Bookmaker, The (25 page)

“Where are my manners?” he said. “It’s just this infernal heat; I am all out of sorts.”

“It’s about eighty degrees,” Otto said.

“Is that it?
Isn’t it terrible? Now I know why I’ve never been back to this savage land in over forty years.” He took a long look around. He was tall and thin and carried himself well for a man who looked well into his seventies. He pushed up his eye glasses and narrowed his sharp green eyes as he took in the scene. “I must say, I was expecting a more traditional funeral. But the joke’s on me, I forgot where I was. The new South is the same old South it seems.”

“Seems so,” I said
, ready to move on and talk to someone else, anyone else.

“I felt compelled to speak with you after I heard your speech, quite rousing you know. May I ask how you knew my brother?”

“You’re Phillip?”

“Yes, Phillip Walker, again, where are my manners today.”

“I thought you were dead?”

“Why would you assume such a thing?”

“I don’t know, I just did.”

“No, I’m alive and still kicking, but for how long, God only knows.”

“No shit. Phillip Walker, but how’d you know…?”

“I get the papers. Rather big news you know, it made it overseas, quite dramatic
, his death. Preston wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said as we stepped away from my group, who’d taken to talking amongst themselves.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Scotch neat,” he said, “then can I get a word with you alone? I’d like to have a little privacy,” he pronounced privacy as “privassy.”

“Yeah sure, meet me over there on the bench under those trees. I’ll bring your scotch. Johnny Walker okay?”

“Of course.”

I handed him his drink and he reached his arm out for me to help him sit down. I was reminded of Preston. I lit up a Camel and he took out a long
, thin cigar and had me light it.

He collected himself, took a small sip
, and lowered his brow. “It seems my ever-charming brother has fooled this rabble and yourself included. Look at them fawning over the loss of a madman.”

I felt his words were a little harsh for a funeral, but understood
. “Actually, I know everything. In fact that’s why I’m here, to document his story.”

“Is that so?” he said. “I’m sure the lies he told you will simply add up to a colossal waste of your time and effort.”

“How so?”

“My brother had been violently psychotic since he was an early teenager. It seems he turned from a well
-adjusted young man to a baying-at-the-moon lunatic overnight.” He took a long drink and reacted to the burn, then went on. “Of course our family’s tragic history had a profound effect on me as well, but I kept my wits about me. I kept it together for God’s sake.”

“He told me the circumstances of your family’s deaths, and I am sorry. But you yourself must have wanted some semblance of revenge against Joe Kennedy?”

“Of course I was angry with him and John too. We shouldn’t have been there, but my father knew the dangers. The war was raging, he could have moved us back here, but Father liked the status he had working for the Ambassador to England.”

“The war? The war had nothing to do with it,” I said.

“Nothing to do with,” he scoffed, “it had everything to do with it. The bomb took out our whole neighborhood. Preston and I lived because we left for school early that morn—”

I stopped him
. “Bomb, what bomb?”

“The bomb from the German Luftwaffe, surely you’ve heard of the German’s bombing of London. The explosion killed my parents and sister, it landed right on our house.”

“What the fuck? Preston told me that it was all—”

“The Kennedys, right,” he interrupted. “After their deaths, Preston decided it was all Uncle Joe’s fault for us being there in the first place and for being in the house he provided us with. And once Preston found the letters in the debris from Joe to our mother revealing their affair, he swore his revenge.
”

“So the affair, that was true. What about John and Audrey?”

“I’m afraid that unfortunate business was true as well. That scandal shook our family to the core.”

“The abortion?”

“Yes.”

“But Audrey lived? Preston said it killed her.”

“Uncle Joe arranged the whole thing and they went through with it, and afterward John never spoke to Audrey again. “

“But she lived.”

“Of course, a little worse for the wear, more heartbroken than anything.”

“Then everything else was a lie?”

“Son, I don’t know what he’s been telling you, but I can safely say yes—all lies.

“He lost it
, son. From that day forward, he completely changed. He became obsessed with an idea that didn’t exist. I tried to help him, but he was too far gone, and after he took out Joe Jr., I threatened to turn him in and he turned violent.” Phillip lifted up his shirt to expose a foot-long scar across his stomach that still looked angry. “He tried to kill me. He did this to me and then put the knife to my throat. After that, I washed my hands of him. I never saw him again.”

“But you just stood by as he picked off the Kennedys one by one?” I said
, disgusted.

“I wasn’t sure it was him. They never pinned anything on him, there wasn’t any proof. I thought he might have had something to do with it
, sure, but that was here in America, I was in England. Besides, Uncle Joe was an asshole anyway.”

