And then everything got dark, numb, and quiet.
CHAPTER 4
Later, Heck told me what had happened. He’d seen the whole thing from the restaurant; he’d been nursing one of his morning Bloody Marys while Fat Ernst sulked behind the bar. Fat Ernst hadn’t been invited to the funeral and was taking the snub personally.
Heck told me, “That Sawyer truck hit the hearse like it was pissed off. The hearse, man, it didn’t have a chance. Went spinning across the highway and pow! It hit the bridge hard, man. Craziest thing I ever saw. “Damn hearse flying, then”—he punched his palm—“right into that bridge. Crunched that back end like steppin’ on a bag of chips. You could just imagine what happened to the coffin inside, man.”
At the time, all I knew was that something was stabbing into my ribs, and for a moment there in the darkness, I got scared that I was wrapped up in black plastic and Bert was jabbing at me with his knife. Then I realized that I was on the floor, wedged against the pedals. Gray light filtered into the cab through the cracked, filthy windshield. I tried to blink the black spots out of my eyes.
The world under Junior’s seat—the clipboard wrapped in plastic, several wrinkled Hustler magazines, Junior’s extra pair of jeans, empty beer bottles, fast food wrappers, a dog leash, and a gigantic Maglite—slowly swam into focus. I heard, “You stupid fucking idiot,” and glanced up in time to see Junior’s fist swinging down at me. His knuckles smashed into my forehead, slamming my head into the steering column, and great pinwheeling fireworks exploded behind my ears.
“You owe me, cocksucker. You owe me big-time.” Junior’s pompadour spilled forward and hung in his face. Greasy hair stuck to his tongue as he snarled, “My truck better … Holy fucking Christ.” Junior glared through the windshield. “Where’s the fucking skull?”
He quickly zipped up his jeans and wrenched his buckle tight. “If it’s broke you’re dead.” He thrust his cowboy boot against my chest and shoved me against the pedals. “I’m getting real goddamn irritated here.” He punched the passenger door open and jumped out, “Bert! Where the fuck are you?”
I grabbed the driver’s door handle. The door sprang open and I slid out to the asphalt. I righted myself on my knees and gingerly felt around. No broken bones, just a lot of future bruises. I touched a raw spot above my eye and my finger came away covered in blood. Still, I could move without too much pain.
I grabbed my backpack and limped around the front of the truck. It didn’t seem too badly damaged, thanks to the steel bumper. The bull skull was gone, though. The truck faced roughly west, sitting sideways in the middle of Highway 200, maybe twenty yards south of Road DD. I heard Junior shout, “Goddamnit, Bert! The skull’s broke!”
I cautiously stuck my head around the right headlight and stared back up the highway. The hearse lay sideways, half submerged in the surging water, crumpled against the bridge. A cloud of steam or smoke enveloped most of the accident. I could see enough to notice that the back door hung limply on its hinges. The coffin was gone.
Straight up the highway was Junior. He swayed unsteadily up the yellow line, carrying the bull skull in his left hand. One of the horns was gone, broken off. Smoke rolled across the highway behind him.
For a moment, nothing moved but the smoke. Then all hell broke loose.
I heard car doors opening, slamming shut. Shocked, angry voices. Men with permanently sunburned faces in dark, Western-cut suits boiled out of their cars and pickups, stomping toward the intersection. Stocky women in dark blue and green dresses that hugged their ample hips and hung to midcalf followed their husbands out of the cars, some wearing the soggy remains of their potluck contributions.
The first Cadillac in the funeral procession, the one that had been following the hearse, sat quietly in the middle of the intersection. Finally, the driver’s door swung open and Slim Johnson, Earl’s younger brother, jumped out. A thin trickle of blood ran from his thinning hair down his white forehead, across the hat line, and continued down his red face. He looked naked without his John Deere hat.
“Sonofabitch!” he screamed, literally shaking with rage. His scarred, leathery hands clenched and unclenched into bony fists. It looked like Slim’s wife and the rest of Earl’s family were in the car. They didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to climb out. I wondered if Misty was in there. Many of the men from the funeral procession had reached the second car in line, but hung back, waiting to follow Slim’s lead.
It didn’t take long. Slim stalked forward, down the center of the highway, shaking a finger at Junior. “Sonofabitch!” he screamed again, apparently the only word he was capable of choking out. A vein throbbed alarmingly in his temple. He stomped down the highway in his ostrich skin boots, his finger vibrating spastically like a dousing rod that had just found the ocean. “Sonofabitch! You hear me, you little sonofabitch?”
Junior ignored Slim and tucked the bull skull under one arm. “Bert! Let’s go!”
In the weeds next to the hearse, Bert called out weakly, “Junior?”
Off to my right, across the muddy lake that Fat Ernst liked to call a parking lot, the screen door slammed shut. Fat Ernst and Heck workedtheir way down the steps and started across the acre of mud. At first glance, Fat Ernst looked like somebody had haphazardly shaved one of those bears that were trained to ride a unicycle around a circus ring. When he got closer, you could see this guy was maybe a little uglier than a shaved bear. He had named his restaurant to try and convince people that this big, waddling German had a sense of humor. But all it did was give everybody permission to call him “fat” to his face.
The smaller man was Heck. He sported a potbelly so perfectly defined it looked like he was trying to hide a bowling ball under his shirt as he hopped through the mud with his ambling gate. Heck, short for Hector, ran a bait shop up near the Split Rock reservoir. He never had a whole lot of business since not many people bothered fishing up there; carp were about the only fish that could live in the brackish water.
Bert called, “Hey, Junior? Junior?”
Meanwhile, Slim had caught up with Junior in the middle of the highway. “You listen to me when I’m talking to you, you little—” Slim started to yank Junior around, but Junior twisted out of the rancher’s grasp and shoved the bull skull into Slim’s chest.
“Fuck off!” Junior shouted up into Slim’s face. “Look what you fucking did to my truck!” Dark spittle flew out of Junior’s mouth and landed on Slim’s cheek. Slim did an admirable job of ignoring it, even as it slid down his cheek and collected at the corner of his lips.
Slim’s voice dropped dangerously low. “Now, now you listen to me—”
Junior jerked the skull up in a quick, savage motion, cracking the heavy bone into Slim’s chin. Slim’s head popped back as if he’d suddenly found something amazing in the clouds above him; then he took two stuttering steps sideways.
He turned, and I thought he was going to say something to the group of ranchers behind him, but he toppled face-first onto the hood of his Cadillac instead. He slid down and his chin bounced off the front bumper, snapping his teeth shut with a solid crack that made me wince. It knocked him straight out; his eyes rolled back and he dropped to the asphalt, landing on one knee and his left ear.