Jack had six fingers. That’s how Big O, the big, fat, white, straw-hatted son of a bitch, was supposed to know he was dead. Maybe by some real weird luck a guy could kill some other black man with six fingers, cut off his hand, and bring it in and claim it belonged to Jack, but not likely. So he put the word out that whoever killed Jack and cut off his paw and brought it back was gonna get $100,000 and a lot of goodwill.
I went out there after Jack just like a lot of other fellas, plus one woman I knew of, Lean Mama Tootin’, who was known for shotgun shootin’ and ice-pick work.
But the thing I had on them was I was screwing Jack’s old lady. Jack didn’t know it, of course. Jack was a bad dude, and it wouldn’t have been smart to let him know my bucket was in his well. Nope. Wouldn’t have been smart for me, or for Jack’s old lady. If he’d known that before he had to make a run for it, might have been good to not sleep, ’cause he might show up and be most unpleasant. I can be unpleasant too, but I prefer when I’m on the stalk, not when I’m being stalked. It sets the dynamics all different.
You see, I’m a philosophical kind of guy.
Thing was, though, I’d been laying the pipeline to his lady for about six weeks, because Jack had been on the run ever since he’d tried to muscle in on Big O’s whores and take over that business, found out he couldn’t. That wasn’t enough, he took up with Big O’s old lady like it didn’t matter none, but it did. Rumor was Big O put the old lady under about three feet of concrete out by his lake-boat stalls, buried her in the hole while she was alive, hands tied behind her back, staring up at that concrete mixer truck dripping out the goo, right on top of her naked self.
Jack hears this little tidbit of information, he quit fooling around and made with the jackrabbit, took off lickety-split, so fast he almost left a vapor trail. It’s one thing to fight one man, or two, but to fight a whole organization, not so easy. Especially if that organization belongs to Big O.
Loodie, Jack’s personal woman, was a hot flash number who liked to have her ashes hauled, and me, I’m a tall, lean fellow with a good smile and a willing attitude. Loodie was ready to lose Jack because he had a bad temper and a bit of a smell. He was short on baths and long on cologne. Smellgood juice on top of his stinky smell, she said, created a kind of funk that would make a skunk roll over dead and cause a wild hyena to leave the body where it lay.
She, on the other hand, was like sweet, wet sin dipped in coffee and sugar with a dash of cinnamon; God’s own mistress with a surly attitude, which goes to show even He likes a little bit of the devil now and then.
She’d been asked about Jack by them who wanted to know. Bad folks with guns, and a need for dough. But she lied, said she didn’t know where he was. Everyone believed her because she talked so bad about Jack. Said stuff about his habits, about how he beat her, how bad he was in bed, and how he stunk. It was convincing stuff to everyone.
But me.
I knew that woman was a liar, because I knew her whole family, and they was the sort, like my daddy used to say, would rather climb a tree and lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth and be given free flowers. Lies flowed through their veins as surely as blood.
She told me about Jack one night while we were in bed, right after we had toted the water to the mountain. We’re laying there looking at the ceiling, like there’s gonna be manna from heaven, watching the defective light from the church across the way flash in and out and bounce along the wall, and she says in that burnt-toast voice of hers, “You split that money, I’ll tell you where he is.”
“You wanna split it?”
“Naw, I’m thinkin’ maybe you could keep half and I could give the other half to the cat.”
“You don’t got a cat.”
“Well, I got another kind of cat, and that cat is one you like to pet.”
“You’re right there,” I said. “Tellin’ me where he is, that’s okay, but I still got to do the groundwork. Hasslin’ with that dude ain’t no easy matter, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. So, me doin’ what I’m gonna have to do, that’s gonna be dangerous as trying to play with a daddy lion’s balls. So, that makes me worth more than half, and you less than half.”
“You’re gonna shoot him when he ain’t lookin’, and you know it.”
“I still got to take the chance.”
She reached over to the nightstand, nabbed up a pack, shook out a cigarette, lit it with a cheap lighter, took a deep drag, coughed out a puff, said, “Split, or nothin’.”
“Hell, honey, you know I’m funnin’,” I said. “I’ll split it right in half with you.”
I was lying through my teeth. She may have figured such, but she figured with me she at least had a possibility, even if it was as thin as the edge of playing card.
She said, “He’s done gone deep into East Texas. He’s over in Gladewater. Drove there in his big black Cadillac that he had a chop shop turn blue.”
