Gone South (12 page)

Standing before him, wearing a pair of black pants and a red shirt with a wide, tall collar and silver spangles on the shoulders, was a man who had died fourteen years before.

“Don’t mind Mama,” Elvis Presley said with a nervous grin. “She’s got a bark, but she don’t have no bite.”

“You’re …” No, of course it wasn’t! “Who the hell are you?”

“Pelvis Eisley’s the name.” He offered a fleshy hand, the fingers of which were laden with gaudy fake diamond rings. Flint just looked at it, and the other man withdrew it after a few seconds as if fearful he’d caused offense. “Mama, get on back now! Give him some room! Come on in, pardon the mess!”

Flint crossed the threshold as if in a daze. Pelvis Eisley — the big-bellied, fat-jowled twin of Elvis Presley as he’d been the year of his death at Graceland — closed the door, relocked it, and scooped up a grocery sack from the nearest chair. It was filled, Flint saw, with potato chip bags, boxes of doughnuts, and other junk food. “There you go, Mr. Murtaugh, you can set yourself right here.”

“This is a joke, isn’t it?” Flint asked.

“Sir?”

A spring jabbed his butt, and only then did Flint realize he’d sat down in the chair. “This has got to be a —” Before he could finish, a little barking thing covered with brown-and-white splotches leapt onto his lap, its wet pug nose mashed flat and its eyes bulbous. It began yapping in his face.

“Mama!” Pelvis scolded. “You mind your manners!” He lifted the bulldog off Flint and put her down, but the animal was instantly up on Flint’s lap again.

“I reckon she likes you,” Pelvis said, smiling an Elvis sneer.

“I … hate … dogs,” Flint replied in his chill whisper. “Get it off me.
Now.”

“Lordy, Mama!” Pelvis picked the dog up and held her against his jiggling belly while the animal continued to bark and struggle. “Don’t ever’body in this world enjoy your shenanigans, you hear? Hold still!” The dog’s thrashings made Flint think of a Slinky. Its watery eyes remained fixed on him as he used his handkerchief to brush the dog hairs from the knees of his pants.

“You want somethin’ to drink, Mr. Murtaugh? How ’bout some buttermilk?”

“No.”
The very smell of buttermilk made him deathly ill.

“Got some pickled pig’s feet, if you want a bite to —”

“Eisley,” Flint interrupted, “how much did that bastard pay you?”

“Sir?”

“Smoates. How much did he pay you to pull this joke on me?”

Pelvis frowned. He and the struggling dog wore the same expression. “I don’t believe I know what you mean, sir.”

“Okay, it was a good joke! See, I’m laughin’!” Flint stood up, his face grim. He glanced around the cramped little room and saw that Eisley’s living habits were the equivalent of buttermilk and pickled pig’s feet. On one wall a large poster of Elvis Presley had been thumb-tacked up; it was the dangerous, cat-sneer face of the young Elvis before Las Vegas stole the Memphis from his soul. On a table was a beggar’s banquet of cheap plaster Elvis statues and busts; a cardboard replica of Graceland; a framed photograph of Elvis standing with his gloomy, hollow-eyed mother, and a dozen other Elvis knickknacks and geegaws that Flint found utterly repugnant. Another wall held a black velvet portrait of Elvis and Jesus playing guitars on the steps of what was presumably heaven. Flint felt nauseated. “How can you stand to live in all this crap?”

Pelvis looked stunned for a few seconds. Then his grin flooded back. “Oh, now you’re joshin’ me!” The dog got away from him and slipped to the floor, then leapt up onto the bed amid empty Oreo and Chips Ahoy cookie bags and started yapping again.

“Listen, Eve got a job to do, so I’ll just say fare thee well and get out.” Flint started for the door.

“Mr. Smoates said you and me was gonna be partners,” Pelvis said with a hurt whine. “Said you was gonna teach me ever’thin’ you knew.”

Flint stopped with his hand on the latch.

“Said you and me was gonna track a skin together,” Pelvis went on. “Hush, Mama!”

Flint wheeled around, his face bleached to the shade of the white streak in his hair. “You mean … you’re tellin’ me … this is
not
a joke?”

“No sir. I mean, yes sir. Mr. Smoates called. Fella come from the office to get me, ’cause that’s where the phone is. Mr. Smoates said you was on your way, and we was gonna track a skin together. Uh … is that the same as bein’ a bounty hunter?” Pelvis took the other man’s shocked silence as agreement. “See, that’s what I wanna be. I took a detective course by mail from one of them magazines. I was livin’ in Vicksburg then. Fella who runs a detective agency in Vicksburg said he didn’t have a job for me, but he told me all about Mr. Smoates. Like how Mr. Smoates was always on the lookout for — let’s see, how’d he put it? — special talent, I think he said. Anyhow, I come from Vicksburg to see Mr. Smoates and we had us a talk this afternoon. He said for me to hang ’round town a few days, maybe he’d give me a tryout. So I guess this is what this is, huh?”

