They’s VC in the woods, boy, so suck it up.
Bubba dropped to a semi-crouch and eased one foot ahead of him just as Jake showed him – toes, ball of the foot, and then heel. Ease the weight forward until it was all on the lead leg. Gently lift the trailing foot…
Don’t drag yore foot, boy! Lift it, lessen ya want yer fool head blowed off.
“I did lift it, Pa, just like you told me to.” Bubba cringed, expecting a blow that never came. He relaxed and looked around. He was about to take another step when a movement caught his eye. He eased himself lower and froze while he focused on the trees down the slope to his left.
“Ah’m a thicket,” he breathed. “Ah’m just a pile o’ weeds an’ sticks. You cain’t see me.”
Careful, Son, might be a VC down there tryin’ t’ sneak up on ya.
“’Tain’t no VC, Pa.” Bubba whispered after watching for a few moments. “No, sir. This is somethin’ much better. More fun.”
The figure below him moved upward and away from where Bubba stood crouched and watching. After a few moments, Bubba started his stealthy pursuit, slowly closing the gap between them.
•
Looking carefully left and right, Peete followed the game path down into the base of the hollow. After fifty yards the tiny trail disappeared in a thicket. He stopped and looked back. He thought he saw a flash of orange at the top of the ridge but it could have just as easily been his imagination, too.
“Separate so we can cover more ground,” he muttered. Well, in truth he thought it sounded like a good plan at the time.
Now all he felt was alone.
It might be all right if his friends got turned around in these woods. They could wander until they found a cabin or house or whatever these cracker hillbillies lived in. They could go up to the door, knock, and explain to whoever answered that they were lost and looking for one of their friends. They’d probably get help, too. Why? Because they were white.
Never had Peete felt his blackness more than standing alone in these naked Tennessee woods. He looked for a way around the thicket. It seemed easier to the right so he started that way.
Damn it, Charlie, he thought as he pushed aside a blackberry runner coiled across his path like a strand of razor wire. Why’d you have to go and cause all this ruckus? What were you thinkin’, offin’ your ol’ lady like that and then getting lost in the woods an’ makin’ everyone spend their Thanksgiving weekend huntin’ for your ass? Here it is cold as hell an’ I’m out here huntin’ for you instead o’ waitin’ to get me a nice buck. At least it ain’t rainin’ or snowin’. If it was, I’d really be pissed. Could be worse, I s’pose. It could be you lookin’ for my black ass out here.
He stopped. He was near the top of the ridge. He looked back the way he’d come. None of the terrain looked familiar. He saw an especially dense thicket on one side of the trail but could not recall passing it. On the other side were a number of brambles. He shrugged and looked ahead. He saw a structure of some kind nestled beneath an overhanging rock. Peete leaned his head to the left and then to the right. It looked like a lean to with a chimney coming out of it. That made no sense. Who would go to that kind of effort with a lean to?
He moved closer. There was a clearing. On the right lay a pile of heavy-looking brown paper sacks. As he reached the edge of the clearing, he froze.
Oh, shit, he thought as he realized what lay before him. You done set your foot in it up to yore ass this time, Peetey-Boy.
Cha-CHUNK!
City-bred or country made no difference. Peete knew there was only one thing in the entire world that made that noise – the working of the slide on a pump shotgun as it chambered a round. Peete slowly raised his hands as he felt a cold steel circle nestle against the base of his skull.
“I don’t see nothin’.” Peete started.
“Shut up, Nigger.”
Peete felt warm wetness spreading through his crotch as his bladder let go. His only thought was, Sure am glad I’m wearin’ dark pants. He stifled the urge to giggle.
“I want you to let that purty rifle o’ your’n slide off’n yore shoulder an’ down t’ the ground. An’ I hope fer yore sake th’ safety’s on cuz if’n it goes off, it’ll be th’ las’ thang you ever hear.”
Peete shifted his right shoulder until he felt the rifle start to slide down his arm. A moment later it clattered on the rocks beside him. He felt a stab of anger at the sound. You Cracker, he thought, that gun set me back twelve hundred bucks.
“Good boy,” the voice giggled. “Oh, tha’s right, you boys don’ like bein’ called boys no more, do ya?”
