Stories (2011) (48 page)

They drove by a crowd at the side of the road, a tan station
wagon and a wreck of a Ford up on a jack. At a glance they could see that there
was a nigger in the middle of the crowd and he wasn't witnessing to the white
boys. He was hopping around like a pig with a hotshot up his ass, trying to
find a break in the white boys so he could make a run for it. But there wasn't
any break to be found and there were too many to fight. Nine white boys were
knocking him around like he was a pinball and they were a malicious machine.

"Ain't that one of our niggers?" Farto asked.
"And ain't that some of them White Tree football players that's trying to
kill him?"

"Scott," Leonard said, and the name was dogshit in
his mouth. It had been Scott who had outdone him for the position of
quarterback on the team. That damn jig could put together a play more tangled
than a can of fishing worms, but it damn near always worked. And he could run
like a spotted-ass ape.

As they passed, Fatto said, "We'll read about him
tomorrow in the papers."

But Leonard drove only a short way before slamming on the
brakes and whipping the Impala around. Rex swung way out and clipped off some
tall, dried sunflowers at the edge of the road like a scythe.

"We gonna go back and watch?" Farto said. "I
don't think them White Tree boys would bother us none if that's all we was
gonna do, watch."

"He may be a nigger," Leonard said, not liking
himself, "but he's our nigger and we can't let them do that. They kill
him, they'll beat us in football."

Farto saw the truth of this immediately. "Damn right.
They can't do that to our nigger."

Leonard crossed the road again and went straight for the
White Tree boys, hit down hard on the horn. The White Tree boys abandoned
beating their prey and jumped in all directions. Bullfrogs couldn't have done
any better.

Scott stood startled and weak where he was, his knees bent
in and touching one another, his eyes big as pizza pans. He had never noticed
how big grillwork was. It looked like teeth there in the night and the
headlights looked like eyes. He felt like a stupid fish about to be eaten by a
shark.

Leonard braked hard, but off the highway in the dirt it
wasn't enough to keep from bumping Scott, sending him flying over the hood and
against the glass where his face mashed to it then rolled away, his shirt
snagging one of the windshield wipers and pulling it off.

Leonard opened the car door and called to Scott who lay on
the ground. "It's now or never."

A White Tree boy made for the car, and Leonard pulled the
taped hammer handle out from beneath the seat and stepped out of the car and
hit him with it. The White Tree boy went down to his knees and said something
that sounded like French but wasn't. Leonard grabbed Scott by the back of the
shirt and pulled him up and guided him around and threw him into the open door.
Scott scrambled over the front seat and into the back. Leonard threw the hammer
handle at one of the White Tree boys and stepped back, whirled into the car
behind the wheel. He put the car in gear again and stepped on the gas. The
Impala lurched forward, and with one hand on the door Leonard flipped it wider
and clipped a White Tree boy with it as if he were flexing a wing. The car
bumped back on the highway and the chain swung out and Rex clipped the feet out
from under two White Tree boys as neatly as he had taken down the dried
sunflowers.

Leonard looked in his rearview mirror and saw two White Tree
boys carrying the one he had clubbed with the hammer handle to the station
wagon. The others he and the dog had knocked down were getting up. One had
kicked the jack out from under Scott's car and was using it to smash the
headlights and windshield.

"Hope you got insurance on that thing," Leonard
said.

"I borrowed it," Scott said, peeling the
windshield wiper out of his T-shirt. "Here, you might want this." He
dropped the wiper over the seat and between Leonard and Farto.

"That's a borrowed car?" Farto said. "That's
worse."

"Nah," Scott said. "Owner don't know I
borrowed it. I'd have had that flat changed if that sucker had had him a spare
tire, but I got back there and wasn't nothing but the rim, man. Say, thanks for
not letting me get killed, else we couldn't have run that ole pig together no
more. Course, you almost run over me. My chest hurts."

Leonard checked the rearview again. The White Tree boys were
coming fast. "You complaining?" Leonard said.

