Rumble Tumble

21

We drove away from there just before noon, right after Herman set fire to the church. It caught quick and went up like oiled cardboard. Herman left a note and a hundred dollars on his truck seat next to the title for the vehicle. The note gave the title and the land to the Mexican woman. The hundred dollars was back wages. The prairie dog machine remained in the truck bed to go the way of fate. I wondered if the Mexican woman would take to it, start sucking dogs out of the ground to sell. My guess was it beat cooking beans and cornbread for a hundred dollars a month.

I was driving, Leonard was in back with Herman and Brett. Red was sitting up front with me, sullen and quiet for a change. I glanced in the rearview mirror and watched the church burn. For a moment, it looked as if it were wearing a flaming hat, then the whole thing was fire and falling lumber.

“So much for God’s house,” Herman said.

Man, this was something. An East Texas bouncer, a black queer, a ex-sweet potato queen, a six-foot-four overweight retired hit man and former reverend, and a redheaded midget with an attitude. The only thing we needed to top our wagon off were a couple of used-car salesmen, a monkey and an organ grinder.

Late in the day we reached the Mexican border. We stayed in a motel on the Texas side that night in a little town called Echo. Herman made a phone call to his friend, some guy named Bill Early Bird. I listened to the talk, trying to pick up on any code words that might mean bring about three hundred bad guys with shotguns and a lawn mower, but I didn’t detect anything like that. Herman explained what we wanted in simple terms and hung up.

“We wait,” Herman said.

Leonard decided to sit outside in the car with a shotgun, just in case the wrong crowd showed up. I loaded a shotgun myself, sat inside to the left of the door. Brett had her pistol and mine. Two Gun Mama. Red and Herman watched television.

About nine P.M. there was a knock on the door and I had Red open it up. Standing outside was a big, dark man who almost filled the doorway. He was dressed in a T-shirt, paint-splattered blue jeans jacket, blue jeans, and boots with paint splotches on them.

He looked down at Red, over at Herman, then around the door at me and Brett.

“Come in,” I said.

He glanced at my shotgun, which I had moved slightly to the side so as not to look too unfriendly. He looked at Brett for a while. She held the handguns against the tops of her thighs like little lap warmers.

The big man came inside. Herman stood up and stuck out his hand. The big man took it. There didn’t seem to be any great enthusiasm in the greeting on either part, just formality.

“Herman,” he said. “How are things with the Lord?”

“Rocky,” Herman said.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

The man had a kind of singsong quality to his voice. His face was pocked.

“This is Bill Early Bird,” Herman said. “He and I used to run together.”

“Long ago,” Bill said.

Herman introduced me and Brett and said, “This is Red, my brother.”

“Red,” Bill said, and stuck out his hand. Red took it and Bill pumped the entire midget like a water pump handle.

Leonard appeared in the open doorway with his shotgun.

Herman said, “And this is Leonard.”

Leonard shut the door, said, “Glad to meet you.”

Bill nodded. “I take it, Herman, these men and this woman are not friends of yours.”

“Not exactly,” Herman said. “They are not friends of Red. I am caught in the middle. Please, sit down.”

Bill started to sit, but Leonard said, “No hard feelings, my man, but I’d like you to come over here and put your hands on the wall.”

Bill looked at Herman. Herman shrugged.

“I don’t suppose while I have my hands on the wall you want me to lower my trousers, do you?” Bill said.

“Only if you want to,” Leonard said.

Bill did as he was told. Leonard held the shotgun to the back of Bill’s head with one hand while he patted him down with the other. Leonard removed a lock-blade knife from Bill’s front pocket and a little revolver from a holster at the small of his back.

“You can sit down now,” Leonard said. “Do that and we’ll get along.”

“We’ll get along all right,” Bill said. “All you got to do is treat me good and don’t call me Chief.”

“He doesn’t like being called Chief,” Herman said. “Bill here, he’s a Kickapoo Indian.”

“Long way from your original stomping grounds, aren’t you?” Leonard said.

“What about you?” Bill said. “My people at least came from this continent.”

“Actually,” Leonard said, “my people come from East Texas.”

“That might as well be another continent,” Bill said, and sat on the bed.

“Story is you can get us across the border into Mexico,” I said. “Carrying guns and ammo.”

“Maybe,” Bill said. “There’s something I must get straight. I am not a great friend of Herman’s. I know him. We have done some work together in the past. Smuggling. I want it understood up front that I’m my own man, and I’ve got my own help, and that’s who I’m taking care of.”

“Help?” Brett said.

“Two men,” Bill said. “One is a pilot. The second man will help in other ways. I want five hundred dollars for each of us.”

“Herman said a thousand,” Brett said.

“Herman has no idea what I want,” Bill said. “Prices change. And I don’t do this much anymore. I have to make it worth my while. And frankly, that’s pocket change.”

“I can write you a check,” Brett said.

Bill laughed.

