Crimes in Southern Indiana

by Frank Bill

  Kurt had been assigned to find the female and her son by the man they’d left for dead. Mr. Hayden Attwood, who owned a farm way down in Hazard, Kentucky. But who now lay in a hospital bed with second-degree burns from being close to the car when it caught fire and exploded. His jaw wired shut. Ribs fractured and with a splintered left shin. Pissing red through a clear tube. Unable to slur a sentence, he wrote down for the Hazard County deputy sheriff and detective what he remembered. Nothing.

  The deputy sheriff told Mr. Attwood the charred license plate they’d found had been traced back to a Mr. Lazarus Dodson, who stayed up north in Indiana. He had no permanent address or employment. He was a gambler, pool shark. Had been drinking late one night at bar in Corydon. Came out to find his vehicle gone. Reported the car stolen. But Mr. Attwood wasn’t a big fan of the law. He wanted the boy who beat him and the silhouette of the woman that ran him over to bleed, and he had his own justice for the maladjusted lawbreakers who crossed him. That was Bonfire Kurt, who’d been working for Mr. Attwood since his discharge from the U.S. Marines twelve years ago, back in ’72.

  Mr. Attwood had written down the plate number of the Duster that he’d tattooed into the hard marrow of his mind after being clipped by it. Left for buzzards to circle while his body baked by the exploding Cadillac.

  He gave the plate number to Kurt, who believed Lazarus was connected to the woman and the child. Attwood wanted Kurt to focus on the kid and the female driver. But Kurt went to Lazarus first. Wanted to see his routine. See if the woman and boy showed up. He found Lazarus at a bar in Indiana. Watched him drink and shoot pool, then shack up in a flophouse at night. The Duster with the woman and the kid never showed. But the cops did. A plainclothes was keeping tabs right along with Kurt, drinking coffee and eating donuts.

  Kurt let the heat simmer, used his other connections for finding people who didn’t want to be found. The Duster’s plate number yielded Connie and her son, Willie Voyles, shacked up at an address two hours away from Lazarus along the Illinois-Indiana line with some Jimmy Joe Cooley. Part-time thief and swindler. Full-time drunk. Kurt formed a scenario. Connie and Cooley had taken the Cadillac for Lazarus. Connie followed in the Duster so Cooley could dump it. Willie vandalized it. Then she and Cooley came back for Willie. Lazarus reports the car stolen. Police find it torched in Kentucky. When the insurance check shows up in the mail Lazarus pays them for the job.

  What had happened in the farmhouse took place days before the ’82 Cadillac had been stolen and ignited. Cooley’s frame was bone-stiff with at least a week into rot. Poor son of a bitch had nothing to do with the Caddy scam.

  Wanting to place features to the hunted, he followed the hallway’s flea-infested carpet to a sheet that doubled as a bedroom door. Inside, a king-size mattress furnished the far left corner. Bullet holes and rape stains intact. A single wadded quilt lay in its center. No pillows. The air was mold and mildew. A few flies had taken up residence on a dented and scuffed file cabinet that was used for a dresser. Shirts, jeans, socks, and boxers hung out of the open drawers. No pictures on the smoke-damaged walls. Just a few fist-size holes. He opened a closet door. Found a wilted, freezer-taped cardboard box labeled “Family Photos.” Removed the lid. Leafed through scattered black-and-white pics of men and women, some young, some old, until he found a color Polaroid with “Connie and Willie 1980” chicken-scratched along the bottom. The female was white-trash erotic. Dirty peroxide locks. A remorseless marrow-white complexion. Eyes so bottomless they were carved out by a god that substituted pleasure in the form of pain.

  The boy had kippered locks. Eyes gouged into two puddles. His pigment corpse-pale. A grin pasted on for a smile. His mother in male form.

  He slid the photo into his shirt pocket, remembering his own mother, her clammy hand against his cheek, heated breath in his ear, the scent of garlic boiled in hops. Kurt shook his head, feeling a butcher cleave his spine down to his Achilles’ heel, and he said, “Know your kind all too well.”

  Moisture heated the back of his neck. Dripped from his brow. He pushed the sheet from the entrance. Followed the hallway carpet back to the kitchen. Stepped over Cooley, out the screen door. The mid-morning heat stole his breath as his hands tremored. He pulled a flask from his back pocket. Twisted the cap, took a hard slug of Wild Turkey that ignited his insides.

