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Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

Rust On the Razor (11 page)

BOOK: Rust On the Razor
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I leaned forward in the car and Cody turned half-sideways so that we could look at each other while we conversed. He seemed almost like a decent guy giving information.
“You let that kind of nut run around?”
“Never committed a major crime. I do know that some people stumbled on his place accidentally once. Hikers who got lost. Don't know what he did to them, but they
hightailed it out of town right quick, claiming they had to escape. They said he had snakes and torture stuff and wouldn't hang around to press charges. I know I wouldn't want him to catch me in the swamp at night.”
“I still don't believe you let him run loose.”
Cody said, “Doesn't hurt that his daddy is very rich. Lives up north somewheres but still owns a big chunk of the county.”
Violet said, “That plus there's a lot of toleration for eccentricity in the South.”
“This doesn't sound eccentric to me. I think it's sick.”
“He didn't kill the sheriff,” Cody said. “Last I knew, Harvey and one of the guys went out to warn him not to light any fires. It's been so dry, even the swamp could go up in flames. They didn't find him, but they left a note.”
The young cop might not have Jasper Williams on his suspect list, but ol' Jasper was sure on mine.
“How about Al Holcomb, the one in charge of the Klan?”
“Him and Peter golfed together nearly every Saturday. They've been friends for years.”
“Maybe Peter was a Klan member,” I said.
“I doubt it,” Cody said. “Everybody pretty much knows who's in the Klan. Never heard the sheriff was. Only about fifty people in the whole county are in the Klan. It's not that big a deal.”
“How about Clara Thorton?” I asked. “Peter and she had that big blowup in the Waffle House yesterday morning. Everybody saw it. Or maybe somebody used that fight as an excuse, a chance to kill the sheriff and blame it on Clara or us.”
“That was just politics between them,” Cody said. “I grew up in town, and I know Clara's husband didn't like the sheriff. Never did know why.”
“Is that the basis of their disagreement, or is it more recent?” I asked. “There's got to be some reason.”
“I know Clara has opposed getting more police officers for years,” Cody said. “Me and Harvey only got hired a couple years back because two guys retired. Every time the sheriff tried to get more money for police or anything for the department, she said no. Hasn't been an improvement in years. Cars are getting so bad we couldn't catch a snail in a high-speed chase.”
“Yeah,” Violet said, “I remember the quote in the newspaper Clara gave. Something about cops don't prevent crime, they just come around after and write reports.”
“I'm going to talk to her,” I said. “Who else?”
“Before I came into the department, I heard the sheriff almost got into a fistfight with Hiram Carpenter, your buddy's brother.”
“I never heard that,” Violet said.
“Hiram has a temper,” Cody said. “He can be pretty mean. Him and Peter was in Rebel Hell and Hiram was pretty drunk. Guy accidentally bumped into Hiram. Poor guy apologized but Hiram belted him, knocked him out with one punch. Hiram's damn strong. Sheriff told him to go home and Hiram got pissed.”
“He didn't get arrested?”
“Naw. It was only a fight. He didn't actually hit the sheriff. He swung and Peter stepped back, grabbed Hiram's arm after the fist went by, and pitched him out the screen door. Hiram charged like a bull, but Peter just turned at the last second, pushed him into the wall of the building headfirst. Sort of took the fight out of Hiram. Still took three guys to get him into the back of his pickup.”
“That's something,” I said.
“That's nothing,” Cody said. “That's just a Saturday night at Rebel Hell.”
“How'd the sheriff get along with Wainwright Richardson ?”
“Never heard of no problems.”
We feel silent for several moments. Finally, I said, “Let's go back.”
She nodded, took the next exit, and swung back onto the interstate going south.
“Cody,” she said, “you're not going to try and do something stupid like talk to people about this?”
“Tell everybody some faggot and a girl dragged me off and threatened me?” He paused. “You're right. I can't have people finding out about what I do. You've got something to hang over my head.” He jerked a thumb toward me. “If I can find a way, I'll lock you up, and no threat will stop me.”
