by Gerald Duff
“He leaves me alone, and I leave Him alone, J.W.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Tyrone,” J.W. said. “You handle your sex life, and I’ll handle mine, but just don’t stand too close to me in a thunderstorm, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Good,” Tyrone said. “I’m glad you’re willing to let me handle my sex life, whatever the hell that is, and I’m going to hold you to that promise.”
After turning the unmarked police car to the right, Tyrone pointed ahead to the gate opening into the Nathan Bedford Forrest Estates, and pulled over to the curb. “We’re here. How do you want to play it once we get to the preacher’s house? You knock, and I walk around to the back, or vice versa?”
“No, you knock. Whoever’s answering the door’ll take less time to open up to a man all spiffied up the way you are. They’ll take you for a dude who’s been to church and is acting under conviction or something. Maybe got some spiritual business that needs tending to. I’ll slip around back.”
“You forget this is a cowboy church deal, J.W. I ought to be wearing a sombrero or something, following that thinking.”
“They sure ain’t going to take me for a cowboy,” J.W. said. “I know that much. They liable to think you’re Lash Larue on vacation or something. Let’s go introduce ourselves to that guard and tell him not to be making no calls after he lets us through the gate.”
As soon as the guard saw the badge holder Tyrone showed him, he sat up from his slump in his chair and assumed a more military posture, even tugging the Confederate gray cap he was wearing into a more serious angle. J.W. noted this fact and approved. Maybe the man had thrown a hitch in the Mexican militaria before he had broke and run for the border and the steady paychecks it promised. Or maybe he was just concerned about the status of his green card. Whatever the reason, the guard had made a gesture toward recognizing at least one organizing principle still operating in the world, and J.W. drew some solace and satisfaction from that.
“You can’t miss the house Reverend Reynolds lives in,” the guard told Tyrone. “It’s the last one on the left side of the court, and it’ll have that plumbing van parked in the driveway, the one from Forrest City, Arkansas.”
“A plumber from Arkansas come in there today?” J.W. said. “I guess the preacher’s got something backing up on him, not wanting to take its ordained trip down the pipes.”
“Some kind of a leak, I guess,” the guard said. “I remember the sign on the truck because of what it said, you know. Forrest City, Arkansas, just like Nathan B. Forrest Estates, what the name is here.”
“Named for the same man,” J.W. said. “I wonder why the preacher would call all the way to Forrest City for a plumber to take care of his sewage needs.”
“You don’t know it’s sewage, J.W.,” Tyrone Walker said, beginning to pull away from the guard booth. “Could be intake problems the cowboys are having today, not sewage.”
“I predict sewage,” J.W. said. “I feel it in my bones.”
“You always assume the worse, every time something comes up. You are bound and determined to look on the dark side.”
“That way I am seldom disappointed,” J.W. said. “There’s the number we’re looking for, but I don’t see a plumber’s van.”
“I do,” Tyrone said, turning into the driveway off Battery Lane, “it’s pulled up behind the house. You can see just the rear end of it.”
Tyrone killed the engine, and both men alighted, pausing to check their Glock 9’s before separating to go to the front and back of the house.
“What you showing to whoever answers the door?” J.W. said.
“My smiling face, and my badge holder,” Tyrone said. “That’s the way you supposed to act on a Sunday afternoon in Memphis, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, you do that, but I got a feeling about this place. Something’s not right here, I don’t think. I believe I’m going to put my training into operation back yonder behind the house.”
“Oh, Lord,” Tyrone said. “What you won’t do to inject a little excitement into your day. Go on ahead, and do that. But I think what you’re feeling is just plumbing anxiety. I’ll just step up to the door and ask about our wandering schoolboy.”
“Give me a holler if you need to.”
The front door was massive, Tyrone noted, appearing at first glance to have been hewn from one huge section of a single tree, but as he leaned hard on the bell he could see the structure was an illusion crafted from metal. That’s reassuring, he thought, as he listened to the chimes working somewhere deep within the house. I’d hate to run into something real here at a cowboy preacher’s ranch house. It’d mix stuff up too much, even for Memphis.
