Black Water (15 page)

It used to be quite a ways outside o’ town. It was closer now, and when the Komes boys got of an age when they could live away from their mother, they left Cob’s and took up in the old place. Pearl and her little baby George’s bones still filled a space in the mulchy ground out back, although their names were no longer advertised on short slabs of wood. Tonight, another dead body lay within.

The silvery moonlight slanted through the open front door as big Hub Lusaw spread half a raggedy blanket on the sittin’ part, and the other half, draped over the back o’ the smelly, dusty, threadbare couch. Sighing heavily, he bent to the floor and easily lifted his little sister’s naked, battered, butchered body. It shocked him that the arms and legs that dangled and flopped like only a dead somethin’ could do, had only a few hours earlier been so very much alive and happy.

She was so young.

Had been.

She was so pretty.

Had been.

He laid her on the blanket. He felt self-conscious, embarrassed even, as he ran his eyes over the ruined little body and thought how much his little sister had grown into a woman. Then he tenderly pulled the part o’ the blanket that hung over the back o’ the couch over her. He could only imagine how embarrassed she’d be bein’ seen in this condition; naked, and her new hairdo, a mess. He wished now he hadn’t teased her about it.

He started to tuck the edge o’ the blanket under her to keep her warm, but then he remembered…it wouldn’t make any difference. She was dead. He’d never seen anything deader. He tucked it anyway. Groaning to the floor with the couch to his back, he pulled a tobacco pouch and papers from his shirt pocket, separated one paper from the pack, and set the rest on the floor. He pulled at the neck on the pouch and shakily filled the paper with leaf, spillin’ as much on his crotch as landed on the little square. He pulled the pouch strings with his teeth, set it on the floor beside the other papers, tamped the leaf around, rolled the paper, and licked it down. His licker was pretty dry, and he had his doubts it’d hold.

That done, he pulled a wooden match from his shirt pocket and snapped it to life with his thumbnail. Lighting the cigarette, he started to shake the match off, but instead, pinched the cigarette in his lips and stuck his leg straight out so he could dig his pocket watch from his pants pocket. He flipped it open to see the time – 1:45 a.m. He pinched it shut, shook the match out, and set both the watch and the spent match on the floor next to the pouch and papers. After a couple o’ pulls, he looked over his shoulder into the half-open, dead eyes that couldn’t look back any more, and he imagined all the things that coulda been, that now never would, and he promised silent promises.

He reached over and pressed her eyelids closed. Not hard, he didn’t wanna hurt her, just enough to close ’em. He helt ’em down a few seconds then let go. They didn’t close completely, but it was better. It almost looked like she was peekin’ at him on the sly. He turned back around, and while starin’ at the glowing ember on the end o’ the cigarette, flipped through the mental scrapbook of his and Ret’s lives until the fire reached his fingers. Then he got up and stepped out on the rickety porch to shake the pins and needles out of his legs. A wispy carpet of mist lay on the ground. He leaned on a porch post, and while the lightnin’ bugs twinkled, rolled another smoke and made his plans.

The off-kilter headlights flashed on the front o’ the shack and the truck scudded to a stop. The engine died, and a second later the lights went out. The drained Jack Daniels bottle clinked to the ground when Matthew pushed open the squeaky shotgun door. Drunk as a skunk, his foot glanced off a rock and he stumbled into the side o’ the truck. He heard George laugh and told him to fuck hisself and go to Hell. Then he pushed off the fender and stumbled around the nose o’ the truck, headed for the shack like he didn’t have a solid bone in his body. George slid out on his side, laughin’ his ass off. Swayin’ next to the driver-side door, he hauled out his pecker and commenced to empty his bladder all over the runnin’ board. He looked over his shoulder and laughed at Matthew lumb’rin’ toward the front door while the smelly, yellow stream bobbed and jerked with each alcohol-induced chuckle.

Matthew entered the shack, and, with no time to register a complaint, his ill-equipped brain box exploded, literally, like a ripe watermelon, from the full go of a three-foot length of two-by-four to the back of his ugly head. George heard the commotion and chuckled at the picture o’ Matthew fallin’ flat on his face, havin’ tripped over the turned-up edge o’ the dirty rug just inside the door. He shook off the last lingering drops and jammed the turtle-necked lizard back in its smelly shroud. Then he, too, stumbled his way into the dark shack.

On the dirt road a hundred yards to the east, scrawny, twenty-two-year-old LeRoy Ledbetter was walkin’ off the effects of too much o’ the home-brewed consumed at the dance. If he entered his mother’s house with liquor on his breath—and she would still be up just to make sure—she’d remind him he was still livin’ under her roof and not a bit too old to be slapped silly. That’s what he was thinkin’ about when he heard the screams and shrieks filterin’ down from the shack. Concerned, although not near enough to get personally involved, he hot-foot it down the road.