“So he drove over in a blue Caddy, not a black one,” I said. “I mean, if it was black, and he had it painted blue, it ain’t black no more. It’s blue.”
“Aren’t you one for the details, and at a time like this,” she said, and rubbed my leg with her foot. “But technically, baby, you are so correct.”
That night Loodie laid me out a map written in pencil on a brown paper sack, made me swear I was gonna split the money with her again. I told her what she wanted to hear. Next morning, I started over to Gladewater.
Jack was actually in a place outside of the town, along the Sabine River, back in the bottom land where the woods was still thick, down a little trail that wound around and around, to a cabin Loodie said was about the size of a postage stamp, provided the stamp had been scissor-trimmed.
I oiled my automatic, put on gloves, went to the store and bought a hatchet, cruised out early, made Gladewater in about an hour and fifteen, glided over the Sabine River bridge. I took a gander at the water, which was dirty brown and up high on account of rain. I had grown up along that river, over near a place called Big Sandy. It was a place of hot sand and tall pines and no opportunity.
It wasn’t a world I missed none.
I stopped at a little diner in Gladewater and had me a hamburger. There was a little white girl behind the counter with hair blond as sunlight, and we made some goo-goo eyes at one another. Had I not been on a mission, I might have found out when she got off work, seen if me and her could get a drink and find a motel and try and make the beast with two backs.
Instead, I finished up, got me a tall Styrofoam cup of coffee to go. I drove over to a food store and went in and bought a jar of pickles, a bag of cookies, and a bottle of water. I put the pickles on the floorboard between the backseat and the front; it was a huge jar and it fit snugly. I laid the bag with the cookies and the water on the backseat.
The bottoms weren’t far, about twenty minutes, but the roads were kind of tricky, some of them were little more than mud and a suggestion. Others were slick and shiny like snot on a water glass.
I drove carefully and sucked on my coffee. I went down a wide road that became narrow, then took another that wound off into the deeper woods. Drove until I found what I thought was the side road that led to the cabin. It was really a glorified path. Sun-hardened, not very wide, bordered on one side by trees and on the other by marshy land that would suck the shoes off your feet, or bog up a car tire until you had to pull a gun and shoot the engine like a dying horse.
I stopped in the road and held Loodie’s hand-drawn map, checked it, looked up. There was a curve went around and between the trees and the marsh. There were tire tracks in it. Pretty fresh. At the bend in the curve was a little wooden bridge with no railings.
So far Loodie’s map was on the money.
I finished off my coffee, got out and took a pee behind the car, and watched some big white waterbirds flying over. When I was growing up over in Big Sandy I used to see that kind of thing often, not to mention all manner of wildlife, and for a moment I felt nostalgic. That lasted about as long as it took me to stick my dick back in my pants and zipper up.
I took my hatchet out of the trunk and rested it on the front passenger seat as I got back in the car. I pulled out my automatic and checked it over, popped out the clip and slid it back in. I always liked the sound it made when it snapped into place. I looked at myself in the mirror, like maybe I was going on a date. Thought maybe if things fucked up, it might be the last time I got a good look at myself. I put the car in gear, wheeled around the curve and over the bridge, going at a slow pace, the map on the seat beside me, held in place by the hatchet.
I came to a wide patch, like on the map, and pulled off the road. Someone had dumped their garbage where the spot ended close to the trees. There were broken-up plastic bags spilling cans and paper, and there was an old bald tire leaning against a tree, as if taking a break before rolling on its way.
I got out and walked around the bend, looked down the road. There was a broad pond of water to the left, leaked there by the dirty Sabine. On the right, next to the woods, was a log cabin. Small, but well made and kind of cool looking. Loodie said it was on property Jack’s parents had owned. Twenty acres or so. Cabin had a chimney chugging smoke. Out front was a big blue Cadillac Eldorado, the tires and sides splashed with mud. It was parked close to the cabin. I could see through the Cadillac’s windows, and they lined up with a window in the cabin. I moved to the side of the road, stepped in behind some trees, and studied the place carefully.
There weren’t any wires running to the cabin. There was a kind of lean-to shed off the back. Loodie told me that was where Jack kept the generator that gave the joint electricity. Mostly the cabin was heated by the firewood piled against the shed, and lots of blankets come late at night. Had a gas stove with a nice-sized tank. I could just imagine Jack in there with Loodie, his six fingers on her sweet chocolate skin. It made me want to kill him all the more, even though I knew Loodie was the kind of girl made a minx look virginal. You gave your heart to that woman, she’d eat it.
