Night of Thunder

“That seems to be all she wrote, sir. Unless you want to buy a nice SKS for under a hundred?

“What’s an SKS?” asked Bob.

“Chinese military rifle. No, I don’t think you’re the type.”

“Anyhow, thanks. You got me scratching another one off my list.”

He turned and left.

The Reverend Grumley was thinking about fucking, as he almost always did when he wasn’t thinking about the next few days. He hadn’t fucked in about three weeks now, and the ordeal was getting harder and harder. The images poured over him, all the holes that he had filled, all over America, how the gals just seemed to want to give a man of the cloth a reward for all the natural good he brought into the world. He was going insane! Some of the damn boys beginning to look pretty good to him! But the last time-

The phone rang, he answered it there in the office of the chapel, and it was B.J. and Carmody, reporting that goddamnit, that fellow had somehow gone straight, straight in a goddamned beeline to Eddie Ferrol’s Iron Mountain Armory. How in hell he make that connection? He’d been in the goddamn county two hours and already he’d made two big connections on…

The Reverend got the whole story, the fellow’s sit by the roadside, going over notes, then speeding off.

“He see you?”

“Nah. Carmody’s too good a driver.” B.J. was always boosting Carmody and Carmody, B.J. because they knew in the scheme of things, they were second-stringers to the more glamorous pairing of handsome Vern and Ernie. See, that’s what the Reverend hated. All that competition, the formation of cliques and rump groups and bitter outsiders. It made for bad business. And if he wasn’t mistaken Carmody might actually be Vern’s half brother, rather than cousin, but, hmmm, he’d have to work that one out later as these issues were never too clear. But now wasn’t time for lectures on brotherliness.

“You got him?”

“Yeah, he’s in there now. We’re parked a good three hundred yards down the road, eyeballing him with glass.”

“Okay, hang tight. This here thang’s gittin’ a little hard to handle. Soon as he leaves, you call me and I’ll call Eddie, see what’s what.”

“Yes sir.”

“What y’all packing?”

“I’m.45, Carmody’s.40.”

“Git ’em ready. May have to go to guns.”

“Yessir.”

“I’ll try and think some plan up. You know, something-”

“There he is.”

“Okay, you hang tight.”

He hung up, went to his wallet to find Eddie’s Mountain Armory number, but before he did, the phone rang again.

“Reverend!”

“Eddie, hear you had a visitor!”

“Goddamnit, Reverend, you done promised me nothing, nothing like this going to happen. It was clean, it was legal, it was okay, we had the paperwork and everything, and goddamnit, first that gal shows up with that cardboard piece of box top and now her goddamn father, asking questions.”

“The old gray-haired guy?”

“Didn’t look so goddamned old to me.”

“Tell me what he asked. Tell me what he knew. Did he know much?”

“He said he’d heard she called or come out this way, it was on her laptop.”

Eddie narrated the story of his conversation with Swagger.

“But he didn’t seem to know nothing about what you got for me, what its possible use was, what we had planned?”

Eddie said no.

“He had no clue. He’s just grasping,” the Reverend said.

“Maybe not, Reverend, but he sure come close, and when this thing goes down there’s going to be all kinds of commotion, and he might be the one to figure it out. So even if he don’t got no idea now, maybe he will then. You said nobody could connect all this up, and goddamn it’s already been connected up.”

“Settle down, Eddie. I see now I got no choice. It’s too close, too much is at stake. Okay, you sit tight, the Reverend will figure on it.”

He hung up, repunched B.J. in Carmody’s follow car.

“You got him.”

“Yeah, some bad news too.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t know what this means but he didn’t go straight to the car. He went around back. He’s back there five minutes. Ain’t there an entrance or something? I don’t know what he’s looking at or doing back there, but when he come out, he made a beeline to the car, and now he’s headed back into town.”

“You stay with him, you understand, while I work out a plan.”

“How’s this for a plan. We pop him. There’s the plan.”

“You idiot. Why’d he get killed? You get state polices in here and they much smarter than the Johnson Smokies and the whole goddamn thing crashes and burns just a few days before. Got to come up with some way to get rid of him that don’t look like Grumleys done the work on contract for something else big. That goddamn Sinnerman is out blowing up trucks with my boy Vern, and I can’t use him again, like on the gal. You stay with him, you hear? Meanwhile, I’ll think something up.”