Blacktop Wasteland(54)

Red Navely groaned.

Anthony knelt beside him. Both his legs were bent backwards at the knee like a bird. Red’s chest was crushed into a concave on the right side. Blood bubbled out of his ears and his mouth. A swath of skin had been sloughed off the side of his head, exposing an angry red wound. Every breath he took expelled more blood that then splashed across his chin. There were tire tracks across his thighs.

“I told you not in front of my boy,” Anthony said. He placed his wide hand over Red’s nose and mouth.

“Is.… is he okay?” a tiny voice squeaked. The girl from the register had come from behind the counter. Anthony bent over Red’s body.

“Go call 911! Go!” he screamed without turning around. He heard the girl’s feet pounding against the pavement as she ran. Red tried to move his hand toward his gun, but it didn’t seem to be working correctly. He trembled once, then twice, then was still. The life drained out of his eyes like a light bulb slowly going dim.

Beauregard squeezed the steering wheel so hard his forearms ached. He could see a willowy plume of white steam pouring from under the hood. The hood itself was dented in the middle. His chest felt like an elephant was standing on it.

“Get out the car, Bug. No need to give the cops a reason to pop a cap in you when they get here,” Anthony said. He opened the door and helped Beauregard out of the car. Beauregard bent over and placed his hands on his knees. He waited for a stream of vomit that never came. Anthony rubbed his back with his huge soup bone of a hand.

“It’s alright, Bug. You go on and be sick if you need to. You ain’t meant for this life. That’s a good thing,” Anthony said.

“They were gonna kill you,” Beauregard said between dry heaves.

“Yeah, I think they had that in mind, Bug. Don’t you worry, I’m gonna tell the cops it was an accident. Everything gonna be alright.”

Four weeks later, Bug was sentenced to five years in juvie for involuntary manslaughter.

By then his Daddy was long gone.





NINETEEN



“Wake up, Ronnie.”

“Lemme alone, Reggie. My head aching like a gnome digging his way out with a spoon,” Ronnie said. His mouth tasted like the bottom of an oil barrel. If his memory served him correctly, they had drunk three bottles of Jameson last night. He and Reggie had consumed most of it, but the two Mexican girls had their share too. What were their names again? Guadalupe and Esmerelda. That sounded right. Maybe.

“Ronnie, please wake up.”

They’d picked them up at Laredo’s Saloon in Richmond. Brought them back to Reggie’s trailer for a night of debauchery so uninhibited it would have made Hugh Hefner blush. The last thing Ronnie remembered was one of the girls sucking his dick like she had been poisoned and the antidote was in his nuts.

“Ronnie, wake the fuck up!”

It had been two weeks since the job and he wasn’t slowing up one iota. For all his talk about white sandy beaches and blue skies, he wasn’t in such a hurry to leave Virginia anymore. Jenny had bailed on him but that wasn’t such a bad thing. The same day she dipped, they found the dyke chick burnt crispier than grandma’s fried chicken. The way the news was telling it, the cops figured she and Jenny had been in on the robbery. There was no mention of any of their possible accomplices. The heat wasn’t off, but it was turned down from broil to simmer.

“You should listen to your brother.”

Ronnie’s eyes snapped open as he reached for his piece under his pillow. He had given Reggie the money to purchase it legally. A Beretta 9 mm.

“Ah, it ain’t there, brother. You might want to sit up for this.”

Ronnie turned over so slow he might as well have been demonstrating plate tectonics.

Two men were standing on either side of Reggie at the foot of his bed. One of them had a nasty scar on the side of his face. He wore a white dress shirt open at the collar with the tail untucked. The other man was as wide as a refrigerator. He wore a blue blazer over a black T-shirt. The T-shirt barely contained his belly. He was the one pressing the barrel of a .357 into Reggie’s ribs.

“Morning, Sunshine,” the man with the scar and the Colonel Sanders facial hair said.

“You from Chuly? Because I gave Skunk the money. I paid in full, with interest,” Ronnie said. The man with the scar shivered and laughed.

“Nah, we ain’t from Chuly. And we ain’t nearly as bad as Skunk Mitchell. Not really,” the man with the scar said.

Ronnie sat up and let the blanket fall and cover his waist. Reggie’s eyes were as big as dinner plates. Ronnie wracked his brain. Was there someone he had pissed off in the last few weeks that would send some boys to rough him up? He drew a blank.

“Look, I don’t know what this all about, so why don’t you enlighten me a little bit, Hoss,” Ronnie said. He spoke to the man with the scar. He seemed to be the brains of the operation. The man with the scar smiled.

“Well, let me see how I can put this. You done fucked up, Ronnie. You done fucked up so bad you might wanna find your mama and crawl back in her snatch and try again. But since that ain’t gonna happen, you need to get up, put your clothes on, and come with us. Be quick now. I’m trying to catch breakfast. You boys ain’t got noth ing in the cabinet but a cereal box full of money. Can’t eat that, now can I?” the man with the scar said.