“You take these kids to their uncle,” she said to Mr. Wentworth.
“They can smell him,” he said.
“You take them out there. I’ll go with you.”
She threw the dish towel inside the door, said, “But I got something you’ll need.”
Mrs. Wentworth went in the house and came out with a jar of VapoRub and had us dab a good wad under our noses so as to limit the smell of Uncle Smat. I was beginning to get a bit weak on the whole idea of a Christian burial for a man I’d never seen and by all accounts wasn’t worth the water it’d take to put him out if he was on fire.
Dabbed up, the four of us started around the house and up the higher part of the hill. We passed the chicken coops, and this gave Mrs. Wentworth a moment for a bit of historical background concerning their time with Uncle Smat.
“He walked up one day and said he needed some work, most anything, so he could eat. So we put him out there chopping firewood, which he did a fair job of. We let him sleep in one of the coops that didn’t have a lot of chickens in it. We couldn’t have some unknown fella sleeping in the house. Next day he wanted more work, and so he ended up staying and taking care of the chickens, a job at which he was passable. Then one night he come up on the porch a-banging on the door, drunk as Cooter Brown. We wouldn’t let him in and told him to go on out to the coop and sleep it off.”
Mr. Wentworth picked up the story there. “Next morning he didn’t come down to the back porch for his biscuits, so I went up and found him dead. He’d been knifed. I guess maybe he wasn’t drunk after all.”
“He was drunk, all right,” Mrs. Wentworth said. “That might have killed some of the pain for him. Fact was, I don’t know I’d ever heard anyone drunk as he was that was able to stand. I went through his clothes, and he had some serious money on him, and I won’t lie to you, we took that as payment for his room and board.”
“You robbed a dead man for sleeping in your chicken coop?” Terri said. “Why didn’t you just take his shoes too?”
Mr. Wentworth cleared his throat. “Well, they was the same size as mine, and he didn’t need them.”
Wentworth lifted a foot and showed us a brown brogan.
“Them toes was real scuffed up,” Mrs. Wentworth said, “so I put some VapoRub on them, rubbed it in good, and put a solid shine on them, took out some of that roughness.”
“Damn,” Terri said, looking down at the shoes on Mr. Wentworth’s feet. “You did take his shoes.”
“You’re talking like a gun moll,” Mrs. Wentworth said to Terri.
“I’m talking like someone whose uncle was robbed of money and shoes, that’s how I’m talking,” Terri said.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Let’s see him.”
As we walked along, Mr. Wentworth said, “When I come to look in on his body yesterday, he wasn’t in the coop, but the coop was broke open, and something had dragged him off. It was either a pack of dogs or coyotes. They dragged him up there a ways and chewed off one of his feet. They got a toe off the other foot.”
Terri looked at me. I gently shook my head.
Top of the hill near a line of woods, we seen his body. The smell was so strong, that VapoRub might as well have been water. I ain’t never smelled nothing that bad in all my life. If at the bottom of the hill it had been strong as a bull, at the top it was a bull elephant.
Uncle Smat wasn’t a sight for sore eyes, but he damn sure made the eyes sore. He was up next to a line of woods, half in a feed bag. It was over his head and tied around his waist with twine. His legs stuck out, and his pants legs was all ripped from animals dragging him out of the coop and on up where he lay. One foot, as Mr. Wentworth had said, was gnawed off, and Mr. Wentworth was right about that missing toe on the other foot; the big toe, if you’re curious.
“So the man dies, you put a bag over his head and leave him with the chickens and write us a letter?” Terri said.
Mr. Wentworth nodded.
“Yeah,” Terri said. “I guess there ain’t no use denying any of that.”
“It’s been too hot for digging, and thing is we don’t know him. We found his name and your address on a letter in his billfold, and we wrote your family. We figured we’d leave the rest to his kin.”
I went over and untied the twine around his waist and pulled the bag off his head. Uncle Smat was not a pretty man, but I recognized the family nose. His eyes was full of ants and worms and such. His stomach was bloated up with gas.