  Men of his state had watched the world bleed its own too many times to feel pity. He’d seen half-strung eyes, beaten faces, and limbs removed. Enough pain to make anyone believe in hell. This Connie, what she’d done to Cooley reaffirmed that hell’s existence. Reminded him too much of what his own mother had been capable of.

  Sliding the flask back into his pocket he walked toward his orange International Scout, knowing he needed names. Addresses. To go back and wait. Watch Lazarus. To find where Connie and Willie could have gone, catch them all together. Of course, people this malevolent didn’t keep close company for long.

  From the distance, a salvage-yard-ready Pinto bounced down the dirt drive, pulled to a stop. Stepping from the Pinto was a female in cutoff s that used to be white, with her ass cheeks peeking out, blowing kisses as she turned to close the car door. She’d a cinnamon-striped tube top that held the shapes of two ripened tomatoes ready to be handpicked. Her waving locks matched the spots on her face, the color of rust, while her leech lips smacked the sugar of the Bazooka Joe bubble gum. She swayed barefooted toward Kurt, speaking in an unsure tongue. “Connie around?”

  Making a deviant blush, Kurt’s eyes trip-wired her with “No. Wouldn’t know where she and Willie might be, would you?”

  “Who are you?”

  “An acquaintance.”

  “I ain’t heard from her in better than two weeks. Thought I’d come by. Make sure that drunk hadn’t beat her black as a milk snake again.”

  Her river-green eyes glanced down to his crotch. Moved up to the .38. Her eyes got confused as she met his.

  Before the female could exhale, Bonfire had a fist full of her rusted locks twisted in one hand. The thumb of his other clicked the hammer of the .38, the barrel bruising her cheek.

  “Didn’t catch your name, sugar.”

  “B-B-B-Barbra Jean.”

  He could smell the trash she’d been burning in a steel drum wafting from her body, topped off with a hint of panic.

  “Well, Barbra Jean, I need names of any acquaintances of Connie. Someplace she and Willie might hole up.”

  “Only person Connie ever spoke of was her older step-brother.”

  “Does he got a name?”

  “Lazarus.”

  After removing the cloth wrapped around Pine Box’s palms, anger flared from Lazarus’s lips.

  “So, little man, was that spent-liver Indian the one who used your palms for ashtrays?”

  A single cigarette dangled from the corner of Lazarus’s mouth. Smoke twined into the bacon-grease air of the trailer. He’d been lying low in town, waiting until the heat was off his back. They’d been eye-fucking him for a few weeks. Connie and Willie stayed at the trailer he rented from Buck Shields on a five-acre plot out in nowhere land. No one knew about it.

  Pine Box sat at the Formica table taking in the oozing pink of his palm. With tiny marble-size indentions scattered about it. A cornmeal crust infected the corners of his eyes, which were dirty streams identical to those of his uncle, who slammed his fist on the kitchen table’s cracked surface.

  “You gonna answer me or play Anne Frank all damn day?”

  “Anne who?”

  “Dammit, Pine Box, answer me?”

  The boy bit his lip and sighed. Said, “Ever time Cooley got to drinkin’ and Mama was out earnin’ her way he’d get some kinda yellow-jacket meanness in him. Wanna play chicken. I wasn’t scared. I played.”

  From the kitchen’s gas stove Connie stood braless in a worn wifebeater and Kentucky blue nylon shorts, saying, “Well, that Indian’s ten kinds of stink now, sugar.” Stubbing his cigarette out, Lazarus shook his head of shoe-polish-slick locks.
Rubbed his chin, wanting to be a part of Pine Box’s life before it was too late. Living hours away, Connie and Cooley hadn’t been giving the boy any history. Didn’t even know who Anne Frank was. Probably didn’t know his namesake. And Lazarus asked, “Connie ever tell you how your name came about?”

  Behind Lazarus, Connie’s hand quivered. She stabbed crisp strips of bacon from the cast-iron skillet to a paper plate. Remembered how her stepdaddy couldn’t keep his hands off her. Made her stepbrothers move out into the barn when her Claymation features thinned out into a shapely woman. She never wanted Pine Box to know anything of her past. How he was conceived. Almost killed and named. Anger charred her face and words combusted from her lips. “Lazarus, shut your damn mouth!”

