Yardbird Read online

  “Anybody want some kimchi?” The GI bellowed. No takers. Some laughed, some cried out in disgust.

  Tommy untied Scratch from the chair.

  Tears rolled down Scratch's cheeks.

  “Hey, bud, stay where you are, OK? Everything's fine. The cavalry is here,” Tommy called out. He stopped Scratch from standing. “Can we get a medic over here?” He smiled at Scratch, patted him lightly on the shoulder. “Ah, hell, soldier. You'll be OK!”

  “I don't even know what happened…” Scratch said as his chest heaved. He tried to control the sobbing but he was too overwhelmed with conflicted emotions. The medic came over and started to work on Scratch.

  “Hey fellas, this guy must be Superman or somethin'! Look it! He went through all this crap and never spilled where we were!”

  Scratch laughed.

  “What's so funny?” Tommy asked.

  “I couldn't tell 'em,” Scratch said.

  Tommy looked at Scratch sideways. “Why is that?”

  “I couldn't understand a damn thing he was saying.”

  6

  Scratch awoke in the '48 Dodge to the smooth sounds of Sinatra crooning In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning. And it was just that. The wee hours of the morning. The sun was just coming up and the sky was pink and grey. The birds were singing not a song of hope for the new day, but a warning or caution of something atrocious.

  He realized he was in the driver's side of the car.

  When he opened his eyes, he still had a blurry vision of an old Korean man screaming at him. Scratch immediately felt for an imaginary gun in the breast pocket of his coat. The mist cleared from his eyes and a teenaged girl started shrieking. She turned and ran into the arms of a teenaged boy. Suddenly, Scratch was surrounded by people in the cul-de-sac where the Dodge was parked.

  Scratch looked to his right and saw a dead man slumped over in the passenger side. He pulled the body up to face him. Just as he thought. It was Ray Gardner. He heard sirens behind him. Scratch adjusted the rearview mirror and saw the two police cars and an ambulance clearly marked Coleman County. Scratch sighed.

  Someone drove me and my dead friend 35 miles from Odarko, he thought. Why didn't they just dump us both at Kemora Lake? It was only five miles away. Then again, they'd have to drive through Darktown to get there.

  Scratch's face ached. His right eye itched him. He moved the rearview mirror so he could look at his face. His glass eye was gone, leaving his right eye a huge black hole.

  He started to remember what happened.

  He reached for the hatbox and somebody hit him. Just before he passed out, he had heard two sets of heels on the floor and the door slamming shut. Whoever hit Scratch from behind took his glass eye when it came out. He looked over at Gardner and saw a bullet hole in his forehead. In Gardner's lap was the snub-nose .38 he had pulled on Scratch.

  “Son of a bitch,” Scratch said.

  Scratch felt the barrel of a .357 Magnum touch his cheek.

  “Don't move, peckerwood!” he heard Deputy Marian Shaw call out.

  Scratch moved his eyes and saw Sheriff Rooster Magee standing tall in the horizontal and bloated in the vertical. He was leaning on the open door of his '52 Ford. The radio was blaring George Jones singing Run, Boy, Run. A huge ball of chaw sat in Rooster's left cheek until he decided to switch it to his right, hock some of it in the back of his throat and splatter the blacktop with it. He walked toward the Dodge.

  Shaw grabbed Scratch by his coat, pulled him out the car window and tossed him on the highway. He kicked Scratch in the stomach. Scratch coughed, doubled up and wrapped his arms around his midsection. Shaw holstered his weapon and laughed.

  “I told you not to move, buckcherry! Didn't I Sheriff?”

  “You most certainly did, Deputy Shaw,” Rooster leaned down and said to Scratch: “You in a lot of trouble, boy.”

  * * *

  “Deputy Shaw,” Rooster said. “I wish you would reconsider your leaving law enforcement, especially Coleman County. But I understand how you and your wife have struggled, and your desire to head to California. I wish you luck, son.”

  Rooster perfected his version of the John Wayne walk when he used to be a rodeo cowboy. His claim was that he invented that walk one night after lassoing three calves and ambling over to untie them. He put a little shake in his hips and four girls, two spic girls, one blonde and an Irish redhead seated in the front of the bleachers, whooped and hollered for him.

