The white Crown Vic had crept through Dundalk at low speed, the Sergeant seemingly leery of attracting attention, now behaving as the criminal—if in uniform—he had described. Nat loved that hat, the brass CSA cavalry sabers crossed on the Stetson with the starry bar band. But, well, he just blurted it, “Major, Sir, the hat… ah, ugh…”
“Spit it out, trooper,” growled the Major.
“Um, ah—it will scare off the…”
Sergeant Crook grinned, “Sir, Agent Star here—for his demographic alacrity has already earned him that keen station—is tip toeing around the fact that your hat may frighten off such benighted Sons of Darkness as we do seek.”
The Major reluctantly unsaddled his hat as Sergeant Crook turned the Crown Vic right off of Sollers Point onto Barclay. The Major spat, and grumbled, “A baby crib, what to rock a buck nig ta sleep as well! I almost miss Pappa Crock—a right and proper savage.”
‘This feels so real, too real—I should be waking up.’
The Sergeant was observing him in the mirror, and, seeming to read his thoughts, cut short his reverie, a trick of the dream phantom to keep him asleep, tripping or whatever, maybe strapped to a gurney being revived…
“Agent Star, this is REAL—as real as real gets. Eye on the ball, Son. We are looking for a man with a guitar, a well pigmented example of his kind in black slacks, platform shoes and a pink suit jacket with powder blue tie, wearing a fedora, of course.”
The pawn shop and the Box N’ Save were to the left, the sound wall straight ahead as the car banked ominously left onto Dundalk Avenue, like a great four-wheeled tiger. Perhaps jarred to trunk-bound action, the forgotten man in the trunk began thumping and mumble-ranting, rocking the back of the car. The Major frothed into a red-faced rage, twisted in his seat, reached around, drew his Bowie knife from the belt curled up behind his seat, as the Sergeant cautioned, “Easy, Sir, easy now…”
“You whining son of a bitch!” snarled the Major as he thrust his knife into the seat back, cut a deep U, inserted his left hand savagely as he squirmed about in a spasm of apish vitality, and ripped out the seat back. He then squirmed more deeply, pressing off the dashboard with his snakeskin boots, handed Nat the knife, growled like some big dog, and with his big hands tore through whatever backed the seat into the trunk. The gagged man could be heard mumbling more frantically. A beam of bright hate shone in the Major’s blue eyes under those blonde and silver brows. Enraged, he snarled, “We offered ye a berth, coward, ta atone fer ye sin! Yankee scum!” snarled the Major more deeply, as both of his arms disappeared into the seat back. A frantic mumble was heard—and, the Major’s shoulders twisted and something snapped sickeningly in the back!
Nat’s eyes got big and were met by the Major’s baleful glare, which dimmed to a smoldering blue. The long big armed man then grumbled, “Apologies. A young fella’s first witness to death should not be such a craven-cruel event.”
The Major stuffed the seat back in place, nodded to the knife and belt and said with a solemn integrity, “Get me that night right yank under yon tin roof.”
The Major hauled himself with a twist that was unusually supple for such an old big man, back into the seat, placed his hat upon his head as the car pulled over to a bus stop that was occupied by the previously described relic of the 1970s. The man was in his 60s at least, was holding an electric guitar with a frayed amp cord dangling from it, looking like one of the Parliament Funkadelics!
“No way,” blurted Nat.
“Yes way,” assured Crook, “To it, Son. On the double!”
Nat slid the .45 behind his waist band, under that old brown belt that had belonged to Grand Pap Keeley out in Cumberland, thought about getting out and around, but instead slid over to the Major’s slicker and felt grays, picked up the stacked folds of creased uniform, opened the passenger side rear door, stepped out, noting that his Motor Head T-shirt was pulling on the handgun behind his belt, and said to the astonished black man, “We need a wardrobe man, Sir. I’m Nat, Nat Star—we’re a man short.”
The old fellow seemed struck dumb, his eyes lit with amazed but wary intelligence. So Nat nodded at that lonely guitar across his lap, noting that the man’s face was hard lined and reluctantly hopeful, “We could use a guitar player.”
“Damned buck wranglin’ always rankles the soul,” grumbled the Major.
But the old fellow was standing and coming forward.
Nat held the door open as the man slid in suspiciously, “I recall y’all from da bus—wutch y’all boost a car, rob a bank?”
Crook split a grin, “Da Playa From Da Himalaya! We had to come back for a second act. How about you throw in with us?”
“Shieet, Honky—whad a Pimp wanna trow in wit y’all cracka crew fo?”
Nat tried not to disrespect the belt and weapons with his tennis shoed feet. In so doing, he noted that he had sheathed the knife half-assed and backwards, some blade exposed above the brown leather. The guitarist noted too, with one raised brow.
Nat had shut the door and the Sergeant was pulling off, as he suggested, “Major?”
The big man took off his hat and handed it to Nat as he turned and looked with cold eyes of ice blue into the cagey old guitarist’s amber brown eyes, eyes that blinked but remained open. The tableaux was of a wolf and a snake searching each other’s depths for a common thirst to slake.
The Major’s voice was dead serious, “I’m a hunter. I need a scout, a guide—a hound; a hound what hunts by sight, by smell, by the crackle of musketry, and by the Devil’s own damned bell.”
The old guitarist looked to Nat, who he seemed to trust on instinct, “Dis shit fo real?”
Nat nodded, “Yes,” tapping the hat for emphasis.
The guitar player then met the Major’s eyes steadily and asked, “Whad’s in id fo me?”
“One hell of a rough ride,” answered the Major.
The car was cruising easily down Dundalk Avenue towards Turner Station and Water’s Edge, to cross Sollers Point again. This realization, this precise course, in the mind of a worldly teenager who had spent long hours exploring by bus the world he had planned on escaping from home and school to since he was 13, impressed him, that a dream this might not be.
“En who is you, big-ass honky?”
The blue eyes lit like coals again as the mustached mouth split in a grin over the blonde point of beard, “Major Shayne Pitt, Texas Rangers, Confederate States of America.”
The man had short straightened hair under his black fedora, something coming to wicked life in his amber eyes as he squinted and coaxed, “En what mighd yo serious-as-a-heart-attack ass be huntin’?”
“Niggers,” answered the Major.
The guitar player smiled like a beacon, his teeth still good after all those years, and extended his hand, long fingered and leathery, “Count me in—I hates me niցցers, done me nuffin’ but wrong all dese triflesome years!”
The two men shook hands. The old guitarist seemed to grow younger by a decade, assuring the Major, “Curtis Green! Have I got a herd fo y’all ta hunt!”
Nat was now utterly convinced, that with the perfect race traitor sidekick on board, that this was definitely a dream, probably his last, perhaps one he would never wake from.
The white Crown Vic rode low, like a boat, what with two men in the back and two bigger ones stuffed in the trunk. The Sergeant sang, “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli!”
‘This is too fucking cool—do not wake up.’
