The Pistol Poets

Chapter 4

"What's she doing in here?" Morgan's voice had climbed two octaves. Almighty God, Morgan realized, was finally getting him. An old man with reams of tattered poetry. A fearless reporter ready to expose his scandals. Plagues upon Egypt.
"We'll handle that later," Jones murmured in his ear.
Bob wrapped Annie in the plastic, sealed her up with duct tape.
Ginny stood near the chair, hands clasped in front of her. "Why do you need the plastic?" Curiosity fighting anxiety.
"Routine," Bob said.
"Would you shut up," Jones said. "This ain't routine. We've never done this before."
"Right, boss."
Jones nudged Morgan with a pointy elbow. "Get her feet."
"What?"
"I can't carry her with my back. Grab the feet."
Morgan took Annie by her plastic-bound ankles, Bob at the other end. Morgan's breathing went shallow. The girl was heavy. They made sure nobody was looking, then quick-walked her out to the trunk of an old Plymouth Fury. Jones explained that they'd swiped a car specifically for this errand.
Morgan turned green as he listened. Sweat on his forehead.
"There's two shovels in the backseat," Jones said. "There's a peach orchard six miles south of town. Take the dirt road and bury her in the middle."
Morgan choked. "Me?"
"For chrissakes, Doc, I can't be involved," Jones said. "I'm in a very delicate situation. Besides, she's your dead girl, not mine."
"But-"
"You'd think you'd be grateful I was fixing this up for you."
"But-"
"Make sure you ditch the car someplace out of the way when you're done."
"But-"
"And don't worry." Jones jerked a thumb at Ginny, who watched from Morgan's porch. "We'll take care of the kid." He made a trigger-pulling motion with his finger.
"No!" Morgan's eyes bulged. "Let me worry about her."
"Want to do it yourself, huh? Sure, put her in the same hole as the other one." Jones slipped something cold and hard into Morgan's hand.
Morgan looked. A little blue-metal revolver with a stubby barrel. "What the fuck's this?" He'd wanted to sound tough and outraged, but it came out like a squeak.
"It's a.38. You said you'd handle her."
"Right." Now wasn't the time to argue. He'd take Ginny with him and figure what to do with her later. But he wasn't going to shoot her.
Maybe himself, but not her.
Morgan waved Ginny into the Plymouth. He took the keys from Jones and climbed behind the wheel. The car's interior reeked of stale cigarettes, and he told Ginny to roll down the window. The cold wind steadied him.
They were a mile from the peach orchard when Ginny spoke.
"They wouldn't give me back my tape recorder, but I have my notepad."
"This will not be a newspaper story," Morgan said. "You must know you can't say anything about this to anyone ever." And how do you shut up a chatty undergrad newspaper reporter? The old man's revolver nudged cold against his thigh in his front pocket.
"I know. It wasn't your fault, right? I mean, you'd be fucking ruined if they found out. I mean, with a student and everything. Not that I find it offensive, but a lot of the establishment types like to maintain this artificial hierarchy."
"Right."
"Besides, I figure if I help you, you might be able to help me, right?"
"Maybe."
"I asked for this assignment specifically because I wanted to speak to you," Ginny said. "What I really want to be is a novelist."
Maybe Morgan would shoot her after all.
He turned the Plymouth into the peach orchard. The narrow road petered out, and he found himself zigzagging among the trees. He parked in an arbitrary spot. He and Ginny took the shovels and started digging.
Morgan began sweating again, rings under his armpits, stomach queasy. His hands ached with the cold, fingers rubbing raw on the shovel's handle. He hadn't done anything this physical in a long time. He stopped digging, leaned on the shovel. His chest heaved, short breaths puffing out like fog. "Okay, good enough."
"That's way too shallow," Ginny said.
"It's fine."
"I'm telling you it needs to be deeper. One good rain and up she comes. All that topsoil will wash right downhill."
Morgan sighed. He looked at the shovel, back at the hole. They kept digging.
When Ginny was satisfied, they muscled Annie out of the trunk and dropped her facedown into the hole. Morgan thought she looked unreal in the plastic, a dime-store mannequin. He could still fish her out of the hole, unwrap her. He wasn't too far into this yet. He could explain. Take her to the police or a hospital.
But there would be questions. What had happened? Who had she been with and where? Morgan leaned on his shovel, eyes unfocused with thought.
Ginny grabbed a shovel and started scooping in dirt.
