The Bible Salesman (17 page)
Uncle Samuel increased the tobacco acreage to include most of the farm and paid Caroline and Henry thirty-five cents an hour to help out during that first summer after he married Aunt Dorie.
Ma D, getting more feeble by the month, moved in with Caroline and Aunt Ruth when Pa D died. Caroline began working at the Simmons drugstore, in addition to the tobacco fields, saving money for Woman’s College in Greensboro. She wanted to be a schoolteacher.
Jimmy Tilletson — a distant cousin just moved back from Tennessee and now a hired hand on the homeplace — had bad teeth and a GI haircut that he said he would keep as long as his brothers were overseas. He and his wife, Jeanette, had a little girl who had polio. Aunt Dorie said the little girl’s dresses were dirty. They brought her to church, and the men who were ushers each Sunday lifted her in her wheelchair up the steps. Jeanette worked at the cotton mill, and Mrs. Albright kept the daughter on workdays. Although two of Jimmy’s brothers were soldiers in the war, the army had not taken Jimmy. No one seemed to know why. Jimmy said it was because he was flat-footed, but when he climbed barefoot into the tobacco barn rafters to hang tobacco, anybody could see he had arches.
While they were frog gigging one night, just the three of them, Jimmy told Henry and Carson about handling snakes in his church in Tennessee. Mark 16:18 promised that believers wouldn’t get bit when they picked up snakes. Jimmy had seen plenty of snakes held up over believers’ heads while they shouted to God in the unknown tongues that Mark 16:17 talked about. He said his church had to keep it all secret because of the newspaper.
“Why couldn’t he tell about it?” Henry asked after he and Carson were in bed. They had twin beds in their own bedroom now. “I didn’t understand that part.”
“Because all the churches have these things they don’t want other churches to know about. Like the Catholics sprinkle people instead of baptize. There’s a Catholic church up in Raleigh and a Jewish church. And I think there’s some Jewish churches in McNeill too.”
“Are they the same as the Jews in the Bible?”
“I don’t know. These might be new Jews. I think they are.”
“Do they sprinkle?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do they want to keep it a secret?”
“Because it’s connected to some kind of code that only preachers can know. Like the Morse code. Like in the army they have these codes that the Germans and Japs don’t have. The Jews had a code and then the Christians had a code. I think.”
“If we went in the army and got killed, would that make Aunt Dorie a gold star mother?”
“No, because you have to be the real mother.”
Henry thought about his real mother somewhere in Raleigh, a blue flag with a gold star hanging in her window. He pictured the flag in a window of a building he’d once passed in Raleigh on a school trip. It was a nice house that had tourists written on a sign out front, and he thought she might live there. He thought about the letter and present he got from Uncle Jack. “I got something in the mail today. You want to see?”
“Sure. What is it?”
Henry opened his drawer, got out his billfold, and pulled three gold packs from the hidden cash pocket. “Three preventatives. Well, I got this billfold too. It’s all from Uncle Jack. He wrote me a letter, told me how to hide them in the secret cash place and move them around so they wouldn’t make circles in the leather, and he told me I needed to learn to use them so I could avoid misery.”
“They keep you from getting a girl pregnant,” said Carson.
“I know it.”
“And they’re rubbers, not preventatives. You ever seen a water bomb made out of one?”
“Yeah, I guess I did. I don’t know. You want these?”
“You don’t want them?” asked Carson.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I’m not going to do it before I get married.”
“Why not?”
“I promised Aunt Dorie. You’re not supposed to. The Bible says not to — somewhere in there. But Uncle Jack said you could practice on a banana.”
“Screw a
banana
?”
“No, dummy. Put a
rubber
on one.”
“I’ll be right back,” said Carson. He came back with a banana.
“Should we peel it?” asked Henry.
“Peel it? I don’t think so. Do you know how to unhook a bra strap?”
“No. Why?”
“It ain’t easy. You need to practice.”
“But I won’t be doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Sex. All the way.”
“Aw, come on. Then you can play with their titties. Ain’t you ever read Song of Solomon, this king in the Bible? David’s daddy?”
“No.”
“Everybody knew about that in Florida. Hand me your Bible.”
