The Deader the Better (29 page)

The deputy went postal. He began to shake. For a brief moment, I
thought he was going to blow Floyd’s head off. Instead, he drew
back the butt of the riot gun, his eyes ablaze, aiming to bash
Floyd’s brains in, but by then the sheriff had covered the distance
between them and grabbed him by the wrist.

“That’s enough,” he said.

“Do you…did you see…” Russell sputtered. He tried to kick
Floyd, but Hand held him off.

“We’ll add your shirt to the charges.”

Mickey had stopped break dancing and now rocked rhythmically on
his spine, breathing heavily through his mouth. Dexter knelt by his
brother’s side. He looked up at me. “Oooo on o a itch,” he
mumbled.

“You really ought to consider speech therapy,” I said. “You
sound like Scooby Doo on quaaludes.” Drugs and cartoons. I figured
he’d get it.

Mickey was panting like a spaniel and kneading his groin with both
hands. Dexter reached out and, in a touching display of sibling
support, patted his brother’s arm.

“Why doncha kiss it and make it better,” I suggested. He
sprang to his feet and started for me. I heard the sheriff shout,
“Dexter,” and begin moving our way. Slowly. At an amble. He
figured to let Dexter have at me for a few minutes before he
intervened. As for me…I figured I could whip a cretin like Dexter
with or without hands. I waited until Dexter was six feet away and
then threw myself back along the trunk of the car, pulled my knees to
my chin and planted both feet in the middle of his chest. The impact
sent him staggering backward, sucking for breath. He fell over his
brother and landed on his back in a puddle, next to a bloated bag of
Doritos and a box of Wheat Thins that bobbed on the brown water like
barges. Mickey caressed himself and whimpered. Dexter sucked air in
ragged gasps. Tough day all around for the Davis twins. From the
other side of the parking lot a small voice sounded. “Those aren’t
the ones, Sheriff Hand.” It was Samantha.

“It’s the other guys.”

“You just stay out of the way, now, and let us handle this.”

She pointed to Dexter and Chainman. “It was those moron Davis
brothers and those others. They started it. Ask anybody. They almost
ran me over.”

An elderly woman in a bright purple ski jacket stepped out from
between some cars.

“The girl is right,” she said. “These fellas were just
defending themselves. They very nearly ran that young woman down.”
She waved a hand. “Made all this mess.”

“S’true,” slurred an old geezer in a red plaid hat with
earflaps. They came out of the woodwork to support our side of the
story, probably ten people in all, but Hand didn’t give a shit. He
began to drag me across the lot by my handcuffed hands. In the
distance a siren wailed.

“Keep back and out the way, now,” he said.

“But they didn’t do anything,” Samantha insisted.

“Dey bufted my teef,” Monk gargled.

“We’ll sort this out down at the station,” Hand said.

“They got what was comin’ to ’em,” said the woman in
purple. She pointed over at Dexter and Mickey. “Those two Davis
boys ain’t got the sense God gave a gopher. You know that well as I
do, Mr. Hand.”

Hand didn’t like it. He had the beginnings of an insurrection on
his hands. “Let ’em go,” somebody hollered.

“Have another doughnut,” a shrill voice suggested. Hand turned
to Russell. “Put him in the car,” he said, and began dragging me
along behind him. I played to the crowd.

“Dey bufted my teef.” Monk again.

I knew the voice right away. “Why aren’t you listening to
these people?” she said. Hand stiffened and stopped yanking at me.
He took a deep breath and turned us both around. Ramona Haynes stood
with her hands on her hips.

“What’s your problem?” she demanded. “These folks here are
telling you what happened. Open your ears.” Her cheeks and chin
were bright red.

Hand seemed to choose his words carefully. “You witnessed it,
did you, Miss Haynes? Seen it all. Beginning to end.”

“From beginning to end,” she said. She pointed to her left,
where her truck blocked the end of the aisle, motor running, door
open. He let go of the cuffs. Put his hands on his hips and looked
around at the crowd.

“Do you want us to sign something or what?” Ramona asked.

Hand ignored her. Instead, addressing the crowd: “I don’t know
whether you folks noticed or not, but several of your fellow citizens
have been seriously injured here.”

As if to punctuate the point, a red and white aid car with a fire
department logo slid to a stop behind Monk’s truck.

