Natchez Burning Read Online Free PDF

minted.”
    He squinted at the coin. “Nineteen twenty-eight?”
    “Can you think of anything special about that year?”
    “The year of the big flood?” Morehouse guessed, blinking at the gleaming coin.
    Frank snorted with contempt. “The flood was in twenty-seven, lug nut.”
    “I was born in twenty-eight,” Sonny said, realizing Frank’s intent.
    Frank nodded. “That’s your dog tag now. Everybody in the unit’s gonna carry one. No robes, no masks, no bullshit—just a gold piece.
Your
gold piece.” He fished in his pocket, then held out a second Double Eagle to Morehouse.
    The giant took the gold coin almost greedily, then held it up in the sun and eyed it like a child examining a rare marble. “Nineteen twenty-seven,” he confirmed, grinning. “
Damn,
that’s neat.”
    “They stopped minting these a long time back, didn’t they?” asked Sonny.
    “Nineteen thirty-three,” Frank replied.
    “So nobody younger than … Bucky Jarrett gets in?”
    “That’s right. Except for my little brother. Snake wasn’t born until thirty-four, but we need that crazy son of a bitch. There’s times when crazy is just what the doctor ordered.”
    Frank’s younger brother had volunteered for Korea at seventeen, lying about his age to get early enlistment. Snake had been in the thick of the fighting for most of the war, and he’d learned a lot. Sonny had a feeling that whatever Snake was doing down at the Chevy was designed to prove that to them.
    “What are we gonna do first?” Morehouse asked.
    “I know what we
ain’t
gonna do,” Sonny muttered. “We ain’t gonna do a lot of gabblin’ and then go home drunk like a bunch of broke-dicks.”
    “That’s a stone-cold fact,” Frank said, his voice crackling like a live wire.
    “We gonna waste somebody?” Sonny asked.
    Frank nodded.
    “Who?” asked Morehouse. “How ’bout that biggity nigger who works out at Armstrong, that George Metcalfe? Sonny says he’s gonna be president of the Natchez NAACP.”
    Frank shook his head. “We’re not going to waste time killing tire builders and handymen. That’s for the clowns in the white hoods, if they ever get their nerve up.”
    “Who, then?” asked Sonny, trying to think like Frank. As soon as he did, a revelation struck him. “Jesus. You’re thinking about wasting
white guys
. Aren’t you?”
    “Maybe,” Frank conceded, his eyes twinkling.
    “What?” Morehouse asked.
    “Informants,” Sonny explained. “Like Jerry Dugan, out at the plant.”
    Frank smiled at Sonny’s deduction, but once more he shook his head. “It may come to killing Jerry one day, but right now he’s off-limits. I want him feeding the FBI a steady stream of bullshit on the regular White Knights. We want Hoover’s boys thinking they have their finger on the pulse around here.”
    “Then
who
?” Sonny asked, genuinely stumped.
    Frank grabbed two wooden paddles and shoveled the alligator steak off the grill. One venison tenderloin remained on the hot iron mesh, cut from a doe poached off the International Paper woodlands last night. After fishing a fresh Jax from the cooler, Frank swallowed half the beer in the can, then leveled his gunner’s eyes at them.
    “If I dropped each of you in a hole with three rattlesnakes and gave you a machete, what would you do?”
    “Shit my pants!” Morehouse cried. “And jump right back out.”
    “You can’t get out, Mountain. You’re stuck in the hole. So what would you do? Start flailing around at everything that moved? Chopping snakes left and right?”
    “No,” said Sonny, trying to visualize the situation. “That’s how you get bit.”
    “Okay, Corporal. So, what do you do?”
    Sonny thought about it. “Stand still, take my time … and when the moment’s right, chop off their heads. Closest one first.”
    Frank grinned. “Outstanding.”
    “What the heck is this about?” Morehouse asked.
    “Killing leaders,” Sonny thought aloud. “Killing the guys who matter. You