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Killer Be Killed

Craig Corelli

"Good morning, sunshine.”

It’s Celia, waving a cup of coffee under my nose. I moan and roll away from her, but she grabs my hip and shakes it.

“Come on, baby. Wake, shake and bite a biscuit.”

“Leave me alone woman.”

“Kinny, it’s 4:30. You got to get up.”

Four fucking thirty. That’s just wrong. I mean, shit. I’m an honest man. I most generally have a job and I never once hit my wife. Every single Sunday I put on my suit, walk two miles to my brother’s church, and pray the Lord to forgive my sins. So if I drink a pint of bourbon after a hard day’s work, ain’t nobody’s business but mine. I’m a good man.

But, Lord, I feel mean this morning.

What happened, night before last, after I finished my deliveries, a freezer truck came in and they needed another man to unload it. So I put in a half shift and got home beat as a mule, threw myself into Celia’s good cooking, then threw myself into Celia, and passed out before I’d drunk even half my pint.

Still and all, last night I picked up a fresh pint on the way home, that being my custom. Which means I had most of a quart last night. And now here I am, with a snake wrapped around my head, squeezing like to break my skull into little pieces, and Celia pulling me up by my wrist.

“Goddamn, woman! Let me be.”

I jerk my hand free and fall back on my elbows. Celia tickles my sides. I push her away and she reaches over to my nightstand, picks up the cup of coffee she left there. Pulls me up again and puts the cup in my hand.

“Call ’em up. Tell ’em I’m sick.”

“Nuh-uh. It’s payday. And McGrick says you miss another day they going to fire your ass.”

“Fuck McGrick.”

“Drink this and wash up. Time you’re done I’ll have your breakfast. Now move.”

I watch her big hips swish out of the bedroom, look down at the coffee, and feel like retching. I put the cup on Celia’s nightstand and drop my head on her pillow.

Next thing, I wake to a glass of ice water—cubes and all—thrown on my face.

“Bitch!”

I sit up, grab up a cube and throw it at the wall. It shatters and scatters and my head feels about like that cube.

“Kindred Early, you going to be late and they going to fire you!” Celia screams.

What she yelling for? Is just a job.

“Kinny.” Drops onto the bed next to me, looks into my face. Tears in her eyes and she looks scared. “This is a good job, and you been there most a year now. Remember how long it took you to find it?”

Pleading. Crying. Damn, woman.

“You don’t got to chuck ice at my head.”

“Please, Kinny. Will you get up?”

I pick up the cup and sip at the coffee.

“I’m up, ain’t I?”

We eat breakfast in silence, avoiding eyes, listening to the news on the radio: apartment fire in town kills six, flooding in the next county, police shoot an unarmed man dead—black man, of course—war casualties, 50 million AIDS orphans in Africa. Me thinking, “Man, we all fucked, ain’t we.” Celia gets up and switches to the gospel station where a man’s singing about all the things Jesus done for him.

I move in slow motion because moving quick makes my head spin. When I finally drag my ass out of our little rented house it’s 6:00 and I’m running a half hour late. Walk the seven blocks to the bus stop, where I wait 20 minutes leaning in the shade under a maple tree. No seats on the bus at this hour and every bump in the road is like a kick in my head. I wait 10 minutes downtown for the next bus, the day really heating up now, the city stink making me feel sick.

Time I get to the warehouse I’m an hour late and my truck ain’t in the lot. Now I start worrying.

Bobby’s not in his office but Jerry McGrick’s in his, behind the glass that lets him watch what’s going on but keeps the cool, conditioned air all for him. He’s crushing a cigarette in a metal ashtray next to the newspaper he’s reading.

He doesn’t say nothing when I knock, but I go inside anyway, saying, “Mr. McGrick, I’m real sorry I’m late, sir. What happened…”

“I don’t want to hear it, Early,” McGrick says, then smiles his ugly sidewise smile. “That’s a funny fucking name you got.”

“Mr. McGrick, sir, I can explain.”

“Explain nothing. You’re fired.”

That catches me short for a moment.

“But Mr. McGrick, night before last I put in overtime for you at the last minute on account of you said you really needed me.”

