In the Night of the Heat (34 page)

His friends shouted him down in a chorus. I tried to kick out, but my legs lay like lead.

As the room dimmed, I saw a woman's bare calves. I could smell the lotion on her legs. She knelt beside me, and a fingertip tapped my nose.
Get help,
I whispered. Or thought.

“Sorry, baby,” Janiece said.

She nudged me to my stomach with her foot, and I flopped down like a fish. Then she grabbed my hand and snaked it around my side until it rested at the small of my back. Next, my other hand. I tried to move before I heard the handcuffs, but she held on. She snapped the cuffs on like a pro. “Wish I coulda got you that brisket,” Janiece said. “You woulda liked it.”

I wanted to run, but I was sinking out of myself. I didn't think about Dad or Chela. Or April. The fight to stay awake was all there was.

SEE?
my Evil Voice screamed in the dark.
EVERYBODY DIES
—

Just like in death, I forgot my own name.

I WAS DROWNING.

I gasped, my eyes flying open as water clogged my nostrils. I spat and choked, shaking my head. I was drenched, but my face was swimming in sweetly scented air. It was dark in places, too bright in others.
Night?
Blinking at a light, I realized I'd been hearing a babble of voices, on and off, for what seemed like years. But the voices were gone.

I couldn't place the pieces that came into sight from the beam of a bright fluorescent lantern on the ground: Planks of wood. A large yellow bucket. Fast-food wrappers scattered on a leaf-covered floor. Was I indoors? Outdoors? I felt an immense space, but I couldn't get my bearings. The ground felt like it was veering from side to side.

I was sitting on a wooden stool, leaning back against a wall, my wrists tied low behind me, fastened to something intractable. My shoulders burned from being slumped in an unnatural position while bound, but the confusion felt far worse. Air was hard to come by, so I was breathing in gasps. I struggled to make out where I was—to distinguish my own limbs from the surrounding environment—blink
ing quickly to see in the odd bluish light. I smelled cigarette smoke, spicy and exotic.

Willpower focused my eyes, and the nearly dark room filled with colors.

A hazy, hulking figure stood over me. Wallace Rubens still wore the same overalls. His boots were caked with mud. A cigarette dangled from his fingertips. He tapped the cigarette until the glowing ash fell to the floor.

“You've been 'sleep seven hours,” he said. Even his speaking voice was a singsong. “Janiece
may
have put too much pack in your punch. My bad. Hope that dose wasn't too much of a shock. One thing you'll find: I'm not one for unnecessary discomfort.”

Southern hospitality.

I saw the large yellow bucket he held and realized he'd thrown water on me to wake me up. My face, T-shirt, and jeans were drenched. My stomach tried to vomit, but nothing came. I only spat as I looked around, frantic to know where I was. I was inside a wooden structure with missing planks. Rafters soared above, with vines dangling that looked like hanging moss. The scent was strong and familiar.
A tobacco barn!
I might remember the name of the road where I'd seen a decrepit barn, if I could get my brain to work…

I knew Rubens was a killer before he told me. His cool voice said it all.

“We coulda just held your head down in this bucket till you drowned anytime,” he said with no particular interest. “That's what my godson wanted to do. Now he's had to go home for dinner, and I said we'd finish when he gets back. Demond and the rest, we all want it done and over with. But before you go, I thought we might have a little talk.”

I grunted, yanking my wrists. I tried to slip my wrists through the
cuffs, but they were so tight I could barely twist them against my skin. Janiece had locked me up well.

When Rubens stepped closer, I tried a swiping kick from the ground, but my sense of distance was shit. My feet missed his ankles, and the room tilted. I nearly toppled from my stool.
Shit.
The room was spinning. I couldn't trust my senses at all.

“Effects'll wear off gradually,” Rubens said, taking a careful step out of range. “If you have time. If I were you, I'd try to use my brains instead. You might think up some questions…like, ‘Why am I still breathing?'”

“Barely breathing.” I exaggerated my next gasps so I would sound even weaker than I felt.

“Don't waste your fine theatrics on me, son,” Rubens said. “In the spirit of honesty, I have to tell you…in a little while, I'm gonna bring over my shotgun and put you back to sleep. And we're gonna bury you right outside, 'bout fifty yards from here.” He spoke quietly, as if reciting mundane chores. “We've got your rental car, and it's on its way God-knows-where. You're just gonna be one o' them unfortunate folks who disappears. I'm old enough to remember when that used to happen from time to time 'round this way.” Rubens knelt closer, looking for my eyes. “All that…and you still ain't a little bit curious?”

