Rumble Tumble

We drove away from there just before noon, right after Herman set fire to the church. It caught quick and went up like oiled cardboard. Herman left a note and a hundred dollars on his truck seat next to the title for the vehicle. The note gave the title and the land to the Mexican woman. The hundred dollars was back wages. The prairie dog machine remained in the truck bed to go the way of fate. I wondered if the Mexican woman would take to it, start sucking dogs out of the ground to sell. My guess was it beat cooking beans and cornbread for a hundred dollars a month.

I was driving, Leonard was in back with Herman and Brett. Red was sitting up front with me, sullen and quiet for a change. I glanced in the rearview mirror and watched the church burn. For a moment, it looked as if it were wearing a flaming hat, then the whole thing was fire and falling lumber.

“So much for God’s house,” Herman said.

Man, this was something. An East Texas bouncer, a black queer, a ex-sweet potato queen, a six-foot-four overweight retired hit man and former reverend, and a redheaded midget with an attitude. The only thing we needed to top our wagon off were a couple of used-car salesmen, a monkey and an organ grinder.

Late in the day we reached the Mexican border. We stayed in a motel on the Texas side that night in a little town called Echo. Herman made a phone call to his friend, some guy named Bill Early Bird. I listened to the talk, trying to pick up on any code words that might mean bring about three hundred bad guys with shotguns and a lawn mower, but I didn’t detect anything like that. Herman explained what we wanted in simple terms and hung up.

“We wait,” Herman said.

Leonard decided to sit outside in the car with a shotgun, just in case the wrong crowd showed up. I loaded a shotgun myself, sat inside to the left of the door. Brett had her pistol and mine. Two Gun Mama. Red and Herman watched television.

About nine P.M. there was a knock on the door and I had Red open it up. Standing outside was a big, dark man who almost filled the doorway. He was dressed in a T-shirt, paint-splattered blue jeans jacket, blue jeans, and boots with paint splotches on them.

He looked down at Red, over at Herman, then around the door at me and Brett.

“Come in,” I said.

He glanced at my shotgun, which I had moved slightly to the side so as not to look too unfriendly. He looked at Brett for a while. She held the handguns against the tops of her thighs like little lap warmers.

The big man came inside. Herman stood up and stuck out his hand. The big man took it. There didn’t seem to be any great enthusiasm in the greeting on either part, just formality.

“Herman,” he said. “How are things with the Lord?”

“Rocky,” Herman said.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

The man had a kind of singsong quality to his voice. His face was pocked.

“This is Bill Early Bird,” Herman said. “He and I used to run together.”

“Long ago,” Bill said.

Herman introduced me and Brett and said, “This is Red, my brother.”

“Red,” Bill said, and stuck out his hand. Red took it and Bill pumped the entire midget like a water pump handle.

Leonard appeared in the open doorway with his shotgun.

Herman said, “And this is Leonard.”

Leonard shut the door, said, “Glad to meet you.”

Bill nodded. “I take it, Herman, these men and this woman are not friends of yours.”

“Not exactly,” Herman said. “They are not friends of Red. I am caught in the middle. Please, sit down.”

Bill started to sit, but Leonard said, “No hard feelings, my man, but I’d like you to come over here and put your hands on the wall.”

Bill looked at Herman. Herman shrugged.

“I don’t suppose while I have my hands on the wall you want me to lower my trousers, do you?” Bill said.

“Only if you want to,” Leonard said.

Bill did as he was told. Leonard held the shotgun to the back of Bill’s head with one hand while he patted him down with the other. Leonard removed a lock-blade knife from Bill’s front pocket and a little revolver from a holster at the small of his back.

“You can sit down now,” Leonard said. “Do that and we’ll get along.”

“We’ll get along all right,” Bill said. “All you got to do is treat me good and don’t call me Chief.”

“He doesn’t like being called Chief,” Herman said. “Bill here, he’s a Kickapoo Indian.”

“Long way from your original stomping grounds, aren’t you?” Leonard said.

“What about you?” Bill said. “My people at least came from this continent.”

“Actually,” Leonard said, “my people come from East Texas.”

“That might as well be another continent,” Bill said, and sat on the bed.

“Story is you can get us across the border into Mexico,” I said. “Carrying guns and ammo.”

“Maybe,” Bill said. “There’s something I must get straight. I am not a great friend of Herman’s. I know him. We have done some work together in the past. Smuggling. I want it understood up front that I’m my own man, and I’ve got my own help, and that’s who I’m taking care of.”

“Help?” Brett said.