Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet (27 page)

He slid my drink across the counter. Grinning around his cigar, flashing gray gums and brown teeth, he said, “Something happen to your paw, pardner?”

I fed him the same line I’d used earlier.

“That a fact?” he said, a knowing gleam in his eyes. “Mister … ?”

“Smith,” I said.

He arched an eyebrow. “Not John Smith?”

I feigned surprise. “You’ve heard of me.”

He leaned across the bar as if to impart a secret.

“You know,” he whispered, “I kinda took you for a Jones.”

I shook my head, “Jonesy’s my cousin.”

We both chuckled politely.

I raised my glass in a toast and then knocked back the hooch. It burned down my gullet and set my guts ablaze. I leaned against the bar and started spluttering. Croker chuckled as I struggled to compose myself.

“Goddamn,” I managed to wheeze.

“Amen,” he nodded.

“That’s good stuff.”

It was better than good; I sopped up the dregs with my finger and rubbed it into my gums.

Croker tapped his nose slyly. “Old family recipe.”

He poured me another. Knowing now what I was dealing with, I sipped it with respect. No wonder this joint was jumping. This was grade-A firewater.

“So,” Croker said, “Mister Smith—”

“John,” I insisted.

He gave a thin smile. “Rusty tells me your car broke down?”

I stifled a snort. “His name really Rusty?”

“Fits him, don’t it?”

Like a glove, I agreed.

“Then I guess you’ll be wanting a tow?” Croker said.

I grimaced apologetically. “I might’ve told Rusty a little white lie.”

“Your car didn’t break down?”

“Kinda hard to,” I said, “when I don’t even have a car.”

“How ‘bout that.”

“Truth is, Horace— Do you mind if I call you Horace?”

“I’ll be hurt if you don’t.”

“Horace,” I said. “The truth is, I’m looking for work.”

He glanced dubiously at my wounded hand. “What exactly can you do?” Like he struggled to believe I could even wipe my own ass without help. And I’ll admit it had become harder recently.

I jerked my head towards the piano player. “I can make that godawful racket stop,” I said, wincing as the guy kicked another tune while it was down.

“You play?” Croker said.

I shrugged. “A little.” A rare display of modesty.

Croker and Rusty exchanged a glance.

Then Croker fanned his arm towards the piano.

“Well, shoot, son,” he said. “Be my guest.”

Before the next coochie gal came out on stage, I weaved my way through the crowd to the piano, and told the dope perched on the stool I was cutting in.

He said, “Like hell you are—”

“Lyle!” Croker barked at him.

Lyle sprang from the stool like he’d sat on a tack.

He shuffled back from the piano, glaring daggers at me.

I shot Lyle a wink, slumped down on the cratered piano stool, and helped myself to the cigarette he’d left smoldering in the ashtray on top of the piano. I slotted the cigarette between my lips as the next burlesque girl sauntered onto the stage. She did a double take when she saw my unfamiliar mug behind the piano. She was built for both dairy and beef and I waggled the cigarette between my lips approvingly. I said to her, “Just follow my lead, toots.”

And then I broke into a one-handed boogie-woogie that lit up the joint like a firebug’s vision of hell, and she started tearing off her clothes like they burned. I hadn’t played a note since the cuck took my fingers, and I’d forgotten how good it felt. Music heals all wounds, and I played through the pain, hammering the keys with both hands now, my mangled mitt smearing the ivories with blood as I closed the show and the place erupted.

The coochie gal dragged me up off my stool to take a bow with her. Before tottering backstage, she whispered something in my ear that I might’ve been agreeable to if I wasn’t sworn off dames for life. And now that the music had stopped, my hand was screaming like a banshee. I needed fresh air and somewhere private to cry me a river.

At the back of the room, double doors led outside to a gallery deck.

I started butting through the crowd, yokels slapping my back and offering to buy me drinks, which I’d gladly accept just as soon as I’d composed myself. About the only person unimpressed by my performance was Lyle. He was pacing around the piano like a rider who’s been bucked by his horse and is nervous about getting back on. When he finally plucked up the courage and retook his stool, the crowd cursed him and pelted him with bottle tops and beer nuts.

Croker shook his head and said to him, “I reckon that’s your lot, Lyle.”

Lyle protested, whiningly. “Hell, Mister Croker, I can play that nigger music—”

“You can leave out the front door,” Croker said, “or the back.”

