cheese here.” She smelled more like Limburger, but I let it go.

  “So you shot him, too?”

  “Well, was just reflex that time. Anyway, he shot me first. Served him right.”

  I pushed Mary Joe away from me and got up to take a look at the both of them, just to make sure they was really and truly dead.

  “Yup, you killed ‘em all right, Vonda. They gone for sure.”

  “Don’t look now, Lee Roy, but I think that makes three of you. Guess that bullet went clean through that no good whore of yours.”

  “Huh? What the fu…”

  And with a terrifying cackle, my wife said to me, “Guess adultery ranks right on up there with murder, Lee Roy. Welcome to eternity.”

  Like they say, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Too bad you can’t keep them down there, though. Would’ve made life and death, a whole lot simpler.

  BURY ME DEEP

  JOSH REYNOLDS

  It was as hot as hell and the Loogroo Swamp work camp stunk of waste, horse manure and rotting meat. The last was probably due to the dead horses being drug towards a handy levee-ditch by several camp inmates, stripped to the waist, black skins gleaming with sweat. The horses were bloated wrecks, their bodies nothing more than temples to maggots now as their heads flopped on broken necks beneath the burning gazes of both the summer sun and the mounted deputies who sagged on their horses, sodden with sweat but alert, hands on rifles. But they weren’t watching their charges. Not really.

  They were watching the swamp.

  John Bass stood beside his battered pickup truck and looked on as the carcasses of the horses were twisted and tumbled lengthwise into the ditch one by one with much cursing and grunting. The sight chilled him in some indefinable way. As if he weren’t seeing something he should. Clouds of flies swarmed the ditch and momentarily obscured the inmates as they lobbed dirt and broken cement blocks onto the bodies to hide them from sight and to keep the gators from crawling into the camp to snag a piece. He wondered what had killed them. Usually the county sold old horses to local butchers to make dog food or hog feed. Why just bury them? Disease maybe? Bass watched the burial for a while before sighing heavily, as if weighed down by each of his sixty plus years, and pulling a rag from his back pocket to mop at the sweat on his hard seamed, craggy face.

  He had hoped never to come back here. It wasn’t a pleasant place.

  But money was money. Especially in these hard times. He’d heard there was a depression on, but he couldn’t say he’d noticed a difference. In Jackapo County, South Carolina the poor were just as poor and them as was rich had managed to stay that way. He looked over the camp, remembering details he’d thought long forgotten.

  The Loogroo Swamp camp had been built in 1886 after a couple of particularly nasty storms had caused the swamp and the ponds and streams that fed into it to flood and rise over their boundaries, spilling out into Jackapo County in one of the worst disasters the area had seen since Sherman had marched through. The purpose of the camp was to see to the dirt levees that ran around the periphery of the swamp to keep it in check, to repair and rebuild them as needed. But it also served the secondary purpose of giving the chain-gangs somewhere to send their rowdiest recruits.

  Or maybe just the ones who were the wrong color.

  Not that there was a lack of white faces in the line of prison denim working at the levee, but only a few. Very few. Something he knew because he’d been one of that few. A snow cone in a coal mine. Bass spat a wad of something from back in his throat as he watched the convicts toil. It had been close to forty years or more since he’d been here, but it still looked the same. Smelled the same too, more was the pity. The same long, low squat bunk houses set side by side, barracks-style, with the guard house set way out front and up on a steep rise. There was the box, in the center of the camp, where you got put for too much lip. It was a smallish steel shed with a single door and a single tiny window above the door. During the hottest days of the summer it was tantamount to a death sentence to be locked in there. The fences, more rust and kudzu than metal now, rose on three sides and rickety wooden towers squatted at each angle. Those towers were nesting places for blackbirds now. Bass doubted any one climbed up into them these days, not with the shape they were in. And on the fourth side of the camp sat the swamp.

  The swamp. Bass watched it warily, noticing that the convicts and guards alike on the levee did so as well, stopping every so often to gaze out at the black, impenetrable mass of coiling, twisted trees and arthritic waterways that stank of green growing places grown rotten and sour. That smell, the smell that some folks claimed was the voice of the swamp, permeated everything, hanging like a jealous lover off of every man and hiding in the eaves of every building coming out at the hottest part of the day to sun itself and remind everyone that the swamp knew where they were. Just in case it ever wanted to chat.

  There were gators in its bowels and worse things too, come to that. Old things. But as long as you stayed out of its reach, away from its dark, secret places, the swamp was content to leave most folks be. Mostly.

  “You watching that swamp like it’s a snake, John Bass.” Bass turned slightly at the rough, heavy voice. King Slope waddled towards him looking for all the world like someone had crammed a feral hog into a sheriff’s uniform and stuffed a white cowboy hat on its head. King Slope, the High Sheriff of Jackapo County. A pretty title for an ugly man. But an ugly man who ran his county like a king and whose family owned a good chunk of the local properties to boot. The Slopes were Jackapo County in all the ways that mattered to them who counted such things. Mean, piggy eyes looked at Bass over the top of his sunglasses and when the sun struck his tin star it shined gold. The badge had been handed down from generation to generation of Slopes for so long most folks in the county had forgotten it was an elected position.

