Ranchero Read online

  “We’ll go around,” he said, and left me to follow the guy on foot.

  I went up the scrubby hill, paused at the top, and found myself looking at the back of a makeshift church. The place appeared to have started as warehouse before it got sanctified. I saw a flash of shirt as that boy with the bag ducked around the far corner.

  I could hear him before I saw him. This time he was making an actual call.

  “Got it,” he said. “I’m here.”

  Then he got talked at for a bit. I took a peek at him around the corner of that warehouse church.

  “Aw’ight,” he said, and listened.

  “Weren’t nobody anywhere.”

  He got talked at some more. Instructed, I guess.

  “Be there in five,” he said.

  Then he crossed the road, cut through a lot, and I just stood and watched him from the corner of the holiness warehouse.

  When Desmond came rolling up, I pointed to show him where to go. I crossed the road and entered the lot, passed through to the next block over, and saw that boy with the sack go in some manner of half-assed restaurant.

  It had a Royal Crown Cola sign in the window. The whole place was painted chartreuse. I could smell the fry oil before I saw the hand-lettered box bottom taped to the door. CATFISH, it read. CHICKEN. RIBS.

  Desmond pulled up, and him and Luther climbed out of the Geo. I told them, “Stay here,” and tapped on my chest to let them know this thing was mine.

  I’m not quite sure what I expected to find once I’d opened the door and gone in. Maybe that Dubois. Maybe that Vardaman. Maybe even the both of them with their stinky kid. Instead I got the Webb cartel eating catfish nuggets and drinking Pepsis. Calvin had the prime seat over in the corner, and he was looking in the sack when I came in.

  Calvin had found his first stack of newsprint just as I entered the place.

  Even in a dashiki and sitting down, Calvin proved capable of nearly dismantling the kid who’d brought him the sack. He punched him. He kicked him. He flung him to a colleague, who punched him and kicked him and tossed him around some more. Then he noticed me.

  “This you?” Calvin asked me, pointing at the sack.

  I nodded.

  “Then we’ve got a problem.”

  “Don’t see how.”

  “Your asshole owes me. He says you owe him. That means you owe me. See it now?”

  “What’s between you and him is between you and him. All I know is that shithead stole my car. Where is he?”

  “Fuck you, Homer.” With that, Calvin started fishing from the sack neat bundles of fake cash and throwing them at me. One at a time, and with considerable leisure and toothy smirks all around. They bounced off me and dropped to the floor. Then he balled up the empty bag and threw that, too.

  “So?” he said.

  “My wallet’s in the car,” I told him. “I’ll be right back, and you and me’ll settle up.”

  I don’t know if they thought I was spooked and intimidated or they just didn’t give a shit, but they let me walk out of there. I went straight to the Geo and pulled the shotgun out, grabbed a fistful of shells, and shoved them in as Desmond and Luther watched.

  “Everything okay?” Desmond asked.

  I nodded and told him, “Peachy.”

  Luther wondered if, while I was in there, I’d pick him up an order of ribs.

  I stepped inside and told those fellows, “Now then.”

  I wasn’t angry. I don’t believe I was even much in the way of agitated. I’d just reached that point where I was through doing things like I’d done them before. Everybody stopped eating, and Calvin wiped his fingers on a napkin. He smiled like a man who’s seen the wrong end of a shotgun once or twice.

  “Can’t shoot us all,” he told me.

  “I can sure as shit try.”

  There were six of us in there altogether, not counting the boy who’d brought the bag and the woman over at the Fryolator.

  “You two might want to clear out,” I said, and they welcomed the chance to do it, while the guy to Calvin’s immediate right, who was big and looked dead stupid, started groping for whatever gangster hardware he had shoved in his pants.

  I took a quick step toward him and tapped his forehead with the shotgun butt. He said some version of “Umph” and dropped face-first to the table.

  The three other colleagues started squirming, and I told them all, “Stay put.”

  Two of them did, but one of them bolted for the door. I heard him run into Desmond and Luther together and at once. From the sound of it he got put down hard and then tap-danced on with vigor.

