Loodie, Jack’s personal woman, was a hot flash number who liked to have her ashes hauled, and me, I’m a tall, lean fellow with a good smile and a willing attitude. Loodie was ready to lose Jack because he had a bad temper and a bit of a smell. He was short on baths and long on cologne. Smellgood juice on top of his stinky smell, she said, created a kind of funk that would make a skunk roll over dead and cause a wild hyena to leave the body where it lay.
She, on the other hand, was like sweet, wet sin dipped in coffee and sugar with a dash of cinnamon; God’s own mistress with a surly attitude, which goes to show even He likes a little bit of the devil now and then.
She’d been asked about Jack by them who wanted to know. Bad folks with guns, and a need for dough. But she lied, said she didn’t know where he was. Everyone believed her because she talked so bad about Jack. Said stuff about his habits, about how he beat her, how bad he was in bed, and how he stunk. It was convincing stuff to everyone.
But me.
I knew that woman was a liar, because I knew her whole family, and they was the sort, like my daddy used to say, would rather climb a tree and lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth and be given free flowers. Lies flowed through their veins as surely as blood.
She told me about Jack one night while we were in bed, right after we had toted the water to the mountain. We’re laying there looking at the ceiling, like there’s gonna be manna from heaven, watching the defective light from the church across the way flash in and out and bounce along the wall, and she says in that burnt-toast voice of hers, “You split that money, I’ll tell you where he is.”
“You wanna split it?”
“Naw, I’m thinkin’ maybe you could keep half and I could give the other half to the cat.”
“You don’t got a cat.”
“Well, I got another kind of cat, and that cat is one you like to pet.”
“You’re right there,” I said. “Tellin’ me where he is, that’s okay, but I still got to do the groundwork. Hasslin’ with that dude ain’t no easy matter, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. So, me doin’ what I’m gonna have to do, that’s gonna be dangerous as trying to play with a daddy lion’s balls. So, that makes me worth more than half, and you less than half.”
“You’re gonna shoot him when he ain’t lookin’, and you know it.”
“I still got to take the chance.”
She reached over to the nightstand, nabbed up a pack, shook out a cigarette, lit it with a cheap lighter, took a deep drag, coughed out a puff, said, “Split, or nothin’.”
“Hell, honey, you know I’m funnin’,” I said. “I’ll split it right in half with you.”
I was lying through my teeth. She may have figured such, but she figured with me she at least had a possibility, even if it was as thin as the edge of playing card.
She said, “He’s done gone deep into East Texas. He’s over in Gladewater. Drove there in his big black Cadillac that he had a chop shop turn blue.”
“So he drove over in a blue Caddy, not a black one,” I said. “I mean, if it was black, and he had it painted blue, it ain’t black no more. It’s blue.”
“Aren’t you one for the details, and at a time like this,” she said, and rubbed my leg with her foot. “But technically, baby, you are so correct.”
That night Loodie laid me out a map written in pencil on a brown paper sack, made me swear I was gonna split the money with her again. I told her what she wanted to hear. Next morning, I started over to Gladewater.
Jack was actually in a place outside of the town, along the Sabine River, back in the bottom land where the woods was still thick, down a little trail that wound around and around, to a cabin Loodie said was about the size of a postage stamp, provided the stamp had been scissor-trimmed.
I oiled my automatic, put on gloves, went to the store and bought a hatchet, cruised out early, made Gladewater in about an hour and fifteen, glided over the Sabine River bridge. I took a gander at the water, which was dirty brown and up high on account of rain. I had grown up along that river, over near a place called Big Sandy. It was a place of hot sand and tall pines and no opportunity.
It wasn’t a world I missed none.
I stopped at a little diner in Gladewater and had me a hamburger. There was a little white girl behind the counter with hair blond as sunlight, and we made some goo-goo eyes at one another. Had I not been on a mission, I might have found out when she got off work, seen if me and her could get a drink and find a motel and try and make the beast with two backs.
Instead, I finished up, got me a tall Styrofoam cup of coffee to go. I drove over to a food store and went in and bought a jar of pickles, a bag of cookies, and a bottle of water. I put the pickles on the floorboard between the backseat and the front; it was a huge jar and it fit snugly. I laid the bag with the cookies and the water on the backseat.
The bottoms weren’t far, about twenty minutes, but the roads were kind of tricky, some of them were little more than mud and a suggestion. Others were slick and shiny like snot on a water glass.
I drove carefully and sucked on my coffee. I went down a wide road that became narrow, then took another that wound off into the deeper woods. Drove until I found what I thought was the side road that led to the cabin. It was really a glorified path. Sun-hardened, not very wide, bordered on one side by trees and on the other by marshy land that would suck the shoes off your feet, or bog up a car tire until you had to pull a gun and shoot the engine like a dying horse.
I stopped in the road and held Loodie’s hand-drawn map, checked it, looked up. There was a curve went around and between the trees and the marsh. There were tire tracks in it. Pretty fresh. At the bend in the curve was a little wooden bridge with no railings.
So far Loodie’s map was on the money.
I finished off my coffee, got out and took a pee behind the car, and watched some big white waterbirds flying over. When I was growing up over in Big Sandy I used to see that kind of thing often, not to mention all manner of wildlife, and for a moment I felt nostalgic. That lasted about as long as it took me to stick my dick back in my pants and zipper up.
I took my hatchet out of the trunk and rested it on the front passenger seat as I got back in the car. I pulled out my automatic and checked it over, popped out the clip and slid it back in. I always liked the sound it made when it snapped into place. I looked at myself in the mirror, like maybe I was going on a date. Thought maybe if things fucked up, it might be the last time I got a good look at myself. I put the car in gear, wheeled around the curve and over the bridge, going at a slow pace, the map on the seat beside me, held in place by the hatchet.
I came to a wide patch, like on the map, and pulled off the road. Someone had dumped their garbage where the spot ended close to the trees. There were broken-up plastic bags spilling cans and paper, and there was an old bald tire leaning against a tree, as if taking a break before rolling on its way.
I got out and walked around the bend, looked down the road. There was a broad pond of water to the left, leaked there by the dirty Sabine. On the right, next to the woods, was a log cabin. Small, but well made and kind of cool looking. Loodie said it was on property Jack’s parents had owned. Twenty acres or so. Cabin had a chimney chugging smoke. Out front was a big blue Cadillac Eldorado, the tires and sides splashed with mud. It was parked close to the cabin. I could see through the Cadillac’s windows, and they lined up with a window in the cabin. I moved to the side of the road, stepped in behind some trees, and studied the place carefully.
There weren’t any wires running to the cabin. There was a kind of lean-to shed off the back. Loodie told me that was where Jack kept the generator that gave the joint electricity. Mostly the cabin was heated by the firewood piled against the shed, and lots of blankets come late at night. Had a gas stove with a nice-sized tank. I could just imagine Jack in there with Loodie, his six fingers on her sweet chocolate skin. It made me want to kill him all the more, even though I knew Loodie was the kind of girl made a minx look virginal. You gave your heart to that woman, she’d eat it.