Give Us a Kiss: A Novel (19 page)

Panda didn’t say a thing, not until he whacked me
with that blackthorn cane. He caught me flush across the shoulders.

“Not my baby,” he said. “No, no—uh-uh.”

He whacked me again.

“You measly bookworm pansy—you let them kill my boy?”

The expression on his face was way out there, out there where I’d never seen him before.

“Why”—whack—“not”—whack—“you? Why not you, not Smoke? Uh-uh. Nooo.
You!
”

I moved away, crossed the floor like a worm. The pain from the cane stunned my shoulders; my arms wouldn’t move right for a li’l bit.

“I’ll do what’s called for!” I shouted. I was still bawling. “I know what’s called for. I loved him, too, you know.”

“That don’t even matter!”

The ladies had stalled in their shrieking, mesmerized by my grandfather whacking the shit out of me. They had their arms flung all about each other, tears running from eyelash to chin point. Their cheeks trembled.

Panda put that cane to use for walking and left the room. I knew where he was headed. I heard the door squeak open, the one to the gun closet under the stairs. The ancient armaments would be coming out.

The ladies helped me to my feet, and we did a pitiful group hug. It felt like a hindrance, this sympathy and empathy. My course had been charted.

I broke the circle.

“Get the load to where it’s safe,” I said.

Big Annie looked at me and shook her head.

“Man, I can’t
even
worry about
that.
”

“You have to.” I grabbed her by the shoulder. “You have to, Big Annie—I’m fixin’ to need a lawyer by breakfast.”

“I, oh.”

She put her hands to her head.

“Macedonia,” Niagra said. “Big Annie?
Big Annie?
Reba and Sonny and them, from when you lived on Blue Goose Commune? They could help. We could run this over to Macedonia—tonight.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I could,” Niagra said. Her beauty always did a number on me. I’d miss her. “Doyle’s goin’ to need the money.”

I heard Panda in the hallway, there, working levers, spinning cylinders, rattling boxes of bullets.

Niagra ran her fingertips over my dog-clawed face.

“I love you, Doyle. I ain’t talkin’ kid stuff, neither.”

“You’re my dream,” I said.

“And you’ll have it,” she said. “It’s just, that, you know, it ain’t right what those Dollys did, but they sure did do it.”

“Use this one!” Panda shouted. “Or I will!”

“Doyle, honey—you don’t have to do what that old man’s puttin’ you up to. You don’t have to—you can just step outside of it, let the law handle it.”

She didn’t hear it—how could she? There’s a kind of devil’s music behind it all, the Redmond world, that you can really learn to dance to once you hear it played loud.

I backed away from the girl, the girl I think I loved.

“No,” I said. “Who I am, see, won’t be that way.”

There wasn’t much more to say. Panda stood in the doorway, and I knew what he’d be holding. Niagra kissed me.

“We’re goin’,” she said. “I’ll call from Macedonia.”

She led Big Annie out the back way, by the hand, and Big Annie forgot to say good-bye. Her feet shuffled like a zombie.

“Smoke,” is all she said.

I didn’t look at Panda straightaway. I massaged my shoulders, then tipped loose a Lucky and lit up.

“You ain’t hittin’ me again,” I said. “That shit’s done.”

His cane and his feet made a kind of music as he came at me across the room; thump, shh, thump, shh.

“Use this,” he said. “It’ll work.”

There it was, the Smith and Wesson thirty-eight he’d killed Logan Dolly with. He’d shown his feelings over that shooting by gouging a notch into the handle, the gouge big and prominent.

Such were his sentiments.

I took the pistol, hefted it, checked the cylinder.

He’d loaded it for me.

“More trouble,” he said. “That fuckin’ sheriff is out front, right now, studying your car mighty close.”

I tucked the pistol inside my belt, pulled my shirt over it.

I looked into Panda’s blue eyes and saw a mess of stuff in there, stuff that’d be hard to shove back under the lid.

“I’ll do what’s called for.”

28

CLOSING TIME

SHERIFF LILLEY BARKED out several harsh comments about me, me and Tararum, delivering these scolds in a hot tone of voice as I crossed the yard, then I put the pistol at his head. I pulled the hammer back to show my level of commitment, and the metallic clicking prompted him to adjust his tone.

“Now, there’s nothin’ here this serious, Doyle.”

“Say you.”

