The Right Side of Wrong Read online

  People clapped and the men started a different song, but it sounded the same. “Why are they singing the same one again?”

  “It’s different, Top.” Uncle Cody stopped. “The songs sound alike when you don’t know the words, but I doubt they’ll sing the same ones twice, unless there’s a request, which reminds me, there are important rules that you need to remember.”

  For the next five minutes he explained how powwows worked, and what we were allowed to do. There were a lot of don’ts.

  “We’re not settin’ anywhere, so that’ll keep you two from getting in trouble with the older folks who can’t stand up for long. We’ll stay back here, but don’t get any closer than that ring of benches, and as a matter of fact, if y’all do find yourselves away from me, ask permission if you can stand behind anyone or anything.”

  Half a dozen little kids chased each other past us. Uncle Cody reached out and ran his fingers through one little girl’s hair as she dodged around him. “When anyone stands for songs, you stand too.”

  “Like the national anthem?” Pepper’s head was about to spin off, because she kept trying to take in everything at the same time.

  “Kinda. There are Prayer Songs and Memorial Songs we stand for, out of respect.”

  Frying foods, wood smoke, and cigarettes mixed with a sweet smell of boiling caramel candy gave a carnival feeling to the dry air. I soon learned they called it Burnt Sugar.

  Cub scouts were everywhere, building little campfires that extended in all directions. Grownups were putting up tents for the night. There were even authentic teepees.

  My nerves jangled in excitement. Uncle Cody and Norma Faye walked slow, holding hands. He was dressed in a blue shirt and khakis with his .45 on his hip. She wore jeans and a short sleeved shirt. I noticed, because women back then usually wore dresses.

  Norma Faye rubbed the back of my head. “Y’all look like we’re at the circus.”

  Pepper was almost dancing, and it was the first time since the Incident down by the Rock Hole that she really and truly acted like her old self. “I’ve never seen anything like this!”

  I tugged on Uncle Cody’s arm, taking his attention from the crowd. “I can’t believe Miss Becky said it was all right for us to come out here. This doesn’t seem very religious, from the way she believes.”

  He and Norma Faye exchanged glances. “Well, y’all know how she is about church, but that little woman knows a lot more than we give her credit for. I think she wanted y’all to understand where we come from and how our people are.”

  Pepper pointed. “Why are they putting money in front of that guy there?”

  “It’s a sign of respect. They’re honoring him for some reason…”

  Cody’s explanation was cut off when a body flashed out of the crowd and slammed into me.

  My first thought was Cale Westlake was here and wanted to finish the fight!

  Cale tried to beat me up nearly a year earlier, not long after I moved to Center Springs. He was a couple of years older than me, and had it in his head that Pepper was supposed to be his girlfriend. When we got crossways at a dance, he and some of his toadies waylaid me out behind the school gym.

  I couldn’t believe my bad luck in running into him in Oklahoma. I braced my feet and twisted, trying to throw him off before his buddies showed up and started trying to beat the snot out of me. I heard Pepper screech, and then she ran into us, knocking me off balance and nearly throwing me to the ground. Hair flew in my face, and I butted heads with someone.

  In the back of my mind, I wondered why Uncle Cody hadn’t stepped in to help, but I figured he was letting me and Pepper handle our own battles.

  And then I heard him laughing.

  Pepper shrieked. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Pepper!” Norma Faye scolded. “Watch your language.”

  I finally got free and ran back a couple of steps to get some space. My fist was doubled up when I spun around to find a target, but all I saw was Pepper hugging a girl. Behind them, Uncle Cody and Norma Faye stood by with their arms around each other, beaming while Pepper rassled with her right there in front of everyone.

  The people walking around us weren’t upset over two kids fighting. They passed with big smiles on their faces.

  Something was wrong with the fight, because Pepper wasn’t mad, and the person she had her arms around wasn’t trying to hurt her. Then the other girl let go, pulled her long black hair out of her eyes, and held up her right hand toward me with a big grin.

