Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,20
like that. You can’t, you don’t just invite yourself over ’cause you don’t got no good food of your own. You got a coupla pigs. Go stick one on a spit and you got your own roast pork, bacon, ham, whatever, as much as you want.”
“So why you calling me? To tell me your fat cow of a wife is cooking a roast pork dinner that I can’t have none of? I tell you, Jess, Connie can’t cook for shit, so go on and have your fuckin’ roast pork—” He cut himself off. “Shhht—you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Jesse said.
“Someone just picked up.” Cleavon and his brothers shared a party line with Jesse and Connie Gordon, and four other households who’d refused to sell their properties to the National Park Service when it started buying up land fourteen years ago. “Who’s there?” Cleavon said. “Speak up.”
“Cleavon?” a voice said.
“Higgins?” Cleavon said.
“Yeah, it’s me Weasel. Who you talking to?”
“Me,” Jesse said.
“Jess? Good, that’s easy—I was just about to call y’both.” He was speaking fast, excitedly. “Boys, we caught us some new does!”
“Lick my leg!” Cleavon exclaimed, unconsciously using a saying his pa had often favored before he blew his brains out with a double-barrel shotgun. “Doe” was code for the out-of-town women they used in the black masses. “How many?”
“Three.”
“Three!” Jesse crowed happily. “Good work, Weasel, you sumbitch! They not too, they not like the last one, too cut up, are they?”
“I don’t know, Jess.”
“The hell don’t you know?” Cleavon said, frowning. “You didn’t just leave them there, for Christ’s sake, did you?”
“You don’t understand, Cleave,” Weasel said. “They were with four bucks. I couldn’t, there were too many, for me to go back. That’s why I’m calling. I need help rounding them up.”
Cleavon blinked. “Seven in all? The fuck they driving, Weasel—a goddamn limousine?”
“Driving?” Weasel said, playing dumb.
“Hell, Weasel,” Cleavon said. “It’s just us, nobody else is on the line listening in, now start talking some sense.”
“It’s just that, Mr. Pratt told us, he said—”
“Fuck Spencer! Now spill it. What were they driving?”
“Cars, Cleave. Normal cars. One was, one was a Jeep, green, if I remember right. Everything happened so fast, you know? The other, blue, I think. That’s the one I ran off, that crashed. Ballsy driver. Came right at me straight as a bullet. Never seen anything like it. He kept coming, he held it together a second longer, I might’ve been the one in the woods.”
A silence followed.
Cleavon said finally: “You pulling our legs, Weasel?”
“No, Cleave. Why?”
“Why? Why? You better be messing with us, Weasel.”
“I’m not messing, Cleave. What’s wrong?”
Cleavon’s headache, which he’d temporarily forgotten about, was back and worse than ever. He kneaded his eye sockets and tried to keep from throwing the phone across the room like he’d done to the rabbit ears. He had to deal with two retards in Earl and Floyd all day long, every day of the year, he didn’t need it from Weasel too. But he got it, didn’t he? He sure did. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Weasel,” he said. “Those people you ran down—”
“Does, Cleave, does and bucks—”
“Those fuckin’ people,” he snapped, “you think, what, they’re just gonna sit there where they crashed and have a barbeque? Shit no, Weasel, they gonna get in the second car and go for help. They gonna go to town. They gonna raise hell, that’s what they gonna do! Now where the fuck are they?”
“Damn, Cleave, I didn’t think, I thought, you know, I thought they’d… Damn, Cleave—they’re right near your place, not a hundred yards north of the bridge.”
“Listen up, Jess, and listen good,” Cleavon said. “Me and the boys’re gonna cut through the woods, get this under control. You and dipshit here, you two drive up and meet us quick as you can. I’m gonna call Lonnie now.”
“Get him to stop anyone coming his way?” Jesse said.
Cleavon nodded, then realized nobody could see him. “They’ll probably stop at his place looking for help. Probably. But who knows for sure. They might drive right on past, so, yeah, get him to stop them whether they want to stop or not.”
“Hey, Cleave,” Weasel said. “I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry—”
Cleavon slammed the handset down. He waited a few seconds, picked it up again, and began dialing Lonnie’s number.
“Cleave?” It was Weasel.
“Get off the fuckin’ phone Weasel!”
“Sure, Cleave, okay, see you soon.”
Cleavon depressed the switch hook, counted to five before releasing it, then dialed Lonnie’s number. After two rings Lonnie’s boy picked up. “Hello?”
“That you,