“Yeah, she’s quite a woman,” Magill said, with a glance at his watch. “What else you got?”
I needed something to make him take me seriously. “Tim has guns in the back of his car,” I said.
Magill thought about it a minute. “Maybe he’s going hunting.”
“He doesn’t hunt.”
“What are you saying? You think he might hurt somebody?”
I didn’t. Really I didn’t. But I wasn’t absolutely sure, and that’s what I said.
“Are you mad at him or something?” he said. “Y’all fighting over this girl? Seems like you’d like to see him get charged with a crime.”
Of course I was mad at Tim for what he did to me and Arnita, but that wasn’t why I’d come here. Or was it? “I just thought you might want to talk to him,” I said. “And I wanted you to know the truth. We’ve been lying about this since it happened. I didn’t know you dropped the charges against Red. That was the main thing.”
“I appreciate that, Dan. I know it took some nerve for you to come here.” His chair squealed as he leaned back. “How’s the family getting along? Y’all settled into a new place?”
“We’re still in a motel.”
“It might be a bit of a wait on that insurance. They’ll pay it, though, eventually. They’ll have to. Fire marshal ruled it an accident.”
“Yes sir.”
“Was it an accident, Dan?”
“Yes sir,” I said firmly. I had practiced this answer many times along the road from Minor. I had toyed with the notion that one word from me could put Dad in jail, but I knew that wouldn’t make him any nicer when he got out.
“See, I wasn’t sure,” said Magill. “I found out your father lied about losing his job. But I never could imagine a man blowing up his own house to collect on a little household policy. He just didn’t seem like the type.” He kept his eyes steady on me. “I don’t suppose you’d ever tell on him, would you?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “Aren’t you going to arrest me?”
“Any reason I should?”
“Well — I kind of thought you might.” In fact I’d expected him to arrest me and Tim both. I thought a trip to jail was the price we’d both have to pay for getting Tim the attention he needed.
Magill scratched his ear. “In our business, we pretty much have to have some evidence of a crime. Otherwise there’s not much we can do. You wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to volunteer a lie, would you?”
“No sir.”
“So if you’re not lying, you didn’t hit the girl intentionally. You ran off, but you did call an ambulance. You should have gone back to the scene, but I’m not about to try and make a case on that. Writing somebody’s name on a toilet wall — that’s vandalism, but you said he went back and cleaned it up. He’s got guns, long as he’s over sixteen and no criminal record, he can have all the guns he wants. Now if he shoots somebody, or threatens a specific person, that’s when you need to call me. Here. Let me give you a card.”
I took it and thanked him for his time.
“Sure, Dan — thank you.” We shook hands. His hand was warm, entirely dry.
I ran my thumb over the raised letters of his name, the seal embossed with the outline of Mississippi. I put the card in my pocket.
I was sure he forgot all about me before I even got out of the lobby.
It was late in the day but the heat was still stupefying. I spotted a cluster of bikes on a rack between the sheriff’s department and the Hinds County Courthouse. A white statue presided over the facade of that big white building — it looked to be Moses, from the gleaming marble tablets in his arms.
I was having trouble facing the idea of walking all the way back in this heat. Twelve miles took almost three hours this morning, when I was fresh. Maybe I could find a bus to the Jackson city limits, but Minor was miles beyond that.
I went to the bike rack intending only to check out the bikes and think about what kind of bike I would get if I had the money. My eye happened to fall on one bike, a red Raleigh ten-speed, not particularly new or expensive but it did possess one quality that set it apart from all other bikes on the rack: it was unlocked.
Look at me! said the bike. No one cares about me! Want a ride?
A smart thief would have checked the windows of the buildings all around to see if the owner of the bike happened to be glancing out at that moment. I didn’t do that.
I lifted the red Raleigh from the rack. I swung my leg over, saddled up, and rode off.
