The Marrowbone Marble Company (34 page)

Stretch said, “My daddy's in prison and my brother broke parole. I just beat a assault rap against Shorty Maynard.”

“Enough said.” Erm liked the young man. He looked at Harold.

“This isn't law school.” He looked at Willy. “And it isn't the racetrack. This is something you don't come back from.”

They said they understood. He led them to the front pews.

Erm sat down on the risers in front of the men. He was tired. This would be his last hurrah. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I was just telling the young ones that they were looking at a dead man.” He took off his shoes and rubbed his feet. “But there are some things in this shit life I'm good at, times when I know what to do.” He looked Ledford in the eye. “This is one of those times.”

“I've got to get back to the hospital,” Ledford said. The whiskey had both settled and frightened him. He couldn't look in Willy's direction, and he could feel Don Staples through the church wall.

Erm nodded. “I'll put this thing together quick if you fellas will give me a hand.”

Mack was uneasy. He wished Harold had never come back to Marrowbone.

“Listen,” Erm said. He sensed he was losing them. “Some men you can put in the ground and nobody notices. I've known those men, and I'm one of em.” He was free to tell the truth about killing. His own coming end had made it that way. “Another kind of men,” he went on, “you can't just make them disappear and expect your life to go on.” He motioned toward Charlie down the aisle. “You have to plan,” he said. “You have to know what you're doing.”

Ledford knew that Erm was right.

They listened to him talk. Then Erm asked them questions. None could understand his reasons.

“Who knows about cars?” he asked.

Mack and Stretch raised their hands. “Who knows someone in Charlie's pocket, maybe Shorty Maynard's too?”

Ledford raised his hand. “Good,” Erm said. “Let's get down to brass tacks.”

 

T
HE GREEN BIRD
respirator clapped and hissed. It had sung Rachel to sleep in her chair again. Her hand was wrapped tight around Orb's, her arm accustomed to the discomfort of extension. She'd not miss the squeeze she knew was coming.

It was dark in the hospital room. One tube light above Orb's head. Moonlight through windowblinds was scarce. Mary sat in the corner chair. She'd bought her mother a new pair of size-six knitting needles and was waiting for her to wake up. The needles were wood, not bone, but Wimpy had made a case for them that Rachel would surely like. It was a carved rosewood fish, its head the screw-off cap. Mary thumbed the sanded gills, ran her fingers over the tiny scales. She listened to the respirator. She would not look up from her lap. She would not look at Orb anymore.

Ledford came through the door. He walked to the bed and put his hand on Orb's forehead. There was heat and there was swelling, and though a machine did the boy's breathing, Ledford bent to him anyway, and he put his head to Orb's nose and listened. “That's a boy,” he whispered. He kissed him where the wrap revealed tiny black hairs, sprouting new. They'd shorn his whole head for the surgery. “I love you Orb,” Ledford whispered.

He straightened and looked at Rachel, who slept sitting up, her mouth open. He whispered that he loved her too, and then he walked over to Mary in the corner and kissed her on the forehead. “I used to sit in the driveway of the house where you were born,” he said. “I used to watch your mother hold you and kiss that little head.” He almost smiled, and then he left.

Mary couldn't be sure, but she thought she'd smelled liquor on his breath. She thought she'd seen tears in his eyes. Both were firsts, and she didn't know what to make of her daddy then. She rubbed the wooden fish and hummed “Amazing Grace” and tried not to think at all.

 

A
T A QUARTER
to midnight, on July 20th, in the kitchen of W. D. Ray, Charlie Ball sat in a schoolroom chair with no desktop, a .45 pressed to his temple. Ledford held the gun steady. He watched W.D. read numbers off a scrap of paper. The old man forced his fat fingers into the holes and dialed.

He held the receiver to his head, and after a while, he hung it up. “No answer at the second one neither,” he said.

“Well, then dial the third number,” Ledford said.

“The emergency one?”

“I'd say this qualifies,” Ledford said. “Wouldn't you Charlie?”

Erm leaned against the icebox and smoked.

Charlie kept his mouth shut. He couldn't figure what they were up to. They'd had him for a week. At first, he was tied in the crib barn next to his car, taped, fed water and bread twice a day from the hands of the Bonecutter brothers. But after four days, they'd loosed the knots and peeled off the tape. Erm had walked him at gunpoint to an empty Marrowbone house. In the bathroom, he'd told Charlie to strip and shower.