Henry got his Bible off his dresser.
Carson read and Henry listened.
“That’s really there? Let me see it.” Henry looked over the passage.
“Okay,” said Carson. “I’m going to get a bra out of the dirty clothes basket.”
“It’s Aunt Dorie’s.”
“I know that . . . aw, come on.”
Carson left and returned. “Here it is.” He held it from one end so that it hung lengthwise toward the floor. “You want to go first?”
“Go first?”
“Try to unhook it. You’re supposed to practice with it on somebody.”
“I don’t need to practice.”
“Aw, come on.”
Henry looked at the door. Then the window. “Okay. You can practice.”
“Take off your pajama top.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t wear a bra over a shirt, stupid.”
“Something ain’t right about this.” Henry took off his pajama top.
“Here. Put your arms through. Okay. Good.” Carson studied the clasp, then fit the ends together so they held.
Henry raised his arms and turned in a circle. “What do you think?” He looked in the dresser mirror as he turned.
“Pretty good,” said Carson. “They stuff them with toilet paper to make falsies.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
“Why wouldn’t they use handkerchiefs?”
“Maybe some of them do. Now you got to face me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not going to be standing behind her, stupid. You think I’m going to
sneak up
on her or something?”
Two taps on the door. Aunt Dorie’s voice: “What you-all doing in there?”
“Nothing,” said Carson.
She opened the door.
REVELATION
A
n hour south of Tallahassee and a few miles north of Panakala lay the twenty-two-thousand-acre Palmetto Greens Plantation. The main house stood at the end of a long, wide driveway. Tall oaks grew out over the drive. Lawns were green year-round. The dirt-and-rock driveway, dragged periodically with a weighted pallet behind a tractor — years ago dragged with a weighted pallet behind a mule — was not the washed-out tan color of other sand in the area. It was, rather, the rich brown of a deer rump, kept that way by a clay mixture, added from time to time.
Along the driveway, beyond the oaks, sat small barns, horse stalls, dog pens for the English pointers, and houses for the tenants and the overseer, all painted every fourth year. On the property were tennis courts, a golf course, and a train stop. A rail loop from the Seaboard Air Line Railway had been arranged. Several times a month during quail season, hunters arrived from New York or Washington.
The plantation raised cotton and corn with tenant help, but its main purpose was to entertain quail hunters, mostly from New York and Washington, DC. It was owned by O. L. “Ossie” Greenlove, a prominent New York businessman and criminal. Greenlove had hired Teddy Lamont, one of Blinky’s lieutenants, to head his security force, not knowing Teddy remained on Blinky’s payroll. In Greenlove’s office, a five-foot-tall safe held antique handguns, gold coins, Confederate paper money, historical documents, and swords, all of which Mr. Greenlove enjoyed showing to guests. The safe also held acquisitions he never showed: cash, and rare documents that were to be sold on the black market.
On a Sunday morning in late June, before daylight, Clearwater and Henry walked slowly beneath the plantation house — it was that high off the ground — Clearwater shining light from a flashlight onto the joists and underflooring along the approximate reverse route of the safe, especially on the porch, in order to determine if the floor would support the weight of a forklift and large safe, even though if all went well they wouldn’t need the forklift. Were the joists sufficiently close together and sturdy?
Only certain kinds of angle problems might require use of the forklift — for example, if the incline from porch to truck bed was too steep for managing the safe by hand. Teddy Lamont’s written assessment suggested the loading job could be done by hand, using a hydraulic jack and minimal tools and equipment, but Blinky long ago learned to require a forklift and dump truck on-site for any safe job. He’d had them on hand, after all, since his and Clearwater’s creative thievery during the war. You never could tell when you might need them. Besides, they were a tax write-off.
Underneath the house, directly below the safe, several two-by-six boards were already secured between and across joists.
“Now why the hell is all that there?” asked Clearwater.
“For support?” said Henry.
“I suppose . . . I hope. Because if he’s” — he moved around, shined the flashlight at different angles — “if he’s got the safe bolted down, then we might have problems. But Lamont didn’t say nothing about that in the folder.”
