The Killing King of Gratis (2 page)

In Gratis he learned how to do a little of everything and looked after his clients better than he looked after himself. If someone died he went to the funeral one day and the courthouse the next. When children got arrested their parents called him. If he could he would go help bail them out. If he couldn’t, or was too deep in the bottle to go out just then, he never failed to come down the next morning. He spent many mornings describing the consequences of a child’s actions to one parent while being fed breakfast by the other.

He didn’t know what it was about a crisis that made people so ready to cook, but being a bachelor he was glad of it. Sometimes, with the poorer clients, he lowered the fee without mention if they fed him. Often, even if they didn’t, he still lowered his fee if the client was having a hard time paying. In the parlance of his profession he was a sucker. He wore that designation with pride.

After hanging up on Jack he started with his morning ritual of reading the local paper, ‘The Gratis Proclaimer,’ which trumpeted that “What happens in Gratis is YOUR business.” Usually that business consisted of property tax proposals or high school football. One could always count on lifestyle updates and being current on garden club elections or Kiwanis meetings. Like everyone else who plopped down their 50 cents, Delroy ignored these items and went straight to Johnnie Lee’s column.

Johnnie made a career of knowing what her neighbors, and everyone else in town, were doing. She knew if they had a good day. She also knew how deep they buried their trash and exactly where to start digging to find it. She was reviled and a socially prominent woman. Good gossip opened doors.

Johnnie, ambitious as she was, needed more than a platform of telephone calls, teas, and dinner parties. She bartered with the married publisher of the Proclaimer for a biweekly column called Lee’s Little Secrets. In exchange she kept quiet about his affair with the sports editor. A friend in Savannah saw the two getting intimate in a Jones Street parking lot behind her flower shop. The sports editor was also married and thereafter mowed her lawn during the summer. “He’s just a dear neighbor,” Johnnie told anyone who asked.

She never had to mention names in her column. Her combination of what so and so did, how many children they had, or what street they lived on was enough. Every column ended with, “well, I have to go now. The phone is ringing, and I’ve been expecting a call.” Her readers hoped they weren’t mentioned in that call, and checked twice a week to make sure of it. Delroy was the subject of one of those calls. Just three weeks after coming back home Johnnie gave him a very public welcome.

“The town’s newest esquire, fresh from the big city, comes to us with a heavy heart in need of mending. Seems he caught his new bride with his new boss. She stood by her man by lying down. Be gentle, Gratisians, even lawyers deserve some mercy.” After the initial shock, Delroy was glad that Johnnie outed him. His heartbreak brought him everyman status, not a bad thing for a lawyer. It also eased the burden of explaining why he came back and why he wasn’t married anymore. There was no use in getting angry at Johnnie. One could only hope not to get caught again.

On this morning Lee’s Little Secrets had one item of particular interest to Delroy. “A new attorney is coming to town. Seems she does a little of everything. I’ll let y’all know if she’s a jack of all trades or a master of none.”

There was plenty of business to go around in Gratis. That didn’t concern Delroy. He was concerned whether this new attorney knew his ex-wife and ex-boss. Against all reason his mind put together a scenario where she knew them both and somehow set up their tryst. After three years the memory was so fresh it startled him. His mind ran like a stock ticker, clacking with scenarios of how this unknown attorney and her adulterous cohorts laughed at him. Surely she was moving here, these sneaky thoughts told him, to make sure he never forgot.

With some effort he silenced this delusion, angry he let it creep into his mind.
If folks knew I gave these thoughts any time, I’d go broke.

With this unsettling suspicion, brought on by three sentences in the Proclaimer, Delroy planned his day. He needed to visit a client at the county jail and then coach Peck’s little league team. Anna asked him to coach knowing it was the only way Peck would play. Delroy knew very little about baseball but agreed to coach. He pretty much did as Anna asked when it came to the children. Usually all she wanted was for him to love them. He did that anyway.

His head throbbed at the thought of standing with a coach’s whistle around his neck in the new summer sun. He contemplated whether anyone would care if he put vodka in his Gatorade. A little hair of the dog seemed a fair exchange for giving up a Saturday afternoon.