When no sign of response came after a couple of minutes of pushing the button and hearing the bells go off inside over and over, Tyrone began to bang on the textured steel door with the flat of his hand, setting up a series of booms that he knew would wake even the dedicated deaf. Even J.W. will hear that, way around the back of the house, Tyrone was telling himself, when he saw a movement to his right just beyond a set of reddish colored ornamental bushes.
“Tyrone,” J.W. said. “We got something you got to come see, round behind the house there.”
“What? Is somebody trying to exit the rear?” Tyrone said, slamming his hand against the door one more time, and then turning to face J.W. “They heard me, huh?”
“Nope, no sign of anybody trying to leave the premises, but there’s a good-looking Mexican woman taped to a chair in the kitchen, wearing a uniform and all. She don’t look like she’s tied too tight, either.”
“She looks nuts?” Tyrone said, coming off the porch.
“No, I don’t mean that. What it is she looks like she could stand up anytime she feels like it and cook me a mess of enchiladas without a damn bit of hindrance from that tape.”
“Where’s the fucking plumber?” Tyrone said as he followed J.W. to the back of the house. “Is he the one that taped her up?”
“There is some duct tape stuck on the side of the van, too, all right. But if the plumber did the taping of the senorita, he is now tending to the sewage backup. There ain’t a sign of nobody else I can see. Let’s go bust in there and see what’s going on.”
“That’s a go,” Tyrone said. “We got imminent danger.”
“We got imminent horseshit, it appears to me,” J.W. said, lifting his Glock to tap at one of the side windows framing the door into the kitchen. “Watch out for your eyes.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Colorado and Ricky Nelson
Upstairs, the figure in the corner shadows of the ante-room leaned far enough forward for Randall Eugene to see the brim of his hat reflect light from a lamp near a side table. Ricky Nelson was trying to see what was happening with the handcuffs, Randall Eugene figured, interested to gauge how well things were going as his hand worked from side to side in the cuff.
“What’s all that pounding on the door down there, Colorado?” Ricky said. “Reckon it’s another one of this bunch of outlaws trying to get them to let him in?”
“If it is, he’s going to be as surprised as the rest of them if he ever gets up here,” Randall Eugene said, lifting his hand for Ricky to see that he had slipped the cuffs. “Look at what I just did.”
“You told me you’d do it,” Ricky said, “and I see you’re a cowboy who don’t say nothing he ain’t going to back up.”
“I appreciate that, Colorado,” Randall Eugene said, rubbing his wrist as he took a step toward the chair where the badman they called Earl had been sitting before the Indian called him into the counting room. “You’re the one give me the idea to get loose and pick up this piece.”
“Call it a firearm,” Ricky said. “A man should always call a thing by its right name.”
“This firearm,” Randall Eugene said. “That’s what I meant, Colorado. I just forgot the right thing to say.”
“What the fuck are you doing, kid?” the Range Foreman said, sitting up straight in his leather chair, not pray
ing now, his eyes wide open. “Get back where they put you, goddamn it. You going to get me killed when they come out of there and catch you with that .45 in your hand.”
“Colorado and I have done come up with a plan, Range Foreman,” Randall Eugene said. “You just keep your head down, and we’ll get this chore wrapped up.”
Ricky had stepped back again, farther into the shadows, and he was grinning now, Randall could see, his teeth a white blur as he lifted his head to laugh. “I do believe you have thrown a scare into the Range Foreman,” he said to Randall Eugene. “He don’t want no part of what you fixing to do. He ain’t got sand enough for it.”
“He’s not used to having to deal with varmints like these, Colorado,” Randall Eugene said. “That’s all. He’ll be all right once things get started up. He’ll remember what a cowboy’s got to do. You’ll see.”
“I admire a cowhand that won’t hear nothing bad said against his boss,” Ricky said, “I purely do. But the Range Foreman’s done showed me you ain’t going to be able to count on him. You got it all to do yourself.”