In the odd light, Rubens looked to me like he had no eyes, only flesh above his nose. A hallucination, maybe. Reflex made me recoil. Rubens knew my future—and there was no danger I would reveal his past. If I wasn't wearing a gag, it was because there was no reasonable expectation that a casual passerby would hear me scream. He was in no hurry. Rubens had no fear of interruption. This was very, very bad, but whatever marginal odds I had diminished to zero if he killed me.

Keep him talking. Buy some time. You'll think of something
…

“Damn right I'm curious,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Tell me, then. Why am I still breathing?”

“Because I can't waste a life,” he said. “Got to do what needs to be done, but I recognize the gravity.” He sounded like a sociopath in a twelve-step program.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Let me go.”

“Can it, son,” Rubens said. “Any more of that talk, and I'll go fetch my shotgun. I was hopin' to find out what I need to know first, so the waste ain't so bad.”

Please let him be bluffing.
There was no way I could tell him I thought he'd killed T.D. Jackson, not even to warn him about possible retaliation from Judge Jackson. It wouldn't help me, and it might put Judge Jackson, or Melanie, in danger. I had to stall, but my brain was mush.

“Your sheriff's fine with murder, too?” I said. “I saw he's down with the hookers in your restaurant. I just wanted to get laid! What do you want from me, man?”

Rubens shook his head. “I'm disappointed in you, son.
That's
what you're gonna say at this moment? Some bullshit 'bout my little angels? I got no hookers, man. I got dancers, and I got models, and everybody comes from fifty miles around to taste Grandmama's barbecue sauce. But what two adults negotiate behind closed doors is none o' my business. We both know that's not what brings you to town.”

If Rubens knew who I was and who I'd been working for, he had to suspect why I was in Mercy.
If I'm close on T.D. Jackson, then he probably knows I heard about Ebersole, and the car accident
…

“You startin' to get a bigger picture?” Rubens said, as if I'd spoken aloud. “If you thought I was a dumb ol' hick out in the woods, you judged me wrong, Tennyson Hardwick. I always do my research. Just go on 'head and tell me whatever you've told Judge Jackson.”

My true name from his lips sounded like a signed death certificate. My brain was barren of answers. All I knew was that I couldn't sell out Melanie's family. And I had to find a way out of my mess for Dad's sake. For Chela's. I vowed I would survive the night somehow.

“I don't know a Judge Jackson,” I said, so overwrought and sincere that for a moment I believed my own lie. I tested my chains again. “This is crazy, man. Think about what you're doing! The sheriff's all right with kidnapping, too?”

After a hard sigh, Rubens suddenly walked over to his shotgun. He wasn't in a hurry, but his stride was full of purpose. He looked like he'd lost his patience.

Shit shit shit shit SHIT.

“What do you need a shotgun for?” I said. “I heard you were some kind of a wrecking machine, Rubens. Look at me, all doped up. Set me free, and let's work this out man-to-man.” I had no illusion that I could take Rubens in my condition, but any chance is better than none.

Rubens didn't have his finger on the trigger when he turned around, and the shotgun was pointing toward the floor. He sat in a white folding chair a few feet from me, and propped his shotgun across his lap, caressing it like his guitar.

“You're sniffin' the wrong bush, Hardwick,” Rubens said quietly. “That sheriff, Jim Kelly, is an open-minded li'l' SOB—more interested in order than law, I'll put it—but I imagine he don't look kindly on kidnapping. That said, we go back a long way, him and me. He might look the other way if he caught wind of what's gonna happen tonight…under the circumstances.”

Under the circumstances?
What would make the sheriff look the other way about my kidnapping and possible murder? My eyes searched the room, newly motivated, and I saw a pile of trash and wreckage crowding the middle of the barn. Maybe something in
there would be useful to someone
without
his hands cuffed behind his back, who
wasn't
under immediate threat of a shotgun-wielding mastodon.

The gray German shepherd I'd seen at the restaurant appeared from behind the trash pile and settled at Rubens's feet. I wasn't happy to see the dog. He looked as if he wondered what flavor I was. “So where's the sheriff—” I began.

The shotgun snapped up with two barrels. “My friend said you were smart,” Rubens said. His voice wavered slightly, like a man on the verge of pulling a trigger. “If you can't think of nothin' smart to ask me, I'm gonna shoot you now and tell him it was all a misunderstanding. Your choice, son.”