I went back to the car and got my gun-cleaning goods out of the glove box, took out the clip, and cleaned my pistol and reloaded it. It was unnecessary, because the gun was clean as a model’s ass, but I like to be sure.
I patted the hatchet on the seat like it was a dog.
I sat there and waited, thought about what I was gonna do with $100,000. You planned to kill someone and cut off their hand, you had to think about stuff like that, and a lot.
Considering on it, I decided I wasn’t gonna get foolish and buy a car. One I had got me around and it looked all right enough. I wasn’t gonna spend it on Loodie or some other split tail in a big-time way. I was gonna use it carefully. I might get some new clothes and put some money down on a place instead of renting. Fact was, I might move to Houston.
If I lived close to the bone and picked up the odd bounty job now and again, just stuff I wanted to do, like bits that didn’t involve me having to deal with some goon big enough to pull off one of my legs and beat me with it, I could live safer, and better. Could have some stretches where I didn’t have to do a damn thing but take it easy, all on account of that $100,000 nest egg.
Course, Jack wasn’t gonna bend over and grease up for me. He wasn’t like that. He could be a problem.
I got a paperback out of the glove box and read for a while. I couldn’t get my mind to stick to it. The sky turned gray. My light was going. I put the paperback in the glove box with the gun-cleaning kit. It started to rain. I watched it splat on the windshield. Thunder knocked at the sky. Lightning licked a crooked path against the clouds and passed away.
I thought about all manner of different ways of pulling this off, and finally came up with something, decided it was good enough, because all I needed was a little edge.
The rain was hard and wild. It made me think Jack wasn’t gonna be coming outside. I felt safe enough for the moment. I tilted the seat back and lay there with the gun in my hand, my arm folded across my chest, and dozed for a while with the rain pounding the roof.
It was fresh night when I awoke. I waited about an hour, picked up the hatchet, and got out of the car. It was still raining, and the rain was cold. I pulled my coat tight around me, stuck the hatchet through my belt, and went to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk. I got the jack handle out of there, stuck it in my belt opposite the hatchet, started walking around the curve.
The cabin had a faint light shining through the window, that in turn shone through the lined-up windows of the car. As I walked, I saw a shape, like a huge bullet with arms, move in front of the glass. That size made me lose a step briefly, but I gathered up my courage, kept going.
When I got to the back of the cabin, I carefully climbed on the pile of firewood, made my way to the top of the lean-to. It sloped down off the main roof of the cabin, so it didn’t take too much work to get up there, except that the hatchet and tire iron gave me a bit of trouble in my belt, and my gloves made my grip a little slippery.
On top of the cabin, I didn’t stand up and walk, but in stead carefully made my way on hands and knees toward the front of the place.
When I got there, I peered over the edge. The cabin door was about three feet below me. I moved over so I was overlooking the Cadillac. A knock on the door wouldn’t bring Jack out. Even he was too smart for that, but that Cadillac, he loved it. I pulled out the tire iron, nestled down on the roof, peeking over the edge, cocked my arm back, and threw the iron at the windshield. It made a hell of a crash, cracking the glass so that it looked like a spiderweb, setting off the car alarm.
I pulled my gun and waited. I heard the cabin door open, heard the thumping of Jack’s big feet. He came around there mad as a hornet. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He hadn’t had time to notice the cold. But the best thing was, it didn’t look like he had a gun on him.
I aimed and shot him. I think I hit him somewhere on top of the shoulder, I wasn’t sure. But I hit him. He did a kind of bend at the knees, twisted his body, then snapped back into shape and looked up.
“You,” he said.
I shot him again, and it had about the same impact. Jack was on the hood of his car, then its roof, and then he jumped. That big bastard could jump, could probably dunk a basketball and grab the rim. He hit with both hands on the edge of the roof, started pulling himself up. I was up now, and I stuck the gun in his face and pulled the trigger.
And let me tell you how the gas went out of me. I had cleaned that gun and cleaned that gun, and now … it jammed. First time ever. But it was the time that mattered.
Jack lifted himself onto the roof, and then he was on me, snatching the gun away and flinging it into the dark. I couldn’t believe it. What the hell was he made of? Even in the wet night, I could see that much of his white shirt had turned dark with blood.