And it was as if his hands lifted the shovel on their own, scooped the dirt. It was the heaviest thing in the world. He tossed in the dirt, and it landed on Annie's back. The second scoop was easier, then a third, his problem returning to the earth. He wondered how long it would take him to forget he'd done this thing, that he'd crossed some line from which there would be no return.
Soon there was only the moist mound of fresh soil. Ginny flattened it down hard with the bottom of her shovel. Steam came off her.
Morgan thought about Ginny. Jones had made it clear what he wanted done, but Morgan had no intention of killing the girl. But she was a time bomb. Morgan's hand slipped into his pocket, fist closing over the revolver's handle.
Ginny turned, saw him watching her. "What is it?"
"Just thinking." He let go of the gun, put his hands on his hips.
She searched his eyes, moved toward him. "I'm not going to say anything."
"I know."
She stood very close to Morgan, her erect nipples brushing his belly. "I want you to believe me."
"I believe you."
Ginny shrugged, lowered her eyes. "Maybe we can seal the deal. Some kind of show of trust."
She unzipped his pants and reached in for him. He stiffened, and she stroked him, the cold air washing over his groin.
Morgan cleared his throat. "I think we can work something out."
Her hands were very soft, her mouth warm.
seven
Harold Jenks got off the bus, took one look around, and said, "Fuck this."
What the hell was he doing in this one-horse, Okie shithole? He stood with his duffel over his shoulder, took another look up and down University Boulevard hoping it would seem better this time.
It didn't.
Pickup trucks, flannel shirts, and feed caps. Redneck city. No place for a brother like Harold Jenks. He pulled his coat tighter around him. What was it, twenty degrees? Colder? Fumbee, Oklahoma, was the asshole of the planet.
Maybe Spoon was right. Maybe his plan was insane in the head, and Jenks was just asking for an assload of trouble.
Fuck that. Jenks could pull it off. Nobody else would dare.
Jenks crossed the street to the campus. He pulled a folded wad of paper out of his back pocket and read until he saw what he needed. The administration building.
He stopped a slender white girl with blond hair in the courtyard, asked her which way to Administration. She was polite, but took a step back, eyes wary. Like you never seen a black man before. She pointed down the sidewalk to a gray, domed building.
"Thanks," Jenks said.
The girl frowned and walked away fast.
At the main administration desk, Jenks was shuffled to the registrar. The gray-faced bureaucrat in that registrar's office said that since he was a week late for classes, his schedule had been forwarded to the English Department.
"Where's that?" Jenks asked.
The lady sighed, dramatic, shoulders slumped. She handed Jenks a folded map. "Albatross Hall," she said. "Building 41 on the map."
"Thanks." Bitch.
He found Albatross Hall and ducked inside, stood a moment in the entrance letting himself get warm. A sign on the wall said ENGLISH DEPARTMENT and pointed him left. He followed the arrow.
The English Department office was barren of life. Jenks stood in front of the outer desk and waited in case a secretary or someone official happened along. Nobody did. He shuffled loudly, dropped his duffel bag with a heavy whuff. Nobody heard. He looked for a bell to ring, or a sign-in sheet or anything. He didn't have a clue.
Just left of the front desk was a door marked WHITTAKER. It also said ENGLISH DEPARTMENT CHAIR and was slightly ajar. He pushed it open, looked in.
A big white guy with a heavy black beard stood wearing a woman's hat and looking at himself in a hand mirror.
"Aw shit." Jenks stared, scratched his head.
Whittaker glanced over his shoulder. "Who is it? Can I do something for you?" As he spoke, he turned back to the mirror, cocked the hat at a jaunty angle on his head.
"I'm-" He almost said he was Harold Jenks. "I'm Sherman Ellis."
Whittaker put down the mirror, went to his desk, and began leafing through a stack of papers. "Ellis, Ellis, that name sounds familiar."
"I'm supposed to be paid for," Jenks said. "My school is free."
"Yes." Whittaker pulled a list from the stack. "Sherman Ellis. You have a graduate assistantship in the tutoring lab. You're a week late."
Jenks didn't say anything.
"We thought maybe you'd forfeited the assistantship. We almost assigned it to someone else. The waiting list is pretty long."
"What about the free schooling?"
Whittaker frowned, cleared his throat. "That's what I'm saying."
"And a place to stay," Jenks said.
"You'll have to take that up with graduate housing. Their waitlist is even longer. Might be a problem."
