Shame the Devil (25 page)

He woke in darkness. The clouds had cleared, revealing a ceiling of bright stars and a bright half-moon in the black sky.
The air was cool but not bitter. It would be another mild winter night. He’d sleep right out here on the dock; it would be
nice.

Walters reached into the cooler for a beer and lit a cigarette. It was too late to think about cooking supper. Walters decided
he would just drink.

He drank another beer, and then he was out of beer and got up from his chair. The dock seemed to move beneath his feet. He
peed off the side of the dock and tottered up to his pickup, parked beside the trailer. He grabbed a six-pack from the bed
and a fresh pack of smokes off the dash of his truck, and his sleeping bag from the back of the cab. He stumbled and fell
to one knee on the way back down to the dock. He gathered the things he had dropped and squinted, looking toward the water.
The dock was clearly defined in the moonlight. Soon he was on the dock and back in his chair.

He cracked a beer and lit a cigarette. Looking out across the water he thought of his wife and son, and he began to cry. He
wiped tears off his cheeks and beer from his chin. The tobacco burned down to his fingers, and he flipped the butt into the
creek. He sat in the stillness of the night, listening to the quiet run of water beneath the dock and around its pilings.
He killed his beer and decided to call it a night.

Walters spread his sleeping bag between his chair, his cooler, and his fishing rods and the edge of the dock. He was too drunk
to move everything back now. He would be all right.

He removed his Orioles cap, set it on the dock, got into the bag, and zipped it to his neck. He lay on his back, folded his
arms across his chest, and looked at the stars, the last wisps of clouds, the moon. His eyes grew heavy and he fell to sleep.

He dreamed that he was falling.

He opened his eyes, and he was falling. The black water rushed up to meet him.

The cold water shocked him. He was numb at once, and his head went under as he tried to free his arms from the bag. He freed
one arm and kicked furiously at the bag. Now his head was out of the water, and he used his free hand to try and unzip the
bag, but his hand was like a club. He kicked at the bag, moving himself away from the dock. The bag and his clothes were heavy
and he was going down again and he kicked.

“Aaaah!” yelled Walters. “God!”

He kicked, and the bag was down around his waist. He went under and came up and kicked and now his legs were free. But his
legs were moving very slowly. His clothing weighed him down, and he couldn’t seem to move his legs. He treaded water and almost
at once he was tired. He saw that he was far from the dock and the pilings around it. His arms ached. He tried to float, but
his clothing and boots dragged him down. He let himself drop beneath the water so that he could rest. He fought and broke
the surface of the water with a gasp. He could no longer feel his feet. His arms barely moved. He looked at the shoreline
and knew he could not make it to the dock.

Daddy!

Walters turned his head. He was near the sunken rowboat. He could see the tip of the bow.

He used his shoulders and will to cut the water and move toward the boat. He went under and came up. He choked in air and
moved toward the boat again. He shut his eyes against the water that was rising and then he closed his mouth and he was down.

He felt something solid and grabbed it. He pulled himself to the solid thing and hugged it.

I have reached the boat,
thought Walters.
I’ll float myself up now and I’ll be at the boat and above the water and I’ll hold onto the bow while I get my breath
.

He tried to push away from the boat, but he was held fast. His down vest or his shirt,
something
was snagged on the boat. He panicked and writhed violently, watching the bubbles from a cough of exhale explode around him.
Something slid across his neck, and he shook his head in panic and was bitten in the face.

In his panic, he let out the rest of his breath.

He had no air in his lungs. He was dizzy and his chest burned and he could no longer move his arms or legs.

In the gray water he saw shapes. The silhouettes of a woman and a little boy dog-paddling toward him.

I love you, Vance. I was always proud of you, son
.

Bernie Walters relaxed. He opened his mouth and breathed. The creek flowed into his open mouth and flooded his lungs.

It didn’t hurt. It was peaceful. His chest didn’t burn and he was no longer cold or anything else.

The darkness came like a kiss.

FRANK FARROW LIT
a Kool. He leaned forward, dropping the match into a kidney-shaped ashtray set on a cable-spool table in front of the living-room
couch.