We circled each other for a moment. I tried to decide what to do next, and then he was on me. I remembered the hatchet, but it was too late. We were going back off the roof and onto the lean-to, rolling down. We hit the stacked firewood and it went in all directions and we splattered to the ground.
I lost my breath. Jack kept his. He grabbed me by my coat collar and lifted me and flung me against the side of the lean-to. I hit on my back and came down on my butt.
Jack grabbed up a piece of firewood. It looked to me like that piece of wood had a lot of heft. He came at me. I made myself stand; I pulled the hatchet free. As he came and struck down with the wood, I sidestepped and swung.
The sound the hatchet made as it caught the top of his head was a little like what you might expect if a strong man took hold of a piece of thick cardboard and ripped it.
I hit him so hard his knees bent and hot blood jumped out of his head and hit my face. The hatchet came loose of my hands, stayed in his skull. His knees straightened. I thought: What is this motherfucker, Rasputin?
He grabbed me and started to lift me again. His mouth was partially open and his teeth looked like machinery cogs. The rain was washing the blood on his head down his face in murky rivers. He stunk like roadkill.
And then his expression changed. It seemed as if he had only just realized he had a hatchet in his head. He let go, turned, started walking off, taking hold of the hatchet with both hands, trying to pull it loose. I picked up a piece of firewood and followed after him. I hit him in the back of the head as hard as I could. It was like hitting an elephant in the ass with a twig. He turned and looked at me. The expression on his face was so strange, I almost felt sorry for him.
He went down on one knee, and I hauled back and hit him with the firewood, landing on top of the hatchet. He vibrated, and his neck twisted to one side, and then his head snapped back in line.
He said, “Gonna need some new pigs,” and then fell out.
Pigs?
He was laying face forward with the stock of the hatchet holding his head slightly off the ground. I dropped the firewood and rolled him over on his back, which took about as much work as trying to roll his Cadillac. I pulled the hatchet out of his head. I had to put my foot on his neck to do it.
I picked up the firewood I had dropped, placed it on the ground beside him, and stretched his arm out until I had the hand with the six fingers positioned across it. I got down on my knees and lifted the hatchet, hit as hard as I could. It took me three whacks, but I cut the hand loose.
I put the bloody hand in my coat pocket and dug through his pants for his car keys, didn’t come across them. I went inside the cabin and found them on the table. I drove the Cadillac to the back where Jack lay, pulled him into the backseat, almost having a hernia in the process. I put the hatchet in there with him.
I drove the El Dorado over close to the pond and rolled all the windows down and put it in neutral. I got out of the car, went to the back of it, and started shoving. My feet slipped in the mud, but I finally gained traction. The car went forward and slipped into the water, but the back end of it hung on the bank.
Damn.
I pushed and I pushed, and finally I got it moving, and the car went in, and with the windows down, it sunk pretty fast.
I went back to the cabin and looked around. I found some candles, turned off the light, then switched off the generator. I went back inside and lit three of the big fat candles and stuck them in drinking glasses and watched them burn for a moment. I went over to the stove and turned on the gas, letting it run a few seconds while I looked around the cabin. Nothing there I needed.
I left, closed the door behind me. When the gas filled the room enough, those candles would set the air on fire. The whole place would blow. I don’t know exactly why I did it, except maybe I just didn’t like Jack. Didn’t like that he had a Cadillac and a cabin and some land, and for a while there, he had Loodie. Because of all that, I had done all I could to him. I even had his six-fingered hand in my pocket.
By the time I got back to the car, I was feeling weak. Jack had worked me over pretty good, and now that the adrenaline was starting to ease out of me, I was feeling it. I took off my jacket and opened the jar of pickles in the floorboard, pulled out a few of them, and threw them away. I ate one, and drank from my bottle of water and had some cookies.
I took Jack’s hand and put it in the big pickle jar. I sat in the front seat, and was overcome with nausea. I didn’t know if it was the pickle or what I had done, or both. I opened the car door and threw up. I felt cold and damp from the rain, so I started the car and turned on the heater. Then I cranked back my seat and closed my eyes. I had to rest before I left, had to. All of me seemed to be running out through the soles of my feet.
I slept until the cabin blew. The sound of the gas generator and stove going up with a one-two boom snapped me awake.
