hate their mothers and want to screw them all at the same time, so they use other women.'
'That's bull.' Billy T. finished off his whiskey and signaled the waitress for another. His blood was already so pumped with alcohol, he could have opened a vein and fueled his gas tank. 'It's 'cause they hate women. White women.'
'There ain't been no black woman killed, has there?' his brother piped up. John Thomas had been drinking shooters for the best part of two hours, and was raring for hell. 'Four women dead and not one of them colored.'
'That's a fact,' Billy T. said, and snatched up his whiskey the minute it was served. 'And I guess that tells the tale.'
Wood scratched the stubble of his beard while the others grunted in agreement. What Billy T. was saying made good sense to him, especially filtered through a haze of tequila. 'I heard tell their heads was nearly cut clean off and their sex organs was carved up. That's psycho stuff.'
'The cops want us to think like that.' Billy T. struck a match, watched it burn. There was fire in his blood tonight, and it needed someplace to spread. 'Like they wanted us to think it was Austin Hatinger killed his own daughter. Well, we know it wasn't.' As the match fizzed out between his thumb and forefinger, he shifted his gaze from face to face, and what he saw pleased him. 'We know it was a nigger. But we got us a Yankee fed, a nigger deputy, and a sheriff who'd sooner lock up a white man than a colored.'
Will cracked a peanut. He was drinking beer and drinking slow. Justine was already giving him grief about spending so much of his pay on drink and pool. 'Come on, Billy T., Sheriff Truesdale's okay.'
'If he's so okay, how come we got four women dead and nobody paying for it?'
As all eyes turned on him, Will, sober enough to be prudent, decided to keep his own counsel.
'I'll tell you why,' Billy T. continued. ' 'Cause they know who did it, sure as Christ. They know but they don't want any trouble from the N.A.A.C.P. or any of those other egg-sucking groups. It's the niggers and the ever- fucking liberals responsible.'
'They ain't hardly talked to no coloreds either,' Wood muttered. 'Don't seem right.'
'That's 'cause it ain't,' Billy T. said viciously. 'But there's been one they've talked to right enough.' He struck another match for the pleasure of watching it burn. 'They've been over to talk to Toby March. That special fucking agent asked plenty of questions about him.'
'Talking's all they do,' Wood mumbled. 'And we got another woman dead.'
'Talk's all they're gonna do.' Billy T. nodded as the others began to shift restlessly in their chairs. He could feel it, the hate, the fear, the frustration all melding together in a pot simmering with the summer heat and flavored by whiskey. 'They'll keep talking and asking questions, and he'll do it again. Maybe one of our women next time.'
'We got a right to protect our own.'
'It's time somebody put a stop to it. One way or the other.'
'That's right.' Billy T. wet his lips and leaned in. 'And I think we know what needs to be done. It's that March bastard doing it. They homed right in on him, then backed off. They even know he has a taste for white meat.'
'He was sniffing around Edda Lou, that's for sure,' John Thomas put in. 'Somebody shoulda fixed him then. Fixed him good.'
'And you know what he's doing?' They all turned to listen to Billy T. 'He's laughing at them. Laughing at us. He knows they don't want no race trouble down here in Mississippi that those Yankee papers can turn all inside out. He knows they're going to look the other way 'lest they catch him with a knife in some white woman's throat.'
'It's him all right,' his brother agreed. 'Didn't I see him standing at Edda Lou's window?'
'He was working at the rooming house,' Will began.
'That's right.' Billy T. sneered. 'Working on how he was going to get Edda Lou out to the swamp so he could rape and kill her. He done work for Darleen, too. She told me how he came to patch her roof.'
'He done work out to the trailer court where Arnette and Francie lived, too,' Wood put in. 'I seen him having a soda pop with Francie and laughing.'
'That's how they tie all together.' Billy T. took a last drag on his cigarette. 'He got around them that way, and starting thinking how he'd like to do it to them. How he hated them for being women. White women. The cops don't want to see it, but I do. I see it plain, and I'm not giving that black bastard the chance to kill another of our women.' He leaned forward, sensing the moment was right. 'I got me some nice strong rope in the back of my car. Every one of us here's got a rifle he knows how to use. I say we kick off our Independence Day by ridding Innocence of a killer.'
He pushed back from the table and stood. 'Anybody's with me, get your gun and meet at my place. We got us a murderer to hang.'
Chairs scraped against the scarred wooden floor. Men started out with an air of purpose tinged with vengeance, their pulses pounding with a sense of right sweetened by the anticipation of violence.
As they trooped out into the hot, sweaty night, McGreedy noted that they looked as though they were hunting for trouble. But as they were hunting it elsewhere, he went back to drawing drafts.
At the door, Wood glanced back to Will, who was standing by the empty table. 'You coming, boy?'
'You bet.' Will lifted his beer and sloshed it down his dry throat. 'I'll be right along.'
With a nod that was as much warning as assent, Wood went off to fetch his Remington.
'Oh, Jesus.' Will gulped down more beer. He didn't want the other men to think he was pussy. That was the worst thing a man had to live down. But he was thinking, now, maybe there was something worse yet.
Hanging somebody.
He wasn't quite drunk enough to see it as justice. Nor was he sober enough to see it as murder. What he saw was Toby March twitching at the end of a robe-eyes rolling and bulging, face going purple, feet kicking empty air.
He didn't have the stomach to watch, and that was the sad truth. And if he didn't, he'd lose the respect of the men he drank with most every week. There was only one way to solve the problem as he saw it. That was to stop it before it happened.
Wiping his mouth dry, he walked over to Dwayne.
'Dwayne? You gotta listen to me.'
'Go on, Will. I told you I'd wait another week on the rent.'
'It's not about that. You see those boys that just left?'
Annoyed with the interruption to his drinking, Dwayne scowled into his beer. 'I'm making it a point not to see anything.'
'They're going out to the March place. They're going out there with a rope.'
Slowly, Dwayne lifted his head and focused. 'What do they want to do that for?'
'They mean to hang Toby March. They're going to string him right up, Dwayne, for killing all those women.'
'Shit, boy. Toby's never killed anything but a possum in his life.'
'Maybe, maybe not, but they went off to get their guns. Billy T.'s dead certain Toby done it, and he's fired up for a lynching.'
'Shit.' Dwayne rubbed his hands hard over his face. 'Then I guess we'd better stop them.'
'I can't do that.' Shaking his head, Will backed up. 'They'll ride me from now to next year if they think I chickened out. I've done all I'm going to.'
People had come to expect sudden outbursts from Dwayne when a bottle was nearby. That was why no one did more than glance his way when he shoved the table aside and grabbed Will by the throat.
'The fuck you have. Toby gets hurt tonight, I'll see that you pay for it, same as the others do.'
'Chrissakes, Dwayne. I can't go against my own kind any more than I have.'
'You want to keep that roof over your head, and the job that's paying for it'-Dwayne lifted Will up on his toes and shook-'you get your ass over to the sheriffs office. You don't find Burke or Carl there, you go find them at home, and you tell them what you told me.'
'Dwayne, Billy T. finds out I did, he'll kill me.'
'Bonny ain't going to be killing anybody.' He tossed Will toward the door. 'Do it.'
