Nowhere Nice (Nick Reid Novels) (18 page)

“Drunk?” I asked Desmond.

“Usually,” he told me.

“All of them?”

Desmond nodded. “Didn’t see them much, but I never saw them sober.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Percy Dwayne asked. “Let’s kick the shit out of them.”

That sounded sensible enough to Desmond to prompt him to say, “I’ll pull off up here somewhere.”

We were looking for a stretch of open ground where we could take full advantage of our sobriety and enthusiasm, but the territory was so wooded and tight along Confederate Avenue that Desmond had cut east to the Union side. He made his way all the way up to the Illinois monument. It looked like a miniature version of the Jefferson Memorial and was perched on the grassy knob of a hill.

“This ought to work,” Desmond said.

He’d been careful not to lose our Purdys, so it had taken us a good quarter hour just to get where we’d ended up. If Luther and Percy Dwayne and Eugene had been spoiling for a fight before, they were desperate to lay into some Purdys by the time we all piled out of the Escalade.

“Let’s wait in there,” I told them and pointed at the building itself.

It had a domed roof, a few columns out front, and an open doorway. I had to think the names of the Illinois dead were etched on the walls inside.

“What’s wrong with right here?” Percy Dwayne wanted to know.

“In case they’ve got more than just the one pistol, a little cover might be nice,” I told him.

“So where’s our guns?” Luther asked me.

“Let’s take the bag,” Desmond said.

That’s just what we did. We hauled that duffel up the hill to that chapel proper. That’s how I started to think of it anyway once Eugene had told us, “I ain’t going in that church.”

“Ain’t a church,” Percy Dwayne and Luther said back both at once.

“Probably haints and shit all in there,” Eugene said and than glanced down at his coonhound and asked, “Right?”

Barbara didn’t appear to have an opinion. She just scratched at her T-shirt as if she’d grown weary of it.

Then the Fiat came rattling down the road with the Fiesta hard behind it. Those Purdys fairly hurtled into the parking lot, scraping off more undercarriage as they came. The boy who’d fired was the crazy Purdy with the eye patch. He tumbled out of the Lada Riva, took a little aim, and squeezed off another round. He hit the near granite wall of the monument, and the bullet ricocheted. We all crouched and ducked and puckered and then raced up the steps and in through the doorway.

The second round singing off granite caused Eugene to reconsider his fear of haints. He passed us on the landing and ran as far inside as he could go with Barbara right beside him.

That idiot fired off another round. It sounded like it hit a column, and I guess the fluting and facets served to turn that bullet back around. It zinged halfway across the parking lot and broke out Desmond’s back passenger window.

“Well shit!” Desmond said, and he fished the TEC-9 out of our weapons duffel. Desmond slapped in a freighted banana clip and stepped full out on the landing. He fired a burst in the air. “Get on back,” he told those Purdys, but they weren’t the sort to take instruction. Especially from a boy who, to their way of thinking, had put their kin to such poor use.

So they just stood there while Desmond, because he could shoot, demolished their vehicles around them. That Fiat went to pieces. The near door fell off while Desmond was still riddling the fender. Two of those Purdys spread flat on the ground. The other three ran and regrouped and ran again.

Desmond emptied his clip into those two cars. The racket that gun made was deafening. He broke out all the windows and caused the Ford coupe to catch fire. At first I couldn’t hear anything but a muffled roar. Then I could hear Barbara barking. I finally got to where I could hear Luther and Percy Dwayne and Eugene all screaming about how they couldn’t hear.

“I guess you showed them,” I said to Desmond.

He cleared his breach. He asked me, “What?”

Those Purdys were all infuriated now. Or they seemed to think anyway that they had ample cause to be infuriated, and the five of them came running at us, yodeling and shrieking all the way. The one with the pistol fired his last round in the air. He led the charge up the granite staircase toward the landing. It was just me and Desmond there to meet them. Our colleagues were inside carping about being deaf.

“What the hell you doing back here?” the lead Purdy asked just as he gained the landing.

I thought Desmond might tell him it was a free country and he could go any damn where he pleased. But I have to think Desmond had long since decided he was finished talking to Purdys. He grabbed this one at the throat and crotch, raised him over his head and threw him. That boy hit his brothers and cousins as they closed on the landing themselves, and they all went down together, toppling backward to the ground.

