Burn What Will Burn (16 page)

She gathered loose tobacco off her lip with her tongue, then spit it out.

“Maybe you do, Bob. A fellow like you … Maybe you do see how it is with some men, some people.” Tammy Fay nodded. “Buck, he just had this crazy thing for me. From the time I was just little, he had a thing for me. Not love, but something.”

She started to work bare toes into a work boot.

“You know how that is, Bob?” she asked “Obsession?”

“I might,” I said. “So what now?” I asked.

“So now, thanks to you, Bob Reynolds, I am a free woman.”

“Thanks to me?” I asked.

She nodded, slipped the other foot into the other work boot.

“You delivered the blow with your binoculars, Bob. That blow was not fatal, but it disarmed him enough so that Idiot out there and me could deal with Buck. I hadn't been able to deal with him for years and it was just getting worse with ol' Buck.”

“I understand,” I said. I was a tool. I understood that.

“Hard to believe you could do it,” Tammy Fay said. “Hard to believe you had it in you. And it was very hard, very, very hard to ever catch Buck unawares. But I guess you caught him off guard and a righteous whack with a pair of big-ass binoculars did the trick for us, didn't it?”

“You found him unconscious and that was a good opportunity for you,” I said. “And you are an opportunistic predator, aren't you, Tammy Fay?”

“It was a good opportunity, Bob. And yes, I am an opportunist, so I took advantage of the good opportunity you provided me with.”

“I understand,” I said. “Buck was getting to be a problem.”

“I've been trying for several years now to get rid of Buck,” she said. “You know how hard it can be to get rid of somebody who's in your life but weights you down so much, you feel like you're swimming in mud, don't you, Bob?”

I nodded. I did know about that perfectly well.

“But you have to get rid of them so you can move on with your life. Right, Bob?”

I said nothing, admitted nothing.

“But what with one thing and another I just never got around to getting rid of ol' Buck. That man was pesky and persistent. Has been for fifteen years.” She shrugged a shrug that explained a lot.

“Why didn't you just leave?” I asked.

“You don't understand the situation around here,” Tammy Fay told me.

She thumped the flesh of her inner arm and winked at me, explaining somewhat the situation.

“Something of a bird nest on the ground, you might say,” she said. “Though the downside is way down.”

“So you didn't leave because your drugs were here?” I asked.

“I didn't leave before now because the circumstances were never exactly right for me to leave before now. And, you don't know Buck, but Buck would have found me. He was the best bounty hunter in this part of the world. He would have tracked me down.” She shrugged again. “And then who knows what would have happened. Me dead instead of him, probably.”

“But the circumstances got right recently,” I said.

She nodded.

“Exactly right, Bob.”

“You saw your boyfriend Buck laid out, knocked out unconscious in his car and Warnell was right there to help load him on your truck and take him to the creek and dumped him in and you just couldn't resist that opportunity.”

“Golden opportunities don't grow on trees, Bob,” Tammy Fay said.

“No,” I said. “They don't.”

She sighed, sort of nostalgically.

“He was a good fuck, Bob. And Buck, he took care of me and my expensive little habit all these years.”

She massaged the inside of her arm.

“But it was getting a little old, you know? I'm getting a little old, Bob. Fourteen years plus with that bastard was just too long with that bastard. Buck would never have let me go either. Not free and clear. He was just too crazy about it, you know? We were too connected. He couldn't just let me walk. That was never going to happen.”

I nodded.

“And life's too short. You know what I mean, Bob? I was crazy about him for a while. When I was a kid I thought he was the one and only shit. He was a handsome bastard. And when he came back from the Corps I even let him get me hooked. Got that little master-slave thing going when I was a kid. But even that's got old. You know what I mean, Bob?”

“Yes.”

Obsession can get old, even obsession can get old. And there arrives a time when you have just had enough. There are limits to patience, even the patience of a spider must wear out eventually.

“There are limits,” I agreed.

“You do understand me, Bob.”

“Better than you might imagine,” I agreed.

