Lost Man's River(10)

“Easy now. Hold on a minute—”

“You been snoopin and skulkin all your life, you sonofabitch! Nobody never knowin where you was at, let alone what you was up to. Maybe you don’t know it, boy, but you come pretty close to gettin yourself killed, back in the old days!”

“By you?”

“Could be.”

“You threatening me, Speck?”

The one-armed man moved in behind him, and the man called Dummy had drawn closer, too. The room went silent. The crowd waited beady-eyed for some stray scrap of event, like hungry crows. Lucius said, “The man I’m looking for calls himself Collins. Old Man Chicken, Billie Jimmie calls him.”

“Chicken-Wing?” a woman yelled. “He ain’t but about four damn feet from where your elbow’s at! Under the bar!”



Despite the heavy humid heat, the man who lay beneath the bar on a soft litter of swept-up cigarette butts was covered right up to his closed eyes in dirty Army blankets poxed with black-edged burns. “He’s comin off a drunk,” Speck Daniels snarled. He toed the body with a hard-creased boot, and the body emitted an ugly hacking cough, then a gasping rattle that might have been some sort of deathbed curse. “When Chicken-Wing washed up here years ago, we made him barkeeper, ain’t that right, Chicken? Paid him off in trade. All he could put away and then some, and he’s still hard at it! Come to drinkin, he don’t never quit! Don’t know the meanin of the word!”

“Crockett Senior Daniels!” the voice said bitterly from beneath the blankets. “Damn redneck know-nothing!”

Speck grinned. “I know my ass from a hole in the ground, which you ain’t known in years!” In good humor now, he winked at Lucius and kicked the body harder. “Come on, Chicken! Say how-do to Colonel, boy, because he’s just leavin!”

Hair like greasy wet tufts of a duck emerged from the olive blankets, followed by a soiled, unshaven head, a sad reek of booze and urine. The old man lifted the singed blanket to his mouth before turning toward Lucius, so that only the eyes showed, peering out through hair and beard like a wild man peering through a bush. Lucius thought he glimpsed something familiar, but he saw at once that this man was not Cox. A scrawny claw crept forth to grasp the tin cup of mixed spirits and tobacco juice which Dummy, at a sign from Speck, had ladled from a slops bucket under the bar. The old man grasped it avidly, knocking it back with one great cough and shudder.

At the sight of Lucius, the eyes came blearily into focus, then misted over before closing tight. The head withdrew. From beneath the blanket came dire curses and more coughing. “Don’t a dying man get no privacy?” he yelled.

Lucius went down on one knee beside the pile of blankets. “Mr. Collins? You wanted to see me?”

“Go on back where you come from, boy!”

“We have to talk,” Lucius said urgently. “You can stay at my place till you’re better.”

With his good arm, Crockett Junior Daniels lifted Lucius off the floor, turned him away. The drunk yelled after him, “Don’t mess with ’em, boy! I’ll see you down the road!”

At the door, Mud Braman tried to block his way. “You’re Mister Colonel, right? Mister Colonel Watson!” At a sign from the one-armed man, Dummy thrust his palm against Mud’s face so that the nose and bulging eyes stuck out between his fingers, then shoved hard with one thrust like a punch, sending Mud back through the screen door. Striking the rail, he spun into his fall, making a half turn in the air before he dropped from view. A scaring bang rose from the bottom of the steps.

Lucius jumped after him down the stairs as Speck Daniels observed them. “Poor ol’ Mud has flew down them steps so many times you’d think he’d get the hang of it, but he just don’t,” Speck said.

Mud Braman, on hands and knees, was red-eyed with pain and disillusionment. “See how they done? I tried and I tried to be in friendship with these peckerheads, done my best to help out where I could! It ain’t no use!” Yet when Lucius tried to help him up, Mud cursed him. Wiping the blood from his gashed brow with the back of a grimy hand, he tottered through the dirt and weeds to the pink limousine and dragged himself into the backseat like a sick cat, pulling the door shut with loud creaks because the hinges were all bent and rusted and the rank growth of weeds kept it from closing. “Anybody thinks that Mud R. Braman is goin to take any more shit off these skunks better think again!” came the voice from within.

Speck Daniels yelled at the pink auto, “You ain’t hurt none, boy! You can thank the Lord you got skunks for friends, cause otherwise you wouldn’t have none at all!” Seeing Lucius headed for his car, Speck raised his voice to a hoarse shout. “Lucius Watson! Lucius Watson ain’t nowhere near the man his daddy was, ain’t that right, Lucius?”