The Thicket (12 page)

As they got within earshot, Eustace said, “Is that your sister?”

“If I am,” Jimmie Sue said, “then we are going to be in deep trouble with the law and a whole bunch of preachers.”

“She’s not,” I said. “She told me where Fatty is.”

“So he’s the one that come here,” Eustace said.

We were all standing in front of the livery now, grouped up. “How did you come by her and that information?” Shorty asked.

“We met at the whorehouse,” Jimmie Sue said, watching Hog as she talked. “He’s helping me run away.”

“I suppose you work there,” Shorty said.

“I have decided to remove myself from the work,” she said. “It has long hours, can be smelly, and is short on any kind of benefits, outside of an indoor toilet and electric lights.” She stared at Shorty. “Aren’t you precious?”

“You think so?” Shorty said. “If you believe that, maybe you could return yourself to your previous business for five minutes up in the hayloft. I have four bits.”

“No,” Jimmie Sue said, running her arm through mine. “I’ve completely got myself out of that business. I’ve gone off here with Red. He’s my knight in shining armor.”

“Cousin,” Eustace said to me, “I’m guessing I’m short that four bits, and she’s what got your armor polished.”

“Afraid so,” I said.

“No—you did what I told you to do, and I’m glad you did it.”

“He’s glad, too,” Jimmie Sue said. “Aren’t you, hon?”

I nodded.

“I used to fuck his grandfather,” she said.

I winced, and Shorty laughed a deep chuckle that made my pride hurt.

“Is not your grandfather the one who was a preacher?”

“Don’t go and try and make him feel bad,” Jimmie Sue said. “Like I was telling him, Jesus forgives, and he’s bound to understand a fella has to get his pipes cleaned from time to time.”

“I am in total agreement,” Shorty said.

“Does that hog bite?” Jimmie Sue asked, as Hog had always been her main point of interest.

“Yes ma’am,” Eustace said. “And really hard. He wanted to, he could tear your leg off, though he’d have to work on it a bit and pull some.”

“You ought to comb that muddy mess out of his hair,” she said.

“I don’t think he’d like that,” Eustace said.

“All right, then,” Shorty said. “Where is this Fatty bastard?”

I told him.

Eustace put the sack on the ground and leaned the four-gauge against the side of the livery. About that time the liveryman came out wearing overalls and no shirt. His work boots had a coating of horse manure and hay on the bottom so thick it stuck out on the sides and at the toes and heel. He was fat and bald and squinted behind some thick glasses. One lens was cracked, and the earpieces had string tied to the ends so that the glasses were bound to his head. He was carrying a horseshoe hammer.

“I thought I heard you two,” he said to Eustace and Shorty. “Are these friends of yours?” said the liveryman, and then his eyes nestled on Hog. “What’s that hog doing there?”

“We include the hog in our organization, such as it is,” Shorty said. “Have you met our secretary?” He motioned at Jimmie Sue. “What is your name?”

She said it.

“The hog is our troubleshooter,” Shorty said.

“Say he is?” the liveryman said. “Does he bite?”

“A common question,” said Shorty. “And the answer is yes, he does.”

“Hard,” said Eustace.

The liveryman lifted the hammer slightly.

“Do not appear threatening,” said Shorty. “Hog has a hair-trigger temper.”

I glanced at Hog. He didn’t seem all that angry to me. He seemed distracted by a fly on his nose.

Before the liveryman could process this information about Hog, Jimmie Sue looked at me, said, “Shorty talks funny. Is that because he’s a midget?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t think that comes with being a midget.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Shorty said. “I am standing right here. And let me assure you there are midgets who talk in the same backwoods, ignorant manner that you do, but I am not one of them.”

“You know a lot of midgets?” she said.

“None currently,” Shorty said.

“Then you don’t know,” she said. “They may all talk like assholes.”

“I knew several in the past,” Shorty said. “Come to think of, some of them did talk like assholes.”

“Who cares?” Eustace said.

“Well, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” said the liveryman, “any of you, but your horses are all fed and watered. Did you find your friend?”

“No,” Shorty said. “Not yet. We are still looking for him.”

“Well, he was the only fat guy came in on a horse with a nicked shoe, and I’ve fixed that for him. You tell him that, you see him.”

“Sure,” Shorty said.

