Black Stump Ridge (22 page)

“Why, I think even a dumb nigger Fed could see he’s in a cave, Billy Ray. Don’t you?”

Icy fingers raced down Peete’s spine. That second voice – Bubba? – sounded familiar but he didn’t know why.

“Why?” Peete croaked, his throat raw.

“Why what?” It was the first voice.

“Here.” Peete’s voice nearly faded. He tried again. “Why…here?”

“Oh.” Bubba nearly giggled. “Ya gotta make y’self clear, boy. You wanna know why yore heah, right?”

Peete nodded and instantly regretted it. White light exploded behind his eyes. His stomach plummeted like a high-speed elevator.

“Well, it’s like this. We don’t like Feds sniffin’ aroun’ up here, ain’t that right, Billy?”

“Just as right as rain on a hot summer day, Bubba.”

“Feds?”

“Y’see how good they’s trained, Bubba? This here Fed’s half dead an’ he still pertends an’ tries t’ play us fer fools.” Billy put his face within inches of Peete’s. “We might be from th’ hills an’ we might be hicks to th’ likes o’ you, but we ain’t stupid.”

“I don’t…”

Peete never saw the fist until just before it crushed his nose. The back of his head slammed into the cave wall.

My god,
he thought as the pain ravaged his brain.
You really do see stars.

“Don’t play me for no fool. I done tol’ ya ah’m not stupid.”

Peete’s mouth filled with blood. It gushed down his throat. He tried to breathe through his mouth. He choked, spraying Billy’s face and shirt with blood and mucous. Billy tried to duck walk backwards but tripped and fell. He rolled to his right.

“Look what you done now, Nigger,” Bubba yelled as he stepped forward. He drew back his right foot. “No one pukes on my brother. Not as long as I’m aroun’. Say good bye to your balls!”

“Wait!” Billy Ray pushed himself to his hands and knees.

Bubba’s foot had already started forward. His attempt to obey his brother made him spin like an overweight, off-balance dancer. There was a momentary tug-of-war between Bubba’s pin wheeling arms, momentum, and gravity. In the end, momentum and gravity won as Bubba collapsed like a straw man suddenly relieved of his support.

Despite his pain, Peete erupted in laughter. His mouth and throat were still blood-filled. His laughs were immediately replaced by choking coughs. His chest heaved as his body tried to expel the blood that threatened to suffocate him.

Billy crawled over to the choking man and stood beside him on his knees. “Lift yore head up, boy,” Billy told him as he put the palm of his hand against Peete’s forehead and pushed his head back. “Don’t want you chokin’ t’ death. He don’t like his dinner cold.”

“Who…” Peete started coughing again.

Billy shook his head. “I don’t think he knows how special this cave is, Bubba.”

“I think you’re right, Billy Ray.”

“Y’see, it’s like this,” Billy made a show of straightening Peete’s collar and smoothing his shirt. “This here cave is his cave an’ he’s awful hungry ‘bout now. ’Cordin’ to th’ stories they tell ’roun’ here, he don’t feed but three, mebbe four times a month.” Billy paused and looked at his brother. “Ain’t that right, Bubba?”

“That’s what they say, Billy Ray.” Bubba nodded from where he sat cross-legged on the cave floor. “’Course, no one knows fer shur ’cause no one that comes up here ever comes back t’ say.”

“’Ceptin’ th’ womenfolk, of course.”

“’Course he don’t eat them,” Bubba grinned. “He got somethin’ speshul in store fer the wimmen.” The grin grew into a lascivious leer.

Billy pinched and poked at Peete’s arms and stomach. “I think he jus’ might go fer a hunk o’ dark meat. He might find the flavor interestin’.”

“Whose cave?” Peete struggled to ask. “Why are you doing this?”

“Well, as fer whose cave it is, I don’t think anyone rightly knows. They say he’s been here a powerful long time.” Billy Ray stood and looked down at Peete. “If you can find a Injun aroun’ here – a real Injun mind you, not one o’ those liberal wannabe’s – then ya might ask him. He might know. No white man does, that’s fer shur.

“As fer why we’re doin’ this, well, that’s a bit easier. It’s ‘cause you were puttin’ your nose where it don’t belong. I’m sure that wherever they sends you boys fer yore cop trainin’ they tol’ you this kind o’ thing might happen. Simple as that. Ain’t nothin’ personal. It’s purely bidness.

