The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [78]
He shook the reins, the horse moved toward us, and now I could hear Jeb breathing, head down, then up. “The bargain I cut with the main man is to see to it Mrs. Constance Dupree got taken care of too. And the funny thing is, she didn’t squeal, neither.” The horse came toward us a few more feet, Thigpen looking one way and the other, that cigar there in his mouth. “She didn’t squeal. Weird one, that bitch. Didn’t complain word one, once she figured out what her now dead hubby’s request was. Checked herself in to the Rantowles Motel, me out in the car, watching to make sure she didn’t pull anything on me. Then she just walked right into the room, wrapped that electrical cord round the shower rung and her neck both. All’s I had to do was watch her step off the edge of the tub.” He paused, slowly shook his head. “Can’t say she winked at me. But she was smiling, looking at me just before she took that little step, and then her eyes commenced to bulging out big, her tongue too.” He gave out another laugh. “Quite a charge, I tell you, watching a woman do that to herself. I see now how that Kevorkian fuck gets his kicks.”
Unc was trembling now, both my hands on his shoulders, and I could feel my throat welling up hard, felt my eyes going wet and my heart pounding too loud for all this, all this. That was the night she’d come to me, that was the night she’d told me she loved Unc, that was the night she’d told me to cherish my momma.
My mom, behind me, shivered too, us here and almost dead. Us, here.
“Y’all got to move sometime,” Thigpen shouted now. “You got to move sometime, might as well be now.” He put his boots to the horse, and the horse moved toward us again, now ten feet off, and I knew he could hear my heart pounding.
“But them two was out of the ordinary, them not squealing on me,” he said, and pulled hard on the cigar. He was close enough now to where I could see his eyes and nose when the tip flared, there above us, silhouetted by the night behind and around him, the pale light off that moon above us all. He brought down the cigar, let out the smoke. “Most of them go squealing away. Kind of like the sound a woman’ll make when you’re poking her good.” He put the cigar back up. “Now, ain’t that right, Leland?”
Unc still trembled, and Mom trembled, and my heart banged loud enough to be heard a mile away, and the horse brought down his head, held it low a moment: Jeb smelled us.
“Just like that sound a woman makes when you’re poking her good, and she’s wailing like it’s hurting her too much but there ain’t a chance in hell she wants you to stop.” He pulled on the cigar again, took it out. He put his hands to the pommel, leaned forward, the leather creaking.
Jeb shook his head.
“Maybe ol’ Constance used to give out that squeal I was hoping for, Leland, back when you was poking her for sport.” He settled himself back into the saddle. “Or maybe,” he said, and gave a short laugh, “that’s the kind of squeal Eugenie give out one night a long long time ago.”
Unc was breathing hard now, Mom still on the edge of whimpering, and now she pushed herself into me even closer than before, and I felt her chin on my shoulder, heard her breaths quick in and out, and felt the heat of her breath, too, right there at my ear.
She whispered, “Huger, no.”
They were next to nothing, words maybe I didn’t really hear.
“Hey, Huger!” Thigpen shouted now, “Huger, you know-it-all shit, I’ll wager I know something you don’t!”
“No, Huger, no,” Mom whispered.
Unc stopped breathing, stopped trembling. He reached with his hand up to my hand on his shoulder. It was cold, that hand.
But I was watching Thigpen, there in the dark.
Something was happening.
“Huger,” Thigpen said, no longer shouting. He gave Jeb a small kick, and he came even closer, Jeb’s front hooves almost close enough to touch.
“Huger Dillard,” he said, even quieter now, “this here news I’m going to let you in on is what you call dead-man talk. Words just between us, not meant for nobody else.” He paused. “Dead-man talk. You tell,