“You’re kidding me,” Kain said.
It was not a long course, as stated, yet it offered entertaining challenges all its own. The field sloped sharply downhill for nearly half the course, a menace that had served its share of sprained ankles and sprained wrists, bruises and broken fingers, broken egos and broken legs (but not so often as to force a relocation of the event, or worse, cancel it outright). As if that weren’t enough, it took a small rise that offered a most unusual hazard: a short jump over a deep trench filled with mud (two small signs at each end informed the participants that the brown soup was also sponsored by Your Friends at Henderson). Thirty paces beyond the muck lay the finish line, and beyond that, a rudimentary shower of sorts waited for those participants who, year after year without fail, stood muddied and embarrassed and in dire need of it. A bright red water truck from the Spencer Fire Department stood next to it, pumping water into a huge tub supported by a crude wooden framework, a framework that had, back in ’56, collapsed, turning a poodle into a puddle, and generating a lawsuit against the organizers, the fire department, and even incumbent Tate, that had threatened to end the race once and for all. Fortunately, cooler heads had prevailed with an out-of-court settlement, the town council voting unanimously to provide the plaintiff with a newborn puppy, and a year’s supply of Purina Dog Chow from Milton’s Hardware & Grocery.
“Break a leg, son.”
“Thanks, Big Al.”
“As I recall—cripes, who was it? Granger Purdy’s boy. Yeah. About five or six years ago. Broke both of ’em. Poor kid was on crutches for six months. I see him sometimes. Kid still don’t walk right.”
“Well, that’s certainly nice to know.”
“What’s the matter?” Lynn taunted, tugging at Kain’s arm. “Scared of a little mud?”
“You know,” he said playfully, “I really think Lee’s a better match for your height.”
“Oh, no. You’re not talking your way out of this one.”
“Not a chance,” Lee-Anne chimed. Despite the suffocating heat, the young girl sported slacks and a long-sleeved shirt, shading herself with a small umbrella for most of the day. She scratched where the bandages itched. “I think he’s afraid to get those boots dirty.”
Big Al motioned with his cane. “You just gonna stand there and take that?”
Kain gave the man a helpless look, as if to say, Get me outta this, will ya?
Lynn would have none of it. She took him by the hand and led him round the course perimeter. She paid the dollar entry fee (which granted the entrants a length of rope, two team numbers with pins, and a chance to win the coveted first-place prize of fifty Henderson Lumber Dollars), and then led him to the starting line. He wriggled as she pinned his number on his shirt.
“Stand still,” she told him.
“Ow!”
“Big baby.”
“Lucky number,” he chuckled, pinning hers.
“Superstitious? You?”
“I figure the odds are already stacked against us,” he said. “But a pair of 13’s?”
She laughed. “Which side?”
“Huh?”
“Left or right?”
“Oh … left, I guess.”
“Yours or mine?”
He moved to her left.
“Jeepers. Stand still,” she said again, as she knelt and roped their legs. “Help me up, will you?”
He took her up by the hand. Like strangers in a terminally long elevator ride, they stood silently, roped as they were, she waiting for him, he waiting for her, both of them trying not to crowd the other too much. Kain tapped his fingers nervously on his leg.
“Like them,” she said finally, nodding to the teenaged couple cuddling beside them.
A little hesitant (the boss was watching, and probably the boss’s wife, no doubt), he slowly slid his arm around the small of her back. She slid hers in beneath his.
“I won’t bite, you know.”
He nudged in closer.
“Better,” she said. They took themselves for a test drive, and she had to laugh at how out of step they were. Clunky and off-balance, they were two rubes stumbling home after a bender trying to hold each other up.
“Let’s try it again,” she said, still laughing.
He regarded her with an unnatural smile that was troubling at best. As it had all afternoon, static rolled from the throng in waves, rising here, cresting there, all the while nearly overloading his will to endure or ignore it. The stifling heat hadn’t helped. He still held a touch of a headache. Early on he had felt nauseous, slightly feverish (it had passed for but an hour while they feasted on chicken and ribs and Georgia’s fine Sweet Potato Casserole down by the river), and those gnawing sensations—those freakish, fleeting visions—had returned. Still, in this moment, something far more serious unsettled him. Just beyond the finish line, a photographer from the local paper was roaming about getting shots of the event. He eyed the newsman cautiously as he pretended to scan the countless faces of the gallery.
Lynn followed his glances to see what was the matter.
“Big crowd,” he said flatly, before she could ask. “They should get a kick out of us.”
“Hey, for all you know, I could be our secret weapon.”
“Yeah, I was thinking that when we almost fell over. So how many times have you done this?”
She raised a playful brow.
“Great,” he said. “We’ll both break our legs.”