“I can give you a thousand in cash,” Brett said. “I thought I might need money for something like this. I have that much. A little more, but I’ll need what’s left for food and such.”

“All right,” Bill said. “You give me a thousand cash. Write me a check for five hundred, and put down on the check it’s for car repairs. You get asked, I had to fix your brakes and balance your tires, do a tuneup. All kinds of things. You understand?”

Brett nodded.

“I have to talk to my men,” Bill said. “I don’t even know they’ll do this. I didn’t tell them anything. I wanted to see you first. I want to see some money now.”

“You can see it,” Leonard said, “but you aren’t taking it with you.”

Bill gave Leonard a strained look. “I have to advance my partners some.”

“Why don’t you advance them your best wishes,” Leonard said. “They’ve worked with you before. Right? They trust you. Or do they?”

“Yeah, they trust me, but I don’t trust any of you.”

“But we’re supposed to trust you?” Leonard said.

“I’m the man you asked to see,” Bill said. “Not the other way around.”

“This entire expedition from start to finish has been misguided,” Red said to Leonard. “I suggest you let Herman and I go, cut your losses, and accept that Tillie is a whore and she is going to be busy at the quick-stop five-minute lube for the rest of her life. At least until she’s too ugly to draw customers.”

“I advise you to shut up,” Brett said. “Or you’ll draw flies.”

“Another word out of you, Red,” Leonard said, “and I’m going to see I can flush a midget down the crapper.”

“Lay off,” Herman said.

“I hope you don’t think you scare me,” Leonard said.

“I know I don’t,” Herman said. “But know this. The feeling works in reverse. You don’t scare me. It won’t be worth it for either of us.”

“You people going to do business or what?” Bill said. “Personally, I don’t care who’s got the biggest dick here.”

“Keep talking,” I said.

“I say, five hundred now,” Bill said, “five hundred when we actually start out, and you give me the check when we finish.”

“Here’s how it is, Bill,” I said. “We give you two-fifty now. That’ll keep you in paint thinner, but I advise you not use any until we finish up things.”

Bill’s eyes shifted away from mine.

“And I thought he was just messy,” Brett said.

“There’s paint all over his coat,” I said. “He sniffs a little paint with thinner. They used to call it doing the bag. Sometimes it’s glue instead of paint and thinner. But with Bill here, it’s thinner. Am I right, Bill?”

“I’m not addicted,” he said.

“I really don’t give a shit,” Leonard said. “You don’t touch that shit until we’re out of your life.”

“Five hundred now,” Bill said.

“We don’t even know you’ll follow through on things,” I said. “Two-fifty now. Two-fifty when we get going. Rest of the cash and check when we finish the job.”

“Things are hard,” Bill said. “I need the money.”

“Hell,” Leonard said. “My thing is always hard, but you don’t hear me whining about it.”

“You don’t know what life is like for me,” Bill said.

“Oh shit, here we go,” Leonard said. “Let me guess. You’re displaced Kickapoos. Your culture is all lost. You don’t get to hunt the sacred deer. You know what, that’s sad. Really. But, on the other hand, I don’t give a shit. I’m fuckin’ tired of the whining and the excuses for not getting on with life. I could sit here and give you my poor-little-nigger speech, but I won’t. Because I don’t see myself that way. My people came from a bunch of ignorant farmers, and so did Hap’s, and he’s white, and that’s his drawback. Way I see it, I’m black and I’m human and I don’t beg nobody for nothin’. So, you believe whatever you want, but it’s not my problem.”

“All right,” Bill said. “I see where this is going. Take care of yourselves.”

“We will,” Leonard said. “Try not to track anything on the carpet on your way out.”

Bill didn’t move. He fumbled inside his jacket for cigarettes.

“Don’t smoke that,” Brett said.

Bill pushed the cigarette back into the pack. He just couldn’t win. He hung his head. He sighed.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll take the two-fifty now, and talk to my partners.”

“I’ll go with you while you talk to your partners,” I said. “Then maybe you’ll take two-fifty.”

Bill didn’t even try to argue this time. He merely nodded.

“You, Leonard,” Bill said. “One word of caution. Watch yourself. Your mouth could easily write a check with me your ass can’t cash.”

Leonard grinned at him. “I can write a damn big check, Early Bird.”

Brett opened her purse, peeled out two hundred and fifty dollars and gave it to me. I put it in my wallet. I took one of the handguns and put it in the holster I had clipped under my shirt. I said to Bill, “Can we find your friends now?”

Bill nodded.

“We’ll keep your weapons here,” Leonard said to Bill. “A word of warning. Hap there. He’s one of those intellectuals, and he likes poor folks and puppy dogs, niggers, injuns, kikes and rednecks, white trash and midgets. He probably even cares you’re a poor little Kickapoo done lost your culture. But you fuck with him, he will stomp your ass into next Sunday.”

Bill looked at me. “That true, Hap?”

“Most likely,” I said. “But just so you won’t think I’m a complete humanitarian, I don’t have any kind of thing for cats.”