Southern Cross (18 page)

“Mostly the bronze.” Just the thought of it made her sick. “But he did paint the top of the base to look like a basketball floor. So yes, some of the marble was involved.”

“I see. So he’s standing on a basketball floor. What else?”

“Well, the worst part. He painted a basketball uniform on him, tennis shoes and the whole bit, and changed his race.”

“Sounds like we got two problems here,” Rumble said as he tossed out another broken letter and the diamond saw in a corner started cutting through stone. “To fix the marble, I’m going to have to chisel it down and put on a new surface. As for the bronze, if we’re talking about oil-based paints . . .”

“Oh we are,” she said. “I could tell. Nothing spray-painted here. This was all done in thick coats with a brush.”

“We’ll have to strip that down, maybe with turpentine, then refinish with a polyurethane coating so we don’t get oxidation.”

“We’ll study this, then,” Miss Sink announced.

“We should,” Rumble said. “Eventually we’ll have to get Jeff Davis in my shop. I can’t be doing all this work on
him in the middle of a public cemetery with people all over the place. Means we’ll have to hoist him up with a crane and a sling, lower him in a truck.”

“I ’spect we should close the cemetery while you’re doing all this,” Miss Sink said.

“During the removal, for sure. But I’d do it now anyway in case other people get ideas about other monuments. And I suggest you get security patrolling around there.”

“I’ll get Lelia to take care of it.”

“In the meantime, I don’t want anyone touching that statue. Now that’s saying you’re asking me to fix it.”

“Of course you’re the one, Floyd.”

“It will take me a day or so to get it out of the cemetery, and then I don’t know how long after that.”

“I guess all this is going to cost a pretty penny,” the parsimonious Miss Sink said.

“I’ll be as fair as I can be,” Rumble said.

Bubba had no intention of being fair. There had been too much trauma and disruption for him to even think about sleep, and as soon as the detective had left with lifted prints and other evidence, Bubba had returned to his shop. He had cleaned up fast and hard, anger giving him boundless energy while Half Shell bawled and bawled and ran around in circles and jumped up and down from the overturned barrel.

Bubba’s karma had not been favorably inclined so far this day. He had bought a bag of large white marbles and a bottle of iridescent yellow paint. His attempts at drilling holes through the marbles were disastrous. They kept slipping out of the vise, and when he tightened the vise more, the marbles cracked. The drill bit kept sliding off, then broke. This went on and got no better until he came up with a clever idea.

At several minutes past three
P
.
M
., Honey poked her head inside the shop, a concerned expression on her face.

“Sweetie, you haven’t eaten a thing all day,” she worried.

“Don’t have time.”

“Sweetie, you always have time.”

“Not now.”

She spotted what was left of her favorite large pearl necklace on the workbench.

“Sweetie, what are you doing?”

She dared to venture several inches inside his shop. The pearls were loose and Bubba was widening the holes through them with a 5/64th-inch drill bit.

“Bubba? What are you doing to my pearls? My father gave me those pearls.”

“They’re fake, Honey.”

Bubba threaded black string through one of the pearls and tied a tight knot. He did the same thing with another pearl and took the two lengths of string and tied them together maybe four inches below the pearls. He slowly whirled this above his head like a lasso. He liked the way it felt, and proceeded to make several more.

“Honey, you go on back inside the house,” Bubba said. “This is something you don’t need to see or tell anybody about.”

She wavered in the doorway, her eyes uneasy.

“You’re not doing something sneaky, are you?” she dared to ask.

Bubba didn’t reply.

“Precious, I’ve never known you to do anything sneaky. You’ve always been the most honest man I’ve ever met, so honest everybody’s always taking advantage of you.”

“I’m meeting Smudge at his house around six and we’re heading out to Suffolk.”

She knew what that meant. “Dismal Swamp? Please don’t tell me you’re going there, Bubba.”

“May or may not.”

“Think of all the snakes.” She shivered.

“There’s snakes everywhere, Honey,” said Bubba, who was acutely phobic of snakes and believed no one knew it. “A man can’t spend his life worrying about snakes.”

