Black Cat Weekly #36

RUN DON’T RUN, by Mary Saums-2

“That’s right. Sit down and relax,” Charlie Brace said. “They’re gonna start the next set in a minute.” Charlie always hired good musicians on the weekends. He used to be a bandleader himself in the old days, booking gigs and playing bass in jazz and blues bands around the South. He sure had some stories.

He told me a little about the band there that night, pointed to the stage and said, “You see the drummer? His great-granddaddy gave me my first job. He was a strange bird. Always had the best working for him though. Said he never hired a man just because he was a good player, but he had to walk right too. Wouldn’t decide on him until after the audition and had time to watch him walk away. It’s true. I saw him do it many a time.”

“You mean, like, to see if they were drunks?”

Charlie shook his head. “I don’t think so. He never would say what he was looking for. Just said he could see who they were. He was a smart guy. Had big crowds everywhere we went. Smart, but a little strange. Eccentric, I guess you’d say.”

I stayed until the band finished their last number. Early next morning, I had a meeting at the courthouse and didn’t get back to my office until about ten o’clock. A woman was inside waiting on me. She had a black eye and bruises on her arms. She filed a report claiming Terrell Long was the man who hit her. I made a few calls before getting the warrant, but I believed her. This was the business I dreaded, what brought me out past Jester’s land that day, to bring Terrell to jail.

This time, his car was there. I glanced inside it, saw nothing unusual, on the way to the porch. The screen door was closed, but the wooden one stood open. Through the screen, I saw an overturned chair in the front room.

I knocked and called his name. Nothing. I stepped inside, saw a broken vase on the floor, walked through, checking rooms, all trashed. In the kitchen, some red splatters, surely blood, dotted the sink and counter.

I went out the back door, circled, and returned to his car. That’s when I noticed the tracks of a heavier, wider vehicle. It had pulled in and backed out after Terrell came home. From over the fields, I heard Jester’s guitar again, the tune moving in a disjointed, raggedy way, like he was distracted again.

Or somebody was with him.

Jester had seen a lot in his years, but he was still a shy man. People made him nervous. He could play at Brace’s with the other old-timers, but that was because he got lost in their company and what they played. One-on-one, he messed up.

I ran to my vehicle and got the dispatcher on the line as I drove. A few minutes later, I turned onto the dirt drive to Jester’s secluded house. I passed a windbreak of a double row of pines set into an upward slope. Just beyond that, his house came into view. My heart sank upon seeing a new four-wheel-drive SUV, parked in the grass and pointed outward toward the main road, as if for a quick getaway.

The one-story farmhouse had a tin roof and wide front porch. Makeshift tables scattered around the side yard held all sorts of machine parts with lawn mowers and other household appliances in various states of repair. Behind them, the barn and sheds looked as weathered as if they’d stood there a hundred years.

Jester looked about that old himself. He wore overalls and a T-shirt like he always did. He sat in a cane-back chair in his usual spot, in the front yard under an oak that gave a wide ring of shade. Next to him, he’d set up a table full of small tools, wire, and bits of metal. A bucket of ice, a spit can, and a smooth-coated mutt sat nearby on the ground. A primitive replica of a National guitar leaned against the table.

It was a work of art. Not just the homemade guitar, the whole picture. The lines of history in Jester’s face alone told their own story. The surroundings told another, of contrasts between the peace of an old man and his home and the threat leaning toward him, Little Eddie, smiling, all innocence. I watched him as I approached, watched him rest the wire cutters he held down on the table and then turn his palms upward as if he had nothing to hide.

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” Jester said.

I crossed to him, shook his hand. Little Eddie either didn’t recognize me or pretended he didn’t. His smile dimmed a fraction when I held my hand out to him as well, but he took it. Two broad-backed henchmen walked toward us from the side yard. They looked like feds out of their element, wearing jackets on a hot day out in the sticks of Mississippi. After a look from their boss, they smiled like gargoyles and stepped farther away from the shorter, slimmer guy with a bloodied lip who walked between them. Terrell.

“Sorry to interrupt while you have company,” I said.

“They’re not company,” Jester said. “Strangers. Real-estate people.”

Little Eddie and his gargoyles grinned wider.

“I didn’t realize you were thinking about selling,” I said.

“I’m not,” Jester said. “They just think they can outfox an old man and take his land for nothing like I ain’t got any sense.”

“Whoa, now, Mr. Dupree,” Little Eddie said. “That is not the case. I’m here to do the opposite. I like your place for myself, not for resale or making money off you. I got plenty of money. What I want is for you to afford to live wherever you want in luxury. An old brother such as yourself deserves that after all you’ve been through. Think about it. If you could live anywhere, anywhere at all, where would you go?”

Jester looked up into the oak branches. “I used to want to live in the mountains. There was a TV show about Colorado. I went out there. It was beautiful, in its own way. I rode all over. But it was empty. Like a shell. Pretty colors. No soul. My place suits me better. Good fishing right here. Ain’t that right, Sheriff?” He picked up his guitar again and started plinking around.

“Pretty good,” I said.

Little Eddie tried another tack. “Some people go around the country to fish, to find the best spots. You could have a fine new home near one of them with all new furniture and fancy appliances and still have enough to travel. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Jester didn’t look up from his playing when he spoke. “Why don’t you buy that place with fancy stuff for yourself instead of here if it’s so much better?”

Little Eddie laughed and shook his head while he tried to think of an answer. “I guess I’m looking for some soul too. All I’m asking is that you think about it.”