“An’ then there’s the idea that there really is somethin’ livin’ up here that might kill an’ eat ya. Me, I don’t hold with those stories. Why jus’ this mornin’ me an’ Pa was arguin’ ’bout that very thing. Ain’t that so, Bubba?”

“That’s a pure D fact, Billy Ray.”

“So, I figger that if yore still alive in th’ mornin’, then the tales is all wrong. ’Course I’ll have t’do fer you m’self, but that’s alright. Leastwise I’ll know fer shore what’s what.”

“The still.”

“Bubba, I thought you said he was a dumb nigger.” Billy Ray looked at his brother. “Why, he ain’t so dumb after all.”

“How was I to know, Billy? I mean, they all look th’ same t’ me. I cain’t tell a smart one from a dumb one no way cuz I ain’t never seen no smart ones.”

“I guess it don’t really matter. He’s ’bout t’ be a dead one.”

“Listen,” Peete raised his head despite the agony. “You don’t have t’ do this. You don’t have to kill me.”

Bubba looked down at Peete, his eyes wide in mock innocence. “Oh,
we
ain’t gonna kill you. Wasn’t you listenin’, Mister Fe-der-al man?”

Billy Ray raised his right hand to his heart. “Mister Nigger Fed, Sir, you hurt m’ feelin’s. Do I look like a killer to you? I ain’t never killed no one in my whole life an’ that’s the God’s honest truth.”

“That’s right,” Bubba added. “We ain’t never killed no one.”

“Why, Granny’d tan our hides if we was to do somethin’ so terrible. The Good Book says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Ain’t that right?”

“Amen t’ that, brother.”

“You just said I was about to be a dead one.”

“Oh,” Billy Ray nodded. “That’s a pure D fact. I figger you got one, maybe two hours.”

“Listen,” Peete pleaded. “I’m not a Fed.”

“Fed. Cop. Agent. T-Man. G-Man. Revenuer.” Billy sighed. “Call it what you want. It all comes down to th’ same thing. First, yore a Fed. Then, yore food. An’ then yore fed.”

Bubba erupted in hearty laughter. “Billy Ray, you gotta tell Pa that one. Tha’s the funniest joke I heard in a coon’s age.” Bubba looked at Peete, his eyes wide. “Oh, Ah’m so sorry, Mr. Federal Agent. I shoulda said a long time.”

Billy Ray looked at his watch. “I think we done had enough fun, Bubba. It’s time t’ look aroun’ an’ make sure we ain’t forgot nothin’. It’s getting’ late an’ I don’t wanna be here when
he
comes nosin’ up t’ th’ dinner table.”

“Where’s my jacket?” Peete interrupted. “I’m getting cold.”

“He’s getting cold,” Bubba said as he looked at Billy Ray.

“I wouldn’t worry ’bout that none,” Billy said, shaking his head. “I don’t think you gotta worry ’bout nothin’ more, Mister Federal Agent Man. No more time clocks. No more overtime. No more mur
an
da rights. No more civil rights.”

“He’s still got one right, Billy Ray,” Bubba interjected.

“What right’s that?”

Bubba bent down, his nose nearly touching Peete’s, and said quietly, “You got the right to scream yore fool haid off when
he
comes a-callin’.”

•

The light was long gone from inside the cave. Peete’s other senses heightened as his sight failed. The coarse fibers of the ropes binding his wrists grew rougher and more irritating as he continued trying to use the rocks to cut through them. It looked so easy on TV.

He stopped to catch his breath. He heard a noise in the Stygian blackness to his left. He stopped breathing and concentrated all his attention on the sound.

Nothing.

He slowly let out his breath. He froze in mid-inhale as the sound repeated. It seemed closer.

“Hello?” he whispered. Then louder, “Is anyone down there?”

“Peete? Is that you, Baby?”