Smudge had his own workshop, which was much better organized than Bubba’s and equipped with only the
essentials. He had the expected table, power miter, radial-arm and band saws, a thickness planer, wood lathe, workbench and shop vacuum. Smudge wasn’t fond of snakes, either, but he used common sense.

The weather had been unseasonably warm. Water moccasins might be stirring in the Dismal Swamp, meaning Smudge had no intention of hunting coons down there. Southampton County would be better, although probably not for Bubba. Smudge was at his workbench Super-Gluing a real rattlesnake rattle to the tail of a long rubber snake. He snagged the snake with a simple eagle-claw hook threaded with twenty feet of monofilament.

S
MUDGE LOADED THE
portable dog pen on the back of his coon-hunting fully loaded V10 Dodge Ram.

“Get in, Tree Buster,” Smudge commanded.

The open-spotted male coon hound eagerly jumped into the truck and got inside his pen. Tree Buster was born to tree coons and that’s all he lived to do, that and eat. Tree Buster was a Grand Show Champ. He had a horn bawl with a lot of volume, which was the best voice a coon dog could have, unless one was hunting in the mountains, and then a higher pitch would carry better.

Smudge was proud of Tree Buster and fed him Sexton dry food ordered out of Kentucky. Tree Buster had tight cat feet, strong legs and good muscles, his ears reached the end of his nose, his bite was good and he could carry his tail up like a saber. This was not quite the quality of hound Smudge had encouraged Bubba to order from an ad in
American Cooner.

Bubba was certain he’d gotten a great deal. The dog was already broken in and was sired by Thunder Clap, who had placed high in a number of world hunts. Bubba had bought the dog for three thousand dollars sight unseen, not knowing she’d been raised tracking coyotes, deer, bear, bobcats.
She was especially good at sniffing out armadillo, or
possum on the half shell
as the good ole boys called them, thus explaining the dog’s name.

Bubba parked his Cherokee in Smudge’s driveway. Bubba slid his portable dog pen out the back and loaded it into Smudge’s truck. Half Shell stopped bawling. Her tail was wagging furiously.

“Kennel up,” Bubba told his dog.

Bubba tossed in his knee-high waders, headlamp, flashlight, gloves and oilcloth Barbour coat, a portable phone, a compass, a Bucktool and a lock-blade Spyderco knife. He set his knapsack on the floor in front of his seat. It was packed with many things, including Cheez Whiz sandwiches, Kool-Aid, his Colt Anaconda and tricks.

“Looks like you packed for a snowstorm,” Smudge commented as he backed out of the driveway.

“Never know what the weather might do this time of year,” Bubba replied.

“It’s pretty warm, Bubba. I don’t know about the Dismal Swamp. Snakes might be squirming.”

Bubba acted as if he didn’t care while the hair stood up all over his body.

“We can talk about it at Loraine’s,” Bubba said.

They drove through peanut country, mulch plants and bleak stretches of newly plowed farmland. Nothing much had changed in Wakefield over the years, except for the new National Weather Service WSR-88-D Doppler radar installation. It looked like a huge high-tech water tower and had stirred up superstitions among neighbors who didn’t particularly want the thing even close to their yards.

Bubba, for one, always got an eerie feeling when the radar dome appeared over the tops of trees. Sure, he had no doubt that it was used to track towering storm clouds, wind direction and provide county-level coverage of tornado threats. But he also believed there was more to it than that. Aliens were involved. Perhaps they used the radar installations to communicate to the mother ship, in whatever wrinkle of time or plane of reality that might be. After all, the
aliens had been sent here by someone. They needed a way to call home.

There had been a time when Bubba might have confided such a theory with Smudge, but no more. He glanced at his good buddy and felt resentment. When they passed the Shrine of the Infant Jesus in Prague church, Bubba did not feel like turning the other cheek. When they cruised by Purviance Funeral Home, Bubba experienced dark feelings about Smudge’s longevity. When they entered Southampton County, where buzzards on the road were looking for snacks, Bubba thought about how Smudge had picked Bubba’s bones clean ever since they’d been friends in church.