Lyle’s face bled white.

He chose the front door; I continued out back.

The deck ended at a waist-high wooden rail overlooking the pond. The water was tar-black, treacle-thick, the surface patched with duckweed. The pungent odor of stagnation and rotting meat choked the air. Mosquitoes swarmed in a humming cloud above the swampy soup. Corrugated sheet metal formed solid walls around the pond, the walls cratered in places, as if hammered from within by a giant anvil. In the middle of the pond, a cypress tree stump lay on its side like a fallen goliath, gnarled roots snaking up from the depths. A tattered shirttail flapped from the roots like a forlorn white flag of surrender.

Slumping against the deck rail, I unwrapped the blood-sodden handkerchief from around my hand. The scabbed stumps of my fingers wept scarlet tears that spattered my reflection on the inky black water below. The sight of the blood made me queasy. I choked down my gorge and inhaled deep breaths.

I’d thought I was alone outside. Then I heard the crackle of burning tobacco leaves as someone in the shadows dragged on a cigarette. Startled, I dropped my handkerchief, watching as it fluttered down into the pond and floated on the water like a bloody lily pad.

She stood in profile to me, silhouetted against the low full moon like a bust carved from marble. And speaking of busts, she had plenty; straining against a white silk blouse that was maddeningly close to translucent in the moonlight. Flaxen hair cascaded off her shoulders, a golden waterfall that plunged down the graceful arch of her back, before it crashed against the rounded rocks of her rump. Her lips were painted stop sign-red. She exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke that will-o’-wisped into the night … and then she cocked her head towards me. Her left eye was blackened, but it was the kind of imperfection that only drew attention to how perfectly put together the rest of her was, and I might have admired her awhile longer if I wasn’t sworn off dames for life.

“You play pretty good,” said a voice that was sin dipped in honey.

I gave her an aw-shucks grin. “For a fella with a gimp hand,” I said, hoping maybe she’d kiss it better.

“Caught raiding someone’s cookie jar?” she said.

I was about to feed her my cut-myself-shaving line, when a smile teased those lips, and she said, “Or the honey pot?”

And right away she had me nailed.

To the goddamn cross.

Blushing like a schoolboy, before I could stammer out an answer—the pond seemed to explode, and I was drenched in a spray of stinking swamp water.

Lurching back in shock from the deck rail, I glanced down into the pond and saw a dinosaur devour my bloody handkerchief with a snap of its jaws.

The huge reptilian head submerged again in a seething froth of bubbles.

“What the Christ was that?”

“Oh …” drawled a voice behind me. “That’s just Big George.”

Croker was blocking my way back to the bar.

He’d removed his butcher’s apron. His silver neck chain dangled down the front of his bullish chest. The gold wedding rings chinked together like wind chimes. He squinted at the dame and me like a sniper sighting down his rifle.

“See you’ve met the missus?” he said.

For a moment I thought he meant the monster in the pond.

Then I said, “We haven’t been properly introduced.”

“Grace,” Croker said to his wife, “this here’s Mister Johnny Smith.”

He tipped me a wink.

“He’ll be playing pee-anna for us awhile.”

It took me a moment to register what he’d said; now that I knew what was lurking in the pond, I was more than a little keen to get off that rickety wooden deck. I dredged up my voice. “I will?”

Croker said. “Said you was lookin’ for work, didn’t you?”

I wasn’t so sure about that all of a sudden.

“Nice to meet you, Mister Smith,” Grace said, icy and flat.

“Call me John,” I said, smiling politely and extending my hand.

“You’ll call him Mister Smith,” Croker warned her, and I took my hand back without her shaking it.

Grace flicked her cigarette off the deck and it sizzled in the pond. Then she brushed past her husband and returned to the bar.

“Damn it, Grace!” Croker bellowed. “How many more times I gotta tell you not to do that? It messes with Big George’s digestion!”

He watched as she sashayed across the room. Hell, I watched too. I hated to see her leave, but I loved to watch her go. Grace was just the right name for her.

When she disappeared through a door behind the bar, Croker shook his head in exasperation, fondling the wedding rings adorning his neck chain.

I forced a chuckle. “Dames.” Gave a knowing roll of the eyes.

His head cranked towards me and I quickly changed the subject.

