The Pistol Poets

Fair enough. "I've noticed a sort of submerged theme in your work. It's reoccurs quite often."

"What do you mean?"

"Easier to show you. Once I point it out, I'm sure you'll see." He pulled two of Jones's poems from the stack, turned them around, and slid them side by side in front of the old man. "Read these and think about them thematically."

Jones didn't read them. "What the hell you talking about? Two completely different poems. This one's about an arsonist and this other one is a man who kills people with piano wire."

"Geeze, these things are so violent."

"So what?"

Morgan shrugged. "In any case, those are just the vehicles," Morgan said. He kept the cigar in the side of his mouth as he talked. He was beginning to like it. "Let me show you something." He stood, scanned the bookshelf in his living room, and came back to the table with The Collected Works of Wallace Stevens. "Listen." He read a poem:

"Anecdote of the Jar"

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

"What's going on in the poem?" Morgan waited, puffed the cigar.

Jones turned the book toward him. He read again silently, his lips moving. "This jar is changing everything just by being there. It's making itself the center of the world."

"But is it really?"

"What do you mean?"

"Is it really doing anything? It's just sitting there, right?"

Jones thought for a long time. Morgan didn't mind. He was enjoying the cigar. He thought a cold beer would go well with the smoke, but it was still before noon and Morgan had recently set some new rules for himself.

He was getting his shit together.

Jones leaned back in his chair, rubbed his chin. "You know what I think?"

"What do you think?"

"I think it's both," the old man said. "I think it's doing nothing and everything at the same time. I think it's only perception that makes it seem like it's changing everything. Then again, maybe perception is all we got, right? So changing perception is like changing reality."

Morgan took the cigar out of his mouth, looked at Jones.

Jones scanned the poem again. "Jesus. That's a pretty fucking good poem. Once you figure it out."

"Yes."

"Got any more like this?"

"You can borrow the book."

"Thanks."

Morgan said, "That's pretty smart, Mr. Jones. Not a lot of people get it right off."

"Thanks, but I'd trade being smart for being able to smoke that cigar."

The phone rang. Morgan set the cigar across the top of the coffee cup, excused himself, and picked it up in the kitchen.

"Morgan, is that you?" Louis Reams's voice was edgy and hushed.

"It's me." Morgan hadn't spoken to the professor since the bicycle incident.

"Have you seen Pritcher? The big faker is walking around campus wearing this ridiculous neck brace. He's been asking a lot of very pointed questions too."

"I think you need to consider that he might really have been seriously hurt," Morgan said.

"Ha. I know better. He's out to get me. Yes, I admit it was a lapse in judgment, a bit juvenile."

"A bit."

"But now he sees his chance. If he can prove I did it, he'll have me by the balls. That's just what he wants, the son of a bitch. Morgan, you didn't mention what happened to anybody did you?"

"No."

"I need you to keep it under your hat. You wouldn't tell would you? That would be playing right into his hands."

"I said I hadn't mentioned it."

"You won't will you?"

"I'll keep quiet."

"Good man." Reams sounded relieved. "I knew I could count on you. I'm going to pay you back."

"That's okay."

"Really. I want to show my appreciation."

"Reams, I don't want you to pay me back."

Reams didn't hear. "I know a fellow down at San Gabriel College in Houston. They're going to need a one-year poet next fall."

Now Morgan was listening. He'd sent out at least thirty applications for next fall and had turned up nothing. Securing a job for next year would take a big load off his mind. And he wouldn't have to track down Ellis for the ridiculous poetry reading. Wouldn't have to be under Whittaker's thumb.

"I'm listening," Morgan said.

"Not now," Reams said. "Got to go. Got to keep an eye out for Pritcher. Can't stay in one spot too long."

"Reams-"

He'd already hung up.

Morgan returned to the table. "Sorry."

"You'll let it go out." Jones pointed at the cigar.

"Right." He stuck it back in his mouth, resuscitated the glowing tip with sharp puffs.

"You know what that jar poem made me think of?"

Morgan kept puffing but arched his eyebrows.

"When I was ten years old, my father took me camping way back in the Catskills," Jones said. "It wasn't like it is now. You could find a forest, go back in there for days."

"Did you fish?"

"No. Just hiking. I liked to build campfires, cook over the wood coals. For some reason a hot dog tastes better in the woods. You get away from the city and you can really see the stars."

"I like to fish," Morgan said. "Supposed to be some good trout streams over the line into Arkansas."

"I'm in the middle of a fucking story here."

"Sorry. Go ahead."

"Anyway I'm hiking pretty far. Dad and me had been hiking all day and it was starting to get dark and we're way gone into the woods, deeper than we've ever been before. I'm thinking maybe we're walking in a spot where nobody's ever been before. Maybe we're the first people ever. You ever think that when you were a kid?"

"Yes."

"So I'm thinking maybe Indians had been here, but other than that we were the first. I guess even at ten I thought maybe that wasn't true, but a ten-year-old can think anything. That's the genius of being ten. Anything can be true. And it's a split second-literally the next second-after I think this that I take one more step and see a beer bottle, a Pabst."

Morgan started to laugh, shut himself up.