"Nah," Scott said, and turned to look through the
back glass. He could see the dog swinging in short arcs and pieces of it going
wide and far. "Hope you didn't go off and forget your dog tied to the
bumper."

"Goddamn," said Farto, "and him registered
too."

"This ain't so funny," Leonard said, "them White
Tree boys are gaining."

"Well, speed it up," Scott said.

Leonard gnashed his teeth. "I could always get rid of
some excess baggage, you know."

"Throwing that windshield wiper out ain't gonna
help," Scott said.

Leonard looked in the mirror and saw the grinning nigger in
the back seat. Nothing worse than a comic coon. He didn't even look grateful.
Leonard had a sudden horrid vision of being overtaken by the White Tree boys.
What if he were killed with the nigger? Getting killed was bad enough, but what
if tomorrow they found him in a ditch with Farto and the nigger. Or maybe them
White Tree boys would make him do something awful with the nigger before they
killed them. Like making him suck the nigger's dick or some such thing. Leonard
held his foot all the way to the floor; as they passed the Dairy Queen he took
a hard left and the car just made it and Rex swung out and slammed a light
pole, then popped back in line behind them.

The White Tree boys couldn't make the corner in the station
wagon and they didn't even try. They screeched into a car lot down a piece,
turned around and came back. By that time the tail lights of the Impala were
moving away from them rapidly, looking like two inflamed hemorrhoids in a dark
asshole.

"Take the next right coming up," Scott said,
"then you'll see a little road off to the left. Kill your lights and take
that."

Leonard hated taking orders from Scott on the field, but
this was worse. Insulting. Still, Scott called good plays on the field, and the
habit of following instructions from the quarterback died hard. Leonard made
the right and Rex made it with them after taking a dip in a water-filled bar
ditch.

Leonard saw the little road and killed his lights and took
it. It carried them down between several rows of large tin storage buildings,
and Leonard pulled between two of them and drove down a little alley lined with
more. He stopped the car and they waited and listened. After about five
minutes, Farto said, "I think we skunked those father-rapers."

"Ain't we a team?" Scott said.

In spite of himself, Leonard felt good. It was like when the
nigger called a play that worked and they were all patting each other on the
ass and not minding what color the other was because they were just creatures
in football suits.

"Let's have a drink," Leonard said.

Farto got a paper cup off the floorboard for Scott and
poured him up some warm Coke and whiskey. Last time they had gone to Longview,
he had peed in that paper cup so they wouldn't have to stop, but that had long
since been poured out, and besides, it was for a nigger. He poured Leonard and
himself drinks in their same cups.

Scott took a sip and said, "Shit, man, that tastes kind
of rank."

"Like piss," Farto said.

Leonard held up his cup. "To the Mud Creek Wildcats and
fuck them White Tree boys."

"You fuck 'em," Scott said. They touched their
cups, and at that moment the car filled with light.

Cups upraised, the Three Musketeers turned blinking toward
it. The light was coming from an open storage building door, and there was a
fat man standing in the center of the glow like a bloated fly on a lemon wedge.
Behind him was a big screen made of a sheet and there was some kind of movie
playing on it. And though the light was bright and fading out the movie,
Leonard, who was in the best position to see, got a look at it. What he could
make out looked like a gal down on her knees sucking this fat guy's dick (the
man was visible only from the belly down) arid the guy had a short, black
revolver pressed to her forehead. She pulled her mouth off of him for an
instant and the man came in her face, then fired the revolver. The woman's head
snapped out of frame and the sheet seemed to drip blood, like dark condensation
on a window pane. Then Leonard couldn't see anymore because another man had
appeared in the doorway, and like the first he was fat. Both looked like huge
bowling balls that had been set on top of shoes. More men appeared behind these
two, but one of the fat men turned and held up his hand and the others moved
out of sight. The two fat guys stepped outside and one pulled the door almost
shut, except for a thin band of light that fell across the front seat of the
Impala.

Fat Man Number One went over to the car and opened Farto's
door and said, "You fucks and the nigger get out." It was the voice
of doom. They had only thought the White Tree boys were dangerous. They
realized now they had been kidding themselves. This was the real article. This
guy would have eaten the hammer handle and shit a two-by-four.