Falling down stairs is painful enough when it’s wooden risers. Going ass over elbows down a granite stairway with a pile of kin proved enough to take the remaining starch out of that pack of Purdys. They ended up in a canna lily bed remonstrating with each other, which with Purdys took the form of saying “Jesus” and “Fuck” in equal parts and in turn.

Percy Dwayne joined us on the landing. He was reaming an ear out with his finger and working his jaw. He caught sight of the Purdys piled up on the ground. They were moving enough to seem alive but hardly enough to seem a danger.

“What happened to them?”

“Slipped,” I told him.

“We going to stomp them or something?”

“Naw,” Desmond said.

And that’s about when the Fiesta blew up. It was feeble and half-assed as explosions go. You can be sure they only had about two gallons of gas in the thing. But the blast proved loud and gaudy enough to serve as a useful beacon to the other crew that was already looking for us in the park.

They came roaring up in proper four-by-fours. Two Park Service Chevys, a state police cruiser, a Warren County patrol car, and two Vicksburg city units.

“Ain’t this some shit.” Luther announced. “Got arrested once already today.”

“Yesterday,” I told him. It seemed like a year ago when I’d gone in and pulled Luther out of the Greenville lockup.

“I ain’t going back in.” That was Eugene. His Arkansas experience had clearly shaken him up. I guess if you’d gotten pitched in a cell in an Arkansas shopping plaza, you might decide you’d rather not be arrested again.

“Let’s just tell them what happened,” Percy Dwayne said. “It’s all these boys’ fault.”

I heard Desmond sigh. We both a knew a life that depended on Percy Dwayne Dubois talking you out of trouble wasn’t really a life worth leading on this earth.

Those cops and rangers and troopers all crouched behind their doors and pointed every manner of firearm at us—pistols and shotguns and rifles.

“Hands,” one of them barked out. “Let’s see ’em.”

I heard the TEC-9 clatter onto the landing.

They didn’t have enough handcuffs to go around, so we got zip-tied and all parked in a line on a length of curbing down where the sidewalk met the lot.

One of the county cops passed his time telling us all to keep our mouths shut while the trooper asked us what we were up to in the park at night.

“That boy right there,” one of the Purdys said—the fat whiskery one with a snake tattoo on his neck—“had his way with our Denise.”

“Who’s Denise?” the trooper wanted to know.

“His sister,” a Purdy said and country pointed with his nose at nobody much.

“Had his way? What do you mean?”

“Hell, you know.” The Purdy with the eye patch was the one who chimed in now.

“Tell me.”

The Purdy’s couldn’t settle on a fit description of what they meant. Consequently, they fell to arguing and got told by the county cop, “Shut up.”

Then one of the city cops found our weapons duffel, and they didn’t care about Denise after that.

“Any of those legal?” I asked Desmond.

I owned a couple of guns I’d bought outright, but I believed they were back at home. The duffel was mostly full of stuff we’d taken off people. Criminals primarily and drunken lowlifes who’d threatened to do us harm. We had a policy of claiming firearms once they were pointed at us, but we had no way of knowing what those guns had been up to before we came along.

“Well now,” one of the city cops said.

He was awfully proud of himself. Him and one of the park rangers had hauled our duffel down the stairs, and they dropped it clanking before us as he spoke.

“What’s all this?” he asked us.

Me and Desmond were accomplished at telling police nothing at all. I’d been a county cop in Virginia, so I knew all the dodges firsthand. Desmond had them down by instinct and disposition. We’d been in enough trouble together to know how to weather the sort of bluster that cops were inclined to get up to once they thought they had us cold.

One of the Vicksburg boys had us doing a dime in Parchman right off the top.

Desmond gave him a neck noise, but that was as far as he would go.

Percy Dwayne had a different strategy. He’d probably been cuffed and zip-tied more times than I could count. He liked to latch on an absolving explanation and just ride it until either it was dead or he was free in the world again.

“Ain’t even ours,” he told those cops while dipping his head toward our duffel. “Took it off those boys.”

“Like hell,” a Purdy chimed in.