My heartbeat galloped. I couldn't think, so I blurted the first question I thought would keep him talking: “What happened at that game in 1967?”

Rubens smiled, lowering his shotgun. He stroked the stock tenderly. He had killed more than once. Maybe more than twice. His eyes were shining; I think Rubens had always planned to kill me, but that was the first moment when he felt any peace about it.

“Man's life is a heavy burden, Hardwick, and you're about to lay yours down. We think we have some control over how many days we get. Think we can we can by on brains and luck. Nah. But you deserve the truth, so I'll give you that gift,” Rubens said, crossing his legs. “I haven't told once in forty years. Not even my grandmama, and she asked me about 1967 the very day she died…I couldn't say it then, but I'll say it now…”

I could barely concentrate on his voice, inhaling as slow and deep as I could, exhaling like a silent teakettle, using oxygen to counter the effects of the drug.

As long as he kept talking, I kept breathing.

“I USED TO HELP PICK TOBACCO
out in these fields when I was eight, nine years old,” Rubens said. “Stood right here in this barn when they strung the leaves up in those rafters. Nobody in my family could
spell
college, until me. First one in my family. Football scholarship. My body could always do easy what other boys found hard. I couldn't afford a plane ticket, so I went out to California by bus. Might as well've been the other end of the earth.

“In 1967, I was a junior at SoCal. I was on the football team, where I met the finest men I've ever known: Don Hankins, Emory Jackson, and Randolph Dwyer. After the first week of practice, you couldn't pry us apart with a knife. Blood couldn'ta made us any closer.

“In those days especially, it was a culture shock, tryin' not to fall flat on our faces. So me and Don, Emory, and Randolph formed a brotherhood. We were all ballplayers and all Taus, so we made a little group inside we called the Heat. Pushed each other through practice, helped each other with schoolwork—you name it, we did it. I wouldn't have passed freshman English if not for Don Hankins, and that's a fact. When I showed up on that campus, I'm 'shamed to say
I could barely read. Don helped me pass English, and I gave him a hole to run through, if I had to dislocate my shoulder to do it. A team within the team. That was the Heat.”

Rubens paused for the first time, unhooking his overalls. He pulled down the straps and began unbuttoning his shirt. Rubens was nearly lost in the fluorescent light, but with his shirt open, I saw the dark “H” on his chest, the size of a silver dollar. “We got brands, all of us. We chose where we wanted to wear the mark. I wanted mine right near my heart. They were the first family I ever had besides my grandmama. Every week, I went to Hell and back for my boys.”

I found the cuffs' keyhole. To the touch, it seemed round, like regulation cuffs, but I'd bet that they weren't. If I had a paper clip, I might have a chance to pick them. If my fingers weren't numb. If my hands weren't behind my back.

Rubens went on: “Life was good, and the day we found out we were gonna play the Sunshine Bowl might still be the happiest day of I've ever had. We were heavy underdogs, but we had a point to make. Especially me—I was coming back home. When I left for college, there were still white-only signs on these water fountains. White and colored sections at the movie theaters. So to come back and play against the
Bobcats
? Negroes couldn't sit in FU's classrooms, but here we had a crack at 'em on a football field. Shit, a country boy like me had never even dreamed so big.

“It wasn't just the players who went to the Sunshine Bowl—some of the students had money, especially the Taus, and they made the trip to see the game. We had a sister sorority, and one of those ladies was like a little sister to us. We called her Bird, 'cuz her bones were like a sparrow's. Texas gal, from Waxahachie, sweet as you'd ever meet. We were all in love with Bird, but since we couldn't let a girl come between the Heat, nobody could touch her. Still, everyone knew it was me she loved. We were both country folk, spoke the same language
more so than Em or Don. They'd been too sheltered. And Randy, well, he was too much a choirboy.

“But it was all innocent. I never broke the pact. We traveled in a pack, the five of us, doin' kid stuff. The drive-in. Student union. Shit, you
know
I'd follow that girl anywhere if I'm sittin' at the library on a Friday night. So it was no different when we got to Tallahassee for the game. We got in a day early, so I took 'em 'round Mercy a li'l' bit. My grandmama never forgot the day I showed up with all my friends from school on her doorstep. See, her grandmama had been born a slave…so Southern California University was a long way from where my family started. I don't think I ever saw her happier again, with a whole house of college kids to feed.

