by Rick Gavin
“Bud, I guess.”
She jabbed her thumb toward a half-dozen beer cans on a shelf. “There’s better if you want it,” she told me.
Damned if there wasn’t—and no more skunky Iron City like Tootie used to drink. I ordered up a Molson and asked her, “Where’d Tootie get off to?”
The girl behind the bar put a finger to her temple and made a dumb show of blowing out her brains.
“Jesus,” I told her.
“Unlucky in love,” the bartender said.
“We’re talking the same Tootie, right?” I tried to approximate Tootie’s bulk, stretched out my arms and puffed up my cheeks.
She nodded. “He had a girl in Jackson. I hear she threw him over.”
Then I couldn’t help but think of Tootie in the altogether. Many folds and tufts and hanging bits like an overstuffed Chesterfield couch.
“You ought to ask Lurleen,” the bar girl told me. “They were cousins.”
She pointed, and I glanced. Lurleen was sitting in Tootie’s old spot down at the end of the bar. She was sipping a diet Pepsi straight out of the can with a soda straw. Lurleen had a pile of yellow hair, less a beehive than a termite mound. She had a ledger open before her and was toting up some figures. No matter how she twitched and swiveled, her hair never let on that she’d moved.
I eased down the bar to speak to Lurleen. I was standing next to her a good half minute before she left off with the bookkeeping and looked up.
“Hey, sugar,” she said.
“Just heard about Tootie.” I gave her my wince of condolence.
“Can’t never tell what’s going on in here.” She tapped her sternum with a blood-red lacquered nail.
“I’m looking for a fellow named Luther Dubois. Used to be kind of a fixture in this place.”
She laid her pencil down and eyed me hard. “You the law?”
“No, ma’am,” I told her and snorted, tried to look offended.
“Why do you want him?”
“Just need to tell him a thing.” I had the poor sense to add, “It’s personal.”
Lurleen had a hell of a pinched smile, which she treated me to for a good quarter minute.
“A boy busted out of Parchman,” I informed Lurleen. “He might be after Luther.”
She eyed me again in a comprehensive way and must have decided that I was all right.
“Got a regular office anymore,” she said and pointed into the depths of the lounge. “I’ll buzz him.” She reached for a doorbell button at the end of the bar.
Luther’s office was hard by the crapper, in a ratty little room where Tootie used to keep his busted furniture. Tables and chairs the patrons had wrecked that Tootie kept meaning to fix. Luther opened the door about the time I reached it. He grinned when he saw who it was.
“Shit howdy,” Luther told me and gave me a shake and awkward hug. “Where’s that nigger of yours?”
I drew a deep breath and country pointed in the general direction of the lot. “Don’t let him hear you say that.”
Luther laughed. He told me, “Fuck.”
He stepped aside to let me pass into his office, followed me in and shut the door. The place was tidy and clean. Luther might have sold oxy, but he had a certain sense of style. Luther had a desk with a copy of Barely Legal open on the blotter and nothing else. There was a straight chair just beside the desk for “clients” (Luther told me), and he had a map of something or another taped onto the wall.
“Park it,” Luther said as he slipped out of his blazer. He’d put the thing on just to answer the door.
Luther was wearing a proper suit. Proper except that it was purple and shinier than a regular everyday business suit should be.
“How the hell you been?” he asked me. “Figured you’d own an island or something by now.”
“You and Lurleen some kind of item?”
Luther glanced around like he wanted to be certain there was nobody in his office but us. Then he shrugged and told me, “Got its perks.”
I think he mostly meant the room we were in and the blind eye to his business.
“That’s some pile of hair on her.”
“Comes right off,” he said. “She leaves it sitting by the sink.”
Luther took a tug on his Rolling Rock pony, and I knocked back the rest of my Molson.
“Got some bad news,” I finally told him. “That Boudrot busted out.”
“Fuckstick?”
I nodded.
“They’ll round him up, won’t they?”