Sid Plummer rapped the microphone and called for all participants to kindly take their places. The emcee thanked everyone for attending, thanked the town council for allowing him to host the event for the fourteenth straight year, promised (for the thirteenth straight year), with a bit of a burp, not to enter the pie-eating contest next year (his shirt sat stained in blueberry, last year it was huckleberry), and then, once the pleasantries and applause had concluded, quickly explained the rules of the race, no pushing, no shoving, no holding, no bumping, no tripping, no hair pulling, no cutting off, and absatively no stopping for a kiss (especially those pairs of just women or just men, Ha Ha Ha went the crowd). The loudspeakers squawked and squealed with feedback, and the large gathering groaned. Sorry about that, folks, came the equally squealing apology.
The emcee stepped to the edge of the stage and stirred the eager crowd by placing a hand to his ear. A flashgun went off with a phooomph. The drifter had already turned away from the photographer, pretending to rub something from his eye.
“Are you ready?” Sid Plummer shouted from the podium. The words blasted out of the speakers, distorted but discernible. The crowd cheered. The man smiled wide and took a step back. He covered the mike and said something to Mayor Tate, who in return grinned a politician’s grin and raised two fighting fists in the air. A handful of the good Mayor’s supporters clapped.
“I said … ‘Arrre … youuuuu … READEEEEEEEEE?’”
Another cheer, this one far more supportive and anticipative than the first. Even Georgia Hembruff, a good thirty yards from the crowd, had joined in, cheering and clapping the way she had, but not without looking around to see if anyone had noticed her small outburst afterward.
Ever the showman, the emcee produced a starter’s pistol, raised it, held it, then lowered it to the crowd’s mild displeasure. He teased them twice more with it, and then, once they’d had enough (there were friendly boos), raised it a final time. His arm was quite extended and his pants rode up halfway to his knees. This drew grins and snickers (as it did every year), but all in all, the amiable coach-cum-master of ceremonies appeared to enjoy playing the jovial mob.
“Here we go,” Kain said breathlessly. He felt Lynn’s hold about him tighten. He had to admit, he was suddenly feeling pre-race jitters himself.
“On your mark …”
“Too late to back out now, cowboy.”
“Get set …”
The drifter’s concern shifted then, from the pistol to the photographer, who had repositioned himself near the trench
in anticipation of a priceless shot. The newshound looked up for an instant, right at Kain it seemed, and was still focusing and fiddling with his gear when the pistol fired.
~ 6
The crowd burst into a frenzy, cheering the entrants on. Like scurrying three-legged spiders, the field quickly scattered, most of the players trying to gain their legs, as it were, some hopping in circles, some listing backward, some veering sideways, one pair roaming off course and into the crowd. It was human-body chaos. Bodies fell and rolled. Bodies fell and didn’t. Screams of laughter came from on and off the field. One couple split apart, their loosely tied rope coming undone and tripping them up, and they had to regroup, doing their best to lace up again as the rest of the field distanced themselves. Much to the delight of her boyfriend (and others, ahem), Marge Bonner bounced her way along, but she had to stop; her left breast had popped out of her skimpy top, leaving Team Sixty-Nine Team Nine for an embarrassing moment until she tucked herself in (several young men, and a few not so young, cheered, while one woman on the sidelines grabbed her gawking husband by the arm and insisted they were leaving). The teens who had started next to Lynn and Kain had managed to bolt out in front and were doing quite well, but their quick start would be their undoing. They tried to slow down along the sharp incline, but they tripped up and went flying. The young girl let out a wail that sent dozens into laughter, and she and her boyfriend landed flat on their faces. There were a few Ooooohs as some people winced, but in reality it looked worse than it was. The girl was only slightly winded, and the young man, down but not out, shook it off and spat out a patch of grass. He kissed the girl, and she swatted him. Caught off guard by the human speed bump in their path, another couple tried their best to go round, but since the husband wanted to pass on the right and the wife on the left, they simply carried forward and toppled over the teenagers into a heap. The wife, thirty-two-year-old Emily Hodgson of Spencer, would later complain of a sore ankle and would be diagnosed with a second-degree sprain; three days later, she would slip on the second step from the top going downstairs for breakfast, break her neck in the fall, and would be buried the following Tuesday.
The Lucky 13’s were having their own comical troubles. Kain was too tall after all, Lynn always a step behind in her stride. He tried to slow their rapid descent with his heels, she tried to keep up as best she could, but as it was, they were just too out of step with each other, laughing the way they were. They swerved like drunks, veering left toward the crowd one moment, steering back the other way the next. Yet, despite their zigzagging, the strategy (dumb luck, really) kept them vertical. But more importantly, as they ambled past the two fallen couples and struggled up the rise toward the trench, it kept them solidly in third, just shy of second.
The leaders, the four-year-in-a-row championship team of the McCogley brothers Edward and Mitch (both deeply tanned farmhands, crew-cut, shirtless with shorts, Eight’s pinned to their asses, the elder Mitch sporting a snake tattoo on his hairless chest, the younger Edward boasting a skull), timed their jump perfectly. They crossed the three-foot leap with a practiced three-point landing, but their inertia shot them forward and they toppled. They scrambled to their feet, and Mitch McCogley cuffed his brother a good one upside the head.