Peete pressed his lips tightly together. The urge to say something flip was almost overpowering. This ain’t th’ time, Peetey. Don’t go all smart ass an’ get yer fool head blown off. You might have a chance if you keep your head on your shoulders and not all over the trees.
“That’s good. That’s real good,” the voice continued. “Now I want you t’ empty yore pockets down there on th’ ground right next t’ yore gun. Do it nice an’ slow, y’hear me? Everyone knows y’all carry knives an’ razors t’ cut folks with. Don’ want you takin’ yore knife an’ tryin’ t’ cut me or nothin’.”
This time Peete couldn’t restrain himself. The words were already forcing themselves past his lips as he turned to face his captor.
“Do I look like a Mexican, you ignorant Cracker?”
Peete’s last thought before the side of his head exploded in pain and darkness claimed him was, How come a thicket’s swingin’ a shotgun?
•
The world’s largest toothache throbbed on the right side of Peete’s head. He moved his jaw. A white-hot volcano erupted inside his skull. His stomach lurched. Something splashed on the ground near his feet. His shirt felt wet, hot, and sticky. An acrid stench assailed his nostrils. His nose and throat burned. Cold clamminess quickly replaced the warm stickiness on his chest.
He struggled to open his eyes against the crust that glued them closed. Although he felt the thick matter break apart, he saw only black. Was he blind? He blinked rapidly. He finally made out some of his surroundings. What he saw was not reassuring.
He felt stone behind and beneath him. Across from him was more stone. To his left was darkness. What light there was came from his right. He slowly turned his head. A bomb detonated inside his skull. He tried to raise his hand. When it reached chest high something stopped it. Coarse fibers cut into his wrist. He lifted his other hand. It, too, was restrained.
“Looks like our guest is awake, Bubba.”
Peete tried but could not place the voice.
“Where am I?” He barely recognized the croak as his voice. Sandpaper coated his throat.
“Our visitor wants t’ know where he is, Bubba. Care t’ tell him?”
“Why, I think even a dumb nigger Fed could see he’s in a cave, Billy Ray. Don’t you?”
Icy fingers raced down Peete’s spine. That second voice – Bubba? – sounded familiar but he didn’t know why.
“Why?” Peete croaked, his throat raw.
“Why what?” It was the first voice.
“Here.” Peete’s voice nearly faded. He tried again. “Why…here?”
“Oh.” Bubba nearly giggled. “Ya gotta make y’self clear, boy. You wanna know why yore heah, right?”
Peete nodded and instantly regretted it. White light exploded behind his eyes. His stomach plummeted like a high-speed elevator.
“Well, it’s like this. We don’t like Feds sniffin’ aroun’ up here, ain’t that right, Billy?”
“Just as right as rain on a hot summer day, Bubba.”
“Feds?”
“Y’see how good they’s trained, Bubba? This here Fed’s half dead an’ he still pertends an’ tries t’ play us fer fools.” Billy put his face within inches of Peete’s. “We might be from th’ hills an’ we might be hicks to th’ likes o’ you, but we ain’t stupid.”
“I don’t…”
Peete never saw t
he fist until just before it crushed his nose. The back of his head slammed into the cave wall.
My god, he thought as the pain ravaged his brain. You really do see stars.
“Don’t play me for no fool. I done tol’ ya ah’m not stupid.”
Peete’s mouth filled with blood. It gushed down his throat. He tried to breathe through his mouth. He choked, spraying Billy’s face and shirt with blood and mucous. Billy tried to duck walk backwards but tripped and fell. He rolled to his right.
“Look what you done now, Nigger,” Bubba yelled as he stepped forward. He drew back his right foot. “No one pukes on my brother. Not as long as I’m aroun’. Say good bye to your balls!”
“Wait!” Billy Ray pushed himself to his hands and knees.
Bubba’s foot had already started forward. His attempt to obey his brother made him spin like an overweight, off-balance dancer. There was a momentary tug-of-war between Bubba’s pin wheeling arms, momentum, and gravity. In the end, momentum and gravity won as Bubba collapsed like a straw man suddenly relieved of his support.
Despite his pain, Peete erupted in laughter. His mouth and throat were still blood-filled. His laughs were immediately replaced by choking coughs. His chest heaved as his body tried to expel the blood that threatened to suffocate him.