“That’s right, Early. We needed you because the guy who was supposed to be here didn’t show. And you want to guess what happened to him?”

I stare at McGrick’s desk, but my eyes are focused on nothing.

“He’s fired, Early. It’s pretty fucking simple. You don’t come to work, ’fore long you find yourself with no work to come to.”

I don’t want to plead with this white man. Fact I don’t care one way or the other about this job. All of a sudden, I just want to lie down. And if I die, that would be OK, too.

Maybe it’s the air-conditioning making me woozy. I sit down on other side of McGrick’s desk.

“Bobby ran your rig out today. Which leaves me alone here doing the work for both of us.”

“Yeah, I see you working real hard, Mr. McGrick.”

He just stares evil at me.

“Give me one more chance.”

McGrick shakes his ugly white head.

“I’m fired for real?”

“For real, Early,” he says and reaches into his desk, hands me an envelope. “Here’s your paycheck.”

I snatch it and ask, “What about this week’s pay? Including the overtime.”

McGrick shrugs. “Next paycheck’s in two weeks.”

“Pay me cash. Now.”

“Can’t do it. We’ll mail it to you.”

I look hard at McGrick, the little prick who thinks he’s king of the fucking world in his shitty little office with the calendar of naked white girls that he takes down whenever his fat wife comes by. Leaning back now in that cushy swivel chair, probably never rode a public bus in his goddamn life.

I pull myself to my feet and lean over McGrick’s desk and hiss, “Pay me now.”

But I’m feeling shaky and the room starts to sway, McGrick nodding, “All right, then,” reaching into a drawer. But this time his hand comes out with a stubby revolver.

“You best get the fuck out of here, boy.”

Boy.

I grip the desk for balance, looking at the hole at the end of the barrel, then behind it at McGrick’s eyes every bit as dark and mean.

I straighten and walk out the door.

After the A/C, the heat’s enough to smother me. I stagger off the lot and down the side of the road, thinking the bus hardly runs way out here and there’s a nice bar a half mile down where I sometimes go after work. The ground comes up hard under my feet and a couple times I almost slip out on the gravel.

Not far from the bar, I see a bus go past, and five minutes later come up and find the bar closed. It’s eight fucking thirty, what the hell was I thinking?

I keep on until I come to a gas station with no customers, just cool air and frosty bottles of beer. I reach behind for the coldest 40 of OE and put it on the counter.

“We can’t sell that until ten o’clock,” says the skinny white clerk.

I stare him down.

“I’m leaving here with this bottle of beer, boy. You going to let me pay for it?”

The kid rings it up and puts it in a brown sack.

The rest of the way into town goes much better. I even sing a little bit. My beer is empty when the bus drops me downtown, but the liquor store is open now and I spring for a fifth. Sipping at it, strolling around, digging town in the middle of the day, I’m already warming to unemployment.

I stop in a bar, drink a beer and eat a burger, watch part of a ball game on TV. When my bottle starts calling to me I find a park and plant myself on a bench in the sun. Sweating. Trying not to think about what Celia’s going to say when I get home.

Drunk. Fired.

Fuck Celia. I’m a good man; she can’t complain about that.

At 1:30, I ride a bus back home, milking the bottle, glaring back at a sour old lady who puckers every time I take a pull. I have to drag my feet those last seven blocks, dreaming only of bed—soft, soft bed.

First thing when I open the door I hear the radio in the kitchen, tuned to the R&B station. Halfway across the front room I catch a smell like steak. In the kitchen, standing in front of the skillet where that steak is frying, with a tall glass in his hand, is Bobby Blount. Bobby’s my best friend, but he looks at me like I’m a ghost.

For a moment we just stare at each other, then I say: “What are you doing here, Bobby?”

“Making a steak,” Bobby says numbly. “You hungry?”

I stand there in the door to the kitchen, Bobby watching me. Then Celia strolls in from the bedroom saying, “What did you say, baby?” Wearing nothing but panties. Looking from Bobby frozen in front of his steak, to me here at the door with a bottle of bourbon in a sack. Screaming then and covering her tits, and backing toward the bedroom.

Covering her tits. We been married six years, she’s covering her tits.