“And the borrowed horse?” I said, looking directly at Shorty.

Eustace and Shorty looked askance.

“Borrowed horse?” the liveryman said.

“The spare horse,” I said, correcting myself. “Sorry. Slip of the tongue.”

“I bought him,” said the liveryman.

“That’s how I got this bag of goods,” Eustace said. “And there’s money left over.”

“I give a fair price when it’s a fair horse,” said the liveryman. He seemed proud of himself. Like a rooster that’s just dismounted a hen.

“I assure you,” said Shorty, “that if anyone should ask, or if it should come up, we will make sure you are known for just that virtue.”

“Why, thank you, midget,” said the liveryman, and I saw one of Shorty’s eyes twitch.

He calmed himself, though, said to the liveryman, “I would like to ask that you maintain our horses awhile longer, a service we will pay for, of course.”

“Of course you will,” said the liveryman.

“We have a bit of business to attend to,” said Shorty. “Something that we thought might arise and now has.”

“You take care of your business,” said the liveryman. “Come back and get them when you’re ready. You got the money, I got your horses. By the way, you want to sell that hog? He would hang comfortably in my smokehouse.”

“Anything dead hangs comfortably,” Shorty said. “But he is not for sale, as he is not owned.”

“Then he’s a free agent, so to speak,” said the liveryman.

“Free, but under our protection, as we are under his,” said Shorty.

“You’re an odd congregation,” said the liveryman.

“I suppose it is all in perspective,” said Shorty. “We will return for our horses.”

The liveryman went back inside, and we walked off down the street in the direction of the whorehouse.

Shorty said, “We thought we might have to leave and find the old trail if you didn’t come across your man. But now that you have, we can find him, have a nice talk, and have some better idea where we are going.”

We came to the whorehouse and stopped in the street and looked at it.

“Where in there is he?” Eustace said.

I explained as best I could where the room was, and what the boots looked like that identified him.

“He’s in there with Katy,” Jimmie Sue said. “She’s got a little gun she keeps just under the bed, on a little stool there. So if you’re going inside you might want to keep that in mind. And you might want to keep Steve in mind, too. He’s near the door with a .410.”

“I think our best course of action would be to wait him out,” Shorty said. He turned and looked across the street at the old abandoned house there. “We can go there and wait, and when he comes out, we can take him.”

“What about me?” Jimmie Sue said.

“What about you?” Shorty said. “When we get this done, you go back to either whoring or moving along. You are not our concern.”

“He finds out I told where he was, he’ll kill me,” Jimmie Sue said. “Either him or his cousin Katy. She’s mean as a snake. Fact is, I’m taking a chance standing here. Someone in there will see me, and then I’m in for it. Pretty soon, they’re going to figure out I’m gone, and Steve don’t like his whores taking a mind of their own.”

“That still is not our concern,” Shorty said.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “I promised her protection.”

“She is a whore,” Shorty said. “She was merely looking for a way out of a mess she was in, and you were it. Just because you lowered your rope in her well does not make you her protector.”

Jimmie Sue let go of my arm, which she had continued to clutch on our walk to the whorehouse.

“I’ll slap your face,” Jimmie Sue said to Shorty. “Even if I have to dig a hole to stand in so I don’t have to bend over.”

“Oh, that is clever,” Shorty said. “You try and slap my face, you will wake up with your arm up your nose. I can promise you that.”

“I said I’d help her, and I plan to do just that,” I said. “And you aren’t going to slap anyone.”

Shorty turned his head and looked at me. Eustace laid his hand on Shorty’s shoulder, said, “You asked me if I thought he had sand, and I said he did. You said he didn’t. What now, Shorty?”

“I suppose there is a trace of sand in him,” Shorty said. “But there may be just enough there to cover him in a grave.”

“Well, it’s all right for the moment,” Eustace said. “Let my cousin Jack have his girl. She ain’t in the way right now.”

“She will be,” Shorty said. “Come on, we do not need to be seen staring at the whorehouse anyway. Let us move along.”

“Yeah,” Eustace said. “They’re gonna wonder what a big nigger, a midget, a kid, a whore, and a nasty hog are considering out here.”

As Eustace and Shorty went away, Jimmie Sue said, “Midgets are not very friendly.”