* * *
I got out of the car and walked around the curve. The cabin was nothing more than a square, dark shape inside an envelope of flames. The fire wavered up high and grew narrow at the top like a cone. It crackled like someone wadding up cellophane.
I doubted, out here, that anyone heard the explosion, and no one could see the flames. Wet as it was, I figured the fire wouldn’t go any farther than the cabin. By morning, even with the rain still coming down, that place would be smoked down to the mineral rights.
I drove out of there, and pretty soon the heater was too hot and I turned it off. It was as if my body went up in flames, like the cabin. I rolled down the window and let in some cool air. I felt strange; not good, not bad. I had bounty hunted for years, and I’d done a bit of head whopping before, but this was my first murder.
I had really hated Jack and I’d hardly known him.
It was the woman that made me hate him. The woman I was gonna cheat out of some money. But $100,000 is a whole lot of money, honey.
When I got home, the automatic garage opener lifted the door, and I wheeled in and closed the place up. I went inside and took off my clothes and showered carefully and looked in the mirror. There was a mountainous welt on my head. I got some ice and put it in sock and pressed it to my head while I sat on the toilet lid and thought about things. If any thoughts actually came to me, I don’t remember them well.
I dressed, bunched up my murder clothes, and put them in a black plastic garbage bag.
In the garage, I removed the pickle jar and cleaned the car. I opened the jar and stared at the hand. It looked like a black crab in there amongst the pickles. I studied it for a long time, until it started to look like $100,000.
I couldn’t wait until morning, and after a while, I drove toward Big O’s place. Now, you would think a man with the money he’s got would live in a mansion, but he didn’t. He lived in three double-wide mobile homes lined together with screened-in porches. I had been inside once, when I’d done Big O a very small favor, though never since. But one of those homes was nothing but one big space, no rooms, and it was Big O’s lounge. He hung in there with some ladies and bodyguards. He had two main guys. Be Bop Lewis, a skinny white guy who always acted as if someone was sneaking up on him, and a black guy named Lou Boo (keep in mind, I didn’t name them) who thought he was way cool and smooth as velvet.
The rain had followed me from the bottomland, on into Tyler, to the outskirts, and on the far side. It was way early morning, and I figured on waking Big O up and dragging his ass out of bed and showing him them six fingers and getting me $100,000, a pat on the head, and hell, he might ask Be Bop to give me a hand job on account of I had done so well.
More I thought about it, more I thought he might not be as happy to see me as I thought. A man like Big O liked his sleep, so I pulled into a motel not too far from his place, the big jar of pickles and one black six-fingered hand beside my bed, the automatic under my pillow.
I dreamed Jack was driving the Cadillac out of that pond. I saw the lights first and then the car. Jack was steering with his nub laid against the wheel, and his face behind the glass was a black mass without eyes or smile or features of any kind.
It was a bad dream and it woke me up. I washed my face, went back to bed, slept this time until late morning. I got up and put back on my same clothes, loaded up my pickle jar, and left out of there. I thought about the axe in Jack’s head, his severed hand floating in the pickle jar, and regret moved through me like shit through a goose and was gone.
I drove out to Big O’s place.
By the time I arrived at the property, which was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and had driven over a cattle guard, I could see there were men in a white pickup coming my way. Two in the front and three in the bed in the back, and they had some heavy-duty fire power. Parked behind them, up by the double-wides, were the cement trucks and dump trucks and backhoes and graders that were part of the business Big O claimed to operate. Construction. But his real business was a bit of this, and a little of that, construction being not much more than the surface paint.
I stopped and rolled down my window and waited. Outside, the rain had burned off and it was an unseasonably hot day, sticky as honey on the fingers.
When they drove up beside my window, the three guys in the bed pointed their weapons at me. The driver was none other than one of the two men I recognized from before. Be Bop. His skin was so pale and thin, I could almost see the skull beneath it.
“Well, now,” he said. “I know you.”
I agreed he did. I smiled like me and him was best friends. I said, “I got some good news for Big O about Six-Finger Jack.”
“Six-Finger Jack, huh,” Be Bop said. “Get out of the car.”
I got out. Be Bop got out and frisked me. I had nothing sharp or anything full of bullets. He asked if there was anything in the car. I told him no. He had one of the men in the back of the pickup search it anyway. The man came back, said, “Ain’t got no gun, just a big jar of pickles.”
