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  Dirt Merchant: A Rolson McKane Southern Mystery

  T. Blake Braddy

  Jinx Protocol Publications

  Copyright © 2017 by T. Blake Braddy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For my mother, who fought tyrannical 4th grade teachers so I could pursue a career in being professionally strange.

  Contents

  Preface

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part III

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part IV

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part V

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

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  Part I

  1

  One time, the old man ducked my head in a sink of water and held it there so long I started convulsing. Kept me submerged until only darkness remained. He didn’t remember it the next day, and I never brought it up, not even after he went away for murder. Sometimes I startle awake, feel like I’m drowning. Great patches of that era are lost in the folds of time, but I remember that moment clear as a bell to this day. The feel of his hands on my neck, the glint of light on the sink. The dread that I may die at the hands of my remaining parent.

  Mostly, though, I remember wishing it was he and not my mother who had died.

  When I dream about it, I wake up covered in sweat — though sometimes I’m convinced it’s sink water — and gulp air until I’m sure I’m not actually drowning. I used to sit up in bed and smoke cigarettes until dawn, puffing on butts and wondering if I’d ever get past it, but the dreams kept coming.

  I got to where I could control it. Wake up. Open eyes. Suck in a deep breath. Repeat. It was my own mindfulness meditation, I suppose, but it worked. I spent those days convinced of my looming death, but eventually the feeling subsided, and I was able to get back to my work of being miserable.

  This time, though, instead of stale air, I sucked in two lungfuls of water.

  Sometimes my dreams get the better of me, so I hoped this was yet another of my hallucinations. However, there was no ghost, no blues chugging on a cheap jukebox. Just me and water and my own sense of mortality.

  I thought I could snap out of it. Thought, maybe, if I blinked or pinched myself, the water would leave me in a dry bed, panting and yearning for daybreak.

  So I gulped a second time, trying to kickstart my system.

  The second intake was sludgier than the first, and I felt the world go slipshod on me. My veins thrummed with a kind of panicked biological imperative.

  Get to some air, it told me, or get to dying.

  Wherever I was, I had to get out. The oxygen deprivation was already burning my lungs. This was not a dream; I was literally under water.

  I caught little details. Glass. Lights. Pressure on my chest.

  The details became clearer. Steering wheel. Dashboard. Column shifter.

  Car. I was in a car, and the car was full of water.

  The pressure against my chest was a seatbelt, which, with some effort, I clicked open.

  I glanced around the cabin. In the passenger seat, a figure sat unconscious, head listing forward, eyes closed. Big dude. Somebody I knew, whose name danced around on the front of my tongue, slightly out of reach.

  Deuce. My best friend Deuce.

  I tried to hit him, but a throbbing in my shoulder kept my right arm prone. I couldn’t get any force behind the punch under water anyway. Instead, I reached over and popped his seatbelt free. He drifted toward the ceiling, where there was still a pouch of air.

  I pinched him. He didn’t move. Air became a necessity. My vision blurred. I pinched him harder, this time on his face.

  He twitched. Eyes opened, registering shock.

  Yeah, I know, big guy, I thought.

  Looking around, he saw me and tried desperately to hide his bewilderment. I pointed to his window, the one he had lowered as we had fled Savannah.

  I fought the dying of the light behind my eyes as I thrashed toward the surface. Since I’d been hit back in Savannah — clean wound, but a bullet wound, nonetheless — I had to swim one-handed up, up, up…until finally I broke free of the water.

  My shoulder and two missing fingers burned like I’d stumbled into a bed of pissed off fire ants, so I had to manage my doggie paddle one-armed.

  I crawled, sputtering and coughing, to the edge of this body of water and collapsed in a soggy collection of mud, sticks, and gravel. Deuce surfaced moments later, sounding like death personified.

  Willie, my barky little mutt, was already on the shore, yapping his ass off. Must have dived through the window and up to the surface while the both of us battled with consciousness.

  I turned, watched Deuce struggle to free himself of the still water. Then, I toppled back and stared at the sky, growing hazy with clouds. Willie marched over and barked at me for a while, I guess, because he thought I was dying.

  I felt like I was getting there.

  “Is this Jacksonville?” I asked, and Deuce’s gurgly chuckle told me he hadn’t quite lost his sense of humor.