I thought of giving him the lecture that I was gay, not a faggot, and Violet was a woman, not a girl, but what was the point?
The three of us barely said a word all the way back to Rebel Hell. Violet turned on a country music station. Some of the songs I sort of liked, since I could understand the words. I wasn't sure I'd understood any of the words to rock music since I was twenty-two.
By the time we got back, the parking lot of Rebel Hell was more than half empty.
“Can I have my gun?” Cody asked.
I reached down to the floor, hesitated, then realized it made no difference. Even if I didn't give him his gun, all he had to do was go into the bar and tell his buddies. We probably wouldn't get far.
I handed it to him. He hefted it gingerly, stared at each of us in turn, then slipped it under his T-shirt in back.
“Where to?” Violet asked as I watched Cody's narrow hips as he strode to a red pickup truck. I got in the front seat as he roared out of sight.
“The hospital.” It was after midnight. “I want to see how Scott is and get the latest on his dad. I want to talk to some more of these people tomorrow.”
“I'll help,” she said.
“I appreciate that. You're willing to take off work?”
“I'm the town librarian. I have my MLS and I run the place. I can do what I want.”
I looked at her clinging halter top and short shorts.
“You have something to say?” she asked.
“You're intelligent. You're educated. You flirt shamelessly with the men. You dress like Daisy Mae.”
She laughed. “What's a nice girl doing with a persona like that?”
“Yeah.”
“If I can use my femininity to get my way, I will. I'll do whatever it takes to subdue my world. If I wear a halter top and men drool, I can get more things than if I wear a conservative business suit. For years the library here was scandalously underfunded. Since I've been in charge, allocation has gone up fifty percent. I'm sure it's because of my persuasiveness. If that upsets some women, I don't care. They don't live here and they don't live my life. I take care of myself very well, thank you, with no help from anyone.”
“Don't know if I've ever met a librarian quite like you,” I said.
She laughed. “I'll call one of the girls to come in and cover for me. Lisa's saving up for college and always wants more hours.”
 
At the hospital she accompanied me to the CCU. Hiram, Sally, and Scott were in the hall. They told us that Scott's dad was still resting comfortably and there was as yet no definitive prognosis.
Scott said, “I slept a few hours earlier. I'm going to stay until four with Mary; then Shannon and Mama are going to come by. What have you discovered?”
We moved away from the group and briefly filled him in
on what we'd found out. I told him we had more people to talk to in the morning.
“I wish I could help,” he said.
“No need. You worry about your dad.”
“You could use some sleep,” Scott said. “Hiram can take you out to the house. It's on the way to his place.”
Hiram did not eagerly say he'd be glad to, but he made no objection. Violet offered, but she lived in town and Scott said it would be silly for her to drive all the way out. I wasn't eager to be alone with Hiram, but I thought this might be a good time to talk to him about the sheriff.
Scott walked with us down to the hospital door and gave me a brief hug. Hiram looked annoyed, but Violet looked pleased.
Hiram led me to a green pickup. In the dim light I could count at least three major dents in the passenger-side door before I got in.
He started the engine, turned the radio up loud, put the car in gear, and jolted out of the parking lot. The noise from the truck told even my untutored ears that he needed a new muffler, or perhaps he'd taken it off. That and the radio noise and we were the loudest thing going down the streets of Brinard. Bumps and potholes didn't seem to bother Hiram. He neither swerved nor slowed for them, with the result that numerous times, we bounced severely about. Twice I hit my head on the cab roof. I guessed this amused him when I saw the side of his mouth rise half an inch both times my head thunked on the roof. I'd looked for seat belts when I first got in, and the truck was new enough to have come with them installed. I didn't see any. He must have taken them out. The truck didn't have air-conditioning, or if it did, Hiram wasn't about to turn it on, and I wasn't about to ask. I matched him by rolling down my window and sticking my elbow out. He gripped the steering wheel with two fingers. I pressed my left hand flat
on the seat beside me and held on to the wing-window with my right.