Roman Otis stood in front of a rectangular mirror, running a little gel through his long hair, softly singing the Isleys’
“For the Love of You.” He couldn’t quite hit the highs like brother Ronald, but he had it in spirit. That was one nice love
song there, too.

Otis smiled, admiring his gold tooth. He patted his hair, turning his head so the gel caught the light. You had to be careful
not to put too much of that gel in your hair. He’d seen some brothers in the old days overdose it, goin’ for that Rick James
look, came out lookin’ like glue and shit.

“Hey, Frank,” said Otis. “You just dye your hair again, man?”

“Some stuff I picked up at the drugstore down in Edwardtown,” said Farrow.

“Finally got that shoe polish out, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Otis pursed his lips. “Looks good, too.”

Farrow glanced at Gus Lavonicus, sitting at an old desk, trying to write a letter to his wife. He had the push end of a pen
in his mouth, and his lips were moving as he struggled to compose the words. His legs were spread wide, as he couldn’t hope
to fit them under the desk, and he was fanning them back and forth. When you got right down to it, thought Farrow, the guy
was nothing more than a giant child. Farrow should not have agreed to let Otis bring him along. But he’d never say no to Roman
— the two of them went that deep.

“How’s that letter to my sister comin’, Gus?” said Otis.

“I’m trying to find the right words.”

“Tell her she’s prettier than a flower,” said Otis, “some shit like that.”

Farrow sipped red wine. He dragged on his Kool. “That what you’d tell her, Roman?”

“If that was my woman? I’d just go ahead and tell her that I planned to split that thing like an ax to an oak.”

“You always did know the right thing to say to women,” said Farrow.

“Goddamn right I did.”

“I can’t say that to Cissy,” said Lavonicus in his monotone.

“No,” said Otis. “I don’t recommend that you do.”

Booker Kendricks, Otis’s third cousin, came from the kitchen with two bottles of beer in his hand. He was a small, spidery
man with rheumy eyes and rotten teeth, a multiple sex offender with violent attachments who’d finally gone down on a sodomy
rape beef. Even Otis knew that his cousin belonged in prison for life. But the system had coughed Booker Kendricks back out
onto the street.

“Here you go, Roman,” said Kendricks, putting a bottle in front of Otis. He snapped his fingers. “Aw, shit, did I forget you,
Gus?”

“I don’t drink beer anyway,” said Lavonicus. “Yeah, you must be in training for that athletic comeback you’re gonna make someday.”

Lavonicus watched Kendricks as he turned on the living room’s television set. Despite the fact that Kendricks was a relative
by marriage, Lavonicus didn’t care to spend much time around him. Sometimes he got the feeling that Kendricks was putting
him on. He didn’t like that.

“Here we go,” said Kendricks, sitting in an overstuffed armchair. “Got the Bulls and the Knicks.”

Otis had a seat on the couch next to Farrow. “You all right, man?”

“Itching to do something,” said Farrow. “That’s all.”

Kendricks watched Larry Johnson sink a jumper, then wink at the bench as he jogged down the court. “Look at L. J., man. The
man thinks he’s
all
that.”

“Johnson can play,” said Lavonicus, who had turned the chair away from the desk to watch the screen.

“Johnson can pa-lay,” said Kendricks, mimicking Lavonicus, then slapping his own knee in laughter. “Aw, shit, Gus. Say, man,
tell me what it was like in that post-ABA career you had. Weren’t you on the squad of one of those teams that used to play
against the Harlem Globetrotters?”

“The New York Nationals,” said Lavonicus softly. “I only did that one season.” They’d thrown him off the team after he coldcocked
one of the Globetrotters who had called him a name.The fans had laughed like crazy; they thought the knockout punch had been
in the script.

“Yeah, I remember the green uniforms y’all had. How’d it feel to be ridiculed, having balls passed between your legs, gettin’
the pill bounced off your head and shit, night after night?”

Lavonicus felt his ears grow hot. He imagined they were red now, the way they got when he let guys like Kendricks get to him
like this.

“It was a job,” said Lavonicus, and he turned his chair back to the desk.

Farrow stabbed out his cigarette.

