“They was loyal,” Jan said. “More loyal to Tina Louise than their own skin. So loyal to the white woman who owned them that they fought against their own interests. Stranger things have happened.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Clyde repeated, following Jan out of the cemetery and into the road that curved downhill to the old High Street.
To anyone but the Smalls, Lick Skillet was a wild, overgrown place. What minor significance it may have ever held was now lost to all but a few. This was not strictly true, but it was the perception preferred by one fierce family. Aside from a single strand of cables bringing electricity over the mountain that stood against the clear eastern sky, there was nothing that placed Lick Skillet in any decade, any century.
Clyde shouldered his rifle and thought of all the blood that had been spilled on this hard patch of earth in the name of freedom.
The year before
Clyde hadn’t been awake long. His truck was the only vehicle on the road between Strasburg and Gunn City and he knew the gray smoke rolling up his hood couldn’t have come from anyone else. But Clyde was daydreaming, his eyes heavy, muscle memory alone keeping him out of the ditch, and his confused mind had registered the smoke as somebody else’s problem. But it wasn’t somebody else’s problem, it was Clyde’s problem. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted, snapping off the engine. He hadn’t checked his levels. Radiator had been leaking almost as long as he’d owned the truck, topping it up was routine. Most days he could afford the time it took to pull off and refill from the watered-down antifreeze he kept in back. Most days all he had was time, endless, fat, and dull, nothing at all to fill it. But today was Tuesday, his only work day. He had to be on time.
Outside Ekland Field—named for the doctor, now dead—he brought his truck off the road. He got the kit from the back, popped the hood, and brought the engine back on, raising his middle finger to that field, a flat slab of dirt he’d spent many a summer night on, bored, sweating, bothered by bugs. Just beyond it, the Potty Pond wormed with a crust of flies Clyde could hear from the highway. Downwind, it stank of shit, not piss.
With a rag he twisted off the radiator cap. He’d made the mistake in the past of pulling a cap from a dead engine. Clyde had never really had a dad to teach him how to not hurt himself as he went through life. He slipped the funnel in and poured, the spill burned against the block, engulfing him in smoke. If he had to do this again before Independence he’d be late and that fucker Leon, his boss, wouldn’t let him forget it.
Back on 58, Clyde rolled his windows into their felt. Gravel dust and pine erased the scent of Strasburg’s human waste. The air rushing in ruffled the old food wrappers on the dash. Clyde moved the six-shooter he kept up there—a silver Colt .45—to pin them down, took a gulp of sweet tea to wake him up. “Rocket fuel” he called it, his own recipe: a gallon of water, twenty bags of Lipton, a cup of sugar. It usually did the trick.
Driving Northwestern Missouri’s uncluttered highways for five years had taught Clyde what the bastard deputy sheriffs would let a driver get away with and what they would not. Sixty-two in a fifty-five was about it. Back when he worked for Mr. Longarm he’d kept a working Fuzzbuster, but that purchase had long since crapped out, like most of what he’d acquired between ’06 and ’08, the only two years of gainful employment in Clyde’s short life. The biggest purchase had been this deep blue Ford F-150 he’d got secondhand three years after it rolled off the factory floor in Lee’s Summit, MO, home of just about the last UAW plant left in the Midwest; now into its eighth year it too was worse for wear. Even if Clyde had possessed the money to fix its many problems, he just didn’t care enough to do so.
He knew he’d be late when he made Independence, the onetime crystal meth capital of the world. Growing up, Clyde had come upon plenty of chances to sample the drug. Half the people he knew had snorted it off the hood of somebody or other’s car. But he never had, being either a good boy or a pussy, depending on who you asked. It was 8:38 by the time Clyde rolled through the gates of the auction lot and Leon made a big show of checking his watch. “Sorry, Leon. Had to stop to fill the radiator.” The day was thick with atmosphere and blasted white so Clyde covered his eyes with his Oakleys.
“That’s funny, I thought you said your radiator overheated again, Twitty.”
Clyde mumbled.
“Why that’s funny,” Leon said, “is because I told you a long time ago to get that fixed. Right?”
Clyde kept his mouth tight. He nodded and wanted to snatch the tire iron from his flat kit and swing it into the side of Leon’s stupid fucking lumpy head. He saw himself do it: dropping the flame-haired prick right to the pavement. Leon walked to a Firebird and signed it out to Clyde rolling a raw, freckled arm to study the time again. His watch was small like a lady’s and cut deeply into Leon’s ballooning wrist. “You got an hour to get eighty miles.” Leon flipped his red ponytail around his neck so that it came to rest on the other side of his denim vest. “Good luck.”
Clyde collapsed into the Firebird’s molded bucket seat. He never could get used to a low-riding vehicle. Even though he was of average height and only about twenty pounds over his fighting weight, he didn’t fit well in the car. The seat was so rigid he had to take his wallet out of his back pocket. He checked the route and turned the key, feeling the vibration of a glass pack. In Clyde’s experience, cars with aftermarket glass-pack mufflers thought themselves much tougher than they were. Once he got out onto the highway he was as rough with the gears as he pleased, grinding second to third, third to fourth, hoping to leave a few pieces on the highway for Leon to think about.
Clyde made the auction with time to spare and parked the car in its designated slot. With a Mr. Pibb from the machine, he stood back watching about fifty people wait to bid on ten vehicles. He was always curious to see who won what he’d driven personally. The bidding on the Firebird started at $250. When it hit $1,000, a bidder bowed out. The two remaining took it to $1,500 before one of them left the girl standing at his side and marched over to the other bidder. “Jay Smalls,” the man said, big loud voice, hand out. The other man shook it.
The auctioneer paused and confusion spread through the crowd. The girl Jay Smalls had left yelled, “Dad!” and said, “I don’t know him,” hiding her face in her hair. People laughed and the auctioneer asked if there was a problem.
“No problem,” Jay Smalls said. His arms were long and tobacco brown and roped with veins and muscle. “Just wanted to meet the competition!” That brought more laughs, then Jay Smalls leaned in and whispered to the other bidder for a solid ten seconds, patted him on the shoulder, said, “All right?” and returned to his daughter. “Fifteen hundred, was it?” Jay Smalls said to the auctioneer.
“Yes sir,” the auctioneer said. “Do you mind if I continue?”
Jay Smalls laughed, making his large moustache, black and thick as a shrub, curl up. He whistled. “Lot of money, boy.”
The auctioneer started up again, waving his little hammer. Jay Smalls jerked his head and raised a hand for sixteen hundred, staring at the other bidder.
The auctioneer continued. “Do I have a seventeen? Seventeen hunert, folks, come on now, seventeen hunert for a fine automobile.” The other bidder tried to hold Jay Smalls’s gaze, it looked like he was going to be sick. Jay Smalls never once dropped his big friendly grin, and finally the other bidder shook his head, walked off.
Clyde retreated to the shade with a frosted honey bun from the machine. Jay Smalls signed papers and searched the crowd until his eyes settled on Clyde. He pointed and yelled, “You Clyde Twitty?” Then he seemed to cut the remaining distance between them in a blink. He had his hand out again, straight as an arrow, and his daughter looked embarrassed trailing in his wake.
Clyde took Jay’s hand. “Yes sir.”
“Jay,”