From beside the door, the fat bartender piped up, “Won’t none Bubba’s fault, this time, Sher’ff. That damn swell, he stuck his nose in where won’t none his bizness, see. And he said plumb terr’ble things to my pore cousin Bubba, too. He called him some really common things, said he went to the movies and all jest to jack off lil boys is all. And—”
“Gawdam you anyhow, Chester,” roared the lawman, “dint I jest thishere minnit git though tellin’ you whut to go do? You don’t go do whutall I tol’ you, you gone need another meat wagon all to yomse’f. Hear me?”
While they awaited the arrival of the rescue squad, the sheriff went from casualty to casualty, squatting beside each of them and critically examining their injuries, commenting upon them. “Damn, Milo, you done some kinda first-rate fuckin’ job on ole Bubba, here; he ain’t dead, don’t worry none about that, he’s jest done passed out agin’ is all. Two, mebbe three, his front tooths is gone, broke off, it’s purely a wonder you dint cut the holy livin’ fuck outen your knuckles, too. His damn nose is broke for sure and his jaw may be, too, and you can bet your fuckin’ ass his cheekbones is cracked all to hellangone. Tomorra, he gone look like Sam Potter’s whole fuckin’ herd of cows run over him … probly feel like it, too. Mebbe it’ll take some the meanness outen him for a while, but don’t put no money on’t.”
Ungently, he proded at his brother’s thorax with the tip of his billy until he produced a thick scream of pain. He nodded, then, “Yup, Wally’s got one, mebbe two cracked ribs; too bad won’t his fuckin’ shithead. Now, Wally, I done tol’ you time after time to keep ’way from that fuckin’ looney Bubba Rigny. ain’t I? He’s got the kinda crazinesses rubs off on other people, and sometime me or somebody is gonna have to kill him and, like as not, some of whoever’s with him then, too. I don’t want one them to be my baby brother, Wally, is all. If you’d minded me ’fore this, you wouldn’t be there covered in puke with cracked ribs and a dang ball-big fulla scrambled eggs atween yore legs, neither.
“Jerry,” he admonished the man in whose face Milo had flung the whisky, “you ain’t gone go blind jest ’cause you got likker in yore eyes. But you don’t stop rubbin’ and clawin’ a ’em. you jest might wind up with a white cane and a police dawg, yet.”
As he moved onto squat by another body, his peripheral vision registered the sly movement toward the door of the knife fighter, and he commented warningly, “Doug Wilkes, I ain’t give you leave for to go, yet. You get your sad ass back here and put it in a fuckin’ chair, till I says diffrunt. I have to come after you, you gone wish I’d let Milo here work on you, too.”
Lifting the head of an unconscious man by its dirty red hair, he used calloused fingertips to explore the egg-sized lump on the back of it, grunted, then let it go to thump back on the hard floor, turning his attention to the swelling, already-discolored face. “Milo, what the fuck you clobber Eugene Fitzger’ld here with, enyhow, a fuckin’ maul? He’s another good ole boy’s gone be drinkin’ his fuckin’ beer though a fuckin’ straw for a while, I figgers. Thanks to you, old buddy, things is gone be dang quiet and peaceful round abouts thishere county till this bunch gets done healin’ up, I’d say. Layin’ here is five the bigges’ troublemakers I got to plague me … an’ it’s gone be six if one Doug Wilkes don’t quit tryin’ to snag thet fuckin’ knife with his fuckin’ toe.”
Still not looking around, he said. “Billy, take the cuffs outn the pouch on the back of my belt here, and put ’em on Doug; cuff him to that chair, he ain’t trustable. Then step out to my cruiser and git Hannibal on the radio, hear? Tell him I said for to send car number three over here and pick Doug up, book him for ADW and thow him in the fuckin’ lockup there to wait on Judge Daniels. He done drawed that fuckin’ fancy-ass spic shiv of his one time too many, to my way of thinkin’. I think some time on the road gang’d make a whole world of diffrunce in him.”
With the prisoner securely cuffed and sitting glumly in the chair, Chamberlin, still at a squat, turned to face Milo and said, “Damn, but I wish I could git that boy, Billy Crawford, to come to work for me, be one my deppities. He come back from Vietnam with a whole pisspot full of medals, you know, and he allus was a real bright boy, and Lord knows he could use the money, too, him and his lil wife. But he ain’t got him but one and a half legs, no more, see, and he says he might not be able to do ever’thing a whole depity could do, and he’s proud, won’t take nothin’ looks like no kind of char’ty. But if I had a real sharp boy like Billy to run the desk and office and all, I could put that cornball shitheaded Hannibal out in one the cars and …” He broke off as the slight man limped back into the bar.
“Sher’ff,” said the scarred man, “Depity Gregory said that he’d get a car here as quick as he could and he said to tell you he couldn’t find no paper on anybody named Milo Moray, neither.”
“Who the hell ast him to?” demanded Chamberlin, his craggy face darkening. “I needs wants and warrants, it’ll be me asts for wants and warrants!”
The scarred man shuffled a bit uneasily. “Well … he did say Chester had been on yore car radio to him … ?”
Chamberlin nodded shortly. “Figgers. Bubba’s his cousin and he didn’ like watchin’ him get beat to a frazzle here. But it none of it wouldn’t of come down if he’d done like I tol’ him and jest kept Bubba and his crowd of fuckers outen thishere bar of mine. Wal, Mr. Chester’s done had the course, this time ’round, that’s for sure, that’s for dang sure. I’ll have Sampson find me a new bartender as ain’t a fuckin’ relative of nobody in this county, and Chester can start workin’ off his fuckin’ fat ass and beergut out the gravel pits agin.
“Oh, speakin’ of Sampson, Billy, would you step over there and tell him to set up the private room for me and you and Milo to have dinner in tonight? Tell him steaks and lobsters. That sound a’right to you, Milo?”
Later, seated across the table from Chamberlin in the lavishly appointed private dining room of the restaurant, sipping whisky and packing his old, battered pipe, Milo asked. “What ever happened after I left the company, the battalion, there in Delitzsch? Did you all really get into the Bavarian Alps to hunt SS?”
“Aw, naw, Milo.” Chamberlin shook his head, his cornpone speech lessening noticeably, for some reason.
“Seems like the minnit the fuckin’ war ended, ever SS and Nazi and his fuckin’ brother was doin’ his fuckin’ danmedest for to get the hell out of Germany or elst cover his ass so it looked like he hadn’t never been nothing but a pore, rear-rank private or Gefreite or suthin’ in the fuckin’ Wehnnacht or a swabby in the Kriegsmarine or best a pore fuckin’ civilian. Them Oberkommando bugtits might’ve set plans to fight up there to the last bullet, but with old Hitler dead, won’t nobody was willin’ to do no such thing when push come to shove. So the battalion jest squatted right where we was for a while, gettin’ fat and sassy on hot A-rations and all the hootch we could find to liberate, getting in replacements and equipment and all, learnin’ what it felt like to be clean and wear clean clothes agin, standing chickenshit inspections ever now and then and even doing fuckin’ close-order drill, for Chrissakes, and route marches and compass problems, too.
“Right after you left, that fuckin’ John Saxon, he twisted my pore balls some kind of fierce till I let him commission me, then upped me to first looey and give me the comp’ny. He done the same thing to Bernie Cohen and made him my exec. That horny old bastid was a piss-cutter, he was, God bless his old soul.”