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“You and Sladder are both skell, and you both know it,” Cummings went on. “If you guys go down, you two pig-dick-lickers will spin on me faster than it takes you to pop a butt-pimple. I need more green for my risk.”
Spaz hungover eyes fluttered as he dared look Cummings in the face.
“And if you chuckleheads even think about spinning on me, I hope you both have brains enough to realize I’ll kill your redneck asses before you can turn evidence. So what’s the deal?”
“Hall, he — “ Spaz faltered in his smudged overalls. “He ain’t got the dough, man — er, I mean Agent Cummings.”
“You’re not hearing me.” And then Cummings drew his Smith & Wesson Model 13 chock-full of .357 Q-loads. Cocked it. “I need more money, and I can’t trust you guys for shit.”
“Wait, wait, man! Listen to me. Here’s a deal for you. Keep covering Hall’s hooch runs, keep taking the c-note, and I’ll set you up with something else that’ll pull you a thousand a month.”
Yeah. Got him. “In exchange for what?”
Now Spaz dared to grin. “Coverin’ somethin’ else, man. I run dust and pot too, and…coke.”
“For who?”
“Fella named Dutch.” Spaz was getting ballsy now. “You ain’t need ta know his real name.”
“So this Dutch motherfucker’ll pay me a grand a month to feed him safe routes?”
“Well, yeah, I think so. It’ll take me some talkin’ though. I mean, Christ you’re a federal cop.”
“No Spaz, I’m a federal cop on the take. Tell this redneck piece of trash Dutch motherfucker that I can guarantee he’ll never get pinched. I’m a fed, my office gets every state narc and DEA fax in the area. He’ll sail clean as a cat’s ass if he works with me. But I gotta have that k-note every month, in cash, unsequenced serial numbers. And tell him this too, Spaz, I won't just mark routes for him. I'll carry his product to his point in the trunk of my federal unmarked fucking police car. Tell him that."
Spaz' moonshine-scarlet eyes grew wide in glee.
Cummings replaced his piece.
"Sh-sure, Stew - er, I mean, Agent Cummings."
"Cut out the Agent Cummings crap, will ya. Call me Stew." Cummings lit a smoke, offered one to Spaz. "We still friends or what?"
"Sh-sure, Stew."
"Just want you to know where I'm coming from. And this dope-peddler of yours, this Dutch — just think how happy he'll be when you tell him you gotta federal tin who wants to transport product for him."
"I-I never thought about it that way."
"Shit, Spaz, he'll be so happy with you, he'll probably pay your next semester's tuition at Harvard."
Spaz' face hooked up in confusion. "Whuh — what's 'harvard,' Stew?"
"Never mind. you guys need me to make your lives easier, and I need the bread. So go talk to your man. I'll meet you here same time tomorrow."
Spaz cheered up quick, smiled again with those teeth that would make a dental hygienist throw up in the rinse sink. "Tomorrow, man, you got it. Any luck I'll have your first month's dough in my pocket."
Cummings spewed smoke, nodded abruptly. "Talk to Dutch."
Spaz roared off out of the dell in his souped '71 Mustang, a 351 Cleveland. Got him hooked, Cummings knew. He'd played it just right, worked Spaz like a puppet and let him come to his own conclusions.
It was a beautiful day. He got back into his unmarked and pulled onto the county highway. Yeah, he told himself, I’m a federal cop on the take. He wasn’t too happy about it, but how else could he afford Kath’s medicine? in the past, it had just been hooch — no big deal — but now he was moving up to the real McCoy — coke, PCP, shit these scumbags sold to 9-year-olds, shit that turned people’s lives inside out. But Cummings had a plan for that too.
Cummings was a Special Agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Russell County Field Office, in Lewisburg, Virginia. He’d worked the gig 10 years now, busting bootleggers and moonshiners, busting stills, setting up stings. At first, he’d even believed in his work — until Kath had gotten sick.
I gotta come through for her, he thought desperately, I can’t let her down.
Nobody else gave a shit, so why should he? And he swore to himself, once Kath was better, he’d go off the pad...
“Hey, Stew.”
“J.L.” Cummings dropped his gunbelt in the field office, hot weight off his waist. J.L. Peerce was a Special Agent in Charge of the FO, and he knew the ropes; Peerce grew up out here, was a rube himself until he got out and got himself an education. Slicked-back black hair, chopburns, and an Elvis sneer. Cummings didn’t have much of a problem with him.
“We’se be goin’ to Washington next month, fer a training session at Buzzards Point.” he declared. “Party hard in D.C. strip joints every night, all on the lamb.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“So how was your watch?”
Cummings eased down in an opposing metal folding chair, lit up another Lucky. “Squat. Nothin’. Checked all those still sites we busted last winter, and the sites are dry. Checked all the back trails, and — nothing. But I’m finding a little activity in some of the old McKully sites. Should be ready to drop hammer on them soon.”
“Good,” Peerce said from his own chair across a U.S. Government gray-metal desk. “How’s the wife, by the way?”
The question felt like a sudden fish hook sunk into Cummings’ check. “The same. Goddamn medicine is killing me. Four-fifty a month, and it’s going up.”