“You’ve got to be insane,” Flint rasped.

Pelvis kept grinning. “Been called worse, I reckon.”

Flint shook his head. The walls seemed to be closing in on him, and on all sides there was an Elvis. The dog was yapping, the noise splitting his skull. The awful stench of buttermilk wafted in the air. Something close to panic grabbed Flint around the throat. He whirled toward the door, wrenched the latch back, and leapt out of the foul, Elvisized room. As he ran along the breezeway toward the office with Clint twitching under his shirt, he heard the nightmare calling behind him: “Mr. Murtaugh, sir? You all right?”

In the office, where a Confederate flag was nailed to the wall next to an oil portrait of Robert E. Lee, Flint all but attacked the pay phone. “Hey, careful there!” the manager warned. He wore blue jeans, a Monster Truck T-shirt, and a Rebel cap. “That’s motel property!”

Flint shoved a quarter into the slot and punched Smoates’s home number. After four rings Smoates answered: “Yeah?”

“I’m not goin’ out with that big shit sack!” Flint sputtered. “No way in Hell!”

“Ha,” Smoates said.

“You tryin’ to be funny, or what?”

“Take it easy, Flint. What’s eatin’ you?”

“You know what, damn it! That Eisley! Hell, he thinks he’s
Elvis!
I’m a professional! I’m not goin’ on the road with somebody who belongs in an asylum!”

“Eisley’s sane as you or me. He’s one of them Elvis impersonators.” Smoates let out a laugh that so inflamed Flint, he almost jerked the phone off the wall. “Looks just like him, don’t he?”

“Yeah, he looks like a big shit sack!”

“Hey!” Smoates’s voice had taken on a chill. “I was a fan of Elvis’s. Drilled my first piece of pussy with ‘Jailhouse Rock’ playin’ on the radio, so watch your mouth!”

“I can’t believe you’d even
think
about hirin’ him on! He’s as green as grass! Did you know he took a detective course by
mail?”

“Uh-huh. That puts him ahead of where
you
were when I hired you. And as I recall, you were pretty green yourself. Billy Lee raised hell about havin’ to take you out your first time.”

“Maybe so, but I didn’t look like a damn fool!”

“Flint,” Smoates said, “I like the way he looks. That’s why I want to give him a chance.”

“Are you crazy, or am I?”

“I hire people I think can get the job done. I hired you ’cause I figured you were the kind of man who could get on a skin’s track and not let loose no matter what. I figured a man with three arms was gonna have to be tough, and he was gonna have somethin’ to prove, too. And I was right about that, wasn’t I? Well, I’ve got the same feelin’ about Eisley. A man who walks and talks and looks like Elvis Presley’s gotta have a lot of guts, and he’s already been down a damn hard road. So you ain’t the one to be sittin’ in judgment of him and what he can or can’t do. Hear?”

“I can’t stand bein’ around him! He makes me so nervous I can’t think straight!”

“Is that so? Well, that’s just what Billy Lee said about you, as I remember. Now, cut out the bellyachin’ and you and Eisley get on your way. Call me when you get to Alexandria.”

Flint opened his mouth to protest again, but he realized he would be speaking to a deaf ear because Smoates had already hung up.
“Shit!”
Flint seethed as he slammed the receiver back onto its hook.

“Watch your language there!” the manager said. “I run a refined place!” Flint shot him a glance that might’ve felled the walls of Fort Sumter, and wisely the manager spoke no more.

At Number Twenty-three Flint had to wait for Eisley to unlock the door again. The heat hung on him like a heavy cloak, anger churning in his constricted belly. He understood the discomfort of pregnancy, only he had carried this particular child every day of his thirty-three years. Inside the room, the little bulldog barked around Flint’s shoes but was smart enough not to get in range of a kick. “You okay, Mr. Murtaugh?” Eisley asked, and the dumb innocence of his Elvis-voice was the match that ignited Flint’s powder keg.

He grasped Eisley’s collar with both hands and slammed his bulk up against the Elvis poster. “Ouch,” Pelvis said, showing a scared grin. “That kinda smarted.”

