Then he saw on a sliver of shoulder revealed by her twisted blouse a red smear, not wet but dry. He touched it: dust, red dust. Hmmm? He turned to her hand and gently opened it. He bent and looked at her nails: under each of the four fingers was a half-moon of what might have been blood but looked more like the same red dust he’d found on her shoulder. The forensics people would have to make that determination.
Red dust? Red clay, possibly? It hung in his mind, reminiscent of something. Then he had it: about ten minutes outside Blue Eye, out Route 88 near a wide spot in the road called Ink, was an abandoned quarry noted for its red clay deposits. It wasn’t so marked on any maps, but by the consensus of oral folklore, folks called it Little Georgia, in homage to the red clay state.
He wrote “Little Georgia” on his notepad, among his other recordings.
He went to the other hand, which was twisted under her, still clenched in a deathly fist. But he thought he saw something in it, a scrap of paper or something. He should leave it, he knew, but the temptation to know more was overwhelming. Gently, with his pencil as a kind of probe, he pried open her tiny hand, trying not to disturb a thing.
A treasure fell out. In Shirelle’s left hand was a ball of material, crumpled and desperate, something she’d grabbed from her killer as he killed her. With his pencil, Earl opened it up. It appeared to be the pocket of a cotton shirt. And it was monogrammed!
Three letters, big as day: RGF.
Could it be that easy? Earl wondered. My God, could that be all there was to it? Finding Mr. RGF with a shirt with a pocket missing?
“Lawdie, Lawdie, Lawdie,” someone was chanting.
Earl looked up. Lem Tolliver’s considerable bulk was moving through the trees under the propulsion of great agitation.
“Earl, Earl, Earl!”
“What is it, Lem?” said Earl, rising.
“I called ’em, Earl, and they gonna git here when they can.”
“Why, what’s—”
“Earl, Jimmy Pye and his cousin Bubba shot up a Fort Smith grocery store. Oh, Earl, they done killed four people, even a cop! Earl, they got the whole state out looking for that boy!”
2
immy reached back over the seat and pulled out a paper grocery bag whose heavy contents, as he lifted it into his lap, stretched it out. But it didn’t break, though when he set it down in his lap, Bub heard the dull clunk of some kind of heavy, metal-on-metal contact.
“Here you go,” Jimmy said, removing a large, long-barreled revolver from the bag and handing it to Bub. “That there’s a Smith .44 Special. That’s a big ole mulekick of a gun.”
Bub looked at the thing. It felt impossibly heavy in his hands, oily, dense, weirdly charged with energy. A gun. A pistol. He’d never had a pistol. Where he came from, everybody had guns, but not pistols. He’d seen policemen with them, that was it. He looked over at Jimmy and felt his jaw drop and the look of gaping stupidity come across his face when he didn’t have no idea of what to say.
Jimmy, meanwhile, had pulled out some kind of automatic gun with gnarled stag grips and had commenced clacking and snapping it, fitting something into its handle, fiddling with a little lever.
“Thirty-eight Super,” he said contentedly. “Your Colt. Goddamn asskick gun too. A lot of gun for a little package. A pro’s gun.”
But then he noticed the look of utter befuddlement on his young cousin’s face.
“Now what’s up and bothering you, Bub? What’s eating you?”
Bub could think of nothing whatever to say. Then he blurted. “I-I-I-I’m … scared.”
“Oh, come on now, Bub. Ain’t not a goddamn thing to it. We go in, we show ’em the guns, they give us the money and we done be gone outta there. It’s that simple. Guy in the joint tole me how you take down a big grocery store. See, they put their dough in the safe every damn hour. So by now, with the morning’s shopping in there, it’s all in the safe in the office, right up front. Every damn IGA’s the same. He tole me: nothing to it. Easiest take there is.”
Bub’s throat got dry and then he had trouble breathing. He wanted to cry. He so loved Jimmy but … he didn’t think he had it in him for this kind of thing. He just wanted his old job back. He just wanted to pound nails for Mr. Wilton, every day just like the other, rain or cold, snow or frost, just pound them nails. That was enough for him.
“Look, Bubba,” said Jimmy, leaning over, drawing Bub in conspiratorially, “I don’t know about you, but I ain’t going back to some goddamn job in a sawmill to make a Mr. Goddamned Earl Goddamned Swagger a happy man. I ain’t working there. Sooner or later, you lose a finger, a arm, a leg. You seen ’em runnin’ around, goddammit, no arms, ‘Oh, he used to work down at the sawmill.’ Not me, no sir.”
He sat back, breathing hard, and checked his watch.
“Now’s the time. We go, we in, we out. Nobody knows nothing. Then we got us a stake. Yes, we do. We can git out of shit-poor West Arkansas and head out to California. Look at me? Bub, look at me!”
Bub lifted his eyes and stared at his cousin.
“Now, do I look like a goddamned sawmill worker, making a thousand a year and living in a cottage off some old biddy lady’s charity? No sir, I look like that goddamned fellow James Dean, I know I do. I am that handsome. I’m going out to California, where I aim to become a big movie actor. You can come on too, Bubba. A star, see, a star always has his Number One Man, you know, calls and makes reservations and picks up the airline tickets. That’s what I got you slotted for. You be my Number One Man.”
“B-but Edie love you.” Like so many, Bub was half in love with Jimmy’s young wife.
“They’s gonna be plenty for Edie. You just watch, be plenty for that girl. We gonna take her too. She’s goin’ to California with us! I got me friends looking out for me out there: oh, we going to have a time, you, me, Edie, in L.A. We going to be stars!”
He was so ardent that Bub closed his eyes and saw it for just a second: his image of movie stars involved swimming pools, fancy clothes, little mustaches, sleek cars, all under the California sun. It seemed utterly beyond dreaming until just now.
“I swear to you, nobody going to git hurt. You just back me up in that office. You show ’em the gun, I show ’em the gun. Nobody going to fight us for some goddamned money belongs to a grocery company. Then we out of there. We swing on by and pick up Edie and off we go. Nobody going to git hurt. Come on now, Bub, I need you. Time to go.”
Jimmy got out of the car and wedged the automatic into the waist of his chinos. He set his sunglasses squarely on his handsome face, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Luckys. With a flick of his wrist he snapped a butt out, picked it out of the pack with his lips and then lit it off a Zippo that had magically appeared in his hand. He turned and winked at poor Bub, who just watched, thinking, without a stammer anywhere in his mind, it already is a movie.
Jimmy in the lead. Jimmy walking confidently, a bebop in his step, a smile on his face. Bub is behind. Bub is scared and confused. He too has stuck the gun into his trousers but it’s heavy and awkward and the barrel is so long it sticks him in the thigh, so he’s walking peg-legged, like some cripple, scampering clumsily to stay up.