I snap.

I lift my bottle like a hatchet and go straight at Bobby. Bobby steps back and chucks his glass at me but I block that with the bottle and send it shattering to the floor. I step over the glass, Bobby back in the corner now, and I break the bottle on the edge of the counter. Bobby scared, Celia screaming, coming at me, grabbing my arm. I push her away, broken glass all over the place but a good chunk in my hand as I come at Bobby, who crouches now like he’s going to fight. Fine, let him, he’ll—

—a gong, a crashing pain in my head, a bright light and then darkness.

***

I watch Kinny drop like a felled tree. My wrists sting and the skillet I’d just used to knock him out feels heavy. I return it to the stove and turn off the burner.

Bobby looks silly. He’s still crouched in the corner cringing. Like someone hit the pause button on him. I start to giggle.

“Kinny really ruined our steak, didn’t he?”

Somewhere way in the back of my mind, a big rock rumbles off the edge of a cliff and falls, falls, falls down to hell. I’m left standing on the edge of the cliff with a long rope tied to my ankles and the other end of the rope tied around the rock, tumbling down and spooling out rope.

Bobby steps to Kinny and squats over him.

“He ruined our lunch, for sure, Bobby. Probably our dinner, too.”

I’m shaking now with twitters.

“But maybe, maybe that whack on the head will give him amnesia. He’ll wake up and be all, ‘What’s that good steak doing on the floor?’ We ought to clean up before he wakes up. We’ll tell him, we’ll tell him—” I bend over now, heaving with laughter. “We’ll tell him he dreamed the whole thing.”

“Celia,” Bobby says.

“Wait, Bobby. I got to pee.”

I tiptoe around the glass.

“Celia,” he says to my back. “He’s not going to wake up.”

I keep walking to the bathroom. The rope trails out behind me. I pull down my panties and sit. I pee.

Damn that Kinny. What is he doing home in the middle of the day? He’ll have some explaining to do when he wakes up, for sure. I laugh and laugh until tears pool in my eyes and I’m sucking air in gasps. Then I stop and shake my head quickly. I wipe my eyes with the palms of my hands and take a deep breath. Pulling up my panties, I stand and flush the toilet.

The rope, reeling out into hell, jiggles my ankles as it whips back and forth.

In the kitchen, Bobby is still squatting next to Kinny. He has his fingers on Kinny’s neck. He looks at me and shakes his head.

“He’s dead.”

That’s not right.

“Celia, baby, why don’t you sit down?”

“I think I’ll sit down.”

I drop onto one of the kitchen chairs. Bobby stands up and walks carefully to the counter and leans against it.

“We can say it was an accident. Self-defense. It was, really. Not quite ...”

Bobby keeps on talking but I don’t hear him. I hear Samson Early intoning the rites at Kinny’s graveside. I hear a judge reading my sentence. I hear St. Peter telling me exactly why I’m going to hell.

The rope goes taut and pulls me over the edge. My stomach clenches and I double over, gasping and sobbing.

“We’re going to hell, Bobby!” I wail. “I told you it was wrong. We’re sinners!”

The words howl out of me like the yelps of a tortured animal.

“There’s no hiding place!”

Bobby comes over and puts his hands on my shoulders. I leap up at him.

“Don’t touch me!”

I push him back.

“Get away from me!”

I beat him on the chest, over and over. He takes it so I hit harder until he backs up toward the sink.

“Sinner!”

I clip him right on the nose and this time he pushes back quick and hard. I fall and put my arms out to catch myself. They land on sharp glass and an instant later my back hits the floor. Or something on the floor. It doesn’t hurt, really. But I have a feeling that it should. I want to roll over but suddenly I can’t move. My eyes flap open and shut. My head hits the floor. My eyes stay open but they stop seeing.

***

When Celia stops blinking I get a sick feeling. I kick the glass out of the way and kneel down next to her and push her up onto her side and—shit—I can see, right between her shoulder blades, the bottom of Dred’s whiskey bottle, wedged in all in the way. I don’t know how much glass is jammed up in her but I reckon part of it got her spine.

