Bode said, “Hey, I don’t wanna go to jail, either. Say we go up on charges, who’d take over the White Rebels?”
The White Rebel Brotherhood is what Bodean Gazzer had decided to call his new militia. Chub didn’t fuss about the name; it wasn’t as if they’d be printing up business cards.
Bode said, “Hey, d’you finish that book I gave you? On how to be a survivalist?”
“No, I did not.” Chub had gotten as far as the business on eating bugs, and that was it. “How to Tell Toxic Insects from Edible Insects.” Jesus Willy Christ.
“I didn’t see no chapter on prime rib,” he grumbled.
To ease the tension, Bode asked Chub if he’d like to make a bet on who was holding the other winning Lotto numbers. “I got ten bucks says it’s a Negro. You want to take Jews, or Cubans?”
Chub had never met a white supremacist who said “Negro” instead of “nigger.” Is they a difference?” he inquired sarcastically.
“No, sir,” said Bode.
“Then why don’t you call ’em what they is?”
Bode clenched the steering wheel. “I could call ’em coconuts and what’s the damn difference. One word’s no better than another.”
Chub chuckled. “Coconuts.”
“How about you make yourself useful. Find a radio station plays some white music, if that’s possible.”
“S’matter? You ain’t fond a these Negro rappers?”
“Eat me,” Bode Gazzer said.
He was ashamed to admit the truth, that he couldn’t speak the word “nigger.” He’d done so only once in his life, at age twelve, and his father had promptly hauled him outside and whipped his hairless bare ass with a razor strop. Then his mother had dragged him into the kitchen and washed his mouth out with Comet cleanser and vinegar. It was the worst (and only) corporal punishment of Bode Gazzer’s childhood, and he’d never forgiven his parents. He’d also never forgotten the ghastly caustic taste of Comet, the scorch of which still revisited his tender throat at the mere whisper of “nigger.” Uttering it aloud was out of the question.
Which was a major handicap for a self-proclaimed racist and militiaman. Bode Gazzer worked around it.
Changing the subject, he said to Chub: “You need some camos, buddy.
“I don’t think so.”
“What size pants you wear?”
Chub slumped in the seat and pretended he was trying to sleep. He didn’t want to ride all the way to Grange. He didn’t want to break into a stranger’s house and steal a Lotto ticket.
And he sure as hell didn’t want to wear camouflage clothes. Bode Gazzer’s entire wardrobe was camo, which he’d ordered from the Cabela’s fall catalog on a stolen MasterCard number. Bode believed camo garb would be essential for survival when the NATO troops invaded from the Bahamas and the White Rebel Brotherhood took to the woods. Until Bode opened his closet, Chub had had no idea that camo came in so many shrub-and-twig styles. There was your basic Trebark (Bode’s parka); your Realtree (Bode’s rainsuit); your Mossy Oak, Timber Ghost and Treestand (Bode’s collection of jumpsuits, shirts and trousers), your Konifer (Bode’s snake-proof chaps) and your Tru-Leaf (Bode’s all-weather mountain boots).
Chub didn’t dispute Bode’s pronouncement that such a selection of camos, properly matched, would make a man invisible among the oaks and pines. Having grown up in the mountains of north Georgia, Chub didn’t want to be invisible in the woods. He wanted to be seen and heard. He especially wanted not to be mistaken for a tree by a rambunctious bear or a randy bobcat.
He said to Bode Gazzer: “You dress up your way, I’ll dress up mine.”
Bode peevishly scooped a fresh beer off the floorboard and popped the tab. “Remember what the Constitution says? ‘Well-regulated militia.’ Regulated means discipline, OK? And discipline starts with uniforms.”
Bode took a slug and wedged the beer can in the crotch of his Mossy Oak trousers, to free both hands for steering. Chub leaned against the door, his ponytail leaving an oily smear on the window. He said, “I ain’t wearin’ no camo.”
“Why not, goddammit!”
“’Cause it makes you look like a fuckin’ compost heap.”
Bode Gazzer jerked the truck onto the shoulder of the highway. Angrily he stomped the brake.
