Calvin’s and my number one distraction was football. Our regional middle school had a team, and Calvin and I were the stars. On offense, he played fullback and I was a wide receiver. On defense he played linebacker and I was a free safety.

As the season progressed, these big, jock looking guys kept coming to our games. They all carried pads or clipboards and scribbled a lot of stuff down. After the games our coach, Bob Traynor, would march up to the two of us and herd us off the field and into the locker room. The third time he did that, I asked, “Mr. Traynor, did Calvin and I do something wrong?”

“No, son. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s what you’re doing right that’s the problem.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Calvin, “I don’t follow.”

He smiled and shook his head and said, “You two get showered up and then come to my classroom. We’ll have us a chat.

Bob Traynor was a black man, about six foot six and weighed about 300 pounds, maybe more. He’d grown up in Western Pennsylvania where high school football is as big as it is in Texas. A friend of his once told Calvin and me that Bob was one of the most gifted pass rushers he’d ever seen. The friend had been a defensive line coach for the Steelers; we believed him.

Bob turned down all the offers he got to play big college ball and went off to Brown University to study mathematics. His freshman year he managed to avoid the football coach. Then he caved in and played for the next three years. The Steelers guy told us Bob spent most of that time chugging along at half speed.

“Why?” Calvin asked.

“Bob would never admit it, but I believe he just didn’t want to hurt anybody too bad.”

Bob was scrunched in behind his desk reading an algebra textbook when Calvin and I walked in. Behind him was a blackboard full of word problems written in neat block letters. One read:

“JIMMY AND TOMMY ARE BROTHERS. JIMMY CAN MOW THE ENTIRE LAWN ON THEIR FOLKS’ PROPERTY IN 45 MNUTES. TOMMY CAN DO IT IN AN HOUR. IT’S NOW 3:30 AND THE GAME THEY WANT TO WATCH STARTS AT 4:00. IF THEY USE TWO MOWERS AND IT TAKES THEM TEN MINUTES TO CLEAN UP ENOUGH TO KEEP THEIR MOMMA FROM GETTING MAD AT THEM, DO THEY HAVE TIME TO SEE THE KICK-OFF? SHOW YOUR WORK.”

Calvin took a quick look and said, “Those two got a momma like mine was, they’ll miss the kick-off.”

“Have a seat, gentlemen.”

After we did, he took the chair out from behind his desk and sat face-to-face with us. “So you been wondering why I’ve been hustling you off the field after the last few games?”

“Yessir,” I said.

“I think I got it figured out, Mr. Traynor,” said Calvin. Just then there was a sharp rapping at the door. A second later Miss Mayfield, our assistant principal, was standing very close to Calvin and Bob was up on his feet. That was the first first time I’d ever seen him look truly worried.

Miss Mayfield knelt down and whispered, “Calvin, we need to get you home right away. Your sister, Marla, has had an accident.”

The drive in Bob’s jeep to Calvin’s house took about twenty minutes. When we got there, a county sheriff’s cruiser was parked at an odd angle in front of the house at the end of a dirt road. Before the jeep had stopped, Calvin vaulted out the door and raced towards the front porch steps. Marla was hunched up sitting next to a female deputy who had her arm around the girl’s shoulder. Marla was sobbing and the deputy was saying something into her ear.

Bob turned to me in the backseat and said, “Jake, hold still for a few minutes. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

In that fall of 1983 Marla Tubbs was 18 years old. If there had been a demand for black models in those days, Marla would have caught the eye of the scouts who seek out tall, beautiful girls to sashay up and down runways in Paris and New York. Probably just as well. Don’t think Marla could have mimicked the bored, disdainful look those girls put on. After she broke out giggling a few times, somebody would have figured out this wasn’t gonna fly.

Marla’s and Calvin’s mother had died five years earlier from some kind of cancer that had never gotten properly diagnosed. Blessedly, her passing had come quickly so the kids and Mr. Tubbs didn’t have to watch her shrivel up over long months of pain. Being the oldest and a female, Marla got thrust into the role of matriarch for Calvin and his three other siblings. That was hard in a way I couldn’t begin to understand. But when I’d see her take Calvin’s hand and hug him as he sobbed unashamedly in front of me. And then make me join the hug because I was sobbing, too – I believed (and I haven’t wavered since) that that young woman was born to be a mother.