  “You,” I said to Calvin, “come here.”

  Calvin had been watching entirely too much cop-show television. He had the lines down, though I can’t quite say how he’d ended up in a dashiki. He seemed confused about where his heritage and his methamphetamines met. But he knew what to say, and he stayed right in his chair and said it.

  “I’m happy enough,” he told me, “where I am.”

  It was almost like he thought I lacked the nerve to change his mind. If he’d caught me a few months earlier, I might have let it go, would have probably figured his taste in outerwear was punishment enough. At that moment, though, I’d lost my talent for accommodation.

  The nexus between Aw-fuck-it and I-don’t-give-shit is a beautiful place to be. I could see that in an instant because I’d lost all sense of consequences. I was right there with Calvin exclusively, needing from him what I needed, and it didn’t matter to me if I shot him or beat him or took him out for brunch.

  I didn’t particularly want him dead, but if Calvin got that way, I wasn’t prepared to worry much about it.

  That sort of attitude tends to come off a fellow like a scent, and Calvin knew enough wanna-be gangsters to recognize the difference. For appearance’s sake, however, he needed to let me hit him once. I settled on a fist this time instead of K-Lo’s shotgun butt, caught Calvin square in the jaw, and sent him tumbling onto the floor. One of his buddies eyeballed me so that I gave him the gun butt instead.

  “On the floor,” I told the last one, who still had his wits about him.

  He went down stomach first on that nasty rolled linoleum—all grease and grit and years of stark neglect—and I relieved him of what turned out to be a knockoff Desert Eagle.

  I drew open the slide and the whole thing fell apart. Made in North Korea or somewhere. There were two bullets in the clip and more rust on the works than you’d find on most backyard grills.

  “What kind of thug are you?” I asked him.

  Beyond calling me “sir” and making apologetic noises, he didn’t appear to have much interest in what kind of thug he was.

  “Go on,” I told him, and I shouted out the door so could pass untapped on and get away.

  “You want to give me a hand?” I said to Luther, who poked his head into the place and came fully inside once he was sure it was only me left standing.

  “We’re taking him,” I said of Calvin.

  “Okay,” Luther told me, but he went straight behind the counter to collect his takeout order of ribs. He ate a couple in the process and sang the praises of them, came over, and wiped his greasy hands on Calvin’s dashiki as we were lifting him up.

  It turned out Calvin had a Steyr TMP under his dashiki, the 9-mm machine pistol. The thing knocked against me when I picked him up. He was wearing it on a strap, and it was all cocked and loaded. Oiled and cared for. Babied, even. When I handed it over to Desmond, Calvin actually stamped his feet.

  “Bad day, bubby?” I asked him.

  He spat on the ground much in the style of K-Lo’s lovely wife.

  I doubt the engineers who’d designed Desmond’s Metro (not that I’m sure there were any) ever imagined there’d be much need for your standard Metro owner to load up three of his full-sized colleagues and drive them all over the place.

  Given the way Desmond’s driver’s seat was backed clean off the rails, there wasn’t much for Lut
her to do but sit on top of Calvin. Calvin raised a considerable fuss about that.

  He got all drug-lordy on us, asking us all those questions kingpins ask. Did we know who he was? Did we know who his friends were? Did we know what they could do to us?

  Luther removed one of Gil’s tap shoes and beat Calvin on his cowlick until Calvin grew meek and finally shut up.

  “Where’s Percy Dwayne?” I asked him

  “Cocksucker owes me money.”

  “Five thousand dollars? Bullshit. You’d never let him in that deep.”

  Calvin didn’t say anything, just grunted and looked sullen.

  I glanced at Luther, who smacked Calvin cowlick again.

  “Two thousand! I sold him a car.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, “because I kind of sold him a car yesterday, too.”

  “Wasn’t driving nothing when I saw him.”

  “When was that?”

  “Afternoon. Three. Maybe four.”

  “He coming for the other three thousand?”

  “Taking it to him. In dope.”

  “Is Percy Dwayne going into business?” I asked him.

  “Seems so,” Calvin told me.