“I never knew gators could get that big,” I said. “Outside of fairytales.” The damn dragon was fifteen feet, easy. “You oughta have him measured for
Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
”

A grin slit Croker’s face and his chest puffed with pride.

“Yep,” he said, “Big George is a legend ‘round these parts.”

By implication, so was the man who had caught him.

Croker slung a beefy arm around my shoulder and led me back to the deck rail to show off his pet. We stood leaning against the rail, our moonlit reflections rippling on the pond. The gator surfaced like a submarine, bubbles frothing around the huge angular snout, erasing our reflections on the water. The protective film slid back from the gator’s eyes. It peered up at me with an ancient hunger. Croker’s hand squeezed the meat of my shoulder.

“I was just a young’un,” Croker said, “fishing for channel cat with my Pap when this big bastard broadsided us, flipped our boat, flung us both in the swamp. Pap managed to boost me up onto a tree branch—‘bout the only kindly thing that ole snake ever done for me—but not before Big George took my leg. Snapped it off right above the knee.” Croker rapped his knuckles against his left leg with a sound like a hollow tree.

“The leg,” Croker continued, “well, that was just an appetizer. Pap was the main course. Perched above the swamp on that tree branch, I took off my shirt, bound it tight around the stump of my leg, and then the rest of the night, and right the way through till dawn, I watched Big George play with his food till all that was left of my daddy was just ragged red chunks of meat snagged in his teeth.

“That,” Croker said, “was the longest night of my life …

“A fishing crew found me the next day. They chased off Big George with rifles. Had to prise my fingers off the branch to get me down outta that tree. I was damn near drip-dried of blood, half-crazed from what I’d seen. Doc Culpepper told my momma he wasn’t sure I’d pull through. But even then I was a stubborn sonofabitch, and I healed over time. Soon as I could, I went back to the swamp and went a-huntin’ for Big George. Wasn’t easy. Took me many a year. Me an’ George had us a grand ole game of cat and mouse, never sure which of us was bein’ the cat and which of us was bein’ the mouse. But I caught him in the end …

“Didn’t I, George?”

Croker gazed down at the gator. The gator gazed back at him. The way they were looking at each other, I wondered if the two of ‘em needed a moment alone together.

“In the end,” Croker said, “all it took was the right bait.”

My mouth went dry. “What bait was that?”

Croker clapped me on the shoulder and laughed. “Aw, you don’t have to worry ‘bout that, Smitty. Big George is penned in real good here, see. ‘Sides, now I know you play pee-anna so good, you’ll be giving the place a touch of class.”

I forced myself to laugh along with him, but I wasn’t really sure what the hell I was laughing about.

“I’m surprised you didn’t just kill the damn thing,” I said.

Croker looked appalled. “Kill Big George? The hell I’d do that for?”

“For what it did to your …” I paused. Unable to detect any grief for his father, I said, “Your leg.”

Croker waved his hand dismissively.

“The night I spent up in that tree,” Croker said, “slowly bleedin’ out, looking down at Big George, Big George sniffin’ the air, looking up at me …” He shook his head. “I been married four times—God help me—but I’ve never knowed an understanding like it … We’re like kin, Big George and me.”

As if on cue, the gator submerged, Croker gave another chuckle, and I watched Grace’s cigarette bobbing on the chop, the butt ringed red with her lipstick.

Later that night after closing, Croker took me to his office behind the bar.

It was little more than a stockroom furnished with a desk, a leather recliner behind the desk, and a hard wooden chair for visitors that numbed my ass just to look at it. On the wall above the desk was a crudely drawn painting. More
Looney Tunes
than the Louvre, it depicted a jolly old fisherman, bearded and fat as a hillbilly Santa Claus, casting his line into the river. Baited on the hook was a Negro child, caricatured to resemble a monkey. Standing upright in the river was an alligator wearing a dinner napkin around his neck, clutching a knife and fork, salivating as the child sailed towards his cavernous maw. The painting was titled ‘Gator Bait.’ I shuddered to recall what Croker had said about “the right bait.”

Sinking down into his recliner, Croker gestured for me to sit. The wooden chair was positioned on a ratty oval rug. I tried to move it closer to the desk, but it wouldn’t budge; seemed to be nailed to the floor, the chair and rug both. Croker was waiting impatiently for me to sit, so I took a pew, and I couldn’t help noticing the way the floorboards creaked and sagged beneath my weight.