“You’re makin’ this into serious trouble.”

I pulled his cuffs from the rear of his belt.

“Assume the position,” I said. “I’d rather not hurt butthole kin, not if I can help it.”

I had some difficulty with the cuffs, dexterity problems, and I had to shove the gun barrel against the sheriff’s head somewhat harder than I wanted to.

“Sorry,” I said. “Get your hands back here.” He didn’t follow orders. His mustache whiffled as he breathed deeply: the idea of fighting me was gaining support in his mind. “Just give me your wrists, Terence, and nothin’ tragic has to happen. Not to you, anyhow.”

His hands came back slowly, he was a reluctant captive. I slapped the cuffs on, squeezed them shut.

He said, “You started off just guilty of bein’ dumb, Doyle, but I can see you won’t rest ’til you’ve took your basic dumb and built it into
dumbest.
”

“Whatever.”

I led the sheriff by the cuffs, pulled him around to the passenger side of the Volvo. I held the door open for him.

“Get on in—watch your head.”

I slammed him in, then went over to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. The car sounded like a garbage disposal when I turned the engine over. The one headlight shined toward the curb.

“Where’re you takin’ me?”

“Along for the ride, is all.”

“No shit? To where?”

“To get even.” I looked at the sheriff there, in the darkness of the car, and he looked back steady. He saw the sincerity in my face. “Smoke got murdered.”

He didn’t say anything. I thought he might call me a liar, or give a speech about civics, the chain of command, that sort of perfunctory attempt to sway me. But no.

I drove on down Grace Avenue, wrestling the steering wheel as the car was crippled severely, the alignment gone. The headlight illuminated the sidewalks and lawns, but not the road ahead of me.

“That makes me the last,” the sheriff said.

I glanced at him and got shocked—he was choking back some surge of emotion. His cheeks puffed and his lips clinched.

“Huh?”

“Don’t you know Smoke’n me schooled together? Shit, son, we both played both ways on the line for the West Table Wuzzahs, lost the district title by a fuckin’ field goal. Now, with your brother gone, see, that means I’m the very last man alive from the whole goddamn line.” He kicked at the floorboards, tilted his head back in sorrow. “Number seventy-four, he touched a power line. Seventy-eight didn’t come back from ’Nam. Sixty-one, shitfire, the doctor said he died of ‘acute alcoholism’ and he wasn’t but thirty-three, thirty-four years old. You wouldn’t think you could swallow enough that fast, but he did. One of the backups, Christ, I forgot his number—can you believe that?—he had a bush hog flip on him. Now ol’ Smoke, number ninety-one, is out of the lineup, too. That only leaves
me
.”

“I’d forgot that was you,” I said.

“I haven’t,” he said. “Seventy-nine for forever.”

“You all had a good team.”

“Lost by a chickenshit kick—kickin’ ain’t even football, not really.”

I shouldn’t have started driving. I didn’t know where I was driving to. The car, I think, was close to balking.

“Who killed him?”

“Roy Don Springer.”

“And, let me hear you say it—you reckon you’re man enough to take
Roy Don Springer?
”

“I’ve already whipped him once.”

“That was you that broke his nose? Good for you, sonny. But killin’ is another deal—and that man is up to it. He’s a flat-out bad man—raped Shareena a couple years back, only
not with his dick. Used a fireplace poker, ripped her up pitiful. Only instead of pressin’ charges, three months later she married him.”

“Maybe she’ll marry better next time,” I said. “She’s going to get another chance to, anyhow.”

Slager’s Liquor Store was shut down for business, but I pulled into the parking lot to think. I really didn’t know where to go. Ol’ number seventy-nine stared at me and stared at me.

“I don’t believe you can take Springer, Doyle,” he said after a bit. “So, I’d strongly
advise
you not to go over to The Inca Club, where he most always is this time of night.”

White dust from the parking lot swirled in the air. Departing vehicles kicked up billows and plumes of dust, imparting a kind of cloudy look to The Inca Club area. It was near closing time, and only a few pickup trucks and a couple of cars were in the lot.

“I hate to be this way,” I said, “but I’m goin’ to have to stow you in the trunk.”

“The trunk? That’s too goddamn much, Doyle.”

“That way you couldn’t be expected to stop me.”

“I ain’t gettin in the trunk, son, no—”

I smacked Sheriff Lilley across the knee with the Smith and Wesson. I know that sort of thing hurts.