As we passed the edge of town I shouted over the noise, “I'd like to understand why you hate me so much.”
He glared at me, then reached over and snapped off the radio. The roar of the mufflerless truck seemed to be swallowed up in the surrounding forest. He said, “Enough to want to take you right now out into Thomas Jefferson Swamp, shoot out one of your kneecaps, and see if you ever come out alive.”
Hiram was the biggest of all the Carpenter kids—at least six-six and beefy, but I doubled if much or any of it was fat. His hair was the same color as Scott's, but Hiram's was brush-cut.
“Why not just kill me?”
He stared ahead as we followed our headlights into the soft Georgia night. The breeze from the window made the humidity almost bearable.
“Thought about it. Not sure where to hide the body.”
His lip did not curl in slight amusement. This was a very angry man. I braced myself for a possible attack. All I said was, “You must have met gay people before.”
“Never.”
“What about Scott?”
He glared at me again. Several minutes later we rounded a sharp curve that thrust me against the car door. In the middle of the curve, Hiram said, “Scott is not gay.”
This time when he glared at me, he caught me with my mouth open in astonishment. Hiram made a fist and punched the rim of the steering wheel. “He is not gay! He'd never choose to be that way!”
Was there a point in giving him the “We don't choose this” lecture? I tried. “Hiram, as you were growing up, you didn't make a choice. I bet from the earliest you can remember, your sexual thoughts were about girls.” He
stared straight ahead at the road and gave no indication he heard, but I continued. “When Scott was little, he didn't choose to have sexual thoughts about boys. It was the same for him as it was for you. You had fantasies about girls. He had fantasies about boys. As both of you got older, you wanted women and he wanted men. That's all. It wasn't some goddamn choice.”
All Hiram said was, “Scott is not gay.”
I thought of graphically describing the things Scott and I did in bed together, but realized anything even slightly detailed might just make him angrier.
“If he says he's gay, why hate me?”
“He's not gay.”
I let several miles of silence pass and then said, “I heard you got in a big fight with the sheriff.”
“I ain't talkin' to you.” With that he flipped the country music station to very loud, straining my budding tolerance for the art form. Not another word did he say until we got to the Carpenter home. He pulled into the end of the driveway and stopped the car.
I got out, slammed the door, and began to walk the fifty-foot drive to the house in the glow of his headlights. I heard the gears shift and the engine roar. I turned back to look, but the lights of the truck were too bright. For a second it seemed they were coming for me. I flinched toward the underbrush but caught myself. I forced myself to walk calmly down the center of the path. At the same time I waited for the sound of the engine closing in. Pride was one thing, standing there and getting creamed another. Gradually, I heard the truck swing back onto the highway. In seconds the noise was gone and I was in the middle of Georgia darkness. Ahead, through the trees, I thought I could see light from the house.
The moon and the stars gave plenty of illumination as I strode through the otherwise dark night. The humidity
was cloying but less than horribly unpleasant. I tried to picture Scott as a kid running through nights just like this. He wouldn't be afraid of the surrounding emptiness. I heard crickets, and frogs, and an owl or two, plus other things I couldn't identify. I thought I might have been halfway to the house when the bushes on my left swayed slightly and I heard unfamiliar rustling. None of the other foliage moved. There was no wind. The movement had to come from something that breathed air. When I stopped, the foliage held still. I walked a few more steps and the movement and noise came again. I strode purposefully forward. I figured it couldn't be a lynch mob, or if it was, they were remarkably quiet for such a large group of people. I wondered if it was a bear. I realized that I didn't know if the state of Georgia had bears, mountain lions, swamp lions—if there were such things—or cougars or lions and tigers. Doubted these last two. The idea of alligators and crocodiles crossed my mind, but I thought, They only live in the Florida Everglades, isn't it, or maybe the bayous of Louisiana? But then I didn't know for sure, and I wasn't eager to wrestle anything that was out in these woods. I hurried my pace, but I refused to run.
BOOK: Rust On the Razor
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