Just before sunup, a reluctant LeRoy accompanied an uncomfortably over-weight, nearly-bald, fifty-year-old Sheriff Bernard “Bernie” Rowe to the Komes shack. LeRoy was shoved over as close as he could get to the Dodge Brothers passenger-side door. He had his right arm stuck out the window while his left was crossed over his chest, his hand grippin’ the window frame. Rowe had a short fuse and a lot o’ powder and he’d threatened LeRoy that by gettin’ him out of a warm bed that early, this call’d better be a damn sight more than George and Matthew gettin’ drunk and fightin’…again. Another thing was, just before the sheriff got in the truck, he pulled off his gunbelt and set it on the seat between him and LeRoy. Then, when he got in, he unsnapped his pants to make room for his gut and it was makin’ LeRoy nervous. Ever time Rowe looked over at him with his jaw clenched down tight, LeRoy expected a whack upside the head. It was known for miles around that LeRoy Ledbetter was a card-carryin’ fuckup.

Rowe finally pulled up in front o’ the Komes shack, nose to nose with George’s old Ford. He turned off the engine. Instantaneous nothingness. Egyptian-tomb quiet. No bugs, birds, or croakers. LeRoy pushed his head back when Rowe owled across the cab and out LeRoy’s window to the shack. It was dark inside and out. After LeRoy’s description o’ the holocaust, he’d expected numerous casualties layin’ about and construction destruction on a grand scale.

Then he looked out his own door window, and there sat the empty whiskey bottle layin’ in the dirt up agin the Ford’s right front tire. He looked back at LeRoy and gave him another jaw clench, pushed in the knob on the dash, switchin’ off the headlamps. From past experience Rowe knew he’d probly find the infamous Komeses draped across their bed, passed out in very uncomfortable positions, or on the floor, swimmin’ in a puddle of their own vomit and shit, and that picture made him work up a mad on LeRoy.

LeRoy wasn’t nervous, though. He was way past that. He wished now he’d just gone home and got mother-slapped, but he was a ferrety little shit, addicted to mindin’ everbody’s business but his own. If it turned out to be nothin’, he’d get a lifetime extension on his fuckup reputation. But! If he was to be the one that found the Komes Brothers in a bad way, it’d be all over town, and he’d be the one tied in with it. Everbody’d remember it.

“It was LeRoy found ’em!”

“Well, LeRoy was tellin’ me….”

“Go ask LeRoy if you don’t believe me.”

Yeah, if only. The sheriff was huffin’ and blowin’ and shootin’ nasty sidewaysie glances at him, because so far, there wasn’t nothin’ at the shack that said any more than that George and Matthew had knocked back a bottle or two of JD, punched each other’s lights out, were layin’ in vomit, and had shat their drawers. If they were even wearin’ drawers.

He was right; Rowe’s biggest concern was findin ’em layin’ in shit. And vomit. And butt-ugly naked. If the dumb bastards were naked, he’d just spin on his heels and leave—they could sleep it off. That was a possibility, but because o’ past experiences with other sheriffin’ happenings, not the only one. He couldn’t take any chances. He was gonna have to go in. “Yer sure it was more than George ‘n Matthew agoin’ at it?”

LeRoy shook his head. “No! I didn’t say it was them, but it is their place. I said I thought it was them ‘n somebody else, ‘n that somebody else sounded like Hub Lusaw. That’s what I said. And they wasn’t just scrappin’, they’s yellin ‘n screamin’ like they’s killin’ each other. That’s what I said.”

Rowe looked to the shack, then back to LeRoy. “You hunker down ‘n keep yr’God Damn mouth shut. You get shot ‘n bleed all over my truck, I’ll beatchu t’death.”

LeRoy slunk down ‘til the only thing showin’ was his eyes and the top of his head. He didn’t sport a badge or a gun and was more than willing to follow the orders o’ the one that did.

All ridge-backed and fuzz-tailed, Rowe opened his door and slid out. He sucked in his gut, hitched up his pants, and re-cinched his belt. Then he reached in and pulled out his gunbelt. He wrapped it around his gut, sucked it in as much as he could, and pushed the little dogoodie in the last hole on the belt. Another few pork chops and he was gonna have to pound in another hole or buy a bigger belt. He waggled the belt down, pulled the gun up by his face with his finger hooked on the trigger. He closed the door quietly, gave LeRoy one more nasty look, took a deep breath, and crossed around the front o’ the Dodge, headed for the shack.