Otis leaned back on the couch, closed his eyes, and picked up the Isleys’ tune where he had left it in his head. He imagined
that he was back in California. Frank had called him, and he’d come, but he didn’t much care for the East Coast. His work,
it demanded that he move around. Sometimes it seemed like one big circle. Do a job, grab some money, spend the money, do a
job… try to stay ahead of the law. Well, what else was he gonna do? He knew the way it would end, too, but it didn’t do much
good to think on it. This was the life he had made for himself. He had accepted that a long time ago.

“Look at Rodman,” said Kendricks, pointing at the screen. “That is one genuine nigger right there.”

They had all stopped listening to Kendricks. Farrow picked up his beer and went to the front window of the house. He looked
out into the absolute darkness.

They were in a small brick rambler in the woods of southern Maryland. Off 301 somewhere and down a couple of two-lane black-tops,
near a place called Nanjemoy, that’s all Farrow knew. They’d stayed here before the May’s job, but Booker Kendricks had been
in Lorton then, and they’d been alone. This Kendricks could really get on his nerves. But Kendricks would be all right if
anything went down. Farrow knew his history, and his type.

Farrow imagined they could do a job in D.C., and finish their business, in the space of a week or so. Then they could all
get on their way.

Headlights appeared down the long dirt road that cut through the woods to the house. As they approached, Farrow could see
that these were the lights of a late-model car.

“Here he comes,” said Farrow.

Kendricks pulled a Rossi .22 from underneath the chair. He locked back the trigger without moving his eyes from the screen.

The headlights were killed out in the yard, and then there were footsteps and a knock on the door. Farrow looked through the
peephole and unfastened the dead bolt. He pulled the door open and stepped back.

“T. W.,” said Farrow.

“Frank,” said Thomas Wilson, stepping inside. “Long time.”

YOU REMEMBER ROMAN
,” said Frank Farrow.

“How’s it goin’, man?” said Thomas Wilson, nodding at Otis.

He saw that Otis was still dressing sharp. Still doin’ that Nick Ashford thing with his hair, too.

“I’m makin’ it,” said Otis, smiling amiably, reaching over and shaking Wilson’s hand.

Wilson did not let the handshake linger. You could mistake Otis’s easy manner for weakness. He had seen a couple of men make
that mistake up in Lewisburg. Roman Otis wasn’t nothin’ much more than Frank Farrow with a smile.

“Say hello to Gus Lavonicus,” said Farrow.

“Gus,” said Wilson. He saw an ugly white giant sitting at what looked like a child’s desk. The giant waved awkwardly and turned
his attention back to the sheet of paper before him.

“And this here’s Booker Kendricks,” said Farrow.

Wilson looked at the skinny, greasy-lookin’ hustler with the yellow eyes, slouched in the chair. A pistol hung limply in his
clawlike hand. Kendricks did not acknowledge Wilson. Wilson felt it was just as well.

“Beer?” said Farrow.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Get T. W. a beer, Booker,” said Otis.

“Damn, can’t y’all see I’m watchin’ this shit?” said Kendricks. “Starks is getting ready to light it up, too!”

“Get it,” said Farrow.

Kendricks went to the kitchen as Wilson took a seat on the couch next to Otis. Farrow stayed on his feet. He leaned forward
and rustled his pack of Kools in Wilson’s face.

“Cigarette?” said Farrow.

“Nah,” said Wilson. “Thanks.”

“This used to be your brand in the joint, I remember right.”

“I gave them up a long time ago.”

Charles convinced me to throw them away for good
.

Kendricks returned, placed an open bottle of beer on the cable-spool table in front of Wilson. Kendricks went back to the
oversize chair and had a seat.

Wilson sipped his beer, fumbled it as he placed it back on the table.

“You seem a little uptight,” said Farrow, catching Otis’s eye.

“I’m tired is all it is,” said Wilson. “Took me over an hour to get down here from D.C.”

Farrow slowly paced the room. “How is it up in town? Any heat that you can make out?”

“None.”

“Good. Me and Roman were thinking you could set us up again with some kind of thing. Something cleaner than the last time.
Less risk.”

“I’m working on it. Been out in the bars at night, listenin’ to people talk. Trying to find out where the after-hours action
is these days. I’m thinkin’ a bag rip-off, or a high-stakes game. Somethin’ y’all could take off quiet.”

“I like the way you’re thinking.”

“Get you in and out of town real quick.”