Black Water (17 page)

“I can’t talk about it now. But things’s gonna be a lot dif’ernt. Come ‘ere.” She stepped closer and he kissed her.

“I wish this was over ‘n you’s back home. I ain’t never been so worried ‘n lonely in m’whole life. It’s a big bed when yer in it alone.”

“I’m sorry, Sugar, but everthing’s gonna be okay. You go on, now.”

“Okay. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She kissed him one more time and left. From the office he heard two little voices. “Bye, Papa,” followed by bug snorts.

“Bye,” he called out, snortin’, and lookin’ longingly at the door.

Toad was leaned back in the sheriff’s squeaky, swivel office chair with his eyes closed, exhausted from the exertion of trying to stay awake. His fingers were laced behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle and propped up on the sheriff’s desk, one foot with a boot on, the stained sock, obvious as a flag, on the other. He coulda changed socks, but the wound had stopped bleeding—he couldn’t even squeeze out any more blood—and there wouldn’t be anything to brag about with a clean one. All of a sudden, the front door opened and in strode Luther Knox, a real Dapper Dan in his mid- to late-twenties, little toothbrush mustache twisted in a curl on the ends. Toad nearly fell out o’ the chair jerkin’ his legs off the desk, scared shitless it was the sheriff.

“Good afternoon,” Luther said, recognizing the stir his entrance had created. Toad tried to compose hisself while Luther flashed a mouthful o’ pearly whites. “Sheriff Bernard Rowe, I trust?”

Totally confused, Toad wondered
What th’Hell’s that s’posed t’mean? Who gives a shit?
“So what?” he exclaimed. It was obvious Toad wasn’t an elected official.

Then it was Luther’s turn. “So what…what?”

Toad’s brain was gonna start smokin’ any second. “What?”

Seeing he was getting nowhere, Luther offered, “Let’s start over. You are Sheriff Rowe?”

“No!” Toad replied abruptly. “What in tarnation would make you think that? Do I look like ‘im?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met the man.”

“Well, I ain’t him. He ain’t here,” then he lowered his voice, gettin’ all biggety. “But I’cn hep ya, I’m ‘is dep’ty, th’only dep’ty. Whadaya want?”

It only took a second for Luther to figure out what he was working with, pull a card from his inside coat pocket with a flourish, and hand it to Toad.

Not used to the approach, Toad was slow to take it.

“Luther P. Knox, Attorney-At-Law, defending Mr. Hubert Lusaw, who, unless I’m badly mistaken,” he took a look around the office and attempted a little levity, “is a temporary resident of your fine establishment.”

Toad didn’t like the smooth talk, the fancy dress, or the fancy card, and still didn’t understand why he said he trusted the sheriff, someone he just admitted he’d never even met. “He’s boxed up in th’back but I doubt it’s tem’prary.”

“May I see ‘im?” Luther asked, still flashing that toothy smile. “Please?”

“What for?” Toad asked, suspiciously. “You know ‘im?”

“No.”

“Well, y’ain’t related. I know ‘is whole famly ‘n you ain’t one of ’em.”

“No, it’s his right,” Knox attempted to assure him.

“Says who?” Toad demanded. With the sheriff away, if anybody was gonna be handin’ out rights, it’d be Toad, and he didn’t like a smart-mouthed city thing tellin’ him what he had to do.

“The Bill of Rights,” Luther said, way too cocky for Toad.

Now Toad’d done it. Put hisself in a box and snapped the lid shut. It wasn’t the first time. He had no idea what a
billarites
was. It could be somethin’ important Sheriff Rowe forgot to tell him about. This was startin’ to smell like one o’ them ‘tit-in-th’wringer’ things the sheriff was always blamin’ him for. He chinned toward Luther’s coat. “You got’ny weapons?”

Luther opened his coat, showing he was minus any implements of destruction.

Begrudgingly, Toad grabbed the keys off the desktop and pushed out o’ the seat. “Back here,” he said and started hobblin’ toward the cellblock.

Luther fell in behind and noticed the favored, shoeless foot. “How’d you hurt your foot?”

Finally! Somebody asked! “Knife wound,” Toad announced proudly. “Line o’ duty. No biggie.” He tried to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, but desperately hoped Luther thought it was.

“In the foot?”

Shit! Toad hadn’t thought about that so he handled it the only way he knew. By ignorin’ it. They entered the cell area.

“Oh, Hubert,” he sang out, “you gotcha’sm comp’ny.”

Hub rolled off the bunk and approached the cell door.

Luther extended his long-fingered hand through the bars. “Mr. Lusaw, I trust?”

