Black Water (22 page)

There were a number of reporters in the audience, and the judge wanted to give ’em as much to write about as he could. No tellin’ how long it’d be before another howdy-do as heinous as this one come along. He was really hopin’ the reporters got his first name right. They’d fucked it up more than once. It was Almer, not Elmer. He’d wondered more than once what the Hell his folks had been thinking when they came up with Almer.

The Foreman played his part, stood up, pulled a slip o’ paper from his coat pocket, and proclaimed, “Yes, Your Honor, we have.” Standing in front of a mirror, he’d rehearsed those lines at least a hundred and fifty times last night and again this mornin’. Five little words. Eighteen letters ‘tween ’em, and they were all his. God Damn! They’d probly be engraved on his headstone when he was finally laid to rest. He’d thanked God a thousand times that he’d been given the opportunity to lob the first stone during the vote. There’d been a whole bunch o’
shit
s and
God Damn
’s from the unlucky and envious rest when he was designated foreman. He was a veterinarian, and as coincidence would have it, Judge Parks had a bunch o’ cows, horses, and hogs, most requiring medical attention at one time or another. One and one was two. When the vet was dead of old age, and the worms ‘n beetles’d stripped his bones clean, he’d still be known as the Foreman at the Komes Brothers Murder Trial.

The bailiff strode to the jury box, took the coveted script, carried it back to Parks and, reachin’ over the bench, handed it to him. From that day for’ard, he’d be known as the bailiff who handed the piece o’ paper with the verdict written on it to the judge at the Komes Brothers Murder Trial.

Parks helt it up so everbody could see. He unfolded the paper and read the verdict to hisself. After draggin’ it out as long as he could by scrunchin’ up his eyebrows, puckerin’ his lips, and noddin’ most judgely, he looked over his glasses at the defense table, cleared his throat and said, “The Defendant will rise.” Hub and Luther stood up. Knowin’ everbody was watchin’ Hub and Luther, Parks slipped the paper in his pocket. Next week it’d be framed and hangin’ on his office wall next to his various certificates of accomplishment. “Mr. Foreman, would you please read the verdict to the court?”

Hesitant and nervous that he’d blow it, the Vet unfolded a copy o’ the paper given to the judge. “We...the jury...in a vote...o’ twelve t’nothin’...find the defendant...Hubert Marshall Lusaw”—and he let it hang in the air. Time stopped. The Earth quit spinnin’ ‘round the Sun. “Guilty,” he finally declared. “On both counts.”

Hub was flabbergasted it hadn’t gone his way. Dimwiddie was intoxicated it had gone his; his two lucky bourbons had come through. Luther wasn’t anything. It went the way he’d feared, and the rest o’ the cheering courtroom had a cud to chew on for the next decade. Parks regretted wearing underwear. He’d dreamed of rollin the head of his pecker in his fingertips while passing such a sentence as this for years, and now he’d let it slip away.

He pounded the gavel, alerting the crowd to the next act. “Hubert Lusaw, for the murder o’ George ‘n Matthew Komes, this court sentences you t’forty years hard labor at Angola State Penitentiary. Court’s adjourned.”

The courtroom exploded, and the judge banged the gavel hard one time, stood up, and descended the two steps. The bailiff met him at, and opened, the back door.

Hub turned to Luther, dumbfounded. “Forty years?” Two guards started for Hub while he grabbed Luther by the collar and screamed in his face. “Forty years? You good f’nothin’, why didn’t you do somethin’?”

With help from the guards, Luther pried Hub’s hands from his coat. “Dimwiddie gave you the rope, you dumb shit, and you stuck your head in it!”

The guards helt Hub’s arms and he growled back. “’Cause o’ you, you prissy little bastard, I’m goin’ t’prison!”

Luther calmly straightened his coat, and then surprised the Hell out o’ Hub and the guards both when he jumped in Hub’s face and spit all over him, yellin’, “Because of you, you backwoods, brain-dead pud-pounder, I lost my first murder trial! We’re even!” Luther Knox, Attorney-At-Law, was the only person present in the courtroom that day who would never, ever brag about bein’ any part o’ the Komes Brothers Murder Trial. He stuffed his paperwork in his briefcase, yanked it off the table, and huffed off while the guards drug Hub away.

On the way out, Dimwiddie met Luther in the aisle and offered to shake his hand. “Young man,” he said, friendly, “considering what you had t’work with, I believe you did an admirable job.” Then he looked around to see if anybody could hear, “And, I was thinkin’ I might write a book about this, and if it’s all right with you, I might like t’use that bus drivin’ line in it. I’d give you full credit, of course. That was a humdinger.”

