Nowhere Nice

ONE

Me and Desmond were wrestling a gas range out of a hummocky tangle of fescue. The people who’d bought that stove on time from K-Lo had left it in their yard. They were Arkansas Guthries who appeared to have abandoned their trailer home but not before they’d pitched their major appliances out the door. Their refrigerator had crushed a gardenia bush. Their washer had half demolished the pump house.

Desmond wasn’t surprised. He had some repo history with Arkansas Guthries. He explained to me, Their way of saying, ‘Take your damn shit back.’

Kendell rolled up in his county police cruiser. He climbed out and smoothed his trousers. Tugged his belt and adjusted his gear. Checked the safety on his Ruger. Gave his handcuff pouch a slap.

Boys, he said and wandered over.

Gone already, Desmond informed him. He jerked his head toward the trailer home with its storm door standing open.

But Kendell hadn’t come about Guthries. He just told us both, Walked off.

Who? I asked.

That Boudrot.

I knew enough to shiver and twitch.

What Boudrot? Desmond wanted to know.

What Boudrot you think? Kendell asked him.

Desmond groaned. He said, Shit, and let go of the stove. Back into the fescue it went.

We both waited for something further from Kendell who spat with his usual tidy precision.

He said nothing for long enough to cause me to say to him, Walked off how?

Thanks to me and Desmond, that Boudrot had been serving twenty years in Parchman, not the sort of place the inmates are usually suffered to walk off from.

Out by Beulah, Kendell told us. Had a gang mowing and cleaning culverts.

Prison work crews in their striped coveralls are a common sight in the Delta. Green and gray stripes, probably eight inches wide. You can see them a mile away. They have escorts, of course. No-neck guards in campaign hats with shotguns. The sort of boys who, but for some luck and restraint, would all be inmates too.

He went in the bayou, Kendell said. Back in some cypresses. Disappeared.

They didn’t chase him? I asked

Or shoot him? Desmond wanted to know.

Gators around, Kendell told us. They must have figured he’d swim back.

Which bayou exactly? I asked.

There’s a huge one up past Beulah where a man who hated Parchman more than he feared the gators and snakes could likely lose himself without much trouble.

Out toward Mound City, Kendell said, and both me and Desmond groaned.

That was the big one. It went on for miles, probably even clear to the river. I did some spitting. I wasn’t tidy and didn’t try to be precise.

Well, that’s it then, I said.

Just hold on. Kendell made a bid to reassure us. They’ve got a whole crew up there. A couple of flat boats, an air boat too. They’re bound to flush him out.

For a county cop in the Mississippi Delta, Kendell was awfully optimistic. It probably helped that he didn’t know an awful lot about that Boudrot. The man was just a nasty lowlife on a booking sheet to Kendell, but me and Desmond had tangled with him in the flesh. We’d made sure he got incriminated by all the harm he’d done. When we knew him, he was a Delta meth lord with a vile sadistic streak, and he’d sworn vengeance on me and Desmond from the moment he got arrested. We’d heard he’d kept it up in Parchman like a catechism.

What’s he doing on a work crew anyway? Desmond wanted to know.

Talk was he’d sliced up a couple of cons with a filed-down bunk stay, and there he was out in the regular world cutting grass and cleaning culverts.

Guess they figured he’d straightened up a little. But Kendell didn’t seem persuaded. If they don’t find him, he’ll just keep on running, get as far as he can. I wouldn’t fret much about it. Just thought you ought to know.

That Boudrot wasn’t remotely the typical lowlife spouting off, rattling on about all the harm he’d never get around to doing. He was a first-class Acadian fuckstick, the pride of Cut Off, Louisiana, and he was too eaten up with making us pay to back off it now.

Who do we need to tell? I asked Desmond.

He thought for a moment. All of them.

Why don’t you start with me, Kendell suggested.

Desmond gave Kendell a snort in reply. The one that meant Like hell.

We’d broken a few laws when we tangled with that Boudrot, and I’d been out of policing long enough to not be clear on what they were. Arson for sure. Assault most likely. More than a little felonious menacing and probably some grand theft too. It was all in a bid to put that Boudrot in prison where he belonged, but the whole enterprise had ended up with the bunch of us keeping his money. That had to be the thing Guy Baptiste Boudrot was most put out about. It didn’t matter that he could sell more meth and make another fortune. We’d messed with his shit, and he wasn’t the sort to tolerate something like that.

