“You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking such a thing,” Mama said.
“Now, don’t get special on me, girl,” Gene said. “You lowered your own drawers down before you took up with my brother. You done that, didn’t you? It ain’t like no one else has ever been under the bridge. Only thing I got to wonder is if you were charging a toll.”
Even in the dark I could feel embarrassment come off Mama like heat off a fire. Gene went past her on his way to the room, paused to slap her on the butt. “You know,” he said. “Always figured, you and me could have a good time, and I think we might still.”
Mama wheeled and spit in his face.
Gene wiped the spit off with his sleeve and grinned at her. “Oh, your time is coming, honey. You can bet on that.”
“Quit jawing and go look,” Constable Sy said.
Gene went on. While he was in the bedroom looking around, Constable Sy said, “All of you might as well cooperate. I’m with the law.”
“You’re out of your formal jurisdiction,” Terry said.
“You always was a smart little fruit,” Constable Sy said. “But I figure you know jurisdiction doesn’t really mean squat. It’s not like I plan on taking that money back to the bank. It’s not like I plan on running you folks in.”
Gene came back. “No one in there.”
“That surprises me,” said Constable Sy, looking at Mama.
Gene went to the icebox, took out the fruit jar with buttermilk in it, screwed off the lid, and drank deep, spilling some of it on his chest. He burped and came to the table and took a chair. He sat the milk on the table at his elbow. The lantern lit one side of his face bright as day. The other side was dark as a hole in the ground.
“So you wasn’t satisfying that preacher and he run off,” Constable Sy said, looking at Mama. He was still standing, one leg cocked forward, his hand resting on his gun butt. “You look good, but I can bet you got a lot of the shrew about you.”
“Come on over here and sit down,” Gene said, motioning at Mama. “It’s all right. Sit down. I ain’t going to let anything happen to you.”
Mama, one hand still on her jaw, went over and sat. She chose a chair far away from Gene.
Constable Sy took a chair on the opposite side, right across from her. He took the gun out of its holster and laid it on the table, kept his hand on top of it. “Like I said. You wasn’t satisfying him, so he left you here. I figure he had to, as the folks we talked to said he wasn’t living like a preacher, just talking like one, then coming back down here and snuggling up with you at night.”
“He was letting us stay out of Christian generosity,” Mama said. “That’s all there was to it.”
“Have it your way,” Gene said. “Let’s make this easy, then we’ll leave you be. We want that money.”
“Where’s Cletus?” I asked.
“Cletus, he’s got his own way of looking for you,” Gene said. “He says he’s going to hire that stinky nigger Skunk to come find you. Trying to get somebody knows Skunk that’s willing to go look for him, like there really is a Skunk. But even if there is, he don’t need to get him. We got you. He thought we wasn’t never going to find you, but he was wrong.”
“How’s Don feel about all this?” Mama asked.
“Don looked for a few days then put himself in the house and hasn’t come out, least not last I looked,” Gene said. “You broke his heart. And I think that’s a bad thing. Not that his heart is broke, but that he’d let it break over someone like you. You come to him with a baby in your belly and he took you in, and now here you are, out on the prowl.” He looked at me. “You know Don ain’t your daddy, don’t you?”
“It’s one of the great reliefs of my life,” I said. “And that business about him having the Sight, that hasn’t helped him none now, has it? It wasn’t him found us.”
“Ha,” Gene said, and seemed to think that was genuinely funny.
“And I’m not on the prowl,” Mama said. “I’ve just run away. That’s all.”
“I got a mind to see if you’re worth what Don thought you was,” Gene said. “Don said you could warm a cold night pretty good after you got liquored up.”
“Hush up,” Mama said. “There’s children in the room.”
Gene laughed and took another swig of buttermilk. “Now you got scruples. That’s funny.”
“Enough chitchat,” said Constable Sy. “Here’s how it’s going to work. You give us that bag of money, and we’ll go, and won’t nothing happen to you. You don’t, it’s fixing to be a bad night for all of you. You going to wish you was dead and done gone to hell.”
“I already wish that,” I said.
Gene studied me for a while, said, “Sassy there, and the nigger gal, could be all right to keep us busy. And then we got Helen, too. It could be real good for us before it turns real bad for them. And we got the sissy, too. A sissy can be all right if you know how to use him.”
“For God’s sake, Sue Ellen’s your niece,” Mama said.
“Not by blood,” Gene said. “And if she was, I don’t know how much that would bother me. You might say since that money got stolen and you left, circumstances has changed in a big way.”
“We lost the money,” Terry said.
Constable Sy snapped his head toward Terry. “You’re a liar. You’re a damn liar, and that’s the worst lie I’ve heard. You think we looked hard and long as we have to take a lie as the truth? You better have that money.”
“The raft turned over and we lost it,” Terry said.
Gene glanced at Constable Sy. “It could have happened,” he said.
“If it did,” Constable Sy said to Gene, “that’s a real sad thing for everybody. But especially for them.” Sy turned his attention back to us. “What we want to know, and all we want to know, is where the money is. You tell us that, we can all go our own way, without the messy part.”
Gene reached in his pocket and took out a folding knife, flicked his wrist, and popped it open with a loud snap.
“You seen me gut fish and skin squirrels,” Gene said, looking at me. “You know how I can work. You don’t want me to start skinning, do you?”
“Leave her alone,” Mama said.
“I would start at the toes and skin upward to the top of your head,” he said. “I’d take your hide and hair right off. It wouldn’t be any fun for anyone but me.”
“We didn’t take that money from you,” Jinx said. “Wasn’t your money.”
“Damn, gal,” Gene said. “I forgot your black ass was even here.”
“You didn’t take it from us,” Constable Sy said. “But we’re going to take it from you.”
“What you going to tell Cletus?” I said.
“Thought we’d tell him you died,” Gene said. “That we didn’t find no money. And he wasted his fee on Skunk.”
“There ain’t no Skunk,” Constable Sy said. “Cletus ought to know better. He might as well stick a dollar in his ass and wait for the leprechauns to leave him a note.”
“All right, then,” Gene said. “I’ve decided first thing I’m going to do is skin that little uppity darky.”
Jinx was on her feet with her fists up. “You better brought you a bucket full of dinner, cause this fight here going to take all night.”
Gene grinned at her and stood up. “That’s all right,” he said, waving the knife around. “I think I’m up to it.”
A shadow fell across the open doorway. Reverend Joy came through it clutching a two-by-four. Gene and Constable Sy didn’t see him, least not in time.
The board whistled and caught Gene upside the skull so hard it knocked his head around and made him look over his shoulder in a way a man can’t do when his neck is on right. Before he hit the floor, Constable Sy, who was still sitting at the table, stood up as he grabbed his gun, but the board was there first. It caught him across the nose and knocked him back on the floor. He tried to sit up and Reverend Joy hit him again, right between the eyes. Constable Sy lay there not moving, but he was breathing loud, like a horse snorting water out of his nose.
“Come on,” Reverend Joy said, tossing the board aside, picking up Constable Sy’s pistol. “Come on.”