“He’s all yours,” Mr. Wentworth said.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Wentworth. “I guess you ought to have his hat. I put it on the back porch and put corn in it for the squirrels. I like squirrels. Oh, one more thing. He had a car, but the night he died, he didn’t bring it back with him. He come on foot or someone dropped him off. Didn’t want you to think we took his car.”
“Just his billfold and what was in it,” Terri said.
“Yeah,” Mrs. Wentworth said, “just that.”
In the car, Uncle Smat lying in the backseat, tucked completely inside a big burlap bag, we started out. I had paid a quarter for the used jar of VapoRub, which was far too much but at the time seemed a necessity. I poured Mama’s perfume over him, but if it knocked back the smell any, I couldn’t tell it. We drove through the night with the windows down and the car overflowing with the aroma of Uncle Smat. Terri hung out of her window like a dog.
“Oh, Baby Jesus,” she said. “This here is awful.”
I was driving and leaning out my window as much as was reasonable and still be able to drive. The air was helping a little, but there wasn’t nothing that could defeat that smell short of six feet of dirt or the bottom of the deep blue sea.
The Ford’s headlights was cutting a path through the night, and I felt we were making pretty good time, and then I seen the smoke from under the hood. It was the radiator again.
I pulled over where the road widened against the trees and parked. I got the hood up and looked at the radiator. It was really steaming. I knew then it had a hole in it. I decided it was a small hole, and if I could keep water in the radiator and not drive like John Dillinger in a getaway car, I might make it home.
With the car not moving, Uncle Smat’s stink had taken on a power that was beyond that of Hercules.
“Oh, hell.” Terri was in the woods throwing up and calling out. “I holler calf rope. You win, Uncle Smat. Lord have mercy on all His children, especially me.”
I used most of our water to fill the radiator and was going to call Terri up from the woods when the wind changed and the smell hit me tenfold. It was like I was in that bag with Uncle Smat.
Terri was coming up the hill. I said, “You’re right. We can’t keep going on like this. Uncle Smat deserves a burial.”
“We ain’t got no shovel,” Terri said.
This was an accurate observation.
“Then he deserves a ditch and some Christian words said over him.”
“I’m all for that ditch, but we ain’t got no preacher neither.”
“Damn it,” I said.
“I say we just put him in a ditch and go on to the house,” Terri said.
“That ain’t right,” I said.
“No, but it sure would be a mite less smelly.”
We packed our noses with VapoRub, dragged Uncle Smat out of the car by the bag he was in, and pulled him down a hill that dropped off into the woods. The bag ripped on a stob. Uncle Smat came out of the bag and rolled down the hill, caught up on a fallen tree branch, and stopped rolling. I could see that Uncle Smat’s coat had ripped open. The lining was fish-belly white in the pale moonlight.
“Ah, hell,” Terri said. “Can’t believe that bag was holding back the smell that much. Oh heavens, that is nastier than a family of skunks rolled up in cow shit.”
I was yanking the branch away from under Uncle Smat so he could roll the rest of the way down when Terri said, “Hey, Chauncey. Something fell out of his coat.”
I looked at what she had picked up
. It was a folded piece of paper.
Dark as it was, we went up to the car and I turned on the headlights, stood in front of them, and looked at the paper. It had some lines on it, a drawing of some tombstones, and the words Fort Sill and Geronimo’s grave written on it. There was a dollar sign drawn on one of the tombstones.
“It was in his coat,” Terri said.
“Probably stitched up in the lining.”
“He must have had a reason for hiding it,” Terri said.
“If he hadn’t, the Wentworths would have found it.”
“What you think it is?”
“A map.”
“To what?”
“You see what I see,” I said. “Where do you think?”
“Geronimo’s grave?”
“Domino,” I said.
“I ain’t going there,” she said.