Reason for the gun at all was ‘cause o’ George and Matthew’s reputation. Gettin’ drunk and shootin’ up the shack wasn’t a common occurrence but it was a possibility. He’d known ’em for years, but if one of ’em came at him, bleary-eyed and squeezin’ the trigger, he’d put him down. He’d try for a leg first, but if that didn’t do the trick, he’d put one in their chest. Very carefully he crossed the porch and laid flat on the outside wall just to the right o’ the black hole of a door and called out. “Hey! What’s goin’ on in there?”

As quiet as it was, his sudden yellin’ scared the snot out o’ LeRoy.

No answer came from the shack.

Rowe tapped the end o’ the gun barrel on the wall and called out again. “George!”

Nothin’.

“Matt!”

More nothin’. Still quiet as a graveyard.

“Shit!” he said under his breath. Grittin’ his teeth and with fire in his eyes, he looked over at the pickup. LeRoy’s bugged-out, froggy-lookin’ eyes peeked back at him from just over window frame.

“God Damn you, LeRoy, if I don’t find a dead body, I’m gonna kick yer worthless ass ‘til Sundee!” Workin’ up his courage, he pulled the gun up and jumped spread-eagled to the middle o’ the open door. Finding he hadn’t been shot at, he worked up the gumption to enter the shack.

LeRoy, cocked and ready to bolt at the first sign o’ trouble, watched as Rowe’s bulkitude slowly dissolved into the shack’s blackness. The sheriff was in the shack only a few seconds when LeRoy saw the soft orange glow of match light flare up and filter through the front door and the window just to its right. He saw the light bend from the match light movin’ around. It snuffed out, and three seconds later another one took its place, and like the first, shifted around the shack. Then it went out.

Rowe’d been sheriffing long enough that he’d seen a bunch o’ bad stuff, but shortly after the second match light went out, LeRoy saw him come back out the door all wobbly-legged, white-faced, and holdin’ on to a porch post with shaking hands. He lurched over the edge o’ the porch and hockled up the porkchops, beans, and apple pie he’d had for dinner just a few hours earlier. LeRoy figured he wouldn’t be gettin’ his worthless ass kicked ‘til Sundee.

LeRoy left from there to walk home. Figuring the Komes brothers weren’t goin’ anywhere, Rowe drove over to the Lusaw house to talk to Hub. Raeleen, Hub’s wife, said, “He ain’t been home since he left for the dance. I’m worried about ‘im. How come yer lookin’ for ‘im?”

“Looks like he mighta done in George ‘n Matt Komes.”

Before noon, Rowe and a couple dozen hurriedly deputized locals, heavily-armed with a multitude of various explosive implements of destruction, accompanied by an excited pack of bayin’ bloodhounds and buoyed by the consumption of various alcoholic accouterments, fanned out in all directions from the murdered brothers’ shack.

Tr’tl Garnier (pronounced Garnyae)—a waddlin’, beetle-browed, bubble-butted, little-bitty-armed, stumpy-legged dwarf—was shovin’ a securely-tethered boar off the back o’ the wagon parked in front of Lootie Komes’ shack. Cob’s old place. Thudding to the ground, the pissed-off boar squealed, forcing Tr’tl’s fearful attention to the shack’s door. Quickly, the same fate as the boar was followed by a ham-strung, four-foot gator and a full-growed cottonmouth imprisoned in a dirty flour sack, lookin’ to empty its fangs on somebody dumb enough to get close.

Tr’tl’s little legs scuttled across the wagon bed to a ladder attached by hinges to the left side o’ the wooden seat and descended to the ground. Keepin’ the ever-watchful eye on the door, he scampered to a wad o’ bills pinned under a small rock on the same stump Cob had used to park her flat, wrinkled ass on. Snatchin’ the money in his poorly impersonated fingers, a bill flittered away, comin’ to rest right next to the door. Tr’tl started for it, but after half a second’s thought, figured maybe he’d let it go rather than get any nearer the door.

He had good reason.

Twenty-some years earlier his mother’d made the mistake o’ pissin’ Lootie off while Tr’tl was still in the womb, the size of a pollywog. He, more than most, knew what the witch was capable of.

Although the butt of a lot o’ jokes, he’d more than survived. He was intelligent, resourceful, hard-working, and worth enough to’ve bought a wife. A beautiful white girl, although blind and deaf. A mismatched set if there’d ever been one, but they made it work. There were also a lot of jokes how he’d pulled off gettin’ her pregnant. They had a girl. Jubilee was the baby’s name. Although not overly pretty and a far cry from dainty, she was Tr’tl’s pride and joy.