Rumble Tumble

Two of Big Jim’s men picked up Wilber’s coat, got hold of Wilber. He screamed in agony when he was lifted. As they carried him along, his leg dragged behind like the tail of a dead animal. They opened the front door and helped him outside.

“This whole thing,” Big Jim said. “It’s soured my stomach. You know, I’m really a pretty nice guy. I like to give breaks. I’m forgiving. But sometimes, well, you got to know when to cut your losses.”

Big Jim reached inside his coat and took out an automatic, said, “Hey, dwarf!”

Red looked at him and Big Jim pulled the trigger. Red’s head slammed against the tin wall and the wall went scarlet and Red melted to the floor like butter running off the side of a griddle.

Herman bellowed, charged at Big Jim. Big Jim swiveled slightly on his stool and shot Herman in the head. Herman’s charge knocked Big Jim off the stool and Herman came down on top of him.

Two bodyguards leaped forward, grabbed Herman, yanked him off of Jim, rolled him on the ground and shot him several times.

Big Jim said, “He’s dead, you fools. He was dead when I shot him.”

Big Jim got his feet under him, put his automatic back inside his suit coat and began to brush himself off. One of the bodyguards came over and helped him. Big Jim let him. When he was brushed off he took the handkerchief off the stool and used it to wipe his shoes. He gave the handkerchief to one of his men, turned to us.

“I shouldn’t have made a deal like that with you guys,” he said. “It was stupid. I thought Wilber could take you, colored man. I thought he’d wipe the place up with you.”

“Maybe he had an off day,” Leonard said.

Big Jim grinned. “No. I don’t think so. All right, ya’ll get the whore, get your asses out of here. I don’t want to see you no more. I hear from you, I see your faces, whatever, all bets are off. Got me?”

We nodded.

Leonard put on his shirt without buttoning it, picked up Tillie and carried her and put her in the back seat of the car. With Brett’s assistance I went after them and leaned against the hood.

Irvin walked past us. He said, “I don’t want to never see any of you again. Ever.”

Outside, the two bodyguards were putting Wilber into the back of a black Cadillac. There was another black Cadillac parked under the tree next to Irvin’s truck.

Irvin got in his truck, started it up, and drove away.

Brett sat with Tillie’s head in her lap. I used the car to brace myself and got around to the passenger’s side. Leonard got behind the wheel. He said, “Shit, no keys.”

“There’s a spare in a magnetic box,” Brett said. “It’s stuck up under the dash there, to the left of the steering wheel.”

Leonard found it and we drove out of the hangar.

I turned to look back. Flames from the plane were licking up higher than the hangar. The big men in their nice suits were escorting Jim out to the Cadillac under the tree. He got in and they closed the door. A few of the men got in the same car. The others opened up the trunk of the Cadillac where Wilber waited, then went back inside the hangar.

As we eased away, I saw them come out of the hangar carrying something. The sun shone brightly on the red hair of that something. They dumped Red into the trunk and returned to the hangar.

“Drive very fast,” I said.

31

The field across the road was frozen and the ice on the dead grass was very pretty in the moonlight. It was mid-December and Leonard and I were sitting on his front porch looking across the road through barbed wire out where forty acres of cleared land lay. It was a hay field, but for some reason none of it had been baled that year. Bad hay maybe. Perhaps the owner died.

We sat on Leonard’s front porch in the porch swing and drank hot chocolate. Bob, Leonard’s son the armadillo, was curled up on the edge of the porch, staring out at the night, perhaps thinking about gunfire and shattering dillo shells, relatives gone to that great armadillo den in the sky, or perhaps he was seeing the leering face of Haskel. I wondered if it would matter to Bob if he knew I had given an anonymous tip to the FBI about Haskel’s location and vocation. Maybe for armadillos, unlike humans, the past was the past, gone away, completely forgotten.

Whatever, Bob had it cushy now. He followed Leonard about and Leonard shared his vanilla cookies with him more frequently than he did me.

I shifted in the porch swing for more comfort. My right thigh still gave me trouble, and my shoulder was a little stiff. I hadn’t gone to the doctor for any of it. Not even blood. I had stayed in bed for a couple of weeks eating steaks and drinking some godawful tonic Leonard made me take. I think I got well so I wouldn’t have to drink that tonic.

Brett came out to see me from time to time. I had only actually talked to Tillie once since the events, and all she had said was hi.