Good thing, because Mr. Tubbs was not born to be a daddy. He wasn’t a cruel or abusive father, not in the least. But where Calvin was an open emotional book, Mr. Tubbs was shut up tight as a drum when it came to expressing tenderness and compassion and sadness. I was reminded of that as I saw him standing off from Marla as the female deputy consoled her. The male deputy was trying to talk to him. Mr. Tubbs was turned away from the man with a face pinched up with rage and frustration.

What happened to Carla did not come out all in a rush. It seeped out like foul smelling puss from a wound. Bottom line, Albert Driscoll had beaten and raped Marla when he had caught her walking along the side of a dirt road a mile or so from the Tubbs’ home.

The Driscolls had been in the northern end of our county for a long, long time. Way back into the eighteenth century. Up until the end of World War Two, they had been dirt poor. Ramshackle houses, no running water, and a hard scrabble existence scraped out of corn and potatoes they grew, pigs they raised and sold, deer they shot out of season, and shine. Up to that point there wasn’t much to distinguish them from thousands of other families spread out over the Appalachian chain from Alabama to West Virginia.

The War changed all that. Albert Driscoll’s father, Ernest, and several of his uncles had served in Germany. They were poor when they enlisted, but they had money when they mustered out. There was no clear account of how that had happened. Most folks thought it was that they’d found a way to steal tanker loads of gas bound for Patton’s tanks and sell it to whoever they could. A few people thought they had started up a prostitution ring that served allied troops after the invasion of France in 1944. Calvin and I were inclined to go with the gas story more than the hooker story. It wasn’t that these guys weren’t bent enough to sell sex. They were. But, rightly or wrongly, we believed it took a certain degree of social smoothness for that line of work. You could accuse the Driscolls of all kinds of things. But smoothness?  No.

Anyhow they took the cash they’d brought back home in the fall of 1945 and slowly turned it into a fiefdom of small businesses—each run by a family member. Two auto body shops that did more cannibalizing of parts from stolen vehicles than fixing dents in cars brought in by legitimate customers. Three hardware stores the ATF assumed (but couldn’t prove) were fencing stolen guns. Gas stations all over the place. Three or four junk yards. And other operations I’ve either forgotten about or never did know about.

Albert Driscoll was the son of one of the brothers who had come back from Europe. In that fall of 1984, he was maybe 40 years old. If it hadn’t been for the family looking out for him, Albert wouldn’t have made it that far in life. He was a mean spirited bully who liked to beat up on women and anyone else physically weaker than him. Except when he was drunk. Then he’d take on anybody, which usually meant getting his ass kicked on a regular basis in the honkytonks he frequented. Ass kicked, but not killed. Because everybody in our region knew his family would come after anyone who did that. The family knew he was an asshole and deserved every thumping he got, but they drew the line at killing. If and when Albert needed dying, they’d take care of it. Nobody else.

___

Albert got away with the crime he’d committed. It was his word against Marla’s. And Albert had five of his kin ready to swear he was with them drinking and playing poker ten miles away when the “alleged” incident occurred. There was a young county attorney who’d dearly wanted to pursue it. He’d been active in voter registration in the seventies and was used to standing up to bigots. But he knew a trial would be a waste of time. Worse, it would put the Tubbs family in even more agony than they’d already been through.

For the first six months or so after the incident, Calvin and I didn’t talk about it much. It was too fresh, too painful. We steered clear of it by focusing on school and football and then basketball. But as spring started to take hold of Appalachia, something changed. Maybe it was the longer days or the fragrances of stuff popping out of the ground or the other magic of early spring in the mountains. Maybe it was simply the passage of time. Anyway, after our first day of baseball practice, Calvin and I were playing a little pepper as the other guys traipsed off our rutted diamond. I had the bat, Calvin had the glove. He snagged a ball I didn’t think a major-league shortstop could get. Then he stood and held onto the ball.

“What?”

“I’m ready to talk about Albert Driscoll.” I put the bat on my shoulder and nodded.