“Now, Colorado, that ain’t right, and you know it. I got help coming.”
“Who from?” Ricky Nelson said, sounding interested but not sure Randall Eugene was making sense. Ricky was standing out away from the wall now, a little closer to where the circle of light from the lamp was falling. The way he moved as he leaned forward looked perfect to Randall Eugene in its grace and balance.
“I’m talking about you, partner, of course. That’s who,” Randall Eugene said, pulling the slide back on the automatic until a sound told him a cartridge was chambered. “Me and you. You and me, Colorado.”
“What’re you saying?” the Range Foreman said. “What you talking about Colorado for? Get hold of yourself and sit back down in that fucking chair. Who’s that knocking on the front door? What in the name of Christ Jesus is going on?”
The one named Earl was the first one to start to come out of the counting room as the door swung inward and gave him room to swing the black garbage bag past it. It was heavy, and what was in it poked up into the sides of the bag and made points and lines and marks of strain in the plastic. What could that be, Randall Eugene asked himself, and even as he put the question to himself knew its answer. It was what he had been counting, it was the Boss’s money, and that sorry sidewinder with the untidy hair and sideburns was taking it out of the room where it belonged.
“Hold up there, partner,” Randall Eugene said, telling himself he wasn’t really saying the word partner to mean it the way he would if he was talking to Ricky Nelson. The right label for the piece of trash carrying off the Boss’s money in the saddlebags had nothing to do with being a cowpoke’s partner, but speaking the word to him now pointed out how unfit it was. Not that the outlaw scum would know that, as underbred and ignorant as he was. He might even take it as a compliment, and that made saying it even better.
“Where you headed with the Boss’s property, partner?” Randall Eugene said, using the word again and wanting to smile but not letting himself do that, because that would be a waste and a tip-off. Say things to trash like the man called Earl without him knowing what was really being said, and never let him know you’re meaning anything but the surface of what he thinks he’s hearing. It would be good now to be able to see the look Ricky would have on his face, hearing Randall Eugene call the man that word partner, and Randall Eugene could feel on the back of his head a little weight, a pressure so light it was a feather touching him, as Ricky watched what was going on.
Don’t look around, Randall Eugene told himself, no matter how much good it would do you to see the way Ricky is looking at you. Keep it inside yourself, let it stay there to look at later, don’t waver in what you’re doing, hold it together. Cowboy up.
“You little punk-ass motherfucker,” the man with the saddlebags full of the Boss’s money said, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing? Hand me that piece, and sit your skinny ass back down in that chair.”
“It’s not a piece, partner,” Randall Eugene said and shot Earl Winston in the chest. “It’s a firearm, see. You’re supposed to call a thing what it is. Always.”
Earl let the black plastic garbage bag slide out of his hand, as he began to fall back against the door facing, lifting his hand to his chest and patting at the place where the .45 slug had entered, but he couldn’t seem to find the right spot. He looked down at his shirt front as though by seeing it closer he’d be able to do a better job of locating where everything seemed to be happening all at once. The door facing stopped him from falling all the way back, letting him slide toward the floor where the black plastic bag had landed and tilted to one side as the stacks of bills inside it shifted.
Earl looked up at Randall Eugene, opening his mouth as though to say something, and that was neat, Randall Eugene thought as he saw it happening, but he didn’t expect the outlaw to actually be able to make any statement as he died. If he had been more of a main character, sure, he could’ve said a few words, tried to brag or be the big man or something, maybe even confess to something he’d done, show he was sorry he had taken the hoot owl trail all those years ago. But, no, not this one, and Randall Eugene knew if he himself didn’t speak up fast, the moment to sum up the meaning of the misdeeds Earl had done would slip away unremarked.
“See, partner,” Randall Eugene said, loud enough for Ricky to hear him from where he stood in the shadows, “if you don’t call a thing by the handle that belongs to it, you’ll never know what’s true and what’s a lie.”