I set her back down and blood starts creeping out from under her so I get up and sit in a chair. The radio’s still playing but it feels so quiet, like the world has frozen, like I’m the last one alive after a nuclear war.

I don’t think about what to do next. I go to the bedroom and make sure nothing of mine is in there, and then I walk out the front door. Down the street, past a couple old folks sitting on their porches. I don’t care if they see me. I’m numb, a zombie. You could swing a bat at my head and I wouldn’t flinch. I walk in the opposite direction of my house, in toward town.

Eventually I start thinking. About how my fingerprints are all over the house. But then Early and I are friends so that don’t matter. Unless they look at that glass of water that broke—that has new prints. But that glass didn’t kill anyone. It’ll be Celia’s prints all over the skillet now.

Probably I should have called the cops. I wonder what they’ll think happened. They wouldn’t believe me if I told them. They’d stick me with it somehow. And even if they did believe me, that I didn’t mean to do that to Celia, her brother would waste me. Most definitely.

I’m thinking this like I’m remembering a movie, like it has nothing to do with me. I feel hollow, like a balloon floating down the edge of the road.

“Yo, that’s Bobby Blount.”

“Who?”

“Bobby Blount.”

“Hey, yo Bobby! Bobby! Maybe it ain’t him.”

“Course it’s—Bobby! What up! It’s Cedric, man!”

I stop and look at the porch I’d almost walked past and Cedric Peters is up there with a guy named Marcus. Now I recognize this is Cedric’s house.

“What you doing, B?”

“Walking.”

“Where to?”

“Just walking.”

“Get on up here, dog. You all right? You look wacked out.”

They’re sitting on old, bent-up lawn chairs next to the front door. Cedric’s sporting short dreads that gravity hasn’t got hold to yet, holding a 40 on his knee and grinning like the goofball he is. Marcus is wearing a Titans cap with some braids running down the back. He’s intense and crumbling bud on a $10 bill.

“I’m cool, Ced. What’s up?”

We knock fists and I sit down. There’s a TV blaring inside the house. Marcus looks up from his work and says, “You got something to kick on this blunt?”

I shake my head. Cedric says: “He don’t got to kick nothing, man. His name’s Bobby Blount.”

Cedric leans back and sucks his 40 to the halfway point. Me and Cedric used to work together at a fried chicken joint until he got fired and I quit. Marcus I hardly know. He spills the bud into a split White Owl cigar and slobbers on it till it’s sealed. Then he hands it to Cedric, who sparks it.

After the blunt makes a few rounds, a girl comes from inside. She could be 16, but I don’t know.

“Let me get some.”

“Silly rabbit. Tricks are for kids.”

“Come on, Ced. I’m bored to death.”

“Hell no.”

“What’ll you do for it?” Marcus asks, giving her a look that gets him a sock on the shoulder from Cedric.

“Let her have some, man,” Marcus says. “It’s my bud.”

“Your bud. My sister. Now get on, girl.”

“I’m telling Mama.”

“You do that.”

“When she comes home, I’m telling Mama you gave me some.”

“Oh, no you don’t.”

“I will, too.”

Marcus laughs. “You afraid of your mama.”

“You damn right I am. And I know you’re afraid of your mama, too, so shut the fuck up.”

“Here, Mercedes.” Marcus tries to hand her the blunt but Cedric snatches it.

“No!” Cedric sits back with exaggerated leisure. “I’ll guess I’ll just have to smoke this whole thing myself, seeing as I can’t trust you two with it.”

He draws deeply while Marcus and Mercedes scowl at him.

“That’s all right, girl,” Marcus says. “I got more. Let’s go inside.”

She considers it for a second, Cedric shaking his head with puffed cheeks holding in the smoke, then she opens the door for him. Marcus starts to follow her. Cedric reaches out and jabs Marcus’ arm with the burning tip of the blunt.

“Motherfucker!” Marcus shouts and jerks his arm away from Cedric.

“Back the fuck up off my sister!”

Mercedes slips inside and watches from the door. Marcus looks at her and barks at Cedric: “Stand up, little bitch.”

“Chill, man,” says Cedric, putting his 40 on the floor. “Why you got to be this way?”

“Stand up!”