  “How!”

  “Mark!” This time it was me who charged with tears in my eyes, and I wrapped my arms around my best friend in a big bear hug.

  ***

  Ten minutes later Uncle Cody handed each of us an ear of roasted corn and we found a place to stand out of the way. Norma Faye sipped a Dr Pepper through a paper straw standing in the neck of the bottle. “What have you been up to?”

  We hadn’t heard from him in months and it bothered Pepper most of all, because she had a crush on him.

  Mark’s grin split his face from ear to ear. “Not much. Missing y’all mostly.”

  He and Pepper standing so close their shoulders brushed. It should have bothered me, but he’d become my best friend in the short time we’d known each other. Uncle Cody took him for a haircut when he lived with us, but in the months since, it had grown back to his shoulders, thick and black.

  “Where you living, son?”

  “Still with my aunt and uncle, up near Frogtown. They’re somewhere hereabouts.”

  “I didn’t think there was anything left of Frogtown these days.”

  “There ain’t. We ain’t got no store or nothin’. Just a few shacks and that’s all.” Mark was much thinner than when he lived with us, and he was wearing clothes a size too large.

  Uncle Cody chewed his bottom lip. “You’ve lost weight.”

  Mark worked his way down the ear of corn from one end to the other like a typewriter. He chewed for a moment. “They don’t have much money, so we eat mostly beans and a few ‘taters every now and then.”

  Uncle Cody studied him for a long moment, and I knew he didn’t like what he saw. Mark was hungry, and we didn’t talk too much until the three of us had eaten two ears apiece, gritty with salt and dripping with butter. Norma Faye couldn’t keep her hands off of him, and I knew she felt bad that he was so skinny.

  By that time, the drum went quiet and a couple of the singers stood up and left. Not all were longhaired Indians. Some were white folks like us. Others quickly took their places and the beat started up again. A singer threw his head back and the air was filled with a sound from a time long past. Several people, both white and Indian, moved up to dance with small steps in a slow circle around the drummers and the fire.

  Mark shuffled his feet to the beat. “I heard ’bout what happened to y’all.”

  Pepper stiffened for a moment, and then tilted her head. “We’re all right.”

  I knew she felt uncomfortable, so I changed the direction of the conversation. “I got a puppy after you left. We named him Hootie, and he helped save us.”

  “A pup did?”

  “He was half growed then, and he ain’t much puppy anymore.” While Uncle Cody talked, he kept an eye on the crowd, and I knew he was looking for something. “I do believe he saved them a second time down on the river in the fall.”

  “Sounds like y’all been busy.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it.” Uncle Cody took Norma Faye’s hand and led her toward the dancers. “Come on kids, let’s go stand over there so we can watch everything and talk without bothering anybody or getting in the way.”

  We threaded our way through the crowd. Pepper held Mark’s hand behind Uncle Cody and Norma Faye, like a miniature version of grown-ups. We stopped beside a group of Indian men building another small fire.

  I’d never
seen Indians make fire, so I was interested. I expected them to get a stout limb and a bow saw to start a blaze with friction, but I was disappointed when a big bellied man unscrewed the lid from a jar of Vaseline and dipped a glop out with a big piece of raw cotton. He laid it on the ground and stuck a match to the cotton. When the Vaseline caught, he piled on small sticks until it burned bright.

  The man gave me a big wink. “Old Indian trick. We don’t use flint and steel anymore. We learned what was easiest.”

  Embarrassed that he knew what I was thinking, I went back to Mark and Pepper. For the next hour, we talked and caught up while Uncle Cody and Norma Faye stood nearby, visiting with different people.

  One of them was the Hugo sheriff, Clayton Matthews, who’d been on the job less than a year. They say he wore a badge up around Tulsa somewhere, before he beat out Sheriff Post for the Hugo job. I believed he won the election because he looked more like an Indian cowboy than a sheriff. I moved closer to hear them talk.