I got away clean. I stole it in broad daylight from the rack in front of the sheriff’s department, and no one ever knew. If that was your Raleigh ten-speed that went missing that hot August day, 1973, I apologize. That bike still had a lot of good miles on it when someone finally stole it from me.
If Jeff Magill no longer cared about the major felonies we had committed, what was one petty larceny? Stealing was easy, and fun! It put extra spring in my legs to be riding stolen property. I whizzed down East Pascagoula in the shadow of Standard Life, the blank eyes of the derelict King James Hotel.
Racing through on a bike, I thought Jackson was much nicer than it seemed from a car. I flew down leafy streets lined with graceful old homes. Then the homes got less graceful, then became just small shacky houses. The pavement broke up. Black kids played in the street. “Hey black boy,” one lanky kid yelled as I bumped toward him. “Hey hey hey, black boy!” That’s what I thought he was saying until I zoomed past and realized he was saying “bike boy.” He made a grab at my leg. I didn’t even slow down.
I rode past the last outskirts of Jackson, out into open country. I was thinking about what was lurking behind my conversation with Magill. Some hint of a suggestion he was trying to make, if only I could be subtle enough to pick up on it. In this business, we need a crime. Now if Tim shoots somebody or threatens a specific person . . .
At last I came to the Minor sign, which someone had altered again:
WELCOME TO MINOR
TWO
ONE OF MISSISSIPPI’S TOWNS
There were lights coming on in the first subdivisions. I turned onto Bluff Park Drive, sweating and puffing over the hill.
Bluff Park was Minor’s ritzier subdivision. The lawns were large and carefully kept. It was not unusual to see three or four cars in one driveway. In front of a gray cedar rambling ranch house, I saw the car I was looking for: a red Mustang Fastback.
Cherry red. GT. Souped up, with flames down the side.
It sat behind two gleaming Cadillacs and a Chevy pickup so new it still wore dealer plates. I wheeled around and went back to check out the gray cedar mailbox with the house number, 3574, and the word MARTIN.
I cycled slowly away, checking out the general area. No close neighbors, lots of trees, thickets of giant azalea between the houses.
I swept down the long hill onto Minor Boulevard. I hadn’t intended to go anywhere in particular, but somehow the stolen bike found its way to the bridge over the Yatchee River.
I checked the hiding place behind the bridge stanchion, but there were no rocks. I rode recklessly down the slope where I used to kiss Arnita for hours.
That was the worst part of it. She didn’t love me anymore. Our love had evaporated in a flash — the way gasoline burns. I would never get to kiss her again. Thanks, Tim.
I laid the bike on the grass and sat by the log where we used to sit. I breathed the air in the same place, hoping it might bring back some of the feeling. The water in the river moved so slowly it seemed frozen, like deep green glass.
23
ONCE I KNEW what I had to do, I didn’t wait. This was the kind of action you don’t sit around and ponder too much, or you’ll never go through with it.
I bought supplies at TG&Y and rode to the Texaco station on Hood Street. In the piss-smelling Texaco bathroom I dumped all the bleach from a brand-new bottle of Clorox into the toilet. I carried the bottle outside to the pump and filled it with 87 octane — for my chain saw, I
told the guy. When he went in to get my change, I stuffed the length of muslin into the bottle. I tightened the cap, stowed the bottle in the TG&Y bag with the big box of matches.
I dropped a quarter in the phone. I dialed the number and closed my eyes. The phone rang three times. “Yello,” Tim said.
I hung up.
I put on my black hooded sweatshirt and slung the bag from my handlebars. Pedaling over to Bluff Park I had time to reconsider. What I was doing was well beyond reckless, into dangerous. The craziest most drastic thing I’d ever done. But I believed I had to do it. I couldn’t think of any other way to stop Tim. It wasn’t enough for me to know that what we did was wrong. Tim had to know it too.
If Jeff Magill needed a crime, I would give him a crime.
Crickets and other night bugs raised a roar in the leafy darkness of Bluff Park. The occasional pool of streetlight was a gathering place for all kinds of swarming fluttery things.