“Don’t know how ya do it, Stew. Yer a good man.”
Not as good as you might think, Cummings thought.
........
Ten years now, and all they were paying him was a piddly 32.5 a year. Different raise prerequisites and time-in-service stats, save for a pissant COLA every now and then. Cummings reasoned it was their fault that he had to do what he did. If they paid him what he was worth — that would be different.
Wouldn’t it?
The sun was sinking. State Route 154 ribboned through treelines and dead pastures, taking him home. Sometimes he had to pull over and masturbate — another thing he didn’t fell too good about — because, despite his primal male needs, he knew it wouldn’t be right to be going home and jumping Kath’s bones, sick as she was. But whenever he did it, every single time in fact, he thought about Kath...
She was always tired, always run down. He knew she tried hard to stay up for him every night, but lately she didn’t even have the energy to do that. Sometimes she cried about it.
Don’t think about it, he cut off the thought. Be a man. Do the right thing. Take care of your wife, because you know goddamn well if it was you who was sick, she’d be bending over backwards to take care of you.
That was about all it took.
He was about to take the turnoff, then, when he saw the flashing red and blue lights up in Cotter’s Field...
........
Travis lay back in bed, sighin’ yet wide-eyed. Moonlight hung in the winder, and throwed light like purdy ribbons on the wood floor, and there were a ruckus of crickets and peepers.
Headers, he thought.
Yessir, he’d had hisself a mighty fine header tonight.
Grandpap had showed him how ta do it. A’corse, he’d hadda snatch hisself a splittail first, but that were easy. “Make shore it’s from a family who done us wrong,” Grandpap had instructed from his wheelchair.
Well, in the past, back when his maw and daddy was still livin’. it weren’t just the Caudills who’d have ‘em a bad time, jackin’ their sheep an’ all. One time, he remembered, a coupla Reid’s dirty rube kids’d plucked all the apples offa one of Daddy’s Golden Delcious trees, all ‘cos a few branches had growed over the fence and were hangin’ over the Reid line. Daddy’d about had a fit. But Travis remembert that well, and when he were drivin’ the pickup ‘round, lookin’ fer a splittail ta snatch, thar she was. He recalled fairly well, Iree Reid was her name, and thou
gh she’d been a might younger last time Travis eyed her, there weren’t no foolin’ him now, not with that shiny blonde hair or them big milkers stickin’ out the front of her peached-colored halter. She were lopin’ barefoot down the Old Governor’s Bridge Road, and a’corse, bein’ the gentleman he was, Travis pulled over an’ offered her a ride home.
“Why’s, you’re Travis Clyde Tuckton, ain;t ya!” she drawled her verbal celebration once she slid her purdy cut-offed jeaned backside inta the truck. “Why’s I remember ya from way back when.” Her purdy freckly face blushed a bit. “Don’t mind tellin’ ya now, I kinda had a fixin’ for ya.”
“Well I gots ta be honest, Iree,” Travis admitted, “Fore I got my butt throwed inta the county poky, I hadda mighty fixin’ on you too!”
“Ya did!”
Travis slammed his big knuckly fist fight smack-dab inta her forehead, and her little lights went right out. then, pickup still rumblin’, he tied her up but good, gagged her, and stuffed her curvy skinny body down inta the footwell. Next thing he knowed, he was carryin’ her in like a sack of farm feed inta Grandpap’s work room, and took ta settin’ her down on the big cherrywood table Grandpap made boots on.
“One of them dirt-eatin’ blondie Reids!” Grandpap exalted. “Good job, Travis! Now tie her down on the table and git them silly, whory clothes off her.”
Travis saw and didn’t even have ta be tolt, ‘cos there was eye-hooks screwed inta each corner’a the table. Little Iree was still out fer the count, so Travis cut her ropes and tied her right back down to the table, on her back, and her head hangin’ over the table edge.
“What I do next, Grandpap?”
Grandpap tittered, stroked his whiskers, and wheeled right up ta the table. In one crabbed hand, though, he gripped the power drill, which were fitted with a 3-inch hole saw.
“Travis, it’s sorta like anything, anything takes practice, ya know. Like Thomas down the roadside bar? that ol’ coot kin play the washboard just as pretty as you please, and Conga Powers, boy, he kin git ta pickin’ the banja like nobody’s business. Know why, son?”
The calculative powerhouse that was Travis’ mind ticked right away. “Practice?” he guessed.
“S’right, boy. Practice. And as far as cuttin’ open a splittail’s coconut goes, I gots a lotta practice, I kin tell ya. Me an’ yer daddy, see — and God rest his soul — we’se got ta be the best head-humpers from here ta New Orleens.”
And with that fine testimony Grandpap squeezed the drill’s trigger, paused, then applied it to the top of Iree Reid’s purdy blond head.
Made quite a racket, it did, an’ travis’ nose twitched at the smell’a burnin’ hair’n bone, but it weren’t another few more seconds ‘fore Grandpap set down the drill.
“Yessir, a good ‘un,” he declared, and wheeled right up, inspectin’ his job. “See that, Travis? What I done, see, is I cut me a perfect hole in the top’a her noggin. See?”