  “If I had to guess,” he replied, “I’d say we’re either just on the Georgia side of the line, or the Florida side. Either way, we’re in Georgia or Florida, I’m fairly sure.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  I tried to sit up. We were positioned on the far side of pond. The road was atop an embankment up the way. We’d run off the road, slammed into the water, barely escaped with our lives. Car was at the bottom. We were still all shot up from Savannah and on death’s threshold.

  “What do you think happened?” I asked.

  “Happened? You were drunk as Cooter Brown. We both know what happened. You…you passed out. And—”

  And then Deuce himself was out. He looked bad. I propped up on my good elbow and tried to get a look at him.

  Deuce was dying. He’d be gone by the end of the day, if he didn’t get some help. Wherever the monster Fitz had shot him, it was doing a whole hell of a lot of damage.

  I rolled sideways and struggled to my knees, resting in a half-assed sprinter’s pose. To my left, Willie whined deep in his throat. He barked once, wagged his tail, th
en barked again.

  “You got any better ideas?”

  He whined again.

  “Didn’t think so. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

  The old dog bounced around on all four paws, perhaps motivating me to get off my knees and do some goddamned thing. I was glad he was there.

  When I was sure I wouldn’t topple over, I got up and stumbled into the woods. The road was bad. It was cops and pedestrians and a lifetime behind bars. I didn’t want to go near the road.

  So, it was the swamp for me. Willie tagged along, bounding over rotten stumps and prickly bushes, diving under cross-laid trees when he couldn’t manage to climb over them. I went south until I got good and lost and then, aching horribly, sat down to rest a minute. The blood loss had made me weak. Lack of adrenaline, probably, too. Ever since my Herculean response to having two fingers excised at gunpoint, I’d fared all right. But the night was over, and daytime was hell.

  Leaning against a tupelo tree in two feet of water, I closed my eyes.

  The dog barked.

  “Yeah, yeah, in a minute,” I said. I kept my eyes shut, trying to toe the line between rest and unconsciousness. If I happened to drift off, might have been all she wrote for me.

  Which was why I should have been more alarmed when I started to drift off toward sleep or some other form of unconsciousness. The dog barked. Bounced on me. Even bit me. But there was nothing to keep me from the darkness. I swam into the embrace of velvety black, let its loving arms wrap around me me, and I thought I heard fingerpicked guitar in the distance.

  A view from above. Someone’s eyes watching this scene, perhaps, though not necessarily Rolson’s. In the frame: two kids outside a high school gym. Wider view reveals three, four, five of them. As the image focuses, it’s apparent there’s a crowd. Middle school kids, maybe early high school. All standing around three in the middle. One kid is bloodied, bruised, yelling. His T-shirt is ripped at the neck, and one of the sleeves is stretched beyond human use.

  The kid, who should look familiar, given the fact that he matches the photos in Aunt Birdie’s house, is screaming fit to beat Jesus. He lurches out, swipes at the smaller of the two teenagers, misses, and gets pounded with a quick one-two from the other, bigger kid. A stream of fresh blood pours from the left nostril, but he seems unfazed. He’s not used to fighting two kids at once, but he adapts.

  “Call my mother a nigger-lover again,” he says, as another fist connects to his jaw. He’s fighting furiously, but he’s getting the worst end of it, and things aren’t looking up for him.

  Shot to the face. Shot to the stomach. More blood. The beginnings of another bruise.

  The bigger kid: “Nigger-lover. I heard your mama died ’cause she couldn’t handle that big old black ding-a-ling between his legs. Just up and killed her, it hurt so bad.”

  The kid who Rolson me charges, intending on killing the sumbitches, but the bigger kid, Luther Todd, stands still and takes it. He’s a football player — half-retarded, so goes the whispers at school — and often in the weight room. He catches little Rolson, holds him with one hand, and elbows him upside his head.

  The crowd lets loose a wail of approval.

  Enter another player on this stage. Kid in a red Herschel Walker jersey pushes through the crowd of onlookers and shoves the bigger of the two assailants to the ground.

  “Don’t y’all two know better than to gang up on one little dude?” he says, turning to face the smaller kid, who flinches. He’s bigger than the both of them, and well-revered at Lumber Junction High School. Already getting attention from colleges, some folks say, but then again, behind his back they also call him the same thing they call every dark-skinned person in town.

  The bigger kid drops Rolson the Younger, who crumples to the ground.

  Luther Todd says, “His mama offended me.” His lip bulges with a tug of Kodiak, and he spits on the ground between them.

  “I don’t see nobody’s mama here,” the boy who would be Deuce says, looking around.

  “She dead,” Luther replies. “She and the darky she went runnin’ around with.”

