“Sorry, honey. They’re my people. I’m related to every one of em. I can’t burn em up. Imagine the nightmares I’d have.”
“I’ll do it! Like I have to do everything else. Can you shoot him, or is it asking too much?”
Robert Earl sighed, as if she’d asked him the fifth time to empty the trash. “He’s not related to me. If he dies Shirley will be highly PO’ed. You should’ve heard her in there a while ago. We’ll have to live the rest of our life watching out for her. We might have to leave the country.”
Eric heard Estafay breathing hard through her nose.
“Plus,” Robert Earl continued, “Sheriff Bledsoe gave me a heckuva pass on something I did a long time ago, before I met you. He told me the next time I got into any trouble would be the last time. I burn somebody I’ll be looking at the electric chair. Besides, Estafay, it just ain’t right! Did God tell you to do this?”
“Was it right your family treated me the way they did? They didn’t know me, didn’t know me from Eve. When decent people meet someone the first time they just say hello, or they don’t say anything at all. Your daddy called me a name to my face, Robert. Ruth Ann fell on her knees laughing. Were they right to treat me the way they did?”
“No, they weren’t right. I hate it happened just as much as you do.”
“Enough talk, let’s get this over with so I can go home and cook supper.”
“Estafay, I… I can’t do it!”
“Go home then!” Estafay shouted at him. “Go home! I’ll handle this myself. Take the roast out the freezer when you get there.”
Wekeee! Wekeeee!
Eric looked and thought he saw something move near the side of the cabin.
“What was that?” Robert Earl said.
“A bat,” Estafay said. “Go home. I got work to do.”
“Aw shucks, Estafay. Why don’t we both go home together and forget about this?”
“Robert, I’m going to explain it to you one last time. I shot this whore here. Everyone in there knows I shot him. They’ll tell the police and we—you and I!—will go to jail.”
“Eric,” Robert Earl said, “you wouldn’t sic the police on Estafay, would you?”
They’re both crazy! “Of course not!”
“He’s lying,” Estafay said.
“Eric, you promise?”
“Cross my heart, on my momma’s honor!”
“See, Estafay, he’s not going to the police.”
“Go home!” Estafay said. Kapoooow!
“Ohhhhh!” Eric shouted, and then realized she hadn’t shot him again. He looked toward Robert Earl’s shadowy form… gone. He heard footsteps fading in the distance.
Crazy bastard flying home. When he gets there, he’ll take the roast out the freezer and sit his big, stupid ass down without thinking once to call the police.
“Alone again, you and I,” Estafay said. “The time has come for us to go our separate ways. Anything you’d like to say before you go to hell?”
“If you kill me I’ll come back and haunt you! I swear I will!”
Estafay laughed. The gun barrel bumped the back of his head. “Guess I’ll see you when you get back.”
Eric closed his eyes, faintly aware he’d released his bowels.
Chapter 42
Gas, Sheriff Bledsoe thought, soured my memory. He forgot Leonard had told him Ruth Ann was at the Boy Scout camp.
Otherwise he could’ve avoided taking the good reverend to the liquor store, contributing to the purchase of a gallon of Wild Irish Rose, driving to the jail and then back to the liquor store because the good reverend suddenly decided Wild Irish Rose with Ginseng was what he really wanted.
The cruiser headlights rolled across a gray Lumina, a yellow Datsun truck and a blue Camry. Ida’s car! He killed the engine and looked around. Totally dark outside of the area spotted by the headlights.
Reaching for his hat, he heard gunfire. He grabbed the mike. “Tracy, come in!” Static. “Tracy, come in!” No response. “Tracy, come in!”
He turned off the headlights and all went black. “Tracy, come in!” No time to wait, he felt under the passenger seat for the flashlight, found it, and got out.
In Iraq, the first time, he wouldn’t sit next to a guy who wouldn’t cuff his cigarette; and now he’d be running in the woods like a neon target.
He waved the beam left to right. A handcrafted plaque marked Maumelle Trail indicated a break in the trees. It looked a good entrance as any, so he started in at full sprint, flashlight in one hand, trusty .357 Magnum in the other.
Not twenty feet up the trail, Sheriff Bledsoe heard something coming toward him. “Police! Halt!” It sounded like a horse, hooves clopping incredibly fast.
A blur appeared in the light and before he could blink, whatever it was ran smack into him, sending him airborne, knocking the flashlight and the .357 magnum out of his hands. He landed on his back on a thorn bush. “Sheriff!” he shouted, getting to his feet. “Freeze, right where you are!”
Gurgling and groaning. “Ohhh, my head!”
“Don’t move!” Sheriff Bledsoe warned. “I’ve got a gun!” Somewhere around here.
“You busted my head!”
“Robert Earl?”
“You broke my nose, too!”
He spotted the flashlight, still shining, picked it up and pointed it at the noise. Robert Earl lay flat on his back, hands over his face.
“Robert Earl, you all right?”
“Uh-uh!”
Where’s the gun? He played the light in every direction and didn’t see it. He dropped to all fours and inspected the ground. It had to be somewhere close.
“Robert Earl, who’s shooting up there?” No response. Thorns scratching his hand, he probed the base of the bush. Nothing.
“Robert Earl, you busted your nose, is all. Who’s up there shooting?”
Robert Earl hawked and spat. “You busted my nose!” His voice a nasal twang. “I didn’t bust it myself. Hey! Listen to me! Oh no, like a homo!”
Sheriff Bledsoe tossed up clods of dirt. “What’s going on up there?”
“What you looking for?”
“Nothing!”
“You looking for something. What did you lose?”
“Don’t worry about me, Robert Earl.” Where in the world is my gun? “Stop evading the question. What’s going on up there?”
“I don’t know.”
He stopped searching and pointed the light at Robert Earl sitting up, pinching his nose, head tilted back, overalls blood splattered.
“Robert Earl, what’s going on up there? Don’t lie to me!”
Robert Earl shook his head and shrugged.
“Don’t BS me! I heard a gunshot and you come running like a scalded hog. Don’t tell me you don’t…” A thought occurred to him. “Stand up, Robert Earl!” he demanded, standing up himself. “Interlock your fingers behind your head. Do it now! Slowly.”
Robert Earl stood up, left hand behind his head, right hand pinching his nose.
“Both hands behind your head! Do it!”
“Sheriff, if I let go my nose will start bleeding again.”
“Do it!”
Clean, save for a bunch of junk in his pockets. Time wasted; someone could be up there hurt—and he couldn’t find his blasted gun.
He resumed searching for it. “One more time, Robert Earl, and if you lie to me again I’m charging you with what you did to that Chinese girl. Who’s shooting up there? Your mother?”
“She was Okinawan, not Chinese.” He hawked and spat again. Then, in a stream: “I told Estafay to come home with me and she wouldn’t listen—I couldn’t burn nobody up ’cause they my family and burnt bodies stink worse than burnt cats and I didn’t want the nightmares and she said Eric would tell even though he promised he wouldn’t and she shot in the air and told me to go home—