“Pickles,” Be Bop said. “You a man loves pickles?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Follow us on up,” Be Bop said.
We drove up to the trio of double-wides. There had been some work done since I was last here, and there was a frame of boards laid out for a foundation, and over to the side there was a big hole that looked as if it was gonna be a swimming pool.
I got out of the car and leaned on it and looked things over. Be Bop and his men got out of the truck. Be Bop came over.
“He buildin’ a house on that foundation?” I asked.
“Naw, he’s gonna put an extension on one of the trailers. I think he’s gonna put in a poolroom and maybe some gamin’ stuff. Swimmin’ pool over there. Come on.”
I got my jar of pickles out of the backseat, and Be Bop said, “Now wait a minute. Your pickles got to go with you?”
I sat the jar down and screwed off the lid and stepped back. Be Bop looked inside. When he lifted his head, he said, “Well, now.”
Next thing I know I’m in the big trailer, the one that’s got nothing but the couch, some chairs, and stands for drinks, a TV set about the size of a downtown theater. It’s on, and there’s sports going. I glance at it and see it’s an old basketball game that was played a year back, but they’re watching it, Big O and a few of his boys, including Lou Boo, the black guy I’ve seen before. This time, there aren’t any women there.
Be Bop came inside with me, but the rest of the pickup posse didn’t. They were still protecting the perimeter. It seemed silly, but truth was, there was lots of people wanted to kill Big O.
No one said a thing to me for a full five minutes. They were waiting for a big score in the game, something they had seen before. When the shot came they all cheered. I thought only Big O sounded sincere.
I didn’t look at the game. I couldn’t take my eyes off Big O. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat. His head only had a few hairs left on it, like worms working their way over the face of the moon. His skin was white and lumpy like cold oatmeal. He was wearing a brown pair of stretch overalls. When the fat moved, the material moved with him, which was a good idea, ’cause it looked as if Big O had packed on about a hundred extra pounds since I saw him last.
He was sitting in a motorized scooter, had his tree-trunk legs stretched out in front of him on a leg lift. His stomach flowed up and fell forward and over his sides, like 400 pounds of bagged mercury. I could hear him wheezing across the room. His right foot was missing. There was a nub there, and his stretch pants had been sewn up at the end. On the stand, near his right elbow, was a tall bottle of malt liquor and a greasy box of fried chicken.
His men sat on the couch to his left. The couch was unusually long, and there were six men on it, like pigeons in a row. They all had guns in shoulder holsters. The scene made Big O look like a whale on vacation with a harem of male sucker fish to attend him.
Big O spoke to me, and his voice sounded small coming from that big body. “Been a long time since I seen you last.”
I nodded.
“I had a foot then.”
I nodded again.
“The diabetes. Had to cut it off. Dr. Jacobs says I need more exercise, but, hey, glandular problems, so what you gonna do? Packs the weight on. But still, I got to go there ever’ Thursday mornin’. Next time, he might tell me the other foot’s gotta go. But you know, that’s not so bad. This chair, it can really get you around. Motorized, you know.”
Be Bop, who was still by me, said, “He’s got somethin’ for you, Big O.”
“Chucky,” Big O said, “cut off the game.”
Chucky was one of the men on the couch, a white guy. He got up and found a remote control and cut off the game. He took it with him back to the couch, sat down.
“Come on up,” Big O said.
I carried my jar of pickles up there, got a whiff of him that made my memory of Jack’s stink seem mild. Big O smelled like dried urine, sweat, and death. I had to fight my gag reflex.
I sat the jar down and twisted off the lid and reached inside the blood-stained pickle juice and brought out Jack’s dripping hand. Big O said, “Give me that.”
I gave it to him. He turned it around and around in front of him. Pickle juice dripped off of the hand and into his lap. He started to laugh. His fat vibrated, and then he coughed. “That there is somethin’.”
He held the hand up above his head. Well, he lifted it to about shoulder height. Probably the most he had moved in a while. He said, “Boys, do you see this? Do you see the humanity in this?”
I thought: Humanity?
“This hand tried to take my money and stuck its finger up my old lady’s ass … Maybe all six. Look at it now.”
His boys all laughed. It was like the best goddamn joke ever told, way they yucked it up.
“Well, now,” Big O said, “that motherfucker won’t be touchin’ nothin’, won’t be handlin’ nobody’s money, not even his own, and we got this dude to thank.”