Hub just looked at it with his eyebrows all scrunched down. Then, it was Toad’s turn to eyebrow-scrunch. Again, he wondered why the Hell the dude had to tell everbody he trusted ’em. Did he honestly think anybody gave a shit?

Hub looked him over. “Who’re you?”

Retracting his hand along with a lot o’ the warmth he’d brought in with him, Luther looked to see if it had shit on it. “Luther P. Knox, Attorney-At-Law. Mrs. Lusaw has retained my services as your defense attorney.”

Hub backed up to get a good look. “How old’re you?”

Luther’d had just about enough of smart mouths and bad attitudes from ignorant backcountry inbreds. “My age has nothing to do with my abilities.”

“’Bil’ty takes time,” Hub replied with a smirk that said he’d been around the block more than once.

Luther slapped on his Smile of Superiority. “If you’ll notice,” he pointed out Hub’s side o’ the bars, “you are on that side of Incarceration,” then pointed out his side, “while I, on the other hand, am on this side of Freedom.” He then pointed to Toad and added just for chuckles, “Even
that
is on this side.”

The jab was lost on Toad ‘cause he was busy tryin’ to remember where Incarsurashun was.

“It would seem,” Luther continued, “initially at least, that I’m smarter than you. Also, Mrs. Lusaw only had fifty dollars and I was willing to take a drastic reduction from my usual fee. I need the experience.” Then he stuck his chin in the air. “You have the distinction of being my first murder trial.”

“How ‘bout that,” Hub said, givin’ Luther his Smile of Smartalecky, “Mine, too.”

“Soon,” Luther said, “I will be victorious, and famous, and you’ll be free.”

“Or in prison,” Hub said.

“Or maybe even dead,” Toad sniggered. He gave both of ’em his Smile of Smartassiness, displaying a mouthful of disgusting chompers.

“What a jovial little rat,” Luther said.

Hub rattled the cell door. “Come on, Toad, let ‘im in, I’m startin’ t’like ‘im.”

“Ah, Toad,” Luther said, looking him over like he might be the dumbest Homo Sapiens he’d ever come across. “An amphibian. My apologies to the rodent community.”

Toad unlocked the cell door. Luther entered, and Toad gave him the evil eye. “Smart ass.”

Toad relocked the door, started off, and out of earshot, Luther countered, “Dumb ass.” Then he pointed to Hub’s bunk. “Sit, we have a lot to do.”

Lootie Komes completed the last of her tasks, and she was spent. She had one final mission, and she was fearful of not having strength enough to carry it out. She stood next to the table in the center of her cold little shack. She was naked, and a horrible sight it was. Her nose and ears were disproportionate to her head. Her eyes were sunken, her face, skullish. She was humpty-backed, her spine twisted, forcing her to stoop and lean uncomfortably to the left. Sitting, standing, or laying down, the pain low in her back never let up. She couldn’t straighten out her legs. Her feet and toes were as warped as her hands and fingers. She hadn’t been able to wear shoes for years. Her tits and butt cheeks sagged like melted candle wax.

More than once that week, she’d weighed passing on cursing Hub and his family. After all, George and Matthew had murdered Hub’s sister. More than murdered. They’d defiled her. Badly. In the end, though, regardless o’ what George and Matthew had become, they were still her children and that was what had shifted the fulcrum point. Hub Lusaw and his family were gonna pay.

She spooned a decades-old gourd into a bowl on the table, the dark contents the consistency of blackstrap molasses. When she raised her arm over her head, her shoulder popped and she yelped. Pain slashed up her neck and exploded in the back of her head. It was yet another reminder that her life was approaching the midnight hour.

Luckily, she hadn’t spilled the gourd’s contents. Steadyin’ herself with half a dozen deep, careful breaths, she raised her arm again, slower, not quite as high, and anointed herself, ritualistically, with the thick, foul potion comprised of the remainder of fetid swamp water, and blood from the gator, the snake, and the boar.

Mumbling her chants, she worked the goo into her scarred scalp and pushed it over her wrinkled old face, stinging her eyes. She traced her finger along the scar that jaggered from her cheek to well into her scalp like she’d done all her life. All within the discoloration was dead. The lightnin’ had destroyed the nerves. As a child, she used to sit, trance-like, and trace its dead line without havin’ to see it.

The ooze rolled down her humped back and bone-slatted chest and globbed off her withered breasts hangin’ like rotted squash, onto a bulbous belly and down her spindly legs. She dipped the gourd into the stinking morass until it was gone.

