“Why didn’t you just go to the police?”
Loretta’s eyes were pleading now. “Daddy, they is the po-leece!”
Earl stared at the daughter he’d never known. He recalled that his estranged wife’s grandmother was named Loretta. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, off the pained, crippled expression on her face. “Can you take me to this boys’ club?” he said.
“I was so hopin’ you’d say that. I had no one else to call; I got no one. And I wouldn’t get two steps inside ’fore Tarvis would put a bullet in me and drop me in the bottoms someplace.”
“I understand,” Earl said. “The world can be a hard place. Just take me to her.”
Loretta wiped at her tears and turned back to the wheel. In minutes, they were on the freeway headed east.
There was nothing left to say between them. Earl sat quiet in the back, Melon dozing next to him. Loretta kept her eyes on the road.
By the time they reached the outskirts of civilization, the moon had risen full above them. Loretta exited the interstate and followed back roads into the piney hillscape. Soon, she pulled off onto the gravel shoulder and brought her taxi to a stop.
“I don’t see anything,” Earl said.
“It’s through those trees. I’d like to go, but they see me, they’ll deal with both of us the same way, no questions.”
“Get the car off the road, out of sight,” Earl said.
Loretta produced a handgun. “You want to take this along.”
“No, I’ll handle it my way.”
“There’ll be a guard out front.”
“Don’t worry,” he said.
Earl opened the door and stepped out with his cane and dark glasses in hand, his camera still strung around his neck. “Jump!” he called to Melon. And together, they set off through the trees — blind dog and seeing-eye master — to face whatever fate held for them.
“You stay close now,” Earl said to Melon, putting his dark glasses on.
Melon gave him a whimper in return.
In minutes they arrived at a cabin set deep in the woods. There was a single light over the porch. A muscled young white boy in blue jeans and a tank top stood guard outside the door.
Earl came out of the trees, tapping with his cane, Melon at his cuff.
“The hell you doing, old man? You lost?”
“Come looking for Masta Tarvis,” Earl said, laying it on thick.
“Yeah, well, you got the wrong place. This here’s private property, so just turn your black ass around and head on back the way you came.”
Earl never stopped walking. He continued tapping his way forward, ignoring the threatening glare, until he was face-to-face with the man.
The young guy was a good head shorter than him, Earl now realized, and probably half his weight. But Earl was also a good fifty years older. He couldn’t let this boy get the first strike.
“Nigger, you deaf as well as blind —”
In one swift move, Earl came up with a right and drove a huge fist into the young man’s face. It caught him square on the nose and dropped him like a loose sack of grain onto the porch decking. The force of the blow also drove pain up Earl’s arm and into his shoulder, and for a second he thought he might cry out.
He rubbed at his shoulder until the pain subsided. “Stay,” he said to Melon. Then he dragged the boy off the porch, letting his head bang on its way down the steps. He found a section of the telephone line leading up the side of the house and used a switchblade he found in the kid’s boot to cut a long section of it free. He wired the kid’s feet and hands and cut a slice of his shirt away and used it to gag him. Then he dragged the still-limp body into the trees and dumped it there. All the while, Melon remained on the porch.
Earl returned to him and let them both quietly inside.
The cabin was dark but for a wedge of light that spilled from a room at the end of a long hallway. He could hear men’s voices, bawdy laughter and crude talk, over the wash of southern rock. He crossed down the hallway, the switchblade closed but cupped in his right hand. Melon followed.
Through the open doorway, Earl saw what he had feared the most. His granddaughter was on the bed naked and spread, tied to the bedposts. Four men were ganged around and over her. All were in their late fifties to early sixties; flabby white bodies, hairy backs and legs. They spouted crude epithets as they worked, prodding and jabbing with implements to coax some life into their crippled prey.
This was the Atlanta boys’ club, minus one — Ray Tarvis — and they were preparing for another round.
Earl stepped into the room and tapped his cane hard on the floor twice. It brought four faces swiveling toward him.