That’s How I Roll: A Novel (34 page)

She had horrible bruising on her where no woman should
have. And everybody knew Miss Jayne Dyson wouldn’t let anybody do something like that to her, no matter how much they offered.

“I’ll tell anyone, Miss Jayne Dyson was a real lady,” Lansdale said that night. He looked genuinely sad. “But even if she was … something other than a lady, she didn’t deserve what was done to her.”

I agreed with him. It was no secret that I had visited her a number of times. There’s no secrets in the part of town where she lived. But I think everyone assumed my visits were all about Tory-boy.

Lansdale hadn’t made that assumption, although I didn’t figure that out until later.

“She must’ve fought like a wildcat,” he told me. “I heard Judakowski’s face is going to be marked for life.”

“Judakowski?”

“Sure,” Lansdale said. “I think his last stay in the penitentiary gave him a taste for … well, you know what I’m saying, don’t you, Esau?”

“Yes, I do. But why would he …? I mean, there’s plenty of other …”

“That’s Judakowski,” Lansdale said, shrugging his shoulders. “He’s not a man you can say no to, not when he thinks he’s got power over you. He’s not even denying he did it. See Henry over there?” Lansdale nodded his head in the direction of a man sitting at the bar, his back to us. “He was in the Double-J a couple of nights ago. Judakowski has his own table, naturally, but Henry was close enough to hear him say, ‘You can’t rape a whore,’ like he was reciting a verse from the Good Book.

“Of course, nobody argued with him. A man’d have to be crazy to do that in Judakowski’s own place, especially when he was all liquored up.”

Then Lansdale went back to talking about other things.

hen I called and told Judakowski there was something I wanted to talk over with him in private, I could see right inside his
head. Judakowski was the kind of man who thought he knew the whole world just because he knew himself so good.

I could see him thinking I was going to offer to take Lansdale out if Judakowski would make me a partner. He knew that respect was really important to me, so he figured maybe I was sick of being paid by the job.

If he was right—and Judakowski would never even imagine otherwise—I wouldn’t want anyone else to hear me make that kind of offer; it would be too risky.

Judakowski himself was always looking over his own shoulder. He didn’t trust everyone in his own crew. And if he didn’t trust people who worked for him, why would I trust them myself?

What he didn’t figure on was me wheeling over to where he was sitting on a big tree stump in that clearing, working on a cigar. I wheeled over close enough to see his face. I had to see for myself those marks Miss Jayne Dyson had left.

“I’m proud of you,” I said.

Judakowski knew I wasn’t talking to him. But before he could open his mouth to ask a question, I shot him in the face. Right at the bridge of his nose. I didn’t want to spoil those rip scars on his cheeks if they decided on an open-casket sendoff.

The shot hardly made a sound. And nobody was ever going to trace the bullet in Judakowski’s brain to the gun in my hand. I’d made that pistol myself; I knew how to unmake it just as well.

I rolled up even closer. Then I held his head back by the hair and put two more bullets into his head, one for each eye.

It was peaceful and calm in that glade. The birds kept on singing while I laid the pistol in my lap and took out my wire cutters.

I left Judakowski’s tongue on his chest. More puzzle for the cops to solve, maybe. But, for sure, plenty enough to start lots of other tongues wagging.

I’m not spiritual. But I know Miss Jayne Dyson watched every move I made.

“Thank you,” I told her. “Thank you for everything. I swear on my brother, if I had known what was in his mind, I would have done this before he ever had a chance to hurt you.”

ll Tory-boy knew was that he drove me to where I told him, and waited by the van for me to come back. He didn’t know who I was meeting up with, much less why.

I guess someone might be able to trick things out of Tory-boy, if they asked the right questions. That’s why I’d always made sure to keep that kind of distance between what I did and what he knew. How was anyone going to make him tell what he didn’t know?

’d attended to Judakowski no more than a few weeks before when I was snatched up for atomizing those skinheads, or Nazis, or whatever they were calling themselves now.

Maybe I’m rambling now. Not being precise, the way I like to be. All of this is a lot of stuff to put down on paper. And, like I said, things around here never seem to happen in a straight line.