“Haven’t yet, and he killed a guy already.”
“Shit!” Luther got up and did a little stalking, though there wasn’t truly much of anywhere to go. “Who?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “Civilian. Needed his car.”
“Where do you figure he’s headed? Away from here, right?”
“That’s what we were hoping, but then he broke in at K-Lo’s.”
“Looking for you boys?”
“Made off with a couple of guns.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“Us neither. That’s why we’re here.”
“Percy Dwyane know? Tommy? Eugene?”
I shook my head. “Know where we can find them?”
* * *
We followed Luther up 66. He had one of those tandem-wheeled diesel trucks that contractors and timber men drive. It was new and shiny and had some pop to it—as far as diesels go—and Luther left us straggling near Belzoni when he went roaring up the four-lane. By the time we caught up with him, Luther was in cuffs and getting marched to a trooper’s sedan.
Me and Desmond said together and harmoniously, “Shit.”
We rolled on by the radio car with its blue beacon going and its headlights pulsing. All of that was bouncing off the lavish chrome of Luther’s truck. Desmond pulled into the lot of the day-old bread shop about a quarter mile up the road.
“Did you see who it was?” I asked Desmond
“White boy. Maybe that Cooper.”
I shook my head. “Too fat for him.”
Me and Desmond said “Shit” again.
We both knew by then it had to be Augustus Polk Benbow. A. P. Benbow was what it said on his name tag, but everybody called him APB. The law enforcement boys got an everlasting hoot out of that. As cops go, APB did one thing with reliable devotion: He arrested Delta motorists for just about anything at all.
He needed an audience, as it turned out. A man in bracelets in the back of his cruiser couldn’t do a thing but hear him. So if you were driving above the posted speed or going over forty on your doughnut or riding with a light burned out or changing lanes without your blinker, then you were a candidate to suffer through what that Benbow thought about this world.
The day he stopped me he had a weed up his ass about the electoral college, was of the opinion that it was spoiling democracy mostly for people like him. He had all sorts of theories about the whys and the wherefores but not too many details and most of the facts he trotted out were ones he’d cobbled up.
“Here’s the thing,” he said about twenty times. That was All Points’s chief rhetorical device. He’d tell you he was unloading the pith of the business about two dozen times. If I had to put him in a slot, I’d say A. P. Benbow was a libertarian under the color of authority and hampered by a partial lobotomy. After you heard him talk for about ten minutes, you’d wonder that he could drive.
“Now what?” I asked Desmond.
He’d been stopped plenty by APB. That Benbow didn’t like your coloreds, so Desmond had gotten an earful about entitlement society, that and all the goddamn money wasted on those fucking rims when there were babies to raise and proper goddamn English to learn to speak.
“Bring the truck, I guess,” Desmond said.
That was another Benbow feature. If he picked you up for a violation, he left your keys on the driver’s seat. All Points insisted on it in the off chance you’d get a further lesson by having some lowlife come along and drive of
f in your car.
I followed Desmond to the barracks up by Leland in Luther’s truck. The place had been a lodge hall once or something, and was a barracks in name only. Nobody slept there. It had a few cubicles and a kitchen, a tiny room for holding miscreants instead of a proper cell.
“I’m staying out here,” Desmond told me in the lot.
I couldn’t much blame him. The Mississippi State Police employed an overabundance of pinhead crackers, and you never knew what they might get up to, especially there inside their clubhouse.
It was a skeleton crew, given the hour. Just a desk trooper, a fellow name Cobb who was mostly a farmer anymore.
“Hey here,” I told him.
He squinted at me like he was trying to place me on some bulletin he’d seen. “I know you?”
“Doubt it.”
“What’s doing?”
“Come after a guy. Just got hauled in.”
“Ain’t this some shit?” Luther shouted my way.
That Benbow was walking him down the hallway. Luther was still in bracelets and had twisted around to look at me over his shoulder. A. P. Benbow punched him in the kidney to steer him.