We couldn’t tell Kendell the shiftless details because he was sure to haul us in. Kendell was about the straightest arrow I’d ever run across. It wouldn’t matter to him that I was his friend and Desmond was his cousin. Kendell was a Baptist absolutest. You either broke laws or you didn’t. He was never terribly interested in why.

Desmond informed me, Sonic, once we’d finally packed up those Guthrie appliances and I’d pulled into the road.

Sure about that?

Uh-huh. He jerked his head toward the truck route. Desmond needed to think, and he did his best thinking over a Coney Island or three.

The trouble was Desmond had been on a righteous Pentecostal diet. He’d been seeing a girl from his church, and they’d been losing weight together as a sign of their devotion to the Lord. Of course, he’d been in an evil mood for some weeks. Nitrate withdrawal, I guess.

I lingered at the truck route junction to give Desmond the chance to reconsider the Sonic. He pointed west toward Indianola. Ain’t telling you again.

Desmond’s favorite Sonic parking spot happened to be available, well down the lot in the shade of a pine, away from the range hood exhaust. Desmond was ordering over the intercom before I’d even stopped entirely.

Maybe they’ll catch him, I said. Might even have snagged him already.

Desmond was usually the sunny one, but he had a nephew who worked up at Parchman, so Desmond was personally acquainted with the brand of halfwit the prison employed.

Won’t, he told me. They’ll spread the word and wait for somebody else to do it.

Swamp might have got him. Ever been out there? Snapping turtles a foot across.

The man had a pet gator, Desmond reminded me.

I’d tried to forget about that.

Desmond took his usual quarter hour dressing his Coney Islands. Truth be told, I think he preferred the ritual to the hotdogs. Marshaling the relish and the ketchup packets, applying his condiments just so. I knew he wouldn’t suffer questions while he was fixing his Coney Islands, so I just sat and ate my cheese tots and picked at my burger until Desmond had rolled up his condiment packets and had taken his first bite. He made a neck noise. He nodded. He could tolerate me now.

I fished out the golf pencil I kept in the ashtray and my phone bill envelope from the glove box. I licked the lead. Start with Percy Dwayne?

Desmond nodded.

Any idea where he is?

Desmond shook his head.

And Luther, he said, and those swamp boys.

Tommy and Eugene. I scribbled all the names down.

Dale for sure, Desmond added.

Dale had been the one to arrest that Boudrot after we’d told him where he’d find him. Dale was off the force these days and working repo like us.

Might tell Pearl to keep an eye out.

Pearl was my dizzy landlady.

I’ll need to tell Tula something, I allowed. This shit’ll chap her pretty good.

Tula was my girlfriend, and I’d half been trying to tell her about that Boudrot. She was aware that me and Desmond had gotten up to some shady business, but she seemed content to let me lay it out for her as I pleased.

It was a simple story if you could tell it without cross-examination. A wiry white-trash specimen named Percy Dwayne Dubois had bought a rent-to-own plasma TV from K-Lo, our boss. He stopped paying on it, and I went to get the thing or come away with the money he owed. Percy Dwayne had another idea altogether and brained me with a fireplace shovel. Then he stole the car I was driving, which wasn’t even mine. That was the trouble really. If it had been my Chevy heap, I could have left it all to county police. I couldn’t do that with a car I didn’t own. So me and Desmond went after Percy Dwayne, and things got complicated.

That’s the leading problem with cracker lowlifes. They can’t do anything straight. One of them steals your car, and you end up taking down an Acadian fuckstick meth lord you didn’t truly have a thing against. It all just cascades into a gaudy heap and jumbles up together. Once you get in with white trash, there’s no such thing as clean and neat.

So whenever Tula or Kendell or anybody asked me about that Boudrot, I was tempted to just tell them, Percy Dwayne Dubois hit me with a shovel and stole a car that wasn’t even mine. That seemed explanation enough to me, but people crave elaboration.

Desmond polished off his second Coney Island. He chewed and thought. He thought and chewed. First off, you and me might go have a look, he finally told me.

At what?

Bayou, he said and pointed in the direction of Beulah, I had to guess. Went in this morning, right?

I nodded.

He might want to want to come out before dark.

TWO

Desmond didn’t care for swamps and bayous. He didn’t like the woods. Truth be told, he was never at his ease over by the river either.

Might fall in, Desmond informed me once when we were standing on the Greenville levee. Then where would I be?