“This ain’t play,” I said. “You’re gettin’ in the trunk.”

He fit well enough, even with the spare tire. His expression was pretty sullen as I slapped the lid on him.

I stood outside The Inca Club, thinking about Smoke, dead in the woods, letting all the voices give pep talks in my head. They told me what was called for.

Forget the modern world, forget what century this is—some stuff runs deeper than that.

I walked toward the door, pistol at my side. I was drawing on a thousand movie scenes, and folktales, Redmond legends, words from mother.
You don’t do this to us,
went the refrain in my senses, though, actually, it’s been happening to us for fifty or sixty generations, near as I can tell. But the need to say and believe that
you don’t do this to us
was chanted in my brain so powerfully that it got my body moving like I knew it to be a bedrock fact.

Shareena showed herself first. She was sitting on the hood of that ’57 Chevy shell, holding a bottle of lite beer. I had the pistol in hand. She saw me coming. It seems a few other patrons did as well, since there was sudden movement toward the exit.

“I thought you might be dead,” she said.

“Not hardly.”

“The night ain’t over.”

I suppose it
is
a tragedy sometimes, this requirement of being who you are. Who you really are. It was sort of undramatic, though, at least this segment was. Springer came up out of the Chevy shell, his hand inside his trousers, like his pistol had slipped down to his jockey shorts, maybe. That metal thing over his nose, and his blackened eyes, gave him the appearance of a tough-luck sprite, or maybe a gargoyle. He wore khaki pants, and his hand had the fly section really rumpling, like a weasel scurried in there. He had a plaid shirt on, but unbuttoned all the way, and his chest hair seemed luxuriant, salt and pepper in hue, thicker than mine by far. He gave no indication of surprise or remorse at seeing me, and didn’t seem to fear the pistol I carried.

The jukebox jumped to life, and one of those songs, country songs, where the singer claims whisky has let him down, started to play.

He had it out then. A revolver, snub-nosed.

Shareena laid herself to the floor.

Someone was yelling. Tables and chairs started scooting.

I believe he shot twice, to no effect.

The one round I let off caught him, I thought, high on the chest. He went down, loose as a rug.

I stepped toward him.

“Crawl, you fuckin’ worm!” I shouted.

The jukebox plug was jerked. Mr. Wofford stood over there by the wall socket, his hands raised.

“He’s past worm-crawlin’, Redmond, you doofus. You done snuffed him flat.”

I looked closer at the body. The wound seemed to be too centered to kill.

The heart, I guess, isn’t exactly where you think it is.

On the way out I snatched a beer off the bar.

I drank it before opening the trunk, I remember that.

Anyhow, I released Sheriff Lilley, apparently, then removed his cuffs. I dropped the pistol.

“I feared for my life,” I said. “Take me in.”

He busted me in the mouth, cost me a tooth.

“That’s for the trunk,” he said.

I took the punch okay.

“You kidnap a lawman, Doyle, you’ve got to expect him to get a li’l red-assed.”

29

THE NODS

ELROD CHUCK, THE hottest crime writer in America, who’d never seen fit to blurb any of my novels, came down to Howl County to do a “think piece” on me for
Esquire
magazine. Nickolai Noonan scribbled out a feature for
Vanity Fair,
with excellent photographs. Newspapers and checkout counter tabloids did me proud.

When Smoke visits, we can’t keep from marveling at all the attention. The headlines tend to accentuate the hillbilly aspect, HILLBILLY NOVELIST IN HILLBILLY FEUD, that sort of thing. Nickolai Noonan titled his piece “The Pulp He Wrote He Lived,” which is kind of windy, I guess, but he’s an elegant sentence man. Elrod Chuck stuck with the laconic: “Bloodlines.”

Smoke says, “You fuckin’
hothead
. You’re famous.”

It was, I know now, a sort of murder of errors. Smoke had been carried to the hospital by a lady farmer, one of the Wolfe gals, and was receiving medical attention by the time I threw down on Springer at The Inca Club. He’d been right about that Kansas warrant, too, and used his share from the money garden to iron out the legal wrinkles in his life.

I think I laughed, at least the first time he explained things to me.

Sheriff Lilley treats me like a pal, almost. My agent calls pretty regular, with offers for my next novel or version of the events that led to The Inca Club, et cetera. The sheriff lets me take all of the calls.