“I don’t know if that goes all around, or just with this midget,” I said. “But my personal experience is the same as yours.”

We went across the street to the abandoned house. It was without doors or glass in the windows, and the floorboards had rotted. The roof had holes in it, and rain had come inside. Oddly, there was a table and chairs and a stained settee still inside, and we perched on those. There was a back room with a door, but we didn’t go in there.

“What about that dead boy?” I said.

“We left a very clear note with details where his body might be found, and we slipped it under the door of the sheriff’s office,” Shorty said.

I wasn’t so sure that was true, and my look told them that. Eustace said, “That’s truth, boy. That’s what we did. Shorty wrote it, and I slipped it under the crack of the door, stealthy as an Indian.”

It still sounded suspicious.

“I’m hungry,” Jimmie Sue said. “I had a long night and busy morning. I could use something to eat.”

“We did not make our menu out with you in mind,” Shorty said.

“Oh, hell, Shorty,” Eustace said. “Quit being such a jackass. We got plenty, and we need something, one way or the other, we’ll get more.”

Shorty hesitated.

“You got what you got in that bag from selling what Eustace calls a borrowed horse,” I said. “It’s not like it’s out of your personal poke.”

“I was the one that borrowed the horse,” Eustace said.

“You sold a borrowed horse?” Jimmie Sue said.

I looked at her, and then she got it, said, “Oh. I see.”

Shorty gave in. When we finished eating some tinned meat, we had a pull on a canteen from the tow sack, and then we sat and waited. Me and Jimmie Sue and Eustace sat in chairs at the rickety table, Shorty on the settee. Jimmie Sue said she had some jokes, and she told two, but nobody got them and nobody laughed. Shorty said, “You only got part of the joke, dear. They are supposed to have a punch line.”

“It was funny when I heard it,” she said. “And maybe there was more to it. I thought I was a good joke teller.”

“I am going to say you are not,” Shorty said.

“I didn’t know it would matter that much,” she said. “I was trying to help pass the time.”

“Perhaps,” Shorty said. “But what you have done is tie an anvil to the feet of time, causing it to drag itself about in circles.”

The joke telling stopped. Jimmie Sue pouted for a while, but not for long. She seemed to be too positive for a lot of ill feelings for herself or anyone else. She rubbed my knee while we sat, and I had to move her hand because it got me thinking about something besides Fatty. She smiled at me, but finally gave it up. I couldn’t decide if she felt real affection for me or was playing a ruse to stay clear of the whorehouse. Right then, I didn’t care. I liked being with her, even if it was sitting in chairs in an old rotten house, and even if my insides were boiling over from all this waiting and my fear for my sister’s condition kept pushing at my every thought.

So we sat there, intently watching across the street through the missing front door, waiting on Fatty. Except Shorty. Shorty wasn’t watching anything. He had stretched out on the settee and gone to sleep, snoring gently.

“It might be a good idea to smother that little shit in his sleep,” Jimmie Sue said.

“You just got to get to know him for a while,” Eustace said. “Then you’ll really hate him.”

Eustace and I laughed. Jimmie Sue smiled, let her breath out, said, “Steve is coming out.”

We all leaned forward to see the pimp come out without his shotgun, spit off the side of the porch, stretch, and go back inside.

“Does he do that often?” Eustace asked. “Come outside like that?”

“I have no idea,” Jimmie Sue said. “Usually I have business other than when Steve is going to spit or stretch or take a leak.”

“All right,” Eustace said. “I was just trying to time him.”

“No help here,” Jimmie Sue said.

Eustace nestled back in the chair, and with a sound like a rifle shot, the chair collapsed out from under him, landing his big butt on the floor.

Shorty was startled awake. He came up with the revolver in his fist. When he realized what had happened, he burst out laughing, and so did the rest of us, even Eustace, when he got over being embarrassed.

As Eustace was getting up, Jimmie Sue said, “There he is. That’s Fatty.”

We all looked. Shorty stood up on the settee to look out one of the windows.

It was him, all right. He was on the porch, and there was a woman with her arm around him, giving him a kiss on the cheek. She was kind of plump, but not fat, and she had hair dark as midnight. I suppose if she was tubbed down in hot water and there was plenty of soap used, you might say she was attractive if there was no one around to compare her to and it was a little dark.