Chapter Thirteen
“You know, part of selling something is actually having the thing for sale,” Loki said as Hoodoo drew even with the booth. “Like where people can actually see it.”
Hoodoo glanced at the booth and saw nothing out of place. The banners hung where he’d left them. The fender and gas tank lay were they could be examined. In fact, everything looked pretty much the same as it had looked the day before. He gave Mad-dog a quizzical look.
Mad-dog shook his head. “We put the stuff back up in the booth, big guy, but ah… you’re the artist. You are what we’re selling. If you’re not here, there’s nothing to sell.”
“Dude!” Val said from the lawn chair where she was putting a great deal of attention into painting her nails black and orange. “It’s afternoon, where the hell were you?” She lifted her hand to examine the effect and frowned a little.
Even their ribbing couldn’t put Hoodoo out of his good mood right now. He nodded good-naturedly, hands up in mock-surrender. “Alright, alright, I’m back, okay? You all run and have fun, enjoy yourselves, I got this.” He sat down on the chair. It tipped slightly under his weight.
Val shook her head and looked at the others for help. Each of them hid smiles and looked pointedly at any direction but hers. Or Hoodoo’s.
“What?” Val demanded, capping her nail polish sitting back. “What am I missing?”
“I think things went very well for the boss-man here,” Andy said, pointing a thumb in Hoodoo’s direction.
“I think it went well for his lady, too,” Danny added with an exaggerated wink.
Val turned to Hoodoo. “I was sitting here in your booth and you were getting laid?” she yelled. “How is that fair?” She crossed her arms over her chest, forgetting her wet nail polish and glared at him like it was his fault when she realized what she’d done.
“You wanna meet my friend later?” Hoodoo asked. Val quit fussing at her nails to look up at him. “Ok, we’re even.”
“Deal.”
Loki wasn’t paying attention to the chatter. His focus was down the road coming into town. The stream of bikes had started up again as soon as dawn and hangovers allowed and it really blended all together. But something caught his eye and he stiffened as he watched.
“Hey, Hoodoo!” he called and frantically waved the giant over to look. Set in the middle of the oncoming stream where a half dozen bikes whose riders were stern-faced and solemn. It was what set them apart from the revelers who whistled and called to each other, social and energetic and so utterly normal for a gathering like this.
Looks that grim meant someone was up to no good. Hoodoo watched as other bikers started clearing away, giving the group some room.
The other thing that separated them from the rest was the fact they seemed to be making a straight line to Hoodoo’s booth.
“Customers?” Hoodoo said, not believing it for a moment.
“No,” Loki said with a nod toward the leader. “That’s the Bandit I saw your lady love splitting a meal with.”
“That’s her cousin?” Hoodoo said, squinting against the sun. “Which one?”
“The one with the middle finger sewn on his vest.”
“Classy.”
Eight of the riders broke off the stream and pulled up as close to Hoodoo’s booth as they could get. Each one wore the colors of The Bandits and they swaggered to the booth, looking critically at the items on display.
“Heh,” one of them laughed and pointed to Val. “How much for that little trinket? She’d look good hanging from my neck.” His cronies laughed. Val flipped him off and Mad-dog held up a restraining hand, not so much for her protection but theirs.
“Which of you pissants is the Cajun?” Joey asked. He glanced at Mad-dog and the others, but when Hoodoo stepped out of the shadows, the man’s eyes grew wider. He backed up a step involuntarily and caught himself before straightening up, and squaring his shoulders like a man about to set into the boxing ring.
Hoodoo sighed. He knew that little dance step. A little man reacts to the size of him and then feels like he has to bluster and pose to gain back the machismo that he feels he lost. Little men like that cannot be reasoned with.
“What you need?” Hoodoo ground out through clenched teeth.
“You stay the fuck away from her. You get me?” Joey pointed his finger in Hoodoo’s face. It lost a little of the emphasis that he had to gesture almost entirely up.
“What are you talking about?” Hoodoo stretched and flexed his fingers, shaking out his hands a little. “Piss off.”
The little man, if anything, drew himself up higher. The man had to be just about standing on his tiptoes by this point. “I said, you stay away from my cousin. I don’t want you sniffing around her! You got nothing to say about anything, you get me? She don’t take orders from you! SO FUCK OFF!”
“Tracy don’t take orders from no one,” Hoodoo said, with an involuntary laugh. His accent grew thicker and heavier when he became angry and right now, he was barely understandable. “No me, nor you, and thinkin’ ‘special no you.”
Joey took a deep breath and spat in Hoodoo’s face.
There was a pause where the world stopped around them. At was as if the entire rally held their breath and then as one moved back to give him room. Because after all, that was all that was needed. The booth exploded in violence. Hoodoo’s fist came across like a vertical jackhammer, this time he wasn’t holding back. This wasn’t exercise before a beer run, this was a shot in anger… this was a shot in rage. He connected to Joey’s chin and the smaller man spun and lifted off the ground before landing in the dirt. Someone jumped on Hoodoo, but he threw the man off and into the parked motorcycles of The Bandits.