“I dislike you,” Flint said icily. “I dislike you, your hair, your clothes, your dead fat hillbilly, and your damn ugly dog.” He heard the mutt growling and felt it plucking at his trouser leg, but his anger was focused on Eisley. “I believe I’ve never met anybody I dislike worse. And Clint doesn’t care for you worth a shit, either.” He let go of Pelvis’s collar to unhook a button. “Clint! Out!” His brother’s hand and arm slid free like a slim white serpent. The fingers found Pelvis’s face and began to explore his features. Pelvis made a noise like a squashed frog. “You know what you are to me?” Flint asked. “Dirt. If you get under my feet, I’ll step on you. Got it?”

“Lordy, lordy, lordy.” Pelvis stared transfixed at Clint’s roving hand.

“You have a car?”

“Sir?”

“A
car!
Do you have one?”

“Yes sir. I mean, I did. Ol’ Priscilla broke down on me when I was comin’ back from seeing Mr. Smoates. Had to get her towed to the shop.” His eyes followed the searching fingers. “Is that … like … a magic trick or somethin’?”

Flint had hoped that if he had to take this fool with him, Eisley would at least be confined to his own car. Then, without warning, Eisley did the unthinkable thing.

“Mr. Murtaugh,” he said, “that’s the damnedest best trick I ever saw!” And he reached out, took Clint’s hand in his own, and shook it. “Howdy there, pardner!”

Flint almost passed out from shock. He couldn’t remember anyone ever touching Clint. The sensation of a stranger’s hand clasped to Clint’s was like a buzz saw raked up his spine.

“I swear you could go on television with a trick as good as that!” Eisley continued to pump Clint’s arm, oblivious to the danger that coiled before him.

Flint gasped for breath and staggered backward, breaking contact between Eisley and his brother. Clint’s arm kept bobbing up and down, the little hand still cupped. “You … you …” Words could not convey Flint’s indignation. Mama had seen this new development and had skittered away from Flint’s legs, bouncing up onto the bed where she rapid-fired barks at the bobbing appendage. “You … don’t touch me!” Flint said. “Don’t you ever dare touch me again!” Eisley was still grinning. This man, Flint realized, had the power to drive him stark raving insane. “Get packed,” he said, his voice choked. “We’re leavin’ in five minutes. And that mutt’s stayin’ here.”

“Oh … Mr. Murtaugh, sir.” At last Eisley’s face showed genuine concern. “Mama and me go everywhere together.”

“Not in my car.” He shoved Clint’s arm back down inside his shirt, but Clint came out again and kept searching around as if he wanted to continue the hand shaking. “I’m not carryin’ a damn mutt in my car!”

“Well, I can’t go, then.” Pelvis sat down on the bed, his expression petulant, and at once Mama was in his lap, licking his double chins. “I don’t go nowhere without Mama.”

“Okay, good! Forget it! I’m leavin’!”

Flint had his hand on the doorknob when Pelvis asked, in all innocence, “You want me to call Mr. Smoates and tell him it didn’t work out?”

Flint stopped. He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds. The rage had leapt up again from where it lived and festered, and it was beating like a dark fist behind the door of his face.

“I’ll call him,” Pelvis said. “Ain’t no use you wastin’ the quarter.”

Leave the hillbilly jerk, Flint thought. To hell with Smoates, too. I don’t need him or his lousy job. I don’t need
anybody.

But his anger began to recede like a bayou tide, and beneath it was the twisted, busted-up truth: he could not go back to the sideshow, and without Smoates, what would he do?

Flint turned toward Pelvis. Mama sat in Pelvis’s lap, warily watching Flint. “Do you even know what this job is
about?”
Flint asked. “Do you have any idea?”

“You mean bounty huntin’? Yes sir. It’s like on TV, where —”

“Wrong!”
Flint had come close to shouting it, and Mama stiffened her back and began a low growling. Pelvis stroked her a couple of times and she settled down again. “It’s not like on TV. It’s dirty and dangerous, and you’re out there on your own with nobody to help you if things screw up. You can’t ask the cops for help, ’cause to them you’re trash. You have to walk — or crawl —  through hellholes you couldn’t even imagine. Most of the time all you’re gonna do is spend hours sittin’ in a car, waitin’. You’re gonna be tryin’ to get information from the kind of slimeballs who’d just as soon be cuttin’ your throat to see your blood run.”

“Oh, I can take care of myself,” Pelvis asserted. “I ain’t got a gun, but I know how to use one. That was chapter four in the manual.”

“Chapter four in the manual.” Flint’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Uh-huh. Well, bein’ a gunslinger in this business’ll either get you killed or behind bars. You can’t use firepower on anybody unless it’s in self-defense and you’ve got witnesses, otherwise it’s you who’s goin’ to prison. And let me tell you, a bounty hunter in prison would be like a T-bone steak in a dog pound.”

“You mean if the fella’s runnin’ away from you, you can’t shoot him?”