  Lazarus remembered his daddy. The man who’d offered a lot of love in the form of pain. A year ago he’d passed. Liver cancer. Left his insurance policy to Lazarus. He used some of the money to purchase the nipple-pink Cadillac. What was left he gambled away. He hated that bastard. Growing up out in that barn, he felt a lot of rage for him. That rage returned when he’d seen Pine Box weeks ago. He held Connie responsible. Feeling as though he were being cheated, letting some half-breed raise Willie.

  “Done about fucked us on the car job. Should have let me out, made sure that man was dead.”

  “That man was redder than canned tomatoes. Hazard County police told you he can’t remember shit. Laid up in a hospital. All we’s waiting on is the insurance check. Besides, you the one who went and parked the car on his property.”

  Lazarus’s hands dampened. The road where they’d parked the car looked like a place people went to get their fuck on, nothing for miles. How was he supposed to know that Attwood was some wealthy landowner? Shit, he wasn’t from Hazard, Kentucky. He was from New Amsterdam, Indiana. Three hours away.

  He seared a stare at Connie, thought of squeezing her complexion from bone-pale to the same shade of red that pumped through her black heart. Pay her back triple for what she’d let that Indian do to Pine Box. Then a bullfrog belch pushed from Pine Box’s mouth.

  “Where my name come from, Uncle Lazarus?”

  Fuck her, he thought. This was his kid too. It was time the boy knew about his history.

  “Your granddaddy Dodson said you came not out of love but out of sickness. When you was born he fetched your wrinkled ass up. Put you in a burlap sack. Took off down the road in his beat-to-shit Ford.”

  Unsteady, not wanting Pine Box to hear the story, Connie flipped the blue-orange gas flame off. Yelled, “Dammit, Lazarus, shut your friggin’ mouth!”

  “His name has got meaning. It’s his birthright to know.” Glancing at Pine Box, he continued, “Connie, she took off after your granddaddy. Running barefoot down the gravel drive. Followed him all the way down to the creek. Now picture that burlap sack you was in being tossed from the Ford as it crossed a one-lane bridge. Smacking against the current of the creek. The weeping whine of you, the just-born child getting his first swimming lesson. Connie waded in. Thinking she’d have to build a pine box to bury you in. Pulled you from that sack. You coughed creek water and cried. That’s the story Connie always told. How you wasn’t born. You was salvaged. And she named you Pine Box Willie: the just-born burlap baby.”

  Remembering that day, how she’d cradled him while telling the tale to others in the town at the Silver Dollar Tavern. Getting hitched on whiskey shots, pain jarred and split her insides. Hardened her grip around the cast-iron skillet’s handle. To pick up. Bust over Lazarus’s skull.

  Then the trailer’s door burst open.

  Lazarus stood up hollering into the outdoor light, which created a silhouetted shape in the doorway. “Who the—”

  The silhouette interrupted with “Lazarus?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Compliments of Mr. Attwood.”

  Orange gunfire opened the sticky trailer air. Parted Lazarus’s right knee, then his left, like two eggs against pavement. Lazarus dropped backwards, screaming. Pinned the table down on Pine Box’s legs. Connie screamed, came at the silhouette with the skillet of popping grease. Her nose met the butt of the .38. Her eyes stung with liquid. Blood creased her lips and her knees punched the floor. The skillet dropped. Bacon grease splattered. The man smiled. Aimed the nickel-plated .38 at Connie’s face.

  “You’re rough company, girl.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Bonfire Kurt. Work for Mr. Attwood. Man’s property you parked that Cadillac on. Vandalized. Man you left for dead.”

  Pine Box clinched his eyes. Squirmed and pushed to get from under the table that Lazarus deadweighted down, bleeding like a bastard.

  “Picked the most vindictive man in all of Hazard, Kentucky. Way I figured, Lazarus and you dumped the Cadillac. Willie destroyed it. Lazarus reported it stolen. Now you and he expect to split the insurance.”

  Losing feeling to cold, Lazarus screamed, “Fuck you!”

  Kurt glanced over his shoulder, smirked, said, “No, fuck you!”

  Connie asked, “How you know who we are?”

  “A personal contact, little recon, and some Barbra Jean.”

  “Barbra…? What’d you do to her?”

  “Not near what you did to Mr. Cooley. I paid you a visit over in Illinois. She showed up. Gave me some answers.”

  Connie spat. “You son of a bitch!”