Probably Vicksburg for supper.

Funny, Desmond had said in a way that reliably meant Shut the fuck up.

So we didn’t do much vigorous poking around on the banks of that bayou by Beulah. There were roads enough in the vicinity to let us ride beside it instead. It was a big, sprawling thing as Delta swamps go, part marsh and part oxbow lake. The water was black, and every fallen log and limb was covered up with turtles. Big ones. Snappers. I’d blow the horn, and they’d tumble into the water like an avalanche with feet.

We were a week into October, so the bugs could have been a lot worse. It wasn’t nearly as Indian-summer sweltering as it usually gets in the Delta.

Where do you figure they’re looking? I asked Desmond. There was no sign of another human. Just crows and cranes and gulls and a dead fox in the road.

Desmond shook his head and grunted.

I shaded my eyes for a good look around. We’d been riding along the swamp bank for three-quarters of an hour and had seen one old leathery black guy fishing with a bobber and pole and a kid pushing a bike with a flat tire and no seat. No county four-by-fours. No state police prowlers. No bug-encrusted crew-cab Chevys from the fleet they keep at Parchman.

Maybe Kendell heard it wrong, I said to Desmond. People talk a lot of junk. Maybe nobody went anywhere. Try Rejondo?

Desmond sighed and nodded. He didn’t have much use for the boy. Rejondo was Desmond’s sister’s son, and he worked as a guard at Parchman. He sold yard statuary as a sideline and wore godawful cologne. It smelled like a piña colada a Tri Delt had already thrown up.

We drove straight to Parchman, and I pulled up to the guardhouse. I recognized the guy inside. We’d repossessed his bedroom suite. Bedstead. Nighstands. Bureau. Dressing table. The whole outfit. His wife had made him buy it all, and then she’d run off with a Tunica pit boss. He’d been happy enough to see us come and haul the stuff away. We’d ended up having a beer with the fellow sitting on his back porch steps.

Hey, bud, I told him as we rolled up to the gate.

He squinted at me, came out of the guardhouse, and had a look at Desmond as well. She come back, he said. Told you she would. Made her buy her own damn dresser.

We all had a laugh.

What you need? he asked.

Heard you lost one out by Beulah, I said.

He nodded.

Went in the bayou or something?

That’s what I’m hearing.

Find him?

He shrugged. Ain’t my end of things.

You know his nephew? I jabbed a thumb Desmond’s way. Rejondo?

That fellow nodded. He checked a clipboard with his roster on it. On at eight, he told us. Probably home.

Thanks. I shifted into reverse. Hope everything works out with the missus.

Won’t, he assured me and went back in his guardhouse to plop onto his stool.

Rejondo lived maybe eight miles from the prison. He had a couple of acres on 49 down by Sumner where him and his girlfriend shared a manufactured home in the middle of the property which was otherwise occupied by cement birdbaths, assorted secular lawn statuary, and a three-foot-tall cast-concrete version of Jesus sitting on a stump. It was popular in churchyards and family plots all over the Delta, probably because it was cheaper than a tombstone and very much in the spirit of the place. The Lord and Savior taking a load off. Desmond called it Shiftless Christ.

We pulled up to find Rejondo out in his yard talking cement donkeys with a woman. She was a wide white lady in stretchy velour pants with her hair piled up on her head and a Salem between her lips. Me and Desmond threaded our way through the birdbaths, the geese, the deer, the gnomes, the peeing boys, the praying hands. We drew up short and waited while Rejondo conducted business.

That woman wanted a bulk discount on a pair of cement donkeys. Rejondo was of the view two didn’t constitute a bulk.

What do you even do with one of them? Desmond asked me in a Desmond baritone whisper, which meant people could probably hear him in cars along the road.

You put your goddamn geraniums in them, the wide white woman told us. She didn’t even turn full around to do it or take the cigarette out of her mouth.

That woman offered Rejondo half of what he was asking.

Got more in them than that, he told her.

She went up, and Rejondo gave the impression of coming down. But there was the stocking fee to consider, the yard-art tax, the hauling charge. Every time she thought she had him, they’d be lurking where they’d started. Then he gave her a break on delivery—knocked a ten spot off.

Thirty usually, he told her, but they’ll do it for twenty. He eyed us across the way.

Bring them right now? she asked him.

Follow you home, he said.

Figures, Desmond muttered.

