Luther's Wars

"You think he's bent."

"What I think doesn't matter worth a shit. I can't prove a goddamn thing."

"Who the fuck is he?"

"Agent Kevin Cooper; IRS, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms division."

"You think the gun was a throw-away?"

"Only matters what I can prove." A long moment of silence passed, then Jeb let a long breath out. "You watch out for that bastard, he knows your name, and he knows you're in town. He's been askin' about you."

"I'll keep my eyes open."

"I have your brother's truck. It's in impound, but I think I can waive the impound fee." Jeb pushed a set of keys across the table, then took a deep breath. "It's been bad the last year and a half or so. Some hunters found David Duey back off Devil's Hollow aways. Beat to death from what the coroner says."

"Dave was no pansy. Big man. Must've been a bunch of 'em."

"I know what you're thinking; I heard rumors you got jumped by the Parkers a few days ago. I don't think it was them. Duey and the Parkers go back a long ways. I'd of heard if they had a fallin' out."

Luther frowned. "Maybe. Some of the worst fights I seen were between people who went back a long ways."

"There are others. Custis Green was shot. Slim Akin's place was burnt out; they got his still and his house. He's gone down south to Arkansas, like most of your kin did 'fore you got drafted."

"I heard 'bout Custis. I don't remember him ever havin' issues with anyone."

"He did knock up that Parker girl, but he was standin' by her and that'd a been a shotgun weddin', not a killing anyhows."

Luther nodded. "That'd make more sense."

"Be careful, Luther. I dunno what the hell is going on, but this is bad. I just can't make any sense of it." The sheriff took in a deep breath. "Sorry about your Mom, she was good people; everybody knows that."

He pushed an envelope over to Luther. "Coroner and fire chief reports. It looks like an accidental fire. A rumor went around that Darryl had a still there that caught fire, but only a damn fool would believe that. Just a chair too close to the fireplace. Musta caught a spark. I'm sorry."

"Teddy Manchin still the fire chief?"

"Yeah. And he asked a really experienced fire chief in Saint Louis to look at it just to be sure. He don't like coincidences."

Luther stared at the envelope. "Thanks."

"Figured it'd be best to give you the reports yourself." He shrugged. "Where are you gonna be staying?"

"Renting a room above Bert's."

"Didn't know they were renting out."

"Mattie Parker asked Sissy to ask her boss if'n it'd be okay."

Jeb looked up at him. "Mattie Parker? One of the Parkers. Helping you?" He leaned over and looked out the window. "I don't see any flyin' pigs..."

Luther shrugged.

"What the Hell is the World coming to?"

******

McCabe Farm. Devil's Hollow, Missouri

******

Luther stood in front of the broken and blackened bones of the farmhouse. A little further back, he could see that Darryl had finished the small cabin they'd been working on. Nothing fancy, just a little saddlebag cabin, two living spaces on either side of a giant stone fireplace.

They'd wanted to give Mom some space of her own, so they'd worked hard to get the saddlebag cabin built, with separate living spaces for Luther and Darryl. They'd even built another outhouse. The original place already had indoor plumbing, so the original outhouse was pretty much pointless, but they'd kept it up anyway. Wouldn't be a proper farmhouse without one.

Pacing around the charcoal-black remains of the old house, Luther stared into the ashes. Fragments of furniture, mostly unrecognizable. Everything else was burnt away, completely gone. He'd never really had much, but what he'd had was in those ashes somewhere.

The fire chief's report said the fire had started with a chair too close to a fireplace. He could believe that; Mom had always caught chill if it wasn't the heat of summer, always sat close to the fire for extra warmth. Then, with the shock of Darryl's death, she'd probably been careless and didn't tamp the fire or move the chair back when she went to bed. From the coroner's report, she'd passed in her bed without even waking up. At least he could be thankful for that.

Luther sat on the edge of the old stone wall and stared at the remnants of the past for a very long time.

He'd be staying above Bert's for a few days.

*****

Three days

*****

Luther watched the movement in his rear-view mirror as he turned the F100 truck onto the highway. Two cars. An unmarked vehicle and a deputy's car, definitely moving together. He'd seen them a while ago, shadowing him.

That was why he'd made a detour by Flora and Irene's.

He made about two more miles before the deputy lit up the lights and pulled him over.

Luther pulled over smoothly; he put his wallet on the dashboard, then put his hands on the wheel, watching in the mirror as a familiar form with a blonde ponytail walked over to him.

