Once, late at night, Leonard and I discussed our physical encounters. Not only those that had happened to us together, but individual events. It was a strange moment, a mix of brag and fact, shame and pride, remorse mixed with euphoria.
And here I was again, on my way to what would most likely turn into a confrontation, and perhaps more than a couple of punches. We weren’t carrying our guns to plunk at cans. My stomach boiled. My head throbbed. Yet, at the same time, I felt disconnected from my body; seized by a combination of fear and anticipation.
We parked behind a closed-up fireworks shack down the road from King Arthur’s red clay nightmare, got out of the car and sat on the hood so we could watch when he drove by.
Jim Bob said he knew the car, so his eyes were the ones on the highway. While we waited, he told us some funny stories and some bad jokes, then said, “All right, get in the truck.”
We looked and saw a big silver Lincoln with dark windows cruising down the highway. A moment later we were behind it, hauling as fast as my little pickup would go.
“Driver usually turns here,” Jim Bob said.
Jim Bob was right. The car veered to the right, headed down a blacktop road that I knew would meet Old Pine Road, and finally onto the highway that would lead to King Arthur’s chili works.
Jim Bob gunned the truck and started around. The Lincoln tried to be helpful, pulled hard right, but Jim Bob pulled hard right too. Next thing I knew, he was nosing my truck into the side of the Lincoln. Sparks flew up. Paint flecks flicked by the window.
“Hey,” I said.
Jim Bob paid no attention. He rammed hard with the pickup and the Lincoln began to veer. I realized it was starting to veer near the great oak where Horse Dick and Raul’s bodies had been found.
Irony or accident? I had to remember to ask Jim Bob, provided I didn’t end up with the dashboard in my teeth, the motor sticking out of my chest.
The Lincoln sailed onto the grass beside the road. The driver fought the wheel, missed the tree, but went over the edge of the incline, down the hill, clattered and bumped and slid into the weeds and slid again, this time sideways into the trees at the bottom. The Lincoln hit the trees with a solid whack and a crunch, and the sunlight caught taillight fragments flying into the air.
I could see all this because Jim Bob had driven the pickup after them. He hadn’t let off a bit. We bumped and bopped, striking our heads on the roof, lurching toward the dash, and finally we skidded sideways to a stop just before the hill got really steep and dropped off toward the trees where our road partners had collided with a patch of wilderness.
Jim Bob jerked the door open, grabbed the shotgun, and yelled, “Showtime!”
Leonard and I got out quick. I slid in the grass but managed to keep my footing and get my gun drawn without shooting myself. We hurried down the hill toward the Lincoln.
The driver, a fat man in a black suit, and two other water buffaloes in black suits were staggering out of the car. One of them, the guy from the backseat, had his gun, a nine millimeter, drawn. The car door was open behind him, and I could see King Arthur sitting in the backseat, or at least I assumed it was King Arthur. I had seen his likeness on cans of his chili. Way he was sitting there, you would have thought he was waiting on a bus.
The man with the drawn gun lifted it and Jim Bob fired the shotgun, sprayed dirt in front of the guy.
Jim Bob said, “Mine’s bigger than yours. Toss it!”
The man tossed the gun.
The other two – and one of them was on the far side of the car, having exited from the front passenger side – had their hands in their coats, and Leonard and I pointed our guns at them. Jim Bob said, “You guys lose the hardware before it gets you hurt.”
They looked at one another, eased their weapons out of their coats and dropped them.
Jim Bob said, “You, on the other side there, mosey on around here where I can see you good and make sure you ain’t got a bazooka in your sock.”
The man, who was large with hair so thin and gray on the sides he looked completely bald at first glance, came around slow-like, his teeth, wet from saliva, shining like greased piano keys in the sunlight.
King Arthur, wearing a white Stetson, a gray cowboy suit with gray boots decorated with red chili peppers, slid out of the Lincoln on our side, stood and looked at us. He was about five-ten, a solid one-eighty, had a lined brown face with a anteater nose. He had a cleft chin deep enough to hide a dried pea in, and shit-ass eyes.
King reached inside his jacket, slowly pulled out a pack of cigarettes, showed them to us, lipped one, put the pack back, and nodded toward one of the buffaloes.
The one that had been in the backseat with King looked at us, slowly reached in his pants pocket, produced a lighter, and lit King’s cigarette.
“Driver’s ed, boys?” King Arthur said.
“Let’s cut through the crap,” Leonard said. “You know who we are?”
“Yeah, I do,” King Arthur said, puffing on his cigarette. “Troublemakers. And look what you’ve done to my car.”
“I don’t think you’ll be reportin’ it,” Jim Bob said. “Might toss a little too much light on you.”
King Arthur smiled. “You thought that was the case, you’d have gone to the police. How come you didn’t? You been puttin’ your shitty noses in my business for a while now.”
“So you do know us?” I said.
“I know all kinds of shit,” King Arthur said. “You’re all connected to them queers got killed.”
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “We’re gonna put it to you straight. We’re out to cause you some grief. But right now, this is more personal. Three of your goons – and if you’re missing a couple you might check a cabin in the woods – broke into my house, sacked it, roughed me up, took me out to this shack, and a guy workin’ for you, one Big Man Mountain-”
“The wrestler?” King Arthur said.
“You know who,” I said. “This Mountain, he hooked a cable and battery and a little hand-cranked generator up to my balls, and gave me a few volts. Fortunately I’m still here, thanks to some help.”
“Don’t mention it,” Jim Bob said.
“What I’m here to tell you,” I said, “is very simple. We could kill you right now, and I think that would most likely be a good idea, but it’s not my style.”
“It’s my style, though,” Jim Bob said, “so keep in mind, King, things could change at a moment’s notice.”
I gave King Arthur a look hard enough to drive a nail. I said, “I’m going to tell you straight out we’re going to nab your ass. You can count on it. Legal-like, if possible. But let me make this clear, and I suggest you open your eyes wide and put on your glasses and use binoculars so you can see what the fuck I’m making clear. You screw around me or Jim Bob or my brother Leonard, my girlfriend – and you know who she is because Big Man Mountain did – I will kill you.”
“If I don’t do it first,” Leonard said.
“Don’t forget me,” Jim Bob said.
“This is your one and only warning,” I said.
“You boys got me wrong,” King said.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re an innocent fella. That’s why you have three bodyguards.”
King nodded. “All right. I ain’t so innocent, but I got bodyguards mostly because I can. I like the looks of it. And now and then, I get a little trouble. I got some deals goin’ here and there outside the chili, but I ain’t never had to shoot nobody. Or have nobody shot. ’Course, with you boys, I might make an exception. I don’t get it. All this over some fuckin’ grease?” King Arthur dropped his cigarette in the grass, put a boot heel to it. “Over some faggot cop took a video of my grease operation? You boys takin’ over where he left off? That it, huh? How much you want?”