Billy crawled over to the choking man and stood beside him on his knees. “Lift yore head up, boy,” Billy told him as he put the palm of his hand against Peete’s forehead and pushed his head back. “Don’t want you chokin’ t’ death. He don’t like his dinner cold.”
“Who…” Peete started coughing again.
Billy shook his head. “I don’t think he knows how special this cave is, Bubba.”
“I think you’re right, Billy Ray.”
“Y’see, it’s like this,” Billy made a show of straightening Peete’s collar and smoothing his shirt. “This here cave is his cave an’ he’s awful hungry ‘bout now. ’Cordin’ to th’ stories they tell ’roun’ here, he don’t feed but three, mebbe four times a month.” Billy paused and looked at his brother. “Ain’t that right, Bubba?”
“That’s what they say, Billy Ray.” Bubba nodded from where he sat cross-legged on the cave floor. “’Course, no one knows fer shur ’cause no one that comes up here ever comes back t’ say.”
“’Ceptin’ th’ womenfolk, of course.”
“’Course he don’t eat them,” Bubba grinned. “He got somethin’ speshul in store fer the wimmen.” The grin grew into a lascivious leer.
Billy pinched and poked at Peete’s arms and stomach. “I think he jus’ might go fer a hunk o’ dark meat. He might find the flavor interestin’.”
“Whose cave?” Peete struggled to ask. “Why are you doing this?”
“Well, as fer whose cave it is, I don’t think anyone rightly knows. They say he’s been here a powerful long time.” Billy Ray stood and looked down at Peete. “If you can find a Injun aroun’ here – a real Injun mind you, not one o’ those liberal wannabe’s – then ya might ask him. He might know. No white man does, that’s fer shur.
“As fer why we’re doin’ this, well, that’s a bit easier. It’s ‘cause you were puttin’ your nose where it don’t belong. I’m sure that wherever they sends you boys fer yore cop trainin’ they tol’ you this kind o’ thing might happen. Simple as that. Ain’t nothin’ personal. It’s purely bidness.
“An’ then there’s the idea that there really is somethin’ livin’ up here that might kill an’ eat ya. Me, I don’t hold with those stories. Why jus’ this mornin’ me an’ Pa was arguin’ ’bout that very thing. Ain’t that so, Bubba?”
“That’s a pure D fact, Billy Ray.”
“So, I figger that if yore still alive in th’ mornin’, then the tales is all wrong. ’Course I’ll have t’do fer you m’self, but that’s alright. Leastwise I’ll know fer shore what’s what.”
“The still.”
“Bubba, I thought you said he was a dumb nigger.” Billy Ray looked at his brother. “Why, he ain’t so dumb after all.”
“How was I to know, Billy? I mean, they all look th’ same t’ me. I cain’t tell a smart one from a dumb one no way cuz I ain’t never seen no smart ones.”
“I guess it don’t really matter. He’s ’bout t’ be a dead one.”
“Listen,” Peete raised his head despite the agony. “You don’t have t’ do this. You don’t have to kill me.”
Bubba looked down at Peete, his eyes wide in mock innocence. “Oh, we ain’t gonna kill you. Wasn’t you listenin’, Mister Fe-der-al man?”
Billy Ray raised his right hand to his heart. “Mister Nigger Fed, Sir, you hurt m’ feelin’s. Do I look like a killer to you? I ain’t never killed no one in my whole life an’ that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“That’s right,” Bubba added. “We ain’t never killed no one.”
“Why, Granny’d tan our hides if we was to do somethin’ so terrible. The Good Book says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Ain’t that right?”
“Amen t’ that, brother.”
“You just said I was about to be a dead one.”
“Oh,” Billy Ray nodded. “That’s a pure D fact. I figger you got one, maybe two hours.”
“Listen,” Peete pleaded. “I’m not a Fed.”
“Fed. Cop. Agent. T-Man. G-Man. Revenuer.” Billy sighed. “Call it what you want. It all comes down to th’ same thing. First, yore a Fed. Then, yore food. An’ then yore fed.”
Bubba erupted in hearty laughter. “Billy Ray, you gotta tell Pa that one. Tha’s the funniest joke I heard in a coon’s age.” Bubba looked at Peete, his eyes wide. “Oh, Ah’m so sorry, Mr. Federal Agent. I shoulda said a long time.”