All the town’s hotels, restaurants, and saloons were packed. The only things in any abundance was beer, whiskey, and rumor. Three-cent watermelons were goin’ for a dime. Hookers were charging fifty percent more than usual and still didn’t have time to stand up between appointments. Reporters scurried about like rats, interviewing any and everone who’d had or even claimed to’ve had anything to do with the Komeses or the Lusaws.

It was standin’ room only outside the courthouse. Anybody passin’ out from the heat had to wait for the crowd to thin out ‘fore there was enough room to fall over. But if it was bad outside, the inside was just awful—everbody drenched in sweat, worthlessly swishin’ fans. The only air to breathe in was what somebody else’d breathed out, and if you got up to go outside for some fresh or to answer nature’s call, somebody grabbed your seat, so most people just sat it out, simmerin’ in their own juices and crossin’ their legs real tight.

Raeleen woulda preferred bein’ inside but she didn’t have anyone to watch the boys. They ran around jumpin’ and squealin’, gripin’ about bein’ hungry, havin’ to wet and wantin’ to go home. The waitin’ was Hell, not knowin’ what was goin’ on until the end o’ the day.

The bailiff, a vulturesque, Ichabod Crane-lookin’ thing with a prominent and active Adam’s apple, sat by the judge’s bench, lookin’ the crowd over and tryin’ not t’nod off.

His Honor, the ruddy-faced Almer Parks, sixtyish, occupied the Bench of Honor.

Totally out of his element, Hub Lusaw sat uncomfortably at the defense table alongside Luther P. Knox, Attorney-At-Law.

Sheriff Rowe, in new duds that weren’t gut-stretched all to Hell, was on the witness stand as the prosecuting attorney, Sam Dimwiddie—fiftyish, a well-padded, local good ol’ boy—paraded back and forth, stretchin’ out his suspender straps. This trial was his ticket to fame and fortune and he was gonna milk it for all it was worth.

“Now, Sheriff,” he began, lawyerly, “how was it you learned about the hap’nin’s on the night of August the seventeenth o’ this year?” Two days earlier, he and the sheriff had gone over all this and both knew it by heart.

“I’s at home, asleep,” Rowe replied, “and LeRoy Ledbetter come poundin’ on th’door blabbrin’ like a ravin’ idyit about trouble down t’th’Komeses.”

LeRoy was sittin’ in the gallery hopin’ t’God his name would come up. Now he was sorry it had. He had a headache, was sweatin’ like a draft horse, thirsty as a sponge, and had to take a piss so bad it hurt…and bein’ labeled a ravin’ idyit was all he had to show for it. Everbody craned their neck in his direction and snickered. He knew the whole town considered him a boob, and he’d hoped that bein’ The One Who Started The Ball Rollin’ On The Murder Of The Decade would turn that around, but now he’d been referred to as The Ravin’ Idyit in front of ever rumormonger and blabbermouth in town. He thought he may as well had I-d-y-i-t tattooed on his forehead.

“Did he say what that trouble was?” Dimwiddie continued.

“He didn’t know, just that they’s a ruckus he thought I oughta see ‘bout.”

“Would you please tell the court what you found upon your arrival at the Komes home?” If he’d been the defense attorney instead o’ the prosecution, it woulda been the Komes shack, but since he wanted to make the poor brain-pulpalized brothers look like they’d been wrongly done on, it was now the Komes home.

“When I got there it was quiet. Four ‘clock, give ‘r take, still dark. Their truck was parked out front ‘n th’front door was open. I called their names a couple o’ times but nobody answered so I pulled m’gun ‘n went in.” The questions and answers may have been scripted but he twitched nervously, bein’ reminded o’ the scene. “They’s two bodies on th’floor, just inside th’front door, ‘n one alayin’ on th’couch.”

“And they were….”

“George ‘n Matthew Komes ‘n Ret Lusaw.”

“When you say Ret, you are referring to Loretta Lusaw? Sister o’ the accused?”

“Yessir.”

“Which one was it on the couch?” Anybody woulda assumed the one on the couch woulda been the girl but Dimwiddie was attempting to set the stage.

“Ret.”

“Was she settin’ up or layin’ down or just exactly what was her position?”

“She was laid out on ‘er back, covered with a blanket, tucked up under ‘er.”

“Tucked up under her, mm-hmm,” Dimwiddie replied, his eyes scrunched down like he was tryin’ to picture it. “And the brothers?”

“Like I said, in the front room, just inside th’front door, on th’floor, ‘parently where they fell.” The scripted crap and Dimwiddie’s bullshit demeanor was wearing thin. Rowe much preferred a stand-up fight and not all the legal fertilizer and dancin’ around he was bein’ forced to take part in.