Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
HAVOC
Nobody looks at me any different, which is the part I ain't ready for.
I come through that door at four in the afternoon carryin' a lie the size of a truck and Tyrant says you're late without lookin' up, and Deacon says my name from the kitchen doorway, and Cricket damn near breaks his own neck gettin' out of a chair he ain't supposed to be sittin' in, and the whole place goes on exactly the way it's gone on for fifteen years.
That's the thing about a lie. You expect the room to know.
The room don't know a damn thing.
"Sit down," Tyrant says. "Both of you. Blitz, sit down."
"I'm standin'."
"You're hoverin'."
"That's what standin' is."
Tyrant's got the book open and a second book next to it, which is new, and he's got a pen behind each ear, which is somethin' I have never once seen a grown man do.
"Rule fourteen," he says. "Prospect's rag. Amended."
"Aw, hell." Blitz drops onto a stool. "You didn't."
"Rule fourteen. Prospect shall carry one rag. One." He taps it. "Rag count in excess of one shall be fined at the standard rate per additional rag."
Cricket's face comes apart.
"That's four rags," he says.
"That's thirty dollars."
"I won, though. You said the book didn't say a number and I read it and it didn't say a number—"
"And now it says a number."
"You can't change it after!"
"Secretary can amend the book by his own hand, ratified at next chapel, it's in the front." Tyrant turns the pen around. "You want to read the front?"
"No, sir."
"Smart."
Blitz has got his head down on the bar, laughin' into his own arm, and Cricket's standin' there holdin' four rags like a man at a funeral.
"Hey." Blitz sits up. "Hey, what about boots? Does the book say anything about boots?"
Tyrant looks at him.
"'Cause I could wear a lot of boots."
"Write that down," Tyrant says to nobody, and writes it down.
Junie's got the bar and Gigi's up on the cooler with her legs swinging, going through a plastic bag of somethin' from the Dollar General.
"Okay, so," Gigi says. "Two ninety-nine."
"Two ninety-nine."
"Two ninety-nine, Junie. For a candle."
"It's a bad candle."
"It's a four-hour candle. It says four hours on the bottom." She holds it up. "It went ninety minutes."
"So take it back."
"I'm not takin' a candle back to the Dollar General."
"Why not?"
"Because then I'm a woman who takes candles back to the Dollar General." She puts it in the bag. "There's a version of my life where I do that and I don't want to meet her."
Junie's laughin' with her whole face and no sound comin' out, which is how she does it, and she has to put a hand flat on the bar.
Raider comes through from the lot with his keys still in his hand.
"Y'all got coffee?"
"You want a beer?"
"Got coffee?"
"There's some from this mornin'."
"That'll do." He drinks it standin' up. Six feet from the door the whole time, one shoulder turned toward it, the way he's stood in every room I've ever seen him in.
"You stayin'?" Gigi says.
"Nah."
"You just got here."
"Got here twice." He puts the cup down. "Storm's got me runnin' to Lafayette in the mornin', so."
And he's gone.
Cricket watches the door swing.
"Does he ever sit down?"
"Once," Junie says. "Two thousand nineteen. Deacon's mama died."
Storm comes out of his office around five and the room drops the way it drops.
"Pawn shops."
"Nothin' yet." I've got the answer ready because I've had it ready since I woke up. "Six between here and Baton Rouge that'll take somethin' without paper. Two of 'em said maybe."
"Maybe."
"Maybe means no. It means they want somethin' for sayin' yes later."
"Ransom." Storm doesn't turn his head. "Give him somethin' for the two maybes."
"How much somethin'?"
"Enough they call us before they call anybody else."
Ransom's already got his rings off. He's been sittin' at the end of the bar for an hour with a receipt book and a cigarette he ain't lit, and now he starts writin' without lookin' up.
"You want it to be the kind they remember, or the kind they don't."
"The kind they don't."
"Then it's smaller than you think and it comes in twice." He tears the page. "A man you pay once is a man you paid. A man you pay twice is a man who's waitin' on the third."
Deacon comes through the doorway wipin' his hands on a towel, which is more towel than Cricket's ever been allowed.
"Y'all eatin' or am I cookin' for the walls."
"You're cookin' for the walls," Blitz says.
"That's fine. Walls appreciate me."
"Deacon, if I told you the rice was dry, what would you say?"
"I'd say you're a growin' boy and there's a spoon."
"No, I mean, would you cuss at me?"
"Nope."
"Not even a little bit."
"Nope."
"Everybody in here cusses. Warden cusses."
"Warden's got his own arrangement." Deacon folds the towel over his shoulder. "I got mine."
"It's not natural."
"It's the most natural thing in this buildin'," Deacon says, and goes back in the kitchen, and Blitz sits there like a man who's lost an argument he didn't know the rules of.
Ransom lights the cigarette finally.
"Boy," he says, without lookin' at him. "Every time you talk, Tyrant gets richer."
Blitz shuts his mouth.
Mercy's at the end of the room where he always is, which is wherever the light don't quite get to.
He ain't drinkin'. He never is. He's got his back against the wall and one boot up on the rung of the stool and he's watchin' the door the way Raider watches the door, except Raider's watchin' it to leave and I have never in nine years worked out what Mercy's watchin' it for.
"Got a minute?"
"Yes, sir."
He says that to everybody. Storm, me, Cricket, a woman at a gas pump. Fifteen years and I've never once caught him bein' anything but polite and it has never one time made me comfortable.
"Blue Star motel, north end. Room eleven."
"I know it."
"I want to know if anybody else has been by askin' after her. New Orleans people, or local boys workin' for New Orleans people." I keep it flat. "Just askin'. Nothin' else."
"Just askin'," he says.
"That's right?"
"Yes, sir."
He goes.
* * *
He's back at seven forty and the room's loud by then, Cricket losin' at cards, Blitz arguin' with the television.
Mercy comes up on my left and stands there until I turn.
"Nobody's been by," he says. "Not the family, not anybody workin' for 'em. Desk man's had four rooms rented in nine days and two of 'em were the same fella."
"Alright. Good."
"He did have your description."
The room keeps goin' behind me.
"Sunglasses on the counter, a fella on a bike, a woman leavin' with him around six." Mercy's hands are down at his sides. His voice hasn't come up once. "He'd told it twice already. To his wife, and to the boy who brings the towels."
"Mercy—"
"He won't tell it again."
He says it the same way he said yes sir. Same weight, same courtesy, the front half of a smile sittin' there on his face because that's where his face lives.
"His sister's up in Opelousas," he says. "He's gone up to spend some time with her. Left this afternoon. Wife's runnin' the desk and she don't know what anybody looks like, and I'd say she won't."
Nobody at that bar is lookin' at us.
Not Tyrant, who hears everything. Not Junie, who's four feet away with a rag in her hand and has gone real interested in a glass she already dried.
I never asked him for that.
I asked him one thing, and he went and did the one thing, and then he stood in a motel office and worked out on his own what I hadn't said out loud yet — that there is a reason I don't want a man describin' me leavin' that lot with a woman — and he fixed it before I knew it was broke.
"Anything else, sir?" he says.
"No."
"Alright." He nods. Takes half a step back. "Evenin'."
And he goes on down to the end of the room where the light don't reach, and puts his boot up on the rung, and watches the door.
Warden's across the bar with a bottle he ain't drinkin' from.
He watched the whole thing. He's been watchin' since I came through that door at four o'clock, and he don't look away when I catch him at it, and after a second he tips his head about an inch toward the hall.
"When you're ready," he says.