  “And you don’t mind?”

  “Shit kickers down yonder? I don’t give a damn.”

  “Did you know about this?” I asked Luther.

  He shook his head. “Percy Dwayne slings it sometimes. Usually after that wife of his has had enough of his laying around.”

  “Where are you meeting him?” I asked Calvin.

  “No damn where,” he told me. “Ain’t no money. Sure as shit ain’t going to be no dope.”

  “Don’t you want your car back?”

  Calvin shook his head.

  “Wasn’t yours to start with?”

  Calvin grunted.

  “Well, there’s going to be a meeting,” I told him. “Money or no money, so where are we going?”

  “Why the fuck should I tell you any goddamn thing?”

  Luther tapped Calvin on top of his head because the moment impressed him as fitting.

  “Ow!” Calvin said. “Quit it!”

  “Where are you meeting him?” I asked.

  Calvin went sullen. Luther tapped him again.

  “Greenwood,” he told us. “Over at the Sonic.”

  Desmond had only been drifting and whistling until then, but he came awfully close to squealing with delight.

  TWELVE

  So back down the Emmett Till Highway we went, riding low and chugging along as fast as four cylinders could take us. All I know is we were lucky that the Delta is dead flat or we’d have met every incline by bailing out to push.

  Calvin had to pee the whole way and complained bitterly about it. He went on at length about how it didn’t much help his bladder to have a cracker sitting right on top of him. That just prompted Luther to poke and antagonize Calvin all the more.

  Of course, Luther was naturally curious about Calvin’s taste in clothes since a dashiki seemed to him the sort of thing you’d wear around the house. Luther couldn’t imagine throwing one on and going out for lunch. Even in Webb.

  Calvin thought Luther was just having some white trash fun at his expense, but Luther’s interest seemed genuine and strictly sartorial. It didn’t help that Luther was eating ribs pretty much on top of Calvin and that Luther didn’t appear to care where the grease ran or the sauce happened to drip.

  The Cottonlandia Museum is directly across the truck route from the Greenwood Sonic. Desmond pulled into the lot there and probably gave the staff a thrill. How many visitors can a museum devoted to cotton picking get? But we didn’t climb out, just sat and surveyed the cars lined up for service at the Sonic. Luther allowed Calvin to sit full upright and look out the Metro windshield.

  “That one,” he said, and pointed to a battered blue sedan. It was dinged all over, rusted at the fenders, and about as filthy as a car could be.

  “You’re getting two thousand for that?” Desmond asked.

  And Calvin got all shirty. “For a fellow with no money and no credit at all, two thousand ain’t too damn bad.”

  “Let’s go over there.” I pointed out a spot near the Sonic building proper where Desmond never parked because of the greasy cooktop exhaust.

  He shot me a look to remind me about it.

  “Just for a minute,” I told him. “We’ll swap out Calvin for Percy Dwayne, and then head out into the country to chat him up.”

  “How am I supposed to get home?” Calvin wanted to know.

  “In your car,” I told him, and pointed.

  “It’s stole!” he reminded me.

  “Drive the limit. You’ll be fine.”

  Desmond made a trial run by the Sonic to see if there were any any police about on the lookout for his Metro. Pinhead friends of Dale’s hoping to settle the score. There was a county cruiser parked up at the end of the car hop bays, but once we were satisfied it was only Kendell, Desmond pulled on in, like I’d suggested, beneath the cooktop vent.

  “He’s all mine,” I said. I grabbed the fireplace shovel off the floorboard, climbed out of the Geo, and eased behind the cars between us and Percy Dwayne. The girl was just bringing Percy Dwayne’s order as I was closing on him, so I lingered behind a panel truck until she’d fixed the tray to his door.

  He’d gone heavy. A holster of popcorn chicken. A corn dog. A double order of chili cheese Tater Tots. A gigantic blue coconut slush to wash it down. It was a hell of a lunch, but I doubted anything could impede my swing.

  I let him start in. He popped a tot and a couple of chicken nuggets. He had the corn dog in his mouth when I stepped up alongside him.