“You listen—” he began.
“No, you listen!” Chub said, and was upon him in a second.
Bode felt the barrel of the Colt poking the soft part of his throat, right about where his tongue was attached on the inside. He felt Chub’s hot beery breath on his forehead.
“Let’s not fight,” Bode pleaded, hoarsely.
“Won’t be a fight. Be a killin’.”
“Hey, brother, we’re partners.”
Chub said, “Then where’s our ticket, dickface?”
“The lottery ticket?”
“No, the fucking laundry ticket.” Chub cocked the pistol. “Where’s it at?”
“Don’t do this.”
“I’m countin’ to five.”
“In my wallet. Inside a rubber.”
Chub grinned crookedly. “Lemme see.”
“A Trojan. One a them ribbed jobbers, nonlubricated.” Bode removed it from his wallet and showed Chub what he’d done the night before—opening the plastic foil with a razor and folding the Lotto ticket inside the rolled-up condom.
Chub returned the gun to his pants and slid back to the passenger side. “That’s pretty slick, I gotta admit. Nobody steals another man’s rubbers. Steals every other damn thing, but not that.”
“Exactly,” Bode said. As soon as his heart stopped skipping, he put the truck in gear and eased back on the turnpike.
Chub watched him in a neutral but not entirely innocuous way. He said: “You understand what coulda happened? That we wouldn’t be partners no more if I blowed your brains all over this truck and took the Lotto stub for m’self.”
Bode nodded tightly. Until now it hadn’t occurred that Chub might rip him off. Obviously it was something to think about. He said, “It’s gonna work out fine. You’ll see.”
“OK,” said Chub. He opened a beer: warm and fizzy. He closed his eyes and sucked down half the can. He wanted to trust Bode Gazzer but it wasn’t always easy. Negro, for God’s sake. Why’d he keep on with that word? It troubled Chub, made him wonder if Bode wasn’t all he claimed to be.
Then he had another thought. “They a whorehouse in Grange?”
“Who knows,” Bode said, “and who cares.”
“Just don’t forget where you hid our ticket.”
“Gimme a break, Chub.”
“Be helluva way to lose out on fourteen million bucks, winds up in the sheets of some whorehouse.”
Bode Gazzer stared straight ahead at the highway. He said, “Man, you got a wild imagination.”
The brains of a goddamn squirrel, but a wild imagination.
Tom Krome didn’t wait to unpack; tossed his carry bag on the bed and dashed out. The owner of the bed-and-breakfast was pleased to give directions to the home of Miss JoLayne Lucks, at the corner of Cocoa and Hubbard across from the park. Krome’s plan was to drop in with sincere apologies, invite Miss Lucks to a proper dinner, then ease into the interview gradually.
His experience as a visiting journalist in small towns was that some folks would tell you their life story at the drop of a hat, and others wouldn’t say boo if your hair was on fire. Waiting on the woman’s porch, Krome didn’t know what to expect. He had knocked: No reply. He knocked again. Lights shone in the living room, and Krome heard music from a radio.
He walked around to the backyard and rose on his toes, to peer in the kitchen window. There were signs of a finished meal on the table: a setting for one. Coffee cup, salad bowl, a bare plate with a half-nibbled biscuit.
When Krome returned to the porch, the door stood open. The radio was off, the house was still.
“Hello!” he called.
He took a half step inside. The first thing he noticed was the aquarium. The seco
nd thing was water on the hardwood floor; a trail of drips.
From down the hall, a woman’s voice: “Shut the door, please. Are you the reporter?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Tom Krome wondered how she knew. “Are you JoLayne?”
“What is it you want? I’m really not up for this.”
Krome said. “You all right?”
“Come see for yourself.”
She was sitting in the bathtub, with soap bubbles up to her breasts. She had a towel on her hair and a shotgun in her hands. Krome raised his arms and said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No shit,” said JoLayne Lucks. “I’ve got a twelve-gauge and all you’ve got is a tape recorder.”
Krome nodded. The Pearlcorder he used for interviews was cupped in his right hand.
