Entering the Cadillac with equal desperation from two sides, they were soon accelerating down the beach road and back on the highway that headed from town.
"Whoopee!" Sammy said. "We just got hold of a real important piece of information. We have just seen Deputy Sheriff Palmer putting it to a colored woman, also known locally as a nigger, in the back seat of his patrol car out here in Dumfuck, Egypt. That is what I call a real important piece of information."
"I don't think it's so important. I'm just glad as hell to be getting out of there alive."
"Man, we got a lot of planning to do."
"Planning for what?"
"I figure Jehovah put us out there tonight for a reason, Ben. He wants us to punish Junior Palmer for his transgressions against the God of Abraham. Now while we are figuring out how to punish Deputy Palmer we must also figure out how we can profit by this little piece of good fortune. We are probably the only people in the world that know about Deputy Palmer and his weakness for dark meat."
"So what? Best we forget it right away, too."
"Forget it! Are you crazy, Ben? The way I see it, we accidentally stepped into high cotton back there. This is a real chance to pick up a little cash dough."
"You don't mean blackmail?"
"No, mercy me," Sammy said, shrinking back in mock horror. "Wash my mouth out with horse piss if I mean blackmail. We are just going to have Deputy Palmer invest in a little occupational insurance. If he wants us to keep our loud little yaps closed, then he can grease the palm with a few measly little greenbacks. That way he can protect that silver badge he's so proud of."
"I don't like one word that you've been using pretty freely, Sammy. It's a pronoun that you keep throwing in. It's plural. It's the word 'we.' I want you to change this pronoun to the first person singular. Then I can enjoy this plot much more."
"Man, we're in this together, Ben. We're partners because we saw this together. I wouldn't think of making money off this without splitting it with you."
"Oh, no, I insist that you take it all for yourself. I wouldn't think of cutting you out of any earnings you make off this, especially since I don't want to end up dead or in prison."
"This is foolproof, Ben, and we can have a little fun making that jerk-off sweat for a couple of days. I was thinking of asking for twenty-five dollars, but I think I might just up the ante to a cool fifty."
"That's a lot of money, Sammy."
"We are just agents of God picked out of all humanity to perform this unpleasant task. Do you think I like the fact that I have to do this, Ben?"
"I think you love it."
"I eat it up," Sammy cackled. "Now help me compose the letter. 'Dear Deputy Palmer, comma.' Or should I put a colon, do you think, Ben? You're the English star."
"A comma's O.K."
"'If you want it to remain a secret that you were seen copulating with a woman of color,' Hey, how do you like that phrase? 'A woman of color,' eh, Ben?"
"You're a poet, Sammy."
"'Bring fifty dollars and place it,' Goddam, where will we have him leave it?"
"Why don't you have him drop it off in your mailbox?"
"Oh, sure, Ben, you ever thought of getting a job as a guidance counselor?" Sammy said, driving in silence for several minutes as he considered a suitable drop-off point. "There," he finally said, pointing at the water tower that served the residents of St. Catherine's Island, the first and the largest of the sea islands separating Ravenel from the mainland. "I'll have him tape the money on the catwalk at the top of that water tower. Hell, yes, then there won't be any monkey business."
"Let me know how it turns out," Ben said.
"Hey, you'll go with me, won't you, Ben? Shoot, we won't keep the money or anything. We'll give it to charity. I know one charitable organization that plans to keep Sammy Wertzberger drunk from now until graduation night."
"I'll come along and watch, Sammy. But this whole thing is your idea."
"You'll drool when I'm folding the fifty loaves of bread into my wallet too. And then for the rest of the evening you'll probably just sit there in awe of me and my master criminal mind."
"Maybe I should get at least half of what you get, Sammy. After all, you're going to have to bribe me to keep me from telling Junior Palmer that you blackmailed him."
"Then we are partners in crime?" Sammy said.
"Partners," Ben answered.