  Mark and Pepper didn’t care. They wanted to whisper to each other. It was like he’d never left, but I knew she’d fall apart when we went home and realized he’d be gone from us again for a long time.

  “I haven’t come across anybody who looks like that, Cody.” Sheriff Matthews stood beside him and they talked without hardly looking at one another. “You say he’s a big man, all muscled up?”

  “That’s what Ned said. Built like John Washington, only white. There was three others with him in the Sportsman, and we think they might be involved in at least one killin’ on our side of the river.”

  The obvious question hung out there until the sheriff couldn’t stand it anymore. “You think it was them shot at you?”

  Uncle Cody shrugged, as if it wasn’t a big deal. “Maybe. I didn’t get a look at anyone because it was too dark, and then I was busy trying to rein in Norma Faye’s car.”

  “What makes you think they’re here?”

  “Didn’t say they was. I said I figured they might be somewhere’s close by, since they hang out at my place a lot, or did while I was in the hospital. I don’t want to try and arrest anybody. I only want to visit with them for a little bit, and try to jolt ’em a little.”

  Matthews grinned. “You’re a-lyin’. The minute you get the chance at ’em you’ll haul ’em to jail.”

  “Maybe, but not from this side of the river. I want to get my hands on them on our side.”

  Norma Faye spoke up for the first time. “Say again what he looked like?”

  “Ned says muscled up, flattop, rolls his sleeves of tight cowboy shirts as high as he can, wears shades inside and out.”

  “Like him?” She jerked her chin toward a big man sitting on the tailgate of a dark green company truck.

  It was hard to make him out in the light, but the guy was as big as Mr. John. He also made me uncomfortable, even from that distance. I was always scared of men who were greasy and tough, with their slicked-back hair or flat tops, and cigarettes hanging from their lips.

  The man on the tailgate was even scarier, because he also wore a stained bandage on his cheek that glowed in the lights.

  It didn’t faze Uncle Cody. He suddenly set his jaw and left us standing there. Sheriff Matthews quickly tagged along. Norma Faye held us back. “Y’all, we need to stay right here.”

  “I want to see,” Pepper complained.

  “Oh, you’ll see all right.” Norma Faye took a deep, shuddering breath and shook her head. “I ‘magine you’re fixin’ to see more than you want to.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Based on the description, Cody instantly recognized the man in the harsh floods as the one who threatened Ned in the Sportsman. Deep inside, he also instinctively knew it was the man behind the wheel of the car that had ambushed him. His mind shifted into overdrive. The bandage covering his cheek surely hid a wound resulting from a struggle with Ben junior. There was no logic to the knowledge, nothing but a dead-solid gut feeling that felt right.

  He’d finally learned to trust his instincts.

  Locking in on the huge figure, he plowed through the crowd in a straight line toward the truck. Milling residents and visitors quickly moved out of his way when they saw the look in the Texas constable’s eyes. Cody unsnapped the strap over his pistol. Sheriff Matthews mimicked his actions, praying they wouldn’t get into a gunfight in the middle of so many people.

  The giant caught sight of Cody pushing through the crowd and stiffened. The men he’d been talking to noticed his reaction and backed away like vanishing smoke.

  “What’s your name?” Cody demanded, stopping short and suddenly hypersensitive to the noise, crowd, and music.

  “Whitlatch. What’s yours…oh, wait, I know you. You’re Cody Parker, that constable from Center Springs.”

  “Stand up!”

  Matthews reached out and touched Cody’s arm to calm his rising rage. “Cody, let me.”

  Whitlach placed the palms of his hands on the tailgate, lifted his body, and arrogantly swung his considerable bulk onto the ground with a thud. He squared his feet in an aggressive stance. “Now what do you want me to do, constable?”