  His eyes got big, and he looked like he was primed to start explaining, but a mouth full of corn dog prevented him from it. That and a shovel blow to the forehead.

  I swung through his lunch. Björn Borg again. Percy Dwayne’s gigantic coconut blue slush particularly went flying. Chili cheese Tater Tots scattered to the hinterlands as well. He spat a little corn dog coating my way and then slumped against the wheel.

  I lifted the tray from his door and chucked the whole thing into a trash barrel, waved Desmond over, and he rolled up just behind that Dubois’s car. Desmond and Luther and Calvin all piled out of the Metro, and we hoisted Percy Dwayne and delivered him to the Geo floorboard. Then Calvin set in to complaining about the mess I’d made in his stolen coupe that he was going to have to drive clear back to Webb. There was chili and coconut blue slush all over the place but for a little ass-shaped spot where Percy Dwayne had been sitting.

  “Stay right there,” I said to Calvin. “You’ll be fine.”

  He sneered my way as he slipped in under the wheel. Calvin hardly let Desmond pull clear before he backed out and roared off.

  I glanced over and saw that Kendell was drinking a cup of Sonic coffee and watching every little thing we did. I felt like I owed him an explanation, him being reliable police and all, so I started toward his cruiser with that fireplace shovel still in hand.

  “Don’t want to know,” Kendell told me as I approached his open window. “Going to see the chiropractor. Don’t have time to arrest all you today.”

  Desmond blew the horn of his Geo. I told Kendell so long, went back to the car, and climbed in the front seat. We rolled on out of the Sonic. It seemed the sensible thing to do. I’m sure that was the first time Desmond had ever left a Sonic unfed.

  We carried Percy Dwayne to the sea of cotton warehouses just south of Greenwood on the old Yazoo City road. Once we’d parked back among them where nobody was likely to stumble across us, we pulled that Dubois from the car and laid him out on the pea gravel, stood around, and waited for him to wake up.

  “Why’s he all blue?” Luther wanted to know.

  “Coconut slush,” Desmond told him. “That ain’t no drink for a man.”

  The warehouses all around us were packed to the rafters with unsold bales of cot
ton, and the doors were all flung open to keep them dry and sound. According to Desmond, the price was so low that it would have been foolish to sell, so all the cotton in the Delta was just piling up until the stuff became more dear.

  I went over and fiddled with a bale, pulled out a tuft, and worked it in my hands. Cotton makes sense when you see it like that. All ginned and soft and fluffy. It’s the stuff in the fields that’s hateful.

  When I first saw cotton in season, I pulled off the road by a patch of it and waded out to pick a little, just a bole or three. That was all it took to bring me to a fresh opinion of Delta slavery.

  It hadn’t been just farm work in diabolical heat. It was harvesting this evil stuff, with spikes on the boles to prick your fingers and the plant growing precisely low enough to make you sorry you had a spine. Cotton is agriculture as punishment, and now they couldn’t even sell it, which seemed fitting if only a hundred and fifty years too late.

  That fireplace shovel had raised a purple welt smack in the middle of Percy Dwayne’s forehead. Sprawled on the ground there he looked like a white trash unicorn at rest. He stayed out for about a quarter hour, and while we waited for him to come around, Desmond reminded me every way possible that he was just at a Sonic and hadn’t gotten the chance to eat.

  “We’ll take care of that,” I kept telling him, but he was kind of in shock. Parked at a Sonic without so much as a bite of a Coney Island.

  “I was right there,” Desmond told me.

  “I know,” I said. “We’ll fix it.”

  Percy Dwayne finally stirred and woke. He groaned and looked up at us. Me and Desmond didn’t interest him much, but Luther snared his attention.

  “I’ll kill you,” were the first words Percy Dwayne bothered to say.

  “He don’t mean it,” Luther told us.

  “If you say so.” Then I gave Percy Dwayne a poke in the ribs. “Remember me?”

  He favored me with a look of high theatrical bemusement. “Uh-uh,” he said, so I tapped him with the shovel just like he’d done me the day before.