"You sound jealous," Tim said.
"I am a little. I don't feel good about that, but I guess I am. I've thought about her some myself. I'd like to get my fingers in that hairdo. But I'm a married man, and a married man ain't supposed to do stuff like that, so I don't. Bible said it was okay to go around pokin' any hole you wanted, I might look at it different, but it don't say that." · "
"Nice of you to tell us all about your office problems," I said. "Come in here and shit all over your deputy."
"Yeah," Leonard yelled. "That's damn white of you."
"Can't help myself," Cantuck said. "I just plain don't like Reynolds. I don't like my secretary either."
"You don't like them, fire them," I said.
"Not that easy. Charlene needs the job. She's got them kids. And Reynolds, I didn't hire him in the first place. Town pushed him on me. Actually, Brown pushed him on me through the Mayor. That's the way politics are played, so I ended up taking him on. He's good enough at what he does, but he ain't all that fair about things. He's crafty, but he lets personal get in the way."
"You think Brown has Reynolds in his pocket?" I asked.
"Not his front pocket, right next to his dick, but his hip pocket maybe. Mainly Reynolds is just Reynolds. He does what he wants 'cause he wants to, and a lot of what he wants ain't all that good."
"Certainly nice of you to drop by and tell us all this, Chief," I said. "Why?"
Cantuck considered a moment. He laid his hands on the back of the chair and leaned back. As he did, a shaft of red sunlight poked through the curtain and landed on his left eye. He jerked his head from the light and leaned forward again, said, "Reckon I should have taken this colored gal's missin' more serious."
"And maybe you want us to feel so warm toward you we'll go home and forget all this mess. Just leave it to you. Trust you to do what's right."
"Could be," Cantuck said.
Bacon brought coffee in, two cups at a time. One for himself. He stood by the television and sipped his.
"What about all those guys jumped us?" I asked.
"Your word against theirs," Cantuck said. "Draighten and Ray say they got into it with you two on their own. Claim there wasn't no one else involved but them, and it was just y'all caused the ruckus."
"You believe that?" I said.
"Don't matter what I believe. We get through sortin' it all out, it'll come down to you two fought them two, and it'll be your word, and Maude's and her boys against all them other folks who saw it and say it didn't happen way you say it did."
"What if we press charges?"
"They'll press charges back."
"So what's next?"
"We put your asses in your car and send you home."
Chapter 22
Leonard and I decided to wear our own clothes. Tim went out to Leonard's car and brought in our suitcases, then asked Bacon to drive him home. Bacon left with Tim, and I went into the bedroom and closed the door and changed clothes and helped Leonard dress. While I held him under the arm and he painfully slipped into his pants, he said, "You think the Chief is telling it the way it is?"
"I don't know," I said. I helped Leonard sit on the side of the bed, then folded up the clothes Bacon had given us and placed them on a chair.
I helped him into a shirt. He buttoned it slowly. He didn't look at me when he said, "I'm glad we're going home."
"Me too."
"There was a time when I thought I couldn't be broken, but I don't know now. I hear a sound, I get tense. I hear it twice, I damn near shit myself. I think it's that bunch coming down on me, all of them, and I figure right now, if I was solid and sound and they came, I might just ball up like a baby and let them have me."
"You wouldn't, Leonard. It's not in you."
"I wouldn't have thought that just a day or so ago, but I think now I've just been lucky."
"No one survives all you've been through and calls themselves lucky. Your problem is you've lost your boyfriend, taken a damn good beating, and everybody saw your dick. Not to mention you cut a fart and pissed on yourself."
"Thanks for reminding me."
"Trust me. You'll get over it."
"You comin' back here, Hap?"
"Come on, Leonard, let's go."
"Hap?"
"I don't know."
The Chief and I loaded Leonard into the back seat of the car with a blanket we borrowed from Bacon, and as a last thought, the Chief gave us his thermos. I took it inside and the Chief came in behind me. I poured what was left of Bacon's coffee into the thermos.
I said, "You wouldn't happen to have some sandwiches, would you, Chief?"
"You boys hit the road, and don't come back," he said. "You were fortunate this time. I see you again, and you get to stay at the jail a while. Like maybe till I retire."
"Been nice visiting your little town, Chief."
I took the thermos and went out to the car, the Chief walking behind me.
The sky was dark again. All the red had bled out. The Chief said, "You start now, you won't get home late, and you might beat the storm. It's coming, but it'll be at your back, you don't fuck around. You've got a full tank of gas, courtesy of me, and you got hot coffee and I don't want the thermos back. I don’t want anything that'll have to do with me seeing you again. Comprende?"
"But we will get a Christmas card from you next year, won't we?"
"Sit out by the mailbox and wait on it. And, son, Happy New Year."
I opened the car door and tossed the thermos inside. A pillow had been laid across the ripped-up driver's seat, and I put my ass on that and started the car and turned on the lights.
As I backed out of the drive, the Chief lifted his fingers and waved bye-bye.
I drove until I reached the highway, then pulled over beside the road.
"What's up?" Leonard said.
"One minute," I said.
I got out and paused to look at the sky. It was dark all over, but behind us there was a greater wad of blackness, like soot-stained cotton, and it was balling and twisting and tumbling our way. The wind was cold and wet and smelled of lightning.
I opened the trunk of the car, got a handgun and the strapped Winchester and made sure they were loaded, brought them around, laid them in the front seat as I climbed behind the wheel.
"Thought you didn't like guns," Leonard said.
"Today, I'm trying to be more open and friendly toward them.”
"Let me have one for back here," he said. "As a pacifier."
I gave him the revolver and he put it in his waistband. I patted the stock of the Winchester on the seat beside me, said, "Good boy. Stay. Good boy."
As I drove, the sky grew black as the bottom of an ancient outhouse. The trees alongside the highway became little more than an outline and appeared to be sketched from charcoal. The storm behind us was rolling faster than I was, and I could feel it as it descended on us like a heavy, alien cloud. Rain splashed the windshield and the tires began to sing in the water; a nasty little song that hinted of blown tires, skidding machinery, and twisting metal.
It had been hard enough to see with the cracked windshield, but now, with the rain coming down the way it was, it was damn near impossible. I slowed, leaned forward, tried to make out the yellow line so I could hold the car steady. I really should have pulled over, but I didn't want to. Not until I had us and Grovetown many miles apart.
Another few miles and I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw lights. Then behind those lights, others. The lights were moving toward us pretty fast, much too fast for common sense in weather like this.
I watched the lights in the rearview mirror when I wasn't struggling to hold Leonard's junker on the road, and they were closing with a determined pace. I felt my bowels weaken, then the car was filled with the light. A big dark pickup was riding right on our bumper, so close, at a glance you might have thought I was towing it. The truck fell back, charged forward, fell back, broke around us and passed.