“I don’t want to fight you.”

“All right, then,” and Marcus opens the door to go inside.

Cedric leaps up and pops Marcus in the jaw. Mercedes screams. Marcus falls back against the door, which almost rips from its hinges, and he near to falls in my lap. Now he’s back up with fists raised. Marcus is taller and stronger but Cedric is big, too.

They duck and weave for a little bit and then start throwing. Each get in a few good ones and then Marcus backs Cedric up against the porch railing. It’s looking bad for Cedric but then he slips one in to Marcus’s gut, which makes Marcus bend forward enough for Cedric to clock him solid in the grill.

Marcus stumbles back a few steps and I think he’s going to land on me but he catches his balance and reaches back up under his shirt in a way that could only mean he’s going for a piece. Something inside me says “Wake up!” His hand comes up holding a nine and I grab the muzzle with my right while I chop down on his wrist with my left.

He lets go, hollering as he spins toward me. I bring the butt of the gun up to his face and crack him on the cheek. I grab his shirt so he can’t back up while I keep hammering. He’s flailing at me. Mercedes is screaming. Finally Cedric comes up and grabs hold of me.

“Chill, chill, chill, chill, chill!”

I let go. Marcus falls to his knees and starts whimpering like a kicked dog. Mercedes is crying, too. Cedric looks at me like I’m some kind of monster but Marcus is the one looking really scary, bleeding like a motherfucker and his left eye swollen shut.

“Shut the fuck up!” Cedric yells at Mercedes. Then to me: “Damn, you didn’t have to do all that.”

“He was going to blast you.”

“Nah. He was just going to wave it around. Weren’t you little bitch? Like you do every time I whup your ass. Yeah, who’s the little bitch now? Huh?”

“Here,” I hand the gun to Cedric.

He shakes his head. “I don’t want it. Probably bodies on that gun.”

I put it in my pocket.

“He needs an ambulance!” Mercedes screams from inside.

“Shut up!” Cedric looks close at Marcus. “Fuck. Yo, Towns, you want to go to the hospital?”

Marcus nods.

“Fuck. All right. Call a cab. We’ll wait here all day waiting for an ambulance. Fuck.”

He looks at me, shaking his head. I hold my hands up.

“I’m sorry, Cedric. I didn’t know.”

“I know, I know. It’s cool, it’s just … It’s a fucking mess now.” To Marcus, he says: “See, man. What I tell you? You and that piece. What the fuck’s the matter with you? At the hospital we don’t say nothing about what happened. You hear? All right, Bobby, you better get out of here.”

I walk down from the porch and start off the way I was going before they called to me. Walking, walking, I walk all the way into town. When I get there, I just wander around. Keep on moving, like if I stop, something’s going to catch up to me.

The gun really feels like something in my pocket. I start getting ideas about things I can do with it. See a nice car—jack that. Nice girl—drag her off and have my way. Look at me wrong—waste you.

Nothing scares me. Except myself. Which I guess is something, because the gun stays in my pocket.

When it gets dark I turn around and start walking toward home. My legs are killing me but I keep going until it’s 2 in the morning and I finally get to the house and find everyone’s asleep. I put the piece under the mattress, lie down and fade away like a puff of smoke.

Next morning Mama gives me the news. I call Dred’s brother, Rev. Early, and commiserate with him. He found them when he went to visit yesterday afternoon. He tells me the cops say they killed each other in a domestic dispute, but he doesn’t think so.

Dred’s funeral is set for Friday.

Mama wants to talk all about it but I can’t stand to. I go back upstairs, get dressed and put the piece in my pocket. My thoughts are wriggling like a worm on a driveway trying to get back to dirt and I tell Mama I need to take a walk and think.

I talk to myself while I’m walking, telling myself I didn’t kill either of them, that it was all a bad mistake, but I feel the devil stepping on my shadow.

I get about five blocks and then someone calls my name, making me jerk like someone poked me with a cattle prod. I turn and see it’s a nice Caddy with Tyrone Gant leaning out the window, waving me over.

“Just come from your house,” he says.

“Tyrone, man, I’m really sorry about your sister.”

We clasp hands.

