Dale was most certainly alive when they got to Whipperwill the first time but now he appeared to be otherwise. Neither one of them were doctors, but Dale was unresponsive and didn’t appear to be breathing. Lester couldn’t find a pulse and started panicking and stuttering that way he would always do when he got nervous. Charlie just stood there, expressionless, casually lighting a cigarette and kind of staring off into space for a bit, then he closed the trunk and put the oval key in his pocket and got back in the car.
When Jimmy Ray started up, Lester got in and shut the door. “Emerald” was playing loud on the eight-track and Charlie drove slow and carefully toward Whipperwill. He figured they would be back at the cliffs in about ten more minutes.
Lester sat in the passenger seat rolling the joint and drinking another Beast. He was trying to calm his nerves but was shaking so bad he was spilling the weed, which was mostly seeds and stems anyway, onto his lap. He didn’t want Charlie, who always seemed so cool no matter what the situation, to see him so unnerved. He tried to think happier thoughts, but his mind kept returning to his time in reform school and being raped in the shower when he was fourteen and pretty much weekly afterward until he eventually found a sort of sad acceptance of his situation and to how alone he had been and how he’d never really had any friends until Charlie took him under his wing a couple of years after Lester was released. He downed his Beast and opened another. He was officially drunk now, but still shaking. He wished he had something harder.
Both of them were what folks around there referred to as poor white trash. Opportunities were few and far between in this part of the country even in the best of times, and the late seventies were far from that. So much of the local economy was built around the Ford plant, and now, better-built and more economical Toyotas and Datsuns were what was selling, and Ford was saying they were gonna close down the local operation in a couple of years. That factory was where boys who wouldn’t be going to college could find decent-paying work, and if Ford wasn’t hiring, no one else was about to take up the slack. Weed and illegal liquor were about the only steady jobs left that guys like that could count on.
They pulled up to Whipperwill and sure enough it had emptied out. It was an especially dark night with clouds obscuring what little moon there was. It was hot and muggy and no sign of a breeze at all. Just a dark stillness that added another level of creepy to the situation. Charlie turned off the engine, put the square key in his pocket, walked around to the trunk, and opened it with the oval key. Dale lay there, still and lifeless. Charlie leaned in and untied the ropes that were binding his hands, noting that he was still warm, perhaps from the heat of the exhaust pipe being so close to the trunk.
“Wh-wh-why’d you untie him?”
Charlie was trying not to be annoyed with him.
“If we leave him tied up, there’ll be too many questions. We don’t want anybody saying kidnap. We need to keep this simple so the cops don’t have to work too hard. We just need them to think he did something stupid, panicked, and jumped off the cliff.”
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what about his car?”
“I’m still trying to figure that one out. You want to keep stuttering all night or you want to help me lift this heavy fucker out of my trunk? Oh, and get your gun.”
Lester reached under the passenger seat and pulled out a loaded snub-nose Colt Cobra .38 that had belonged to his older brother before he died. It was bundled up in a dirty towel, which Lester unwrapped. He stood there for a moment staring down at it but Charlie reached out for it and Lester handed it over to him without a moment’s thought.
Charlie nonchalantly said, “You never know,” as he stuck the gun in the back pocket of his jeans.
They then heaved Dale out of the trunk, pulled him into some brush, and closed the trunk. Charlie put the oval key into his pocket. Then he stuffed the gun down the waistband of Dale’s jeans.
“I c-c-c-can’t go back to jail.”
“Goddamn it, Lester, I can’t hear myself think. Dale got in over his head and died. Dead happens all the time.”
They began pulling Dale through the grass and brush and down the trail to the cliffs of Whipperwill. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was bigger than either of them and the deadweight made him seem heavier than they would have thought. By the time they got to the cliffs, they were both panting and covered with sweat. Up there, with the river wide below them, there was a slight breeze that would have felt good if either had been in the mood to notice.
Charlie got behind Dale and lifted him up by his underarms. “I want you to hit him a couple of times. We need to make this look like he put up a little bit of a fight.”
This might not have made sense to Lester if he’d thought about it, but Lester never questioned anything Charlie said so he hit Dale twice, very hard, in the face. Blood spattered from his nose and lips, and Lester cut his knuckle on one of Dale’s teeth.
Lester stood there, holding his sore knuckles and looking down. “Fuck,” he said, without a trace of stammer. Tears welled up in his eyes and he felt very much like vomiting. When he looked up, Charlie had Lester’s gun in Dale’s hand pointed straight at him. It took Lester a few moments to figure out what was going on. Lester tried to make eye contact with Charlie but he was staring at his chest without any hint of expression. Lester opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out but his last breath.
The shot rang loud, echoing down the river. It hit him straight in the heart and Lester fell over dead in the clearing. The gun dropped onto the ground and then Charlie dragged Dale to the edge of the cliff and hoisted him up and over. He heard a faint splash, then walked over to make sure Lester was dead.