"License and registration, please." The blonde deputy kept her face impassive as he carefully handed everything over.

"No problem, officer."

She glanced back behind the truck and nodded.

A tall, slick-looking man in sunglasses and a suit moved up. "Luther McCabe."

"All my life. You must be that revenuer I been hearin' about."

"What are you carrying?" He gestured to the bed of the truck. "What's in the boxes."

"I dunno Mister Revenue Man. Probably all the drinkin', I can't rightly remember."

The agent looked at him for a moment, then pulled the canvas cover off and tossed it on the ground. "What do we have? Ten crates?"

Luther shrugged. "Maybe. Never was all that good at math."

The agent pulled the canvas off and looked over the truck bed. "Gallon jugs..." He stopped abruptly. "Empty."

"Getting' on to fall, time to make cider."

"What's in that wooden box by the tailgate?"

"I don't think you want to open that Mister Revenuer, sir."

"And why would that be?" The agent moved to the back of the truck. The deputy moved to stand by Luther's door.

"Jest a bad idea. You know us hillbillies, we do stupid shit all the time."

The agent reached for the brass latch on the wooden box. "Your truck stinks..."

Luther gave the deputy a wink, then began to roll up his window. A momentary wind shift twisted the breeze, and the deputy's eyes shot open. "Wait..."

The box fell apart almost as if by magic, exposing a small, very agitated, black and white shape. The agent backed away with a confused, incoherent, angry shout.

The deputy sprinted down the road, glancing over her shoulder before finally slowing and cautiously looking over the truck.

Even with the windows rolled up, the smell of the skunk crept inside the truck's cab. The agent was staggering around, wiping at his eyes, cussing up a pure blue streak as the deputy cautiously returned.

Luther cranked his window down an inch. The deputy shook her head, suppressing a grin. "I'm thinking I'd better arrest you. Nothin' can happen to you while you're in custody."

"Gonna take me in on criminal mischief?"

She nodded with a twisted pursed-lips smile. "Criminal mischief. Sounds about right."

*****

"Luther McCabe, time to rise and shine."

"Sheriff." Luther pulled himself up to sit on the jailhouse bunk, grinning.

"Let's go."

"Where to, boss?"

"It seems the prosecutor is not remotely interested in anything involving a skunk, a McCabe, and a damn fool of a revenuer who doesn't have the sense to know that a polite McCabe is up to something. He's probably afraid you'll teach our other guests in the jail to be as big a pain in the ass as you are." Jeb shook his head.

"Really?"

The sheriff looked at him dryly. "Told him that isn't possible; you got to be born to it to be that kind of pain in the ass."

"That agent pissed at me?"

Jeb shoved a paper bag into Luther's hands. "I don't think he'll ever not be pissed at you now. You be damn careful."

"Yeah, that's probably good advice." Luther looked in the bag and saw his wallet, belt, and pocketknife.

"Good. Glad you recognize that."

"I'm not wantin' any shit, Jeb. I just want to be left alone. I'll stay clear of the man."

"You still staying at Bert's??"

"Got to. I'll get the cabin knocked into shape as soon as I can, but it needs some work."

"You need a lift?"

"I'll walk. Been puttin' off a stop I need to make anyways."

*****

Beloved Wife and Mother

Luther studied the inscription carved into the pink granite. She'd always loved the color pink, even if she'd never had a little girl to dress in pink. Just two wild boys; but she'd always, always done the best she could by them, even after her husband died in a one-car accident, burned to black char in his 1940 Ford.

Running 'shine, of course.

"Beloved Son"

Darryl's tombstone was charcoal gray, and the fat cherub on it had a slightly wicked look, a brat of an angel.

Luther gave a half-smile and put the vase of pink roses down by Mom's marker, then poured a bottle of beer over Darryl's grave.

It'd be what each of them would have wanted.

He stood up straight, paused, and slowly walked away.

*****

Luther wandered into Bert's and walked over to a corner table, dropping into a chair near one of the electric fans.

Sissy straightened her apron and walked over. "Hell, it's good to see you back here. What sounds good, Luther?"

"Been a long damn day and night. I'll take a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke."

"I hear tell you spent the night in jail again." A mischievous twinkle lit her eyes.

"Criminal mischief."

"Again? All y'all McCabes..." Sissy shook her head with a soft giggle. "Y'all get charged with that for just bein' in town."

"Pain in the ass revenuer got no sense of humor."