“Sure is tiny,” JoLayne remarked. “Sit down.” She motioned with the gun toward the commode. “What’s your name?”
“Tom Krome. I’m with The Register.” He sat where she told him to sit.
She said, “I’ve had more company today than I can stand. Is this what it’s like to be rich?”
Krome smiled inwardly. She was going to be one helluva story.
“Take out the cassette,” JoLayne Lucks told him, “and drop it in the tub.”
Krome played along. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. Quit staring.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t tell me you never saw a woman take a bath. Oh my, is it the bubbles? They sure don’t last long.”
Krome locked his eyes on the ceiling. “I can come back tomorrow.”
JoLayne said, “Would you kindly stand up. Good. Now turn around. Get the robe off that hook and hand it to me—without peeking, please.”
He heard the slosh of her climbing out of the tub. Then the lights in the bathroom went out.
“That was me,” she said. “Don’t try anything.”
It was so dark that Krome couldn’t see his own nose. He felt something sharp at his back.
“Gun,” JoLayne explained.
“Gotcha.”
“I want you to take off your clothes.”
“For Christ’s sake.”
“And get in the bathtub.”
“No!” he said.
“You want your interview, Mr. Krome?”
Until that moment, everything that had happened in the house of JoLayne Lucks was splendid material for Krome’s feature story. But not this part, the disrobing-at-gunpoint of the reporter. Sinclair would never be told.
Once Krome was in the water, JoLayne Lucks turned on the lights. She stood the shotgun against the toilet, and knelt next to the tub. “How you feeling?” she asked.
“Ridiculous.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. You’re a good-enough-looking man.” She peeled the towel off her head and shook her hair.
Tom Krome roiled the water to churn up more soap bubbles, in a futile effort to conceal his shriveled cock. JoLayne thought that was absolutely adorable. Krome fidgeted self-consciously. He reflected on the difficult and occasionally dangerous situations in which he’d found himself as a reporter—urban riots, drug busts, hurricanes, police shootouts, even a foreign coup. Yet he’d never felt so stymied and helpless. The woman had thought it out very carefully.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Because I was scared of you.”
“There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“Oh, I can see that.”
He laughed then. Couldn’t help it. JoLayne Lucks laughed too. “You gotta admit it breaks the ice.”
Krome said, “You left the front door open.”
“I sure did.”
“And that’s what you do when you’re scared? Leave the door open and wait buck naked in the bath?”
“With a Remington,” JoLayne reminded him, “full of nickel turkey load. Gift from Daddy.” She ran some hot water into the tub. “You getting’ chilly?”
Krome kept his hands folded across his groin. There was no sense trying to act casual, but he did. JoLayne put her chin on the edge of the tub. “What do you want to know, Mr. Krome?”
“Did you win the lottery?”
“Yes, I won the lottery.”
“Why aren’t you happy about it?”
“Who says I’m not?”
“Will you keep your job at Dr. Crawford’s?” The lady at the bed-and-breakfast had told him JoLayne Lucks worked at the veterinary clinic.
She said, “Hey, your fingers are pruning up.”
Krome was determined to overcome the distraction of his own nakedness. “Can I ask a favor? There’s a notebook and a ballpoint pen in the pocket of my pants.”
“Oh, no you don’t.”
“But you promised.”
“I beg your pardon?” She picked up the gun again; gonged the barrel loudly against the tub’s iron faucet, which protruded from the wall between Krome’s feet.
OK, he thought. We’ll do it her way.
“JoLayne, have you ever won anything before?”
“Bikini contest at Daytona. I was eighteen, for heaven’s sake, but I know what you’re thinking.” She rolled her eyes.
Krome said, “What was the prize?”
“Two hundred bucks.” She paused. Puffed her cheeks. Propped the shotgun against the sink. “Look, I can’t lie. It was a wet T-shirt contest. I tell people it was bikinis because it doesn’t sound so slutty.”
“Heck, you were just a kid.”
“But you’d put it in the newspaper anyway. It’s too juicy not to.”
