Southern Nights

by Barry Gifford

  Once they were inside, Bunk noticed that the red light was flashing on his answering machine. He hit the message button.

  ‘Black zero, black zero. Straight up, straight up. Hammerhead, hammerhead. Respond, Cuba, respond.’

  Bunk immediately punched up a number on the telephone and as soon as his connection was made, he said, ‘Cuba big, Cuba big. Lay down, black zero. Lay down, black zero. Zero in.’

  He hung up and told Defillo Humble, ‘Got a unexpected visitor comin’ in at midnight. Better tell Lesson to put his kid to bed. I’ve got to set the lights.’

  At one minute past midnight, Humble, Wes and Bunk stood next to the landing strip watching a Learjet taxi toward them. The airplane stopped and idled while the passenger door opened and an aluminum stepladder was lowered to the ground. A man wearing light but sturdy casual clothing, dressed as if he were going sailing, and carrying a green duffel bag, climbed down the ladder, put the duffel on the ground, then lifted the ladder back into the plane. The man picked up the duffel bag and walked toward the reception committee as the jet taxied toward the far end of the runway. Bunk stepped forward to greet the visitor.

  ‘Bienvenida, Señor de Estoques,’ said Bunk. ‘It’s been a pretty little while.’

  They did not shake hands but the man, a handsome, clean-shaven Latino in his mid-twenties, smiled at Bunk, then turned and watched the Learjet rumble away, ascend in the north and describe a perfect 180° arc before disappearing into the sub-tropical moonlit sky.

  ‘Mozo, this is Defillo Humble, a longtime associate,’ Bunk said, ‘and Wes Lesson, my new assistant. Gentlemen, meet Mozo de Estoques, from Medellín, a most highly valued member of the Colombian Boys Club.’

  Mozo de Estoques smiled again and spoke in close-to-perfect English.

  ‘Señor Bunk, how can it be that you look younger now than you did when I first met you? That was what, eleven years ago? I was fourteen then.’

  ‘I remember. It was in Cali, and you’d just completed your first assignment for the Club.’

  ‘Broke my cherry, as you norteamericanos say.’

  Bunk nodded. ‘That’s right. Mozo was no bigger’n your little girl sleepin’ inside, Wes, when he embarked on his illustrious career. Just a kid.’

  ‘What little girl?’ asked Mozo de Estoques.

  ‘Wes’s daughter,’ said Bunk. ‘She’s asleep back in the dormitory.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bunk said. ‘Twelve or thirteen.’

  ‘She’s fourteen,’ said Wes. ‘What difference does it make?’

  Mozo looked at Wes Lesson, reflections from the runway lights flickering like tiny flames in the Colombian’s unblinking black eyes. He smiled with the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Much,’ said de Estoques. ‘It makes much difference.’

  ‘Come on, men, let’s go inside,’ said Bunk. ‘Take ’em back, Humble, while I kill these lights. Be right there.’

  Humble and Wes walked behind Mozo, who obviously had been there before. He tossed down his duffel bag and went into the restroom.

  ‘Who is he?’ Wes asked Humble.

  ‘Jorge Muleta’s top assassin. He’s here to hit somebody big, you can bet. Mozo de Estoques don’t travel for no good reason. He supposedly whacked the last two opposition presidential candidates down there. Runs a school for assassins financed by the Muleta cartel.’

  Bunk came in at the same time as Mozo emerged from the can.

  ‘How much time you got, son?’ Bunk asked him.

  ‘A car will come in three hours or less. I’m tired, Señor Bunk.’ Mozo yawned and stretched his arms and back. He studied his oversized Rolex. ‘If I am still asleep at two forty-five, wake me up.’

  ‘You got it.’

  The assassin picked up his bag and headed for the dormitory.

  ‘How about a drink, Bunk?’ said Humble. ‘Got any of that Glenmorangie left?’

  The three men were perched on stools around a stainless steel table in the kitchen area. Bunk and Humble were sipping single-malt Scotch and Wes held a can of Dr Pepper.