Well, I guess if they do they could fire me
, he thought, closing his eyes to take a short nap. He wondered whether there was some Stoli in the office, and whether he could show Peck how to hit a fastball.
Hell, I can’t even hit one myself.
He laughed at the thought, despite his aching head, and hoped he wouldn’t dream of new lawyers and old wives.

“
A
lright, Newt, let’s count those cases and bottles and see where we stand from last night.”

Kero Peters shouted at Newt MacElroy down the stairs where he was dozing on the back porch, catching the breeze coming off the river. They were at Daddy Jack’s, Kero’s juke joint in Gratis that hung over the Bird like a gnarled tree. It was the first Saturday morning after the last day of school.

Kero’s dad owned a block of buildings in Gratis and after his death the block was divided among his children. Kero’s share was an old four story brick building nestled by the downtown in front and the river in back. Over the years the building served as a hotel, a tavern, and a boarding house for Christian women.

Kero loved the immensity of the building and knew when he inherited it what the main floor would be. After working on it for a year he opened Daddy Jack’s, a juke joint “with class,” as Kero would point out.

Customers had to go down a side alley to enter. Kero turned it into a dark path with faint gas lights leading to the door. Even at the height of day this passage, with the building overhangs and dense plants on both sides, was dark and cool. It led to the entrance, a huge wooden door with a sign hanging over it that read “Where Angels Fear to Tread.” Kero thought it was hilarious.

The first thing one saw upon entering was a long wooden bar in the back.

It was decorated with innumerable stickers, road signs, license plates, tacked up dollar bills, and other totems Kero picked up along the way. Dominating it was a large mural of James Brown in concert directly behind the taps. The whole thing said “sit and have a drink or two.” In the back corner was an ancient jukebox that Kero babied and stocked to suit him. Being the owner had its benefits.

On the main floor were tables where patrons dined from a menu of ribs, chopped pork and a few sides. Kero usually had some fresh shrimp available, too. He believed in sticking to a few things and doing them well.

Off the main room was a steep flight of steps leading down to Daddy Jack’s “Rendezvous.” It was a large open room with another bar and a porch dangling over the river. There was no eating down there unless you counted the free self-serve popcorn, just tables for drinking and watching the Bird float by. On the weekend there was always a blues or shag band, and then the Rendezvous filled up. All types would come, young and old, drinking and dancing and carrying on.

As a child, Kero spent most weekends with his father going on his rent collection rounds. At the end of each day they went to Junior’s on the outskirts of town. It was a hot joint with pealing linoleum, grease in the air, and red vinyl covering the booths. The owner, Junior, usually sat with his father and they would laugh, drink, and have a high time. In the red vinyl booth his father looked like a king. When they tore Junior’s down after his death, Kero bought every one of those booths. They were the first thing he put in Daddy Jack’s. Some nights he thought that, for a little while, he made everyone look like a king.

Newt worked the night before as he usually did. It started out well. He tended bar and made sure everyone was taken care of. Toward the end of the evening, though, he got sloppy and gave away free drinks. Doing shots with the customers had that effect.

Kero shouted again, “Newt, get off your ass and see how much of my money you gave away last night!”

Kero knew that Newt had a habit of giving away free drinks on some nights. He also knew that a lot of folks came because they were hoping for those drinks. They drank and paid quite a bit while waiting for the free ones. Newt’s generosity was a drink special Kero didn’t have to guarantee.

Like Kero, Newt grew up in Gratis. He played linebacker at Gratis High School, home of the “Purple Hurricanes,” and stayed there after graduation. He tried junior college for a couple of semesters, but Newt was never made for going to class.

The truth was that Newt wasn’t made for much of anything. He could joke around with anyone and had the luck of being very good looking. Basically, those were his only two life skills. Even so, most of the men in town, including his friends, envied him for his ease with everyone, especially women. He appreciated women, and was quick to show that appreciation, whether they had boyfriends, fiancées, or even husbands. His appreciation didn’t stop at a woman’s looks, either. When those he spent time with were generous, Newt was more attuned to their inner beauty.

