Lost Man's River(251)
Them businessmen and their lawyer-politicians who work our federal government like some old whore—them kind are the real criminals in this country! If we go to talkin about betrayin America, them powerful sonsabitches at the top are the worst traitors in the whole history of the U.S.A.! That whole gang deserves to be took out and shot, or at least have their ears cut off so’s the common man could see ’em comin!
You know who pays for all them profits with their lives? Same ones that always pays—the little fellers! All us pathetical damn fools that don’t know how to do nothin about it! Fools like Crockett Junior Daniels who are dumb enough to sign right up to go and fight their wars for ’em! Go get their heads blowed off or arms blowed off for a tin medal, while these fat boys stay home livin high off of the hog!
Before Junior went overseas, he’d talk real serious about fightin for freedom and democracy. Frown a little, y’know, squint off into the future like he seen in the movies, let on kind of quiet and modest how he aimed to serve his country. And I said, “No, boy, that ain’t what you are doin, cause this ain’t your country! It’s their damn country, right up to the White House! Them greedy sonsabitches owns it all!”
Panting for his breath like a thirsty dog, Daniels glared about him, fire-eyed with drink. His weathered face was dark with blood to the point of stroke, and no one spoke as he wound himself down, snarling and muttering. All were astonished by the passion in this man who had never been suspected of unselfish feelings or even the smallest deference to the common good.
Speck glared into the fire while he wiped his mouth and otherwise composed himself, too unraveled to focus. When he spoke again, his tone was low and bitter, and his green-eyed head hunched down between his shoulders like the head of a swamp panther, sinking all but imperceptibly into the undergrowth. “I’m still fightin ’em and always will.” Speck’s voice was hoarse. “I always stood up to their law—home law, school law, church law, state and federal. I only got the one life, same as you, and I never liked nobody tellin me what I must do with it, specially when ever’thin they’re tellin is plain lies and bullshit.”
Speck Daniels looked them over, as if daring them to dispute what he had said. When they awaited him, respecting his strong feelings, his dark aggrieved expression gave way to sly amusement. He winked at them conspiratorially, as if all his grief and fury over the ruination of the Everglades and the despoliation of America and even the maiming of his son had been no more than cynical performance.
Hearing him laugh—more like a bark—the blind man burst out, “Goddammit to hell!” and Harden growled and turned away, disgusted. Lucius watched coldly as the gator poacher, to burlesque things further, attacked his food with loud and sloppy chewing. Peering gleefully from beneath his heavy brows, he ate ferociously, and because he was grinning, pieces of fish protruded and fell from both sides of his mouth. In inspired perversity—to spite his listeners, making their awe of his populist eloquence seem idiotic—the man was mocking them. Yet even his mockery was ambiguous, since plainly he believed what he had said, and was only jeering at it—and at himself, and at them, too—because he saw sincerity, even his own, as foolish weakness.
Belching, Speck picked his teeth with a fish spine, in no hurry. Tossing the bone away, he spoke again, so softly now that he was almost whispering. “Old feller asts me the other day, says, ‘Speck? Don’t you pine for our old life? Don’t you wish them days was back the way they was?’ And I told him, ‘Yessir, Lee Roy, I sure do.’ Said, ‘If I had my life to do again, I would live it right here where I’m at, live off this land same way I always done, huntin and fishin, and lawbreakin, too.’ I told him, ‘Lee Roy, I ain’t never goin to be drove out! Goin to live off this Glades country till I die! U.S. Gov’ment wants to run me out, they’ll have to come in after me, and they better come in shootin, cause I aim to be.’ ”
“Runnin guns to the Spanish countries, now that is a good business,” Speck said cheerfully when nobody else spoke. “Course some say it’s a cryin shame to haul that ordnance so far south and come back with a empty hold. Might’s well find you a return cargo, might’s well haul some of that marijuana weed and make you a nice livin. First feller who done that, over to the Keys, the other men looked down on him somethin terrible, but now there’s more of ’em startin up into that trade, so I been thinkin it couldn’t be too bad. And we got us a smuggler’s damn paradise here in the Islands, least for the ones like Whidden here that knows these shaller waters.”