Rumble Tumble

“He sent me and Wilber over to Oklahoma City to have a talk with her. She was most inconsiderate. Not unlike the lady there with the revolver. Very rude. Very … how shall I put it. Very … Go Ahead. Well, our orders were simple. Either she came through, or we eliminated her and set something up new for Jim. She didn’t come through. In fact, she tried to shoot the both of us with a derringer. That didn’t work out. She missed. Wilber disarmed her and held her down and I strangled her with a stretch of piano wire strung between two wooden knobs. It sounds exotic. Almost secret-agent-like. But it’s really a messy instrument. They say a gun is messy, but I must tell you on authority this isn’t true. I suppose a bullet makes a kind of mess, but it’s from afar if you want, and if you get a good shot in, and you don’t shoot your target in your living room, you just walk off.

“Not so strangling a colored woman who I would judge tapped out at about three-fifty and could tie a good-sized hog in a knot with her bare hands. Wilber had to sit on her, and I had to hold her head in my lap and use the piano wire on her throat. Very messy. Gets all over you.”

“Yeah, and she shit herself,” Wilber said.

“Yes,” said Red, “there was that. Defecation. Most unpleasant. I was reminded of the chimpanzees I used to work with.”

“Had on a muumuu,” Wilber said. “It ran down her legs. Got on my hands, all over my pants and shoes. Had to throw them away. The pants, not the shoes. Shoes cleaned up all right.”

“It took us a good part of a half hour to finish her,” Red said, “and I bet that piano wire cut all the way to the bone, and still she struggled. I’ve never seen anything like it. The woman was a regular Rasputin.”

“And she just shit all over everything,” Wilber said.

“You said that,” I said.

“Seemed the more I tightened that wire, the more she fought,” Red said. “Wilber there, big as he is, couldn’t hold her down. When it was over, we were both exhausted. It was quite a rumble tumble.”

Red looked at Brett to see what effect he was having. Brett’s face held no more emotion than the revolver in her hand. I could see a flash of disappointment roll over Red’s face, but he covered it with a puff of his cigar. A cloud of dark tobacco smoke rolled up and gathered about his red head like smoke above a forest fire. Red leaned over and thumped his ashes in an ashtray on the nightstand next to the bed.

“You telling this so we’ll know how tough you are, or just because you like to hear yourself tell it?” I said.

“Both,” Red said. “And Maude has to do with Tillie, and that has to do with Jim, and finally with us, then you. I’m wanting you to know too, that though Wilber and I have had our disagreements with Jim, I think Jim is one heck of a good fella.”

“Ain’t no one nicer to niggers,” Wilber said. “He’s got lots of niggers work for him, and Indians, and that’s more than can be said for folks down this way.”

“Jim is quite advanced when it comes to equal opportunity employment,” Red said.

“He’s got some old niggers work for him too,” Wilber said. “He’ll hire an old nigger fast as a young nigger. ’Course, just for certain jobs.”

“Frankly,” I said, “Jim’s work relations don’t interest us all that much.”

Red nodded. We were all close friends now. “Big Jim does have his problems, however. Gambles too much.”

“He’ll gamble on anything,” Wilber said. “I’ve seen him bet on how long a guy’s dick would be. And that fella had to get it out too, and Big Jim, he could guess a thing like that.”

“But he isn’t homosexual, or anything like that,” Red said. “He just likes to gamble, and the wilder the gamble, the more he likes it. Always pays up when he loses too. ’Course, he don’t lose much. Big Jim’s a character. All in all, you couldn’t ask for a nicer more honest employer in this type of business.”

“Tell us about Tillie,” Brett said.

“Well, Tillie worked for Maude. She was one of Maude’s girls, you see. When we did Maude in, we put the old reprobate in a piano crate with about three hundred pounds of rocks to keep her company, drove her all the way to Arkansas and dropped her hefty self in a lake. We made it a kind of holiday, stopping to see scenic markers and points of interest along the way, though we drove over there faster than we drove back. She started to acquire an aroma about the time we got to the Arkansas line. When we completed the chore, we returned to Tulsa to see Jim. Jim was so pleased, he put me in charge of Oklahoma City and sent Wilber with me as a kind of enforcer.