Wolf Whistle (12 page)

Lord Montberclair said, “Take the bus. I'll give you a thousand dollars and a bus ticket to anywhere in the world.”

Solon shook his head, real slow, side to side.

He said, “I don't thank so, my friend. Tell you the truth, I'd feel like a durn fool making my desperate escape on a Greyhound bus. Do you see what I mean? What you want me to do, Dexter, stand out in front of the Arrow Cafe with a bunch of sharecroppers and wait till ten o'clock tomorrow morning for the southbound to pull in? You want me to stand in line and let some old boy in a baggy gray wool suit and run-down shoes and a bill cap punch my
ticket and check my luggage? Honest to God, Dexter, you might ought to think about getting a grip on that drinking problem of yours, if that's your solution to how to escape the scene of a murder. You ain't getting out enough. You ought to take in a movie now and then, take a trip somewhere besides Mexico.”

Solon was still naked beneath the covers of the bed. He had sat up now, against his pillows, but he kept the covers pulled up high on his chest. He could see the Luger in Lord Montberclair's pants, and so he kept his hand on his own pistol, up under the covers, pointed at Lord Montberclair's stomach.

Lord Montberclair said, “If you take my car and they catch up with you, I'll be implicated.”

Solon said, “Well, ain't that just tough shit, Dexter. I mean, boo-fuckin-hoo, man. Scuse me if I ain't too goddamn over-sympathetic. I ain't planning to get caught. It just ain't a part of God's universal plan for the white-trash element to keep the niggers in line for you quality people and then go to jail for you, too. And if I do get caught, well hell, man, use your imagination, tell them I stole the car, for God's sake, that's simple enough, ain't it? Who's gone believe the word of a piece of white trash like me over that of a fine gent like your ownself?”

Lord Montberclair said, “Well, that's true, that's true
enough, I hadn't thought about it that way. I'm not thinking too clearly these days, you understand, family matters, you're a family man, you understand what I mean. Nobody's going to believe a piece of shit like you.”

Solon said, “If you turn me in, Dexter, I'll kill you and everybody you ever met, bank on it.”

Lord Montberclair said, “Okay, all right, is that it, then? A thousand dollars and a car. That's fair, that sounds fair enough, I see your point. You can take the El Camino. I'd give you the Cadillac, but I don't know where it is. Anyway, you'll be needing transportation out to the nigger's house. I know where he lives. Sally Anne took him home, well you know that, you're the one who told me about her and the big buck in the first place. Anyhow, I know where he's staying.”

Solon said, “There's one more thing.”

Lord Montberclair said, “What's that?”

Solon said, “I want that Luger.”

Instinctively, Lord Montberclair's hand went to the pistol in his belt.

Beneath the sheets, Solon Gregg lifted the little .25 caliber revolver and cocked the hammer with his thumb. The barrel was poking into the covers.

Lord Montberclair didn't seem to notice, and he didn't take the Luger out of his pants, he only rested his hand on it in a protective way.

Solon said, “The Luger and an extra clip. What would that be, eighteen shots altogether?”

Solon thought this was a golden opportunity. Well, just think about it. This was the first real career break he'd ever had in his life, and coming at such an opportune moment as this. It just looked like one of those cases of being in the right place at the right time. He couldn't ask for a better deal if he'd thought it up himself.

He could do this one job, snuff the nigger, then come cruising back into town in that sweet little El Camino, tool on over to his own house, and how would you say it, close down his family life forever, end on a positive note.

If Wanda didn't want to go out with the rest, and it was a distinct possibility with the upcoming wedding in the docket, why then, that was her choice and hers alone, he wouldn't try to influence her one way or the other. And here was the real kicker—he could give her the thousand dollars as a wedding present.

Goddamn, what an idea! It was positively brilliant. Whoever said “the Lord will provide” sure as shit knew what they were talking about. Why, shit, he wouldn't even have to snuff the nigger. He could pistol-whip that little motherfucker, scare the shit out of him, and then forget about him forever, just take care of family business and let Poindexter Montberclair go to hell. That nigger would just find Dr. Hightower and get hisself a couple of stitches and,
it wouldn't be long, he would be eating crawfish and turnip greens while Poindexter's thousand dollars would be riding in Wanda's pocket on the first air-conditioned, double-decker Greyhound bus to Missouri, and Solon Gregg and his lovely wife and children would be managing a full-scale, high-yield indoor worm farm before that durn fool Poindexter Montberclair knew what had happened.