Just beyond wetlands, Loraine’s Restaurant offered Fast, Friendly Service, a neon sign out front advertising FR ED SHR P OYST & CRA LE S $13.25 with a blinking arrow pointing to the small cream building with red trim. The parking lot was an old truck stop with piles of gravel, and islands where there used to be gas and diesel pumps. A Norfolk-Southern train rumbled behind the building as Bubba and Smudge parked and walked past front windows hung with Smithfield hams.

Loraine’s was a favorite hangout for coon hunters, although not as busy in chasing season as it was in killing season, which was fine with Myrtle, the cashier. She supposed she could understand killing coons years back when pelts were going for twenty dollars apiece. But no one bothered once the price dropped to eight dollars. Whatever the boys shot usually stayed in the woods.

Myrtle was always happy to see Smudge and Bubba. They hunted for the joy of putting their dogs through their paces, it seemed. They only killed coons when it was important to rev up the dogs again, make them believe if they treed a coon, maybe they’d get to kill it. Myrtle couldn’t count all the times coon hunters came into the restaurant dressed in Delta Wings camouflage covered with blood. The guys smoked and chewed. They ordered lots of hot coffee and All-U-Can-Eat fried oysters and shrimp, Captain’s Platters and meat loaf.

Tables were plastic-covered and designated with bingo numbers. Bubba and Smudge chose B4, with its cheery message, “Come Back Real Soon.” Bubba started digging in the little wicker basket of A-1, Worcestershire, sugar, Tabasco, and packets of jellies to see if there were any captain’s wafers hiding in there. A ceiling fan turned slowly. Smudge and Bubba looked at the specials on the board, next to a sign that read “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

“Let’s put it all out on the table, Bubba,” Smudge said, taking off his Ducks Unlimited cap. “How much?”

“How much you want?” Bubba tried to sound macho and confident, but inside he was Jell-O.

“Five hundred,” Smudge said, studying Bubba carefully to see his reaction.

“I’ll raise it to a thousand,” Bubba said as his gut turned to ice.

“You on the map, good buddy? Or just mud flapping.”

“I got it in my pocket,” Bubba said.

Smudge shook his head. “That old hound of yours has treed a chicken on top of a chicken pen and a goat on top of a stump. Closest it got to a coon was treeing one on top of a telephone pole. She won’t go across water, just barks at it when she’s not hanging around your feet. Half Shell ain’t worth the lead to shoot her, Bubba.”

“We’ll see,” Bubba said as Myrtle came up to the table, notepad in hand.

“You boys decided yet?”

“Iced tea, fried shrimp and oysters,” Bubba said.

“One-time plate or all-u-can-eat?”

“Lay it on me,” Bubba said.

Myrtle laughed, chewing gum. “And Smudge?”

“The same.”

“You boys sure are easy,” she said, brushing crumbs off their table and walking back to the kitchen.

“Where we headed?” Bubba asked.

“Gonna start out at the intersection of 620 and 460 right over there.” Smudge pointed. “And head left way up in the middle of nowhere. Just muddy roads, forest and creeks. I
did some checking into the Dismal Swamp and you definitely don’t want that right now. Apparently when it’s warm during the day, snakes are balled up like earthworms, there’s so many of ’em. When it cools off at night, you run over ’em like sticks on the road.”

Bubba was having a hard time breathing.

“You all right, good buddy?” Smudge said.

“Allergies. I forgot to bring my Sudafed.”

“Chances are where we’re going the snakes aren’t going to be near that bad,” Smudge went on. “And if we see a snake, just let it be. They’re more scared of us than we are of them.”

“Who says?” Bubba blurted out. “Did a snake actually tell someone that? It’s like saying dogs have no sense of time. Did someone ask Half Shell if it’s true? I’ve heard tales of a snake going up somebody’s pants leg. So how scared is that?”

“Good point,” Smudge thoughtfully replied. “I’ve heard the same thing. I must admit I’ve also heard of snakes chasing people and cobras spitting you in the eye, although I can’t say whether it’s true.”

Divinity tried to calm Smoke and get him out of his dangerous mood. But when he got like this, there was no point ranting and raving about something unless she wanted to get the treatment.

“Baby, it’s just I don’t want nothing bad to happen to you,” she tried one more time as he sped along Midlothian Turnpike, away from the slum he called a clubhouse where he now had enough of an arsenal to take out an entire police precinct.