  “Now.” Rooster retold this story as he sat on the edge of his desk. Scratch was in the cell, lying on his bunk, his fedora covering his face, trying not to listen to Rooster. “You wouldn't believe it, but that walk has gotten me laid more times than I can count. I bedded all four of those young lassies. Still got up and baled hay for old man Spiff out in Cottonwood. Before he built Odarko into what it is today. Of course,” he shrugged. “I'm talking about George Spiff. The father of that rat turd Oliver Spiff. Your boss, I believe?”

  Shaw laughed along with Rooster. “I love that story, Sheriff,” he confessed, love in his bulging eyes.

  Rooster looked at Shaw sideways. “Of course you do! Because it's the truth, son.”

  Scratch shook his head. Made a loud clucking noise with his tongue.

  “You got somethin' to say?” Shaw screamed, touching the butt of his .357 in its holster. Rooster waved him back and Shaw eased back in the wooden chair.

  “An out-of-work actor in the thirties got drunk in San Pedro, California, where I cut my teeth as a law officer,” Rooster said, chugged coffee from a mug, wiped his thick lips. He saw this walk and took it with him to Hollywood. And that actor was Paul Fix.” Rooster spat a black wad in the trash can. “The rest,” Rooster said with a weird leering grin on his long, fat face, “is history. Hell, the closest those fags out there ever got to a real cowboy was when they bumper-car an asshole in the men's restroom. So how in blazes could they know such a manly walk?” He laughed. “Obviously from me!”

  “Obviously!” Shaw mimicked Rooster.

  Rooster cut his eyes at the young man. Shaw hung his head.

  The door swung open and Shep Howard and his deputy, Ralph Farley, stepped through the jailhouse. Rooster and Shep locked eyes.

  “Turn him loose,” Shep said.

  “Shep,” Rooster said in a calm, and gentle way, like he was explaining a Bible story to children. “You don't walk into a man's jailhouse, let alone his county, and demand that man set free his A1 suspect.”

  “When you work for Oliver Spiff, you bound to do a lot of things you normally wouldn't do,” Shep said. “Like gun down the sheriff of Coleman County and blow the balls off his deputy.”

  Rooster laughed. “They are hollow words, Shep. No meaning behind them a-tall. How many men have you really killed? Now,” Rooster showed the butt of his Colt revolver to Shep. “I got 12 notches on this gun. Count 'em. Every one of 'em has a story, my friend.”

  “With not a shred of truth to them, Rooster and you damn well know it.” Shep walked past Rooster and Shaw, who was in his gunfighter stance about as scary as Jerry Lewis screwing a football, and went into the office. Ralph went to the jail cell, spoke to Scratch.

  “You all right?”

  “About as all right as I can be,” Scratch said.

  “You had breakfast?” He asked.

  “Just hot water with grounds in it.”

  Ralph patted the bars on the cell. “We'll go to Chauncey's on 61 when we get you out,” he walked to the office, following Rooster inside.

  “He ain't getting' out!” Shaw called out to Ralph. Ralph laughed. Shaw trotted over to the jail cell. “You ain't getting' out, peckerwood. You're so smug. Didn't even ask for a phone call or a lawyer… You ain't getting' out.”

  “You a bettin' man, Shaw?” Scratch asked.

  Shaw thought about the question. “No,” he said.

  “Good,” Scratch nodded. “You'd lose.”

  “I know who you really are,” Shaw's upper lip curled. “I know wha
t you came from.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “You know damn well it is, boy,” Shaw said. “I've seen you in Darktown,” he chewed on his bottom lip, scrunched up his eyes, trying to look intimidating. “I know what you really are. When I get a chance, I'm gonna let everybody in Odarko know. How's them beans now, peckerwood?”

  “Taste like horseshit to me,” Scratch said. “You don't know shit from Shinola. All you know is rumor and housewife talk. You a backdoor man, Shaw? You sleepin' in another man's bed after he done wrinkled the sheets? Huh?”

  “Shut your dirty mouth. You need to find a church, peckerwood. Ask God for forgiveness, talking the way you do to a real white man.”

  Stone faced, Scratch scowled at Shaw.

  “Hell do you mean by that?”

  “Ohh-ho-ho! I think I finally got through to you,” Shaw grinned, then added in a sing-song voice: “Like I said,” he giggled. “I seened you in niggertown…”

  Scratch leered at Shaw, shrugged. “So what? Maybe I was buying me some brown meat.”

