Mal walked up to Silo's cooler and pulled out a beer. "Help yourself there, Sheriff," Silo said.
"I'm off duty." He took a long sip and began walking down the steps. "Funeral's Friday, boys. At noon."
"Where?"
"Here. Where else?"
THURSDAY
Neely and Paul met early Thursday morning in the rear of the bookstore, where Nat brewed another pot of his highly addictive and probably illegal Guatemalan coffee. Nat had business up front, near the tiny and semi-hidden occult section, with a sinister-looking woman who had pale skin and jet-black hair. "The town witch," Paul said somewhat proudly, as if every town needed a witch, and very softly, as if she might fling a curse their way.
The Sheriff arrived a few minutes after eight, fully uniformed and heavily armed and looking quite lost in the only bookstore in the county, and one owned by a homosexual at that. Had Nat not been a former Spartan, Mal would've probably had him under surveillance as a suspicious character.
"You boys ready?" he growled, obviously anxious to leave.
With Neely in the front seat and Paul in the back, they sped away from downtown in a long white Ford with bold lettering along the doors, announcing that the car was the property of the SHERIFF. On the main highway, Mal pushed the accelerator and flipped a switch turning on the flashing red and blue lights. No sirens, though. Once everything was properly configured, he cocked his weight to one side, picked up his tall Styrofoam cup of coffee, and laid a limp wrist over the top of the wheel. They were doing a hundred miles an hour.
"I was in Vietnam," Mal announced, selecting the topic and giving the impression that he might talk nonstop for the next two hours. Paul sank a few inches in the rear seat, like a real criminal on the way to a court hearing. Neely watched the traffic, certain they were about to be slaughtered in some gruesome two-lane pileup.
"I was on a PBR on the Bassac River." A loud slurp of coffee as the setting was established. "There were six of us on this stupid little boat about twice the size of a nice bass rig, and our job was to patrol up and down the river and make trouble. Anythang that moved, we shot it. We were idiots. A cow gets too close, target practice. A nosy rice farmer raises his head up from the rice paddy, we'd start firin' just to watch him hit the mud. Our mission each day had no tactical purpose whatsoever, so we drank beer, smoked pot, played cards, tried to entice the local girls to go boatin' with us."
"I'm sure this is going somewhere," Paul said from the rear.
"Shut up and listen. One day we're half asleep, it's hot, we're sunbathin', nappin' like a bunch of turtles on a log, when, suddenly, all hell breaks loose. We're takin' fire from both sides of the river. Heavy fire. An ambush. Two guys were below. I'm on the deck with three others, all of whom get hit immediately. Dead. Shot before they could get their guns. Blood flyin' through the air. Everybody screamin'. I'm flat on my stomach, unable to move, when a fuel barrel gets hit. Damned thing wasn't supposed to be on deck, but what did we care? We were invincible because we were eighteen and stupid. The thing explodes. I manage to dive into the river without gettin' burned. I swim up beside the boat and grab a piece of camouflage nettin' that's hangin' over the side. I hear my two buddies screamin' inside the boat. They're trapped, smoke and fire everywhere, no way out. I stay underwater as long as I can. Whenever I pop up for air, the gooks spray gunfire all around me. Heavy gunfire. They know I'm in the water holdin' my breath. This goes on for a long time while the boat burns and drifts with the current. The screamin' and coughin' finally stops down in the cabin, ever'body's dead but me. The gooks are out in the open now, walkin' along the banks on both sides, out for a Sunday stroll. All fun and games. I'm the last guy alive, and they're waitin' for me to make a mistake. I swim under the boat, pop up on the other side, take some air, bullets everywhere. I swim to the rear, grab the rudder for a while, come up for air, hear the gooks laughin' as they spray me. The river is full of snakes, these short little bastards that are deadly poisonous. So I figure I got three choices-drown, get shot, or wait for the snakes."
Mal placed the coffee in a holder on the dash and lit a cigarette. Mercifully, he cracked his window. Neely cracked his as well. They were in farmland, speeding through rolling hills, flying past farm tractors and old pickups.
"So what happened?" Neely asked when it became apparent that Mal wanted prompting.
"You know what saved me?"
"Tell us."
"Rake. Eddie Rake. When I was hangin' on for my life, under that boat, I didn't think about my momma or my dad or my girlfriend, I thought about Rake. I could hear him barkin' at us at the end of practice when we were runnin' sprints. I remembered his locker-room speeches. Never quit, never quit. You win because you're tougher mentally than the other guy, and you're tougher mentally because your trainin' is superior. If you're winnin', never quit. If you're losin', never quit. If you're hurt, never quit."
A long pull on the cigarette while the two younger men digested the story. Meanwhile, outside the car, civilian drivers swerved onto shoulders and hit brakes to make way for this law enforcement emergency.
"I finally got hit, in the leg. Did you know bullets can get you underwater?"
"Never really thought about it," Neely admitted.
"Damned right they can. Left hamstring. I never felt such pain, like a hot knife. I almost passed out from the pain, and I was gaspin' for breath. Rake expected us to play hurt, so I told myself Rake was watchin'. Rake was up there somewhere, on the side of the river, watchin' to see how tough I was."
A long cancerous draw on the cigarette; a halfhearted effort to blow the smoke out the window. A long pause as Mal was lost in the horror of this memory. A minute passed.
"Obviously you survived," Paul said, anxious to get to the end of it.
"I was lucky. The other five got boxed up and shipped home. The boat burned and burned and at times I couldn't hang on because the hull was so hot. Then the batteries exploded, sounded like direct mortar hits, and she started to sink. I could hear the gooks laughin'. I could also hear Rake in the fourth quarter, 'Time to suck it up and go, men. Here's where we win or lose. Gut check, gut check.'"
"I can hear him too," Neely said.
"All of a sudden, the shootin' stopped. Then I heard choppers. Two of them had seen the smoke and decided to explore. They came in low, scattered the gooks, dropped a rope, and I got out. When they hauled me in I looked down and saw the boat burnin.' I saw two of my buddies lying on the deck, burnt black. I was in shock and finally passed out. They told me later that when they asked me my name, I said, 'Eddie Rake.'"
Neely glanced to his left as Mal turned away. His voice cracked just a little, then he wiped his eyes. No hands on the wheel for a couple of seconds.
"So you came home?" Paul said.
"Yeah, that was the lucky part. I got outta there. You boys hungry?"
"No."
"No."
Chapter Sixteen
Evidently Mal was. He stomped the brake pedal while veering to the right, onto a gravel lot in front of an old country store. The Ford fishtailed as Mal brought it to a violent stop. "Best damned biscuits in this part of the state," he said as he yanked open his door and stepped out into a cloud of dust. They followed him to the rear, through a rickety screen door, and into someone's small and smoky kitchen. Four tables were packed close together, all surrounded by rustic-looking gentlemen devouring ham and biscuits. Fortunately, at least for Mal, who appeared to be ready to collapse from hunger, there were three empty stools at the cluttered counter. "Need some biscuits over here," he growled at a tiny old woman hovering over a stove. Evidently, menus were not needed.