Some days you just have to hang in there for a while, and endure the worst that life has to offer, self-doubt and hard luck and low self-esteem, the whole shooting match, before events just seem to turn themselves around 180 percent, as Solon's wife would say, and good things start to happening, you couldn't stop them if you tried. It's just one of life's little unexplainable ironies.

That's what Solon Gregg was thinking, as Lord Poindexter Montberclair handed over the Luger and one thousand dollars cash money and the keys to the El Camino. Lord Montberclair said there was an extra clip in the glove compartment of the car, fully loaded.

In Jesus all things were possible, if you only believed—that's what the church song said, and looked like to Solon it mought be right, sho did.

And Solon and his wife might want to take their time a little, maybe go on a little vacation trip, after all the tykes were dead, so much stress and all, she deserved it, if any woman in the world did, a second honeymoon, maybe, a
trip down to the Big Easy, where Solon could show her the sights, French architecture and good food, and fall in love all over again, before he used the Luger to put the lights out for both of them.

Solon said, “One more thing, Dexter.”

Dexter said, “What.”

Solon said, “I don't know where the place is at, where the nigger is staying. You're going with me.”

S
IMS AND
Hill was the name of a country store a few miles outside of Arrow Catcher where you could buy beer any time of the day or night, whiskey, too, if you wanted it.

Solon was behind the wheel of the El Camino. Dexter was sitting beside him. The radio was turned to WOKJ, the colored station in Jackson. Muddy Waters was wailing away on his harmonica and going plink-plank-plunk on his guitar. Muddy Waters might be a nigger, but he spoke the truth.

Solon said this to Poindexter, “Ain't that right, Dexter?”

Dexter was feeling a little sick. He didn't answer.

Solon had his foot in the El Camino's gas tank, headed out dark, dark Highway 49 to Leflore, with empty fields, black as hell, stretching out on either side of the highway all the way to the rivers.

Dexter said, “Slow down some.”

Solon didn't slow down.

Dexter said, “No need to drive all the way out on the highway to get to Runnymede, anyway. We could have crossed the bridge in Arrow Catcher.”

Solon said, “Then I wouldn't get no chance to see what this little car would do.”

Solon was wearing Lord Montberclair's dry clothes, too. Now that was a good one, wont it?—khaki twill pants, blue button down shirt, seersucker sport coat, a baseball cap on his head that said Leflore Country Club. Shit. Solon looked like a spote hisself.

He checked himself in the rearview mirror. Looking good. Feeling fine.

Solon said, “Drinking wine, spotey-otey, drinking wine.” The song popped into his head.

Poindexter said, “Just watch where you're going. Keep your hands on the wheel.”

Solon might not kill nobody after all. No need to, really. He had the car beneath him. He had the German Luger, heavy as an anvil, and the extra clip full of bulldogs, laying on the seat beside him. Plus, he had the popshooter, the .25 caliber sidearm, in his pocket, just for fun. He felt safe for the first time in his life. Oh, it was a fine night, all right, fine as wine. But not necessarily a night when anybody had to die.

It was seven or eight miles to Sims and Hill. Rain was still falling, and the clouds were low. Dark, dark Mississippi 49, a ribbon of streaming wet asphalt across the swampland. No Highway Patrol out tonight. Dock of the moon, dockside of the moon.

Solon had the El Camino rocking. Hundred and ten miles an hour. Telephone poles, flash on by!

The Runnymede flat woods, out to the right of them, were filling up with water. Foxes and deer were camped out together on any little bit of high ground they could find.

The road beneath him was a river. Solon was moving, he was grooving, he was shucking, he was jiving, he was balling the jack.

Muddy Waters was crying on
WOKJ
:
I'm going down to Louisiana, baby, behind the sun.

Poindexter said, “Have you ever heard about hydroplaning?”

