Page 17 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin’s Duet (Sins of the South)
EIGHT
ABSALOM
The prisoner’s resemblance to Lorrie was striking, but it could have just been a figment of his mind. Tanya Weaver was a short and well-curved woman, with such a quantity of hair it covered her entire face from view.
“Did she say anything?” Absalom asked Hiram from the other side of the door. Through the stained-glass panel he could see the prisoner huddled on the loveseat, her face buried in her knees.
“Nope,” said Hiram. “Still says she’s got no idea where Bailey is.” The big redhead adjusted himself in his jeans. “I could make her talk. Could barely stop the boys from all fucking her. I still might. Like how we almost gangbanged your colored slut.”
Absalom checked his battered Casio. It was almost three o’ clock. “Nobody is to touch the girl. She’s our leverage with Bailey. Understand?” he said mildly.
“Yeah. Sure,” sneered Hiram. “You got a soft spot for them, don’t you? The darkie girls.”
Absalom’s uncle Hogs had a pig farm down deep in the valley. About fifty Red Wattles and twenty Hampshires. One day soon he’d bring Hiram there for a visit. In a body bag.
He sank into the great oak chair, carved two centuries ago buy the very first Green Tree for the second or third McCall in the Florin lineage.
The carvings had worn dull on the arms from centuries of McCall leaders stroking them in deep contemplation.
Duke had occupied that chair for Absalom’s entire life until Roman took over.
And now it belonged to Absalom. From this chair Duke, and then his son Roman, had directed the Harvest, held business meetings, collected debts, and listened to the many woes of mountain folk seeking retribution for some slight or another their neighbor had given them.
His eyes fell on the map again, and the strange symbols Roman had written in spidery ink over certain places.
People said that Roman McCall dabbled in black magic.
That he could be in many places at the same time.
That he used animals to listen in on conversations.
That he could make men do his bloody bidding while under trance and spell, and they would wake with no recollection of it.
Until that morning Absalom naturally held those rumors in the category of idiotic fiction.
But they’d raided Roman’s house, the same house his spies had watched like a hawk all night long, and found it empty.
No Roman. No wife. No kids.
It raised a man’s small-hairs, no doubt about it.
By all appearances the house might have been unoccupied for weeks.
Every room was barren but for the furniture.
Roman had kids, but their toys were gone, and their books.
Quietly Absalom was thankful for that. He had never had any intention of hurting Roman’s wife and kids, and so he took the risk of slipping his intentions through certain channels so Roman could get them to safety if he wished.
And to give the man his dues, Roman was no fool, and likely knew already what was coming.
But what Absalom didn’t understand was how the big man himself, seen on this very hill just yesterday, could have vanished into thin air under heavy watch.
Tunnels, then. He had to have used tunnels under the house to escape.
There had always been rumors of such and knowing Roman he didn’t doubt it.
However, a search of the cellar turned up only some very old wine and even older whiskey, which Absalom directed (by unpopular demand) to be left where it was found.
Finally Absalom had to concede that Roman had slipped away into the night like a coward. Well, putting his own pride aside, a bloodless victory was a great victory still.
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Roman had simply read the writing on the wall and yielded his throne to a successor before he could get dragged off of it by force.
But Absalom now had a problem. Supposedly Roman was the richest man in Florin.
Duke, Roman’s father, was known to have a private fortune in the millions, much of it in cash, gemstones, and gold.
And what about the guns– hundreds of them, by some accounts, stashed across the property?
Over months of plotting his rebellion, Absalom had made these riches out to be a hoard to rival King Solomon’s. His men had come expecting a score.
Hiram grew bored of the books and Absalom ignoring him, and shuffled out of the room. From the corner of his eye Absalom had noted that the man kept patting his jacket, which had a bulky square object inside it. Not a gun. Likely some trinket he’d picked up around the house.
Gold was not the only store of value in Roman’s house.
There was always the wine. The whiskey. Possibly the furniture.
Most definitely the art. But paintings and wine and oak tables did not excite roughnecks who’d come expecting treasure.
It just wasn’t good enough. And stripping the house for parts just so his men could get drunk seemed sacrilege to Absalom.
