The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (9 page)

Jewel looked down as the wino passed, his nose wrinkling in disgust. He looked up in time to see his visitor approach the trash cans.

“Get out of there,” Jewel said evenly, then sprang to his feet. “Hey, you! Get out of there!”

The wino looked at him with sleepy eyes.

“Grub your chow somewhere else,” Jewel said. “Go find your own trash cans.”

“But these
are
mine,” the wino said in the tone of a shy boy being picked on by his teacher. “They been mine ever since Wally the Hog left. That made ’em mine. Let’s see, that would be when the men went
up and tracked mud on the moon. Around then. They got money for doin’ it, I’d bet. It was the cleanest place in the world before they went and did that.”

After glancing out to the street and not seeing Teejay Crane’s maroon LTD, Jewel said, “It might still be. That’s quite a while back anyhow.”

“Wally the Hog had ’em longer, but he died. He never left, like I said. He died.”

“I’ll give ’em back to you tomorrow.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about it, you see. My last cough drop says it was his heart. All them butts he was always pickin’ up.” The wino pinched two gloved fingers to his throat and gobbled, then began walking in reverse. “He thought it was just his good luck to find ’em, and it was, too, till they killed him.” He stopped and squinted at Jewel. “I heard he smoked a halfie after a Chinaman tossed it—now you
know
that
can’t
be good for you.”

Jewel glanced down the alley, then back to the street.

“I warned him more times than I’ve shit,” the wino testified.

“Sure,” Jewel said. “I been knowin’ better than that my whole life.”

“Well,” the wino said with a nod, “told the police ’bout it, too.”

“You what?” Jewel said. He advanced on the wino, jerked him by the shoulders and spun him about, then booted his ass. “Why you old snitch—get the fuck out of here.”

The wino, after an initial burst of rapid steps, settled into a measured wobble, his immediate future hugged protectively to his chest, not even glancing back over his shoulder with concern.

Somewhat irritated by his inability to provoke paralyzing fear, even in bums with spoonable brains, Jewel watched until the wino was fifty feet down the alley. He’d seen a movie once where it turned out even Comanches wouldn’t tweak the noses of unknown fates by spearing outright crazies. He got the point of it, now, and it didn’t have anything at all to do with having sung too many old Baptist hymns.

Jewel moved forward and began to hover on the edge of the sidewalk. The masquerade of being an aimless bum he only occasionally remembered. His eyes searched every passing car and he tensed up at
the sight of every large black man who was better dressed than he was. He should’ve asked more questions, he saw that now.
He’s a big buck who dresses nice
. A multitude of victims filled the sidewalks. Show me a big buck who
don’t
dress nice, hunh? If I see one I’ll shoot him, ’cause he’s gotta be in with the laws.

The minutes crawled by like daddy time had been kneecapped. The clock in Shevlin’s window now read nine after five.

Jewel began to pace. He kept looking back to the second trash can where just a sliver of the stock showed above the garbage. Maybe two times a year the sucker’s late, and this had to be one of them. A horrible thought struck Jewel: maybe he got a ride, maybe the maroon LTD got a flat and he got a ride and I won’t have no way of knowin’ him. Or maybe he’d fix it himself. Maybe he’s the kind of sensible nigger who’d put his hundred-dollar shoes on the floorboards and his coat on the front seat and bend down to fix the flat himself, barefoot.

Jesus.

And Cuz and the Frog might not understand the situation and leave or something.

An argument began to echo down the narrow-bricked, litter-decorated alley. Jewel turned around and saw the wino of his acquaintance being the reluctant dancer in a three-person variation of the Seventh Street Waltz. Slurred curses dribbled through the air, and the wino curled over his bottle while two erect hoofers took turns kicking his back.

What a bunch of noisy bums, Jewel thought. How can people live that way?

One of the team-oriented bums said something to the prone, stingy brother of the grape. It had to do with sharing, just like the rest of us, just like last night when I had the good day.

“Pint!” the wino screamed as he curled more tightly around his gallon of red. “Pints are silly!”