Sissy smiled and rolled her gleefully sparkling eyes. "They never do, do they? I heard tell of it."

Luther shook his head.

Checking her order pad, Sissy gave a crooked half-smile. "Anything else?"

"After I finish my burger, bring me a shot of whiskey every ten minutes until I pass out. After that, bring me another shot every twenty minutes."

Sissy nodded solemnly. "I'll do that."

Twenty minutes later, Luther McCabe took his first shot of whiskey.

*****

Sledgehammer Mission Support Base HEAVY DROP, Republic of Vietnam

"You crazy, Snake." Thiệu, the Chiêu Hồi Kit Carson Scout eyed Corporal Luther "Snake" McCabe with grim amusement.

Staff Sergeant Estrada grinned. "You know it, Thiệu. Snake here is Boo Koo Dinky Dao. Shit. Never met a mutherfucker this crazy."

"Didn't have a choice Sarn't. Right place, right time." Luther glanced down and saw his bootlaces hanging down his boots and knelt to tie them.

"Snake, you're so damn short you got to stand on a nickel to piss on a dime. What do you have, a few weeks?"

"Two weeks, Sarn't."

"Two weeks left on that short-timer stick, you crazy bastard. Two weeks and you go back to the World. So you decide it's a good time to jump a damn company of NVA?"

Corporal McCabe began to rope in his errant boot laces, tweaked up the brim of his tiger stripe pattern boonie cap and grinned, his teeth starkly white against the loam and green camo on his face. "They didn't have a clue we were there, Sarn't. Didn't have a chance.

"Over two hundred fucking Sappers."

Nguyen Thiệu gave a cold hate-filled snarl. "Over two hundred dead mother fuckers. All 312th NVA Main Force Sapper Battalion." Even though he was a North Vietnamese Army defector, his hatred of the NVA was legendary. Rumor had it that his whole family had been tortured to death when his Sapper unit had failed to complete their mission, but nobody was sure if that was true. What was certainly true was that Thiệu didn't leave NVA prisoners alive.

Not that there had been any prisoners this time. Between Luther's claymore mines, the supporting fire of the squad, and the rain of napalm hell that the RTO, "Squelch" Thomas had called in, there'd been no survivors at all. Not even much in the way of remains.

Just a blackened valley full of ashes and charred tree stump tombstones.

Luther started to speak but froze in shock as Thiệu began to decompose suddenly. Pinpricks of red blossoming outward from his chest as he seemed to shatter into a million glacial pieces.

Staff Sergeant Estrada began to simply drift away, slowly expanding into a cloud of fine spray; the fog turned from brown to pink as it grew and thinned, only his boots remained, standing solid and real.

At the same time, the air turned white as it compressed, forcing the water from it in an expanding wave of fog.

The world reset in a stuttering concussive flash.

"Medic! Medic!" The call was hollow and distant...

*****

Luther blinked his eyes open, wincing at the harsh light. Cold. Everything was white. And blurry.

A figure moved above him, then came into focus.

Mattie. Matilda Mae Parker. Sitting on top of a closed toilet seat, staring down at him expressionless. She sighed. "You sobered up yet?"

Luther squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. Things were a bit more in focus, but pain crawled through his eyeballs and coiled around the back of his head. A flashing, broken memory of Mattie holding his arm and half dragging, half guiding him up a set of stairs strobed through his mind. "Yeah. I'm...well, 'sober' may not be the right word, but gettin' kinda close."

She shook her head disdainfully and wordlessly tossed him a wadded-up towel she'd had between her and the wall.

"Why am I in the tub? And where are my clothes?"

"You puked all over yerself. Got it all over me an' Sissy when we hauled your drunk ass up here."

For the first time, Luther realized Mattie was wearing one of his own Army t-shirts. "I suppose that's why I'm all wet."

"Just kinda rinsed you off, an' it was too much work to get you back outta the tub. I shoved a towel under your shoulder to keep you on your side so you wouldn't choke to death if'n you puked again. Wasn't sure that'd work, so I just sat here an' slept sorta leanin' against the wall."

"Why?"

"Because the damn bathroom is too damn small to sit anywhere else."

"No, why did you help me?"

She let a long silence hang in the air, then pulled a hatchet up from beside her. "Because I was plannin' on killin' you."

"That don't make any sense."

"Somebody burned down Ma an' Pa's house, night before last. I thought you'd made a fool of me, but Sissy says you'd been in jail all that night and were stupid drunk downstairs since just after lunch today. No way you coulda done it."