He was puzzled. What was Ronnie, his wife, doing here? He looked closer. The cave was still there, but it looked like their living room, too. He shook his head. Ronnie stood there in the cave’s darkness. Instead of the usual skirt and blouse that showed off her figure, legs, and butt, Ronnie wore a white satin robe like she wore when she sang in the church choir on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. He recoiled in stunned disbelief. Above her left breast was the circle and cross of the Ku Klux Klan. She also wore a pointed satin hood. The hood’s mask was thrown back revealing her perfectly made-up café-au-lait complexion. Her deep brown eyes were nearly black with passion. Peete tried to wrap his mind around the vision but couldn’t. Ronnie swept the fabric away from her face. Blonde-streaked, processed hair pushed out from beneath the fabric to frame her rounded chin. Her full lips were sensual and sexy beneath her crimson lipstick.

“Peetey.”
Her tongue, forked and snakelike, darted as she nervously licked her lips.
“Honey, I worry about you gettin’ hurt. If you keep hangin’ out with those white friends of yours, somethin’ bad’s gonna happen. I can feel it just as sure as I’m standin’ here lookin’ at you. You gotta stop thinkin’ you’re good as white just because they take you huntin’ with’em and let you play cards with’em an’ all that. Baby, take a real good look in th’ mirra. You ain’t white. Not even close, Baby.”

“Why you wearin’ that, Ronnie?”

“Wearin’ what, Baby?”

Peete passed his hand over his face. She now wore a bright yellow blouse above a short, chocolate-colored skirt. He blinked. A heavy gold chain with an inverted cross was hanging around her neck.

“They ain’t like that. We really are friends. I know if I need something, I can count on any of them for help. Color’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

“I hope you’re right, Baby. I really do. But, if I learned nothin’ else in my life, I learned this: when push comes to shove an’ choices gotta be made, most of them choices will come down to color.”

Peete felt his frustration rise. He knew the source of Ronnie’s worries. She grew up on Detroit’s south side. In the best of times it looked like a war zone. During the summer of sixty-eight, when Twelfth Street erupted and the tenements burned, Ronnie was only five years old. She bore the mental and emotional scars of the violence she’d witnessed and been too young to understand. How does a child cope with the stomp-slide grating of booted feet advancing behind Plexiglas shields and a thicket of bayoneted rifles? With the smell of smoke as stores and apartments burn? With the mixture of people wailing and sirens screaming?

“My friends ain’t like that, Honey. You just gotta trust me on that.”

Tears ran down Ronnie’s face as she held her hands out. The robe was back. Its bright satin sleeves hung open below her arms. The bright crimson nail polish glistened, reflecting the light.

“It’s gonna end bad, Baby.”

Red drops formed at the tips of her nails. The globules swelled and then dripped onto the robe’s shiny fabric. From there they trickled in the fabric’s crease like freshly spilled blood.

“It’s gonna end in blood – your blood.”

As the hand drew back it changed into a claw on a green-scaled arm. Ronnie’s face changed to the storekeeper’s. The claw whipped downward. Peete screamed. The talons bit into the side of his neck. Blood sprayed as bone cracked and tendons ripped.

The creature ignored Peete’s head rolling towards the cave mouth as it dipped its face and drank from the crimson fountain spraying from the ragged stump of Peete’s neck.

 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Well, look who decided t’call on a lonesome ol’ woman,” Truly Mae chuckled as she opened the front door. “Don’t tell me you’re up here lookin’ fer love potions.”

Jake removed his hat as he ducked through the low doorway. “How ya doin’, Granny?” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek as he stepped past her and into the kitchen. “You know I don’t hold with none o’ that. Save it fer the young’uns. We got bigger fish t’ fry this mornin’. Got any coffee made?”

“All I got’s dregs left over from breakfast. It’s all y’deserve fer callin’ my remedies nonsense. Half th’ holler’d be dead or lame if it warn’t for me an’ my nonsense.”

“I don’t mean nothin’ by it, Granny. You know that.”

“Yes, I do,” she laughed. “If ya don’t mind waitin’ a few minutes, I can scrape th’ sludge off’n the bottom of th’ pot an’ have some perkin’ in no time.”

“You don’t need t’bother.”

“’Tain’t no bother! Jest set yourself down over there while I make us up a pot. Th’ day it’s a bother fer me to make coffee fer company’s th’ day you need t’wrap me in m’shroud and drop me in th’ ground.” She picked up the white-flecked blue enamel percolator from the stove and carried it to the sink.

“’Sides, I was tryin’ t’ come up with a reason to make another pot. I didn’t wanna waste none ’cause I knowed I couldn’t drink it all when lo an’ behold, here comes company so’s I don’t have to.”