"You're right, you're right," he mumbled with absolutely no conviction, as he explored the wonders of her existence in a way that was unknown and overwhelming to her.
It was difficult to predict exactly where this might have gone had Bubba not intervened. There was a Holiday Inn Express not too far away on 1-77, and it had an indoor pool, 42-channel cable TV, and free local calls and newspaper, and complimentary continental breakfasts.
Possibly, West and Brazil would have made their way to one of those rooms before morning, and gotten into even more trouble at a bargain price. They possibly would have slept together, and that was where West always drew the line. Sex was one thing, but she did not sleep with someone she was not in love with, meaning she slept with no living soul except Niles.
Again, such contemplations are moot when there is a sharp rap on the window and one peers into the barrel of a carbine rifle reminiscent of Bosnia, or perhaps Miami. West did not have her glasses on, but the redneck with his assault rifle outside her police car looked familiar in a fuzzy sort of way.
"Sit up very slowly," she said to Brazil.
"What for?" He wasn't ready yet.
"Trust me," she told him.
vft It was just as well that condensation had formed on the glass.
Bubba could not see exactly what was going on inside the dark blue Ford Crown Victoria, but he had a pretty good idea. This heightened his excitement, making him more certain that he was going to waste these two after doing something really, really bad to them first. If there were two things Bubba could not endure in life, they were queers making out, and straights making out. When he saw queers flirting,
touching, Bubba wanted to beat the shit out them and then leave them dying in a ditch. When he saw what he thought he was looking at right now inside this police car, he felt pretty much the same impulse.
People with money, importance, or a good sex life, and especially all three, made Bubba insane with righteous outrage. It was his calling, he was sure, to smite them in the name of America.
West was not as frightened by the rifle with thirty rounds as most people would have been, and her brain was powering up.
It seemed this was the creep from the Firing Line who had gotten arrested for exposing himself in Latta Park. She had a pretty good idea why she had found Super Glue in her shrubs, and she wished like hell that Brazil hadn't busted the guy's nose. All the same. West was ready for violence. When anyone pointed a gun at her, there was a true cause and effect that rapidly clicked into gear. Unhooking the mike, she placed it next to her hip. She keyed it with her right hand, locking out all radio traffic in her response area. Dispatchers, cops, reporters, and criminals with scanners, could hear nothing but her.
She rolled down her window a few inches.
"Please don't shoot," she said loudly.
Bubba was surprised and pleased by her rapid submission.
"Unlock the doors," he ordered.
"Okay, okay," West continued in the same loud, tense voice.
"I'm going to unlock the doors real slowly. Please don't shoot. Please. We can work this out, all right? And if you start shooting here, everyone at the Seventy-six truck stop will hear, so what good will it do?"
Bubba had already thought about this, and she was right.
"The two of you are getting in my truck," he said.
"We're taking a ride."
"Why?" West kept on.
"What do you want from us? We have no problem with you."
"Oh yeah?" He gripped the carbine tighter, loving the way the bitch in uniform was groveling before him, the great Bubba.
"How about at the range the other night, when Queerbait there hit me?"
"You started it," Brazil said to him and all listening to channel two.
"We can work this out," West said again.
"Look. Let's just get right back on Sunset, maybe meet somewhere where we can talk about this? All these trucks coming in here, they're looking. You don't want witnesses, and this isn't a good place to be settling a dispute."
Bubba thought they had already gone over this point. What he planned to do was shoot them out near the lake, weigh their bodies down with cinder blocks, and dump them where no one would find them until mud turtles had eaten important features. He heard that happened. Crabs were bad on dead bodies, too, as were household pets, especially cats, if locked up with dead owners and not fed, and eventually having no choice.
As Bubba deliberated, eight Charlotte patrol cars with flashing lights were speeding along 1-77, now within minutes of the truck stop.
Shotguns were out and ready. The police helicopter was lifting from the helipad on top of the LEC, sniper shooters poised. The SWAT team had been deployed. The FBI had been called and agents were on standby, in the event hostage or terrorist negotiators, or the Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit, or the Hostage Rescue Team, might be what it took to save the day.
"Get out of the car," said Bubba.
In his mind, he was not in plaid shorts, white tube socks, Hush Puppies, and a Fruit of the Loom white T-shirt that had never been washed with bleach. In his mind, he was in military fatigues, with black grease under his eyes, hair a buzz cut, sweaty muscles bunching as he gripped his weapon and prepared to score two more points for his country and the guys at the hunt club. He was Bubba. He knew the perfect sliver of undeveloped lake property where he could do his duty, having his way with the woman first. Take that, he would think as he drove home his point. Now who's got the power, bitchf
Police cars turned onto Sunset East. They traveled single file, lights going, in a neat flashing line. Inside the truck stop, several truckers, who believed they had been stagecoach drivers in an earlier life, had lost interest in microwave nachos, cheeseburgers, and beer. They were looking out plate glass, watching what was going on at the edge of the parking lot as pulsing blue and red lights showed through trees.
"No way that's a rifle," Betsy was saying as she chewed on a Slim Jim.
"Oh yeah it is too," said Al.
"Then we should go on out and help."
"Help which one?" asked Tex.
All contemplated this long enough for police cars to get closer and the sound of chopper blades to be barely discernible.
"Looks to me like Bubba started it," decided Pete.
"Then we should go get him."
"You hear about the guns he's got?"
"Bubba ain't gonna shoot us."
The argument was moot. Bubba could feel dark armies closing around him, and he got desperate.
"Git out now or I'm going to let loose!" he screamed, racking a cartridge into a chamber that already had one.
"Don't shoot." West held up her hands, noting the double feed that had just jammed his gun.
"I'm opening the door, okay?"
"NOW!" Bubba pointed and yelled.
West positioned herself before the door as best she could, and planted a foot on it. She raised the handle, and kicked with all her strength, as eight police cars roared in, sirens ripping the violent night.
Bubba was slammed in his midsection, and flew back, landing on his back, the rifle skittering across tarmac. West was out and on him before her feet hit the ground. She did not wait for her backups. She didn't care a shit about the big, burly drivers boiling out of the truck stop to help. Brazil leapt out, too, and together they threw Bubba on his fat belly and cuffed him, desperate to beat him half to death, but resisting.
"You goddamn son-of-a-bitch piece of chicken-eating shit!" Brazil bellowed.
"Move and your head's all over with!" exclaimed West, her pistol pressed hard against the small of Bubba's thick neck.
The force hauled Bubba away, with no assistance from the truckers, who returned their attention to snacks for the road, and cigarettes. West and Brazil sat in silence for a moment inside her car.
"You always get me into trouble," she said, backing up.
"Hey!" he protested.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm taking you home."