“Ow, dammit,” Luther told him. That just got him hit again.
“What did he do?” I asked that Cobb.
He glanced at the charge sheet on his desk. “Ran a light.”
“No lights out there. I was right behind him. Not a damn thing but road.”
“Take that up with A.P.,” he said.
We both watched Benbow slam Luther hard against the wall. Luther grinned like a man who’d been slammed around before.
“Come on now,” he told that Benbow, which earned Luther a backhanded slap.
“Him?” I asked Cobb. “That cracker fuckwad back there?”
Cobb whistled through his teeth. “Boy talking shit about you,” he shouted toward that Benbow.
That Benbow shoved Luther one time further. He told him, “Stay,” like you’d tell a dog.
APB came swaggering up the hallway, his holster creaking and his keyring jangling.
“So?” that Benbow said to me. “I’m right here. Spit it out.”
“You want to write him up, do it. But you’ve hit him your last time.”
That Benbow grinned. At me. At Cobb. “That right?”
I nodded. I grinned right back.
He whipped around and caught me with the back of his hand. Just a slap really, more knuckles than meat. I stood there and took it. I winked at that Benbow. I fixed my mouth and blew him a kiss. It had just the effect I’d imagined it would.
“That fucking tears it,” that Benbow said as he reached to loosen his buckle.
I guess he was aiming to take his gun off and lay it aside on the desk so he could go about the lively pleasure of beating me with his fists. I didn’t allow him to get that far. I punched him in the throat.
Cobb said, “Hold on here!” He stood up and got a blow to his windpipe as well. They both lurched around the place wheezing and fighting for air.
“What did you go and do?” Luther asked me.
I pointed at that Benbow. “I don’t like him much.”
“Hell, who does? They’ll be on you now.”
That Benbow dropped into a plastic chair and made a string of whooping noises. He was bluer than I’d hoped for him to get.
“Want to stick around?” I asked Luther.
He held out his cuffed hands my way. “Fuck no.”
I unlocked him with that Benbow’s key, and I kind of told those two boys I was sorry. Then me and Luther went out the door and found Desmond in the lot.
“That was quick,” he said.
I gave him the shrug I give him sometimes when things have gone all shitty.
Desmond had seen it enough already to know to tell me, “Awwww!”
FIVE
We headed for Pearl’s with Luther behind us. It was half past ten by the time we pulled into her driveway. It looked like just about every light in Pearl’s house had been switched on. There was a car parked in the pullout beside Pearl’s dinged up Buick Regal. It was a BMW with Tennessee plates, a car I recognized. The thing belonged to Pearl’s sister’s daughter, Angela Marie.
We’d had kind of a fling a few years back. It never came within sight of torrid. We just had some laughs. She’d come to the Delta. I’d go up to Memphis. It didn’t so much end as peter out. Angie met a guy at a conference in Denver. They were both in hospital administration. He wasn’t a vegan or a teetotaler or even a Presbyterian, which made him the sort of creature Angie Marie felt she could tolerate. He was better for her than I’d ever be. You can’t just have laughs forever.
I hadn’t seen her since this then, so this was a sort unexpected, awkward reunion.
“Oh,” I managed. “Hi,” once Angie had answered my knock.
She looked past me to Desmond and Luther. She’d met them both a few years before, back when we’d tangled with that Boudrot the first time around.
“Hey, boys,” she said.
“Evening, ma’am,” Luther told her. He had the habit of getting old West courtly in the presence of any woman who wasn’t palpable cracker trash.
“Everything okay here?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Just saw all the lights.”
Angie glance into the kitchen where Pearl was prattling on about something. She stepped out across the threshold and shut the door behind her.
“Problem?” she said.
“Remember that Boudrot?”
“Fuckstick?”
I nodded. “He’s loose.”
“Released?”
I shook my head. “Kind of busted out.”
“And he’s looking for y’all?” She took us all in.