  Sheriff Matthews moved in front of Cody. “Whitlatch, I need you to…” He was interrupted when a scuffle broke out not ten feet away. A woman screamed as two work-hardened men grappled over an unknown slight, then the fight became real when one of the slender men punched the other with a meaty crack.

  Blood flew.

  As if attracted by a magnet, a crowd moved in, a living entity that immediately congealed six people deep around the combatants. Instantly the smell of crushed grass rose around them.

  A knife flashed in the floodlights.

  Another scream.

  The crowd roared their approval amidst the country carnival smells of frying foods, cooking sweets, and wood smoke.

  Sheriff Matthews and Cody turned toward the disturbance, Whitlatch momentarily forgotten.

  “Shit!” Realizing what happened, Cody’s head snapped back around, but Whitlatch was already gone. The gathering throng prevented Cody from responding, and when he spun in the sheriff’s direction, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Two entirely different men stepped between Matthews and the onlookers, asking questions as if nothing was going on behind them.

  “What county is this, Sheriff? We’re looking to move to Okla…

  “He’s just kidding. What we really want to know is if they sell beer around here tonight, we’re mighty thirsty.”

  Confused at the bizarre turn of events, Sheriff Matthews momentarily divided his attention between the unnaturally-casual conversation and the crowd around the fight.

  Another roar went up and the crowd pulsed with movement.

  “Move!” Cody charged past the two who resisted for a moment and then stepped meekly aside.

  “You two stay right here!” Matthew shoved the tightly packed gawkers out of the way and pushed his way through to the fight. Bodies rippled like rings in a pond, but when the lawmen broke into the makeshift arena, both fighters were gone.

  “Dammit!” Cody scanned the crowd in frustration. When he tried to locate the two who’d stalled them, he found they had also disappeared.

  The maneuver orchestrated by Whitlatch’s men worked so smoothly it might have been planned.

  Cody was close enough to touch the men who tried to murder him, and they’d slipped away like ghosts.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Half an hour later, Uncle Cody met us over near the popcorn stand. We’d missed most of the action because of the crowd ginning around in front of us.

  Norma Faye stepped forward and took Uncle Cody’s arm. “Was that him?”

  “I think so, but they’re slick. They got away. Matthews wanted to call for help so we could check the cars coming and going, but it’d take twenty minutes before they even got here.
Whitlatch is already long gone.”

  Mark shook his head, eyes twinkling. “You Parkers are something else. You come to a powwow and find people who’re trying to kill you.”

  Uncle Cody put his arm around Norma Faye, still keeping his eye on those around them. “You’re older than your years, Mark Lightfoot. An eighty-year-old man told me the same thing not too long ago.”

  “What do you want to do, Uncle Cody?” I knew Pepper didn’t want to leave Mark, and I wanted to stay for the rest of the powwow. She was afraid he’d take us home and then come back to look for that feller. I didn’t see how that little incident would ruin a perfectly good night.

  “We’re gonna stay right here and have a good time.”

  “Good.” Mark acted like he wanted to be with all of us, but it was easy to tell he was more interested in Pepper. “Cody?”

  “Umm hum?”

  “I know about that feller you went over to talk to.”

  Uncle Cody’s eyes lit up. “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve seen him around. Some of my outlaw kinfolk talk about him at night around the fire. His name is Whitlatch, and he’s got a group moving marijuana up here in Oklahoma from Mexico.”

  The whole night suddenly focused on the five of us. I’m sure there were people around, but we’d moved into a world of our own.

  Uncle Cody knelt on one knee to be eye level with us. “Do tell.”

  “Whitlatch drives different cars they only keep for a week or two, and then sell ’em to buy new ones. That way no one recognizes the cars, most of the time, but he keeps a green fifty-nine Galaxie five hundred that he drives sometimes.”

  Cody rocked back like he’d been hit between the eyes. “I remember! That’s the car I glimpsed that night. Those four headlights had me half blinded, but I know those low rear fins were right there beside me just before I left the highway. How do you know all this?”