A few minutes later, Clearwater, carrying hammer, nails, and two of four sheets of plywood, entered through the front door. Lamont had supplied a key. A Ford Motor Company trademark was printed on each sheet of plywood, along with forklift counterweight.
Henry stood in the truck bed, shined his light across two axes, a service station hydraulic car jack, two heavy forklift pallets, leather straps and ropes, plywood, iron-pipe axles, five small metal wheels, a large khaki-green canvas tarp, a block and tackle, three long lengths of logging chain, lengths of smaller chain, chain cutter, toolbox, metal lay-down tracks, sixteen-pound sledge hammer, two hatchets, other tools and equipment, and a pouch of twenty-dollar bills. Pushing the hydraulic jack in front of him, Henry started along one of the wide, iron-pipe-reinforced gangplanks from the truck to the porch.
Around back, near the open back door, sat the Chrysler. Clearwater had both sets of its keys. There were two directions for a getaway. One, out the driveway to the main highway — to use if they finished as planned, before daylight — and the back way, in case they left after daybreak or due to some other unexpected problem. The back way would take them along a wagon path and onto a two-lane blacktop.
Just inside the front door, Henry met Clearwater coming out. “The goddamned safe is bolted to the floor. We’re going to have to . . . I don’t know.” He looked at Henry. “This is not my doing.”
After some hacking and hammering under the house, Clearwater exposed a couple of bolts and nuts. “Oh God, the nuts are welded to the bolts.” It crossed his mind that he was being set up. He walked out from under the house, stood, listened carefully for a full thirty seconds. No, it was that stupid Teddy Lamont.
He never even checked to see if the safe was bolted to the floor. The idiot
.
Clearwater walked back. “We’re going to have to . . .”
“We could probably do something with the block and tackle,” said Henry.
“Like what?”
“Well, I don’t know without thinking about it.”
“Block and tackle are not going to help us. We’re going to have to chop around the damn thing, free it, and let it fall into the truck.” He looked at Henry. “We can back under there far enough, I think. You got any better ideas?”
“We could use the logging chain and pull it out — like pulling a tooth. Out through the window somehow.”
“I don’t think we got enough logging chain.” How the hell did he get himself in a position to be listening to a boy for ideas? “Go get the truck. We’ll back it under here. Wait. We got to get the forklift out of the truck bed. Drive it off onto the porch. Can you do that?”
“Sure, but what if we just drive the forklift up against the back of the cab — take off the tines? That would save time, and that still leaves room.”
“Okay. Do that. Hurry up.”
Now Henry had the truck in reverse and was looking through the big driver’s-side rearview mirror. Clearwater directed with his arms. Henry backed over a flower bed, up to the latticework.
“Back on through it!” shouted Clearwater. He stepped under the house, said to himself, “We’re lucky them pillars are placed right.”
Henry heard the lattice wood popping.
“Come on,” said Clearwater. “Come on. Okay. Stop!”
When Henry stepped on the brakes he could see Clearwater in the sideview mirror, bathed in red light, standing under the house. He climbed down from the truck, walked under. Clearwater opened the truck tailgate, got out an ax. The safe was above the rear of the truck bed.
Up in Greenlove’s office, after they’d axed through the floor on the two sides of the safe that ran parallel to the joists, they started on the third side.
“It’s almost daylight,” said Clearwater. “We got to get on the damn road.”
Henry thought about how normal citizens had no idea what-all the FBI did. This was risky. Real criminals would get very upset at being robbed. He and Clearwater couldn’t afford mistakes. “What if the safe drops and then goes right on through the floor of the truck bed?”
Clearwater stood, his hand on the ax handle, sweat dripping from his nose. “I don’t think . . . There were some fence posts piled out there. God almighty. Line the bed.”
At about daylight, the safe started through the floor with a loud cracking sound, broke loose, and fell on its side onto the fence posts lying in the truck bed, bounced once. They covered it with canvas and tied it with rope. On the canvas, stamped in large letters, was forklift counterweight.
Safely away, driving the Chrysler, following the dump truck northeast along the old Atlanta highway, Clearwater began considering his options.
In a couple of hours, he and Henry sat across from each other at a small table with a red-checkered tablecloth. Clearwater was eating a waffle. Henry, pancakes, a scrambled egg, and grits.