Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller (20 page)

Bobby turned and found the soldiers had tracked him down. Or maybe they’d simply materialized in the clearing.

Because this is their mountain and they don’t like trespassers.

They circled Bobby and the bulldozer operator, their rifles leveled. They were close enough that Bobby could see the tarnished insignia on their uniforms and the moth holes in their filthy jackets.

“What in God’s name?” the man whispered.

“Like I said.”

“It’s them dress-up boys for Stoneman’s.”

The man stepped toward the closest soldier, who sighted down his barrel and thumbed back the flintlock.

“I think they want you to stop,” Bobby said.

“No way,” he said, continuing. “Nobody points a gun at me and gets away with it. Even if it’s a pretend gun.”

The soldier pulled the trigger and the flintlock struck, igniting the powder charge and propelling a lead ball into the man’s face. Bone crunched and a red spray jumped from the back of the man’s head, his cap flying off from the blow. A few drops of blood hit Bobby, and he saw other soldiers were aiming their weapons.

The bulldozer operator’s head, which had snapped backward on impact, now lolled forward as his knees collapsed. He flopped face-first as if making a snow angel in the mud of the road bed.

Bobby put his hands over his eyes, figuring the next volley would rip him to shreds, expecting his life to flash before his eyes. But all he saw was Karen Greene and his sneering dad and Vernon Ray’s Bambi eyes and a scene from
Shrek
where Donkey first realizes he can fly. Some life. He listened for the click of a trigger, wondering if he would die before he heard the shot.

He wondered how his dad would take it, and whether Will would sell his comic collection. Would Karen cry? He was wondering about the photos on his camera-maybe a little fame after his death-when he realized he’d been wondering for too many seconds.

What’s taking so long?

He uncovered one eye and blinked.

Nothing.

The soldiers were gone.

The man from the bulldozer lay on his belly, a pool of thick red spreading from his shattered skull.

After a minute, the birds began chirping again in the high treetops.

“Come give me a hand, squirt,” Elmer said, knocking on the door to his sons’ room.

The Schlitz 40s had clubbed his head but good and the last thing he needed was little Bobby adding to the headache. Sunday afternoons were for sitting on the couch and watching NASCAR, but Vernell had ragged him so hard about Dolly’s Dollhouse that he’d promised to fix the leaking sewer pipe under the trailer.

It wasn’t like he’d even copped a feel, and the closest dancer to his table was a used-up warhorse whose tits drooped like cold balloons. He could have sworn that when she clamped her thighs around the brass pole and spun, dust had floated into the air and her skin had chafed like rusty brakes. So even if he didn’t feel any particular need to make amends for that sin, he’d rather wallow in shit under the trailer than put up with shit inside the house.

The space beneath the trailer was only three feet high, and while Elmer could slither through the septic mud and find the leak, he needed Bobby to fetch the proper lengths of pipe, carry tools, and do all the wriggling in and out.

Elmer pounded on the door harder. He wasn’t surprised Jerrell was nowhere around, because Jerrell had a job and his own wheels and was banging babes all over town. His real son, a real man. While Bobby, the bastard blonde, was probably polishing the old bone to pictures of those big-titted superbabes in the comic books.

Could be worse, could be a flaming fag like Jeff’s boy.

His face broke into a triumphant grin. Jeff could kick his ass in bowling, boss him around in the Civil War games, and draw twice the income, but when it came to raising them right, Elmer had the heating-and-AC man beat all to hell.

Elmer gave the door one more hard blow with the bottom fist. “Bobby, get your ass out here.”

He tried the door handle. Locked. Elmer could shove the flimsy door in, but then Vernell would give him shit about that, too, and he’d spend the rest of the evening replacing it, and the money would come out of his beer kitty.

Elmer went down the hall and through the living room, where Vernell sat on a sofa drying her fingernail polish. Elmer never understood how a woman could fix on one thing and block out everything else in the world. When Vernell dried her fingernails, that was all she did. If some corporation could figure out how to channel that empty happiness on her face, then preachers, barkeeps, and shrinks would all go out of business.

“Where’s Bobby?” she asked, as if she’d missed the tom-tom job he’d done on the bedroom door.

“Little idiot didn’t answer,” Elmer said.