Way Big O looked at me then made me a little choked up. I thought there might even be a tear in his eye. “Oh,” he said, “I loved that woman. God, I did. But I had to cut her loose. She hadn’t fucked around, me and her might have gotten married, and all this,” he waved Jack’s hand around, “would have been hers to share. But no. She couldn’t keep her pants on. It’s a sad situation. And though I can’t bring her back, this here hand, it gives me some kind of happiness. I want you to know that.”
“I’m glad I could have been of assistance,” I said.
“That’s good. That’s good. Put this back in the pickle jar, will you?”
I took the hand and dropped it in the jar.
Big O looked at me, and I looked at him. After a long moment, he said, “Well, thanks.”
I said, “You’re welcome.”
We kept looking at one another. I cleared my throat. Big O shifted a little in his chair. Not much, but a little.
“Seems to me,” I said, “there was a bounty on Jack. Some money.”
“Oh,” Big O said. “That’s right, there was.”
“He was quite a problem.”
“Was he now … Yeah, well, I can see the knot on your head. You ought to buy that thing its own cap. Somethin’ nice.”
Everyone on the couch laughed. I laughed too. I said, “Yeah, it’s big. And if I had some money, like say, $100,000, I’d maybe put out ten or twenty for a nice designer cap.”
I was smiling, waiting for my laugh, but nothing came. I glaced at Be Bop. He was looking off like maybe he heard his mother calling somewhere in the distance.
Big O said, “Now that Jack’s dead, I got to tell you, I’ve sort of lost the fever.”
“Lost the fever?” I said.
“He was alive, I was all worked up. Now that he’s dead, I got to consider, is he really worth $100,000?”
“Wait a minute, that was the deal. That’s the deal you spread all over.”
“I’ve heard those rumors,” Big O said.
“Rumors?”
“Oh, you can’t believe everything you hear. You just can’t.”
I stood there stunned.
Big O said, “But I want you to know, I’m grateful. You want a Coke, a beer before you go?”
“No. I want the goddamn money you promised.”
That had come out of my mouth like vomit. It surprised even me.
Everyone in the room was silent.
Big O breathed heavy, said, “Here’s the deal, friend. You take your jar of pickles, and Jack’s six fingers, and you carry them away. ’Cause if you don’t, if you want to keep askin’ me for money I don’t want to pay, your head is gonna be in that jar, but not before I have it shoved up your ass. You savvy?’
It took me a moment, but I said, “Yeah. I savvy.”
Lying in bed with Loodie, not being able to do the deed, I said, “I’m gonna get that fat son of a bitch. He promised me money. I fought Jack with a piece of firewood and a hatchet. I fell off a roof. I slept in my car in the cold. I was nearly killed.”
“That sucks,” Loodie said.
“Sucks? You got snookered too. You was gonna get fifty thousand, now you’re gonna get dick.”
“Actually, tonight I’m not even gettin’ that.”
“Sorry, baby. I’m just so mad … Ever’ Thursday mornin’, Big O, he goes to an appointment at Dr. Jacobs’. I can get him there.”
“He has his men, you know.”
“Yeah. But when he goes in the office, maybe he don’t. And maybe I check it out this Thursday, find out when he goes in, and next Thursday I maybe go inside and wait on him.”
“How would you do that?”
“I’m thinkin’ on it, baby.”
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”
“You lost fifty grand, and so did I, so blowin’ a hole in his head is as close as we’ll get to satisfaction.”
So Thursday morning I’m going in the garage, to go and check things out, and when I get in the car, before I can open up the garage and back out, a head raises up in the backseat, and a gun barrel, like a wet kiss, pushes against the side of my neck.
I can see him in the mirror. It’s Lou Boo. He says: “You got to go where I tell you, else I shoot a hole in you.”
I said, “Loodie.”
“Yeah, she come to us right away.”
“Come on, man. I was just mad. I wasn’t gonna do nothin’.”
“So here it is Thursday mornin’, and now you’re tellin’ me you wasn’t goin’ nowhere.”
“I was gonna go out and get some breakfast. Really.”
“Don’t believe you.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Yeah, shit,” Lou Boo said.
“How’d you get in here without me knowin’?”
“I’m like a fuckin’ ninja … And the door slides up, you pull it from the bottom.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Come on, Lou Boo, give a brother a break. You know how it is.”