They got out of the car and the fat man waved them around
and lined them up on Farto's side and looked at them. The boys still had their
drinks in their hands, and sparing that, they looked like cons in a lineup.

Fat Man Number Two came over and looked at the trio and
smiled. It was obvious the fatties were twins. They had the same bad features
in the same fat faces. They wore Hawaiian shirts that varied only in profiles
and color of parrots and had on white socks and too-short black slacks and
black, shiny, Italian shoes with toes sharp enough to thread needles.

Fat Man Number One took the cup away from Scott and sniffed
it. "A nigger with liquor," he said. "That's like a cunt with
brains. It don't go together. Guess you was getting tanked up so you could put
the ole black snake to some chocolate pudding after while. Or maybe you was
wantin' some vanilla and these boys were gonna set it up."

"I'm not wanting anything but to go home," Scott
said.

Fat Man Number Two looked at Fat Man Number One and said,
"So he can fuck his mother."

The fatties looked at Scott to see what he'd say but he
didn't say anything. They could say he screwed dogs and that was all right with
him. Hell, bring one on and he'd fuck it now if they'd let him go afterwards.

Fat Man Number One said, "You boys running around with
a jungle bunny makes me sick."

"He's just a nigger from school," Farto said.
"We don't like him none. We just picked him up because some White Tree
boys were beating on him and we didn't want him to get wrecked on account of
he's our quarterback."

"Ah," Fat Man Number One said, "I see.
Personally, me and Vinnie don't cotton to niggers in sports. They start taking
showers with white boys, the next thing they want is to take white girls to
bed. It's just one step from one to the other."

"We don't have nothing to do with him playing,"
Leonard said. "We didn't intergrate the schools."

"No," Fat Man Number One said, "that was ole
Big Ears Johnson, but you're running around with him and drinking with
him."

"His cup's been peed in," Farto said. "That
was kind of a joke on him, you see. He ain't our friend, I swear it. He's just
a nigger that plays football."

"Peed in his cup, huh?" said the one called
Vinnie. "I like that, Pork, don't you? Peed in his fucking cup."

Pork dropped Scott's cup on the ground and smiled at him.
"Come here, nigger. I got something to tell you."

Scott looked at Farto and Leonard. No help there. They had
suddenly become interested in the toes of their shoes; they examined them as if
they were true marvels of the world.

Scott moved toward Pork, and Pork, still smiling, put his
arm around Scott's shoulders and walked him toward the big storage building.
Scott said, "What are we doing?"

Pork turned Scott around so they were facing Leonard and
Farto who still stood holding their drinks and contemplating their shoes.
"I didn't want to get it on the new gravel drive," Pork said and
pulled Scott's head in close to his own and with his free hand reached back and
under his Hawaiian shirt and brought out a short, black revolver and put it to
Scott's temple and pulled the trigger. There was a snap like a bad knee going
out and Scott's feet lifted in unison and went to the side and something dark
squirted from his head and his feet swung back toward Pork and his shoes
shuffled, snapped, and twisted on the concrete in front of the building.

"Ain't that somethin'," Pork said as Scott went
limp and dangled from the thick crook of his arm, "the rhythm is the last
thing to go."

Leonard couldn't make a sound. His guts were in his throat.
He wanted to melt and run under the car. Scott was dead and the brains that had
made plays twisted as fishing worms and commanded his feet on down the football
field were scrambled like breakfast eggs.

Farto said, "Holy shit."

Pork let go of Scott and Scott's legs split and he sat down
and his head went forward and clapped on the cement between his knees. A dark
pool formed under his face.

"He's better off, boys," Vinnie said. "Nigger
was begat by Cain and the ape and he ain't quite monkey and he ain't quite man.
He's got no place in this world 'cept as a beast of burden. You start trying to
train them to do things like drive cars and run with footballs, it ain't
nothing but grief to them and the whites too. Get any on your shirt,
Pork?"