The old man shook his head. "The whole forest arranged itself around that beer bottle, my whole life. Everything I thought. Like that jar on a hill in Tennessee. Seems dumb, I guess. But I was mad about that bottle for a long time. Not because of littering. I don't give a shit about that. Because it took away what it felt like to be ten."

Morgan puffed the cigar. The old man closed his eyes and smelled it.

"Maybe I talk too much," Jones said.

"No. I know what you mean."

"What about you?" Jones scooted forward in his chair. "Something's gnawing on you. I can tell."

"I'm supposed to get one of my students to do a poetry reading in a week, but I think he's skipped out on me."

"Kids." Jones waved his hands like that covered the whole subject.

"What about you, Mr. Jones? Ever read your poems in front of people?"

Jones said, "You ever drop your britches and wave your pecker at a passing bus?"

twenty-three

Moses Duncan drove his pal Eddie home from the county hospital. They'd told the doctor that the broken window which caused the dozens of cuts on Eddie's face had been shattered by a hard-thrown baseball. Eddie's entire face was wrapped in gauze like a mummy's, only slits for his eyes and nostrils. His lips had been badly lacerated, so he didn't have a mouth hole.

"Mmmmph. Mmm mmmph," Eddie said.

"Don't you sweat it, Eddie." Duncan gripped the steering wheel tight. He still burned with hatred, the image of Big John's body sprawled in the dust branded on his mind's eye. His side stung too from the slight buckshot wound. "We'll get that coon and his buddies too. We'll go home and get the shotguns and we'll find that son of a bitch."

"Mmmph."

"You leave that to me," Duncan said. "Not many black guys around here. Hell, we'll just cruise up and down every street until we find him if we have to. Don't worry. We'll get him."

"Mmmmph umph mmmmph."

"Damn straight." Duncan wondered how he understood Eddie so well. "You know I think I'd of been a good dentist. I could probably understand folks even with my hands in their mouths."

"Mmmph Ummm Mmmph."

Duncan frowned. "No need to get nasty, Eddie. Just ain't called for."

"Mmph."

"Okay, then."

Red Zach sat in the back of his limo. He was pissed. Why couldn't it just be easy for once?

Spoon sat across from him, one of Zach's big goons uncomfortably close. Spoon looked drained, broken, and scared. He kept his eyes on the floor of the car.

Okay, Zach had to get in character, so he could play hard-ass with Spoon. Not for the first time, Zach supposed he needed to train some middle-management personnel, a couple of good men to do all this bruiser work. Zach could lounge on the beach in Antigua and hear all about it via cell phone or e-mail. The key to an operation like this was to get it on autopilot as much as possible. Zach wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the dirty work.

But until then, if he wanted shit done right, he'd have to do it himself.

"Your boy Harold killed one of mine in that trailer," Zach said. "You don't think I can just let that go, do you?"

Spoon shook his head.

"Where's he going now?"

"I don't know, Red. Shit, he don't tell me nothing."

"That's what you said the first time," Zach said. "Once we helped you remember, you told us about Harold coming to Oklahoma."

Spoon's hand went to his split lip. "I don't know, man. You got to believe me."

Zach smiled. "Okay, I believe you." He nodded to the goon.

Moving fast, the goon looped the length of piano wire over Spoon's neck, yanked. Spoon's eyes bulged. His tongue popped from his mouth. His whole face bunched tight like the last bit of toothpaste being squeezed from the tube.

Zach flipped open his cell phone and thumbed the speed-dial. "This is Red. I need all the boys down here right now."

Spoon kicked. The goon hanging tight. Blood from Spoon's throat.

Zach wasn't paying attention anymore. "Don't waste my time asking why. Get the fuck down here and make sure everyone's packing heat. We going to make an example."

Spoon went slack, eyes wide. The body slumped to the car floor.

Zach folded the cell phone closed, looked at the body and the goon and the blood. "Goddammit. You got blood on the seat. Shit."

The goon hung his head, looked sheepish.

Deke Stubbs had found a lot of names and a lot of secrets in Annie Walsh's journal. Two names stood out. Moses Duncan and Timothy Lancaster. Annie had tried to be subtle in some of her journal entries, but it was obvious that Duncan was her connection. A good possibility.

Duncan wasn't in the phone book, but Lancaster was. His apartment was close.

The two beers Stubbs had swilled at Friday's put him in the mood for more. He stopped at a Quickie-Mart and bought a six-pack of Busch and a copy of Hustler. He drank one in the parking lot and flipped through the jack-off magazine. He was getting crazy horny again. Something happened to Stubbs when he saw skin. It made him desperate crazy. Maybe that's why he was always forking over big bucks to get his rocks off.

He threw the magazine into the backseat before it made him too crazy. He flipped through Annie Walsh's journal instead.

Apparently, Annie had boinked this Lancaster kid a month back as some sort of experiment. The journal said that Lancaster "intrigued" her.

A place to start. A thread.

Stubbs pulled out of the parking lot, tossed the empty beer can into the backseat. He opened another, slurped, held the can between his legs, and pointed the Dodge toward Lancaster's apartment.

He was in no particular hurry. He was getting paid by the day.