  Five fingers clasped into Connie’s hair. Pulled her to her feet while the .38’s heated barrel singed her temple. She twisted her neck into his forearm. Dug her teeth into his shrapnel skin. Took a blood sample. He yelled. His trigger finger twitched. Gunfire quartered skin and bone across the trailer’s kitchen. His knees buckled with her weight. He lowered the mess that was once her to the kitchen’s floor.

  Willie stood behind Bonfire with waterlogged eyes looking down at the motionless red mess.

  “Mama?”

  Bonfire bent his knees to standing. Turned to Willie, whose taffy-pink palm reached for Bonfire’s hand that held the .38, pressed his forehead into the heated barrel. His clouded eyes dug through Bonfire.

  “I ain’t scared.”

  Blood pumped from the chewed opening of Bonfire’s forearm, coating the pistol as he lowered it. He looked at Willie, thought of the man who took him from his mother.

  “No you ain’t, boy, no you ain’t.”

  Through fogged vision, Lazarus watched Bonfire’s empty hand open, palm up. Offering Willie another choice.

  A Coon Hunter’s Noir

  J. W. Duke was choking down his fifth cup of kettle coffee, nursing a hangover, when his wife, Margaret, came through the kitchen door, screaming as if her skin had been pressed through a cheese grater. “J.W.? J.W.?”

  His head was swelled up with a fever of pain from the bottle of Old Grand-Dad he’d sucked down the night before. He wrinkled one eye small, viewed her through the one opened wide. “Woman, what the hell are you hollering about?”

  Tense, she tells him, “It’s Blondie, she’s—”

  J.W. cut her off. “She’s what?”

  He hadn’t seen her this keyed up since she got the bad news from her doctor about not being able to bring a child into the world. She fired her fury off. “J.W., she’s gone!”

  People need to understand the severity of the situation. Blondie was a purebred mountain cur. A dog some use to hunt and track bear out west. Being a coon hunter, J.W. had an idea that if a cur could hunt bear out west, why not train it to hunt coons in southern Indiana? Raccoons. See, in southern Indiana coon hunting is as prosperous as Sunday hymns to a Baptist. The meat from a large coon could feed a man a few times and a single hide would bring twenty-five to thirty dollars. To J. W. Duke coon hunting was the damn gospel.

  J.W. created a champion bloodline. A top-notch coon-hound. Made all those blueticks, redbones, and treeing Walkers look like some Mississippi mutts.

  He took a nice chunk of his monthly disability pension from the U.S. Marine Corps for being half deaf in one ear, for being too close in proximity
to someone trespassing over a land mine in a rice field back in ’68. That was eight years ago. Now he was twentyeight, had invested that chunk of money into this hound.

  J.W. and his hunting buddy, Combs, a man living off an inheritance, drove all the way to Colorado. J.W. had pick of the litter. Paid the breeder cash. Brought the golden cur pup home. He raised her as though she were from his own flesh, like teaching a child to speak, to use their limbs to walk and nourish themselves. He taught Blondie to strike the right scent, tree the correct animal.

  He trained her just like his daddy taught him. His daddy was the connoisseur for coon hunting before his choice of permanence. A .38 to the rear of his neck. He’d gotten the depression bug after J.W. left for the Vietnam War and his mother became eaten up with the cancer.

  Daddy Duke knew a canine’s family bloodline. Which bitch was to be bred with which stud to produce the best hound for hunting. J.W. became the only certified trainer and breeder of mountain curs all through southern Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

  And when J.W. returned home from the war, he met and married Margaret. Soon after, she wanted a child. They had tried and tried until they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. Her insides wouldn’t take what he was offering. The doctor called it a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces that didn’t mesh.

  She’d cursed God for how he’d made her. Told J.W. she’d do anything to change how her insides were. Margaret had become so eaten up with it that J.W. couldn’t mention it without her tearing up.

  But Margaret warmed up to Blondie like a combine picking corn. One was invented for the purpose of cultivating the other. She took to those big brown eyes and that short velvet coat the color of a cold lager beer. Blondie became their baby girl. Margaret helped J.W. train her. She bathed and brushed Blondie from the pup stages into the adult stages. Took her on her morning walks. Late-evening fetching trials of a ball with a coon hide hidden inside. And even took her into town when running errands, the truck window down, Blondie’s head taking in the passing wind with ears flopping like a flag. She taught her the commands: Stay. Sic it. Get ’im, girl. And on those zero nights of winter Margaret brought Blondie into the house, left her to rest at the foot of the bed or next to the wood heat of the Buck Stove.