He had to talk to someone. Carrie? Nell? Hoad was in Everglade at the new lodge. He would talk to Hoad first, they would take Hoad’s boat, go look for him. He drove the rough road recklessly.
Across a slat bridge over a ditch was a small clearing where two swamp trucks, beds jacked high on outsized wheels, were parked outside a low decrepit cabin. Loose-fendered junked autos baked in the thick heat. The yard glinted with metal scraps and bottle caps and broken glass, its edges strewn with defunct batteries, lube buckets, bald tires. Gaunt kids and dragged-out women came to the cabin doorways to see who had pulled over and spavined hounds emerged from beneath the trucks. One swamp machine was a dark gurry red, the other dull crankcase black. On the red truck’s door was wild hog jambaree in daubed black lettering; the black one bore the name bad cuntry in crude jagged red. Lucius was suddenly so frightened that he had to force his unsteady legs to walk the plank across the ditch.
Dummy and Mud lounged like whores against the trucks, lipping cigarettes and gasping beers. Dummy seemed torpid and indifferent, kneading his testes in a languid manner, but scraggy Mud grinned hungrily at the scent of trouble.
Crockett Junior lay sprawled across the black hood of bad cuntry, using a big hunting knife to scrape crisped insects off the windshield. A heavy key chain at his belt scraped scars on the truck paint when he shifted. “Fuckin Mud! Don’t go nowhere at all he ain’t got a beer can stuck into his face. He don’t know fuck-all, that stupid fuck. I ain’t lettin him nowhere near this rig. Wouldn’t have fuckin nothin left of it, time he got done!” Ignoring the intruder, he wheezed with his exertions, levering his torso with strong hairy shoulders, thrashing on the stump of the lost arm. Behind his knife hand, the crude head of his dog loomed in the windshield.
When Mud and Dummy straightened and came forward, Lucius stopped. In a voice hoarse with nerves, he said, “Where’s my brother?”
“Wants to know where his brother’s at.” Mud glanced at Crockett for approval. “Never heard of him, ain’t that right, Junior?”
Crockett scraped. When Lucius warned them that witnesses at Naples had seen them seize Robert Watson, that they would be charged with kidnapping or worse, Mud took a long slow gulp out of his beer can. Pulling it away, foam on his scraggy beard, he came up with an aggressive belch, wiping his hairy mouth with the back of his hand. “That so? How come you ain’t called the law? That because the law’s after him, too?” He hooted gleefully. “ ‘Armed and dangerous’! Come on the radio this mornin. Turned out to be a real bad feller, Chicken did.”
“Turned out to be one them fuckin Watsons.” Crockett Junior’s wet snarl opened his beard stubble like a wound. “Oughta had his fuckin neck broke. This one, too.” He turned back to his scraping. In the sunshined air and hot scrub silence, the knife blade squeaked on the dry glass. “Get goin, mister.” He spoke in a low voice without turning.
Lucius nerved himself. “Not till I find out what happened.” He knew he had to persevere in the full knowledge it was useless.
Crockett Junior laid his knife down on the hood. He hiked himself onto his stump, then took hold of his big belt buckle with his freed hand in order to hike and shift himself. The maneuver took considerable effort, and he gasped and panted as he made it. Retrieving his knife, he slid off the hood. “You don’t listen good,” he said.
Dummy kept his eye on Crockett’s knife, mouth fallen open. Mud’s scared voice warned Lucius, “Never heard Junior tellin you, Get goin?” Mud stood ready to snarl or jeer according to the one-armed man’s first shift in mood, but he seemed concerned for the intruder, too. “You keep pesterin,” Mud blustered, “he’ll set that dog on you, run your ass right off this road. So just you back up and get goin like the man told you, hear? Cause us dumb-ass redneck boys don’t know nothin about no Robert Watson. Only fuckin thing we know to tell you is the fastest fuckin way off this here propitty.”
When Crockett Junior yanked open the truck door, the dog sprang to the seat edge, taut for the next command-a knob-headed male dog of a bad tawny color blotched with dark brown. Shivering in loin and tendon, it strained toward Lucius as he yelled in fear, “Hold that damned dog!” Then Crockett whistled and the creature sprang, striking the ground with a hard thud of bone-filled paws.
Stiff-legged, bristle-naped, the dog circled him slowly as if penning him. From its clamped jaws came a low monotone growl. When it pushed its snout into his calf and left it there, awaiting its next command, a rank stink rose from its hide.
Lucius knew better than to move or speak. Feeling the blood drain from his face, he averted his gaze as a dog will, eyes half closed as if sleepy. He could only hope that his own fear smell would not fatally incite this morose animal.
“If Junior tole him to, ol’ Buck’d go for a bull gator,” Mud said. “Junior can lay a T-bone by his nose and go out to the store and Buck won’t touch it lest he’s tole to.”
Lucius contained his shaking with main strength. “I’m not armed,” he told them. “Call him off.”
“Think I don’t know what your fuckin brother wanted?” Crockett yelled. “Think I ain’t seen Speck’s name on that damned list? Should of blowed his head off!” At that shout of anger, the dog snouted his calf harder, pushing with hind legs, shivering.
“Only we didn’t,” Mud reminded Crockett. Mud looked scared. Even Dummy seemed uneasy, adjusting his genitals through his greased coveralls.
Lucius said, “I made that fool list years ago. Means nothing.”
“That a fact?” Mud said. “If you was Speck, would you take a Watson’s word for that?”
Crockett whistled the dog into his truck, which Mud took as a sign to march Lucius back to his car, haranguing him all the way. “You got more guts than brains, know that? You don’t know who you’re foolin with.” He jerked his head in the direction of Crockett’s truck. “Your brother run off and hid on us. We don’t know where he’s at. So don’t come back no more.”
Shoving the dog into the other seat, Crockett had climbed into bad cuntry and slammed the door. Mud joined Dummy in the red truck. “Hold on!” Lucius protested, extending his arms. Gunning his motor, Mud jolted across the ditch as Lucius jumped onto the running board, trying to hang on to the window. Dummy’s paw shot out and seized his shirt and yanked him hard against the cab and carried him a good ways down the road before he pushed him away hard and sent him sprawling. The black truck, following close behind, honked its approval,
Jeers drifted back as the big machines headed east toward Gator Hook. Shock and pain. His brain was ringing. He pushed himself up onto all fours, then rested on his knees a moment before staggering to his feet, his scraped forearm packed bloody with limestone road bits, Dummy’s musky smell still in his nose. Slapping distractedly at his dirtied pants, he knew he’d accomplished nothing. Yet for all his outrage and frustration, he felt unaccountably relieved, even queerly elated. He felt free.