Travis leaned over, squinting. “Yeah, Grandpap. I see.” And he also seed the perfect circle’a bone still wedged in the hole-saw. “So what’s now?”
“Just ya watch.”
Travis, curious as he were, just clammed up and watched Grandpap, very adroitly now, push Iree’s blonde hair back, to show the fresh-cut hole more clear. Blood was drippin’ a little onta the floor.
Then Grandpap picked up a knife.
“What’cha — what’cha gonna do with that, Grandpap?”
Watch, boy. Gotta make a slit, fer yer pecker.”
Later it would occur to Travis that this made sense. The knife was just yer typical steak knife, ‘bout eight inches long an’ one inch wide, and Grandpap, with the same surprise expertise, stuck that baby right inta that hole in Iree’s skull, slittin’ hisself a nice li’l slot. But, boy, once that knife were retracted, out gushed the blood mixed with somethin’ that looked watery — CSF or cerebral spinal fluid, but a big dumb animal like Travis wouldn’t know nothin’ ‘bout that - and it was then that Travis seed just how the floor at the base of the work table got ta be so rotted. All that blood over the years, pumpin’ outa gals’ heads, and the stuff just lay there, turned the wood soft, an’ went ta rot.
“Get’cher bone up, boy,” Grandpap said, wheeling back to watch and unfastening his trousers hisself. “Get ‘er up and stick it in. Have yerself yer first head-humpin’.”
Travis didn't knowed quite what he thought about this at first. Fuckin' a gal's brain? He dropped trow and jacked hisself a tad, thinkin' 'bout some of the honeys he seed in the girlie mags in the joint. An' once his dog was up an' barkin' he stepped up to Iree's motionless head at the edge of the table and paused.
"Come on, boy. What's wrong witch' ya? Ya got yerself a header here, boy. Better'n any pussy ya ever stuck yer bone in."
The implication was clear, a'corse: Travis were meant to put his hard dick inta Iree Reid's head an' hump it. Relucterant at first, he did so, but it weren't long 'fore he got the feelin's.
"Aw. shee-it, Grandpap," his throat gusted. "This is mighty fine, mighty fine, indeedy."
Travis held her dead head, humpin' it, his dog-stiff plumbin' in an out Iree Reid's still-warm brain. At first he thought it might be like jackin', in that he'd have ta think 'bout the girlie mags, and the gals he poled 'fore he went ta the joint, or some of the butts he slammed whiles he was in stir. No, Travis weren't queer, but when ya pulled 11 years in the county slam, ya made considerations. Ever so often, Travis'd get ta thinkin' and suddenly he'd be hornier'n a field dog. So he'd find hisself one of the bitches (Bitches, fer those'a ya that don't know, were what skinny boys was called in the slam, and they was mostly always ready, willin', an able ta spread their cheeks fer a pack of smokes or a li'l protection. And anyways, Travis helped hisself many a time, not that he were queer, mind ya, as has already been preevcrissly stated. He'd just think about Kari Ann Wells' slick hot box whiles he's was doin' it, er some other gal he dicked was back when, an' he'd come just dandy.) But there weren't no need fer this now. I'se havin' me a header! I'se humpin' a gal's brain, he thought. An' it feels GOOD...
"Hump that head, boy. Hump it!" Grandpap goaded on from his wheelchair. "Give her brains a good squirt of yer jizz!"
And this Travis did 'bout a second later, huffin' an' puffin' an' humpin' away till the feelins' built up so bad, there were no turnin' back. He grunted then moaned long an' hard an' shot a gusher of his peckersnot deep inta the middle of Iree Reid's head.
An' ya know what?
It felt better'n any pussy he ever did hump, and any buttholes too. Fer shore. Travis, blushing and outa breath, stepped back an' let his limp bone slide outa the warm hole.
"Shee-it, Grandpap. you were right. Head-humpin's a kick!"
"Told ya so, boy," Grandpap obliged. He was jackin' hisself whiles he' was watchin', and had already creamed his belt buckle with a li'l spurt of his old man juice.
"Ain't nothin' like a good header, Travis. No one been doin' it out these parts fer awhiles, but it's high time we'se get back ta the old ways. We'se gonna have ourselfs a head-humpin’ most any chance we git, yessir! An’ lemme tell ya somethin’, son. Yer daddy’d be damned proud knowin’ you just spewed a load of yer peckersnot in that blammed Reid girl’s head!”
........
Cummings' mind fell aswarm with thoughts. First off, Kath, of course—run down all the time, lethargic, sick. But she still had a smile for him every night, didn't she? Then some harder things, like Spaz, and this dope peddler Dutch. He knew it wasn't exactly conduct becoming of a federal agent, but what else could he do? He needed the money. It wasn't like he was robbing banks, for Christ's sake, or taking down old ladies on Crotchet Lane for their social security. I'm going to knock over a drug dealer, for crying out loud... These guys sold crack to kindergarten kids. They put 13-year-olds out onto the street to turn tricks. They didn't give a shit about the kids, so why should Cummings give a shit about them? He'd be doing the world a service.