“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Don’t you take that tone with me.” She gave me a look of reprimand. I was suddenly back in the basement of the old brick church on Sycamore Street. “Delbert spent the night at my home last Friday.”
I was incredulous. Miss Etta Mae Fish was aiding and abetting a fugitive? My mouth was open, but no words were coming out.
“I had no idea at the time that he was wanted by the law. I haven’t watched the news since David Brinkley retired, but I turned on the radio after Delbert left, and there it was.”
“You didn’t go to the police?”
“Of course not! Delbert couldn’t have done those things.”
I was leaning over my desk, doodling on a yellow legal pad. I had seen little Delbert’s picture on the news and heard the story. He certainly looked like he was guilty. He had black tattoos running up his neck, his nose was askew, and he had a puckered scar running from the corner of his mouth up to his left eye. He had already done time in the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Correctional System.
“Bradley, you just have to find Delbert before the police do.”
I just stared at her.
“They will kill him!”
What she was asking me to do was like crawling into a cave full of rattlesnakes.
“The radio also said that the girl’s father has offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward.” She pursed her lips defiantly, causing her bifocals to shrug up on her nose.
Ten thousand dollars.
My demeanor must have changed, because she took out a pen and paper from the purse and said, “Let me show you where he went.”
And now here I was, shooting pool with Delbert’s “associate,” Tiny Buckman; the two fellows became fast friends while awaiting trial in the Washington County Jail on drug charges a few years back. Although it was tempting, I did not clear the table after Tiny’s lame attempt at a break. No one else had put any money on the table, so I let him win the first game. It cost me twenty bucks, but it would be cheap if I could find the location of his family’s notorious still back in the mountains. That may sound strange, but this is Arkansas. We have a number of dry counties, and moonshiners continue to ply their trade back in the hills. Etta Mae was convinced that Delbert was headed to the Buckman still to hide out until the search cooled off. I did not even ask how she knew where to look for the place.
Seven beers and three games of eight ball later, Tiny looked no more drunk or talkative than he had been to start with. In fact, he seemed to get surlier as the night went on. I had been dropping hints about how some of the Benton County high rollers had developed a taste for good moonshine, and how I intended to cash in on that trend if I could find a supply of quality product. He showed absolutely no interest until I finally came out and asked if his grandpap still made shine up in the hills. That got his attention, but not the way I had hoped. He picked up his cue in midshot and turned it around, backing me up against the bar. I jerked a leg up to protect myself as he swung the cue at my ribs. The cue stick hit my knee with a loud crack, and fell to the floor in pieces. That was going to hurt when the adrenaline wore off. Before I could slither away and run, Tiny had a forearm across my neck, bending me backwards over the bar. His hairy arm was up under my chin, and he was bellowing obscenities as he attempted to crush my windpipe. He only succeeded in propelling me down the bar on my back. My T-shirt was soaking up spilled beer as glasses went crashing to the floor.
Just when I thought I was going to pass out, I heard a loud crack, like when Albert Pujols knocks one deep into left-center, and the pressure on my neck was released. As my vision cleared I saw Tiny’s eyes roll up into his head. The bearded, sweaty, slobbering face of Tiny Buckman went blank as he fell away to the floor. I coughed and massaged my throat as I slid off the bar and steadied myself against it.
Standing before me was a small woman with stringy black hair holding the narrow end of a pool cue. She calmly set the cue down on the table and looked at me. She wore a black Jack Daniels T-shirt cut off short, revealing twin dragon tattoos peeking out of her low-riding jeans on either side of her navel. She had a square jaw and coarse chin. “Can you give me a ride home?” she asked. “I don’t think Tiny’s up to it.”
I looked at Tiny lying facedown on the floor. He was already starting to snore. “Boyfriend?” I asked.
“Husband,” she said.
It was well after midnight when I started up the old motorcycle. The woman looked skeletal in the blue mercury-vapor light in the parking lot. She was older than I had thought; she had fine wrinkles around her mouth and eyes like a chronic smoker. She stared off at the darkness when she spoke; her eyes were glassy and dark with a bovine emptiness.
“It’s a ways out there. Got plenty of gas?” she asked.
“I think we can make it,” I said.
The bike had the original buddy seat on it, so she climbed on behind me with practiced ease. I pulled away slowly, while she lit up a cigarette. I kept the pace slow since I didn’t know the road and she was giving directions.
We had passed a closed liquor store half an hour before. That was just before we hit the gravel roads. I figured the store was on the county line, and we were now in one of the dry counties. The night was so dark it seemed to swallow the feeble light the old bike put out. I hadn’t seen a dusk-to-dawn light for a good fifteen minutes when a battered house-trailer loomed into the sweep of my headlight.
The place looked deserted, but as I turned off the bike, the bark and howl of a coon dog announced our arrival. I could hear the dog’s chain dragging against the skirting of the trailer. No lights came on, but I heard a screen door open and could make out the silhouette of a child as the woman reached the front door.
“Momma?”
“Go back to bed,” she scolded.
“But I’m hungry...”
“I ain’t got nothing for you. Now, get to bed!”
She turned my way. I could barely see her as my eyes tried to adjust. “Thanks for the ride,” she said.
“Will I get lost getting out of here?” I asked.
“Ain’t but one road out,” she said. “Don’t stop till you get to the county road. They let them dogs run loose at night.”
“Coonhounds?” I asked.
“Hell no, they’s part pit bull or somethin’. You best get out of here.”
She didn’t have to tell me again. I found myself taking the rutted two-track road a lot faster than I normally would have. Summer was about gone but the air was thick with humidity and, if anything, the night had gotten darker. A flash of lightning illuminated the surrounding hills as I came to the county-maintained road. Thunder rumbled across the valley before me as I rolled on the throttle; I did not want to get caught in a storm at night in the Ozark Mountains.
The sky in the east was streaked with red and orange as the sun pushed away the early-morning mist. The sky to the north was gunmetal gray as thunder echoed down the valley. I spotted the little store that I had seen coming in with its beer and liquor signs now muted by the coming daylight. The place had gas pumps, the old kind with number wheels and bells, not the kind where you can swipe your card and go. I pulled up to a pump and shut off the ignition. Without the noise of the bike, I could hear the rushing of a stream as it gushed past the little store and shot under the highway bridge. The violence of the water attested to the heavy rains that were falling farther up the valley.