She smiled, pursed her lips.

When she moved toward the door I grabbed her arm.

“Let me go, Bob.”

“I thought you liked it rough.”

She glared at me.

“Warnell!” she called for her bodyguard who hulked on the back porch.

I let her go, backed away.

She put her hand on the screen door.

“So now you're leaving,” I said.

“To parts completely unknown, Bob. So, if you were thinking of following me, forget that thought.”

“I wasn't. I wasn't thinking that thought at all.”

“You're a smart boy, Bob. Not too pretty, but smart. And if I ever have need of you, I'll be in touch.”

She pushed open the screen door. On the back porch steps, breathing heavy, Warnell waited.

She turned back to me.

“I've got to give Idiot here another hand job and then I'll be out of this country, Bob. Probably out of your hair for good.”

“What about the sheriff?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Who do you think the High Drug Lord is around here, Bob?”

I nodded.

“And Joe Pickens Junior?”

She shrugged.

“Joe Junior was always stupid enough to think he was smarter than everybody else, Bob. Or let me say Junior was always just smart enough to get in on the shit and then to just get the short end of it.”

“So you, or Warnell, shot and killed Joe Pickens Junior? Did you find Buck King's gun and shoot Joe Junior with it?”

“Bob, really…” When Tammy Fay shook her head her honey-blond hair hid her eyes for a moment and then revealed them again, staring at me. “I said Joe Junior was stupid, I didn't say I was.” She paused, then added, “Let's just say things worked out in a local way.”

“Quite a place this place,” I said.

“You cannot imagine, Bob.”

She leaned against the screen door as if she were weary.

“Just to warn you, Bob. Because you are sort of nice, in a loser way. Buck's got to turn up. He is a respectable citizen in our community. He's a deacon in the Second Baptist Church. He has a wife and kids and clients, even lawyers and judges and doctors upstanding, who will ask questions. His daddy is Dick King, King of Tires.”

“That could get sticky,” I suggested.

She shrugged and did not seem too concerned.

“Sammy will take care of it. Sammy's good at stuff like that. And you'll be all right if you stay out of Sammy's way. He won't bother you, because you've got money and your own lawyers. But if any of you screw with me…”

“You've got pictures,” I said.

“And I've got stories to go along with my pictures, Bob. All recorded. All safely hidden away here and there and everywhere.” She looked at me again and raised a dark eyebrow. “And now you're in the pictures and in this story too.”

“I am,” I said.

She stepped off the back porch onto the slab patio and headed toward the tow truck.

“You ready for your hand job, Idiot?” she asked Warnell, who was drooling on the back patio, staring at her.

“Whole thing, Tammy,” Warnell said. “I get the whole thing this time,” he pleaded. “Just like him.” He pointed across her at me, standing on the patio. He was fairly slobbering.

“We'll see about what you get when we get to the Slough,” Tammy Fay said.

She walked to the truck with her lapdog leashed to her.

“Good-bye,” I said to her.

She did not even look at me.

They left in the tow truck.

 

CHAPTER 10

She had forgotten half a crushed pack of Pall Malls in a pocket of her coveralls. I kept the cigarettes and burned the coveralls in the backyard trash barrel down to pure ash and a long metal zipper. For a long time I sat on the back steps smoking her cigarettes even though I do not normally smoke.

I had spent a lot of time sitting on those steps over the last few months, staring at my weedy fields, on the lookout for my neighbor's livestock, waiting for the sun to rise or set. Waiting for something to happen. Now something had happened and I waited for it to be over.

This too will pass, I told myself. Like all else, this too will pass and she will be gone, physically at first and then from my memory and eventually there will be nothing to remember about her that I don't care to remember because life is mostly memories and projections and so controllable, if your mind has the correct control dials.

I tried to pretend it was just another such time, a time that would pass as just another memory.

But then Stank limped out of the back field and started barking.

“Oh shit.”

Stank whined.

“This is pushing it,” I told the dog.

The old hound barked, then sniffed my crotch.

I did not want a dog.

