When the Women Come out to Dance (2002) (8 page)

"Lemme off on the corner over there and make your circle. I'll be waiting."

Jared turned left, pulled up in front of the yellow Subwa
y awning, and Boyd got out. He went inside the shop--no on e here but the woman behind the counter--and stood at th e plate-glass window smelling onions. The view showed mos t of the John Weld Peck Building diagonally across the way.

From here, Devil Ellis said, he'd have a clear shot at the corne
r windows up there. Which was how much Devil--what the y called him--knew about firing a grenade rocket at a targe t this close and high up. It was the kind of stunt Devil woul d try, stoned or just crazy, stand here chewing on a roast bee f sub dripping onions and decide, yeah, shoot through this bi g window.

Devil was the one drove down to the Tennessee line on
e night and set off a charge in the Jellico post office, and all th e pissed-off retirees had to wait and wait to get their social security checks, which didn't help the cause. Got the post office bombing listed with the abortion clinic Boyd was supposed t o have blown up--the dumbest thing he ever heard of. Wha t did you gain by it? Rob a bank and spray-paint White Powe r on the wall, you make your point and get away with a bag o r two of cash.

It was Devil told him to keep an eye on Jared--both Devi
l and Boyd's baby brother, Bowman, suspecting Jared had bee n planted among them by the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Imperialism, or was an agent himself, although pretty dumb.

Boyd walked out to the corner and stood watching for unmarked cars creeping around, vans parked where they shouldn't be, spotters inside. It was getting dark already.

The muddy Blazer rolled up. Boyd got in and Jared said
, "Which way?"

"Straight ahead."

Boyd sat there and didn't speak again until they were u
p Main Street a ways, crossing East Central Parkway now, an d Boyd said, "We coming to it, Niggaville," Boyd looking a t dingy old buildings, run-down storefronts, people he saw a s winos on the street. Another couple of blocks and he spotte d the place Devil told him to look for. Sure enough, up on th e right. "There it is," Boyd said. "Go past slow." He could rea d the sign now sticking out from the front of the building: TEMPLE OF THE COOL
AND BEAUTIFUL J
. C
. A thin coat of whitewash covered the front, the place a dump, the sign blasphemous, calling Jesus cool and beautiful , for Christ sake.

"Turn left that next street and stop. I believe I can take 'e
r from over there." Boyd stuck his butt in Jared's face pushin g his way between the seats to get in the back. Jared raising hi s voice now: "You gonna blow up that church?" Sounding surprised
, then in kind of a panic. "Boyd, we're in the middle of fuckin g Cincinnati."

Now Boyd, in the back end of the Blazer, getting his Chinese grenade launcher unwrapped, raised his own voice to tell Jared, "You always have a secondary target, just in case." H
e looked out the rear as Jared came to a stop. "This is good, I'
m gonna have a clear shot."

"Boyd, there's people on the street." "I don't see none. Just some niggers."

"They gonna see us. I
. D
. my car."

Boyd loved times like these he could show how cool he wa
s under fire, so to speak. "You worried about your car, huh?"

"They's people right up the block, watching. Boyd, you se
e 'em? They watching us."

Even if this Jared wasn't a snitch, which could be, he sur
e as hell wasn't commando material. "Fuck 'em," Boyd said.

"We're about to raise a whole lot of hell."

He had the RPG just about put together. He'd screwed th
e propellant cylinder to the back of the missile grenade an d slipped it into the tube, sticking out now like a fat spear.

Next, he removed the nose cap from it. Shit, he could do thi
s in the dark drinking from a jar of shine. He pulled out th e pin, the safety, and called to Jared to get ready.

Now Boyd dropped the tailgate and slipped out to th
e street with his rocket gun, hefted it to his shoulder, flippe d the sight up and took aim. He called out to no one in particular, "Fire in the hole!" Squeezed the trigger and that Temple of the Cool and Beautiful J
. C
. blew up before his eyes.

III.

Boyd got rid of the RPG crossing the Ohio Rive
r south, stuck his head and shoulders out the back end of th e vehicle and flung the weapon out into the night. He tol d Jared to look for 275. That took them over to the airport , where he got Jared to follow the signs to long-term parkin g and find a spot a good ways from the terminal. "Over ther e toward the fence," Boyd said, still crouched down in th e back end.

Once they were parked, Jared said, "Now what?" soundin
g like all his energy had drained out of him.

Boyd didn't answer. He had one of the Chink AK-47s unwrapped and armed with a magazine. He heard in his mind the familiar words lock and load and was ready for business.

Jared said to the rearview mirror, "What're you doing?"

Boyd could see just the top of his head above the cushio
n on the front seat.

"How'd you know where we was going?"

"What?"

"You heard me." It was quiet in here, neither of the
m moving.

"How'd you know we's going to the federal building?"

Now Jared's voice in the dark said, "Was your brother tol
d me. Him and Devil."

"You mean you heard 'em talking?"

"Uh-unh, Bowman told me and then Devil goes, 'Bu
t don't let on you know.' "

"I think you spied on 'em."

"No sir--you can ask 'em."

"I think you listen in on things you shouldn't, and then report it to who you work for. Is that what you are, a snitch for the feds?"

Jared had his head raised to the rearview mirror.

"Boyd, you got no reason to say that, none."

"I saw how you acted, I'm setting up to blow out that nigger church. You didn't want no parts of it."

"They was people around, watching us."

Sounding like he was starting to panic again. Boyd asked himself, You want to argue with him or get 'er done?

He laid the barrel of the assault rifle on the backrest of th
e seat close in front of him and bam, shot Jared through th e headrest of the driver's seat--the round going through the fa t cushion, through Jared, through the windshield, through th e rear window of the car in front of the Blazer and through it s windshield--Boyd discovering this once he was outside an d took a look.