  “Yeah? That would be against the law.” Shaw sniffed, examining his fingernails. “You know, brother and sister… knowin' each other… carnally..? “ He moved his eyes up slowly to meet Scratch's hard stare. “I think old man Spiff would be very upset if he knew that you awful close-knit, with some of the… cuh-lard folk. I mean, especially him bein' an honorary Grand Dragon of the Klan.” Shaw licked his lips. “Whew-we! That cocoa-butter-colored girl you visit must be some piece! She could almost pass for a spic girl!”

  Shaw guffawed and Scratch reached out to get him, but Shaw danced away from him, squealing, laughing harder.

  “Shaw!” Rooster bellowed from doorway of his office. Shep and Ralph stood at arm's length from Rooster, both watching the scene unfold, both touching the butts of Smith and Wesson .38s, ready for anything going down. “Stop teasing that man and let him out of the cell!”

  Shaw stopped dancing. The smile disappeared from his pale, flakey face. He looked at Rooster curiously.

  “Go on!” Rooster demanded. “Git on with it! Turn Mr Williams loose!”

  Shaw, resigned, head bowed almost to his chest, got the keys from a beat-up gun rack and picked one out. The door to the cell popped open as soon his wrists turned the key. Shep relaxed, took his hand off his gun. Ralph smiled, breathed a sigh of relief and did the same.

  Shaw pulled on the bars and the cell door creaked open. Scratch stood, grabbed his coat, then his fedora. He smiled at Shaw and slowly placed his hat on his balding head. He walked past Shaw and said: “I'll be seeing you.”

  Indignant, nostrils flared, Shaw said: “You can count on it, peckerwood!”

  7

  They were riding down the highway in Shep's Police car. Scratch was in the back, Shep was in the passenger seat, and Ralph was driving.

  “The old man wants to see you,” Shep said.

  “I'm sure he does,” Scratch said. His head was pounding and he felt like invisible pins were forcing his eyelids shut. He lay in the backseat, one arm covering his eyes to block out the sun.

  “Somehow this misfortune ended up in the Daily Message,” Ralph said.

  “I thought the old man controlled the news,” Scratch said.

  “He did,” Shep turned the radio on. He turned the knob through dead air and white noise until he came up on Johnny Cash singing Train of Love. He started tapping his finger on the car seat, keeping time with the brushes on the drums. “He never really owned the newspaper. That was Horace Hammock. Old Horace ain't with us no more.”

  “What happened to him?” Scratch asked. He remembered two years before, he'd taken care of a problem for Horace. A blackmail from an ex-reporter who went on a vacation with Horace. Seemed Horace ran a paper on the East coast, and had taken some money he shouldn't have. Invested that in a chocolate bar company. The blackmail stopped after one visit, and the reporter had relocated to Chicago where he accidently overdosed on heroin.

  “Apparently…” Shep hocked up phlegm from deep down his throat and spat it out the window. “Horace killed himself.”

  “He didn't seem like the suicidal type,” Scratch said.

  “The old man didn't think so either,” Ralph added.

  “He wants me to look into it?” Scratch sat up in the back seat. “He'll have to look into it himself. I'm busy trying to figure out who set me up.”

  “You know you'll end up doing it,” Shep said. “I know first hand, Scratch. You can't defy the old man.”

  “I'm different from you, Shep.”

  “I know.” Shep's voice raised up a few decibels “I know, Scratch. But I used to be the yardbird in these parts. I'm just…”

  “I'm different from you,” Scratch said.

  Shep chuckled. “OK,” he said, throwing his hands up. “You're different. I guarantee you'll be doing what the old man wants. Priority is Horace and who put in that news story of Gardner's death.”

  “Shep?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would the old man set me up?”

  “What the hell for? You work for him.”

  Scratch shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe to keep me in line? A way out of something else?”

  “Scratch, he don't operate that way,” Shep said. “Now, if you left the company for any reason… and you made threats… or if he didn't trust you anymore…”

  “Any reason he shouldn't trust you?” Ralph glanced at Scratch in the rearview mirror. “Or we shouldn't?”

  “That's a hell of a question, Ralph!” Shep yelled.