The chastening two-step began again and for the briefest of seconds Jewel thought about going down there and putting a stop to it. But it’s just their ways, he thought, and anyway they’ll end up slobberin’ all
over each other with dumb smiles on their faces once he’s had enough boots to the spine. Besides, this is America—that means you can get however much you can grab, but keepin’ it’s your own damn problem.

So accustomed to disappointment did Jewel’s eye for color become that when the maroon LTD passed in front of him he did not recognize it until the car was halfway down the block. He jerked around and looked at the trash can, then stepped out onto the sidewalk to watch the car park.

The car pulled to the curb on the theater side of the street, about fifty parking spaces down, nearly half a block away.

The driver’s door didn’t open.

Jewel checked the clock and saw that he was nearly twenty minutes late, and still Crane had not emerged from the long-anticipated maroon background.

What’s he doin’ in there, anyway?

Jewel’s foot nudged the empty Falstaff bottle, then he looked down and kicked at it. A glancing blow pushed the brown-bagged bottle onto its side where it pinwheeled, then came to rest in a divot in the asphalt.

When he looked up his stomach flopped like a prizewinning bass, and his hands felt weak. Teejay Crane was on the sidewalk, limping right into Jewel’s showdown midnight.

Jewel scooted to the trash can, second one in, and lifted his crime partner, then flicked the safety off. He felt as though he were floating back to the sidewalk. He leaned against the wall of the theater, using his body to shield the shotgun.

When Crane was twenty car lengths away a dark-skinned woman in blue sneakers and a shawl with leopard spots on it said something to him and he stopped.

He couldn’t hear what they said, but Jewel saw that what he’d been told was true. Crane was
big
, and dressed real nice, with a red velvet pimp jacket on that looked like it would’ve took a three-day convention of railroad men to pay for. Fuckin’ pimps.

Crane kept smiling at the woman and saying things that caused both their torsos to shudder and their mouths to stretch.

Come on, man, Jewel thought as he tapped the sawed-off against the back of his leg. Give her the brush, huh? She ain’t so such a much.

Crane did not move, but stood there working on the feline-clad woman as if he wanted election and she were a crowd. His hands went up, then out, and sometimes they patted her on the shoulder. Her leopard leaped as she squealed happily, her knees buckling, then springing her back to full height.

Time was changing things. Jewel didn’t know how long Cuz and the Frog would wait but quittin’ time was long overdue. He thought about going down the sidewalk and taking Crane off right there. He knew that it was strictly uh-uh to do that, but circumstances weren’t dovetailing with his plans.

He continued to watch, and wait, then a trembling urge for the spectacular propelled him onto the sidewalk toward Crane. He swaggered straight down the middle of the sidewalk, being cagey with the shotgun at first, then, surrendering to the flamboyance that he had long coveted, he raised it in his right hand and began to point it as if it were a pistol.

Loafers became ambulant, even speedy, as Jewel approached, and an army of snazzily dressed strangers got out of his path. Several gasped and invoked the deity, while a shrewd etiquette caused others to look away.

When Jewel had closed to within a Cadillac of Crane, the woman put her hand to her mouth and stutter-stepped backward.

“Oh, Mr. Crane,” she said. “What’s this?”

The barrel of the shotgun, shortened to provide a wider shot pattern and nastier look, was trained on the slightly gray head of Teejay Crane.

Crane followed the woman backward, as if the shotgun were aimed at him by accident and if he moved it would sight on something else. But when he moved the muzzle followed, and suddenly his heavy shoulders slumped. He looked at his feet and raised his hands as though the brilliant whiteness of his palms would save him.

“I ain’t even surprised,” Crane said dully. “I guess I knew it.”

When Jewel stepped forward Crane decided to pop-quiz fate, and tried to limp away more cunningly than buckshot could follow, but when he made his first zig he was ripped high in the shoulder by the opening blast. He crumpled in a spin, once more facing Jewel.

Jewel had not really heard the shot, but he’d sort of felt it jangling up his arm. He pumped another shell into the chamber. There was blood on the sidewalk, and a little fountain of it sprayed from Crane. People disappeared from the street. He looked down at Crane, whose eyes had narrowed, his lips tightening with disappointment, as if some small thing had displeased him.

With the next shot Jewel turned the man’s forehead inside out. He quickly whirled in a tight-pivoting circle.

