Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

They got to the door and Bodeen, clutching at his twisted leg in his chair, said, “What about me? You ain’t worried your daddy might be crippled for life?” Trying to play it off as tough but with a touch of whine in his voice.

Lila left Chase propped in the doorway, walked back to her father, geared up, and with the side of her hand chopped him in the throat.

Sheriff Bodeen squawked like a strangled cat and flopped against the dining-room table. Lila told him, “Daddy, you ever touch my man again and I’ll make sure you ride all the way to hell in a wheelchair.”

Hearing her say “my man” like that made Chase grin, and as she pulled his arm around her shoulder again, his tongue spilled out one side of his mouth and a thick rope of blood trailed from the other.

T he next Saturday Sheriff Bodeen showed up at Lila’s door on crutches with his leg in a cast. Chase backed up a step when he saw the man on the porch. He was still pissing blood and had already lost five pounds from having to eat meals through a straw. The fight had given him a certain sense about himself, knowing he could be hard when he had to be and that he could disregard Jonah when necessary. But still, he didn’t feel like going another round right now.

The sheriff said, “You want a job?”

It was tough to talk but he could swing it. “What job?”

“I need another deputy. I could use someone like you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“What’s what mean, son?”

“Someone like me.”

“You’re smart, you’re fast, you’re tough as saddle leather, and you know how to keep your head in the middle of a fight.”

He thought about that for a minute. What a gas Jonah would have, thinking about Chase walking around with a badge. Standing there on a street corner being Deputy Dawg while Lila called him an outlaw. Riding after the stupid Southern crews that stumbled into town loaded on moonshine.

Chase said, “Thanks anyway.”

Bodeen nodded, looked a little irritated, said, “You mind tellin’ me why the hell not?”

“I don’t like guns.”

A couple of months later, when he started looking around for a wedding ring, he asked folks who the best jeweler in the area was. They all pushed him to Bookatee. He couldn’t believe it, and nearly hit the road to go check out shops in New Orleans, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, somewhere there was civilization. But he figured what the hell and went to visit the Emporium.

Turned out Bookatee really did know jewelry. Book sold Chase a nice diamond ring for a fair price. When Book opened his safe and Chase got a look inside, he pursed his lips, realizing the crew really had known what they were doing. At least in scoring Bookatee.

He sent a message to Jonah only once, through the regular channels. From a pay phone he called Murphy in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

“Heard you were down South someplace,” Murphy said.

“Still am.”

“You looking for a job? I know of two shops that could use a good mechanic like you.”

The usual way of telling him there were two crews looking for a wheelman. “No thanks. I think I’m settling down here for a while.”

“Doing what? Changing oil? Rotating tires? Fixing crankshafts?”

Asking him what grifts he was working. “My crankshaft is just fine. I met a girl.”

Chase could sense Murphy wrinkling his brow, trying to figure out what Chase was talking about, what kind of score he was after.

Chase said, “A real girl, Murph. I’m settling down.”

“Kid like you who’s been in the life since you were a squirt, it’s got to be hard.”

“Well, I’m getting married anyway.”

“To one of them Southern belles? She the kind who expects you to sit in the stands of the Alabama-Mississippi game and cheer for the Muskrats or the Armadillos or whatever the fuck their mascots are?”

“No, she’s the local sheriff ’s daughter.”

“You do like a life of juice. What if big daddy decides to pull you in?”

“She already tried it. She’s the deputy. He only broke my jaw.”

Murphy let loose with a wild laugh. “Like most of you speedsters, you like to put the hammer down as far as it’ll go.”

“Only when I have to. I need to get a message to Jonah. I’d like to send him an invitation to the wedding.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“He’ll steal the icing off the cake. Hold on.” Murphy rolled around his office in a chair with squeaky casters, opening and closing filing cabinets. “He opened his own shop.” Murphy rattled off ten digits. It wasn’t exactly a sophisticated code. Chase reversed the number and saw it was a 202 prefix. Jonah was in DC.

He wasn’t sure how it would go, talking to his grandfather again after all this time. He figured it would be easier for Jonah to get in touch with him if the man felt like it. Chase gave Murphy the reverse of his cell phone. “Tell him what I said. If he wants to, he can drop me a line.”

T he wedding got a little wonky because Lila had three moonshine-toting uncles who came out of the deep woods for the first time in years and started kicking it up hard. Chase liked them fine, but Sheriff Bodeen sat there eating fried possum and glowering as if he wanted to arrest them. And this was his best man, the father of the bride.

First came the drinking, then a lot of the food and some dancing, and then the actual service down at the lake. Everybody set up chairs with parasols affixed to them to keep the sun off their heads. They wreathed themselves in veils of mosquito netting. A choir of gospel singers led them all through a couple of quiet hymns before really getting funky, dancing around with their tambourines and howling out praises to Jesus.

Chase and Lila exchanged vows in front of a minister who was overcome with the Holy Ghost and started speaking in tongues. He threw himself into the lake and Chase had to dive in and fish him out. They both stood there dripping while the man finished the ceremony, Lila unable to look at Chase for fear of cracking up.

When he and Lila kissed everybody let out a Rebel yell.

She drew back and said, “Well, you’re in it now, outlaw.”

“Been that way since the moment you botched the grand curio shop heist.”

A few of her friends wondered where his family was and asked a lot of personal questions. He gave the usual short-shrift answers, smiling but definitely putting some ice into his words, and eventually they backed off. The three drunk toothless uncles started firing shotguns in the air and actually managed to nail a couple of wild geese. They plucked the birds and threw them on the fire. By then Sheriff Bodeen had finished a bottle of whiskey and was hugging everybody, including Chase.

“Son,” he said, “you gonna take care’a ma cherished girl or I’m’a gonna bury you in the bayou.”

It wasn’t exactly congratulations, but Chase knew it was from the heart.

Judge Kelton got crazy on moonshine and started taking off his clothes and chasing Molly Mae around the field. For a girl with some heft to her, she was pretty fleet on her feet. By midafternoon he’d proposed in nothing but his skivvies, and she seemed to be seriously considering it.

She said to Lila, “He’s got hisself a fine house, no chilluns, and I hear tell he got money stashed away in mason jars buried ’neath his barn. He gotta be goin’ on eighty, I won’t have to bear his tomfoolery long.”

Lila said, “He’s lookin’ healthy enough to stay outta the undertaker’s clutches a good while longer.”