“You, too, Bobby. I know Dred was your boy.”

“Since we were short.”

“Come on in. Where you going? I’ll drive you.”

“That’s all right. I’m just walking, trying to get my head around all this.”

His tone changes when he says, “Ride with me, Bobby.”

I go around and get in the car. Gant pulls out and drives slow.

“This make sense to you?” he says.

“What?”

“You ever know Celia and Dred to fight?”

“Argue? Sure.”

“I mean, did he hit her?”

“Not that I know about.”

Dred knew Gant’d break his neck if he did.

“Something ain’t right. I got some boys in the sheriff’s office and they say it looks funny how they died, but the sheriff don’t give a shit. Two dead niggers to him.”

I say nothing. Gant looks at me and I nod.

“I’m gonna find who did this,” he says. “Someone else was at that house. Know any of the neighbors?”

“Nah, not really.”

“That’s all right. One of my boy’s lives on the next block.”

“Oh, well, you mean like you want me to ask around? I can do that. Sure.”

“All right then. I’m working a few other angles, too.”

He pulls over to let me out and I’ve got one foot on the street when he says, “You have a problem with Marcus Townsend?”

“You know him?”

“He does some work for me.”

“Just a misunderstanding.”

“Watch yourself.”

When I get out, I feel that same numbness I felt yesterday right after I left Dred and Celia’s. I walk until I’m on streets I never seen before, across the tracks in the white part of town.

I come up on a Winn-Dixie and wait at the corner of the parking lot. A fat white lady in a sweat suit rolls her cart out to her car. Lots of other cars around but no people. She opens the trunk to load up. I move when she gets to the last bag and I’m on her when she reaches to slam it shut, the nine low by my side.

“Give me your keys.”

She’s froze.

“You probably got lots to live for, lady. More than a car and a bunch of groceries is worth.”

Still froze.

“I ain’t gone keep the car anyway. Just borrow it like. Give me the keys and you’ll live.”

She reaches into her purse and pulls out a big jangly mess of keys. She makes to pull the car key off the ring but I snatch them all from her hand.

“Your money, too.”

Hands shaking, she opens her wallet and pulls out a few bills.

“I got friends, lady. I get caught, they’ll find you. They’ll know by the car. Got it?”

She nods dumbly. I nod back and get in the car. She’s still standing there when I drive off.

Been a long time since I drove a car. First thing, I drive back across the tracks to where a black man won’t stand out. Wonder if they’re already looking for the car. What’d I steal it for, anyway?

I count the cash at a red light: $62. I still have $45 in my wallet. Definitely enough for what I need right now. It crosses my mind that I could go to Tyrone Gant, but that’s out of the question. So I head downtown, steering toward the ’hood, feeling the devil riding beside me.

Soon I see what I’m looking for, three guys on the corner, looking around, one lifting his chin in my direction. I pull up next to them and he comes up to the car.

“What you need?”

“You got rock?”

That was what we called it last time I did this, when I was young buck, but that was more than 10 years ago.

“The best,” he says.

“I got thirty,” I say.

I take it from the lady’s wad and hand it to him. He walks back to his group. One of them turns away for a moment, then turns back and walks to the car. He reaches his hand in and drops the vials in my hand. Ten. Prices haven’t changed, either.

I drive back out of town and park about 10 blocks from the bar where I plan to drink until I can’t remember my name. I leave the car running with the keys in it and bend the antenna off.

The antenna does all right for a pipe, and I fill the bathroom with the smell of burnt plastic between every gin tonic. Each drink, each rock is more air I’m pumping into an overfilled tire that I know is going to blow.

Afternoon slides to evening. At closing time someone carries me out and leaves me propped up against the building. I come around sometime later to empty streets. I stagger home, about a mile.

Tyrone Gant’s waiting in front of my house in his car.

“Get in, Bobby.”

I feel almost relieved when I climb in next to him.

“You talk with Dred and Celia’s neighbors?” he asks.

“Yeah. Nobody saw shit, man.”

“Don’t fuck around, Bobby Blount. My boy asked the neighbors and heard you was over there most every morning.”

“Bullshit. A few times, yeah.”