I rode at a leisurely pace past the excellent darkness of the Martin driveway. The setup was ideal, no streetlamp within fifty feet. The light glancing off the cars was indistinct, a soft glow from the house.
I continued on a few yards beyond their property, coasting to a stop beneath a low-hanging live oak. I laid the bike in a patch of deep shadow, pointed in the direction of my getaway.
I was trying to think through all possible outcomes. I carried the Clorox bottle and the box of big-headed matches across a wide stretch of grass, to the driveway.
I placed the bottle on the pavement beneath the Mustang’s back bumper, and fished out the gas-soaked muslin. The insect chatter seemed to intensify. I unscrewed Red’s gas cap and tucked it in my pocket as a souvenir.
I stuffed one end of the muslin into the mouth of the fuel tank, unrolled it down the bumper, crammed a couple of inches into the bleach bottle, and carried on unrolling as I crept back from the car, across the lawn. I was worried how quickly the gas might evaporate from the muslin, whether there would be enough fuel to carry the flame to the car.
I wiped my fingers on the grass. My hands trembled as I slid out the cardboard drawer. I made a little bouquet of four matches. I struck them all together on the side of the box. The sudden gout of flame startled me. I steadied myself and knelt down, touched the fire to the cloth.
A bright bluish flame raced quick up the slender white trail, over the grass and up to the mouth of the bottle, which exploded with a heavy woof! that blew fire into the mouth of the fuel tank. Red’s cherry-red 1972 Mustang Fastback GT detonated with such force that the fastback end sailed up in the air and came down in slow motion, a huge crash, burning, sliding sideways into the pickup truck with a metallic groan.
Flames all over the car! Not just flame decals on the sides. Both cars were burning.
This spectacle made me happier than I had imagined. Death to Red! Death to the Mustang! Burn baby burn!
I jumped on the bike and got the hell out of there. I flashed down Bluff Park Drive into Oak Hill, the long way around to stay off the traffic streets.
Here came a wail from the north — a red ladder truck rocketing down Minor Boulevard with lights and sirens blazing, followed by a pumper truck honking and screaming.
I rode fast toward the highway. You have done it now, Musgrove. You have knocked the nest out of the tree. Now let’s see where the hornets will go.
Red loved that car. That car was never less than spotless, shiny and red.
That was the greatest part of the plan. Revenge was mine, and it smelled as sweet and flammable as gasoline. That’s for you, Red! A special gift from Five Spot!
I had the strongest urge to find Tim and tell him.
No. He would find out soon enough. Soon he’d be having his little talk with Jeff Magill. That was liable to get pretty hot — Tim with all the indignation of the wrongly accused, Magill embarrassed and mad at himself for ignoring my warning.
Tim would hate me when he figured out what I’d done. That was okay by me. I was willing to lose him as a friend, in order to stop him. It had taken me a long time to make up my mind about that.
Tim would try to convince Magill it was me who burned Red’s car. Magill wouldn’t believe him because I had come to him first, with a warning.
And no one would ever have to find out what Tim really meant to do with those guns.
The plan had other benefits. Red’s car was hilarious rising up on its cloud of fire like a toy car. Like a great big burning Matchbox car.
I did a good job of blowing it up, a job to make my father proud. Demonstrating once again the Musgrove talent for demolition. I was tingling with the same excitement Dad must have felt when he blew up our house. All the violence I ever wanted to do to Red was condensed into that bright bloom of gasoline, the car lifting up, the wrenching crash of metal.
Way back in my mind a little bell was ringing, a persistent alarm bell I was not completely able to ignore. What if things don’t go exactly the way I planned? What if Tim and Jeff Magill don’t react as I expect?
If somebody saw me do it, or I left some stupid clue . . .
I rode off for the Reid Motel. I would have to scrub hard to get the smell of gas off my hands.