“I can’t let this go.”

“Whadya want to do?”

“Don’t know. Probably shouldn’t even be talking to you about it.”

“Yeah, you should.”

“Could get awful messy.”

“Calvin, it’s already messy.”

“Yeah.” Then we traipsed off the diamond ourselves.

Big Time is the closest thing we have to a crime boss in our county. He’s black, about twenty years older than me and Calvin. He and his family have been in these parts since long before the end of slavery. His “bidness” interests are many and varied. Some legitimate, some not, and some a combination of the two. His unofficial headquarters are in the back of a hardware store in a seedy area of Warsaw, the county seat.

Big Time’s real name is Hezekiah Ezekial Braxton, but nobody ever calls him anything but Big Time. He is not a small man. Estimates of 400 to 450 pounds seem conservative. When you talk to him in his office, he sits on a little chair that was called a typing stool back when there were still such things as typists and typewriters. I remember being puzzled the first time I’d seen him perched on it. Then it dawned on me. Unlike clothes, office furniture doesn’t come in big ‘n tall. Listening to that thing squeak and groan made me think the manufacturer deserved an award for selling such a sturdy and resilient product.

When Calvin and I sat down with Big Time after Marla’s rape, he wasn’t as big as he is today. Maybe about 250. And he didn’t have an office. We met up him with near a wood shed on his property on a gorgeous Saturday morning in late March. Calvin and I had been up for hours. Big Time looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. With his raspy voice and swollen eyes and the smell of bourbon wafting off him, safe to say his hangover wasn’t gonna leave any time soon. Each of us had turned over an un-split section of oak to use as a chair.

“Appreciate you taking some time with us, Big Time,” Calvin said.

“Your Uncle Tilden said you’d be dropping by. What’s on your mind, Calvin?”

“Uh … this is …” He pinched the bridge of his nose, slowly shook his head and looked skyward for several seconds.

“This about Marla?” Calvin just nodded.

“Take your time, son. We ain’t in a hurry here.” The raspiness in his voice had melted away.

“Albert Driscoll,” I said. “We need to do something about him, Big Time.”

“Two of you in this together?”

“Just us,” Calvin said.

“You want it done for you or you wanta take care of it yourselves?”

“Only help we want, Big Time, is advice. And then we never had this conversation.”

“Be better all around if I did this for you.”

“Nope.”

He pursed his lips and nodded and said, “Okay.”

Big Time gave us some advice, but he also gave us the use of an old, beat-up pickup.

“Couple things,” he said. “One, neither one of you got a legal license to drive, am I right?”

“No,” I said. “We’re both fourteen and can’t take the test for almost two years.”

“But you both know how to drive pretty good?” We nodded that we did.

“I’ll get you both fake licenses. And the plates on the truck’ll be fake, too. Most likely, they’ll fool a hick cop — one that don’t know ya. But the staties? They’re another matter. Don’t  get stopped by a statie. Fact, don’t get stopped at all.”

Until school got out in June, Calvin and I didn’t have much chance to use the truck. But we did get free in the middle of a Saturday afternoon in April. We’d decided I should do most of the driving. If we did get stopped, be easier for me than him to bullshit a cop. Maybe.

We knew Albert Driscoll liked to go to this one honky-tonk called Jimmy’s just off I-40.  Back then (a little less so now) those kinds of places were sprinkled all over the South. Customers tended to be bikers, truckers, hookers, guys that worked with their hands, and single women that could handle a pool cue — either to whip your ass at nine ball or whack you in the mouth if you weren’t acting like a gentlemen.

Jimmy’s did a good business just about any night of the week. But Saturday night was crazy. The dirt parking lot covered at least three acres. And it was chock full of pick-ups and semis and motorcycles and dented up shit heaps that woudn’t have got a dime in trade. In fact, except for the bikers, nobody ever brought a good looking vehicle to Jimmy’s. Too much chance it’d get stolen or damaged. I think the bikers sort of hoped somebody would try to run over or jack their Harleys. Give ‘em a chance to shoot somebody.

We drove by the parking lot about five or so and saw Albert’s ’62 Ford truck sitting maybe a 100 feet from the entrance to the place.