Lester was lying there, his Willie Nelson T-shirt soaked in blood and a trickle coming out of his mouth. His eyes were staring straight up and Charlie turned him over. He pulled Lester’s wallet from his back pocket and took most of the money out of it, then put the wallet back. He put the oval key in Lester’s front pocket. He would miss Lester’s company but now wasn’t the moment to be getting sentimental. He would walk back to his house and in the morning call the police and report his car missing.
Charlie didn’t waste any time. The last thing he needed was for someone to see him out there. He took smokes and his personal effects out of the car, stuck the Thin Lizzy tape in his back pocket, and put the square key in the ignition. He knew it would seem strange for Lester to have stolen Charlie’s car like that, but the cops knew he had always been trouble and no one would want to pull Charlie any deeper into it than necessary. White-trash boys were always killing each other around here and with everyone neatly dead, there wouldn’t be too much paperwork, no messy trials or investigations.
Charlie began walking back toward town. It would take him a couple of hours and he would need to stay off of the main roads and not be seen. He would have plenty of time before the sun came up, and no one would discover the bodies until later the next day. If everything went smoothly, he could get home, get a little sleep, and report his car missing early the next morning. He often left the key in the ignition because no one would steal a piece of shit like Jimmy Ray anyways. He never locked his doors because he didn’t want anyone breaking his windows looking for drugs. The cops would just figure that Lester went a little crazy, took the car, robbed Dale and the Zippy Mart, and then it all went wrong and they killed each other. Charlie had never much been one for making plans or working things through in advance, but he’d always been able to think on his feet, and, so far at least, he’d always been able to get through whatever landed in his path. Some folks just survive, no matter what. As Charlie walked down the road, his mind cleared and it all seemed to make sense and he relaxed, knowing he wasn’t going to get into much trouble. This was all goddamned Lester’s fault anyway, as it was his dumb idea to put Dale in the trunk in the first place.
The walk was slow but peaceful. The night was dark and way too quiet but since it was now getting really late it was starting to cool down a little. The l
ack of moonlight made him less likely to be seen walking alone in the night. Every so often he’d hear a car coming or see headlights and he’d step off the road into some woods. He’d hear the whoosh of the car going by or maybe a song from the stereo blasting, then see the honeysuckle glowing red from the taillights. When the coast was clear, Charlie would step back onto the road and resume his walk.
It was still dark when Charlie got into town, the only light coming from a billboard for the latest wet/dry referendum that was coming up this fall. Every so often they would bring it up for another vote and the local churches would come out in force, buying up TV and billboard ads to make sure that legal sales weren’t allowed. The churches profited from this as tithes were always high during election season and it was easy to stir up the old folks with tales of all of the drunken debauchery that would ensue if liquor were ever legal there. The package stores and honky-tonks up at the Tennessee state line, or the Line, as everyone called it, would get into the action, donating tons of money to the bigger churches, as legal sales down there would wipe out their business. The bootleggers and the redneck mafia that controlled them would also get into the action, as everyone wanted to protect the status quo.
As Charlie got to his neighborhood, the sky was taking on the first glimmers of light and echoing with sounds of the morning birds. Charlie’s stomach was rumbling and he realized that he hadn’t really eaten anything since a late lunch the day before and now his buzz was diminished and fast being replaced with the first pangs of what would surely be a terrible hangover. It had been a long night and Charlie was pretty exhausted but wired from all of the excitement. His mind started playing tricks on him. What if Dale wasn’t really dead at all and was just unconscious from the carbon monoxide in the trunk? Maybe all of this was some kind of fever dream or overreaction. His mind was racing and he knew he needed a beer, maybe a joint, to try to turn it all down so he could get some shut-eye before having to deal with cops and questions. He always dreaded dealing with the police and had to make sure that he kept his story straight, but knew that it would all work out okay. They all thought he was some kind of hero. He knew how to be cool in the fire.
Folks were always saying that Lester would end up dead somewhere anyway. Charlie could feel himself becoming resigned to the notion. Some dudes just don’t make it. Getting all weepy wasn’t gonna bring him back now. Just bad breaks. Dale too. Charlie and Dale weren’t really buds, but he’d always liked him okay. You meet those guys along the way. You have some good times, then you move on. Life gets tough sometimes. It was always rough around those parts.
As he rounded the curve to his house, there was Jimmy Ray parked, just there under the streetlight in front of his house like he always left it. The 1970 redesigned Chevelle SS had such beautiful lines. She needed a lot of work but he’d get around to it one of these days.
Charlie stood there for a bit, taking it in. His mind slowed and he was suddenly totally calm and relaxed. He felt like he was out of his body, looking down and seeing the whole scene, as if in a movie. His mind felt strangely rational and deliberate, the way he would get when he started those fires that made him a hero. The way a hunter feels as he draws a bead on his kill.
The air had developed a slight chill now and he thought he could smell a faint trace of smoke in the pines. The cooler was still in the back and the hood was still warm. He noticed that the square GM key was not in the ignition. He wondered what, if anything, might be in the trunk and wished he had the oval key to check.
