Jack’s thumb pronged the silent safety to Off. He pivoted the rifle ever so slightly, ever so smoothly, tracking the large man, a green phantasm in the glow of the scope, lit by the infrared lamp atop. He felt the slack coming out of the trigger, as the crosshairs came onto the chest until in a magic moment they seemed locked there.
38
hey came out of the woods into a sudden, late burst of sunlight. Russ felt liberated from the green gloom of the forest. Before them was the squalid cabin. Incongruous wildflowers lit up around its messy base and front yard.
“He’s watching us,” said Bob. “I can feel him and I just seen something move behind that window.”
As they approached, a man semi-emerged from the doorway and stopped, hiding in the darkness. He observed them with ancient, embittered eyes. As they approached he dipped inside and retrieved a shotgun.
“Y’all git on out of here,” he yelled, glaring. “This ain’t no goddamned freak show. You’se on my property and you be gone or I’ll give ya some buckshot.”
Jed Posey had the look of a man whose life had been consumed in fury. He was scrawny, leathery and toothless, and the denim overalls hung on his frame, showing an old man’s wiry body. He was nothing but sinew and hate. His bare arms wore the dapple of three and a half decades’ worth of prison tattoos, and he had two tears inscribed in the taut flesh of his face, though his eyes were tearless and fierce. His hair was the prisoner’s gray bristle.
“You go on,” he said, bringing the gun up, “or I will by God blast you out of your goddamn boots and be damned.”
“We have business,” said Bob.
“We ain’t got no business, mister. You working for the niggers? Bet the goddamned niggers sent you down here. I’m telling you to stop, by God, or I’ll send you to hell where I sent that goddamned nigger.”
“We don’t work for nobody,” said Bob. “I am Bob Lee Swagger, the son of Earl Swagger. I’m here to talk about the day my father died, Jed. I don’t care a damn about nothing else.”
Jed lowered the shotgun. But the aggression that suffused his entire body and made it tight and shivery like a pointing terrier’s diminished not a bit; his dark little eyes narrowed in anger and if possible he got even redder and tenser. He seemed to be breathing hard.
“Your goddamned father done socked me in the jaw,” he said. “That’s how come my face is broken. I’ve had forty years of pain on account of your sumbitch old man.”
“If my daddy smacked you, Jed, by God, it was a smack you’d earned and I’ll bet it was a smack you ain’t never forgot.”
Jed seemed to melt backwards a step. Something flashed through his little eyes, and told them yes, yes by God, no matter what had happened, Jed Posey had never forgot the day Earl Swagger broke his jaw.
“What you want?” he said. “All that’s long time ago. Jimmy Pye kilt your daddy and your daddy kilt Jimmy Pye and his cousin Bub.”
“I got some questions.”
“Why the hell should I answer one goddamn question for a goddamned Swagger? Nothing in the law or nowhere says I got to talk to you.”
He hawked a squirt of tobacco venom into the dust.
“No sir, you don’t,” said Bob. “But a old goat like you understands one goddamn thing. Money. You gimme an hour of your time, I’ll give you twenty dollars.”
“Twenny dollar! Mister, you must think I’m stupid. Twenny dollar! Cost you forty dollar, Swagger. For forty dollar I’ll tell you any goddamned thing you want to know.”
Russ started forward, but Bob caught him.
“I said twenty dollars and I meant twenty dollars. I don’t bargain with scum. Come on, Russ,” and he pulled the boy back and turned.
Russ shot him a what-the-hell look but Bob yanked him backwards and they turned and started walking back toward the woods.
“Goddamn you, Swagger, thirty dollar.”
Bob turned. “I said I don’t bargain with trash. You take what’s on the table or I will leave the table and that’s true today or a hundred years from today and you won’t never make no twenty dollars.”
“Goddamn you, Swagger.”
“Goddamn me one more time, you old coot, and I will come up on that porch and knock in the other side of your face and finish my daddy’s work.”
“Let me see the twenny.”
Bob pulled his wallet and removed a twenty.
Jed considered narrowly, as if he had a lot riding on the decision.
“You give me the twenty now.”
“If you want to hang on to something, you hang on to your dick, you egg-sucking piece of trash. I’ll hang on to the money until I am finished with you and then I will hand it over. You know no Swagger in these parts or any other ever broke his word or welshed on a bargain.”
“There’s a goddamned first time for everything,” said Jed bitterly. “You come on, then. But you keep your distance.”
Bob and Russ climbed the rickety steps into the dark dwelling. Russ was always amazed at how things diverged from his imagination of them, but this time he was absolutely correct. It was one grim big surpriseless room, rank with odor. A deer’s shabby antlers were nailed to a crossbeam; the stove was old and stank of cold, ancient grease, the bed, a pallet in the corner, supported a scurvy nest of swirled blankets. One wall had been transfigured into Jed’s hall of fame by the industrious use of thumbtacks as his front page from the paper had been pinned to the wood, where it was now yellow and crackly with age—COUNTY MAN SLAYS NEGRO, it said, uniting him and Davidson Fuller in journalistic immortality. The smell of unwashed clothes, dead animals, human destitution and loneliness hung everywhere in the thick air.
“Ah, could I have a decaf cappuccino and a mocha for my son?” asked Russ. “And the chocolate biscotti.”
“Shut up, Russ,” Bob said, as Jed’s squirrelly little face fell into anger, “this ain’t no time to be smart.”
The old man threw down at an oilcloth-covered table, clinging to the shotgun, and Bob sat across from him. There was no place for Russ to sit and there wasn’t enough money in the world to induce him to physical contact with that bed—yccch, he shuddered—so he just sort of leaned against the closest wall.
“Tell me about that day,” said Bob.
Jed pulled a pack of Red Man from his pocket and stuffed some of the stringy tobacco in his mouth, did some manipulating with his tongue until he got it lodged between cheek and gum on the right side, where it bulged like a tumor. He smiled, showing brown gums.
“Ain’t much to goddamn tell. They woke me in the Blue Eye drunk tank along with my brother, Lum, rest his soul, and that fat old deputy Lem tole me he had work detail. I’se so hung over, I didn’t realize where we was until we got there. Let me tell you, Swagger, I wasn’t in no mood to go horsing around in them hot woods lookin’ for no nigger gal.”
“What happened?” Bob said. “Talk me through it.”
Jed looked around, spat at an overflowing Maxwell House can on the floor and then narrated a rambling account of the day, of the heat and dust of the forest even high in the mountains, of the agony of picking through the saw brier and the bracken, of the mosquitoes and other things that buzzed and bit, and the stench of the dogs, and the final thing, the girl.
“Shit,” he said. “She was a ripe one, all blown up like b’loon. You could see her goddamned li’l mouse, tell you what. Just out there in the open. Now they show that stuff in the magazines. In them days, boy, you never saw no mouse. Heh, heh.” He absently chortled in memory of the smoky pleasure of it and Russ saw a flicker of rage play across Bob’s face, then subside.