Chapter 29
Three times Sammy drove past the water tower on St. Catherine's Island to make sure that no one was lying in wait to apprehend the author of the blackmail note. Satisfied, he extinguished his headlights and hid the car in a natural cul-de-sac on the edge of the forest. Then both he and Ben scouted the terrain beneath the water tower half expecting the tubercular, sallow face of Junior Palmer to appear as an apparition before the long climb to the catwalk could begin. But they found nothing to either arouse their suspicions or allay their fears. Sammy hauled himself up on the ladder first and began climbing slowly. Ben followed him, staying four or five rungs behind his friend. At first they ascended in a dead silence.
"I wish there was a moon tonight," Ben said.
"Are you crazy?" Sammy whispered in reply. "Then some dope would see us climbing up this thing and every cop for a hundred miles would be there when we were climbing down."
"You sure that fifty dollars is going to be up here?" Ben asked.
"It better be," Sammy answered," or Junior Palmer's name is going to be spelled S-H-I-T by tomorrow morning. Of course it'll be here. You know he must have had a cow when he got that note."
"Where'd you leave it?"
"Under his windshield wiper. I hid and watched when he came out of the jail and read the note. There's nothing but gold at the end of this rainbow."
"God, I feel like I'm high enough already to be climbing a rainbow. This thing is a lot higher than it looks from the ground."
Both Ben and Sammy were breathing hard now. Ben felt a slight quivering in his thighs as though sinew had turned to gelatin; his knees felt vulnerable, even collapsible, the higher up the ladder he went. His wrists began to ache from grasping each rung too tightly. His hands were slick and untrustworthy. Looking down and to his left, he saw Ravenel shimmering across the river, the white yachts gleaming under marina lights, and shrimp boats ghostly below their nets. The higher he climbed, the more subject to delusion Ben became. He was teased only slightly by the phantoms of vertigo, but slightly nevertheless. All was delusory. The steel ladder was made of paper, of silk, of quicksilver, of air. Sammy would disappear. The ladder would climb toward infinitude. Ben would feel himself falling. Then he would stop climbing and look up at Sammy. He would set his bearings on Sammy's behind like a pilot would fix his eye on the horizon. Then he could resume climbing.
"Why couldn't you have had him tape the money at the bottom of the railroad trestle or leave it beneath the bridge, Sammy?" Ben said, anxious to begin a dialogue again.
"No challenge in that. This was the most romantic place I could think of."
"If you wanted a challenge, you could have had him tape it on Coach Spinks's left testicle," Ben said.
"Now there's a challenge," Sammy agreed.
"How was your date with Emma Lee last night?" Ben asked. "You haven't told me a thing about it."
"I think it's love, son. I think she's absolutely out of her mind in love with that suave, latin Romeo, Sammy Wertzberger."
"Well, she's only human. Even if she is a preacher's daughter."
"She talked about books the whole night. I felt like I was out with you and Mary Anne. But later on the old mover sprang into action. She was inexperienced, but Casanova was very gentle."
"Did you kiss her good night?"
"Kiss her good night! Are you kidding? Sometimes you are such an innocent, Ben. No I didn't kiss her good night. But it will all come in good time. You don't use the Bohemian Mountain Approach on a girl like Emma Lee."
"God, it's high up here. I can see the runway at the goddam
air station."
"We're almost to the top," Sammy's voice said above him. "Almost to the end of the rain . . . "Then Sammy's voice stopped abruptly. And Sammy stopped.
"What's wrong, Sammy?" Ben asked. "Is something wrong?"
A boy with a shotgun stuck against Sammy's throat said, "Yeah, boy. Something's bad wrong. "Ben recognized the voice. It belonged to Red Pettus.
Far below him, Ben saw the revolving light of a police car spinning in a slow, malevolent circle.
The county jail was a windowless, antiquated structure that had served as an armory in the decade before the Civil War. It was located on the edge of Paradise, backing up against Joe Louis Lane, a dirt path that snaked through the back alleys of the black community. Inside the jail, Ben and Sammy could hear the semisweet, candently primitive rhythms of jukebox blues diffusing out of unseen nightclubs. The music, the anthem of Saturday night debauch, filtered to them through the jail stones that now enveloped them, isolated them with Junior Palmer.