And with that last comment, I knew that he was cut from the same cloth as Preston. “So you just sat by and watched it all happen
, and you could have done something but chose not to?”

His face turned sour. “I didn’t want to get involved, besides
, my brother scared me. When I saw what he was capable of, I grew even more frightened. It’s no coincidence that I only made it back here
after
he died. I’m here to celebrate his death, not mourn it. I should be out there cheering and hoisting back beers with the great unwashed. Perhaps they did know him well, hence their jubilation of his demise.”

I didn’t know who was worse, Preston for committing the acts
, or this coward for succumbing to apathy and fear and allowing it all to happen. I had to get away from him; he was making my skin crawl.

“I’m surprised there aren’t more bodies left in his wake
,” Phillip said nonchalantly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if these woods weren’t littered with corpses. He comes from a long line of murderers.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I guess he left out that part of your story. Son, my family is no stranger to killing; I suppose that’s why Preston found it so easy.”

“No, he didn’t say anything about that.”

“Figures, as we know, truth was never his strong suit. How do you think my family first got this property? My great grandfather, Cecil, just took it from the original settlers. Their bodies are out there in shallow graves on this property. And my grandfather, Elijah, to get his land back from the men he sold it to—”

“The two cotton farmers from up north?” I interrupted.

“Exactly. Them. He made them sign over the land right before he shot them. They’re buried here too. Those are just the few I know about. I shudder to think who Preston may have added to the collection.”

I was blown away, yet it was all too believable at the same time. “Where is the cemetery you mentioned?”

“I’ll draw you a map to the best of my recollection. And after I do so, I’ll have to bid you farewell. I cannot stand to be in this godforsaken place a minute longer; it makes me sick to my stomach just being here. I hope you understand?”

“Sure, thanks for the talk, it was very educational.”

“I’m sure it was,” he said.

He drew me a rudimentary map of the property with an X where the graveyard should be, shook my hand, tipped his hat
, and headed back to London. I was glad to see him go.

I stayed on the bench
and watched him leave. My mind was reeling with revelation.
So Preston was insane? He went after the Kennedys for no reason other than sick voices in his head? Maybe Phillip was lying? No, what would he have to gain? What about Matador? Preston had him kill for him, and now he was on the run? Where was he?

I didn’t want to deal with this right now on top of everything else, it was too much. I wanted to go someplace with Corynne and hide, just us. No suicide, no murder, no assassination, no lying, no funeral, no Mississippi—just the two of us on a beach with sand between our toes and palm trees swaying above. I pushed the conversation with Phillip out of my head and returned to the swarming masses of drunken mourners. I poured myself a stiff drink and joined the clink and clatter of cocktail glasses and revelers in black. I needed to be numb.

The weeks after the funeral passed in a haze of paperwork and lawyers. Otto stayed for a week and returned home, although, he hit it off with Rhonda and promised to return soon. As Christmas approached, Dayla and Jay moved into the house, taking the other master bedroom (Matador’s room) across the long hallway from Corynne and me. Delotta still had her room downstairs and run of the house.

Unfortunately, Marcus stayed on after the funeral as well. Apparently he enjoyed the free room and board
, Delotta’s housekeeping, and having access to all the guesthouses. Worse yet, he found a connection in town—a local guy who catered to over-stressed and over-worked students who needed a little help pulling all-nighters. Marcus didn’t have such noble intentions for his use. He was always high and increasingly paranoid, and along with him annoying the shit out of us, Corynne was worried about Tucker. We wanted him gone and Jay came up with a plan.

Marcus made it well known how he felt about blacks—the one thing he had in common with Preston. So we asked Darnell if he and Erika would like to live rent free in the guest house next to Marcus. Of course they accepted. Now this pissed off Marcus to no end, but it wasn’t enough to get him to pack up and leave. We had to try more desperate measures, and it fell to me to carry it out.

By Christmas Eve day, Marcus had more than worn out his welcome. He constantly fought with Corynne, mostly about his lack of inheritance. He even got a beat down from Jay one night when he tried to hit on Dayla. He had to go and now. I waited until around 1:00 in the afternoon as I knew he wouldn’t be out of bed anytime before that. I knocked to no answer; finally, I just pushed open the unlocked door. I found him in his bed still passed out in his train-wreck of a room. He wasn’t alone. He’d brought home a townie tweaker; she was still out too.

I spoke and then yelled his name…nothing. Fed up, I began shaking him. He weakly threw his arm at me to stop.

“Look, Marcus, we need to talk. It’s time you got going man, back to HB. Corynne can’t handle you being here anymore, not when you’re on the shit—no one can.”

He replied with barely audible grumblings
.

“Look man, get the fuck up. This is serious,” I said.

