Dirtbags (22 page)

18

Bubba Greene spit something onto the floor, yelped a curse, then sent his fist through the trailer wall. Wood paneling and corrugated metal went every which way, and Bubba howled as it tore up his hand and forearm. This made a shit situation even worse.

Passion ran to his side. She spat a series of sweet-talking and stroked his good arm, tried to help him pull the other free from the trailer wall. However, it hung up on something and nothing was getting it loose. She turned to Sinnamon, who couldn’t be more bored.

“Are you just going to sit there?” Passion wailed. “Help me get Bubba’s arm out of the trailer wall.”

Sinnamon lighted a cigarette and fell back into the plush couch cushions. “Uh-uh,” she said. “That man knows better than to punch things when he gets angry. You’d think he learned when he hit his car windshield, or even when he put Roy Hendrix in the hospital with six broke teeth. No, he’s a grown man. He got his arm in that trailer wall, he can get his arm out.”

“Every minute he stays stuck in this here wall is another minute that bitch is out there stealing our money,” Passion said. To drive home the point, Bubba erupted in another fit of moaning and grunting and, despite common sense, set to jerking his arm from the metal. “Stop it, Bubba! You’re going to open up a vein or something, and we won’t be able to stop the bleeding!”

“Damn that bitch!” screamed Bubba. “I knew she’d be the death of me.”

“There, there,” said Passion. She turned to Sinnamon, still more interested in her cigarette. “Sinnamon, can you please help?”

“There ain’t a damn thing I can do,” Sinnamon said. “I don’t have a degree in getting men’s arms out of trailer walls, so I don’t think I’ll be a lick better at it than you will.”

“Go get Big Jack,” Passion said. “Tell him we need his help.”

“Tell that thick-necked Judas to stay out of my office,” Bubba said. “If he’d done his job, that red-headed bitch wouldn’t be here in the first place. You don't think I got enough problems, what with all the heat we already get? If somebody sees her in here? You go tell him if I see his face for the rest of the night, I’ll put a bullet in it.”

Passion set to petting Bubba’s head, stroking his hair saturated with Brylcreem. Her other hand ran along his back, but efforts to soothe and placate him were wayward at best. He writhed and wriggled, hoping to jimmy his arm from the wall.

“You stop that right now, Bubba Greene,” she said. “You know Big Jack ain’t got the heart to be cross with none of your girls. You can’t blame him.”

“I can very well blame him,” Bubba said. “And she ain’t one of my girls.”

“Not no more she ain’t,” Sinnamon said. She produced a sparkly cellphone from a sparkly purse and ran her impossibly long fingernails across the screen. “So she gots to go. If you don’t get her on up out of here, then I’m walking. You hear me, Bubba Greene? I ain’t got to put up with this shit.”

“You’re not helping,” Passion said. “Go get Big Jack.”

“Bubba said he’s going to shoot him in the face if he comes in here.”

“He’s not going to shoot him,” Passion said.

“I want to hear Bubba say it,” Sinnamon said.

“Tell Sinnamon you’re not going to shoot Big Jack if he comes in here,” Passion said.

“I ain’t saying no such thing,” howled Bubba. “You get my hand out of here and give me my gun, you hear me?”

“I ain’t getting him,” Sinnamon said, and she fell back into the couch again.

“Bubba, Big Jack will get you out of this wall,” Passion said softly. “Please tell Sinnamon you won’t shoot him if he comes in here.”

Bubba said nothing. Stared at the wall.

“Tell her,” she repeated.

“Tell him to bring me a bottle of corn,” Bubba grumbled. “And tell him to be quick about it.”

Sinnamon rolled her eyes and worked like the dickens to get out of the over-plushed sofa. Once up, she ran those razor nails through her weave and threw the locks over her shoulder. “Ain’t everything got to be a Hank Williams song with you peckerwoods,” she said and opened the door. Suddenly the office filled with the bump and grinding hip-hop music from out on the floor and, after she closed it behind her, muffled again.

Passion ran her hands across Bubba’s back and massaged his neck. Still, he wouldn’t quit squirming. Anger welled up in him something fierce. No matter what the girls said, he could not be soothed. Stealing was stealing, and that’s exactly what the bitch outside was doing. Nobody stole from Bubba Greene. He hadn’t needed to make an example of nobody for some time because, years ago, he’d made enough examples of enough people. Folks whispered about Bubba Greene and what he would do if you crossed him. Sometimes the stories were true, but often enough, they weren’t.