They stood in a bare room, handcuffed together, as Palmer unloaded shells from his automatic shotgun. He had paid Red Pettus ten dollars and sent him home as soon as the patrol car had pulled within sight of the jail. The only thing Sammy had been able to say to Ben since their capture was that" Red and Junior are third cousins. "Ben had said," How many million cousins does Red have?" but the opportunity for speech had died a swift death.
Now Junior Palmer stared at the two boys, a reptilian coldness in his eyes that reminded Ben of his mother's warnings. She had always told him to beware the law behind closed doors, the yellow-toothed men behind silver badges who had been betrayed by their chromosomes and their birth. She would talk of power as a yeast that could activate a malevolence that no force on earth could overcome once it had begun. Beware the feral, washed-out, hare-lipped genes that sculpted the occasional unfathomable barbarisms of the poor white South. Beware of the men I have protected you from knowing, she had said. And would say again, Ben knew, after this night.
"You boys got me between a stone and a hard place," Palmer said, his voice a whine.
"It was just a joke, Junior," Sammy said. "Honest, it was just a joke."
"Then how come I don't see nothin' funny in it, Sammy? How come I ain't fuckin' laughin' one tiny little bit."
"O.K., it was a lousy joke," Sammy said.
"Now, Sammy, I got me a big problem. Your daddy's been in this town too long and knows too many people and might just run his mouth in too many of the wrong places. You understand me? I can't afford nobody asking no questions about tonight because even though you boys falsely accused me of doin' somethin' I would never do, just the mention of this kind of trash can kill a man in this town. This town's all mouth sometime. You boys see what I mean?"
"Yes, sir," they both said.
"Now, what did you boys see out there at the beach?"
"Nothing; we didn't see a thing, Junior," Sammy said.
"Nothing, sir," Ben answered.
"Now what makes you think I was spending time with some blue-gummed nigger girl?"
"It must have been my imagination, Junior," Sammy said.
Walking slowly around the table, Junior lit himself a cigarette, inhaled deeply, blew smoke into Sammy's face, then drove a fist into the boy's solar plexus. Sammy went to his knees, emitting desperate sounds of strangulation as he tried to catch his breath.
"Don't you ever call me 'Junior,' Jew. You call me 'Mr. Deputy.' Or you call me 'sir' but don't you ever call me by my name again," he hissed, walking back toward the desk where he sat down and threw a leg over the arm of his chair. "Now my big problem, the way I figure it, is this. I can only keep one of you boys because I'll have to answer too many questions if I keep both of you in here. Now Red don't know nothin' because I didn't tell him nothin'. The only people in the world that knows about this alleged incident is us three. Or have you told anybody else?"
"We haven't told anybody, sir," Ben said.
"Well that's mighty kind of you, Mr.—. What's your name again, boy?"
"Meecham, sir. Ben Meecham."
"That's mighty thoughty of you, Mr. Meecham," he grinned, showing his yellow teeth. He gazed down at Sammy who had just begun breathing with some degree of regularity again.
"Sammy, I been shoppin' at your father's Jewstore for a long time, now haven't I?"
"Yes, Mr. Deputy."
"And me and Suzie still go to the Jewstore for a lot of stuff even though it's a lot cheaper at the Piggly-Wiggly, ain't that right?"
"Yes, Mr. Deputy."
"Now I don't want to hear no talk around the Jewstore of you ever being here. I don't want your daddy to know or your mama or nobody else. I don't want your daddy calling up no councilman or no sheriff asking no questions. You understand?"
"Yes, Mr. Deputy."
"Fine. That's nice. Now you get your Jew ass out this door and if I ever hear about you talking about me and a nigger at the beach, I'm gonna circumcise you just one more time for good measure. You understand?"
"Yes, Mr. Deputy."
"I mean do you understand?" Palmer screamed, coming across the table and pulling Sammy by the collar until they were nose to nose.
"Yes, Mr. Deputy. But you got to know this was all my fault. Ben just came along for the ride."
"That's too fuckin' bad. He came. Now you get out of this jail."