“What do we do?” Calvin asked.

“One thing for sure. We can’t go in there. Besides the fact that folks with your complexion are not particularly welcome in the establishment, we’re kids and they’d chase us out. Plus, Albert might recognize us.”

“Be too drunk for that, probably. But I agree. Let’s come back after dark. See what we can see.”

By seven or so it was dark enough so we could park on the periphery of the lot and not get noticed. There were at least 50 other trucks pretty much like Big Time’s scattered here and there.

“Your momma buy the story ‘bout you stayin’ at our place?”

“Think so. How about Marla? She think you stayin’ with me?”

“Probably not. But she worries lot more about Daddy than she does about me.”

“Damn.”

“I know.”

We’d been there maybe twenty minutes when off to our right we saw this huge guy with a beard and wearing a baseball cap that said “Don’t fuck with me!” He was hauling himself off a big ass bike. Soon as he dismounted, the bike tumbled to the ground. As it rocked back and forth in the mud on its roll bars, the guy limped, but real fast, towards the front door.

“This should be good,” Calvin whispered through a low chuckle.

“Maybe we should take off.”

“Fuck no. Wanta see how this comes out.”

For two minutes or so nothing happened. Then the front door flew open and whacked the outside wall. Before the spring could whip the door back to its frame, this skinny little dude came tearing out and started running for the woods.  Before the door could close, the big guy emerged and punched it so hard the top hinge came off. Now the door was slowly bouncing up and down with the force of its spring as it pivoted on the lower hinge. Sounded like a donkey “hee-hawing.”

“That’s right! Run you little cocksucker!” cried the big guy as he tried to give chase and get off a couple blasts with a sawed off shot gun.

After one of the blasts took out the windshield of a pickup parked not too far from ours, I said, “Calvin, I don’t give a shit. We’re outa here.”

Before I could turn the key, he grabbed my right wrist. “Thirty more seconds.”

We heard her before we saw her. Size wise she was about half way between the big guy and the little guy. With her massive breasts flopping up and down with every stride, she shouted, “Harold, please, baby, don’t kill him. He means nothing to me. You’re the only man I’ve ever truly loved.”

Calvin was laughing so hard he couldn’t hold onto my wrist anymore. “Wasn’t that worth the wait?”   

“Shit, yeah, Calvin. Jeepers, I can’t wait to come back next weekend.”

We might have heard another shotgun blast as we roared out of the parking lot.

After the “lovers’ triangle” incident Calvin and I concluded our safety outweighed the entertainment factor at Jimmy’s: We needed another venue for our surveillance of Albert. We figured Big Time’s truck was still a good idea because it allowed us rapid movement and good concealment.

A few days later we were ambling back to the locker room after baseball practice. “If we follow him around when he’s in his pickup,” I said, “good chance he’ll spot us or just lose us all together.”     

“Yeah … maybe we follow him when he’s driving the big rig? Be a lot harder for him to see us when he’s in it, and no way he’s gonna lose us.”

“Okay. But he doesn’t drive it that much, does he?”

“Not sure. We’ll find out. Remember the most important thing Big Time told us?”

“Remind me.”

“Patience.”

Calvin nodded as we walked into the locker room and a wet towel smacked him full in the face. The ensuing wrestling match made us forget all about Albert Driscoll.

Can’t remember how we found out, but Albert made most of his runs in the big Peterbilt out of one of three junkyards his family owned. The runs were all pretty short. Usually fifty miles or less. Looking back on it, we think he was dropping off cannibalized parts to auto repair shops whose owners didn’t question where the distributors, transmissions, tires, and such had come from.

Whenever we got the chance to sneak off in Big Time’s truck, we’d pick a junkyard where we could scope the place out with a pair of old binoculars.

“Got him,” said Calvin.

“I can see him good myself.” Albert had just trudged out of a rust stained corrugated structure called a Quonset hut. It had a semicircular roof and ran maybe a hundred and fifty feet long. A throwback to World War Two days. The hut was where the Driscolls stored the smaller parts that couldn’t withstand inclemency. Tires, hub caps, old chassis and other big stuff were left out in the open and surrounded by a ten foot high chain link fence with razor sharp concertina wire on top. And there was always a mean ass Rottweiler, Doberman, or German Sheppard prowling around inside the fence to rip into anybody stupid enough to break through the fence.