“Dey bufted my teef.” Right on cue.

“They got what was comin’ to ’em,” the old woman repeated.

“That may be well and good, Mrs. Franklin, but don’t none of
that bears on the assault on Deputy Russell.”

“Only assaulting I seen was you on them,” said Earflaps.

“Dinna have no cause to be wavin’ a scattergun around.”

“Why dontcha shoot ’em with your goddamn radar gun, Sheriff?”
somebody yelled from behind me. The line got laughs and scattered
applause.

Ramona Haynes stepped over next to the old woman.

“Tell you what, Sheriff, we’ll all forget about your use of
excessive force, and you forget about a little spit.”

A trio of EMTs started in on the wounded. To my right several
store employees were picking our groceries from the mud and water.

Hand removed his hat and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He wagged
a finger at his deputy. “Turn him loose,” he said.

“And check that permit he says he got.”

For a second, I thought Deputy Russell was going to refuse. His
face was the color of Boris’s beets. His hand shook slightly as he
pulled the key out of his watch pocket.

“Turn around,” he said. Sounded like he was being strangled.

Floyd obliged.

“You, too,” Hand said to me. I turned and offered my manacled
wrists for liberation. He grabbed the chain and jerked me close.
Whispered in my ear. “I were you, I’d make sure I was somewhere
far away. There’s more where these old boys came from. Do you hear
me?”

I did horrified. “Are you threatening me?” I asked in a stage
whisper.

He did incredulous. “Threat? Heh, heh. What are you talkin’
about?”

I rubbed my wrists. Something about being restrained always makes
me feel dirty and less human. As if the way the metal bruises and
disregards my flesh somehow carries over into the realm of the spirit
and injures me there as well. I turned my back so he couldn’t watch
as I tried to massage away the feeling. I worked at calming my
breathing, counting my breaths until my senses began to widen and I
could hear voices and the rush of tires. The booming of rap on a
stereo. And then the shrill
kaak
of a gull. I looked up to a
pair of herring gulls gliding above our heads, air surfers, swooping
low toward the litter, gliding close enough for me to make out the
black and white polka-dot tails and the perfect red circles
decorating the sides of their bills. Dexter and Mickey were on their
feet, both bent at the waist, looking a little green but otherwise
seemingly intact. Chainman shuffled over to their sides. They formed
a tight whispering knot as they watched Monk and his remaining teef
get wheeled off on a gurney, along with redneck number two, who
walked himself to the aid car with his face pressed into a towel. The
deputy got out of the squad car. “Permit’s valid,” he
announced.

The sheriff tilted his head. With a childish show of disgust,
Bobby dragged his heels over to Floyd and returned both the permit
and the automatic, both of which quickly disappeared into Floyd’s
coat. Floyd reached into his pants and pulled out a roll of bills.
Opened it up. Took out a couple of singles and held them out.

“For your dry cleaning there, sport.”

The kid’s eyes bulged. He slapped the bills to the ground,
turned and strode to the far side of the patrol car, stood there with
his arms folded, looking out toward the highway. A cough. People
began to move off. Cars started. The Davis brothers and redneck
number one left in Monk’s truck. Watching Mickey and Dexter
struggle up onto the seat brightened my spirits considerably.

I crossed the lot to Samantha. Gave her my thanks and twenty bucks
that I eventually had to stick in her apron pocket. Next thing I
knew, the store manager was at my elbow saying they felt terrible
about what happened and were going to replace our whole order for us.
I started to protest, but he didn’t want to hear about it. When I
turned back looking for Floyd, Ramona Haynes was standing about three
feet from me.

“See,” she said. “I told you. You’re just too dangerous to
be at large in this town without supervision.”

Something adolescent in me wanted to ask her if she was
volunteering, but I had an unexpected flash of lucidity and said,
“Thanks for the testimonial,” instead.

“Seems like every time I run into you it’s some kind of
disaster.”

“Chaos is my medium.”

Floyd appeared at my elbow. “Store says they’re going to
replace our stuff,” he said.

“I know.”

“Back home they’d drop a littering charge on you.”

“That’s the beauty of small-town life,” Ramona said.

“And here I was thinking it was you,” said Floyd.

The smile she gave him reminded me of that line from Voltaire when
he was asked what he thought of the so-called Enlightenment and he’d
answered, “I used to be disgusted, now I’m just amused.”