Unlocking the handcuffs, Palmer began pushing Sammy toward the front door of the jail. When he reached the outer office beyond the interrogation room where Ben now stood in a despairing paralysis, the deputy kicked Sammy in the buttocks and sent him sprawling down the front steps. "Not a word to anyone, Jew."
Ben was placed in a dark cell on the white man's side of the jailhouse. Black offenders resided in the east wing with the offices of the sheriff and his deputies in between. As Palmer locked the cell, Ben asked, his voice so tremulous as to make speech nearly impossible," Why am I in here, sir? Don't you have to charge me with something?"
"Red told me some bad shit about you, Marine brat. I don't know what I'm holding you for right now, but when I think about it you're gonna go along with it or I'm gonna double the number of your bellybuttons. I'll be back a little later to tell you what crime you committed."
Sitting on a small, rancid cot at the side of the cell, Ben moved his hand along the wool blanket waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. His hand grabbed something involuntarily. Wings flared and rabidly desperate insect legs dug into Ben's palm for leverage. He threw the roach across the cell to the opposite wall where its back clicked against the cement. Other roaches scratched along the floor in wild countless battalions as Ben lifted his feet off the floor and prayed that his pilgrimage and exile among the roaches would be brief. He lay still and the smell of mildew and decay overpowered him, contributing an odor to his despair and his fear. Lying on his back, staring at a ceiling he could not see, Ben felt discarnate, a voiceless body buried accidentally, smelling the top of the coffin for the first time. For an hour he lay without moving, listening to the sprint of roaches beneath him.
Then a light went on in the anteroom leading to the cell block. There were voices, unidentifiable whispers. A key worked into a lock and a huge silhouette came through the door followed by Deputy Palmer. The figure was wearing a flight jacket.
"Dad," Ben called, rushing to the front of the cell nearly crying with relief, with the single joy that he had a family and a father who would always be a buffer between Ben and the malignant men of the world. "Dad, over here."
Bull charged at Ben's cell, his hands reaching through the bars clutching at Ben's sweater. Before Ben could protest or pull back, Bull had hit him beneath the eye with a closed fist. Ben's head snapped back, but not far enough to avoid the backhand that sent him staggering backward out of control with his head cracked against the far wall. Ben slowly slid down the length of the wall. Stunned, he sat there vaguely aware that roaches were fleeing across his hand and over his body.
"If you ever hit an o
fficer of the law again, I'll beat you so goddam bad even your mother won't want you," Bull roared.
"You better lock him up good, Sheriff, because if he gets out of here too soon I'm liable to kill him."
"I'm sorry to have to disturb you like this, Colonel," Palmer said. "But I thought a father ought to know right away. The boy didn't mean no harm. He'd just been drinking a little too much."
"If he gives you any lip while he's here, you just let me know about it," Bull said, his voice fading now. The light went out in the anteroom. Ben was alone again, his eye swelling in the dark.
The light went on again and Palmer came to Ben's cell laughing. Fear engulfed Ben, its talons sliding down the tissues of his belly. Palmer clicked on a flashlight and pointed it at Ben's eyes. The light tortured him and Ben turned his head toward the lit-up back wall where he saw the grotesque silhouette of his head. The light, his head, and the wall, he thought, as though he were an initiate or some perverted eclipse created without the consent of nature.
"I like your daddy real fine," Palmer said. "I liked the way he just slapped you down and didn't ask no embarrassing questions."
"If you think my father was rough on me tonight," Ben said," just wait till he finds out you were lying to him. You'll be wearing the badge in your asshole."
"Now watch your mouth, sonny. I know you're mad now, but you still ain't in no position to be mouthin' off to Daddy Junior here. You're in bad trouble, boy, and you just made it worse by runnin' off at the mouth. Now, here's what happened tonight and you listen good, Marine brat. You was driving Sammy's daddy's big ol' Cadillac and I pulled you over because I saw you weaving down the highway. You were liquored up pretty bad and when I told you I was gonna have to take you in, you started throwing punches at me. Does that sound good to you, boy?"
"No, sir."
Palmer tapped a large, ugly-mouthed hunting knife against the bars of the cell. Ben turned and saw the blade glint with a pale, slim hunger as Palmer twisted it back and forth in the light.