“I ain’t kiddin’!” he shrieked. He could hear his voice, the echo of it seeming to linger. Or maybe he had repeated his cry.

With the muzzle pointed down he started toward the corner of Benton Street, but several men began to move in a storefront there and one of them held his hands inside his jacket.

“No, you don’t,” Jewel said, backing up. “I can’t believe that.”

He looked up the street and down, then spun once more, dropped the shotgun, and started to run back the way he’d come. At first it was a calculated jog, his path clear as his dreams, but then he overshot the alley. He wanted to turn around because that alley was the only other way to the escape car. But people were already standing up from between parked cars and someone shouted encouragement for him to be killed.

Then he started running with nothing held back, entering blocks he’d never seen before. Blocks full of people who he was certain would not like him even if they’d known him from the cradle.

Jewel’s brain began to ricochet off vague sayings and childish knowledge.

Some Indians can run a hundred miles a day. In the desert, with meat hung from their belts.

The new sidewalks of people did not part for him and he shoved his way through without articulate comment. He was lost, and running
was becoming harder. His breathing was ragged and his feet did not land where he aimed them. His legs felt full of rips.

A man can outrun a horse for the first forty yards. That’s proven. The first forty yards belong to the man, but what about after that? Please! What about it?

Oh, please?

8

P
ETE
L
EDOUX
, a man with a vast experience of ugliness, sat behind the steering wheel of a yellow VW bug and watched people pour toward Seventh Street like a fistful of BBs down a funnel. He knew that that meant it had happened, but enough time had passed that fright had eased and curiosity taken over. Sirens already sounded their luring wail.

Ledoux turned to Duncan Cobb who sat in the back seat.

“Keep the piece hidden,” he said. “Something fucked up.”

The pressures of the day were reflected by the bellicose sag of Duncan’s pale, fleshy face.

“That would be Jewel,” he said of his cousin. “If it’s fucked up, it must be Jewel.”

“He might be the one who fucked up, but we’re the ones with a problem.”

Ledoux started the car, grimacing at the low-rent rattle of the engine.

“Couldn’t you’ve gotten anything else?” he asked as he pulled into traffic. “I mean, really.”

“You wanted something that wouldn’t be too hot,” Duncan said. “The owner of this car is on vacation for five days.”

“How can you know that?”

“ ’Cause he’s a friend of mine.”

“You stole it from your friend?”

“Hey, it’s safe, Pete. It’s safe, and safe is what you wanted.”

“Okay,” Ledoux said with a shrug. “But I
never
go on vacation,
buddy
.”

The traffic on Benton Street was slow and civilized until it got to Seventh Street, but there many drivers stared at the fattening crowd, then pulled to the curb when the fear that they were missing a gruesome event of historical importance became too strong.

The yellow bug made a U-turn at Seventh, then cruised back down Benton.

“He ain’t goin’ to make it,” Ledoux said. “Would he shoot it out, do you think? Or lay down and wait to be popped?”

“Maybe Crane got
him
first.” Duncan began to rub at his thick neck, then exercised his head until his neck crackled. “I don’t know what he’d do. How could I know? If he ran, he doesn’t know his way around. If he runs he’ll get lost.”

“He gets caught, we’re the ones who’re lost. We got to find the dumb peckerwood.”

“We’ll find him.”

After a meaningful glance over his shoulder, Ledoux said, “We better. He was your gimmick, mon ami.”

“You don’t need to tell me that, man.”

“I just want to keep it straight. I got a good head for rememberin’ who fucked up.”

“That’s called survival.”

“You ain’t tellin’ me a thing, mon ami.”

They cruised the neighborhood, and squeezed down alleys, searching for Jewel with no luck. Ledoux called it off, and decided to go on with things.

He drove through town, passing the thin, hungry-looking houses, the vulgarly named taverns, and weed-filled lots that were the south side’s counterpart to the north side’s Frogtown. It had not always been wise for Frogtowners to sightsee in this district, but over the years Ledoux had managed to learn his way around in it. As in all of the old parts of town, the river was the dominant feature here, and if you kept it in sight you could not become seriously doubtful of your whereabouts.