  “Way you talk,” Young Deuce says, “makes me think you won’t block for me when I get the ball. I don’t like the thought of that.”

  Smiling the whole time. Never losing his cool. One-and-a-half times the size of the biggest kid. But playing it smooth, all the same.

  “Football’s different,” Luther replies. “Football’s where color don’t matter. Out here, everything matters, and this little shit’s existence makes my pecker shrivel up.”

  “Maybe you should stop associating your pecker with little boys,” Deuce responds.

  The crowd ooohs in response.

  “You and me’s got no problems, no issues, so why don’t you leave us alone?”

  “You think I didn’t hear what you said? You think I’m-a let it pass?”

  “That’s sort of what I was hoping, yeah.”

  “Well, don’t you figure if I let this pass, then I’ll have to let it pass every time, and then where are we? Nowhere.”

  Deuce points a finger at Luther Todd. “You reckon I should kick the shit out of the both of you right now?”

  “No. We was just messing with him.”

  Luther Luther Todd speaks defensively, but anyone listening closely enough can hear a touch of deference, as well. It speaks to how people around town regard Deuce, even in high school.

  Deuce seems to consider this. “You go and get the hell out of here. Get on to the other side of the gym, where the kids selling pot hang out, and we’ll stay here.”

  For a moment, it looks like there might be a rumble. Luther and his little helper take a silent step forward, as if to challenge Deuce. All the while, the younger version of Rolson watches from his place on the ground.

  The tension radiating from the crowd is palpable. They’re standing there waiting, the possibility for a second fight just over the horizon. Though they’ve basically calmed down, internally each person wishes for one of the interested parties to swing.

  Luther lifts his chin, holding onto the last of his white teenage dignity, and then he says, “I ain’t got to listen to no nig—”

  Before the word is out of his mouth, there is a crack, loud as a rifle blast, echoing through the crowd. The group lets out a single shriek of astonishment, as Deuce readies himself to administer another smack. The first one was a backhand, a warning. Now, he’s bent his knees, and that hand is closing into a fist. No more warning shots. The next one would be the real deal.

  Luther’s trying not to clutch his jaw, but the entire side of his face turns crimson. He backs away, and signals for his little buddy to follow him, and they head for the weight room, where the head coach is undoubtedly spitting sunflower seeds onto the floor of his office.

  Deuce helps the bloodied, but basically okay, version of Rolson up.

  The crowd parts, thankful they’ve been privy to even a little schoolyard violence, leaving the two remaining combatants alone.

  “You all right, man?” he asks Rolson, but Rolson doesn’t immediately answer. He’s gingerly testing the bridge of his nose, seeing if it’s broken.

  “My Aunt Birdie’s going to skin me alive,” he says. “She done told me twice to stop fighting over what people say about my mama.”

  “Them dudes give you hell often?”

  “Only when Luther’s dad kicks the shit out of him, I reckon.”

  Deuce pats him on the back, and the two start for the schoolhouse. Morning break — this southern high school’s version of recess, which consists of people shuffling around outside for ten minutes — ends in a few minutes anyway.

  “Not anymore,” Deuce replies. “That bag of dicks gives you trouble, you come to me. I’ll take care of it. ’Specially if he brings one of his minions with him. You get me?”

  Younger me nods, though with some sense of hesitation.

  Deuce says, “I’m not your guardian angel, and y
ou don’t need a protector, I’m sure, but that dude’s big, and you’re not. He’s got a hard-on for your mama, for whatever reason, and he probably won’t stop with this one. What’s he got against her, anyway?”

  Younger Rolson sighs and says, “Don’t want to discuss it.”

  “No worries, man,” replies Deuce. “It ain’t got to be hard for you.”

  “Thanks,” replies Rolson. “What do I call you?”

  “Deuce, man,” he replies. “You can call me Deuce. You Rolson, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Man, I thought it was just black folks who gave their kids crazy names.”

  Rolson quips back with, “We have an Emmanuel, Irwin, Paulie, and a Sheldon at this school. I don’t think white people have any right to make comments on people’s names.”

  The two make their way inside, the rest of the formerly rowdy crowd shuffling, zombie-like, in behind them, discussing baseball and Nintendo as if nothing had happened. As Deuce and Rolson disappear into the gym, the air goes all wobbly. Neither one of them realizes the importance of this particular moment in their lives, but it will become clear in due time.

  The first word out of my mouth on reaching consciousness again was, “Drink.”