James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'Here,' Buchalter said, and handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

'What if I got to sign for it?'

'Just scribble on the board. Now, get out there and do it.'

Chuck went back out on the porch. I could see his shadow moving about under the bug-crusted light.

'All right, thanks a lot,' I heard him say. 'Just set it on the gallery. I'll carry it in later.'

'I'll bring it around. It's no trouble.'

'No, man. You don't need to do that.'

'It's going to rain. We're responsible for water damage.'

Chuck came back into the kitchen, the skin around one eye twitching with anxiety.

'Calm down,' Buchalter said. 'Go out front and help the man. Just keep him away from the back.'

'I'm cool, I'm cool.'

'I can see that, all right.'

'I don't need you on my case, Will. This one gets fucked up, I'm going down on a habitual.'

'It's better you not talk anymore, Chuck.'

'You don't get it. I been down four times. I don't need this kind of shit in my life. Now there's this fucking weird guy for UPS. I'm telling you, I don't need this kind of shit, man. I ain't up for it.'

'You're under a strain, Chuck. Wait a minute, what do you mean "weird guy"?'

'He looks like an ape with a UPS cap on its head. Wearing fucking Budweiser shorts. You don't call that weird?'

Buchalter's hand pinched at his mouth. I could feel the heat from his body, smell the mixture of sweat and deodorant secreting under his arms.

'Go out the front door, Chuck,' he said. 'You talk to the man out front. You keep him there. That's your assignment. You understand me?'

'Why me? I don't like this, Will. You want to 'front the guy, you 'front the fucking guy.' Then the skin of Chuck's face drew tight against the bone, stretching his eyebrows like penciled grease marks.

'The sonofabitch is coming around the side again,' he said.

'I'll handle it. You keep these two quiet,' Buchalter said.

'You wouldn't listen to me, man. Now it's turning to shit. I can feel it.'

'Shut up, Chuck. If it goes sour, you make sure Mr. and Mrs. Robicheaux catch the bus,' Buchalter said. 'If he doesn't work for us, he doesn't work for the Jews, either.'

'You want to clip a cop? With our prints all over the place? Are you out of your goddamn mind?'

Buchalter raised his ringers for the cross-eyed man to be silent, then dropped the Beretta into his pants pocket and walked out onto the back porch, with a smile at the corner of his mouth that looked like an elongated keyhole.

Chuck picked up his crossbow and leveled it at my throat. His hands looked round and white and small against the bow's dark metal surfaces. He breathed loudly through his nose and shook a fly out of his face. Large, solitary drops of rain began hitting in the trees outside.

I heard Buchalter open the screen door out on the porch.

'Okay? Is that everything now?' he said.

'I need you to sign.'

'All right.'

'You got a pen? Mine must have fallen off my clipboard.'

'No, I don't. And I'm rather busy right now.'

'Maybe it's in my pocket-'

'Now listen, my friend-'

'Hands on your head, down on your knees, motherfucker! Do it! Now! Don't think about it!'

I heard the weight of two large bodies crash against the wood slats and rake across the tangle of garden tools on the porch; then Buchalter and Clete Purcel fell into the kitchen, and Clete's blue-black.38 revolver skittered across the linoleum.

Buchalter got to his feet first, his flat buttocks pinched together, the change jangling in his slacks, his triangular back rigid with muscle, and drove his right fist into the center of Clete's face. Clete's head snapped sideways with the force of the blow, blood whipping from his nose across his cheek. But he grabbed Buchalter around the legs, locked his wrists behind Buchalter's thighs, and smashed him against the doorjamb.

'Chuck!' Buchalter yelled out, as he tried to get his hand into his pants pocket.

But Chuck had taken his crossbow and gone through the hallway and out the front door like a shot.

Buchalter began swinging both his fists into the top of Clete's head. He wore a large Mexican ring on his right hand, one with a raised, knurled design on it, and each time he swung his right fist down, he twisted the ring with the blow, and I could see gashes bursting like tiny purple flowers in Clete's scalp.

But Clete Purcel was not one who gave up or went down easily. With rivulets of blood draining out of his hair into his eyes, he reached behind him, grasped a three-pronged dirt tiller by the wood handle, and jerked the sharpened tines upward into Buchalter's scrotum.

Buchalter's face went white, his mouth opening wide with a roar that seemed to rise like a rupturing bubble from the bottom of his viscera, as though bone and linkage were being sawed apart inside him. He stumbled sideways, lifting his knees into Clete's face, and crashed through the screen door into the backyard. Then I heard his feet running into the darkness.

Clete pulled himself up by the doorknob and walked like a drunk man into the kitchen, soaked a dish towel under the faucet, and pressed it to the top of his head. He kept widening his eyes and breathing hard through his mouth. His knees were barked, and one sock was pulled down over his ankle.

'Pick up your piece,' I said.

He wiped at his nose and eyes with the towel, then leaned over heavily, holding the towel to his scalp, and closed his hand around his.38.

'The handcuff key is on the dresser in the bedroom,' I said.

He went into the bedroom, came back with the key, and began unlocking the handcuffs. I could feel water dripping out of his hair onto my neck. The handcuffs clattered to the floor. My hands were purple, bloated with lack of circulation, the skin dead to the touch. I opened my pocketknife, cut through the electrician's tape at the back of Bootsie's head, eased it out of her mouth, then began sawing loose the tape on her arms.

'Oh God, Dave,' she said. Her breath came in gasps, as though she had been held underwater for a long time and her lungs were aching for air. 'Oh Lord, God. Oh God, he was going-'

'It's over,' I said.

'He was going to cripple you. He was going to deliberately cripple you,' she said, then squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that coursed down her cheeks. I held her face against my chest and kissed the top of her head. I could smell the heat in her hair.

'Your phone's dead. They must have cut it outside,' Clete said.

'Give me your piece,' I said.

'Where's yours?'

'In the glove compartment of the truck.'

'Man, I can't see straight. That guy's got fists like chunks of concrete.'

'Take Boots down to the bait shop and call the sheriff's office from there,' I said.

'Where are you going, Dave?' Bootsie said, her eyes clearing with a new sense of alarm.

'They probably parked their car farther up the road,' I said.

'No,' she said. 'Let somebody else handle it this time.'

'He's a fanatic and a psychopath, Boots. If we don't nail him now, he'll be back.'

I looked away from the expression on her face. I started out the door with the revolver in my hand.

'Hey, Dave-' Clete said.

He followed me onto the back porch.

'Forget the rules on this one,' he said. 'You get the chance, close this cocksucker's file.'

'Tell the sheriff to call the bridge tender and have him raise the drawbridge,' I said.

'Listen to me-' he began, his face stretching with impatience. Then he stopped and lowered his voice. 'This kind of guy sits in a jail cell and thinks for a long time about things to do to people. Don't live with regret later, Streak. Buchalter is as bad as they get.' He pointed a finger at my face, then wiped a smear of blood off his nose on his wrist.

The moon had risen in the east from behind a bank of black clouds, and a steady, warm rain was dancing on the duck pond at the foot of my property and clicking on the tall stalks of sugarcane in my neighbor's field. When I had returned from New Orleans I hadn't seen any vehicles parked on the dirt road by the bayou, and I guessed that Buchalter and the man with crossed eyes had driven past my house, parked on the far side of it, and cut back through a pecan orchard by the four corners, over a wooded knoll, and through my neighbor's cane field.