  Bass hadn’t forgotten, but then he never voted. He’d had dealings with the Slopes before. Served with King’s two oldest boys in the Great War. Kept them from getting their damn fool selves killed like a good sergeant should and he’d done work for some of the family since, but never in a friendly way. His late wife, God rest her, had said trusting the Slopes was akin to trusting a cottonmouth. You knew it was gonna bite, wasn’t no question to it but when. His Talia had been a smart woman. Only good thing he’d brought back from the war. Dead now these ten years, he could still call her face to mind. Still remember that French perfume she’d brought from home. She’d wear it every Sunday to church. Back when he’d still thought God was worth talking to. But not no more. Not since, in all His wisdom, He’d seen fit to take his Talia and leave John Bass to clean up His messes.

  He shook his head, driving the images away. Instead of those old memories that hurt worse than crushed glass, Bass met Slope’s gaze and ignored the meaty paw that swung to clasp his ha
nd in a friendly gesture. Instead he just shifted his gaze back to the swamp and said, “You would too, if you knew half as much as you thought you did, King Slope.” Slope snorted in reply, sounding amused. But there was an undertone of agreement there as well. He was of an age with Bass and though they’d hardly traveled the same roads, sometimes they’d managed to go to the same places and some of those places were dark and ugly. Bass shook his head and turned to face Slope, his eyes hard. “Why’d you call me out here King Slope? I done got out of this here place once and I don’t aim to spend any more time here than God allows.”

  “That’s right. I pure done forgot about that. My daddy told me all about that mess.” Slope grunted, a smile curling at the edges of his grizzled cheeks as he idly dabbed at the sweat stains that marred the color of his shirt. His eyes were sly. “Must be like old home week.”

  “If that’s all you got to say, I’m leaving.”

  “Fine! Fine! Just hold on a damn minute John Bass!” Slope made to grab his arm. Bass looked down at the hand, then up at Slope until the sheriff removed the offending limb. “Now look here, I was just being friendly like.”

  “We ain’t friends. But say what you need to say.” Bass said simply. Slope blinked in apparent confusion for a moment before he rallied. His features twisted, becoming mean. It looked more natural this way at least.

  “Well, that’s mighty white of you.” Slope sneered. Seeing the look on Bass’s face, he quickly continued. “You see them damn horses? The ones stinking up the air?” He waved at the levee.

  “Hard to miss them.”

  “Guess you ain’t blind yet then. Something killed them.”

  “Gator.”

  “A gator that don’t eat what it kills? Mighty strange to me.” Slope grinned, his jaws working around a wad of chaw. Bass snorted.

  “Mighty strange then. Now what in the hell this got to do with me? I’m too damn old to be standing out in this heat and I don’t hunt gators neither.”

  “I know what you hunt, John Bass. That’s why I called you.” Slope said quietly, his voice hoarse. Shaky. Bass peered at Slope, his eyes narrowed. Trying to read Slope’s fat face was like trying to read churned lard.

  A sudden scream cut through the hot, slow air like lightning on a clear day. Bass whipped around and felt his jaw go slack as a big bull gator, greenish-gray hide shining wetly, hurled itself up onto the levee in great, earth-gutting strides and clamped its jaws down on the thigh of a man who’d gotten too close to the edge. It began to drag him back down towards the swamp as the guards spurred their horses up onto the mound of man-moved earth and began firing their rifles, trying to kill the thing. Slope and Bass loped towards the scene, Slope unholstering his pistol as they climbed the levee and hurried down the other side only to find it all over but the shouting. The gator was gone and only the moaning man was left, clutching a leg that would most likely be useless for the rest of his life, however long that was. One of the deputies had dismounted and was tending to the man as best he could using scraps from the man’s shirt. He looked up at Slope. “He says he were pushed, Sheriff.”

  Slope looked up at the other convicts clustered on the levee. “Who did it?” he asked in a voice more like the greedy grunt of a boar. “Come on, ‘fess up. Who done it?” Blank faces with empty eyes met his glare and matched it. Bass knew they wouldn’t answer. He wouldn’t have. But then Slope knew that too. He was just asking out of habit. He didn’t actually give a damn. Slope looked up at one of the still mounted deputies. “Arl. Get the damn bucket. We’ll settle this right now.”

  The deputy returned sans mount with a round wooden bucket and a heavy burlap bag over one meaty shoulder a few minutes later. The convicts eyed the bucket the way a smart man looked at a rabid dog. Slope cleared a space on the top of the levee with his boot and set the bucket down, bottom facing up. Then he gestured and the deputy opened the bag. Slope pulled on a pair of leather gloves he pulled from his belt and reached into the open bag. What he hauled out glittered brightly in the dying light. Bass knew what it was even before Slope pulled his hand out. Shards of glass and barb wire burrs. A Southern hotfoot, or at least that’s what King’s daddy Solomon had called it when he had Bass on the bucket all those years ago. King tossed his toys around the bucket until he had a radius of a foot or two around it piled several inches high with broken glass and twisted metal spurs. Then, clapping his hands to free the last few flakes of glass from his palms he looked at the assembled work crew. They stood quietly, waiting. They knew what was coming. “You boys know the drill by now don’t you? Tell me what I want to know, or one of you goes on the bucket.”

