Bull Mountain(22)

“You hush your mouth, woman,” Valentine said, and stood a little taller. His broad shoulders were nearly twice the size of Cooper’s. “You do your worse, sir. I know I can’t stop you. But I know what Rye give me, and I know what’s right is right.” That was all Albert Valentine had to say. Cooper didn’t hesitate. He swung the ax handle and hit Valentine in the jaw. The crowd roared with surprise and Mammie screamed. The old man spun almost completely around before falling to the ground. He lifted his hands to cover his face, but Cooper swung again and again, snapping the bones in Valentine’s hands and fingers like campfire kindling. The sticky night air was filled with whooping and laughter from most of the men in the crowd as Cooper beat Valentine with the hard wood. Mammie never stopped screaming, and tried grabbing Cooper’s arm. He flung her away without much notice and the crowd kept her from trying again. Valentine’s son threw himself on top of his father to stop the beating, but Cooper grabbed the boy and tossed him to the side like a bale of weed. He lifted the ax handle high for a final blow. Valentine’s eyes were already swollen shut behind shiny purple knots.

“Deddy, stop!” Gareth said, getting in between his father and the beaten old man. Cooper gripped the wood gone slick with blood.

“Move yourself, boy.”

“No, Deddy, don’t kill him. He’s a nice man. He won’t do wrong no more. He won’t.”

Cooper stood holding the hickory up high, twirling it in a slow circle like a ballplayer. He looked around at the faces surrounding him, which ranged from thrilled to terrified. Gareth’s hands were shaking as he held them up to block his father from hitting the old man again.

“Please, Deddy, please stop.”

Cooper lowered the length of wood. “Get him out of here,” he said. Mammie and Albert Junior scrambled to help the old man. Cooper looked at his son with a confused expression, partly impressed and partly disgusted. “Pick up that bag and get in the truck.”

Gareth looked around on the ground and found the paper bag full of cash. He tucked it under his arm and slid into the front seat of his father’s truck. Albert Junior waited for Gareth to look at him, and when he finally did, he nodded. Gareth nodded back.

“Ernest,” Cooper said, wiping the ax handle clean on the canvas tarp hanging off the truck. “I want you to follow these people back to their house and collect the rest of the take from that run and bring it with you to work tomorrow.”

“Yessir,” Ernest said, and gave Mammie a hand lifting Valentine to his feet.





CHAPTER





8




GARETH BURROUGHS

1958

Gareth sat in the passenger side of his father’s old Ford, holding Annette Henson on his lap by her hips. The night outside was starless and pitch black. He tried counting the fireflies blinking on and off outside the truck’s window to keep his eighteen-year-old libido in check, but it was the bird that did the trick. “Do you hear that?” he whispered in Annette’s ear.

“Hear what?” she said.

“That bird. What is it?”

Annette stopped dry-humping his lap for a moment and looked at him funny. “I don’t hear any birds, Gareth.”

“Just a second ago. I’ve never heard any bird like that before.”

Annette grabbed one of his hands and put it on her breast. “You need to be paying attention to me and not some bird.”

“I’m serious, ’Nett. I don’t think that was a bird.”

Annette tilted her head, more than slightly irritated that he wasn’t giving her his full attention. “You’re being paranoid, Gareth.”

Of course he was being paranoid. He was Cooper Burroughs’s son. He was raised to be paranoid. To be observant. To be aware. The bird outside the truck didn’t sound right. He spent most of his nights listening to the night birds sing to him outside his window, and the chirping he’d just heard was foreign. It didn’t belong. With both hands, he gently pushed Annette’s face back from his and wiped the fog off the window glass.

“Seriously, Gareth, what is it?” she said in a husky whisper, her eyes barely open.

“Shhh,” he said, but she made an attempt to bite at his raw lip anyway. This time he pushed her back with a little more force and held a finger to her lips. She almost protested. She wasn’t happy about being postponed. The Ruby Bliss lipstick she’d borrowed from her sister just for tonight was supposed to be unpostponable. Out of instinct she scanned the truck’s bench seat for her handbag to apply some more.

“There it is again. Did you hear that?” Gareth whispered, and tried to concentrate on the blackness outside the window.

“All I hear is your heart beating, sugar.”

Gareth was no longer in the mood for the teenage dream. He slid his hands down her curvy frame and lifted her off his lap. The look of disappointment on Annette’s moon-shaped face was one Gareth would remember and talk about for years to come. He slid her over behind the steering wheel. “Keep your head down, and don’t get out of this truck, no matter what happens.”

“Gareth, I . . .”

“I’m serious. Don’t get out of the truck. I’ll be right back.” He quietly clicked open the glove box and pulled out his father’s .44-caliber pistol.