  ‘Only time I was in Colombia,’ Bunk said, ‘Estrago Muleta—that’s Jorge’s younger brother who was executed by a firin’ squad year before last in Venezuela, Maracaibo, I believe—he and I were out in the jungle when we come upon the biggest goddamn snake I’ve ever saw, sleepin’ smack in the middle of the trail. Estrago said it was a bushmaster, a serpiente muy peligroso. Estrago handed me his Uzi machine pistol and snuck up on the viper, lopped off its head with a machete. Reptile didn’t budge. Estrago hoisted the head on the tip of his long knife and carried it that way, like a Sioux with Custer’s scalp, back to the camp. Boy was one fearless son of a bitch. Well, he’s a government footnote now.’

  The gunshot came before the scream. There was a very loud pop that sounded like a deeply imbedded cork being removed from a goosenecked bottle, followed by Marble’s long, wobbly howl. Wes was the first of the three men to reach her. Marble sat on the floor next to the cot on which she had been sleeping, clasping in her two hands a Colt Python pointed at the inert body of Mozo de Estoques, who lay draped across the cot, naked from the waist down, except for his white cotton socks.

  Wes took the pistol from his daughter, who sat perfectly still, rigid, her eyes frozen open. He knelt next to Marble and hugged her to him. Humble pushed aside Mozo’s black forelock, revealing reddish ooze where his right eye had been. Bunk came in last, took a look at the scene, started to say something, then stopped. Wes gently caressed his daughter’s head as he held her, and after a minute or two, she blinked.

  STICKING WITH JESUS

  dear jesus,

  It has been a while since I wrote I know but lots has happened during this time. I will begin with the big event and go back. I killed a man who tried to rape me in Alabama. You know I am fourteen and still a virgin child and intend to remain one until I decide to do it though I have to tell you not necessarily in the marriage bed. Anyway that is the big news now I will tell you how it happened.

  Daddy and I went with a stranger named Defillo Humble to see about a job for Daddy at an airfield in Alabama by the border of Mississippi. This stranger had helped out Daddy I guess when he was drunk in trouble one night and when he showed back up at the house and said he might know about a job Daddy figured why not check it out due to his not having one and the work situation in his home state of Louisiana not being good at the moment. I did not have a very good feeling about this man Humble who is an extremely large person but who says he is a writer which did interest me. As you know I have ambitious desires in that direction.

  So we went with Defillo Humble in his Buick up around Meridian to this airfield which is a school called Bunk Colby’s Balloon and Airship Academy. It is run by an extremely strange man Bunk Colby who says he is 75 years old but looks almost as young as Daddy. There was one balloon there but nothing else of an air nature that I could see. This school was way out in nowhere and I did not think Daddy would accept work there but he did being so desperate and not drinking though he is not going to work there now of course.

  That night we were there was when everything happened. Mr Humble, Mr Colby and Daddy and I went to Meridian to eat dinner and see a movie called Showdown in Little Tokyo. The dinner was OK at a barbecue restaurant but the movie was dumb and awful with really fake looking foot fighting, automatic weapons galore going off, and lots of naked women with mostly Japanese criminals. The worst part was where the leader of the Japanese criminals cuts off the head of a blond woman with a sword in one hand while he rubs her bare breasts with his other. He does this from behind her with no shirt on so we can see he is tattooed all over his chest and shoulders and arms and stomach. Later he is killed but you would not believe how horrible this movie is Jesus don’t go see it.

  After we got back to Mr Colby’s place I went to sleep in a room with lots of small beds in it because it was too late to drive all the way back to New Orleans. I woke up with a man on top of me
I did not know who he was. He put a hand over my mouth and pulled down my blanket with his other to get at me. I turned my head and saw a gun on the floor next to the bed and while he was doing things to himself I reached down and grabbed the gun and put the nose by the side of his face and pulled the trigger.

  The man collapsed on me and there was junk everywhere not just blood but stuff from inside his head. I guess I screamed then and crawled out from under his body and would have shot him again if he moved but he was completely dead and did not. Daddy came and held me. I knew it was him but honest Jesus I could not talk or even move for a long time. Mr Humble and Mr Colby came in and saw the mess but they did not say a word.