"Hey, man. I got it right here I'm supposed to have a place to stay. For free." He shook the letter in the air, one of the documents he'd taken off of Ellis. He'd get all up in this guy's business about his rights and shit.
The gun in his coat pocket hung heavy. A.32 revolver with a short barrel, the serial number filed off. Spoon had given it to him, told him the little heater would be easy to hide when he was on campus. The Glock was in the duffel. Harold Jenks wasn't planning on letting any of these white college motherfuckers get over on him.
Whittaker's face hardened. "Nobody's going to take away your entitlement, Mr. Ellis." He said it through gritted teeth.
"I'll get a lawyer." But Jenks took a half step back. The guy was big, lady's hat or not, and Jenks saw he was getting mad. Jenks's hand dug into his coat pocket, closed over the butt of the pistol. He didn't like the way the dude's face twitched when he said entitlement.
"Here." Whittaker handed Jenks a manila folder stuffed with paper. "You need to see Dr. Annette Grayson about your one-hour comp-rhet practicum. They'll start you in the tutoring lab, I imagine. Pair you up with one of the veteran tutors until you learn the ropes. Your schedule's in there as well. I'd find all of your professors soon, get syllabi, and find out what you've missed."
"Right." Jenks had no fucking idea what he was talking about.
"If you have any more questions, I suggest you talk to Professor Jay Morgan. He's been assigned as your faculty advisor. Or ask Professor Grayson. You'll be working closely with her too."
"What about the place to stay? I'm supposed to have a free place to live."
"The housing office."
"Where's that?"
"You have a campus map?"
"Yeah." He handed it to Whittaker.
The dean unfolded it, squinted at the small print. "Building 9." He gave the map back to Jenks.
"Later." Jenks left, grabbed his duffel on the way out.
After Ellis left, Whittaker reminded himself that he was not a racist. But the sheer arrogance of these kids! Still, he'd have to tread lightly. The university was in a delicate position. He pulled the memo from his desk drawer, the one university president Lincoln Truman had sent directly concerning Sherman Ellis. He read it again.
He did not need the brief overview of the university's checkered past, but he read it anyway. Enrollment just fifteen years ago had been over twelve thousand. But bad choices and bad administration had caused the school to fall on hard times. At its worst, enrollment had fallen to a catastrophic thirty-two hundred students. Instructors had been laid off. Crusty, tenured professors had been strongly encouraged into retirement. Funds had been slashed in every department. The football team, the fighting Buffalo Skinners, had been reduced to a Division III joke.
Indeed, the university had almost been closed altogether. There had been serious talk about turning it into a branch campus for OSU.
But superadministrator and divine savior Lincoln Truman had turned the school around. Enrollment had been up the last four years in a row, and the student body was now a healthy 6,857 students. Eastern Oklahoma University was entering a glorious new renaissance.
In only one area was the school drastically behind the rest of the nation. Diversity.
They weren't. Diverse. At all.
Out of nearly seven thousand students only forty-one were Native American, the school's largest minority. Twenty-three were Hispanic.
Eastern Oklahoma had only five African-American students. Now six with Sherman Ellis.
Granted, it had been hard to attract black students after the lynching. But that was nearly ten years ago. Still, Lincoln Truman had vowed to erase the university's stained reputation as a "Klan Kollege" as one muckraking newspaper had put it.
Whittaker pulled Ellis's file. His grades were solid. His GRE scores were through the roof. He returned the file to the cabinet.
Okay. A smart kid with a bad attitude. Whittaker had seen it before. Once Ellis realized he was among people who wanted to see him succeed, he'd ease off the tough-guy routine.
If not, well, Whittaker was known to be rather a tough cookie himself. He picked up the hand mirror again and went back to adjusting the hat.
"I've told you already," said the woman at the housing office. "We didn't think you were coming. We gave the room away to somebody else."
"I'm supposed to get a free place." Jenks waved the letters like a magic wand.
"But there's simply no place we can-"
"I'm black," Jenks said.
The woman's shoulders slumped, and she picked up the phone.
eight
After Morgan dropped Ginny at her apartment, she thought about him all night. The next morning she found herself getting into her car, driving toward the professor's house as if she were hypnotized. Not that Morgan mesmerized her, not completely. She was in love with the scheme developing in her head.
Ginny determined that she would weasel her way into the professor's life whatever it took. He was the most interesting thing to happen to her in a long time.
It rained hard, the sky black with fat clouds. The slap of the windshield wipers contributed to her hypnotized feeling.