Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

The two mop-heads pulled into the Dairy Queen in a black Mercedes and got out and leaned down on the windowsills on both sides of Chug’s car. They smelled of funk and onions and fish and unwashed hair that had been plaited with aloe.

“We don’t go nowhere till we see some money, mon,” the one at Chug’s window said.

Chug lifted up a napkin from his lap and exposed a roll of one-hundred-dollar bills crimped together with a rubber band. He smiled, his tongue lolling on his teeth. A tiny green stone gleamed in his earlobe.

“There it is, hard as a cucumber. You want to touch it?” he said.

“You can follow us. We got a place to do business. But don’t be talking that way to me, mon. We don’t got dose kinds of problems in the Islands,” the man at Chug’s window said, his dreadlocks swinging like dusty snakes on his cheeks.

“How we know y’all won’t beat us up?” Chug said, his face suddenly soft and vulnerable.

“You too sweet and de little man there too rough,” the man at the window said.

So the mop-heads were smart-asses as well as take-down artists, Wesley thought as he followed the Mercedes down the highway. Just like everybody else, making fun of him because he was short and didn’t think fast and his meal ticket was with a fudge packer or two. Well, maybe they needed to get their paint scratched up a little bit. Like Hammie said, point of honor. It made Wesley feel good to know he was on the same wavelength as guys like Hammie and Warren.

The Mercedes turned off on a dead-end gravel road and drove between rolling pasture, then stopped by the desiccated and paintless shell of a farmhouse that was squeezed to breaking inside a stand of blackjack.

The mop-heads cut their lights and walked back toward Chug’s car. One of them opened Chug’s door.

“Step out here in de road, mon. We need to count your money,” he said.

“Really?” Chug said, standing erect now, the mop-head finally realizing how big Chug actually was.

“Yeah, ’cause dat’s too much money for you. We think maybe you just give it to us,” the mop-head said, his hand reaching for the .25-caliber automatic pushed down in the back of his beltless slacks.

That’s when Chug hit him in the stomach, harder than Wesley had ever seen anyone hit. That was also when Wesley pulled the remote latch on the trunk and heard Hammie climb out on the gravel and saw Warren and Jeff each coming fast down the road in separate vehicles, their headlights so bright they made his eyes water.

He turned away from what happened next. The blows from fists and knees and feet finally stopped and the dust drifted into the trees and broke apart in the wind, and he thought it was over, that they would be on their way back to Deaf Smith in a few minutes and he would be in his father’s house by dawn.

But Hammie looked down at the mop-heads and said,

“Hey, you guys got to check out that rock quarry. It’s a pretty spot. You’ll dig it.”

The quarry looked like a large meteor hole filled with green water, the shale sides tapering down to the surface under a sky that was bursting with stars. The mop-heads were belted into the backseat of their Mercedes, both doors open, their wrists fastened behind them with plastic flex-cuffs. In the darkness their faces were the color of eggplant, welted and glistening with blood.

But they weren’t afraid, Wesley thought. They had proved that when they took their beating without asking for mercy. One of them had even told Chug he’d give him a discount on diet pills.

But now Jeff was taking a gas can and an emergency flare out of his car. Oh man, this wasn’t happening, Wesley thought.

Hammie, Warren, Chug, and the other guy were sitting on a grass-tufted mound of dirt, eating fried chicken from a plastic bucket and drinking more beer. How could you eat after you pounded the shit out of two guys? Wesley thought. These East End guys were meaner, more unpredictable and dangerous than anyone he’d known inside. Jeff had a crazy light in his eyes, like he’d loaded up on screamers or whites on the half shell melted down in booze. He was squatted down on his haunches now, eating a drumstick not five feet from the Mercedes, with the gas can resting by his foot. He finished chewing and threw the chicken bone at the mop-head who was closer to him.

“What do you think is about to happen in that insignificant life of yours?” Jeff said.

“My mother give me over to de spirits when I was born, mon. I don’t argue wit’ what they do,” the mop-head answered.

Jeff stood up and unscrewed the plastic cap on the flexible hose that was screwed into the top of the gas can. He held the emergency flare under the mop-head’s nose like a police baton and pushed his head back on his neck.

“You ever read about Nero? He used Christians for candles. You guys Christians?” Jeff said.

When the mop-head didn’t reply, Jeff popped him across the nose with the flare, then swung the can idly back and forth, letting the gas slosh against the tin sides.

Warren and the others had stopped talking now, their faces suddenly tuned in to what Jeff was saying. Warren rose casually to his feet, wiping the grease off his hands on the back of his jeans. He picked up a jack handle that was stuck sharp-end-down in the sand.

“We already got their stash, Jeff. Maybe we should just remodel their car a little bit. Let them take a visual lesson back home,” he said.

Warren walked in a circle around the Mercedes, breaking head- and taillights as though he were cracking hard-boiled eggs with a spoon.

“What’d you think I was going to do?” Jeff asked him.