I guess it’s obvious by now that I killed Judakowski for my own reasons. And it’s even obvious that Lansdale had known that telling me how Miss Jayne Dyson had been raped to death had been signing Judakowski’s death warrant.

So now it’s time to tell the Why of that.

I once thought about my body and my mind as a single unit. That sounds strange, maybe—my mind can do all kinds of things, and my body can’t even carry me across a room. But what I’d been thinking about was the frozen part. My conscience should have stopped me from doing some things, so I told myself that it had just stopped working, as atrophied as my body.

“Atrophied.” I hated that word as much as I loved “inertia.” Once you start rolling, you stay rolling, true enough. But if you never use something, it just … rots. Only Tory-boy wouldn’t let
my legs rot. He’d grab my ankles and just work my legs. It hurt a bit, but I remember it like a treat. A treat I’ll never have again now.

I’m just dancing around the perimeter, and I know it. So here’s how it happened. I was over to Miss Jayne Dyson’s one afternoon. That was the way we worked it; if Tory-boy had a question that a woman should be answering for him, I’d call Miss Dyson and make an appointment. Then we’d drive over there.

I always left them alone. I knew it would be easier for Tory-boy that way.

He was in her little parlor a good half-hour that time. It takes Tory-boy a while to get something down. But once he gets it, he keeps it.

I just waited on Miss Dyson’s porch. I knew people could see me out there, but it didn’t bother me a bit. None of those spike-tongued women would ever be talking about me to Miss Webb. And I didn’t care who else they told. Or what they told them.

When Tory-boy finally came out, he really wanted to go see someone. Some girl, I guess.

“Esau, I swear I won’t be but an hour. That’s if I go now. But if I have to drive you back home first—”

“You think Miss Dyson is going to want me sitting out here for an hour, Tory-boy?”

“No. No, Esau. I didn’t even ask her. I mean, she knew where I was going, and she asked if you wouldn’t like to take some tea with her. I said I’d ask you. So I am.”

I was about to tell Tory-boy I’d have to check for myself when Miss Jayne Dyson came to the screen door.

“That is exactly what I asked Tory,” she said, like she was reading my thoughts. “I could use some company. That’s why I always like seeing Tory. He’s a real gentleman, and I know who taught him that.”

“I …” That was as far as I got—I guess I ran out of words. Miss Dyson held the screen door open, and Tory-boy wheeled me right inside. I swear our van was moving before Miss Dyson even got a chance to sit herself down.

n the fall, darkness drops down quick. But I couldn’t really tell what time it was by the light—Miss Dyson had her parlor fixed so that it was always in some kind of soft shadow.

I probably pay more attention to couches and chairs and such because I don’t know what it would be like to sit in them. Hers were old-style: built of a heavy, dark wood; the cushions covered with a kind of a velvety material as dark as dried blood.

Every other time I’d been there, Miss Dyson would always seat herself on the divan, so there could be a long, low table between us. For putting cups and saucers on without making it awkward for me. But this time, she put herself in a high-backed straight chair near the corner. When she beckoned with her hand, I rolled my chair over to her. Fussing a little to myself about the wheels making marks on her carpet, but I could see she wasn’t paying attention. Or didn’t care about such things.

“You just wait here a minute,” she told me.

I don’t know how long she was gone. I was—I don’t know how to say it, exactly—maybe
feeling
the parlor. My eyes closed, and I was breathing through my nose.…

“You take honey?”

I had to come back from wherever I’d gone to, and I wasn’t sure I heard her last word right, so I just nodded.

“Lemon?”

“Yes, I do,” I answered, feeling better now that I was back all the way.

“Not sugar, though?”

“With that honey? No, ma’am.”

“I thought I told you—”

“I didn’t mean it like it came out,” I told her. “I was just trying to be … emphatic.”

“Clear.”

“Clear,” I agreed.

e sipped our tea, polite as a church social. Then she put her cup and saucer down on the little table and leaned toward me, dropping her voice just a little. Miss Dyson never spoke loudly, but this was … not so much quieter as it was softer.