That wide white woman swiveled around to take the two of us in. We didn’t appear to inspire much donkey-delivery confidence in her.

She shook her head. She flicked her butt. She told Rejondo, I guess.

Boys? Rejondo said and pointed at that pair of cement donkeys.

I looked at Desmond. He shrugged. That was Rejondo all over. He’d calculated we’d come for something from him, so he’d get his something first.

That’s how we came to be hauling cement donkeys for a wide white woman in a Suzuki. She spent the whole time we were carting her purchases over to my Ranchero squeezing herself under the wheel of her Samurai. Rejondo gave us some cardboard to protect the paint on my Ranchero bed. He chucked a box at us, anyway, that we could flatten or not.

Where do you live, ma’am? Rejondo asked the woman.

She pointed at her headliner and told all of us, Memphis.

I was just beginning to sputter when she went on to explain that, for donkey-delivery purposes, she had a weekend place near Grady.

Rejondo stepped over to my Ranchero just as me and Desmond were settling in.

Here about that Boudrot? he asked.

We nodded.

I’ll get on the horn and try to have something for you when you get back.

When Desmond finally spoke, we were about halfway to Grady. He shook his head and said, Ain’t this some shit?

Naturally, we toted that woman’s donkeys all over what passed for her yard. She had a miniature windmill in it already, a canopied glider, a wishing well, a lawn tractor with a broken front axle, a flatboat on a trailer, and I think I counted three derelict barbecue grills. In her defense, it was hard to find a spot cement donkeys might improve. They ended up in her front yard either side of her stoop.

By way of thank you, that woman told us, Don’t be looking for no tip.

We were barely out of her driveway when Tula called me.

Got something you’ll want to see, she said.

Right now?

Yep. Then she shifted away from her phone to tell somebody, Why don’t you back the hell on up.

Tula was out by the river, off Highway 1 just north of Legion Lake, about halfway between Beulah and Rosedale. By the time me and Desmond arrived, Kendell was on the scene as well, along with a no-neck deputy I knew only by reputation. He was a bad one to tap on folks with his nightstick as a first resort.

There were maybe a dozen civilians as well—neighbors and passersby—who’d gotten wind of calamity and had swung over to have a look. They were all gathered in a sun-baked patch of open ground between a ratty trailer home and one of those corporate tractor sheds, a steel and tin monstrosity about the size of an airplane hangar.

An EMT truck pulled in just behind us, so me and Desmond walked over toward Tula and Kendell in the company of a couple of techs who were arguing over what constituted a college football fumble and kept at it—barking back and forth about whose damn knee was down—until Kendell plugged the pair of them up by saying one time, Hey!

That’s when me and Desmond saw the body. A white guy in his underwear. Maybe forty and on the stout side. His head was a sticky bloody mess, and he had what looked like a wooden chair leg jammed into his chest.

Stole his car, Kendell told us. Yellow Gold Duster with lifters and mess.

Who? Desmond asked, and Kendell pointed us to Tula.

She was squatting by the corpse taking photographs. She rose as me and Desmond approached. The mineral stink of gore was thick in the air, and what bugs there were had gathered.

Show them, Tula said to her no-neck deputy colleague who used the tip of his nightstick to lift a shirt off the ground. Green and gray stripes, like an awning. Baggy, scratchy twill. Parchman garb.

THREE

Why are we even here? Desmond wanted to know.

We were parked by then with Tula and Kendell in what passed with the Greenville PD for an interrogation room. It had been somebody’s office once. They’d left a credenza in it and had brought in a stout steel table and a half-dozen plastic chairs. There was a sheet of knotty plywood where the one-way glass should have been and boxes of files stacked head high full across the back wall.

Whatever you got up to with that Boudrot— Kendell started.

"Didn’t get up to nothing with him," Desmond said.

Fine. Kendell settled back and showed us his palms. All I’m telling you is we don’t care. You did what you did.

Tula wasn’t entirely on board with that, which she made plain in a glance.

You tell him, Desmond instructed me.

Tell him what?

About that gator of his and shit.

Gator? Tula asked us.

I didn’t quite know where to start, so I wound all the way back to where it began. Percy Dwayne Dubois owed on a TV. Instead of handing the damn thing over, he hit me with a fireplace shovel. They took my Ranchero, him and his wife. Pearl’s Ranchero at the time. And somehow the wife and the baby and the car all ended up with that Boudrot.

Somehow? Kendell asked