“Me neither. We’re going home. Remember, Terri. The hogs ate him. Nobody is going to believe the chickens did it. It would take them too long.”
Back with Uncle Smat, I finally managed to pull the branch aside that was holding him, and as there was a deep, damp sump hole at the bottom of the hill between two trees, I gave him a bit of a boost with my foot and he rolled down into it. One of his legs stuck out, and it was the one with the chewed-off foot. I scrambled down and bent his leg a little and got it into the sump, and then I tossed the ripped bag over him and kicked some dirt in on top of that, but it was like trying to fill in the ocean with a pile of sand, a spoon, and good intentions.
“Hell with it,” Terri said.
“Maybe we can come back for him later,” I said.
“Ha,” Terri said. “I say we stick to that story about how the Wentworths’ hogs got to him and ate him.”
“I can live with that,” I said.
“Mostly I can live with him being out of the car,” Terri said.
“It ain’t much of a Christian burial,” I said.
Terri inched closer to the sump hole, put her hand over her heart, said, “Jesus loves you...Let’s go.”
We drove with all the windows down, trying to clear out memories of Uncle Smat. When we got to the Red River and was about to cross, the car got hot again and I had to pull over. We didn’t have any more water, other than a bit for drinking, so I decided wasn’t no choice but for me to take the canteens and go down the hill and under the bridge and dip some out of the river.
Terri stayed with the car. When I came back up the hill with the full canteens, sitting there on the hood with Terri was the ragged man we had seen the other day. He was sitting there casual-like with his hand clutched in the collar of Terri’s shirt, and the moonlight gleamed on a knife blade he had in his hand, resting it on his thigh.
“There he is,” the man said. “Good to see you and Miss Smartass again.”
I placed the canteens gently on the ground and picked up a stick lying by the side of the road and started walking toward him. “Let go of her,” I said, “or I’ll smack you a good one.”
He held up the hand with the knife in it.
“I wouldn’t do that, boy. You do, I might have to cut her before you get to me. Cut her good and deep. You want that, boy?”
I shook my head.
“Put down that limb, then.”
I dropped it.
“Come over here,” the man said.
“Don’t do it,” Terri said.
“You shut up,” the man said.
I came over. He got down off the car and dragged Terri off of it and flung her on the road.
“I’m gonna need this car,” he said.
“All right,” I said.
“First, you’re gonna put water in it, and then you’re going to drive me.”
“You don’t need me,” I said. “I’ll give you the keys.”
“Now, this here is embarrassing, but I can’t drive. Never learned.”
“Just put your foot on the gas and turn the wheel a little and stomp on the brake when you want to stop.”
“I tried to drive once and ran off in a creek. I ain’t driving. You are. The girl can stay here.”
“All right,” I said.
“I ain’t staying,” she said. “He needs me to read the map and such.”
“I ain’t going the same place you was going,” the man said.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“Back the way you come,” he said.
He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the folded sheet of paper I had left lying on the front seat. He pointed at the map.
“I’m going here to see where my partner hid the bank money.”
Damn you, Uncle Smat. I said, “You mean that dollar sign means real money.”
“Real paper money,” he said.
After I put water in the radiator, the man sent me back down to get more water while he stayed with Terri. I didn’t have no choice but to do what he wanted. Next thing I knew I was turning the car around and heading back the way we had come.
“It stinks in here,” said the man.
I was at the wheel; he was beside me, his knife hand lying against his thigh. Terri was in the backseat.
“You ought to be back here,” Terri said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Be sick out the window,” said the man.
“So you and Uncle Smat were partners?” I said.
“Guess you could say that. Ain’t this just the peachiest coincidence that ever happened? You coming along, him being your uncle, and me being his partner.”
“I think you stabbed your partner,” Terri said.