Lou Boo laughed a little. “Ah, man. Don’t play the brother card. I’m what you might call one of them social progressives. I don’t see color, even if it’s the same as mine. Let’s go, my man.”
It was high morning and cool when we arrived. I drove my car right up to where the pool was dug out, way Lou Boo told me. There was a cement-mixer truck parked nearby for the pool. We stopped, and Lou Boo told me to leave it in neutral. I did. I got out and walked with him to where Big O was sitting in his motorized scooter with Loodie on his lap. His boys were all around him.
Be Bop pointed his finger at me and dropped his thumb. “My man,” he said.
When I was standing in front of Big O, he said, “Now, I want you to understand, you wouldn’t be here had you not decided to kill me. I can’t have that, now can I?”
I didn’t say anything.
I looked at Loodie, she shrugged.
“I figured you owed me money,” I said.
“Yeah,” Big O said. “I know. You see, Loodie, she comes and tells me she’s gonna make a deal with you to kill Jack and make you think you made a deal with her. That way, the deal I made was with her, not you. You followin’ me on this, swivel dick? Then, you come up with this idea to kill me at the doctor’s office. Loodie, she came right to me.”
“So,” I said, “you’re gettin’ Loodie out of the deal, and she’s gettin’ a hundred thousand.”
“That sounds about right, yeah,” Big O said.
I thought about that. Her straddling that fat bastard on his scooter. I shook my head, glared at her, said, “Damn, girl.”
She didn’t look right at me.
Big O said, “Loodie, you go on in the house there and amuse yourself. Get a beer or somethin’. Watch a little TV. Do your nails. Whatever.” Loodie started walking toward the trailers. When she was inside, Big O said, “Hell, boy. I know how she is, and I know what she is. It’s gonna be white gravy on sweet chocolate bread for me. And when I get tired of it, she gonna find a hole out here next to you. I got me all kind of room here. I ain’t usin’ the lake-boat stalls no more. That’s risky. Here is good. Though I’m gonna have to dig another spot for a pool, but that’s how it is. Ain’t no big thing, really.”
“She used me,” I said. “She’s the one led me to this.”
“No doubt, boy. But you got to understand. She come to me and made the deal before you did anything. I got to honor that.”
“I could just go on,” I said. “I could forget all about it. I was just mad. I wouldn’t never bother you. Hell, I can move. I can go out of state.”
“I know that,” he said. “But I got this rule, and it’s simple. You threaten to kill me, I got to have you taken care of. Ain’t that my rule, boys?”
There was a lot of agreement.
Lou Boo was last. He said, “Yep, that’s the way you do it, boss.”
Big O said, “Lou Boo, put him in the car, will you?”
Lou Boo put the gun to back of my head, said, “Get on your knees.”
“Fuck you,” I answered, but he hit me hard behind the head. Next thing I know I’m on my knees, and he’s got my hands behind my back and has fastened a plastic tie over my wrists.
“Get in the car,” Lou Boo said.
I fought him all the way, but Be Bop came out and kicked me in the nuts a couple of times, hard enough I threw up, and then they dragged me to the car and shoved me inside behind the wheel and rolled down the windows and closed the door.
Then they went behind the car and pushed. The car wobbled, then fell, straight down, hit so hard the air bag blew out and knocked the shit out of me. I couldn’t move with it the way it was, my hands bound behind my back, the car on its nose, its back wheels against the side of the hole. It looked like I was trying to drive to hell. I was stunned and bleeding. The bag had knocked a tooth out. I heard the sound of a motor above me, a little motor. The scooter.
I could hear Big O up there. “If you hear me, want you to know I’m having one of the boys bring the cement truck around. We’re gonna fill this hole with cement, and put, I don’t know, a tennis court or somethin’ on top of it. But the thing I want you to know is this is what happens when someone fucks with Big O.”
“You stink,” I said. “And you’re fat. And you’re ugly.”
He couldn’t hear me. I was mostly talking into the air bag.
I heard the scooter go away, followed by the sound of a truck and a beeping as it backed up. Next I heard the churning of the cement in the big mixer that was on the back of it. Then the cement slid down and pounded on the roof and started to slide over the windshield. I closed my eyes and held my breath, and then I felt the cold, wet cement touch my elbow as it came through the open window. I thought about some way out, but there was nothing there, and I knew that within moments there wouldn’t be anything left for me to think about at all.