Solon knew that the El Camino had risen up off the highway, that he was driving on water alone now.

Behind the sun.
That's where Solon was going, that's where he already was, it was where he lived.

Hundred and fifteen miles an hour, hundred and sixteen, seventeen. Nothing but water. No contact at all with the surface of the road. Hydroplane, oh yes!

Solon said, “You gone worry yourself to an early grave, Dexter.”

In this car, with these two pistols and this dry suit of college-boy clothes, Solon was filled with the power of God, not just God, the power of all the gods.

In this car at 120 miles an hour, the low clouds and dark woods around him like a cage, Solon was God. He was not Simon Peter, that chickenshit apostolic wimp of little faith who fucked around when he had a chance to stand on the
flood and water ski into Glory. Solon was the Living Christ, walking on the waves.

Solon was going Christ one better, he was not walking like some goddamn peasant, he was driving on water, and driving an El Camino, to boot.

Behind the sun.

With a Luger on the seat, bulldogs in the clip, a country club baseball cap on his head.

Muddy Waters's guitar was going
pewww-boink-boink-boink, pewww-boink-boink-boink.

Muddy Waters said,
I'm going down to New Orleans, get me a mojo hand.

Solon Gregg was going down to New Orleans, all right, just like the voice on WOKJ, but he didn't need no mojo. He didn't need no black-cat bone, he didn't need no John the Conqueroo, nothing. Solon Gregg could walk on water. Drive on it. What did he need a mojo for, didn't make no sense, now did it?

He saw the yellow light bulb on the porch of Sims and Hill, the overhang, and the dimmer light from the gas pump, so he let up on the gas and allowed the El Camino to come back down to earth.

Poindexter said, “What are you doing?”

Solon said, “Stopping for a little taste.”

Poindexter said, “Have you lost your mind?”

Solon said, “You gone say the wrong thing to me, one of these days, Dexter.”

The car slowed. Solon tested the brakes, a little skid, a little slide-and-sleeve, and then tested them again, and put on his blinker and got to going slow enough so he could ease the car into the gravel drive of the country store.

Poindexter said, “You must want to get us caught. Is that what's going on here?”

Solon said, “Just think about Sally Anne sitting down on that little nigger's face, her pitcher up in his wallet like it is.”

Poindexter said, “I should have killed you, is what I should have done.”

Solon parked up under the overhang in the front and set the parking brake and slipped the Luger and the cartridge clip into the pocket of the seersucker jacket, for safe keeping. It paid to be a little discreet.

He said, “I meant what I said, Dexter.”

Poindexter stayed in the car when Solon got out.

Solon buttoned Lord Montberclair's seersucker jacket in front to cover the pistol handle of the little revolver, where it stuck out of his belt.

He motioned for Poindexter to roll down his window. He said, “If you try to run, I'll put a bullet through your heart, Dexter. Got it?”

Poindexter didn't answer.

Solon said again, “Got it?”

Poindexter said, “Yes.”

A boy name of Hydro Raney was keeping Sims and Hill open all night. Hydro was about thirty years old and had a big head. Hydro's head was as big as a goddamn watermelon. He didn't have good sense. He could run about forty miles an hour in short bursts, and he liked to chase cars. He also howled at the fire whistle, which was embarrassing to Hydro's daddy, Mr. Raney, down at the fish camp. Mr. Sims was a good man to let Hydro keep the store for him sometimes.

Solon would almost rather have had a child laying up in an iron bed with no skin or future than to have Hydro for a boy. Hydro's daddy owned a fish camp on Roebuck Lake and generally Hydro didn't do nothing all day but eat peach pie.

Just for a second there, Solon thought about pulling out the Luger and putting a bullet in that big old watermelon head, just to see what would happen. Bust that big head of Hydro's wide open. Then he thought about robbing the place and pistol-whipping the shit out of him and going on about his business.

Solon was disappointed that Hydro was keeping the store tonight. Nobody to show his money roll to. Hydro Raney
didn't know the difference between a thousand dollars and a thousand and one Arabian nights.

Solon said, “Hydro, wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, or I'll shoot you square in your big ugly head.”

Hydro said, “How come you dressed up like Mr. Dexter?”