  “I'm sorry, Scratch. I had to ask,.” Ralph said.

  There was a moment of uneasy silence. Scratch's mind had drifted back to the incident at the Primrose. How he reached for that hatbox, how upset Gardner got, and suddenly he was out cold.

  “Shep. I need to get back in that room at the Primrose,” Scratch said.

  “Well… I guess you can. The city boys are in there. County took the body already. In a few hours Gladys and her girls will start cleaning up blood and brain.”

  “What about my car, Shep?”

  “Rooster getting a wrecker to bring it to the station. Pick it up there this afternoon.”

  The police car turned down a long, wooded lane that circled around a hill, stretching two miles. The car stopped at a gate with the old man's initials made out of elephant tusk. Scratch dreaded it. Riding along with Shep and Ralph was OK. Talking to Shep was always good. Any time spent inside the mansion, or in the old man's presence, turned Scratch's stomach upside-down.

  The guard opened the gates, waved the police car through. He looked miserable, too. As a matter of fact, most of Spiff's employees looked miserable, except Shep and Ralph. That's because they only saw him when they were called in. The butler let them in. Cecil said Spiff was out back shooting skeets. Cecil had been a vet of World War One and carried a shrapnel scar on his chin. He was a lean old man who looked like he'd been an athlete at one time. He knew Spiff's old man from a long time ago. Rumor had it, they rode together before World War One and may have robbed a few banks out in New Mexico. They were chased by a posse and Cecil was shot, left for dead. A few months later, Spiff's father showed up and busted Cecil out. By then though, Spiff's father had claimed all the money and left Cecil with zip. A broken man, he became subordinate to Spiff's father – a slave and an employee.

  Wonderful to have friends, right?

  Spiff was out by the lake he had built last spring, playing skeets. His gruff bellow announcing, “Pull!” didn't jibe with nature. No birds were singing, and even the ripples on the lake were quiet. The blast from the shotgun disrupted Scratch's thoughts, too. He had to close his eyes and quickly think of something else. The sound of gunfire took him back to that mountain in Korea. For the most part, Spiff was terrible at skeets, he would only hit one plate out of five.

  When he hit a plate, he acted overconfident, looking at his lawyer, Dan Lowery, like it was meant for Spiff to be the best at everything. When he missed, he cursed
and stomped his feet like an oversized child.

  “See that?” Spiff said to Lowery.

  “Yes sir.” the young man in a powder-blue suit tugged at his tie and adjusted his glasses.

  “That's how you do it, Lowery!” Spiff chuckled. “You can learn a lot from an old coot like me.”

  “Yes sir.” Lowery acted as if he was too scared to say anything else but yes sir.

  Spiff was still in his pajamas. He often did that. Went to lunches, or in town to shop. Even went to business meetings and board meetings in his nightwear. No one knew exactly why.

  “If it isn't the Three Stooges,” Spiff said.

  Shep wasn't amused. He kept a sour demeanour when he was around Spiff. Keeping it all business curtailed the abuse. Might have been one of the reasons Shep was the only one Spiff had any respect for.

  “Let's get this over with, old man,” Shep said. “I got some fishing to do.”

  “Don't you have a county to protect? You're always fishing or hunting,” Spiff retorted.

  “I have to relax somehow after dealing with you,” Shep said.

  Spiff smiled. He liked that. The bantering and the way Shep stood up to him.

  “How about you?” The old man asked Ralph.

  “I don't understand the question, sir,” Ralph said.

  “You going home to diddle the little lady?”

  Ralph didn't like that. He didn't like it at all.

  “Make some more children you can't afford to have?”

  “Yes sir,” Ralph said. “A whole clan. So one day they can take this godforsaken town from you and make it decent,” Ralph snarled and turned to Shep: “I'll wait in the car.” He walked to the car, looked behind him every step of the way.

  The old man laughed. Everyone around the old man felt uncomfortable. But he was king of his world and he showed it. He instructed Lowery to pour him a whiskey sour out of the pitcher sitting on a tray beside two folding chairs. Shep decided to sit in one of the chairs. He sighed as he sat down slowly.

  Lowery handed Spiff a tall glass and the old man snatched it from him aggressively.

  Scratch wanted to hurry back to the police station to get his car. He had business at the Primrose. He kicked at a stick on the ground.