“Stubborn,” she said. “Gets it from your side of the family.”

Elmer ducked his head back in the door, but didn’t catch her face in time to see if she was jerking him around. Pushing the little secret in his face. If he had the damned money to spare, he’d send the cuckold-spawn for DNA testing and then Vernell could bounce her ass out onto the street and start walking. “At least my side can cook.”

“He might have sneaked off with Vernon Ray,” she offered.

“Well, he didn’t come through the house.”

“Maybe he got up before we did. You was snoring so loud an elephant parade could have wandered down the hall without us knowing.”

Elmer didn’t want to get into it, not right now. He brawled better with a few tall ones under his belt. There were a couple under the truck seat and it would give him a head start on the afternoon and make crawling in shit a little more bearable.

He slammed the trailer door hard enough to cause Vernell to yip and then got his tools from the truck. Like most in vocational trades, Elmer didn’t like to take his work home with him. Carpenters couldn’t be troubled to so much as hang a picture hook, painters wouldn’t color a toenail, and plumbers were pissed off if they had to
slorp
a plunger around in a blocked toilet to jam out some cooze’s bloody Tampax.

As he went around the trailer, he saw the open window in the boys’ bedroom. He braced himself on the oil-tank rack and stretched up to look in the room. It looked like Bobby was still asleep, curled up in the blankets on the bottom bunk. He watched for a moment, figuring if Bobby was tickling the one-handed puppet then the bunk would be shaking.

Nothing. Not a thing. Not even the slow rise and fall of breathing.

Elmer was about to punch the glass hard enough to break it when he saw a crevice in the blankets, right where they met the pillow. He peered through the window at the place where Bobby’s head should be. The skin was smooth and white, and a stitched patch of black met it.

Fucking soccer ball. The bastard pulled the old sleeping-dummy trick.

Elmer stifled a surge of pride. Though he’d played a version of that stunt on his own folks plenty of times, sneaking out on Friday nights to knock down whiskey that his friends paid winos to purchase, he couldn’t rightly claim a genetic link. Bobby was just a drain on the wallet and another pain in the ass, and if Elmer couldn’t even get a little labor out of him, then he might as well send the brat’s medical and grocery bills to the real father, whoever that was.

Bobby was probably down at the Davis trailer, dorking around with Vernon Ray. Elmer had no idea why his inherited son would want to hang around with a blooming fruit, but Bobby had always been a little too sensitive for his own good. He read too many books, for one thing.

Elmer would have worried about Bobby maybe having a little sugar in his britches, but Bobby was a jock and the little chickies seemed to dig him just fine. Too bad he spent all his time hanging around with his guy friends. He was probably missing out on a ton of stinky finger.

Well, even a bitch like Vernell can’t expect me to fix the busted pipe all by myself. I’ll go round up Bobby and maybe even get Vernon Ray to help out, too. About time Bobby learned the family trade, anyway.

Elmer walked to the Davis trailer, making sure he kicked over one of the little flagstones that girded the flower garden around the porch.
Yes, suh,
Captain Fucking Davis
.
The officer’s quarters are always a mite finer than what the troops get. Privilege of rank and all that happy horseshit.

Elmer pounded on the door, his hangover gripping his skull in the bright sun. Maybe he’d hit Jeff up for a cold one, even though it was barely past noon. Chat him about the Civil War and Elmer might even get two or three freebies, plenty of lubrication for wallowing in shitty water and fixing a pipe. Just like a regular workday.

Jeff opened the door a crack, his mustache twitching. “Hey, Elmer. You not in church?”

“I already been saved. After that, I didn’t see much point.”

“Got your golden ticket, huh? Want a beer?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

“Come on in. Martha’s gone to Barkersville to get her hair done.”

Elmer stepped inside. The trailer, as usual, smelled like mothballs and Clorox. Framed portraits of Jeff’s Civil War ancestors covered the walls, and a print of the
C.S.S. Neuse
, an ill-fated ironclad, dominated the wall behind the couch. Jeff’s wife had made a few decorative overtures like a basket of potpourri and doilies on the armchairs, but this was clearly Jeff’s house. It made Elmer resent him even more, because Elmer busted his ass to pay rent, but that lazy-assed Vernell called the shots.

