“How long?”
“Two days.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Thirsty, too, I reckon.”
“Can I get some whiskey?”
“You bet.”
“I got the shakes, too.”
“I know, baby.”
Fannie opened the bag and pulled out a silver spoon and toyed with it a moment before clicking on a lighter and heating its contents. She grabbed a syringe and soon filled it and tapped the vein in his arm. She shot down the plunger, and he was filled with the most quiet, wonderful sensation, as if having sex to the point of climax and having it last and last. He closed his eyes and smiled.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Hill Top.”
“You keeping me in a whorehouse?”
“That I am.”
“A dream come true.”
“I need you well, Johnnie.”
“You got me.”
“Everyone is gone.”
Johnnie opened his eyes and breathed through his nose. He closed his eyes again.
“The Guard. They got orders from the governor to bust up this town. I need you, Johnnie. Don’t leave.”
He reached up with his left hand and had a bit of trouble finding Fannie’s heart-shaped face. She shifted his hand over to her left breast and said everything was going to be all right. “Don’t you worry, baby.”
A flame struck again in the dark little room, and he saw Fannie Belle’s face and red lips and intent green eyes, and then it was clouded again in a puff of smoke. He heard her inhale, and then she passed the cigarette between his lips.
“I got the door locked,” she said. “I turned the lights off and closed the gate. If they even think about busting down the door, I’ll take a few of those bastards with me.”
“I love you, baby.”
“Johnnie, how ’bout you tell me more about this money you took from Hoyt. I sure like that story.”
12
THE RAIDS STARTED that Thursday at exactly 4:30 with a proclamation from Governor Persons that Phenix City was under martial rule. That gave Hanna and the Guards the go-ahead to surround the Russell County Courthouse and relieve all law enforcement and city officials of their duties and make them surrender all weapons, squad cars, and badges. Just as General Hanna and Major Black burst into the sheriff’s office, they found Sheriff Ralph Matthews sitting behind his desk, a big wad of chaw in his cheek, playing gin rummy with four deputies and a jailer. Another jailer was within earshot of the men, sitting on the office toilet and reading a copy of Gent magazine. As soon as the Guard leveled their shotguns and.45s at the boys, Matthews looked from deputy to deputy and then over to the jailer on the toilet.
He shook his head and threw the remainder of his cards into the pot.
The other deputies did the same and they all slowly stood, hitching up their gun belts on their uniforms.
“What can we do you for, General?”
“Not a goddamn thing,” Hanna said, walking over to Matthews’s desk and pulling a Hav-a-Tampa from a box. “Just leave your guns and badges on the way out.”
“Sir?” Matthews laughed, the big plug in his cheek. His face turned a bright red.
“You heard me, you hick bastard,” Hanna said. He lit a match against his thumbnail. “Now, take off those guns nice and slow.”
Matthews shook his head again. He dramatically spit in a wastepaper basket and smiled with a lot of pity. He was a fat man with a big belly and a small mind, and he didn’t quite catch on to what was happening. His fat cheeks looked like apples.
Just then there was a creak and the men turned, seeing the jailer stand from the little box bathroom and raise a pistol, his trousers at his ankles.
Jack Black fired off a round over the man’s head. And although the shot missed him by a foot, the man ducked and landed back with a hard thud onto the commode and dropped the pistol into the water.
“Now,” Hanna said.
Matthews went first, unhitching his belt and guns, laying them atop the big wooden desk. His deputies followed, and they all stood shoulder to shoulder as five-foot-five bulldog Hanna passed by them as in an inspection line, never once saying a word but eyeing the men as if they were the sorriest bunch of bastards he’d ever seen in his life.
It was raining, and the thunder belly-grumbled outside as the water pinged against the pane glass and slid down the windows. Hanna pulled his MacArthur hat off his head and held it out to Matthews, “I said badges, too.”
“Murphy?” he called out to me. I entered the room.
Hanna handed me Ralph Matthews’s badge and pinned it over my Texaco star. “I kind of like that one better. It suits you, Sheriff.”
FOUR HOURS EARLIER, I’D SAT IN JOYCE’S BEAUTY SHOP drinking a cup of coffee and explaining to her the job I’d just been offered by the state. She was between appointments and cleaning out a sink full of brunette hair dye. The room smelled of burnt chemicals and sweet shampoos, and as I tried to make sense of the offer she just nodded and nodded, keeping her hands busy with the washing and some sweeping and some straightening of a couple of helmet dryers by a back wall under framed pictures from Vogue.
“Why you?”
“I have an honest face.”
She nodded. She sat down in a stylist chair and faced me. I was still dressed in my coveralls, my Texaco baseball cap in my hands, as I looked down at the floor and waited for what was about to come.
But she didn’t say a word for a long time, and when she spoke it was calm and confident. “Is this temporary?”
“It could be,” I said. “It’s just until the election.”
“If the Guard is taking over, why do they even need you?”
“It was the best we could get. Something called limited martial rule. They have to have local police. The Guard can’t make arrests on their own.”
“You don’t know a thing about being a sheriff.”
“I tried to explain that to them.”
“And what did they say?”
“They said John Patterson recommended me for the job. Jack Black, too.”
“Can’t they just find someone else?”
“Bernard Sykes already offered it to George Findletter.”
“And what did he say?”
“His wife said there was no way in hell. She’d divorce him.”
Joyce nodded. She inspected her painted nails and turned back and forth in her seat. There was a knock at the front of the little shotgun house, and she walked to the door and told a woman that she’d be right with her. She shut the door with a little click and walked back. You could only hear the air conditioner humming in a small window facing our yard.
“You already said yes, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
She nodded back. Her hair was freshly done and curled, and she wore a powder of makeup on her face. Her cotton skirt hit her at the knees, and when she walked she sometimes put her hands in the pockets.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me, too.”
“You need this, don’t you?”
“For a long time.”
She looked at me. The woman outside walked back and forth on the little porch, impatient. I crunched the bill of my ball cap and then looked back at Joyce. She was looking right at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see our images in a bank of mirrors.
“I don’t want our kids hurt.”
“They won’t be.”
She shook her head and stood and reached down her long, lithe fingers to me. I looked up at her, confused, until I saw the way she held her hand. I took her hand and stood, and we shook on it.
AT MIDNIGHT, I WAS WITH THE GUARD DOWN ON DILLINGHAM Street in the rain. I wore my civilian clothes under a yellow slicker but carried a standard-issue.45 Colt Jack Black had given me earlier. Black carried a pump shotgun in one hand and leaned against a jeep, while Hanna sat up in the driver’s seat smoking a cigar and talking to someone on a field telephone. The street was dead and filled with rain and quiet and dark in the absence of all the neon. You could hear the roar of the Chattahoochee, filled with storm water and rolling and breaking over the dam, but Phenix City was still, not a car heading down the road besides Guard troops. In the silence, we heard a grunt, and Hanna climbed out holding an ax.