“Thank you…Mr…”

“Floyd,” he said with an enigmatic smile of his own. Sheriff
Hand’s cruiser splashed by, both cops throwing their hardest looks
our way. Floyd waved bye-bye. “Ta-ta,”

he hollered. He took a step backward. “Nice to meet you,”

he said to Ramona and then looked at me and jerked his thumb over
his shoulder. “I’ll see to the provisions there, boss,” he
said. We watched as he skirted a cavernous puddle, hopped another and
disappeared inside.

“Interesting guy,” she said.

“He’d be glad you thought so.”

“Does he always carry a gun?”

“Even when he sleeps.”

She searched my eyes with that back-and-forth, up-anddown thing
women do.

“You’re serious.”

“Absolutely.”

“Is Floyd his first or his last name?”

I shook my head. “Not a clue.”

“He’s your friend and you don’t know his whole name?”

I shrugged. I’d never thought to ask. Silly me.

“I’ve heard that men friends don’t talk, but…”

“Who said he was my friend?”

“What is he, then?”

Good question. “My bodyguard, I guess.”

“
Pfui
,” she scoffed. “You need a bodyguard like this
town needs more out-of-work idiots with too much time on their
hands.”

“I’m a little banged up.” I lifted the Yankees cap from the
front of my head.

She ooohed and aaahed and gently touched my stitches with the tips
of her fingers. “That’s right. You were in that accident over on
West River.”

“Is that what you heard? That it was an accident?”

She said it was. I don’t know why I was surprised, but the
notion that people had tried to kill me and nothing official was
being done about it offended the hell out of me. Must be that public
trust hang-up of mine again.

“Did anybody ever tell you your chin gets red when you’re
pissed off?”

“My ex,” she said. Her lips wanted to bend into a smile, but
she wouldn’t let them. “According to Donald it also happens
during…” She shot me a coy look. “At other times,”

she finished. I went shopping for a snappy rejoinder, but the
sudden redistribution of my blood supply seemed to have left my
cranial cupboards bare.

She began to back up. “Better get my rig out of the way,”

she said. “You think you can manage to stay out of trouble
without me?”

“Probably not,” I said.

She stopped. “Every time I see you I feel like I owe you an
apology for the way those idiots act.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“You know what I mean.”

I made the sign of the cross. “
Domini domini
. You’re
now officially excused from being the goodwill ambassador for those
guys.”

She put her hand to her throat. “Well, since it’s official, I
guess I have no choice but to lay my burden down, do I?”

she joked.

“None.”

“Gotta go. ’Bye.”

“See ya,” I said. “Thanks again.”

Halfway to the truck she turned back my way. “You gonna be
around for a while?” she asked.

“Probably,” I said.

“As my last ambassadorial duty, why don’t you let me make you
dinner?”

“I’d like to,” I hedged, “but I’m not sure of my
schedule yet. You know, maybe if…” I felt like I was talking with
rented lips.

“If you change your mind, I’m in the book,” she said with a
smile.

Samantha crossed between us, pushing a cart full of groceries.

“Did I hear that correctly?” Floyd was by my side.

“What?”

“Did she just invite you to dinner at her place and you turned
her down?”

Ramona Haynes rolled down the window and waved goodbye and then
went roaring off down the road. I listened as the sound faded.

“Yeah,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. He
reached up and picked the cap carefully from my head.

“They X-ray your head while they had you in there?” I snatched
the cap and put it back on.

I started toward the car, where Samantha waited patiently for one
of us to unlock the trunk. “Cut it out,” I growled.

“Really, man, I’m serious. I’m concerned here.”

Although I never would have admitted it to Floyd, I knew exactly
what he meant. Hell, I was a little concerned myself.

THE STROLL WAS BORIS’S IDEA. HE’D COME ROLLING in at about
three. Seems the deadly duo had not only come up empty again, but had
been so shamed by their failure to produce results that they were
forced to get drunker than usual. According to Boris, their last stop
had ended when they were escorted out the door by a large and rather
unfriendly looking African-American bartender, who’d waved them
about like dolls before depositing them in a pile on the sidewalk.
Time to go home, he’d figured. We’d marched them by the elbows
down to their cabin and left them happily snoring their little hearts
out. “How far is dee ocean?” he asked me.