Boys Life

shambled forward. I swear his hands were the size of country hams, and his feet in their scuffed-up boots looked like they could stomp down small trees.
    The masked man with the bulbous belly said, “We’re incog… incog… We don’t wanna be recognized.”
    “Shit, Dick!” the bearded monster said, and he guffawed again. “Have to be a blind fuckin’ fool not to recognize your fat gut and ass!” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, I thought.
    “Awwww, you’re not supposed to recognize us, Mr. Blaylock!” the man who’d been called Dick answered with a whine of petulance, and I realized with a double start that this man was Mr. Dick Moultry and the other was Biggun Blaylock, the fearsome head of the Blaylock clan himself.
    Ben realized it, too. “Let’s get outta here!” he whispered, but Davy Ray hissed, “Shut up!”
    “Well,” Biggun said, his hands on his massive hips, “I don’t give a shit if you wear sackcloth and ashes. You bring the money?”
    “Yes sir.” Mr. Moultry reached into his pocket and brought out a wad of bills.
    “Count it,” Biggun ordered.
    “Yes sir. Fifty… one hundred… hundred and fifty… two hundred…” He kept counting, up to four hundred dollars. “Take the money, Wade,” Biggun said, and the man in the spangled shirt walked forward to get it.
    “Just a minute,” the second masked man said. “Where’s the merchandise?” He was talking in a low, gruff voice that sounded false, yet I knew that voice from somewhere.
    “Bodean, get what the fella wants,” Biggun told him, and Bodean took the Cadillac’s keys from the ignition and walked back to the trunk. Biggun’s gaze stayed fixed on the man with the false voice. I was glad it wasn’t directed at me, because it looked so intense it could puddle iron. “It’s fine, quality work,” Biggun said. “Just what you boys asked for.”
    “It oughta be. We’re payin’ enough for it.”
    “You want a demonstration?” Biggun grinned, his mouth full of gleaming teeth. “If I were you, friend, I’d get rid of that cheroot.”
    The masked man took a final pull on it, then he turned and flicked it right where we were hiding. It fell into the pine straw about four feet in front of me, and I saw its chewed plastic tip. I knew who smoked cheroots with a tip like that. It was Mr. Hargison, our mailman.
    Bodean had opened the trunk. Now he closed it again, and he approached the two masked men carrying a small wooden box in his arms. He carried it gently, as if it might hold a sleeping baby.
    “I want to see it,” Mr. Hargison said in a voice I’d never heard Mr. Hargison use.
    “Show him what he’s buyin’,” Biggun told his son, and Bodean carefully released a latch and opened the box’s top to reveal what lay within. None of us guys could see inside the box, but Mr. Moultry walked over to peer in and he gave a low whistle behind his mask.
    “That suit you?” Biggun asked.
    “It’ll do just fine,” Mr. Hargison said. “They won’t know what hit ’em until they’re tap-dancin’ in hell.”
    “I threw in an extra.” Biggun grinned again, and I thought he looked like Satan himself. “For good luck,” he said. “Close it up, Bodean. Wade, take our money.”
    “Davy Ray!” Ben whispered. “Somethin’s crawlin’ on me!”
    “Shut up, goofus!”
    “I mean it! Somethin’s on me!”
    “You hear anythin’?” Mr. Moultry asked, and that question froze the marrow in my bones.
    The men were silent. Mr. Hargison gripped the box with both hands, and Wade Blaylock had the fistful of money. Biggun’s head slowly turned from side to side, his blastfurnace eyes searching the woods. Hoot-hoot, went the distant owl. Ben made a soft, terrified whining noise. I hugged the earth, my chin buried in pine straw, and near my face Mr. Hargison’s cheroot smoldered.
    “I don’t hear nothin’,” Wade Blaylock said, and he took the money to his father. Biggun counted it again, his tongue flicking back and forth across his lower lip, and then he shoved the cash into a pocket. “Okey-dokey,” he said to the two masked men. “I reckon that concludes our bidness, gents. Next time you want a special order, you know how to find me.” He started trudging back to get into the Cadillac again, and Bodean moved fast to open the door for him.
    “Thank you kindly, Mr. Blaylock.” Something about Mr. Moultry’s voice made me think of a ratty dog trying to lick up to a mean master. “We sure do