The blonde had been made to leave the room, and he wished she was there, wished he had been nicer to her. He needed a friendly face right now. These fellas, he found it hard to charm them. Men were like that a lot of the time, saw through him, maybe not all the way, but deep enough to get bothered. Women, that was another matter. He liked to talk to women. He liked to move around women, and they liked to watch him move, but these two, or was it three, they weren’t impressed.
“So, you want to get even with this guy you had a fight with?” McBride said, lighting his cigar. He was sitting there in his frilly white apron and his nigger-black wig, and the big coon, he was wearing a jacket like you might expect to see on one of those guys had a wand, waved it around in front of a band, an orchestra. He had on a bowler hat too.
“That’s one thing, yeah,” Hillbilly said. “Another is, I thought maybe I could make some money.”
“You know all about the oil deal, to hear you tell it,” McBride said. “You know everything.”
Hillbilly nodded.
“Knowing everything, that could get you in some shit, couldn’t it, Two?”
“It could,” Two said. And then, in another voice. “That’s the facts, my friend.”
“Show him just a little bit of shit, Two,” McBride said. Two squeezed Hillbilly’s kneecap so hard, Hillbilly thought it would pop off. He reached down with both hands and got hold of Two’s wrist.
Two said, “Let go.” And his other voice said, “Yes, do.”
Hillbilly let go, and Two, he kept squeezing, and Hillbilly, without even realizing it, put the side of his hand in his mouth and bit down on the flesh to keep from screaming. Just when he thought he was going to bite through his own hand or his kneecap was going to come off, Two let go, gave Hillbilly’s thigh a pat.
“That’s a little shit,” McBride said. “I don’t like someone knowing my business, and me not telling it to them. I don’t like you getting it from Rooster, cause I don’t like Rooster. He ran off, you know. Smarter than he looked. I didn’t have much more use for him and I guess he knew it, figured what was coming. You, maybe I got some use for. That face of yours, it heals up, bet it looks pretty good. It look good?”
“Yes,” Hillbilly said. “It does. But my nose, it ain’t never gonna be straight again.”
McBride burst out laughing, and Two, he grinned, big and wide and white.
“I fought Jack Johnson once, before he was anybody,” McBride said. “He broke my nose. I didn’t even know it till later. It hadn’t been for a hurricane coming, messing up our fight, I think I’d have won. Never got to find out. We had to stop it before it got started good. A nose, it’s a funny thing. It’ll break easy. Let me show you.”
McBride leaned out of his chair very fast and hit Hillbilly in the nose with a short right. Blood sprayed and Hillbilly dropped his head and moaned.
“You just thought it was broke before,” McBride said. “Wasn’t nothing before. Now it’s something. You come to me, and you tell me things I don’t think you ought to know, and I’m thinking, thing to do is have Two give you the big nigger job. He can twist your head off like you was a chicken, fuck your neck stump while you bleed out. He could do that, and he wouldn’t bat an eye. I could do it, but I don’t want to get blood on my dick. You hear me, Used To Be A Pretty Boy?”
“Yeah,” Hillbilly said. “I hear you.”
“Good. I’m gonna let you live, but take what we done here as a kind of lesson, a message. You twisted on that gal, come to me, and that’s all right, but you twist on me, I’ll twist you. Hear me?”
“Yeah. I hear you. Loud and clear.”
“That’s good. That’s damn good. Now let me tell you what you’re gonna do, and at this stage of our association, you ain’t got no say anymore, hear me?”
“Yeah.”
Two slid over and put his arm around Hillbilly’s shoulders. When Hillbilly turned, Two was real close, his white teeth grinning, his green eyes bright as emeralds.
He turned back to McBride, and McBride began to talk.
While Sunset and Clyde were gone, Lee and Goose and Karen, using Clyde’s pickup, had moved the tent and all the belongings, making four or five trips, to Clyde’s place.
When Sunset and Henry and Clyde pulled up at Clyde’s place, the tent was up, and out to one side of it was the tarp Clyde had erected, and to the other side, the house he had burned down. Out front of the tent a large post had been cut and there was a thick chain fastened around the post, fixed so that it ran through a place drilled in the center. The chain was pretty long and Ben was fastened to the chain by means of a collar made out of an old belt. Lee and Goose and Karen came out of the tent and Lee was carrying a chair with him.
“What in hell are you doing?” Henry said.
“Jail,” Sunset said. “You’re going to jail.”
“What jail?”
Sunset put the car in gear and pulled up the hand brake, turned in the seat to look at Henry, who sat in the back with Clyde. Clyde had used a short piece of rope to tie Henry’s hands together, and Henry looked as mad as a hornet in a fruit jar.
“That’s exactly what I got to thinking,” Sunset said. “What jail? I need a jail for Henry, but I haven’t got one. And I got to thinking too, you got friends, and I take you to my place, leave you there, they might come and see me. So, we’ve moved. People know where I live, that’s got around, but Clyde, they might not think of his place, and if they do, well, Clyde, he’s lived out here pretty much by himself for years. Right, Clyde?”
“Oh, yeah. And except for Hillbilly for a while, I ain’t had any visitors, so anyone might matter to you, I doubt they know where I live. It could be found out, but that’s what shotguns are for, nosy bastards.”
“You’re gonna regret this, girlie,” Henry said.
“I already regret it,” Sunset said. “Regret the day I took this job and found out anything about you.”
Henry looked puzzled. “Then let me go. Drop the job. Take off. Hell, the money offer is still open. We can toss Clyde in too.”
“I regret the day, all right,” Sunset said, “but there’s this thing about having a center, and damn it, I got one, and I don’t want it to shift.”
“Do what?” Henry said.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Sunset said.
They took Henry out of the car. When they got to the post in front of the tent, Sunset spoke to Lee, said, “Well, Daddy, is the post in solid?”
“Ben thinks so. He tugged for a while, then laid down.”
“All right, then.”
Clyde went in the tent, came out with a pair of handcuffs and a padlock. He used a knife to cut Henry loose, then put the handcuffs on him.
Sunset took the collar off Ben, who came over and sniffed Henry’s crotch like he might like to bite it off.
“What in hell are you doing?” Henry said.
“Putting you in jail,” Sunset said. She looped the chain through the cuffs and used the small padlock to stick between links.
Lee put the chair up against the post.
“This is your jail,” Sunset said.
“Out here?” Henry said.
“It’s kind of shaded,” Sunset said.
“You can’t do this.”
“Sure I can. Just hope I haven’t lost the keys to the cuffs or the padlock. Sit down, or I’ll have Clyde sit you down. Karen, go get Henry some water, would you?”
“You are going from bad to worse,” Henry said.
“Sit down, Henry.”
“How long you going to keep me here?”
“I don’t know. I got to figure what to do with you, which lawman will not let you go, which ones aren’t with the Klan or got Klan connections, or who won’t change their minds by letting money touch their hands.”
“You may find that a difficult person to find,” Henry said.
“Not everyone’s crooked,” Sunset said.