Charlie’s house was dark and still but his door was standing wide open. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, threw the match down on the ground, and walked toward the front porch.
DRIVING TO GERONIMO’S GRAVE
by Joe R. Lansdale
We ought never to do wrong when people are looking.
—Mark Twain
I HADN’T EVEN been good and awake for five minutes when Mama came in and said, “Chauncey, you got to drive on up to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and pick up your uncle Smat.”
I was still sitting on the bed, waking up, wearing my nightdress, trying to figure which foot went into what shoe, when she come in and said that. She had her dark hair pushed up on her head and held in place with a checkered scarf.
“Why would I drive to Oklahoma and pick up Uncle Smat?”
“Well, I got a letter from some folks got his body, and you need to bring it back so we can bury it. This Mrs. Wentworth said they were gonna leave it in the chicken house if nobody comes for it. I wrote her back and posted the letter already telling her you’re coming.”
“Uncle Smat’s dead?” I said.
“We wouldn’t want to bury him otherwise,” Mama said, “though it took a lot longer for him to get dead than I would have figured, way he honky-tonked and fooled around with disreputable folks. Someone knifed him. Stuck him like a pig at one of them drinking places, I figure.”
“I ain’t never driven nowhere except around town,” I said. “I don’t even know which way is Oklahoma.”
“North,” Mama said.
“Well, I knew that much,” I said.
“Start in that direction and watch for signs,” she said. “I’m sure there are some. I got your breakfast ready, and I’ll pack you some lunch and give you their address, and you can be off.”
Now this was all a fine good morning, me hardly knowing who Uncle Smat was, and Mama not really caring that much about him, Smat being my dead daddy’s brother. She had cared about Daddy plenty, though, and she had what you could call family obligation toward Uncle Smat. As I got dressed she talked.
“It isn’t right to leave a man, even a man you don’t know so well, lying out in a chicken house with chickens to peck on him. And there’s all that chicken mess too. I dreamed last night a chicken snake crawled over him.”
I put on a clean work shirt and overalls and some socks that was sewed up in the heels and toes, put on and tied my shoes, slapped some hair oil on my head, and combed my hair in a little piece of mirror I had on the dresser.
Next, I packed a tow sack with some clothes and a few odds and ends I might need. I had a toothbrush and a small jar of baking soda and salt for tooth wash. Mama was one of the few in our family who had all her teeth, and she claimed that was because she used a brush made from hair bristles and she used that soda and salt. I believed her, and both me and my sister followed her practice.
Mama had some sourdough bread, and she gave that to me, and she filled a couple of my dad’s old canteens with water, put a blanket and some other goods together for me. I loaded them in another good-size tow sack and carried it out to the Ford and put the bag inside the turtle hull.
In the kitchen, I washed up in the dishpan, toweled off, and sat down to breakfast, a half a dozen fried eggs, biscuits, and a pitcher of buttermilk. I poured a glass of milk and drank it, and then I poured another and ate along with drinking the milk.
Mama, who had already eaten, sat at the far end of the table and looked at me.
“You drive careful, now, and you might want to stop somewhere and pick some flowers.”
“I’m picking him up, not attending his funeral,” I said.
“He might be a bit stinky, him lying in a chicken coop and being dead,” Mama said. “So I’m thinking the flowers might contribute to a more pleasant trip. Oh, I tell you what. I got some cheap perfume I don’t never use, so you can take that with you and pour it on him, you need to.”
I was chewing on a biscuit when she said this.
I finished chewing fast as I could, said, “Now wait a minute. I just got to thinking on this good. I’m picking him up in the car, and that means he’s going to go in the backseat, and I see how he could have grown a mite ripe, but Mama, are you telling me he ain’t going to be in a coffin or nothing?”
“The letter said he was lying out in the chicken coop, where he’d been living with the chickens, having to only pay a quarter a week and feed the chickens to be there, and one morning they came out t
o see why he hadn’t gathered the eggs and brought them up—that also being part of his job for staying in the coop—and they found him out there, colder than a wedge in winter. He’d been stabbed, and he had managed to get back to the coop, where he bled out. Just died quietly out there with their chickens. They didn’t know what to do with him at first, but they found a letter he had from his brother; that would be your father”—she added that like I couldn’t figure it out on my own—“and there was an address on it, so they wrote us.”
“They didn’t move the body?”
“Didn’t know what to do with it. They said in the letter they had sewed a burial shroud you can put him in; it’s a kind of bag.”
“I have to pour perfume on him, put him in a bag, and drive him home in the backseat of the car?”
“Reckon that’s about the size of it. I don’t know no one else would bother to go get him.”
“Do I have to? Thinking on it more, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.”
“’Course you got to go. They’re expecting you.”
“Write them a letter and tell them I ain’t coming. They can maybe bury him out by the chicken coop or something.”
The Highway Kind Page 16