“Couldn’t do much else,” Percy Dwayne said in a more-in-sadness-than-anger sort of way.

Desmond swung around my way to steal a glance.

I shrugged.

“They was after him,” Percy Dwayne told the three cops that had gathered before him. A city policeman. A trooper in his cocked campaign hat. A park ranger in twill so wrinkled and baggy he should have been hanging off a garbage truck.

“Why?” The trooper was taking the lead.

“Used to date one of them, didn’t you?” Percy Dwayne asked Desmond.

“One of
them
?” the city cop said and sneered as he pointed at those Purdys.

They objected faster than Desmond ever could.

“Aw hell no!” they shouted out like some aggrieved cracker chorus.

Then the one with the eye patch up and declared, “He used my sister hard.”

“What does that even mean?” the trooper asked.

I was being careful not to look him full in the eye. I couldn’t say but that the trouble I’d had with A. P. Benbow at the barracks had followed me clear to Vicksburg and would do me in at last.

“You know,” that Purdy told him, which didn’t appear to lead to enlightenment in any significant way.

“His sister?” that trooper said to Desmond.

“Saw her once or twice,” Desmond said.

“Tied her the fuck up,” that Purdy brother told us all.

“That right?” The Vicksburg cop was getting interested now.

“Only way she’d have it,” Desmond informed him.

“Like hell.” The Purdy brother tried to stand up but got shoved back down. His Purdy colleagues grumbled.

“Wasn’t even real rope,” Desmond explained. “Wrapped in velvet and shit.”

“Caught him beating her,” the Purdy brother with the pitiful aim said.

“Ain’t never hit a woman,” Desmond said.

“But you’d tie one up,” the trooper reminded him.

“Not before her. And not after,” Desmond said. “That was all her kink. I just like them naked and upside down.”

Luther and Percy Dwayne both said, “Amen.”

“Whipped her,” the Purdy brother declared.

“She asked me to,” Desmond explained. “Damn thing was made out of foam.”

“Where’s your sister now?” the trooper asked the Purdy brother.

“Houston. With some boy.”

“Like him?” The trooper pointed at Desmond.

That Purdy spat and blew a breath before he told him, “Yeah.”

“Here’s a thing I want to know,” that shabby park ranger told us all. “What the hell’s that dog doing in a shirt?”

*   *   *

There wasn’t a lot for us to be up to after that beyond giving those guns to the Purdys. As pastimes go, we went at it with concerted energy. It helped that we had a gaudy assortment of firearms in the duffel. Those cops would pull out a Steyr or our M1A, our 93R, our Heckler & Koch, and all our regular pistols too, and those Purdys just couldn’t seem indignant when we insisted they owned them.

Ours were finer firearms than probably any Purdy had ever had in hand to judge by the revolver the eye patch Purdy had been firing all over the place. Consequently, those Purdys couldn’t help but admire them and probably covet them a little. I had to imagine they were thinking ahead to when this spot of trouble got sorted and they could haul off their bag of guns as they left the jailhouse all free men. That must have been what kept them from raging against us because they didn’t put up much of a fuss.

“That one there like to mow us down,” Percy Dwayne said and pointed at the Purdy brother.

He couldn’t trouble himself to bark back how he’d never done any such thing. Instead he just sat there looking like the sort of hard man who might just use a machine gun.

“Shot out all our windows,” Percy Dwayne said. “Went half wild. Even shot up his own damn car.”

The cops all looked at that Purdy brother. He was so deep into being a machine-gunning bad-ass that all he could do was spit.

“Might even have shot a buddy of ours,” Luther chimed in, sounding teary.

“What buddy?” the trooper asked.

I called Dale’s name. “Used to be a trooper up by Indianola,” I said.

That did it. That trooper snatched that Purdy brother up off the curb.

“What did you go and do?”

“Nothing!” He was finally wising up. “We just kicked him around a little.”

“Where?”

That Purdy brother was so confused about where he was he couldn’t say. Traveling in a Riva Lada was probably a lot like riding in a blender. You were so busy trying to stay between ditches that you hardly knew where you were going and surely couldn’t tell where you’d been.

“Back where we came in,” I told the trooper.

“Show me,” he said. “You two.” He pointed at me and Desmond and escorted us over to his cruiser.