“I’m a warn you this one more time not to fuck around. I learn Dred went to work that day, got fired, and went home early. Were you there, Bobby?”

“Look here, Gant. I want to show you something.”

I reach into my pocket and pull out the piece. Out of the corner of my eye I see a quick movement and I know my suffering is over.

I don’t hear the shot. I just disappear like a shadow when the lights go out.

***

Goddamn. Little bitch drew on me. Look at the fucking mess he made of my ride. Goddamn.

I pull out and turn the first corner.

Well, I guess that about settles that. I didn’t half believe he could have taken out Dred. I was just blowing smoke up his ass and look what come out.

I’m gonna have to get this thing detailed. Shit.

I call Larenzo and tell him to meet me at his yard and bring some paper towels and cleaning shit. I drive out there with punk-ass Bobby Blount slouched down like a drunk I’m taking home. That’s right, deputy, he’s dead drunk. Hah.

I wait outside the gate to the landscaping yard, smoking a Swisher, until Larenzo comes. We go in and he asks a lot of questions and I tell him to shut up and help me put Bobby through the thresher. Bobby comes out a vomit of red and pink that splashes all over the pile of wood chips. Larenzo hoses down the thresher while I soak the blood off the seats and the floor—finally give that up and just rip out the floor carpeting.

By now it’s light and Larenzo figures no one’ll pay no mind if he lights a fire—he’s always burning something—so he pours on some gas and lights those chips right up. I watch it burn for awhile, lay some cash on Larenzo, then go fill up at the Waffle House. I get home in time to get clean and put on a suit before Dred’s funeral.

I’m the only one there from my family, on account of how it ended for Celia. First time I’ve darkened Rev. Early’s church since the wedding. I sit in the back and watch the show.

Samson, he’s slick. The way he holds up his weeping mama as he walks her to her pew. His shaking and quaking as he talks over the body. Different man from the one who worships at my church several nights a week. Makes me sick thinking about him with my sister.

I leave right after the service; no one wants to talk to me anyhow. I go to my club and wait. He’ll come to me.

Sure enough, that night Samson walks in and sits on my right at the end of the bar.

“Thanks for coming to the service today,” he says. “How you doing?”

I don’t answer.

“Me, too. But they’re in a better place. … Nothing against your fine establishment.”

He hails Eddy, who’s tending bar.

“Jesus turned water to wine, but bourbon’s my drink,” he says. “Fill it ’til the cup runneth over.”

Samson drinks off his whiskey in one throw and calls for another. His face is flushed when he claps me on the shoulder.

“Try to forget about what the Lord taketh away, Gant. Tonight, take what he giveth.”

One of my girls comes up and sits on his right. He turns to her and whistles.

“And the word was made flesh!” he says and grabs a handful of her ass. “What say you kneel down and kiss the bishop’s ring?”

“Just put twenty in the collection plate, Reverend.”

“I will. But first I’m gonna fire some brimstone.”

He lays $20 on the bar in front of me and I give him the rock.

“Cocaine and I’m able. Praise God! When I come back, girl, we’ll go upstairs and you can open wide those pearly gates.”

He leaves $10 on the bar and takes his drink out to the back porch. I wait a minute and then follow. Five other guys are out there sparking it up, Samson sitting alone facing out to the hill. I quietly tell the others to go inside and come up behind Samson as he blows out his smoke.

“Rock of ages! Praise God!”

“Samson.”

He half turns, his eyes afire.

“I told you I was going to find out who done that to Dred and Celia.”

“Did you?”

“Find out the same man was at the house most every afternoon when Dred was at work.”

Samson focuses and becomes serious.

“Celia was a deeply spiritual woman, Gant. I take my ministry wherever it’s needed. But as God is my witness, they was dead when I got there.”

“That’s as may be, Samson. I’ll let the big man judge you.”

I pull my piece, saying: “Prepare to meet—”

But then I hear a click and feel a punch right above my Adam’s apple, knowing it ain’t a fist, feeling Samson’s hand clamped on my gun hand, seeing his eyes blazing like the fires of hell, and then I fall.

***

“Come like a thief in the night, don’t it?”

Copyright(c) 2007 by Craig Corelli

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