By the time the guards got Hub through a side door to the outside, he was shackled with one set of irons at the wrists and hobbled by ‘nother at the ankles, forcing a stutter-stepped shuffle. Raeleen approached, draggin’ a whining Harvey and Henry behind her, dread granitized on her face. She already knew about the sentence. The verdict had been shouted to the waiting throng outside the courthouse two and a half seconds after bein’ announced.

“Hub?”

The guards stopped, allowing time, but Hub said nothin’.

“Hub, say somethin’,” she pursued.

“Like what?”

“Like what’re we gonna do?”

For a second it looked like he was gonna tell her somethin, but then licked his lips and shook his head. “I can’t tell ya what t’do Raeleen. Looks like yr’on yr’own.”

Before they could say another word, a haint-like visage pushed through the crowd and, before Hub could do anything, raked the wooden gator head across his left forearm. Lootie’d gripped the tail end of the thing in her right hand and pushed the poison-laden teeth down and into his arm with the left, slicin’ it badly.

Instantly, the arm felt like it was on fire, and he jerked it to his side. Bits of skin and flesh hung from the thing’s curse-hexed teeth. She dropped the wooden gator head to the ground, pulled one o’ the vials from her bag, popped the cork, and before Raeleen could jump out o’ the way, splattered her in the face with the dirty, fetid, swamp-water concoction. Immediately, her eyes burned and she was temporarily blinded. One o’ the guards put his hands on Lootie’s shoulder, but when she turned that one depthless black eye on him, he let go and backed off.

Lootie turned to Hub. “You killed my boys!” She rummaged in the bag hung on her shoulder and gestured to Harvey and Henry. “One o’ these days, I’ll collect these two in payment.” She popped the cork off the snake blood vial and flung it across Harvey’s face. He fell to the ground, screamin’ and roilin’ in fiery pain.

Although she could hardly see, Raeleen tried to step between Lootie and the boys, begging, “No! Please, no! Not my babies.” She bent to pick Harvey up and pull him to safety, but because o’ the depth o’ the gossip-mongering gawkers who’d gathered to watch the guards haul Hub off, she couldn’t push through.

Lootie twisted the cork off the third and final vial, the boar blood, shoved Raeleen aside, and splashed it across Henry’s face. Now both boys screamed like they were bein’ boiled alive, the black, cursed potion drippin’ from their little faces.

Lootie pointed to them all. “Th’day th’first dies, y’all die,” then she pointed to Hub, “and th’lowest o’ th’low’ll fight over yer bones.” She reached in the bag one more time and pulled out the knife. The same one ol’ hole-in-his-face-where-a-nose-oughta-been cut taters with. The one Smoke pounded in the back o’ the noseless pig fucker’s head. The one Pearl used to free Lootie from Smoke’s belly. The one the squeaky little voice told her to take with her from Roach’s cabin. Pointin’ it at Hub, she cast her last spell. “My life f’yours.” Never taking the black eye off Hub, she gripped the knife handle with both gnarled hands and placed the tip under her ribcage. Then she deliberately fell on it, burying it in her heart and cracked the front of her head open when she hit face-first in the dirt. In seconds, black blood circled her head like a hellish halo.

The crowd pushed back like a drop of oil on water, and for ten seconds, the only sounds were of shufflin’ feet, Harvey and Henry squirmin’ on the ground, and Raeleen pleading, “No! Somebody do somethin’! Don’t let ‘er die! Please don’t let ‘er die,” but no one moved. No one spoke.

Finally, one o’ the guards cautiously knelt beside the inert, emaciated lump and checked the pulse in her neck. He looked up. “She’s dead.” He stood up, wiping his fingers on his pants leg.

Blood rivered down the toothed grooves on Hub’s arm, over his hand and off the ends of his fingers, puddlin’ beside his left shoe. No one paid any attention to the thickening tributary that inched sluggishly from the pool at the front of Lootie’s head to the one at Hub’s feet.

It took a dozen law enforcement officials twenty minutes to push the crowd away enough so that one o’ the guards could back his Ford short-bed pickemup to the scene. Sheriff Rowe guided him until the back bumper was about eight feet shy o’ the body. He helt his hand up, and the driver killed the motor and set the brake. He got out and walked to the sheriff and another guard standin’ beside him. They looked at the corpse and then at each other. Rowe gave ’em a look that said we need to get it in the truck.

The truck’s owner recognized it, stiffened, and shook his head. “Uh-uh. No, sir! I’ll use m’truck. I don’t want to, but I will. But that’s’s far’s I go.”

Rowe looked at the other guard.

“I’ll turn in m’badge first, ‘n I ain’t funnin’.”

