Tears rolled down Scratch's cheeks.
“Hey, bud, stay where you are, OK? Everything's fine. The cavalry is here,” Tommy called out. He stopped Scratch from standing. “Can we get a medic over here?” He smiled at Scratch, patted him lightly on the shoulder. “Ah, hell, soldier. You'll be OK!”
“I don't even know what happened…” Scratch said as his chest heaved. He tried to control the sobbing but he was too overwhelmed with conflicted emotions. The medic came over and started to work on Scratch.
“Hey fellas, this guy must be Superman or somethin'! Look it! He went through all this crap and never spilled where we were!”
Scratch laughed.
“What's so funny?” Tommy asked.
“I couldn't tell 'em,” Scratch said.
Tommy looked at Scratch sideways. “Why is that?”
“I couldn't understand a damn thing he was saying.”
6
Scratch awoke in the '48 Dodge to the smooth sounds of Sinatra crooning In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning. And it was just that. The wee hours of the morning. The sun was just coming up and the sky was pink and grey. The birds were singing not a song of hope for the new day, but a warning or caution of something atrocious.
He realized he was in the driver's side of the car.
When he opened his eyes, he still had a blurry vision of an old Korean man screaming at him. Scratch immediately felt for an imaginary gun in the breast pocket of his coat. The mist cleared from his eyes and a teenaged girl started shrieking. She turned and ran into the arms of a teenaged boy. Suddenly, Scratch was surrounded by people in the cul-de-sac where the Dodge was parked.
Scratch looked to his right and saw a dead man slumped over in the passenger side. He pulled the body up to face him. Just as he thought. It was Ray Gardner. He heard sirens behind him. Scratch adjusted the rearview mirror and saw the two police cars and an ambulance clearly marked Coleman County. Scratch sighed.
Someone drove me and my dead friend 35 miles from Odarko, he thought. Why didn't they just dump us both at Kemora Lake? It was only five miles away. Then again, they'd have to drive through Darktown to get there.
Scratch's face ached. His right eye itched him. He moved the rearview mirror so he could look at his face. His glass eye was gone, leaving his right eye a huge black hole.
He started to remember what happened.
He reached for the hatbox and somebody hit him. Just before he passed out, he had heard two sets of heels on the floor and the door slamming shut. Whoever hit Scratch from behind took his glass eye when it came out. He looked over at Gardner and saw a bullet hole in his forehead. In Gardner's lap was the snub-nose .38 he had pulled on Scratch.
“Son of a bitch,” Scratch said.
Scratch felt the barrel of a .357 Magnum touch his cheek.
“Don't move, peckerwood!” he heard Deputy Marian Shaw call out.
Scratch moved his eyes and saw Sheriff Rooster Magee standing tall in the horizontal and bloated in the vertical. He was leaning on the open door of his '52 Ford. The radio was blaring George Jones singing Run, Boy, Run. A huge ball of chaw sat in Rooster's left cheek until he decided to switch it to his right, hock some of it in the back of his throat and splatter the blacktop with it. He walked toward the Dodge.
Shaw grabbed Scratch by his coat, pulled him out the car window and tossed him on the highway. He kicked Scratch in the stomach. Scratch coughed, doubled up and wrapped his arms around his midsection. Shaw holstered his weapon and laughed.
“I told you not to move, buckcherry! Didn't I Sheriff?”
“You most certainly did, Deputy Shaw,” Rooster leaned down and said to Scratch: “You in a lot of trouble, boy.”
* * *
“Deputy Shaw,” Rooster said. “I wish you would reconsider your leaving law enforcement, especially Coleman County. But I understand how you and your wife have struggled, and your desire to head to California. I wish you luck, son.”
Rooster perfected his version of the John Wayne walk when he used to be a rodeo cowboy. His claim was that he invented that walk one night after lassoing three calves and ambling over to untie them. He put a little shake in his hips and four girls, two spic girls, one blonde and an Irish redhead seated in the front of the bleachers, whooped and hollered for him.
“Now.” Rooster retold this story as he sat on the edge of his desk. Scratch was in the cell, lying on his bunk, his fedora covering his face, trying not to listen to Rooster. “You wouldn't believe it, but that walk has gotten me laid more times than I can count. I bedded all four of those young lassies. Still got up and baled hay for old man Spiff out in Cottonwood. Before he built Odarko into what it is today. Of course,” he shrugged. “I'm talking about George Spiff. The father of that rat turd Oliver Spiff. Your boss, I believe?”
Shaw laughed along with Rooster. “I love that story, Sheriff,” he confessed, love in his bulging eyes.
Rooster looked at Shaw sideways. “Of course you do! Because it's the truth, son.”
Scratch shook his head. Made a loud clucking noise with his tongue.
“You got somethin' to say?” Shaw screamed, touching the butt of his .357 in its holster. Rooster waved him back and Shaw eased back in the wooden chair.
“An out-of-work actor in the thirties got drunk in San Pedro, California, where I cut my teeth as a law officer,” Rooster said, chugged coffee from a mug, wiped his thick lips. He saw this walk and took it with him to Hollywood. And that actor was Paul Fix.” Rooster spat a black wad in the trash can. “The rest,” Rooster said with a weird leering grin on his long, fat face, “is history. Hell, the closest those fags out there