Mad-dog, not to be outdone, growled and leapt the table in front of the booth and blocked a blow by another Bandit and drove his fist into the man’s solar plexus.
The twins and Loki looked at each other, and as one, stepped into the fray, each choosing an opponent and Val disappeared. Whereas Mad-dog leapt the table, she leapt on the table and flew from there, landing a vicious flying kick to the tip of a Bandit’s nose. He never saw it coming.
She landed on her feet in front of the Bandit who was untangling himself from the bikes. He reached behind his back and Val yelled “GUN” and propelled herself back into the air, stopping her ascent by laying her steel-toed boot into the man’s groin. He went down coughing blood and his pistol flew free, landing under the mass of motorcycles.
Mad-dog lived up to his name. His fists pummeled the man so fast and so hard, he never had a chance to defend himself. His opponent went down writhing in the dirt, blood coming from a split lip and a broken nose.
Hoodoo spared a quick glance at Andy and Danny, as they weren’t the best at brawling. His worry was for nothing, as they were taking as good as they got, each of them racking up superficial injuries but still fighting. Loki grabbed a walking stick from somewhere, possibly a nearby booth and was making proper use of it. He twirled it like a baton, but used it like a deadly club, alternating between the wide strike along the edge and using it like a pool cue, ramming the end into his victims with telling precision. Hoodoo had to duck once to keep from getting clobbered, but these things happened in fights and given he’d just taken a step back to give himself room for more of a running start, it was entirely his fault.
He bulldozed two of them, neither of which stayed down. Still, he managed to keep them busy. Strikingly fast for a man of his size was not the same thing as fast. The other two got in some good hits, but for the most part Hoodoo grunted and took the blow and absorbed the hit.
Val came behind the man fighting the twins and dropped to one knee, throwing her weight behind a fist that pin-pointed the man’s appendix. He cried out and grabbed the injury as Danny and Andy hit him simultaneously, putting him out.
By this point, the crowd had gotten involved in cheers and bets. The roar from the crowd as each Bandit went down was deafening.
Which meant no one should have heard her at all. But somehow they all did.
“WHAT THE HELL?” A woman’s voice split the chaos of the fight and the cat-calls of the crowd. Sirens came closer, but the crowd was too heavy for police cars. Hoodoo caught a glimpse of uniforms when he looked up, the cops trying to push through on foot.
Hoodoo held Joey by his collar in his massive left hand and his right hand was poised to come crashing down on Joey’s face. Hoodoo felt the blood in his eyes and roared like an angry god.
He was vaguely aware of the other opponent diving for the gun under the motorcycles.
The screaming woman was scarier than all of it.
Hoodoo looked up and saw Tracy, eyes flashing and arms on her hips glaring at him. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” she demanded.
Val yelled and kicked the face of the man reaching for the pistol, causing him to arch and then fall like so much wet cement.
Tracy didn’t see that. Tracy didn’t see Val behind her, or see how close she came to being shot in the back. All she saw was Hoodoo at his worst. He could feel the rage and hate pulsing off of him, could see the blood in his eye, feel the heat of his face and the snarl of bared teeth.
Joey looked up at Hoodoo and said in a weak and tearful voice, “I was only concerned for her safety, I just wanted to ask his…intentions!”
“Put. Him. Down.” Tracy’s voice let Hoodoo know this was not open to debate. Teeth gritted, Hoodoo glared at Joey who was making a show of repentance and innocence. “I said, Put. Him. Down!”
Hoodoo released his left hand— the right wouldn’t unclench—but Joey slipped free and crawled away, coming up behind Tracy with a smug smile for Hoodoo when he got behind her.
The police showed up about then and, weapons drawn, demanded that Hoodoo and the Gilas surrender. Hoodoo looked around at the products hanging from the booth and wondered if any of it was still going to be there once he returned.
Mad-dog was in cuffs, as were the twins and Val, although she was cursing a blue streak under her breath, mostly about having wrecked her nails. Hoodoo spotted Loki in the crowd. He’d taken off his jacket and was using the stick as a cane, leaning heavily on it and walking with a pronounced limp. The people around him grinned and moved between him and the police. Loki pressed a finger to the side of his thumb and winked.
Hoodoo turned back to Tracy. She looked like she was trying hard to not cry or scream or both. Without another word, she turned on her heel and stalked off.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up!” Joey wailed to the policeman who was helping him to stand. “It could have been a lot worse! They’re CRAZY!”
Hoodoo closed his eyes and tried to resign himself to a long and unproductive day.
Thank God Momma Leona wasn’t there. It was the only bright spot in his day.