“They didn’t have that back then,” Eugene said, as if he actually knew. “Anyway, there’s nothing to work with. It’s all gone.” All A.J. could do was shake his head. He had always known that Eugene was a bastard but hadn’t realized it was the literal truth.
“When did you find this out?” A.J. was morbidly curious. He recognized this shortcoming in himself and vowed to change. Tomorrow.
“I’d had my suspicions for years. You just don’t grow up in a house with a man who has no dick and not get the feeling something is wrong. You ever take a shower with John Robert when you were a kid, or maybe take a leak on a tree together?”
“Sure.”
“We didn’t do that sort of thing. I’ve never seen him with his pants off. I sat down with Angel one day and asked her what the deal was. She hemmed and hawed but finally came across. She wouldn’t tell me who my father was, but she admitted the dastardly deed. She thought I would be upset. I told her it suited me just fine that Johnny Mack wasn’t my father. As a matter of fact, I was happier.” Eugene began to hum a quiet tune. Eventually he turned to A.J. “Cat got your tongue?” he asked.
“Since you brought it up, if Angel married a man she knew couldn’t dance the waltz with her, why did she dance the waltz later with someone else?”
“Dance the waltz? Come on, Victoria. If you mean fuck, say fuck.”
“We’re talking about your mama. Have some respect.”
“Boy Scout,” Eugene said, rolling his eyes. But he seemed to take the point. “I have a theory. Angel got Jackie the hard way courtesy of a Nazi. So I don’t think… dancing was very high on her list when she met Johnny Mack. She may have even married him because he couldn’t dance. I don’t know. Later on, her biology caught up with her, and she began to want to do the old two-step again.”
“Who all knows about this?” A.J. had until tomorrow to be morbidly curious and wanted to find out more while there was time.
“You, me, Angel, Jackie, and Johnny Mack. Assuming, of course, he understands how these things work. My real father, whoever he is, may or may not know. Who can say?” Eugene stood up, stretched, and started toward the yard, stumbling a bit when he stepped off the porch. He walked to the bulldozer, climbed up, and started it.
“I’ll be right back!” he hollered as he headed down the trail. A.J. walked to the remains of the Jeep for a smoke. The porch was still too combustible for his comfort. He wondered what Eugene was doing. He knew he would have issues to address with Johnny Mack if the Cat went off a cliff. He heard Eugene down the trail, making a great deal of noise. Then the Cat hove into view, and A.J. was amazed at what he saw. Eugene was pushing the Lover up the path. As he got closer, he waved A.J. to the side and shoved the old Chrysler right in beside the Jeep, as if he had been looking for a good parking spot and finally found one.
“Tell me you’re not going to shoot it,” said A.J.
“I’m going to shoot it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want it to outlast me,” Eugene replied as he climbed down from his perch. The effort winded him. A.J. had almost forgotten the central issue during the discussion of Angel’s unusual dancing habits. Now it was back on his mind, and it was depressing. Still, he hated to see the old Lover end up like the Jeep and the tree, riddled and abused.
“It’s your car, but it deserves better,” A.J. said.
“Don’t we all?” came the reply. A.J. looked at the Lover, the Jeep, and the remains of the tree across the clearing. He thought of the Navy Colt.
“If you keep getting rid of things that might outlast you, I’m going to get nervous,” A.J. observed. “Maybe I ought to hog-tie Rufus and get us both out of here before it’s too late.” Eugene looked at him with an odd smile.
“You’re getting paranoid. I would like to see you hog-tie Rufus, though. I don’t know which way I’d bet on that deal. You’re smarter, but his teeth are sharper. If you use your bat, I think you might have a little edge.”
“If I use your shotgun, I might have a bigger edge.”
“That would be poor sportsmanship. What would Coach Crider say?”
“Coach Crider dropped dead, which saved someone the trouble of killing him,” A.J. said. Coach had died of a heart attack while expressing a difference of opinion with a referee. He had spit in the official’s face a bare moment before he collapsed, so it was actually the first time in Georgia high school football history that a dead coach was ejected from a game for unsportsmanlike conduct. It was a sad moment, a true low point for the team, and the boys had not played well the rest of the contest. “Anyway, I have never claimed to be a good sport.”
“No, you haven’t,” Eugene said. “But you are.” He lit a cigarette. “What are you going to do with Rufus after I’m gone?” The question caught A.J. off guard.
“I wasn’t planning on doing anything with him. Why don’t you give him to someone? Maybe Jackie. He has a lot of dogs.” It was a sure bet that A.J. didn’t want him.
“No, Rufus would kill all of them, and some of them are good dogs,” Eugene said. “Jackie would have to keep him tied. I’d rather see him dead.”
“What do you mean by that?” A.J. asked, suddenly wary.
“After I’m gone, I want you to shoot Rufus. Nobody is going to want him, and he’s getting too old to live wild. I don’t have the heart to do it myself.” A.J. sighed.
“Last week you asked me to kill you. This week, it’s Rufus. Next week, you’ll be wanting me to gun down Diane and the boys. Why are you doing this to me? I don’t like killing. I don’t even hunt! If Rufus walked up right now and keeled over, I wouldn’t shed a tear, because I really hate your dog. But I don’t want to kill him!” A.J. had become upset. “Why do you keep bringing up this kind of shit?” he demanded.
“Because you’re all I have,” Eugene said quietly, meeting A.J.’s eye. “Because I need the help.” He paused for a long moment. Then he continued. “Because I know you can do it when you have to.” A.J. stiffened. The clearing was as silent as the grave. A.J. walked to the bulldozer and climbed aboard. He fired up the old machine and sat there momentarily. Then he climbed down and walked back to Eugene.
“You son of a bitch,” he said in a quiet voice that roared like a train. “You swore on everything you held sacred that you would never talk about that. You’re a lying son of a bitch.”
“No, I’m not,” Eugene said. “I just don’t hold anything sacred anymore.” He sounded as if he might cry.
A.J. headed for the dozer. Without another word, he left the clearing.
CHAPTER 5
Your coffee killed me.
– Excerpt of posthumous letter from Eugene Purdue to Hoghead Crab, restaurateur
A.J. WAS HAVING A BAD WEEK. EUGENE HAD INITIATED the process on Saturday by reminding him of an incident he had tried to forget. The human mind was a devious organ, however, and it chiseled in stone that which would be best left unrecalled. In fairness to Eugene, he had not dredged a memory that had been successfully entombed. It was always with A.J., coming to him in the quiet moments. Still, Eugene had sworn never to mention it, but mention it he had. In this regard he had proven faithless, and his breach of trust had upset A.J. For Eugene possessed the truth. Of the two of them, one was a killer. Of the two of them, one had beaten two men to death with the Louisville Slugger and had shot a third. Of the two of them, A.J. owned the bat.
Most people never foresee their dates with destiny, and A.J. was no exception on that fateful day years past. He and Eugene had decided to try their luck at a trout stream that ran on the mountain to the north of Sequoyah. Their wives were both out of town, and Eugene and A.J. had decided on a fishing trip to while away the afternoon. Actually, Eugene had proposed another plan, a scenic tour of some of the finer topless clubs of Atlanta. But A.J. vetoed the idea, although it had been touch and go for a moment when Eugene described the Panther Club, a bistro that featured nude interactive water volleyball.