"Thanks." Luther pushed himself to sit upright and winced as a wave of dizziness hit him. "Shit."

Mattie gripped his arm and steadied him. "Let's get you set down in a chair."

With her help, he managed to pull himself to his feet, damn near falling when he tried to cover himself.

Mattie shook her head and touched her bulging stomach with a wry smile. "Like Flora said. You ain't got nothin' I ain't seen before."

She helped him over to a faded easy chair and dropped him into it before turning and walking to his dresser to toss him a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. "You can get yourself dressed. Sissy an' I washed my clothes; they're drying on the sink. I'll change after I eat."

She headed into the kitchenette. "I hope you got some coffee in here."

Luther choked as he fought hard not to laugh as she walked away. All his t-shirts had his name printed on the tail as a laundry mark. He wondered if, in all of creation, a Parker girl had ever before had the label "McCabe" printed across her ass.

She started to turn, and he just managed to keep his face straight. "There's some coffee in the cabinet above the sink, but I don't have a percolator or anything."

"I'll just make camp coffee then. You got to have eggs left; I know Irene gave you a bunch."

"In the icebox."

"I'm having four. Been eatin' like a hog since I got past the mornin' sickness. You want any, or you got your own mornin' sickness?"

"I'll take a couple. Gimme a minute, and I'll help."

Mattie shook her head. "I got it; I know how I like my eggs. You can just live with it."

By the time the dizziness left Luther, Mattie had the eggs done and had poured hot water over the coffee grounds and stirred them. She'd let it set several minutes, then checked the pot one last time again before dropping in the eggshells to settle the grounds.

They sat at the tiny table with the eggs and coffee.

She ate two of her eggs before looking across the table. "Something ain't right here. None o' this makes sense. Been askin' around, and you're pretty much the last McCabe here. All the rest headed to Arkansas after that Ben McCabe died."

"My Uncle Ben was the one holding everyone together here; most of the family was already down there anyway. But my mom didn't want to leave 'cause Dad was buried here. So it was just me an' her and Darryl."

"So who's doing all this?"

"You probably know more than me. Sheriff warned me about the revenue agent, but that's all."

Mattie shrugged and tore into her remaining eggs in a way that made Luther think of a starving wolf. "I'll try an' tell Bobby. He was serious pissed off, but he can't hardly argue if you were in jail."

Luther stretched as he stood up and put the plates in the sink. "Gotta get some socks on."

He walked over to the bed, trying to think of what he still needed to do.

Nothing. There was really nothing to do right now. Sure as hell nothing he felt up to doing. He sat down on the bed, then stretched back out on it for a moment.

Mattie rolled her eyes. "You still in that bad a' shape?"

"I just need to straighten my back out. Sleepin' in the tub an' all. Just give me a second or two."

*****

East of Kon Tum, Republic of Vietnam. Less than three klicks West of Ta Vieng Cambodia

Writhing monstrous clouds of fire stretched across the ridge then poured into the valley with horrific speed, a living breathing demon consuming everything; the ravenous monster taking the trees, the grass...and men. So many men.

Squelch crouched under a thorn stalked palmetto, talking calmly into the radio handset as he helped the Covey FAC guide in more of the cold metal raptors. One of the demonic angels, an RVNAF A-1 Skyraider, buzzed in.

Something dropped lazily from the prop-driven dragon, falling with sluggish certainty.

A red flower bloomed where it hit, growing with insane speed into a river of hellfire consuming screaming men with horrifying hunger.

Snake McCabe felt insane laughter building and building within him. He bit it back with cold determination.

Nguyen Thiệu seemed to sense it and gave him an approving look, a recognition of infernal brotherhood.

McCabe took a deep breath to ward off the laughter. If he let it out, the laughter might never stop.

*****

Luther blinked awake. Mattie was snoring softly, curled up on the other side of the bed facing him, pillows and blankets twisted and wadded up to support her stomach.

He closed his eyes. He'd just wanted a minute to stretch out his back, to try to straighten out the kinks from sleeping in the tub. Just a minute. From the dying reddish-purple light coming through the window, it'd been a whole lot longer than a minute.

Mattie twitched, and he pulled a corner of one of the blankets up over her hips. She'd changed back into her own clothes at some point. She mumbled softly, oddly gentle, and maybe just a touch appreciative.

Luther let himself relax, listening to the slow rhythm of Mattie breathing and the low mumble of noise from the bar below.