“There is that,” said the man. “We had what you might call a falling-out on account we split up after we hit the bank and he didn’t do like he said he would. Let me tell you, that was one sweet job. I had a gun then. I wish I had it now. We come out of the bank in Lawton with the cash, and the gun went off and I shot a lady. Not on purpose. Bullet ricocheted off a wall or something. Did a bounce and hit her right between the eyes. Went through a sack of groceries she was carrying and bounced off a can in the bag or something, hit right and betwixt.”
I didn’t believe his story, but I didn’t bring this to his attention.
“So Smat, he decides we ought to split up, to divide the heat on us, so to speak, and he was going to give me a map to where he hid the money. He said he’d hid it in haste but had made a map, and when things cooled, we could go get our money.”
Terri leaned over the seat.
“So he come and told you he had a map for you, and he was right with you, and he didn’t give it to you?”
“Get your nose back before I cut it off,” the man said, and he showed her the knife. Terri sat back in the seat.
“All right, here it is,” he said. “It wasn’t no bank job at all. We robbed a big dice game in Lawton. One, that was against the law, but the law was there playing dice. This was a big game and there were all these mighty players there from Texas and Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, I think Kansas. Hot arms, they were. Illegal money earned in ways that didn’t get the taxes paid. This was a big gathering, and the money was going into a big dice game and there was going to be some big winners. We were just there as small potatoes, me and Smat. Kind of bodyguards for a couple of fellas. And then it come to me and Smat we ought to rob the dice game. It wasn’t that smart an idea, them knowing us and all, but it was a lot of money. Right close to a million dollars. Can you imagine? You added up every dollar I’ve ever made sticking up banks and robbing from folks here and there and what I might make robbing in the future, it ain’t anywhere near that. Me and Smat decided right then and there we was going to take the piles of money heaped on the floor and head out. We pulled our guns and took it. That woman I shot, it wasn’t no damn accident. She started yelling at us, and I can’t stand screeching, so I shot her. It was a good shot.”
“Yeah,” Terri said. “How far away were you from her?”
“I don’t know.”
“I bet you was right up near her. I bet it wasn’t n
o great shot at all.”
“Terri,” I said. “Quiet.”
“Yeah, Terri,” the man said. “Quiet.
“Well, we robbed them, made a run for it in Smat’s car, and then we hid out. Smat, after a few days, he begins to think he’s done shit in the frying pan. Starts saying we got to give it back, like they were gonna forgive and forget, like we brung a lost cat home. We hid the money near Geronimo’s grave one night, took some shovels up there in the dark and buried it by an oak tree. There ain’t nobody guards that place. There ain’t even a gate. It was a lot of money and in a big tin canister—and I mean big. A million dollars in bills is heavier than you’d think. We took about ten thousand and split that for living money, but the rest we left there so if we got caught by cops for other things we’d done, we wouldn’t have all that big loot on us. If we went to jail, when we got out, there’d be a lot of money waiting. Right then, though, we didn’t plan on being caught. That was just a backup idea. We were going to wait until the heat died down, go back and get it. But Smat, he got to thinking that, considering who we robbed, the heat wasn’t going to die down. He reckoned they’d start coming after us and keep coming, and that worried him sick. It didn’t do me no good to think about it either, but I didn’t like what he wanted to do. He was planning on making a map and mailing it to them so they could come get the money. He showed me the map. We had driven to Nebraska, where we was hiding out. He was gonna send them the map with an apology, just keep moving, hoping they’d say, ‘Well, we got our money, so let’s forget it.’ He thought he could go on then and live his life, go back to small stickups or some such, and steal from people who would forget it. But them boys at that dice game, I tell you, they aren’t forgetters. With a million dollars, I tell him, we can go off to Mexico and live clear and good the rest of our lives. You can buy a señorita down there cheaper than a chicken. Or so I’m told. Shit, them boys were gonna forget it like they would forget their mamas. Wasn’t going to happen.”
“Yeah,” Terri said. “I’d be mad, I was them. I can hold a grudge.”
“Damn right,” the man said. “What I told Smat. Mama Johnson didn’t raise no idiots.”
The Highway Kind Page 18