The house should be for everybody to enjoy, because the labor of Green Trees and Mulgrews and Snatch Hills had paid for it.
He’d have to pay his men off some other way.
His mind turned back to the tunnel. There had to be a tunnel. There could be no possible way Roman had slipped out with the house being watched all night. It was impossible. And yet…
By mid-afternoon, all sorts of folk had made their way to Roman’s hill to see if the rumors were true that the great leader of Florin had resigned and now young Absalom Greentree was the shot-caller in Florin.
There came whispers that Black Florin had shut down for the day and people there were bracing themselves for a rampage. It was no overreaction.
“We’ll get a set together for tonight, boys,” Hiram was saying, strutting like a peacock before the posse of Snatch Hills crowded in Roman McCall’s living room, which attached to the study where Absalom was inspecting another hoard of documents.
“We’ll go over to Black Florin and try for a bonfire, what do y’all say?”
“Let ‘em rest, Hiram,” one of the men disagreed. This one was on Absalom’s hit list– he’d been in the room when they held up him and Lorrie. Funny enough, the man was mixed race. “Surely it’s a waste of time; it’s just old folks and tumbleweeds over there now.”
“Exactly. Just easy pickings to get our beaks wet,” Hiram retorted. “Show everybody we ain’t nothing to fuck with. Hell, if you like them so much, Lloyd, you can go stay there.”
“Fuck that, I just think it’s pointless.”
“There’s always the church,” suggested Hiram. “Let’s hit that first. Reckon there’s something in the collections.”
Absalom stepped through the door of Roman’s study and pointed at them all. “Nobody is gonna be robbing any churches. Period fuckin’ full stop. And if you spit on that floor one more time I’ll knock your fuckin’ teeth out, Hiram.”
Silence followed that statement. Absalom could hear the minds of seven men working out who they feared the most. If it came down to a fight, who was worth backing? The tension between Hiram and Absalom was no secret. Word of what had happened last night had already made its rounds.
Hiram’s jaw worked up and down. He moved his tobacco pouch from one cheek to the other. “I wouldn’t be robbing anybody if this house had been the prize some had suggested,” he said finally.
But he didn’t spit on the floor again.
Moving to a safer subject, the men began suggesting targets from Black Florin like farmers discussing the logistics of a cattle roundup.
Somebody mentioned Ben Simpson, the owner of the chicken shop.
“Keebler rewired his garage. Said there was a hollow spot. Never liked that uppity nigger or his chicken.”
“Too spicy,” came the sound agreement.
Absalom half- listened through the crack in the door of Roman’s study.
He found their plans disgusting but when you put Snatch Hills in a room together such was the result.
A plan began to take place in his head, a very foul and ugly plan, but one that would be more effective than feeding Hiram to pigs.
He wondered where his cousin Shadrac was at right now— Shad was the one to talk to.
At the moment Shadrac and the rest of the Green Trees were busy down in the cellar stockpiling the booze and completing their search.
He’d let them finish up. Absalom pulled a collection of dusty books from Roman’s shelf and opened them on the desk.
They were the accounts for old harvest years, back when Roman’s father Duke had been in charge.
Absalom read the numbers with growing unease as the work before him became plain.
The operation had been dead in the water for a year now thanks to Roman.
It had to be revived and that took time and collaboration with other counties and other families outside of Florin.
He would have to build up trust with them.
There was at least one field in bud right now, and once that crop was gathered.
.. The old sheds needed clearing out. The drying-houses had been burned down, but some might be restored for the winter… What was Lorrie doing right now?
Laying in bed touching herself.
Laying in bed crying ‘cause I hurt her.
Laying in bed not thinking of me at all.
“Saverin is here,” someone cried.
Absalom came through the door of the study in a blink. “Put your fucking guns down,” he ordered the little Snatch Hill posse, who reluctantly obeyed. Hiram’s eyes narrowed. “I suggest you get Bailey to pay up for his whore,” he growled. “The meager pickings here won’t cut it, Green Tree.”
Absalom ignored him and addressed the group. “You boys go make yourselves useful. We got a rally tonight and you’re standing around scratching each other’s nuts. You, Guts, go set up the roasting pits. Stu, get all these books together for me. Don’t touch fuckin’ nothing else, we clear?”