“I find him, he’s dead,” Smoke said.

Wu-Tang was playing “Severe Punishment.” Smoke turned it up louder.

“What’d I tell him to do?” Smoke glared at Divinity.

“You told him to paint up the statue,” she quietly said, watching his hands to make sure he didn’t head them her way.

“I told him to
paint up,
as in
fuck up,
as in
ruin.”
Smoke
gripped the wheel hard. “I knew I shoulda stayed there and watched. Goddamn it. Shit! Then he paints that little fucking blue fish and the whole fucking world thinks that fish virus has got something to do with it! Where’s our credit, huh? Where does it say the
Pikes?”

“Don’t look like we got credit, baby.” She was freezing up inside, waiting for that beast in him to jump out.

“Well, I’m gonna fucking fix that, and you know how?”

“No, baby,” Divinity said, rubbing his neck.

“Don’t touch me!” Smoke shoved her away. “My mind’s working.”

The newsroom at this hour was left to a certain breed, the cave fish of journalism, those who slept through the sun and monitored life at its darkest hours. Artis Roop did not keep to a schedule.

He was energized and almost crazed as he hammered on about “Smokes,” Fishsteria and the same blue fish painted ever so subtly on the base of Basketball Jeff. There had been no real breaks. Roop was rearranging old information, and he knew it. There was nothing else going on except the same old drug shootouts and fights in city council.

“Shit.”

He leaned back in his chair and stretched, cracking his neck to the right and left.

“Got anything for last edition?” night editor Outlaw called out.

“Working on it,” Roop called back.

“How big?”

“How much space I got?” Roop asked.

“Depends on what comes in over the wire,” Outlaw said.

Roop was about to confess that he had nothing worth shit when his phone rang.

“Roop,” he answered.

“How do I know for sure?”

“Huh?” Roop asked.

“How do I know I’m talking to Roop,” the tough male voice came back.

“What is this, some kind of crank call?” Roop was about to hang up.

“I’m the blue fish guy.”

Roop was silent. He flipped open his notepad.

“You ever heard of the Pikes, man?”

“No,” Roop confessed.

“Who the fuck you think painted that fucking statue? What the hell do you think the fucking fish is?”

“A pike?” Roop was fascinated. “The fish is a pike?”

“You fucking got it.”

“There’ve been suggestions the fish is actually the state fish, a trout,” Roop let him know.

“It ain’t no trout and you better pay attention ’cause there’s a lot going down in this city that the Pikes are taking charge of.”

“So is it fair to say that the Pikes are a gang?” Roop asked.

“No, fuckhead, we’re a Girl Scout troop.”

“Then it’s all right if I refer to the Pikes as a gang in my article. Who are you?” Roop cautiously asked.

“Your worst nightmare.”

“I mean, really.”

“The leader. I’m whatever I decide to be and I do whatever I want. Your fucking city ain’t seen nothing yet. And you can print that in red. Remember the Pikes. You’re going to hear from us again.”

“But why a basketball player, and does the fish tag have anything to do with the computer crash . . . ?”

Roop was answered by a dial tone. He called the police.

At this point, tables B3, B6, B2 and B1 had gotten caught up in Bubba and Smudge’s conversation.

“Let me tell you what happened to me one time,” said an old man in overalls. “Found one in my toilet. Lifted the lid and there it was, all curled up, its tongue sliding in and out.”

“Oh my!” exclaimed a woman at the other table. “How could that have happened?”

“Can only figure it was a hot summer and he wanted to cool off.”

“Snakes are cold-blooded. They don’t have to cool off.”

“Might’ve come up from the sewer.”

“I was out in my johnboat one early morning before it was light, looking for duck when a damn water moccasin dropped into my boat, right on top of my foot, I kid you not. He must’ve been that big around.” He made a huge circle with his fingers.

“Every time you tell that story, Ansel, the darn thing gets bigger.”

“What’dya do?” Smudge asked as Bubba sat in silence, his face ashen.

“Kicked the damn thing as hard as I could. It sailed right over my head, all wriggly, and I could feel it brush my hair as it went past before splashing in the water.”