“He just climbed into the rig. Give him a few minutes to pull out and get down the road some. We’ll catch up and stay with him for a bit.”

After about a minute we could hear his engine rumble as coal black smoke shot out of the exhaust stack sticking up from the cab.

“Man, that’s some nasty shit.”

“Sure is. Momma and Daddy are always carrying on about how that new government agency … what do they call it?”

“Environmental Protection something?”

“Yeah. The EPA. They’re always saying the EPA should be controlling pollution like that. Otherwise we’re gonna ruin the planet.”

“I agree with ‘em. Okay, he’s moving.”

The next hour I would not describe as wildly exciting. On the interstates big rigs can build up a head of steam and really roll. But on side roads in our part of the state, it’s not like that. These things labor up steep grades at twenty-five miles per hour for five or ten minutes, plunge down a hill at breakneck speed for maybe thirty seconds and then start the whole process again. Must be hell on the driver. For a couple of itchy-pansed teenagers following one? “Boring” doesn’t describe it.

After a half hour of this, I said, “I’m about ready to pack it in or let you drive. This sucks.”

“It does. Let’s stay after it a while longer. If nothing shakes, we’ll call it a day.”

Then we saw Albert’s brake lights come on for a stop sign. After a slow right turn he poked down the road towards a huge truck stop with a Texaco sign towering above it. As he pulled in and parked I said, “Fantastic. Now we gotta wait for his redneck ass to go in take and piss and get a bear claw and a coke?”

“Maybe I should drive.”

“Okay. I’ll settle down.”

“Thank you.”

After about twenty minutes of sitting well back from Albert’s truck where we could see both it and the entrance to the building, Calvin said, “Fuck it. Let’s go home.” Just then Albert came around the front of the cab and climbed up into it.

“Now where in the hell did he come from?” I said.

“I can’t tell you that. But I thought he looked kind of … happy?”

“Yeah, he did.”

A day or two later we were back to sitting on stumps and chatting with Big Time.

“Okay, I think you’re on to something with old Albert.”

“And that would be?” asked Calvin.

“If it’s what I think it is, not gonna be pretty. Y’all need to be prepared for that. And especially, you need to be careful. Let me go get what I’m gonna loan out to you and then we can figure out how to do this thing.”

As Big Time toddled back to his house, I asked, “You got any idea what he’s talking about?”

“Nope. But he’s got me curious.”

Couple days later we were back at the same truck stop. After Albert had parked his rig, we waited for him to go through the front door. Then we took off at a trot up onto the hill behind the building and into some dense woods.

“Big Time said the place was straight back, maybe two hundred yards?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we gotta keep off the path and stay low and be real quiet.”

“There he is, right on the path. He’s looking all around.”“Good. Nice and slow. And get ready to yank it out of the case. We may just have a second or two to get what we need.”

“All right.”

Crouching as low as we could, we tried to stay even with Albert as he sauntered up the path to a circular clearing some 100 feet wide. In the circle were about ten men of varying sizes and ages standing around smoking and drinking coffee or sucking on bottles of whiskey. Some wore the trucker uniform of vests, jeans, baseball caps, and heavy boots. Two or three had sports jackets and ties on, like maybe they were real estate agents or sales guys who could make their own schedules.

Albert strode right over to one of the guys with a sport jacket and gave him a little wave and a smile. Then the two of them paced off single file into some thick brush.

“Go,” I said in a harsh whisper. After about a minute it was clear that Albert and the other guy had stopped. We could hear them talking softly, but we couldn’t see them.

“We gotta circle around until we can get a clear shot,” Calvin said. “Otherwise this ain’t gonna work.” Finally we got to where we had a pretty good view of them. Calvin took Big Time’s camera out of its case, dropped to one knee and started snapping off pictures.

“You got all you need, Calvin. Let’s buggy.” A second later we were crashing off away from Albert and his friend and the circle of men, not worrying about making noise. I was about three feet behind Albert when I felt my left foot catch on something. Then I was flying through the air for a good ten feet. I blacked out for a second and came to, lying flat on my stomach spitting out mud and rotting oak leaves.