Fuck it
. He followed Jeff to the kitchen, his parched tongue licking his lips in anticipation.

As Jeff handed him a Budweiser, Elmer nodded thanks and said, “Say, did Bobby come over?”

“Bobby? I thought he was at your house. Vernon Ray said he was spending the night over there.”

“I ain’t seen either of them.”

“You mean they were out all night?”

Elmer didn’t want to think about the boys’ sleeping together. Bad enough to be raising the creation of another man’s sperm, but raising a fag would be 10 times worse. “Probably nothing. Boys will be boys. Remember when we was kids?”

Jeff gazed out the window at the trailer park, chin up in that prissy little officer’s stance he used, and Elmer doubted if the guy remembered much of anything that didn’t feed his little Civil War fantasy. “Yeah. We had some good times. Playing army, hiding in the woods, building forts.”

Come to think of it, Jeff had been a mad general even back then, always giving orders and making sure they all died dramatic fake deaths. Then he’d command them to stand up and do it all again, the outnumbered Rebs against the blue-bellied hordes of the devil. He’d even refused to play with Lincoln logs because of their connection to the Union’s leader.

Elmer took a sip of his beer, which washed down the resentment. “Yeah. Kids nowadays with their goddamned videogames.”

“They don’t know how to use their imaginations anymore,” Jeff said, twirling one end of his mustache.

Right-o, Cap’n. And some of us still live in the land of make-believe.

“Well, I got to fix a busted sewer pipe or I’ll have to listen to Vernell bitch for the rest of the day,” Elmer said.

“You going to watch the race later?”

“If I get done in time.”

“I got a new cap-and-ball pistol to try out. Want to do some shooting?”

“You bring the beer and I’ll be there.”

“Okay. I’ll pick you up after the race. We can go up Mulatto Mountain.”

Elmer blinked redness from his eyes. “That ain’t game land anymore. It’s private development.”

“We won’t hurt anything. Besides, it’s Budget Bill. He never had any problem with people hunting his land.”

Elmer had no desire to go anywhere near the Jangling Hole, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Jeff had practically built his life on notions of honor, glory, and courage, and while Elmer couldn’t give two shits about any of that, he wasn’t about to show his spinelessness. “Pistol, eh?”

“Remington .44 replica. Got a nice kick to it.”

“Set you back a bit?”

“A couple hundred.”

“I don’t see how Martha lets you get away with that. Vernell would shit a squealing worm if I dumped any more money into the hobby.”

Jeff reached up to his forehead as if to adjust the brim of his Stetson, then realized his head was bare. He touched his hair instead. “It’s all in making enough to keep her happy. Send her to Old Navy with the credit card once a month, keep her satisfied in the sack, and let her win all the arguments except the ones that matter.”

Elmer didn’t even have a credit card, and he couldn’t remember the last time Vernell had even bothered to fake an orgasm. And Vernell won every argument, whether important or not. He was beginning to hate Jeff even more than before. But another sip of cold suds washed down a little bitterness. A few more cans of Bud and good ol’ Cap’n Davis would be as worthy of worship as Stonewall Jackson and General Lee.

“Vernell’s a bitch,” Elmer said.

“You just haven’t figured out what makes her happy.”

Elmer studied the man’s eyes. They held a gleam of secret triumph. Elmer noticed for the first time they were blue-gray, the color of a gun barrel. The same color as Bobby’s, now that he thought about it.

“Why would I want her to be happy?” Elmer drained the Bud can, tilting it so the flat foam in the bottom tickled his tonsils. In his trailer, he’d throw empty cans across the room, trying to bank them off the wall and into the trash. Jeff’s house was regimented and orderly and smelled like one of those specialty gift shops in the mall, the kind that made you sneeze about as fast as it made you bored. Elmer set the can on an imitation, catalog-ordered antique tea table. “Well, time to eat some shit,” he said with exaggerated good cheer.

Jeff, still gazing out the window, held up a hand as if signaling troops to be quiet. Elmer went to the window, figuring either the 19-year-old tart Shawna Hicks was strutting around the trailer park in cut-off jeans and no bra or else the cops had driven up to the Baker double-wide with another warrant. Something worth seeing, in other words.