Rowe looked around and noticed a couple o’ colored boys, Bob McDonald and Phillipe LaRue, standin’ around lookin’ like do-nothin’, shiftless, lazy-assed niggers. “Hey, boys. I’ll give y’all fifty cents t’load ‘er in th’truck.”

They sauntered over, and the oldest, Bob, looked at the body and then the Sheriff. “Two dollahs.”

“Apiece,” Phillipe added.

“Yeah,” Bob agreed. “Apiece.”

Rowe didn’t have to think about it much. “Awright, but f’that, you load ‘er up, ride in th’back, ‘n unload ‘er at th’morgue.”

Bob and Phillipe shared a nod and walked to the body.

Sweatin’ like a plow horse in July, Hub bounced and rocked from side to side in the center of a hard metallic seat welded along the driver-side wall of a smallish, dirty, drab-green bus bound for his new home. Angola Penitentiary. The worst rat trap in the whole world. Every bump touched off a searing flame of pain. His arm felt so heavy it was like somethin’ was pullin’ it to the floor. His leg irons snaked through a heavy-duty eyebolt welded to the floor ‘twixt his feet. The guards had passed on the wrist manacles ‘cause of Hub’s mangled arm, cupped in a hastily contrived sling double-knotted around the back of his neck.

He was leaned for’ard, head hung and eyes scrunched in pain. His right elbow rested on his knee, so the slung left arm could hang between his legs like a hammock. The pain throbbed like a rotten tooth, and even tightly wrapped, the blood-saturated sling leaked and dripped, puddling molasses-like blood on the dented and scraped metal floor.

Besides the driver, there was one-armed guard on the front seat o’ the prisoner section, back to back with the driver, and another all the way in the back, facing the front. Both were as far from Hub as they could get, and neither was very big on conversation. They knew who he was and who Lootie Komes was, and that was all they needed to know. They watched the bloody puddle spread with each drip.

Halfway to the prison, Hub’s mouth dropped open, his eyes rolled up, he turned to linguini and toppled over head-first to the dirty bus floor. Another smaller puddle started from a new gash over his right eye in the same place he’d been cut when Sheriff Rowe slammed him against the cell wall. The guards looked at him, then at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and shook their heads as if to say “not me.” They’d let somebody else handle it when they got to Angola.

Hub opened his eyes. Stunned. He didn’t move. Except his eyes. He helt his breath and looked around. Then he closed ’em, squeezed down real hard, rolled his eyeballs around behind the lids like he was cleanin ’em off, and then opened ’em again. It was the same. It was still there.

He blinked, confused.

First he’d been in a bus, goin’ to Angola Penitentiary with his arm on fire, and then…he looked at the arm. It was unslung and undamaged. He bent it, wringin’ it around, and straightened it. Nothin’. He slapped it with his other hand. No pain. He was dreaming! Yeah, that was it. That had to be it! But he’d never had a dream that looked this real. Then, just to be sure, he checked the other arm. Nothin’. It wasn’t like he could just forget which arm had about been destroyed and ready to rot off, but the one he thought shoulda been…wasn’t.

He looked around again. His surroundings were familiar. Very familiar. Too dang familiar. He waited for the skip-jump of a dream, the weird stuff. Flippin’ from one place t’nother. It wasn’t happening, though. It wasn’t a dream. But how could it be real? He was on a bus, goin’ to Angola Penitentiary. He looked around again, wonderin’ where he was and, better yet, how the Hell he got there. It looked so familiar, but….

Then it hit him—he was dead. Yeah. That was it! He was dead. Died on that God Damn bus! He didn’t hurt anywhere. He didn’t smell smoke or hear anybody screamin’ or beggin’ for ice water, but there wasn’t any other explanation. He was dead. Dead and sittin’ on the edge o’ the front porch o’ the Lusaw family home. The same house where he was raised. But it wasn’t there anymore. That old house wasn’t anywhere anymore. It’d been torn down. Caught fire, burned, gutted, torn down, and hauled off, what was salvageable used on another house or a barn. But there it was. Here it…is.

“My name’s Hub Lusaw,” he said, out loud. He said it to see if it would sound as strange as his bein’ there. It didn’t. It sounded like him. He was still hangin’ on a little some to the dream idea. It was easier to accept than that he’d died and gone to Hell, toppin’ off his life by killin’ the Komeses.

“It’s nineteen-twen’y-four ‘n I’m twen’y-five-years old. I’m married ‘n got two younguns. I killed George ‘n Matthew Komes fer killin m’sister. I went t’court ‘n got forty years. I’s on a bus goin’ t’th’pen. I got sick ‘n….”