“Scrub good,” Erm had said. “Get all that tape residue off.” Someone had laundered Charlie's clothes, and he re-dressed and slept in the empty house under watch of revolving guards. It occurred to him that maybe they wouldn't kill him after all.

On the third ring, there was an answer. “Shorty?” W.D. said. He was wide-eyed, looking from Ledford to Erm.

“Just say what we practiced,” Erm whispered.

It was Noah on the other end. He asked W.D. what he wanted.

“I've got something,” W.D. said. He was talking loud, like a child
might to a tin can phone. “Something big that's goin to get you all off the hook on this hit-and-run thing. But I've got to see Shorty in person. Can't talk about this on the telephone.”

Charlie opened his mouth as if to shout warning.

Ledford stuck his .45 inside.

Charlie pissed himself again.

Erm nodded at W.D., let him know he was doing just fine. “Charlie's here now…yes,” W.D. spoke into the receiver. “No, they've all gone to Charleston for the weekend. Ledford, Mack, all of em. Some other benefit up there at the Capitol for that other killed Kennedy boy.” He nodded. Gave Erm a thumbs-up. “All right. I'll see you soon.” W.D. hung up the telephone.

 

T
EN MILES AWAY
,
in Elmwood, Noah Ball and Shorty Maynard gathered themselves. They shuffled in the dark to find their shoes. Empty Mason jars were everywhere. Canned peaches and green beans and tomatoes polished off. Shorty kicked one over reaching for his gunbelt. Glass shattered. “This better be good,” he said.

The room smelled like a cave. It was a secret room, a bomb shelter Noah had dug out in 1951. Its doorway was hidden behind a bookcase in his basement. The smell of embalming fluid was embedded in its walls. He'd stocked it sufficient with food and water and liquor.

They'd been living inside for two weeks, emerging only to empty piss and shit buckets in the mortuary sink. Their second day inside, they'd listened as the Bonecutter brothers searched the basement, mumbling and scooting equipment across the floor.

Shorty got his gunbelt buckled. “We'll take my car,” he said. “I don't know if that's a good idea.” Noah scratched at his neck stubble. It had grown in every which way. “We could take my—”

“We'll take my car.” Shorty unlatched the shelter door and pulled it open. He pushed hard on the back of the bookcase.

They'd hidden the squad car under a tarp in a locked garage down the street.

In the shadows of the old trees lining Elm Avenue, they ran there.

 

E
RM PATTED
W.D.
on the back. “You were perfect,” he told him. “Now go on upstairs and lock the door behind you. You remember how to turn on the television?” Erm had bought the old man his first set the day before.

“I remember,” W.D. said. He walked up the stairs, greasy yellow cat at his heels.

Erm looked at Ledford and Charlie. “Keep that gun on him,” he said. “I'll be back.” He walked through the living room and out the front door.

From the porch, Erm pointed his flashlight to a wide patch of gravel alongside Knob Drop Road. He pushed the button three times, on and off.

Inside the Packard, Stretch said, “That's it. Let's go.” He sat in the passenger seat. There was a toolbox at his feet, and next to it, an old kerosene blowtorch.

Willy fired the ignition. Before he drove away, he stuck his own flashlight out the driver's window. He aimed it west, up the road toward Marrowbone. He switched it on and off three times.

Harold was at the wheel of the blue Short Bus, tucked by a hedge in an abandoned lot. He signaled back with the headlights.

Erm watched the Packard drive east. He stepped down off the porch and walked to the back of the house, flashlight in hand. He lit up Mack, who was sitting in a broken wrought-iron chair, his toolbox at his feet. “Ten, maybe twenty minutes,” Erm said.

Mack nodded. “Did you get that?” Erm asked loud. “Got it,” Dimple answered. He and Wimpy crouched behind a rhododendron bush.

“Good. You other three come with me.” Erm came back in the house with Herchel, Jerry, and Fury behind him. Each carried a short-barreled shotgun. “Get in position,” Erm told them.

Jerry climbed the staircase and turned a corner. He put his back against the hallway wall and tried to breathe normal. The air stunk of wallpaper glue. He could hear the television from behind a closed door.