Billy Ray looked at his watch. “I think we done had enough fun, Bubba. It’s time t’ look aroun’ an’ make sure we ain’t forgot nothin’. It’s getting’ late an’ I don’t wanna be here when he comes nosin’ up t’ th’ dinner table.”
“Where’s my jacket?” Peete interrupted. “I’m getting cold.”
“He’s getting cold,” Bubba said as he looked at Billy Ray.
“I wouldn’t worry ’bout that none,” Billy said, shaking his head. “I don’t think you gotta worry ’bout nothin’ more, Mister Federal Agent Man. No more time clocks. No more overtime. No more muranda rights. No more civil rights.”
“He’s still got one right, Billy Ray,” Bubba interjected.
“What right’s that?”
Bubba bent down, his nose nearly touching Peete’s, and said quietly, “You got the right to scream yore fool haid off when he comes a-callin’.”
•
The light was long gone from inside the cave. Peete’s other senses heightened as his sight failed. The coarse fibers of the ropes binding his wrists grew rougher and more irritating as he continued trying to use the rocks to cut through them. It looked so easy on TV.
He stopped to catch his breath. He heard a noise in the Stygian blackness to his left. He stopped breathing and concentrated all his attention on the sound.
Nothing.
He slowly let out his breath. He froze in mid-inhale as the sound repeated. It seemed closer.
“Hello?” he whispered. Then louder, “Is anyone down there?”
“Peete? Is that you, Baby?”
He was puzzled. What was Ronnie, his wife, doing here? He looked closer. The cave was still there, but it looked like their living room, too. He shook his head. Ronnie stood there in the cave’s darkness. Instead of the usual skirt and blouse that showed off her figure, legs, and butt, Ronnie wore a white satin robe like she wore when she sang in the church choir on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. He recoiled in stunned disbelief. Above her left breast was the circle and cross of the Ku Klux Klan. She also wore a pointed satin hood. The hood’s mask was thrown back revealing her perfectly made-up café-au-lait complexion. Her deep brown eyes were nearly black with passion. Peete tried to wrap his mind around the vision but couldn’t. Ronnie swept the fabric away from her face. Blonde-streak
ed, processed hair pushed out from beneath the fabric to frame her rounded chin. Her full lips were sensual and sexy beneath her crimson lipstick.
“Peetey.” Her tongue, forked and snakelike, darted as she nervously licked her lips. “Honey, I worry about you gettin’ hurt. If you keep hangin’ out with those white friends of yours, somethin’ bad’s gonna happen. I can feel it just as sure as I’m standin’ here lookin’ at you. You gotta stop thinkin’ you’re good as white just because they take you huntin’ with’em and let you play cards with’em an’ all that. Baby, take a real good look in th’ mirra. You ain’t white. Not even close, Baby.”
“Why you wearin’ that, Ronnie?”
“Wearin’ what, Baby?”
Peete passed his hand over his face. She now wore a bright yellow blouse above a short, chocolate-colored skirt. He blinked. A heavy gold chain with an inverted cross was hanging around her neck.
“They ain’t like that. We really are friends. I know if I need something, I can count on any of them for help. Color’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
“I hope you’re right, Baby. I really do. But, if I learned nothin’ else in my life, I learned this: when push comes to shove an’ choices gotta be made, most of them choices will come down to color.”
Peete felt his frustration rise. He knew the source of Ronnie’s worries. She grew up on Detroit’s south side. In the best of times it looked like a war zone. During the summer of sixty-eight, when Twelfth Street erupted and the tenements burned, Ronnie was only five years old. She bore the mental and emotional scars of the violence she’d witnessed and been too young to understand. How does a child cope with the stomp-slide grating of booted feet advancing behind Plexiglas shields and a thicket of bayoneted rifles? With the smell of smoke as stores and apartments burn? With the mixture of people wailing and sirens screaming?
“My friends ain’t like that, Honey. You just gotta trust me on that.”
Tears ran down Ronnie’s face as she held her hands out. The robe was back. Its bright satin sleeves hung open below her arms. The bright crimson nail polish glistened, reflecting the light.
Black Stump Ridge Page 16