We turned at the sound of a car coming up the drive. One of my deputies.

“Folks,” I said, “everything’s okay. Mr. Dupree, I stopped by to see if you’d seen Mr. Long here.” I took out my warrant and waved it at Terrell. I motioned for him to walk toward me. “I need him to come down to the station to ask him some questions.”

Terrell came forward with an unsteady gait, like he’d hurt his legs, but smiled as if nothing in the world was wrong. Little Eddie’s smile disappeared. His eyes moved, assessing the yard, as he considered his next move. Jester rose slowly from his chair.

“Sheriff, while you’re at it, these boys need arresting too, all of them, now that you got help.” He said it in a calm way. His voice cracked only once. He stood as straight as his crooked frame allowed. “I lied a while ago. This one here,” he said with a nod at Little Eddie, “said they’d hurt me if I didn’t sell. They been beating up that young man, though he’s as bad as the rest. A couple days ago he was pushing me to sell to him. Now his fancy friend wants my place. They been talking mean and nasty, talking about how they know where my granddaughter lives, like they’ll hurt her if I don’t sell them my place here. They think I don’t know why. They want to set up a drug stop, come in with boats and such at my cove. That young one wants to run it for them. And he”—again he indicated Little Eddie—“said they’d cut off my fingers where I couldn’t play no more if I didn’t do what they want.” His voice cracked once more as he rubbed his hands, looked at the table where the wire cutters lay.

A hush fell over the yard. Seconds passed with only the sound of the deputy car coming closer. Jester had spoken too soon.

Terrell changed. Sweat beaded on his face. His eyes looked wild, as if he was on the verge of panic.

Little Eddie faked dismay, walked backward toward his men, called the old man crazy. Jester stepped away from the tree, closer to him. His dog rose and followed, not blinking, not taking his eyes off Little Eddie. The car stopped. The deputy got out, shut the door, and walked toward us.

It was not Jester’s fault. He lived in his own world, came from a place and a time when no bad guy would dare harm an officer of the law. I doubt it ever crossed his mind that these men would do anything other than what I instructed them to do. But even down here, Little Eddie and his boys were still in their own world, one with no such rules. The family business and keeping it healthy rated higher than the lives of a two-bit hustler and a few hicks, even hicks wearing badges.

Terrell stole a look behind him just as Little Eddie whispered an order. His goons reached under their jackets, came out with guns. One turned about-face and dropped the deputy with one shot.

The other aimed at me and fired as Terrell rushed me from the side. We both hit the ground.

Another shot rang out and then a short barrage from two, maybe three guns as I rolled Terrell off me. The first shot had missed Jester due to the dog’s intervention. That bullet and the rest went into the dog.

I pulled my sidearm and yelled, “Drop ’em now.”

They didn’t hear me. At the same time, Jester screamed and threw himself, arms out, toward the nearest gunman. The other one turned my way, raised to shoot, but I got him first, a split second before his friend shot Jester between the eyes. I yelled again and shot the killer, saw a movement to my right, swiveled, and had no time to think. Little Eddie’s arm was extended, gun pointed at me. I shot him in the belly. He groaned and crumpled.

He died in the hospital. The others didn’t get that far.

It takes forever for things like this to be over, especially in a small town. But we got through it. Other than myself, the only survivor was the deputy. He sells insurance now. Everybody else went back to Chicago in boxes.

A low-ranking punk in Little Eddie’s organization testified that Terrell worked on small jobs for them. An opportunity to steal over $700,000 from a drug transaction accidentally came Terrell’s way and he took it. He ran but thought better of it once he got to Solley. Like Jester said, he got the idea of setting up his own kingdom there by the river. He thought he could talk Little Eddie into moving him into upper management. He didn’t know Little Eddie like I did.

Jester and the way he played can’t ever be replaced. It was his own sweet soul that he pressed out in twangs and steel bends, a shy man with sad stories, using the only language that goes straight from heart to heart. The sound was like an extra dimension over the land and riverbanks, a part of the scenery. I still hear it faintly, and it makes me wonder if what he played still echoes off the trees and plowed fields and laps in at the water’s edge again and again. Or if the whisper of it has always been here, and that Jester only magnified it.

I think of these things now as I watch the measured walk of folks in this town, something I never noticed before. Usually it’s the older people, men and women, who move to a slow blues soundtrack. They know the horrors of the world, but they keep on moving through it.

That old skinny dude in Chicago, the night I got shot, he felt a similar thing. The clamor of city life, bouncing off concrete and pummeling in the wind, gave him a different groove in his walk, harder and more stiff than those of us down here. That’s the Chicago style. Harsher tones, a faster clip on top of the beat. Less give, less soul.

He saw what was fixing to happen to me that night. His city survivor instincts kicked in automatically and though he gave no sign, I knew from his eyes that the calm he displayed was a lie. Inside, he felt the push and the pull, the need to hurry away from trouble, the equal need to stay slow, not draw attention, to delay what trouble might be ahead.

It comes natural after a while, always will, so long as the world is looking for a man to hurt or to blame, to shoot in the back if he runs, to knife up close if he stays. All we can do is keep going, pour out the sorrow in measures, by the river, in the fields, on the street, in dark clubs; not too fast, not too slow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From early childhood, Mary Saums has had three deep loves: books, music and the American South. Her most joyous work years were as a recording engineer in the Muscle Shoals music industry. She now thoroughly enjoys retirement and a house full of beautiful glorious books waiting to be read.