The Seven-Seven sisters, Sally and Bonnie Parker (twins not by any stretch, they had different fathers from different counties, Bonnie a full one-eighty-eight, Sally a relatively svelte one-sixty-five), were a dozen steps from the trench and moving fast. They stumbled, nearly falling flat on their faces, but somehow managed to right themselves. Their eyes seemed to grow with each step toward the looming leap.
Trailing them by mere strides, Kain egged his partner on. Lynn responded with double time but was nearly out of breath, huffing and puffing Oh my God Oh my God. They brushed up against the pair of Sevens and overtook them taking second, finding themselves just three long strides from the jump. A jump coming way too fast.
“Watch out!”
Lynn was half laughing, half shouting, as they made their approach. A bright blast from a flashgun struck them, but Kain had already turned away, drawing them sideways and toward the trench at a precipitous angle. They nearly keeled over. Struggling to stay vertical, the Parker sisters were screaming like the schoolgirls they were, leaping out of blind faith and a prayer. They came up a full foot short and splashed into the gravy like stones. Laughing uncontrollably, muddied as they were, they began the arduous task of climbing out. They nearly made it, but gravity was unkind and they slid back in, flailing. For their part, Kain and Lynn could only limp forward and stumble in after them (Lynn let out a wail that was all too girlish), and they came down quite off-kilter. Still laughing, Lynn clutched her partner with both arms, and when they bounced off the big girls and splashed into the thick brown soup up to their waists, both of them were laughing themselves silly.
Completely covered in muck, the sisters regrouped and crawled from the trench. Lynn struggled to help her teammate rise. He ducked (she screamed) as a pair of leaping Elevens swept over them, and he had to draw her down on top of him as he fell on his rear. The goop nearly swallowed them. Further along the mud-trough, the Sixty-Niners missed the mark and dunked like donuts, and when today’s boy toy grabbed her boob as something to hang on to, Banshee Bonner howled. The stragglers had thrown in the towel, stopping to watch the goings-on, laughing, pointing, and carrying on. The sidelines cheering continued to fever, and while the Lucky 13’s managed to climb out without further incident, they were too far behind to catch up, and as it was, the crowd erupted once more as the McCogley Brothers Edward and Mitch legged through the finish line to victory for the fifth straight year, amid a flurry of photographic phooomphs and applause. So much for The Great Three-Legged Experiment.
~ 7
“I swear, if this gets in the paper I’ll die,” Lynn said, limping across the finish. Splattered and smeared from top to bottom, her 13 was now but the lower half of a 1. The flower in her hair was a mash of limp petals, and her hair itself looked a fright. She clawed the thickest stuff off her face in slimy handfuls, and in quite unladylike fashion, spat out some mud. “Blecch.”
Kain tried not to laugh, but he simply burst. She did, too. He was soaked and equally a mess, if not more. His hair was caked with brown goop, his face thick with the dirty slime. His eyes were round white balls. He looked like a sorry stand-in for Al Jolson’s Gus in Big Boy.
Still, in spite of themselves, he was thankful for one thing. The newshound had just snapped a shot of the Banshee under the shower (Kain doubted the small kid in the foreground had actually been in focus) and was now heading off to the podium for some post-race shots of the victors. He could not be certain, but he figured he had averted any trouble. Time would tell, of course, but should the worst happen, there was always the road.
“Cripes,” Big Al said, hobbling up to them. He chuckled. “You’re a mess, darlin’, no doubt about it. But you look like hell, boy.”
His granddaughter giggled beside him.
“He looks like a god damn nigger.”
Maybe it was that last emphatic word; the dark cut of that slurred voice. But when she looked up from untying her leg from her partner, Lynn Bishop was clearly shaken. She rose, slipping back just a little. Her daughter gasped Pa, so low and so breathless that no one could hear.
Flanked by cronies who stood a small distance behind him, Ray Bishop swirled his favorite drinking buddy at his side, its glass throat held loosely between two fingers. The liquor was nearly fully drawn. He looked drunk and he was drunk. Drunk with anger.
Al Hembruff labored round and locked eyes with his son-in-law. “What do you want, Raymond.”
“‘Raymond’ … I always liked that. Don’t you like that, boys?”
George Jacob Maxwell, a forty-five-year-old gas station attendant whose forty-one-inch belt size often seemed loftier than his intelligence quotient, sniggered. A soiled Texaco cap sat crooked on his bulbous head. His arms were folded above a belly that
sprawled beyond his shirt and hung naked over his jeans; an ant scurried across it and seemed to be toying with the idea of burrowing into the man’s navel. Grocery boy Frank Wright (this forty-year-old success story would pick up some hours here and there from ol’ Five Fingers Milton, mostly when the smokes ran out), “Frankie” to his closest friends (all two of them) and hardly the sharpest tool in the shed himself, barely nodded. He coughed a horrible smoker’s cough and nearly lost the cigarette that dangled between his thin lips. He had lost an awful bout with a sidewalk in the fifth grade after losing control of his bicycle, and his upper lip had never quite closed with the lower one. Bad teeth. Bad skin. A real beanpole.
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