But some of them were.

Success had its pitfalls, and as Bubba Greene stood there with an arm stuck inside Club 809’s office wall, he wondered why things couldn’t always go his way. If he’d ever be able to stop teaching someone a lesson and could just, on some nights, have a quiet drink without having to get nasty. That’s what he believed Big Jack had been hired to tend to.

Again, the room flooded with shit music, and in walked Big Jack. His giant mouth opened wider than anyone thought possible, and his large, white eyes bugged against his black skin. Big Jack, the biggest black dude most folks in town knew, also had the most expressive face anyone had ever seen. Whether angry, happy, or sad, his features exaggerated themselves to the point of caricature. Even when his face was blank or lost in thought, folks fancied him a cartoon. Along with the expression of overstated surprise, he carried with him a half-full bottle of bourbon.

“What happened, boss?” Big Jack asked. Sinnamon entered the office behind him, still busily tapping at the screen of her smartphone with the two-inch fingernails. “They said your arm was stuck in the trailer wall.”

Bubba erupted into a fit of hysterics. He swung his fist as far as it could reach toward the giant black man. Big Jack evaded the blows, but Bubba came at him fiercer.

“You idiot,” Bubba barked. “Why did you let that bitch back in here? You know the rules.”

“But it was Miss Rhonda, boss,” Big Jack said. “I figured you wanted her back, the way you carried on about her after she left.”

“But ain't you heard the Sheriff's been sniffing around for her, asking questions?”

“I can't remember the last time you gave any never mind to nothing the Sheriff was doing, boss.”

Bubba wished he could shoot the big idiot, but instead snatched the bottle from him and fussed at the lid with his teeth. Unable to open it, he grunted and whinnied until Passion took it from him and unscrewed it herself. Again, he snatched the bottle with his free hand and took a couple swigs. He set down the bottle and wiped amber liquor from his chin.

“Now listen up,” he said, “we’re going to deal with her. I want you to bring her in here, you understand?”

Big Jack’s mouth formed a tiny “o,” almost disappearing into his massive cheeks. “In here, boss? With you stuck in the wall like that?”

“Dammit, you want to get shot, don’t you?” Bubba wiggled and tugged at his own arm, then yelped as it caught on something and tore his skin.

“The longer we fiddle around in here, the longer she has to take our money out there,” Sinnamon said. “This is getting ridiculous. Y’all all can play around in here. I’m going home. But not before I kick that bitch’s ass.”

She started for the door, but Bubba screamed at her to stay put. “I’ll be the one to deal with her. Do all of you understand?” They all nodded. “Now, let’s set about getting my arm out of this wall.”

Big Jack and Passion would both agree that none of the other dancers could affect Bubba Greene the way Rhonda did. She’d been one of the more popular dancers, which was one of the reasons Bubba went into hysterics when she quit. Those hysterics were nothing compared to the fit he threw now that she’d returned.

They sent Big Jack around to the outside of the trailer to see if he could make any progress. He brought a ball peen hammer, and the girls winced every time he slammed it against the siding, winced further as he bore through the holes he created. Bubba howled as Big Jack tinkered around in there from the outside, but whatever he did worked because, in no time, Bubba jerked his bloody hand free from the trailer wall and immediately charged for his desk. He rifled through his drawers.

“What are you doing?” Passion asked.

“I’m getting my gun,” Bubba said.

“Oh, now I’m really glad I stayed,” Sinnamon said.

Passion threw herself between Bubba and the desk. “Oh, no you don’t! You promised you wouldn’t shoot Big Jack. You don’t plan on breaking your promise, do you?”

“I have no intention of shooting Big Jack,” said Bubba. “I’m going to shoot that bitch. Get out of my way.”

Sinnamon clapped her hands and yelped. She stomped her heavy high heels on the trailer floor in double-step time. Passion didn’t move.

“You ain’t going to shoot nobody, you hear me?” She stared him straight in the eyes. Big Jack opened the door, washing out the room with some hair rock music, then muffling it again as he shut it. “Drink you some corn, and keep your head straight.”

“Big Jack, would you mind taking Passion outside and getting her out of my way?”