Generous women, however, weren’t enough to pay all the bills. Newt was a regular customer at Daddy Jack’s and finally convinced Kero to give him a job. He was as sorry as a person could be, but being upright wasn’t a prerequisite in the juke joint business. Kero grew to trust him, if just barely, and Newt was discrete when taking extras. He limited himself to giving out free drinks and taking a few dollars out of the till on special occasions. Newt was fun to have about and just seemed to fit. He was the old dog on Kero’s porch.

On this Saturday morning, Newt was an extremely hung over old dog. “I’m working on the numbers,” he yelled up to Kero, “but it’s gonna be later.” With Newt, everything in life was going to be later.

Kero yelled back down the steps.

“As long as later is in the next fifteen minutes, that’s fine. I’m counting and you got about fourteen left.” Kero chuckled after saying this. They had a give and take consisting of Kero giving shit and Newt taking it.

Newt was having a hard time focusing. He looked at every receipt four or five times, never registering a single figure. Knowing he wouldn’t be worth anything until he got more sleep, he stumbled to his hiding place for a nap. He went into the downstairs beer cooler, moved a creaking board behind the cases of Pabst, and crawled into the tunnel under Daddy Jack’s.

Gratis was underscored by a vein of limestone sitting a few feet higher than the soft sedimentary stone surrounding it. Ages ago the Bird flowed into the depression between the stones and Gratis was eventually founded on the high side. This same vein of limestone rose up, slightly, down river and caused the blockage where water backed up to form the Neck.

Over the years locals carved small tunnels into this soft stone for various reasons, but most were dug in the 1920s. Gratis was dry in those days, but those who wanted to drink never had a problem until federal agents showed up to enforce prohibition. The townsfolk responded by sneaking liquor in by way of the Bird, getting it into town through tunnels coming from the river’s bank. After Prohibition was repealed some of the tunnels caved in from neglect (these were locally known as “drinkholes”) and some were purposely filled in, but many remained.

Newt found the tunnel under Daddy Jack’s one day while moving a balky freezer. He dug out the parts filled with dirt and braced the shakier ones. Not far from the back of Daddy Jack’s beer cooler he found a section just big enough to keep a cot and the occasional companion.

There he hid from Kero that morning, taking a nap before looking at another number.
Kero will have to wait on those numbers, and can yell all he wants to.
Closing his eyes, he was soon chasing women in his dreams. He didn’t wake up until he caught one.

B
efore Delroy left for the jail that morning he got a call from Anna. She was hysterical and he had a hard time making out a word she said. He heard the words “Peck” and “Meg” and “damn swamp” through her crying.

Anna wasn’t one to get upset and it unnerved Delroy as he jumped into his old, pre-soccer mom, Suburban to go to her house. He had no idea whether the children had gotten into more trouble or had gotten hurt going off in that boat. Either way he knew he was in the middle of
it
.
It
, whatever it was, sounded worse than usual.

When he pulled into the drive, Anna was outside with Meg beside her. They were crying and calling for Peck.

“Anna, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she croaked, and kept yelling for her son.

Delroy turned to his neice. “Meg, tell me what’s going on, now.”

Meg looked up at her uncle, took his hand, and led him to the back of the house. Once there she pointed at an empty bird bath. On top of it was a package wrapped in a rag.

“There,” she said, “it’s in there.”

This was something new to Delroy. Not the package on top of the birdbath so much as the fear in Meg’s eyes. She was not a fearful child. Delroy realized he was watching her get hit, really hit, by life for the first time. His own fear amped up, he asked again, “What’s going on? What is that?”

“It’s in there,” was all Meg could say. He decided not to ask again.

Delroy hated this. He blustered or consoled people on a daily basis about the horrors affecting their lives. If a parent was dying, Delroy made sure their children got the details of the funeral ready. If a child was looking at jail time, he sat with the parents and told them what they needed to hear. He let them know they weren’t alone.