His blood-shot eyes bugged out of his pasty-pale face as he motioned me closer. “You gotta hook me up before I can do anything,” he whispered, pointing to the bag of crystal meth on the nightstand.

“Fuck that! I ain’t going near that evil shit.”

“It’s the only way,” he groaned.

I spotted the Slayer
Reign in Blood
CD case he’d been using as a cutting surface and poured the misleadingly pure snow-like crystalline powder onto the case, took the razor blade next to his baggy and cut two fat three-inch lines and handed it to him, along with the well-used cut-off milkshake straw. He meekly lifted his head from the pillow and sniffed the lines quickly and efficiently. He was reborn.

He handed the CD case back to me, shook his head
, and made a horse-like snorting noise unique to speed freaks coping with the burn traveling up their sinus cavity.

“Now what the fuck is your problem
, T?”

“It’s not my problem, it’s everyone’s. You gotta split, it’s time.”

The poison now surging through his system gave him a lift.

“Look at
you, motherfucker, you’re here a few weeks—because of me no less—and you’re telling
me
to split. Well I say fuck you to that.”

“Come on
, Marcus, you hate it out here. Don’t you need to get back home, back to Donna?” I tried to reason.

He pushed himself up
, flicked his nose, and lit up a smoke. “Fuck her, man, and fuck you too. This is my family, not yours. So you’re saying I gotta leave, while you stay here with Jay living the good life, while doing my little sister?”

This was gonna be harder than I thought, it was time to give him the deal. “Look
, man, I can understand where you’re coming from, how about we make you a deal?”

He perked up. “A deal? What kind of deal?”

I took one of his smokes and lit one up for myself. “First of all…do you know how much you owe me?”

“Fuck if I know…a couple grand
, I guess,” he snuffed.

“Try $4
,400 and counting.”

“So I had a couple bad weeks, it’ll turn around.”

“How about I forget you owe me anything if you promise not to make a bet again?”

“I’m listening, but that ain’t enough to get me to leave my family and my ancestral home,” he said, now bargaining with something he had so callously thrown away before.

“Okay, but I have something here that might.” I pulled out a cashier’s check we had Jimmy Ray, Esq. draw up per Corynne’s request. I waved it in front of him. “Now, I know you’re pissed about getting hosed in the will—this here is a one-time offer, take or leave it. Just know you aren’t wanted here whether you take it or not.”

“What is it, goddamnit?”

“This is Corynne’s peace of mind and, hopefully your salvation. This is a cashier’s check made out to your dumb ass for $50,000; it’s all yours if you leave and never come back while you’re using.” He reached for the check. I pulled it back. “There’s another one of these waiting for you if you can prove—and I mean
prove
—you’re clean for over a year. The choice is yours.”

“Yeah, just give me the check and I’ll leave in a week.”

“Not good enough. There’s a plane flying out of Memphis to John Wayne in three hours. When you’re on it, I’ll give you the check.”

He reached over and slapped his bed-mate on her bony little ass and said, “Get up
, bitch, I gotta get out here.” She moaned, and he started chopping up some get-up-and-go for her and one more for himself.

After dropping off a giddy and newly rich Marcus—who swore up and down that he’d be back clean next year for the other $50,000—it actually started to snow, tiny little flakes, but real snow. I’d never seen snow before
, and by the time I made it back to Oxford, the whole town was covered in a dreamy white mist. It was definitely Christmas now.

Christmas morning at Walker Manor was a grand time. It was just us three couples and house matriarch Delotta, who was pleased to have Darnell so close. Although, she might have picked another girlfriend for him, but she kept that to herself
the best she could and made my first Oxford Christmas one to remember. She cooked up a traditional southern spread and decorated the house like this was the last Christmas in history. Tucker bounced around, opening presents, screaming Sanna Caws, Sanna Caws everywhere he went until he passed out from exhaustion. We had dinner by the fire and capped off the night with a long toast to Preston, who was truly missed, and one for Matador, who we still hadn’t heard from yet.

The days passed as days do, and the dark memories of Dallas faded to grey; life moved forward. By late February
, it was time to plant. The fields would now be a communal effort between Jay, Darnell, and me, with Jay in charge. The damaged crops long removed, the fields were set for planting. We dropped seeds along the cut rows with a welcome sun warming our backs. The stereo Jay set up over the winter now came in good use as Bad Religion resonated from the four speakers surrounding the fields. Jay claimed the plants loved the music and fed off of it more than the shit we fed them with. We sipped beers and leisurely sowed the fields, trying to explain the virtues and appeal of our music to Darnell, who wasn’t buying it.