Before I was done with the spitting, he yanked me up by my hair and the back of my shirt. His breath stunk of beer and cigarettes. He had some weird, Yankee accent and his voice sounded like it was funneling out of the bottom of an oil drum. His lips were pressed up against my left ear: “What the fuck you doing, you little nigger?”

Before I could say anything I heard a thwacking sound like a butcher’s mallet hitting a side of beef. Then the man howled with pain and released his grasp. I stumbled around a bit waiting for my hearing to come back. When I turned around the man was lying as flat as I’d been. Calvin was kneeling next to him with his hand gripping the man’s greasy hair and repeatedly pounding his face into the mud.

Then he stopped and held the man’s head a few inches above the mud. “Have I got your attention, you fat piece of shit?”

“I’m gonna kill both you little niggers.”

“I was mistaken. You ain’t ready to listen to me.” Then Calvin continued his pounding until the man grunted something I couldn’t understand and held up a hand showing he’d had enough.

“Good. Now we can chat. Actually, I’ll do the chatting and you just gotta lie there and take in what I say. You cool with that?”A slight nod from the man.

“Here’s the deal. Since you’re not from around here, I need to explain something to you. I’m a nigger. My friend here? He’s white. White people down here don’t like to be called niggers. Gets ‘em upset. That’s why I’m acting as sort of a peaceful intermediary here between you and him.” Then he gave the guy one last pound into the mud and got up and started brushing himself off. With a little wave and said, “Y’all come back now, hear.”

After Big Time had had the pictures developed and printed on eight by ten glossies, we got together one more time on the stumps. As he handed half the prints to Calvin and half to me, he said, “I told you these wouldn’t be pretty.”

“Damn, Big Time,” said Calvin. “That’s one fine camera you loaned us. Maybe we don’t have proof Albert’s a rapist, but we damn sure got proof he’s a pervert. Feel like plastering these sumbitches all over the county. I did that, I might not want to kill him so much.”

“You don’t want to be plastering these things anywhere, Calvin.”

“No?”

“Nope.”

“Then why’d we go to the trouble of taking ‘em in the first place?”

“Insurance.”

“I’m not with you.”

“Lookahere. You may never need to show these things to anybody but Jake and me. On the other hand, someday … could be years from now … you might want to show ‘em to somebody to make a point. But for now? Just keep ‘em in a safe place.”

“That’s gonna be hard to do.”

“You and ‘hard to do’ get along pretty good, Calvin.”

Two years after the “photo shoot” Calvin and I were playing in a baseball game in early May. The game was tied in the top of the ninth with one out. I was playing shortstop and Calvin was in center field. They had a guy on first with good wheels and Tommy Crawford, our pitcher, was doing his best to hold him as close to the bag as he could. When the count got to 3-2, the kid bolted towards second just after Tommy finished his stretch. Our catcher had a rifle arm, but by the time I caught the throw and tagged the kid, his foot had been on the base for a full second. The next two guys flied out. We came up in the bottom of the ninth to try to put the thing away. No go. Now it was the bottom of the eleventh.

Our first guy had just struck out and was walking back to the bench. I yelled something to him about not worrying about it when Big Time appeared out of nowhere. Calvin was sitting on the bench next to me. Big Time bent over and whispered in his ear. Then Big Time strode over and whispered something to the coach. By that time Calvin was up off the bench and stumbling away from the field. As I started to go after him, the coach yelled, “Jake, you’re on deck.” Big Time blocked my way and said just, “Albert Driscoll just died in a car crash.”

And then there was a fast ball coming at me high and inside. It stopped and just sat there like it was in an oversized sports photo. I started to chuckle and thought, “Come on. This shit doesn’t really happen, does it?”

They tell me that as I crossed home plate, I started shoving everybody out of the way and they were getting pissed at me. I guess so. All I remember is finding Calvin on the edge of the woods down on his knees sobbing. I got down with him and hugged his head and said, “I hope he suffered. I hope the motherfucker suffered a whole goddam lot.”