“I have got my limits,” I told Stank.

Stank barked hoarsely.

I raised my hand but could not hit her.

I walked off, toward The Little Piney.

Stank bounced after me. She was slow, but seemed persistent. I decided to let her run herself out, pick her up on the way back.

*   *   *

I had only walked a hundred and twelve steps when I saw Malcolm headed toward me, his arms worked like wings preparing for takeoff. He was shaking his head like his hair was full of bees. He closed the distance between us fast.

“He dead, Bob Reynold.”

“I am sorry your daddy's dead, Malcolm,” I said.

The kid stared at me.

“My daddy dead, Bob Reynold?”

“Shit.”

“He is, Bob Reynold? Daddy dead?”

“I'm really sorry, Malcolm.”

The kid brushed a hand over his nose, shrugged.

“Well, I guess I didn't 'spect no different from him, Bob Reynold. PaPaw always said Daddy'd wind up dead.”

“I am sorry, Malcolm. I shouldn't have said anything. I just thought … you seem so upset, I just thought you had found out.”

“I hadn't heard nothing 'bout that, Bob Reynold. Where I'm going to hear something? I only just saw Daddy yesterday 'round about this time of day down at the creek.”

“Your daddy's been around awhile, Malcolm?”

“He come sneaking up to the store one late night lately, wanting me to steal some potted meat and crackers and cigarettes and money and bring it down the bridge. He was total busted, Bob Reynold, so I saw to feeding him, but I wouldn't be stealing no money from PaPaw.”

The kid kept his moral compass handy like nobody else I knew.

“You knew why he was hiding out?” I asked

“My daddy, he always hiding out,” said Malcolm. “Hid out day I was borned, PaPaw said. And never did quit hiding out from me since then.”

“I'm sorry, Malcolm,” I said, sincerely. “Your daddy did you a major misservice.”

“Daddy that way, Bob Reynold. Never did trust Jesus Rising Star so he misservice everybody.”

I wanted to give Malcolm a hug, but shied from that, waited. Malcolm seemed sort of stoical about his father's death.

“He's upset awful 'bout something yesterday and this last day I seen him, so I didn't 'spect nothing good come of it, Bob Reynold. I didn't 'spect nothing good from Daddy lately. Never did, tell the truth.”

“I never expected anything much good from my daddy either, Malcolm.”

“Then you know how it is.”

I did.

“But I ain't getting no 'heritance money.”

“I'll give you some of mine, Malcolm,” I offered impulsively. “How about a thousand dollars?”

Malcolm considered.

“That about what you figure a daddy's worth, Bob Reynold?”

I nodded.

“I figure that's about what your daddy's worth, Malcolm Ray.”

“All right then, Bob Reynold. Praise Jesus and I 'preciate you.”

Stank hobbled up to us, sniffed at me, then turned to Malcolm, licked the boy's hand.

“This Miss TamFay's dog, ain't it, Bob Reynold?”

“It was. You want it?”

“I always did like this dog,” Malcolm considered. “She ugly, but she a good dog.”

Stank barked.

“Three-leg dog,” the kid said. “Okay.”

Malcolm nodded at me and the deal was done.

“I call her ‘Three Leg' then. How about that, Bob Reynold?”

“Sounds right, Malcolm. I don't think that dog is smart enough to know the difference in names or in people either one.” I motioned toward my truck. “Come on now and I'll take you back to the store.”

Malcolm didn't move, kept his hand on the old bluetick.

I waited.

“It's something I didn't tell you yet though, Bob Reynold.”

“What's that?”

“It's something down at the creek,” he said.

“You saw something down at The Little Piney,” I said. “Just now? In the middle of the night?”

“Yessir, Bob Reynold. I went down to find my daddy and bring him some stuff, but PaPaw on to me now and I couldn't get nothing to take him so I went down the creek to tell Daddy that but Daddy ain't there. But I did see somebody, pretty sure I did.”

“What?” I asked. “Who?”

“If they both dead, Bob Reynold, maybe it's no use messing with it.”