The spring wedding would be moved to summer. Dayla claimed it was a reaction to all that had happened. She said she wanted to let Corynne grieve properly and let time do its healing. The real reason, the obvious reason, was she was getting huge and didn’t want to be married looking as bad as she thought she did. I thought she looked great with a little something extra on her—the voluptuousness became her. But it was her day
, and July 17 it would be two months after the due date and enough time for her to get her figure back as she insisted.

As far as Corynne was concerned, she dealt with Preston’s suicide and the fear of whatever he had planned for Tucker with a quiet, graceful aplomb that made me love her even more. We’d grown closer and more reliant on each other as the months turned from cold to Mississippi hot again. And I was happy to say that she needed me as much as I wanted her. I didn’t take her for granted like I
had with all the other girls. I knew what I had and doted on her and became a father-figure to Tucker—a role I enjoyed as much as being with Corynne.

It was
a little slip of paper crudely drawn in haste and folded into fours, yet it pervaded my days and haunted my nights. I hadn’t even looked at it since Phillip Walker had handed it to me on the day of his brother’s funeral. I didn’t want to know the path it gave, the pain it would bring. I didn’t want the life I had out here to be thrown into the turmoil it would reveal. How many bodies, if any? I couldn’t look, ignorance was bliss. I tried to put it out of my mind. The dark, desperate days that had dragged on unmercifully before I came out here were gone. Even with all that had happened, I’d never been happier, more content with what I had, and I wanted to keep it. Call it selfishness; call it keeping my head in the sand. I hid the map. Out of sight out of mind, I tried to convince myself.

Same deal with Preston’s story. For now, I’d sit on it for the same reasons. Every now and again, I would pick up my rough draft and get the urge to clean it up and complete it. But then I imagined the firestorm it would bring upon us out here. I couldn’t let that happen, especially with the fields now starting to bloom green and with my book operation as well. It wouldn’t be pretty for any of us. But most of all, I kept the secrets for Corynne and Tucker’s sake. The last thing they needed was any more drama. We all just needed to live our lives for awhile
, and I wouldn’t disrupt that.

In early May I got a call from Otto. I hadn’t heard from him in over a month, not since March Madness ended. He told me he was coming out to see me in a few days and had something important to talk to me about.

On the drive back from Memphis International Airport into Oxford, we drove past Johnny Rebs and Otto said, “Stop right here, park it. This is what I wanted to show you.”

“What, you want to get a quick drink?”

“Well that and I want to see my girl.” He pushed open the door and gave Rhonda, who was working the bar, a big hug.

“Wow…
you two?” I asked, sitting down at the bar.

“Hell yeah, I knew she was the one the first time I laid eyes on her,” he said
, glancing down at her in a show of emotion I’d never seen from him before. He was truly happy—another new side of him, another new emotion.

“And we’ve talked every day since,” Rhonda added
, squeezing Otto. Their puppy-love affection made me feel a little awkward and put me in third-wheel status.

Otto let go of her
, walked around the bar, and sat in the stool next to me. “So, T, what do you think of this place?”

“I like it good enough, it’s a nice little bar.” I said
, not giving it much thought.

“What would
you think about me buying it?” Otto asked with a big grin breaking across his face.

“What, really?” I asked. “That would be fucking fantastic. And you’d move out here and run it?”

“You’re goddamn right.”

“I didn’t even know it was for sale
.”

“No one does,” Rhonda said. “Pete, the owner, has some serious tax problems, been cooking the books for years and it finally caught up with him, he needs to sell it quick. And he’s willing to give it away for a song as long as he gets cash. The title
’s clean, don’t worry about a lien on the place, the IRS just wants their money.”

I turned back to Otto
. “And you’re really gonna do it? You’re gonna buy this place?”

“That’s right, but under one condition
.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“That you buy it with me.”

I shook my head in disbelief
. “You want me to go in on this with you? I don’t have any money.”

Otto laughed
. “You don’t have any fucking money…? You got the money for writing the book, I’ve given you over ten Gs since the end of football season, and I got ten more in my pocket for you right now. And I know for a fact that we’re up over $15,000 with our lay-off book.”

He was right. I’d forgotten about Preston’s money he won betting my games last fall, it was still there. “How much would you need from me?” I
asked, now considering the impossible possibility of being a bar owner.

“We need
one hundred thousand cash. I’d need half that from you and we’ll finance another hundred thousand, and the bar, the land, and the liquor license are all ours.”

“It really is a steal,” Rhonda added. “A bar this size in this prime downtown location is worth a lot more
than that. I know for a fact that The Falcon, two blocks away, which is similar in size and scope, sold for twice as much last year. Hell, the license alone is worth over $100,000. This is an opportunity of a lifetime.”