  Daddy held me in the back seat of Mr Humble’s car all the way back to New Orleans in the middle of the night. I guess Mr Colby buried the body of the rapist who Daddy told me later was a murderer from South America who the US government was after and would be glad to know he was dead but we were not going to tell them or anybody else. I promised Daddy I would not tell Mama about any of this because she would never allow me to visit Daddy again not that she wanted me to anyway as you know. But I had to tell you Jesus you are the only one.

  I am writing this on the bus back to Florida. Remember the last time I was on it a bolt of lightning hit us and every passenger except me was killed or hurt bad. I know for certain now that I was spared for a special purpose and probably for more than one. The first was to destroy the South American killer and rapist who beyond any doubt in my mind was an agent of the devil. More are out there Jesus and I am ready for them. There is a TV show that says 25 million people claim to have spoken with the devil and I believe it. I also believe there are others on the planet such as myself who can save the world from the devil and his agents. Stick close with me Jesus I am on your side forever.

  Your friend,

  Marble Lesson

  arise and walk

  And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,

  Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?

  For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins

  be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?

  –Matthew 9:4–5

  Despair is the only unforgivable sin, and it’s

  always reaching for us.

  –Sam Peckinpah

  arise

  CONTENTS

  Top Snake

  Wet Heat

  The Brave and the Beautiful

  History in the Making

  Day of the Mule

  The Secret of the Universe

  Close Calls

  Going Down that Road Feeling Bad

  Precious

  Elohm

  Moving Right Along

  Bugs

  The Ring of Truth

  Beyond Ontology

  The Gospel According to D

  Almost Perfect

  Run to Evil

  Smart Mouth

  Shadow Bands

  Prestigitation

  The Tempest

  TOP SNAKE

  the reverend cleon Tone, formerly pastor of the Church of the Fresh Start in Daytime, Arkansas, stood on the corner of Burgundy and Orleans streets in the French Quarter of the city of New Orleans, holding upside down in his hands a battered black felt fedora. Suspended from his neck by a piece of string was a hand-lettered cardboard sign that read, hand yursef a fresh start by lend a man a hand. ‘The Lord’ll love you harder,’ he said whenever a passerby dropped a coin into his hat.

  Cleon Tone, who now slept in a nameless hotel patronized chiefly by transients on North Rampart Street, was fifty-eight years old. Thin strands of gray hair spiderwebbed his skull; his facial skin was splotchy, pink and red; his hands were dotted by liver spots. Black smudges scarred his throat, indelible souvenirs of his attempted murder by Prentiss Temoign, the husband of Viridiana Legend Temoign, a member of the Church of the Fresh Start, whom Tone had cuckolded a decade before. Owing to that disgraceful incident, the reverend had fallen on hard times, having been railroaded out of Daytime, Arkansas, by his irate former parishioners. He had drifted around the Deep South since then, initially working at odd jobs until his worsening alcoholism reduced him to this present state.

  The night before, Cleon Tone had shut himself inside the W.C. and while seated on the toilet had picked up off the floor a section of the previous day’s Times-Picayune. He read an article about the mating habits of pit vipers, such as rattlesnakes and copperheads. Female copperheads, he learned, mate only once every three to five years. When one emerges from her den after hibernating for the winter, she is greeted by a veritable phalanx of suitors. These males battle one another for the privilege of partaking of her favors not by biting but by wrestling, attempting to force the other down to the ground into a submissive position, an exercise that may last hours or even days, about the same length of time it takes to complete the process of copperhead copulation. Females shun the weaker snakes, and even younger males will assert themselves over the defeated adults, whose self-confidence has been severely reduced. Once the competition has been completed, Cleon Tone read, the top snake seeks out the willing female and immediately presents her with his double-pronged demand.

  ‘Be damn!’ Cleon said aloud, after he had finished with the article. ‘That been me, the top snake! Now look.’

  The knob rattled and the W.C. door shook.

  ‘You-all about crapped out, yet?’ someone asked.

