effort.
“I’ve got help.”
“Fuller ain’t enough,” Arch said.
She unzipped his fly and reached in and touched him through his drawers. Arch closed his eyes. But just as quickly, she let go and pulled the cigar from her mouth and crushed it into the ashtray. She stood and put her hand on Arch’s shoulder.
The cigar smoldered in the cut glass.
“I’m not talkin’ about Fuller,” Fannie said, a smile slicing up to her pointed ears in the red light. “I’m talking about sending a mess of messages Western Union. You understand, don’t you? I know you do, Arch. Because you’re a goddamn American hero.”
BERT FULLER PUNCHED ON HIS HEADLIGHTS WHEN THEY hit Crawford Road, and they drove away from Phenix City and out toward Seale and into the country. Reuben reclined in the patrol car’s seat while Fuller made some calls on his radio to the sheriff’s office and then hung up the microphone.
“Where we headed?” Reuben asked, arm hanging out the window. The wind seemed hotter than the air when they were parked.
“Cliff’s.”
“I don’t want to go to Cliff’s.”
“I wasn’t asking you.”
They passed groupings of ragged shanties on eroded pieces of land and long stretches of cotton just planted. A few of the farmers had roadside stands that were closed up for the night but still advertised with hand-painted signs for corn, field peas, squash, and boiled peanuts, even though corn and peas wouldn’t be in for some time.
Reuben reached under his seat for the bottle of the homemade liquor Fuller had brought along and, after taking a long pull, passed it on to the assistant sheriff. Fuller smacked his lips and said: “That could peel the paint on a barn door.”
“Or make you blind.”
“Pussy will make you blind, too.”
“I’m worn out.”
“Naw, you ain’t,” Fuller said, slowing and turning down an unmarked dirt road and under a tunnel of pecans growing along a slatted fence. They passed a burned-out car and another stretch of plowed-under land and then took another turn, the headlights cutting through the darkness on a moonless night like going into a long, endless cave.
“You know what ole Hank used to say about the moon.”
“What’s that?”
“Said the moon was hiding on account of its sadness. How’d that man think of that?”
“He was a drunk.”
“He was one of the best friends I ever had and the best goddamn singer that ever came out of the state of Alabama,” Reuben said when Fuller stopped the car and turned off the ignition, the words coming out louder in the quiet than he’d intended than over the motor.
“When did you meet him?”
“After the war, when I got home. He’d just been fired off WSFA and needed someone to drive him. Keep him sober for singin’ at all them roadhouses.”
“And they hired you.”
“His mamma did.”
“Well, his mamma didn’t have sense at all.”
“He could write songs from picking the words out of the air.”
They followed a path to an old unpainted house situated next to a small, two-acre pond. Reuben turned up the liquor, damn near finishing the bottle, and watched as the moon reappeared from outside a cloud just like Hank had always said. A broken-slatted pier walked out into the water maybe six feet.
“I want you to listen to me,” Bert Fuller said. Tonight, he’d dressed in blue jeans and his usual boots with a white snap-button shirt and matching hat. If he didn’t know better, Bert Fuller sure looked like one of the good guys. And Reuben smiled at the thought.
“What are you laughing at?”
A bass flopped to catch a bug in the pond. Reuben turned to look at it.
“Listen,” Fuller said. “Cliff’s done got him this Mexican gal that you won’t believe. I know you was always sayin’ how you like those little Filipino women. The Mexes ain’t a hell of a lot different. All that talk about their pussies smellin’ like tacos is a bunch of trash. This gal has golden skin and big old brown eyes, titties the size of watermelons. Man, I just could bury my pecker between them.”
“What’s that mean to me?”
“It means I’ll let you have her after I fuck her. But I ain’t goin’ after you.”
“Bert.” Reuben laid his hand on Fuller’s shoulder. It was embroidered with lassos and bucking horses. “You sure are good to me.”
Reuben followed him inside Cliff’s Fish Camp, and in the elongated, camp-style room was a roundup of most the Machine, minus Shepherd and Matthews and a few others. Most of them were bit-part players who’d come out of the hills to run ’shine or come from Nevada or Atlantic City to deal cards or work on slots. There were the locals, too. Godwin Davis and Red Cook, the Youngblood brothers, Slim Howard, Papa Clark, Jap Sneed, and Frog Jones. And at the end of the table was the Queen herself, Fannie Belle, and she pulled Fuller in close.
Since Shepherd and Matthews had gone into semi-retirement, Fannie had snatched up most of the PC action, including some business down in the Florida Panhandle. She’d partnered with Cliff Entrekin in the fish camp and worked the needle-and-pill racket with some buck-toothed flunkies who worked out of back alleys and barns. Some say she got a big cut of the sale of whore’s babies, too, with Dr. Floyd. But to Reuben, she’d always be that tired, big-titty, redheaded B-girl who used to work at his club, writing letters to her twenty husbands who sent her checks monthly.
He had to admit she had a hell of a scam, getting some horny Army boy to marry her and then getting the dumb, pussy-struck sonofabitch to head overseas. Reuben used to call Fannie the Queen of Hearts.
Fannie laughed some more with Fuller, her teeth bright and big, and Fuller probably telling some dirty joke he read in the back of a comic book. Then her face retreated into a half smile and she wrapped an arm around his fattened stomach, whispering into his ear, and Reuben wondered what the hell you had to whisper about in this world.
Fuller stepped back from the whispering and nodded. The top of Fannie’s red hair caught in the light like a red flame. They both stood and motioned for Reuben to follow them.
A strand of bare bulbs had been strung over the camp tables, and the men and whores talked as if this was a big, old family function with half-eaten plates of catfish and hush puppies before them. Ole Moon sat in a corner, away from the whores in their kimonos and housecoats, working on probably his fifth plate, wiping the grease from the whole bone fish across his overalls.
Outside, Fannie walked them over to a beaten-up old Nash and popped the trunk. She reached inside for a flashlight by the wheel well and pulled back a knitted blanket. She shined a beam onto two wooden boxes.
Fuller opened one and gave a short little laugh.
“So easy even you two jackoffs could do it,” Fannie said.
“Good God Almighty,” Reuben said. “What’s this shit for?”
“I don’t want to fuck up a perfectly good manicure.”
“You always were particular with your hands,” Reuben said.
Fannie clawed at Reuben’s face, but he quickly sidestepped and told her to calm her ass down. She walked back into the night on wobbly high heels, and both the men stood there looking down at the two boxes.
Fuller gave a low whistle and walked back into the fish camp. Reuben peeked back inside the box, looked at all those sticks of dynamite, shook his head, and closed the trunk.
He sat down on the edge of a slatted porch and stayed there for a while and watched the loopy motion of bats gobbling up the night insects. He lit a cigarette and thought about what he’d just seen and how he always found