Probably Earl didn’t hear all of that, judging by the way his eyes were all rolled back in his head, showing only their whites now, and he was so relaxed looking that whatever was inside of him had shifted to the side just like the money in the saddle-bags had done. Everything lying on the floor was on its own now, nothing was controlled by anything outside of itself, and that included Earl with all that blood running down the front of his shirt, onto his pants, and soaking into the carpet of the anteroom of the house belonging to the Big Corral outfit.
It made no real difference, though, Earl not hearing all of what Randall Eugene had said because he was too busy dying. Randall Eugene knew that Ricky Nelson had heard it and that later on they’d talk about it, somewhere by themselves as they stared into the embers of a fire before they threw the dregs from their cups of coffee into the ashes right before bunking down.
He couldn’t hear Ricky saying anything right now, though somebody was talking, yelling really, and Randall Eugene wished whoever it was would shut up so he could hear what Ricky had to say if he decided to talk at all now.
“It wasn’t me,” the voice was saying. “I just been sitting here praying and waiting for y’all to leave. I didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
Randall Eugene had heard the voice before, he knew he had, and he was just about ready to say the name his brain was fixing to furnish him, when Ricky Nelson spoke behind him. “Colorado,” he said, his voice low but carrying well from the shadows in the corner of the room. “The half-breed. Keep an eye out for him.”
What would I do without my partner, Randall Eugene said to himself as he dropped to one knee and moved to take cover. Later on when we got time, we’ll laugh about him having to tell me to watch out for the Indian, Ricky and me will. He’ll give me a real hoorawing about being a tenderfoot, and I’ll act like I’m sulling up about it. I really won’t be, naturally, but you got to play along and do the way you’re supposed to act around a bunch of cowboys. Everybody knows you’re just putting on a show, but that’s part of the fun of it, a way of knowing they’ll never let you get a big head, but they’ll all be right there with you if you get into a scrape. And you’re going to get into that. They ain’t no doubt about it. It’s a hard country and a hard life and a hard bed at night, and that’s why having a partner like Colorado means so much to a cowboy.
But don’t talk about that to him, Randall Eugene told himself as he leveled the sights of the .45 at a p
oint on the open door about the height of where a big Indian’s head would be if it appeared in the opening. When you talk and talk and talk about a thing that makes you feel a certain way, good or bad, the way I used to with the Bones Family standing on a street somewhere when I was somebody not me, it kills it. The more talk about what you think about a thing, the less you really think about it and the more it all seems to bleed out and die.
Ricky just sat there in that sheriff’s office and didn’t say a word to John Wayne when he asked him if he could help out with all the Clantons coming to get the young one, the wild drunk one of the bunch, out of the cell. He didn’t even nod, Ricky didn’t, he just lifted the shotgun up a few inches to show he’d heard what John Wayne had asked him, and when he did that, old Walter Brennan just cackled like he always would do. Then he said something like, “Colorado ain’t got nothing to say. I reckon he’ll let that shotgun do his palavering.”
Those words were not exactly the ones Walter Brennan used, Randall Eugene knew, and he felt the real ones somewhere just out of his reach, and he lifted the hand that wasn’t holding the .45 automatic as though to touch something floating past his eyes in a slow drift, something like a dandelion thistle. That was when the Indian’s head showed for just an instant in the open door, and the breeze took the dandelion thistle just past Randall Eugene’s eye close enough to affect his aim. The slug from the .45 must have hit the metal door facing and ricocheted because instead of falling down the Indian jerked his head back, and paint flecks and dust jumped up into the air of the room and someone was yelling about Jesus and making crying noises.
“Don’t let it bother you one bit, Colorado,” Ricky said to Randall Eugene from behind. “I wish I had me two bits for every time I’ve missed what I drawed down on.”
“I wasn’t watching what I was doing,” Randall Eugene said. “That big buck Indian was going to be hard to hit, and I ought to’ve been allowing for that.”
“You’ll get another chance,” Ricky Nelson said. “I guarantee you that, Colorado. And you’ll be ready next time, too. You’ll put one right between his eyes.”