She was right: It was an irresistible anecdote—yet one that could be retold tastefully, even poignantly, as JoLayne Lucks would appreciate when she finally saw Tom Krome’s feature article. In the meantime he could do little but gaze at the glassy bubbles that clung to the wet hair on his chest. He felt disarmed and preposterous.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked JoLayne.
“I’ve got just an awful feeling.”
“Like a vision?” Krome was fishing to see if she was one of the local paranormals. He hoped not, even though it would’ve made for a more colorful story.
“Not a vision, just a feeling,” she said. “The way you can sometimes feel a storm coming, even when there’s not a cloud in the sky.”
It was agony, hearing one good quote after another slip away untranscribed. Again he begged for his notebook.
JoLayne shook her head. “This isn’t the interview, Mr. Krome. This is the pre-interview.”
“But Miss Lucks—”
“Fourteen million dollars is a mountain of money. I believe it will attract a bad element.” She reached into the water—deftly insinuating her hand under Tom Krome’s butt—and yanked the drain plug out of the bathtub.
“Dry off and get dressed,” she told him. “How do you like your coffee?”
4
Demencio was carrying out the garbage when the red pickup rolled to a stop under the streedight. Two men got out and stretched. The shorter one wore pointed cowboy boots and olive-drab camouflage, like a deer hunter. The taller one had a scraggy ponytail and sunken drugged-out eyes.
Demencio said: “Visitation’s over.”
“Visitation of what?” asked the hunter.
“The Madonna.”
“She die?” The ponytailed one spun toward his friend. “Goddamn, you hear that?”
Demencio dropped the garbage bag on the curb. “I’m talking about Madonna, the Virgin Mary. Jesus’ mother.”
“Not the singer?”
“Nope, not the singer.”
The hunter said, “What’s a ‘visitation’?”
“People travel from all over to pray at the Madonna’s statue. Sometimes she cries real tears.”
“No shit?”
“No shit,” said Demencio. “Come back tomorrow and see for yourself.”
The ponytailed man said, “How much you charge?”
“Whatever you can spare, sir. We take donations only.” Demencio was trying to
be polite, but the two men made him edgy. Hicks he could handle; hard-core rednecks scared him.
The strangers whispered back and forth, then the camouflaged one spoke up again: “Hey, Julio, we in Grange?”
Demencio, feeling his neck go tight: “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Is there a 7-Eleven somewheres nearby?”
“All we got is the Grab N’Go.” Demencio pointed down the street. “About half a mile.”
“Thank you kindly,” said the hunter.
“Double for me,” said the ponytailed man.
Before the pickup drove away, Demencio noticed a red-white-and-blue sticker on the rear bumper: MARK FUHRMAN FOR PRESIDENT.
Definitely not pilgrims, Demencio thought.
Chub was intrigued by what the Cuban had said. A statue that cries? About what?
“You’d cry, too,” said Bodean Gazzer, “if you was stuck in a shithole town like this.”
“So you don’t believe him.”
“No, I do not.”
Chub said, “I seen weepin’ Virgin Marys on TV before.”
“I’ve seen Bugs Bunny on TV, too. That make him real? Maybe you think there’s a real rabbit that sings and dances dressed up in a fucking tuxedo—”
“Ain’t the same thing.” Chub was insulted by Bode’s acid sarcasm. Sometimes his friend seemed to forget who had the gun.
“Here we are!” Bode declared, waving at a flashing sign that spelled out GRAB N’GO. He parked in the handicapped space by the front door and flipped on the dome light inside the truck. From a pocket he took out the folded clipping from The Miami Herald. The story said the second winning lottery ticket had been purchased “in the rural community of Grange.” The winner, it reported, hadn’t yet come forward to claim his or her share of the prize.
Bode read this aloud to Chub, who said: “Can’t be many Lotto joints in a town this size.”
“Let’s ask,” said Bode.
They went into the Grab N’Go and picked up two twelve-packs of beer, a cellophane bag of beefalo jerky, a carton of Camels and a walnut coffee cake. While the clerk rang them up, Bode inquired about Lotto tickets.
“How many you want? We’re the only game in town,” the clerk said.
“Is that a fact.” Bode Gazzer gave a smug wink at Chub.