We nodded like a clutch of shamed schoolboys.
“What do you want me to do?” Angie asked me.
“Take Pearl home with you. Only be for a couple of days.”
Angie stood and digested the prospect in silence.
“He’ll kill any damn thing. Got one body already.”
“All right,” she said and exhaled profoundly. “I guess I can stand to get earfucked for a week.”
“Thanks,” I told her.
I got a grunt. A corrosive nod.
As she was turning to lay her hand to the doorknob, I tried to make nice with Angie. “How’s … uh … Donald?”
“Wife in Orlando, as it turned out.”
“Oh. Sorry,” I said. “Guys, huh?”
She lingered to cut us all three with a look. “Yeah,” Angie told us. “Guys.”
A trip to Memphis for Pearl was like going to Paris for most anybody else. She was uneasy driving anywhere but locally anymore and so made regular excursions to the Sunflower Market, to the Dollar Store, and the Rack Room—all of them on the truck route. She played canasta in the neighborhood. Drove to the Presbyterian church, and had lunch sometimes at the catfish place in downtown Indianola. But that was about as wide as Pearl’s orbit got anymore, so she didn’t need to be asked twice to go with Angie up to Memphis.
We all hung around there in the house while Angie helped Pearl pack. Me and Desmond cleaned up Pearl’s dinners dishes while Luther found him a topcoat in Gil’s closet. Pearl was keen to let Luther have anything of her dead husband’s that would fit. It was a fine specimen as topcoats go, beautiful caramel-colored camel hair with only one mismatched button. Luther went on at some length about the skirting and hang of the thing. He talked about clothes the way most guys in the Delta talked about fishing.
We promised to lock up, and I assured Pearl I’d take care of her flowers, by which I meant that I’d try to avoid crushing them with my car. We all stood there in the driveway waving as they reached the road in Angie’s beamer. Then she gassed the thing, and they rolled off into the night.
“There’s Pearl safe anyway,” I said.
Luther shoved his coat sleeve my way. “Smell that.”
I didn’t.
“Put your truck in the pullout,” I told Luther, “in case any troopers come around.” My Ranchero was already buttoned up in Pearl’s car shed.
Desmond had left his phone, like usual, in his Escalade cup holder. His “Satin Soul” ringtone started in before we could get back into the house. It was late, but Desmond was a night owl and his mama was the same, so there was nothing odd about Desmond getting a call in the small hours. It was probably after midnight by then.
Desmond opened his door and fished out his phone. He checked the screen and groaned a little. “Kendell,” he said and answered.
Kendell wasn’t a night owl, and Kendell worked the day shift. If he was up and about, it had to be for something catastrophic.
Desmond listened without comment for long enough to make me squirm. When he finally spoke, he only said, “Sweet Lord.”
“What?” I asked him.
“Cut up?” Desmond said into the phone.
“Who?” Luther had even quit sleeve sniffing.
“Yeah, he’s here,” Desmond told Kendell. “Luther too.”
He listened.
“Doing that now but hadn’t caught up with any of them but him. Just sent Pearl off with her niece.”
Desmond listened some more before he said, “All right,” and dropped the call.
“Must have been going after Dale,” Desmond told us. “Ended up at Patty’s.”
* * *
Dale and Patty had been married back when that Boudrot went to prison. They had a little house and a garden plot up by Boyer that Patty had kept in the divorce. When Dale went inside for taking bribes and beating a few boys up, Patty decided that he wasn’t worth redeeming after all. She served papers on Dale in the lockup and presented him with the key to his self-storage unit where he could find his collection of tracksuits and his free weights and his dumbbells and his dietary supplements and his big chrome commercial-grade juicer.
He tried to win her back once he was out, but Patty’s restraining order made that kind of tough.
We all rode out to Patty’s together. It was a handsome little place a few miles north of town in the middle of nowhere much. Patty’s nearest neighbor was on the far side of a wheat field, probably half a mile away.