“But me and the guys, we knew we had a game, so we were on our best behavior. We got to the boardinghouse when we told the coach we'd be there. Lights out. Me and my brothers prayed on it, asking for strength on the field, and we went to bed.”

He paused to sigh, and I was afraid his story was over. But it wasn't.

“The game got ugly, name-calling and such. Don, Emory, and Randolph were surprised. Well, being from Mercy, I knew that crowd would get riled. But Em, Don, and Randy seemed real hurt by it. People say I'm the hothead, but nothing like the way Don got pissed off during that game. Boy was made out of mad. I swear, that boy played miles better'n we'd seen him in practice, or any other game. We were all talkin' shit to the Florida players on the field—and they weren't used to Negroes who weren't 'fraid to talk back. Mind you, I knew some o' them boys. Two or three of those players were from Stephens County High, which wasn't integrated back then. Couple o' them Mercy boys pointed right at me, and said, ‘You better shut your friends up 'fore they get hurt.'

“There's no feeling to describe seeing the scoreboard when the
clock runs out. There we were, twenty years old, never been nowhere or done nothin', and we'd just beat the Florida University Bobcats
on their home field.
You'd have to be in the same place and time to know what that felt like. With the race thing on top of it, we all thought we were Malcolm X and Dr. King rolled up in one. We were changing the world. At long last, our day had come.”

A loud rumbling sound came from outside, and a truck's brakes moaned to a stop. Headlights bled through the cracks in the planks.

I heard voices. Three or four other people had just shown up.

The dog leaped up and ran for the open barn door, tail wagging. The dog barked.

Propping himself up with his rifle as if it were a cane, Rubens stood up. He pulled his fishing cap out of his front pocket and put it on. Rubens had told he was going to kill me when his family got back from dinner. I suspected he was a man of his word.

“
That's
the story?” I said. “What else happened?”

Rubens held up his index finger, walking toward the door. “Hold your horses.”

Outside, I heard men's voices, speaking low. Two men, maybe a woman, too. I tried to hear what they were saying, but the dog was barking.

With Rubens's back turned, I twisted my right wrist around and around, kinking the chain. If I could take all the slack out, I would have the best leverage to see if one of the links was weak. When it wouldn't twist any farther, I clinched my gut as hard as I could, exhaled slowly, and channeled every ounce of strength into my forearms and wrists, ignoring the sting as the cuffs bit into my skin. My arms felt as if I would wrench them out of my shoulder sockets.

Rubens didn't turn around. I pulled again. Just one weak link. A bad weld. A bubble in the metal. Any structural compromise for appearance above security. Anything.

“Shit, shit, shit…come on, come on…”
I whispered, resting a moment, then twisting harder. Simultaneously, I scanned the floor for something useful; there wasn't anything within my legs' reach except pinecones, dead leaves, and scrawny twigs.

Rubens met the others in the open barn doorway. The damn dog buried his words with his yapping. Janiece appeared with a brown bag I guessed was filled with food. She was still wearing her pink piggy dress and apron from work.

“…some bullshit, Bear,” I heard one of the men say. “It's like, eight o'clock, man…”

“Just go on, take a few minutes and get started out back. Four, five feet. Use the jack.”

I was relieved Rubens was bargaining for more time with me, until I realized he was telling them to kill time by digging my grave. Every silver lining has a cloud.

I saw Janiece peek at me from around the corner, her arms folded. She was too far to see her eyes, but she looked quickly away. I heard her ask Rubens what he wanted to drink.

“Gimme a Coke,” Rubens said. “Go put my dinner by my chair.”

Shit.
I stopped struggling to free myself when Janiece came toward me with his soda and bag of food. Could I turn the interruption into a blessing in disguise?

“Don't get close!” Rubens called after her, and she stopped short, just when I was plotting how to capture her with my legs and bargain for my freedom.
Damn.
Rubens and the other men argued, walking out of sight. I heard the bed of a pickup truck fall open.

“Sorry,” Janiece said softly.

“Sorry?”
I whispered. “Girl,
they're gonna kill me.
” Her pity was my last hope, so I gave her an actor's tears. I spoke in a hush, my lower lip trembling. “There's gotta be something you can say. Please. I've got a kid—Chela. She was headed for trouble, but everything's
working out for her. Don't let this happen. Her future's finally looking bright. Janiece, I'm begging.
Please.
”

For an instant her face froze, as if a thought was trying to surface. Then she shook her head. “When will ya'll learn not to fuck with Bear?” she said, as if it were a question she pondered each night. “You seem nice, not to mention
fine,
so yes, I'm sorry. But don't act like I made this bed for you.” She stuck out her lip and turned to walk away.