Big Jack stood at the center of the office, his arms poised to do something, anything, but yet did nothing.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, boss,” he said.

“Dammit, this is mutiny!” Bubba turned from the desk and stared at the hole. Outside, the tall pines stretched well out to the river and then some. If those pines could talk . . . well, if they could talk, he would have had them chopped down decades ago. He opened a closet door, found an old t-shirt, and wrapped his bloody arm in it.

The door flew open, and Destiny barged in and, with her, a loud poppy number that Bubba had wanted removed from the jukebox years ago. “You ain’t going to believe this,” Destiny said. Everyone looked at her until she felt compelled to continue. “Rhonda’s here.”

“No shit,” Sinnamon said. She pointed to the fist-sized hole in the wall.

“Then you really ain’t going to like this,” she said. She waited to confirm she had everyone’s attention, then said: “She done pulled Gil Shaw into the back room for a private dance.”

Before that moment, only Bubba’s first wife had ever seen his face turn that color red. Most folks reckon she currently resided out back underneath about three feet of rusty pine needles, loam, and Southern Virginia topsoil. Bubba slammed his hand against his desk, forgetting—though not for long— about his earlier injury. He pitched and howled and kicked the desk, sliding it across the floor and into the wall.

Sinnamon put down her phone. Big Jack’s eyebrows cleared his forehead. Passion cowered in the corner. If Bubba’s eyes could set fires, Destiny would be in ashes.

“Which room,” he growled. “The pink or the blue?”

***

Gil Shaw considered himself an unlucky man. He left his wife, and three months later, she hit five numbers on the statewide lottery. He paid off his truck, then totaled it. One day, he’d gone to the market for some groceries and held open the door for a lady who subsequently won the One Millionth Customer shopping spree. He’d never held open another door since. No, he figured his fate was to remain unlucky until he showed up at Club 809 on the night Rhonda Cantrell returned hell-bent and itching to get her former employer’s attention.

Gil thought Rhonda’s talents to be plenty, but one she certainly had down pat was knowing when a man had just gotten paid. Plenty often, she’d kept him at arm’s length, as did several of the other dancers. But payday would come and suddenly, in a flurry of coos and come-ons, she would be upon him, smothering him in a wave of lavender and cocoa butter. In no time, she would have him leading her to the back room for a private dance.

She was his favorite. The others were great, sure, but he had a thing for redheads. His mom had been a redhead, but he didn’t feel like unwrapping that box of issues just yet. Anyhow, watching Rhonda dance usually got his motor running, and if she’d suggested they jump in a pit of snakes, he would’ve happily done it. Thankfully she only suggested they go into the back of the 809 so she could dance on his crotch.

When she left the 809, he’d been crestfallen. At first, he’d refused to believe it and showed up every day, should she return. Several of the girls would “quit,” only to again darken those doublewide trailer doors within a couple days. But three months passed, and when Rhonda didn’t reappear, Gil grew depressed. He slunk around the 809 with a hangdog expression, slouching in the metal folding chair while watching the dancers and when a girl came around to collect money for the jukebox, he would request some of the saddest shit possible. Some of the girls begged Bubba Greene and Big Jack to have him tossed, but Bubba figured his money good as anybody’s so long as he had some.

So imagine his surprise that night after hearing a voice ask him to chum in money on the juke. “I already done paid the last three times you come around,” he said, not looking up. “You done tapped my well dry.”

“I’ll tap something dry, sugar,” came the answer, and he looked up to see Miss Rhonda standing over him, smiling like the cat done ate the canary. He stood and moved to hug her, but remembered the setting and the no-touch policy. She smiled and said, “Go on, honey. I don’t work here no more. There’s fewer rules these days. Want a private dance?”

Gil chewed the tip of his thumb. “If you don’t work here no more, Bubba ain’t going to like you none taking me to the back for a dance.”

“Bubba won’t mind,” she said. “Me and him have an arrangement.”

Gil needed no further encouragement. In a flash, he was up, bounding toward the back to what folks called the blue room, former stripper in tow, and they were inside and she pushed him to the sofa and straddled him and got right to grinding.

“Why did you take off when you did?” he asked. “I hear you got a job in town.”

“I took a job in a restaurant,” she answered. She fiddled with the buttons, began working them loose, one at a time. “I was the manager.”