From the terminal he called Devil Ellis at the Sukey Ridg
e church to tell him he'd arrive at the London-Corbin airport o n the late shuttle. Devil was full of questions on the phone, bu t Boyd managed to satisfy him with, "Yeah, I had to let Jare d go. I'll tell you about it when you get me."

Now in Devil's pickup, trailing its headlight
s along pitch-dark roads toward Sukey Ridge, Boyd filled hi m in: how he'd knocked out the nigger church--Devil lettin g out a Rebel yell--and then how, not taking any chances, h e shot Jared, wiped down the Blazer pretty good where he'd sat , and stashed the rifles and extra RPG loads and parts alon g that cyclone fence there separating the lot from the airfield?

They'd send one of the skins, see if he could pick 'em up.

Boyd sipped from a jar Devil kept in his truck, then looke
d over at him with his dark beard and black cowpuncher ha t Boyd allowed, the look being the man's style, Devil's devilish , go-to-hell image.

"Jared said you told him where we's going."

"Yeah, me and Bowman."

Boyd took another sip of the shine. "Even thinking he wa
s a snitch?"

"Bowman figured Jared'd fuck up and you'd see he kne
w more'n he was supposed to and you'd get on him about it."

Boyd said, "Yeah . . . ?"

"Jared'd say it was us told him and you wouldn't believe it."

Boyd said, "Then what?"

"We figured you'd work on him in your way and get hi
m to confess."

Boyd said, "That he's a traitorous snitch."

"Yeah, in the pay of the govermint."

"But he didn't tell me nothing like that."

"You work on him?"

"I started in but, hell, I knew he'd lie to me."

"I know what you mean--those people. So you put hi
m down. I'd have done the same."

Boyd didn't say anything to that. They drove through th
e dark in silence till Devil said, "You know how he was alway s talking about the Murrah Building, saying he was there like a minute after she blew? Me and Bowman don't believe he wa s anywheres near it. Saw it on TV like everybody else."

Boyd said, "Was it you didn't trust him or you just didn'
t like him much?"

Devil said after a moment, "I guess both."

They were coming to the church now, way u
p there where that speck of electric light showed on the ridge.

Across the front of the property, coming down to the dirt roa
d they followed, was a pasture, a good five acres of cleared land and no road leading up. It was around the next bend wher e the pickup slowed to turn into the trees past the sign that sai d PRIVATE PROPERTY--TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.

Boyd said, "You watching for claymores?"

"You think you're funny," Ellis said. "If I believed yo
u planted any I'd move clear to Tennessee."

They followed switchbacks up through the trees finally t
o top a rise and coast into the barnlot back of the old church , not used for services since Ike was President. Boyd ha d bought it cheap, had it painted and turned into a dormitor y for when his skinheads were here. Anybody complained i t looked like a prison dorm, Boyd would tell 'em to go sleep i n the barn--with a mean rat-eating owl lived there. He got ou t of the truck stiff, tired from riding.

Three skins watched him from the back porch where
a kerosene lamp sat on top the fridge. The two fat boys were locals Boyd called the Pork brothers. The one without a shirt this cool evening, his dyed-blond hair spiked, was a bo y named Dewey Crowe from Lake Okeechobee in Florida. H
e wore a necklace of alligator teeth along with the word HEIL
t attooed on one tit and hitler on the other, part of th e Fuhrer's name in the boy's armpit.

Walking toward them Boyd said, "What's going on?"

It was Dewey Crowe who spoke up. "Your brother got shot."

The words came at Boyd cold, without any note of sympathy, so he took it to mean Bowman wasn't shot any place'd kill him.

But then Dewey said, "He's dead," in that same flat tone o
f voice.

And it hit Boyd like a shock of electricity. Wait
a minute--in his mind seeing his brother alive and in hi s prime, grown even bigger'n Boyd. How could he be dead?

"Was his wife shot him," Dewey said, "with his deer rifle.

They say Ava done it while Bowman was having his supper."

IV.

It was Art Mullen, marshal in charge of this Eas
t Kentucky Special Op Group, who had requested Rayla n Givens, now seated in Art's temporary office in the Harla n County courthouse. It was an overcast morning in October , the two sipping coffee, getting acquainted again.

"I remember you were from around here."

"A long time ago."

"You still look the same as you did at Glynco," Art said
, meaning the time they were both firearms instructors at th e academy. "Still wearing the dark suit and wing-tip cowbo y boots."

"The boots're fairly new."

"Don't tell me that hat is." The kind Art Mullen though
t of as a businessman's Stetson, except no businessman'd wea r this one with its creases and just slightly curled brim cocke d toward one eye, the hat part of Raylan's lawman personality.

He said no, it was old.

"What do you pack these days?"

"This trip my old Smith forty-five Target." He saw Art grin.

"You and your big six-shooter--born a hundred years to
o late. You ever get married again?"

"No, but I wouldn't mind some homelife. I can't sa
y Winona ruined it for me. I stopped to see my two boys on the way up. They come down to Florida every summer and I ge t 'em jobs."

There was a lull. Raylan looked toward the gray sky in th
e window, trees starting to change color. Art Mullen, a big , comfortable man with a quiet way of speaking, said, "Tell m e what you remember of Boyd Crowder."

Raylan, nodding his head a couple of times, went back t
o that time in his mind. "Well, we dug coal side by side fo r Eastover Mining, near Brookside. Boyd was a few years olde r and had become a powderman. He'd crawl down a hole wit h his case of Emulex five-twenty and come out stringing wire.