So much for pity.

“Sister,
please
,” I hissed. “I haven't done a single thing to this man…” My voice would have broken almost anyone's heart.

“Liar,” Janiece said, walking off.

I yanked my wrist with frustration, biting my lip. It took all of my willpower not to yell out what I thought of her—but she might come in handy later, so I held it in. If there was a weak link in Bear's crew, Janiece was it. It was hard to watch her walk back into the night.

Outside, a chain clanked. Rubens reappeared with his shotgun resting across his shoulder. As he got closer, I smelled his perspiration from an exertion. Digging?

Rubens sat in the chair, ignoring his food. He sighed and lit a hand-rolled cigarette. He stared at me with one eyebrow raised while he put his shotgun between his knees, his hand inching toward the stock.

“What did you say to Judge Jackson?” His voice was gentle, a father confessor.

This time, a lie would only get me shot sooner. I was certain of that.

“I told him what T.D.'s mother begged me to tell him—I said he might never know what happened, and he should let his son rest in peace.”

Rubens' soft, sad look said he believed me. I might have finally said the right thing. Still, he didn't take his hand off of his shotgun.

“What happened after you beat Florida?” I said. “Did you really have an accident, or was some redneck from town looking for payback?”

Rubens smiled sadly. “Don was right about you, son. You were headed straight for it.”

Straight for WHAT?
I felt a terrible certainty that Rubens wasn't planning to kill me merely because he'd killed T.D., or I because I might be able to implicate his buddy Hankins in an old car accident. Hankins and Rubens thought I'd stumbled on to a secret from 1967.

“Whatever it is you think I know—I don't,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you some questions. I only came to Mercy because of lucky guesses, Rubens.”

“All things considered, I'm not sure I'd call 'em lucky,” Rubens said. But his hand fell away from the rifle, and he leaned over with a grunt to pick up his food. He pulled out a thick barbecue sandwich and bit down. Brisket. My stomach rolled.

“We were pretty much mobbed after the game, but Coach got us on the buses and sent us to the rooms,” Bear went on. “If we'd stayed in our room like we were supposed to, none of the rest would've happened. Turned out, there were kids waiting outside, hoping we'd come out. Sitting there in their cars with the lights off. But we didn't know.

“Me, Emory, Don, and Randy piled into my grandmama's big ol' beat-up Dodge Dart, and we headed for Bird's aunt's house, where Bird was waiting. We'd all made a plan to go to Quincy, where we hoped we could sneak into a bar. Then we jumped on I-10 and headed west. You've seen the road—it looks much the same now. Just weren't as many cars then.

“We'd been driving fifteen minutes before we realized anyone was following. Not just one car, it turned out—two. Nine boys in all. Only one of 'em was from FU, and none of 'em were players. They were pissed off and drunk, and they wanted a little overtime, an extra down or two, you feelin' me? Near the town Midway, one of the cars drives alongside us and honks. I'd told my friends not to say anything—
Let me do the talking
, I said—but Don Hankins shouts something out of the window, playing the dozens like he would back home, and those boys took great offense to the idea of Don Hankins ass-fucking their mamas. Maybe it would have all gone to hell no matter what, but that was certainly no help.”

Outside, faintly, I heard machinery chug-chug-chugging. Digging.

Think think think think think.

I unwound the cuff chain, and then wound it up the other way. Inhaled silently, tensed my body without moving my face, and
twisted.

Rubens went on with his story. He seemed lost in his past. “Two cars against one, it didn't take 'em long to run us off the road. I was driving, and I did my best, but my grandmama's old car could barely make fifty. Next thing, we were in the woods. I grabbed a tire iron and Don had his switchblade—he always wanted to be a thug like his uncle in Chicago, I reckon—and we thought we'd show those rednecks who they were messing with. We were young and dumb and full of cum, man.

“Next thing we know, there's a shot fired. One of 'em had a gun. Shotgun, like this. Once they had the gun on us and we gave up fighting, they went after Bird. She was a fine-featured li'l' thing, turned lots of heads. Bird was shaking so bad I could see it in the dark. She gave me a look I'll never forget:
DO SOMETHING, Wallace.
They had a gun, but I didn't give a shit, and I knocked two o' them boys
down before they could blink.” Something ugly flickered behind his eyes, then was gone. His voice fell, softer.