  ‘Clinch it back a minute!’ Cleon said.

  He tore the page he had been reading in two and used a piece to wipe himself. The other he folded up for another time. Reverend Tone pulled up his trousers, fastened them, and pulled the flush chain before sliding back the bolt and opening the door. To his surprise, the hallway was empty when he emerged.

  ‘A top snake don’t lay down for long,’ he mumbled, as he shuffled toward his room. ‘And this’n got at least one big strike left in him, you bet.’

  WET HEAT

  wilbur ‘damfino’ nougat and Gaspar DeBlieux slumped down in their red leather easy chairs in their two-bedroom suite at the DeSalvo Hotel on Gravier Street, drinking rum and orange juice, waiting for the two hookers they had ordered from the Congo Square Escort Service to arrive. Nougat and DeBlieux—pronounced ‘W’—were white men in their mid-forties, in New Orleans for the annual national convention of dental supply salesmen, the profession at which each of them had been laboring for the better part of twenty years. Nougat lived in Nashville, Tennessee; DeBlieux in Monroe, Louisiana. They had become friends fifteen years before, when they had first shared a room at the Pontchartrain in Detroit. Since then, they had arranged to stay together whenever and wherever the dental supply salesmen of America gathered.

  ‘More an’ more I’m likin’ dark meat,’ said Gaspar. ‘Used to it was only blondies stood Little Boy at attention. Why I married Dolly Fay, ’cause of her yellow hair, which now can’t no way tell for sure what color it is. Changes every month or two. ’Bout you, Wilbur? What’s your preference?’

  ‘Damfino or care, Dublya. Long’s it’s hooters a pair an’ wet heat below, she can be blue with white polka dots from hair to there. Stick it and lick it, that’s the ticket’

  DeBlieux laughed. ‘Sonesta hear what you say, she’d be after you with her magnum cocked.’

  ‘Only cock she get, too,’ said Damfino. ‘Woman size the Goodyear blimp now. You ain’t seen her in a year or two. Awful how she let herself go.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it. Sonesta was sweet-lookin’ once.’

  ‘She claims it was havin’ a fourth child did in her figure, but it’s chocolate. Sonesta can’t go a hour without she’s chunkin’ chocolate.’

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Be our dates, Dub.’

  Damfino popped up, went to the door, and opened it. Two tall, lanky black hookers entered the room and stood together, unsmiling, in front of a large picture window opposite Gaspar DeBlieux.

  ‘Drinks, ladies?’ asked Damfino.

  The hookers had tough fac
es; their heavily painted skin looked waxed. Both of them were quite beautiful, however; each had high cheekbones, full lips, and what appeared to be a perfectly sculpted figure barely contained by a tight leopard-skin dress. They wore red berets over their pressed black hair.

  ‘Holy Infant!’ chirped Gaspar, springing out of his chair. ‘Looks like we hit the right number tonight!’

  He practically pranced around the hirelings, grinning, the contents of his hand-held glass sloshing onto the burgundy carpet.

  ‘We don’t use alcohol,’ said the slightly shorter of the two prostitutes. Her voice was very deep.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ said the other, in a more feminine tone, ‘we’d prefer dispensing with the business side up front. Two hundred each, gentlemen.’

  Wilbur Nougat and Gaspar DeBlieux each extracted two crisp C-notes from his wallet and handed them over. The prostitutes took the money and deposited it in their purses, out of which they each then withdrew a .32-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver with a silencer affixed to the barrel. They pointed the guns at the men, who froze at the sight.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ said the tallest hooker.

  ‘Just a hot damn minute,’ said DeBlieux. ‘What you doin’?’

  ‘Take off your clothes or we’ll shoot you,’ said the other hooker. ‘We be aim low.’

  The men removed their clothes and stood naked in the middle of the room.

  ‘Suck his dick,’ the shorter hooker commanded DeBlieux. ‘Genuflect front your partner an’ do ’im.’

  ‘This the buddy system,’ said the taller one.

  Gaspar dropped to his knees, put his lips on the head of Damfino’s penis, and closed his eyes.