24
I JOGGED ACROSS HIGHWAY 80 to the pay phone. I put in fifteen cents. It rang three times before Patsy Cousins picked up.
“Hey Miz Cousins, can I speak to Tim?”
“Daniel, my God! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Well — yeah, I’m fine. What’s wrong?”
“Well, my Lord, they just came and got Tim, and took him down to Jackson. To the police station.”
I stayed silent. Did this mean they would come for me next?
“They said they wanted to ask him some questions,” she was saying, “but they wouldn’t say what it’s about. And they wouldn’t let me go with them! Do you know what’s going on?”
“No ma’am.”
“Come on, Daniel. Tim tells you everything.”
“They didn’t say why they arrested him?”
“They didn’t arrest him. They took him for questioning.” Her voice tightened. “Why would you say that? Daniel — if you know something, I swear, you tell me right now!”
“Miz Cousins, I haven’t even talked to Tim since Eddie’s funeral.”
“Is this something to do with that colored girl that got hurt after the prom?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “How should I know?”
“Is your mother there? Put her on the line.”
“I can’t.”
“Well, your father then. Let me talk to him now, please.”
“I’m at a pay phone. We don’t have a phone where we’re staying right now.”
“Daniel. Now listen to me. I am not accustomed to having the police show up at my door and take my son away. Do you hear me?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Is Tim mixed up in something?”
“Not that I know of.”
“He’s so horrible and moody these days. We’re at the end of our rope. We’ve tried to get him help, but he won’t cooperate. You can’t get that kind of help if you won’t cooperate even a little. He goes off all the time by himself, God knows where, and the times when he is here, he’s so unhappy we can hardly breathe. His poor father is just disgusted with him. Now this. You’re his friend. Would you please, please tell me what’s going on?”
“Well, it all started with — there’s this guy at school,” I said.
She pounced on that. “Red Martin?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh I know all about Red Martin! That boy has caused us more pain — I wish the same thing would happen to his family. Did Tim tell you how he messed up my yard?”
“Yeah, he’s pretty bad,” I said. “But Tim overreacts. And that makes it worse.” Across the road I saw Mom and Dad and Janie climbing into the station wagon.
“Daniel. What can we do to help him?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cousins, I don’t know. Tell him I’ll se
e him at school, okay? I’ve gotta go —”
I hung up and ran to the car.
I thought we were going to the Dairy Dog for supper, but we drove out old Highway 80 past the turnoff for Old Raymond Road, past the campus of Mississippi Baptist College, past the Hungry L Truck Stop, the school bus shed and the scrap metal yard, and under the interstate bridge to the Twi-Lite Drive-In Theater.
Dad put on his blinker.
“Are we turning around?” I said.
“We’re here, Danny,” Janie said. “This is it.”
The drive-in had been closed for years. The marquee still bore a few letters advertising its last feature:
UN KAB E
OLLY BRO
Dad was watching my reaction in the rearview mirror. Mom gazed across the road as if there was something incredibly interesting about that Spur station over there.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Our new house,” Janie said. “We’re gonna live here.”
“At the drive-in?”
“Isn’t it crazy? Wait till you see.”
“This is not our new house,” Mom said. “It’s just one of the possibilities Daddy and I are considering. We have a lot of talking to do before any decisions are made.”
“No we don’t,” said Dad. “I told you, I signed the contract.”
“Well, anything that’s signed can be unsigned,” she said.
Dad pulled in at the streamlined pink-and-blue Twi-Lite marquee. When he turned his head I noticed the jaunty toothpick in his mouth. “It’s a golden opportunity,” he said.
We drove past the deserted ticket booth, the flying-saucer snack bar, and the projector hut, onto a wide field studded with speaker-box poles. In front of each pole was a gravelly hillock that raised your front wheels to give your car the right tilt for viewing the enormous screen. That screen was blotched and torn in places, a dim but dazzling whiteness occupying one whole side of the sky.
“Are we camping here?” I ventured.