Herchel and Fury sat down behind the old couch in the living room. Dust bunnies gave way. The two of them tucked tight and stared at the old cookstove against the wall.

When Erm walked into the kitchen, Ledford stepped away from Charlie Ball. He kept the .45 aimed at his head.

“Charlie,” Erm said. “Look at me.”

Charlie looked at him.

“If you do what I tell you to do, you'll walk out of here alive.”

 

S
HORTY HAD INSISTED
on driving with the headlights off. “No tellin' who's out lookin,” he'd said. He'd gone three times to the pint of bourbon under his seat.

Noah braced his arm against the dash around turns. His feet were planted hard on the floor.

They rounded dead man's curve at twenty miles an hour. Something caught Shorty's eye. When they'd passed, he asked, “You see that?”

“What?”

“I thought I seen something over there. A little orange light.”

“I didn't see anything.” Noah's nerves were shot. He was ready for all this to end.

Shorty came up the straight stretch in blackness. He coasted quiet onto the Rays' gravel drive, one hand on the wheel, the other on his sidearm. He saw Charlie's Impala in the yard. “He's here all right,” Shorty said.

They parked next to the Impala and got out slow. Crickets sang in unison, a deafening call. The porchlight was on.

“W.D.,” Shorty said, his pistol drawn.

The old man stuck his head from an upstairs window, and Shorty aimed at him. W.D. swallowed hard and said, “I'll be down presently. Got a case of fire trots I'm afraid. Charlie's in the kitchen.”

Noah looked at Shorty, who kept his gun drawn and walked slow onto the porch. He looked through the window slats before going in. “Charlie?” he called from the doorway.

“In the kitchen,” Charlie hollered.

They walked through the dark living room. Floorboards whined below their feet. At the kitchen doorway, Shorty raised his gun. He saw Charlie's wingtips and stepped over the threshold. “Why are you sitting like that?” Shorty asked. He holstered his gun.

“Like what?” Charlie stared at the icebox. There was a pencil drawing taped there, and in it, a bearded man in the sky extended his arms wide. Lightning bolts erupted from his hands, and below him, stick-figure people ran about.

“Like a statue,” Shorty said.

Noah gripped the doorjamb and frowned. Something wasn't right with his cousin.

Ledford and Erm stepped from the walk-in pantry with their guns leveled at Shorty Maynard's head. “Keep that pistol holstered,” Erm said.

Noah thought about running but didn't. “Hands up high,” Erm said.

They did as they were told. “Now,” Erm said. He held his .38 in a manner bespeaking seriousness. “Everything is going to be fine. Ledford's going to take your revolver, pat you down, that's it.”

Ledford pulled Shorty's gun from its holster and stepped back. He put his own weapon in his waistband and emptied Shorty's of its rounds, which he dropped in his pants pocket. He returned the gun to its holster and patted both men down. “Just that one,” he said.

“Okay fellas,” Erm called.

In the living room, Fury and Herchel stood from behind the couch. They rested their shotgun barrels on its back. Jerry stepped from the landing and stuck his through the stair rail.

“Step in there and have a seat,” Erm said.

Outside, Mack cut through the sideyard in a quiet crouch. He set his toolbox down by the squad car's front tire. He put his creeper board at the bumper and lay down. There was a small dent in the grille, and Mack thought of Orb. He rolled under, switched on the flashlight tucked in his armpit, and located things. Axle. Fuel line. Brake line.

Ledford and Erm were by the front door. They glanced to the yard once in a while, where the Bonecutter brothers stood guard. None spoke a word until Mack rolled out and nodded.

Charlie, Noah, and Shorty sat in a row on the couch, shotguns at the base of their necks, another one staring from the stairs.

“Here's what we're going to do,” Erm said.

Noah Ball couldn't take it. The silence had gotten him. “Please,” he said. He wore a pathetic look. “I was just in the car. I wanted to go back and check on the boy, but it happened so fast—”

“Shut your mouth,” Ledford said.

Charlie Ball was numb to it all. He sat as he had in the kitchen. Statue straight.

Shorty shook his head in disgust at Noah, who clasped his hands and bowed his head and prayed in a whisper. It was hard to make out, all “dear Gods” and “thank you Lords.”