  “King.” Bass said quietly. Slope glanced at him. Dismissed him.

  “You keep quiet, John Bass. I don’t tell you your business you don’t tell me mine.” He grunted.

  “You know they ain’t going to tell you nothing, King.” Bass continued as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and stuck one in his mouth. “Just like I never said nothing. So why you doing this?”

  “’Cause, John Bass, I’m a son of a bitch.” Slope farted laughter at his own humor. “And there’s a difference between you and these jigaboos.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My daddy left you a little pride. On account of your daddy an his. But me, I don’t play that game. Ain’t no pride here in this lot, is there, boys?” He directed the last at the convicts, none of whom met his eyes. “Can’t afford it. Pride get a boy shot. Get him eaten up by gators and boogats—don’t it, Little Will?” He continued, addressing the nearest of the convicts, a small, wiry black man close to Bass’s age with a head of soft cotton hair and a raggedly healed scar curling his upper lip in a permanent grin. Slope leaned in close to the man, grinning from ear to ear. “Ain’t that right? He have him some pride there, Little Will? That why you push him?” The man’s eyes widened slightly, his lips moved as if to deny it, but no words came. What was the use? He had been chosen for the lesson. Guilt or innocence didn’t matter here. Only the will of the King. Slope put his big hands on the smaller man’s shoulders and put his fat lips near his ear. “Get on the bucket, Little Will. Take your damn shoes off and get on that bucket and so help me if you step off before I say so, I’ll feed you to the gators myself.”

  The man stepped up onto the bucket, wobbling slightly as he tried to maintain his balance. Slope turned back to Bass, smiling, pleased with himself. With his power. Bass sucked on his cigarette, his eyes empty of anything remotely resembling emotion. It was a test in a way, an ad hoc one to be sure, but a test nonetheless.

  Bass hated tests.

  He blew a plume of smoke into Slope’s face, his gaze never wavering, never weakening. Iron was that gaze. Stone. Cold and unfeeling. “If you is finished King Slope, maybe now we can get back to why you done called me out here to this little patch of heaven.” Slope frowned, then shook his head.

  “We’ll talk in my office. Get back to work.” He grunted, waving a paw at the convicts. “You too boy. You might not be able to walk but you sure as hell can dig.” He said to the wounded man. “We’ll get the doctor out here along and along.” Slope looked back at Bass and gestured for him to follow him off the levee, his face taciturn and sulky. Bass followed with a last glance at the man perched on the bucket, his bare toes curling around the edge as if to get a better grip. It wouldn’t last.

  No one ever stayed on the bucket. If the heat didn’t get him, exhaustion eventually would. Then the immediate pain of glass and metal digging into the soles of tender feet followed by the later pain of the guards’ clubs and gun butts thudding into skull and back and belly. Bass met Little Will’s eyes and something passed between them, a recognition of shared pain and bad memories. Bass nodded and Little Will shrugged and their gazes drifted apart separated again by the wall between free man and prisoner, black and white.

  Bass followed after Slope, smoke from his cigarette curling around his head in a hazy halo as his thoughts drifted. How many men like Little Will,
hell like Bass himself, had King Slope lost out in that swamp? How many men had fallen off the bucket and just never gotten up again, their bodies buried beneath the levee or, if someone was feeling charitable, in the tiny potter’s field outside the front gates? And how many people would mourn if King Slope himself suffered the same end? Not many. But probably more than would mourn himself., Bass smiled grimly as he stepped up onto the rough, unsanded planks that made up the porch of Slope’s office. The office was connected to the guard house but only by an adjoining wall. Slope was holding the door for him, looking impatient and what? Scared? No. Worried maybe. But about what?

  It was something in the air. Whatever it was that he had felt when he’d first arrived as the horses were buried. Something that was growing stronger, like the smell of spoiled food left too long as night came on. Bass stubbed his cigarette out on the doorframe and went inside the office, pulling his cap off as he did so. Slope followed him and closed the door behind them. Inside, the office was barely furnished with little more than a desk and two chairs and a rusty, dented filing cabinet in one corner. The air was thick and heavy, barely stirred by the opening and closing of the door. Slope sat in the chair behind the desk and dropped his own hat listlessly on the desk, running his pudgy fingers through the few remaining strands of gray hair plastered to his skull by sweat. Bass dropped into the other chair, trying not to notice the sounds his joints made as he did so. He was getting old. But that was nothing new. He had been getting old from the first day he saw light and it would continue until he died. He carefully hung his cap off of one knee and gazed quietly at Slope, waiting for the other man to begin. Slope pulled a bottle of whiskey and a small glass out of one of the desk drawers and poured himself a slug. He didn’t offer any to Bass. He drained his drink and poured another. Then he began to speak.