Gordon stepped back into the shadows to watch the fun. The door opened and, as planned, that broke the string. This set the ax free in a huge swing toward the center of the door, and whoever stood there — namely Horace P. Dumpler — would get the blade right in the center of his face.
There was a muffled sound of locks being turned and then the door sprang open. Simultaneously the heavy ax, its razor-honed blade gleaming in the hallway ceiling lights, swung down toward the door. Gordon waited intently for the grisly thud.
But this did not happen. Instead the ax swung back, and then back and forth several times, before dangling to a rest in the middle of the hallway beneath the eyebolt. Puzzled, Gordon stepped out of the shadows, and there in the doorway was — the dwarf! Dumpler had apparently picked her up in the bar and brought her back to his room! The ax had swung a good foot and a half above her head.
Scheisse! Gordon thought. How could I have known?
Gordon followed Dumpler all that day and the next, trying to find an angle. He noted that at precisely five p.m. Dumpler visited the indoor swimming pool. He liked to dive, it turned out, and was fond of doing flips on the diving board. There was no lifeguard and few other people visited that particular pool, as there were several outdoor heated pools they could go to.
On the third day Gordon waited for Dumpler, hiding in some plants by the indoor pool. The revenue chief arrived exactly on time. The dwarf was with him — that could be a snag. She sat down in one of the lounge chairs beside the pool but Dumpler took off his robe to reveal only a bathing suit. His hump gleamed like a polished dromedary’s dome in the ceiling lights.
Gordon slipped out into the hall and went to the reception desk. “Could you page a Mr. Horace Dumpler?” he asked innocently. The receptionist obliged, and Gordon sidled back toward the hallway where he saw Dumpler striding importantly through the doors leading to the reception desk.
They passed quickly in the hall; Gordon deliberately stared at the wall hoping Dumpler wouldn’t recognize him. He didn’t, though Dumpler did find something vaguely familiar about the encounter.
Gordon walked quickly into the pool area and stripped off his shoes, pants, and shirt. Underneath he had on a bathing suit. He went straight to the diving board clutching in his hand a bottle of Johnson’s baby oil. He stepped out on the diving board and there squeezed the contents as discreetly as possible onto the very end of the plank. Then he bounced once, held his nose, and went feetfirst into the warm, heated water.
This ought to break his crooked neck, Gordon thought as he got out of the pool. Then he went over and engaged the dwarf in conversation.
Dumpler returned looking puzzled, muttering something about strange things happening in the hotel. Seeing that the dwarf was engaged in conversation, he went immediately to the deep end of the pool, stepped up, and addressed the diving board. Measuring distance like a football placekicker, Dumpler backed all the way up and then ran forward.
When he reached the end of the board, he hit the baby oil and took off in the air, sort of like Rocket Man. But instead of doing a half flip as Gordon had envisioned, landing on his head on the springing board, Dumpler did a complete flip and a half, landing on his ass on the end of the board, which then propelled him — sproing! — straight up in the air once more for two additional flips before he hit the water in a kind of modified swan dive.
Both Gordon and the dwarf, whose name was Lorraine, watched this spectacle speechlessly. Dumpler’s head soon emerged from the water and he cried out, “By God! Did you see that!”
Lorraine began to clap and shout. Dumpler staggered up the steps and out of the pool, into the waiting arms of his lover. They both jumped for joy.
“I was twenty years in the circus and I ain’t never seen anything to match it!” Lorraine exclaimed.
Dumpler, noticing Gordon, said, “Say, haven’t I seen you someplace before?”
Gordon stood for a moment twisting his hands. “Well, yes, you have. I have the boat that takes people up in the Delta.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Dumpler extended his hand to Gordon, who shook it lightly. “Say, I’d like to take that trip again. I’m here till the end of the week. How about it?”
“Well...” Gordon replied. He was thinking, thinking, thinking...
“My golf buddies have to go back on Friday... so it would just be me. I hope that’s all right.”
“Ah, yes, yes, certainly,” Gordon told him.
“You know what I liked about that last time?” Dumpler enthused. “The alligators. I liked the way they come out in the springtime — especially that big fellow. How big did you say he was?”
“Seventeen feet. Maybe a little longer. Nobody’s been exactly able to measure him.”
“My, my,” said Dumpler, “a man-eater. My, my.”
“Yes,” Gordon responded, serenely now. “Just meet me at the dock at eight a.m — or should we make it nine?”
“Eight,” Dumpler said. “That last trip — don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself more! Just you and me!”
“Yes,” Gordon smiled. “Just you and me...”
Sweet Baby
by Ace Atkins
Gu-Win
She’d been so damn cute once, not even six years old, with big false eyelashes and a curly blond wig. People would travel for thousands of miles just to look at her on that shopping mall tour of ’08, get her to autograph her signature porcelain doll, or hear her sing her hit YouTube song, “Sweet, Sweet Baby.” Onstage, they’d dress her up as a rodeo chick, a genie, a pirate, and even a Vegas showgirl. Feather headdress, tall plastic heels, fishnet stockings, and attitude to spare. Her momma took a lot of heat for the showgirl costume, thousands of letters and e-mails to the cable channel asking why in the world a mother would want her child to look like a gosh-darn streetwalker. But her mother, Big Nadine, would look right in that camera, a Virginia Slim tucked between her fingers, nails long and red as blood, and say there wasn’t nothing wrong with the costume, only with twisted, sick minds.
“Did it all start with pageants?” the man asked. He drove the black van in shadow, a hulking shape over the wheel speeding east along Corridor X toward Birmingham. Speaking with no accent, sounding like some kind of Yankee.
“At first,” Cassie Lyn said. “After I won runner-up in Little Miss Lower Alabama, that’s when I got noticed by Rick. He was the talent scout up in Birmingham. Mainly he worked with rodeo dogs and race car drivers. But he told Momma he saw something in me. They took a video at that pageant in Wetumpka and that’s how I got on that show.”
“You sure looked good on TV,” the man said, following the highway blasted straight through hills of rock and stone, winding its way through the darkness from her hometown of Gu-Win. “You were so photogenic. So sassy. Such a cute little mouth on you. Blue eyes as big as marbles.”
“Is that why you come for me?” she said. “Now I’m nearly eighteen.”
The man didn’t answer as they shot past a Love’s Travel Stop and Cracker Barrel settled down in a valley below the interstate, Cassie Lyn hungry as hell, not eating since her evening shift at the video trailer. Cassie Lyn TV. She wondered if he’d feed her before he got to wherever it was they were going. He was a white man, maybe thirty or forty, with thin black hair and a mustache. He wore thick glasses and one of those shiny black windbreakers her granddaddy still wore. Members Only. The man didn’t give his name. And she didn’t ask.