Southern Cross by Patricia Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page B

talk to his wife.
    “Smudge,” he got back to his good buddy, “QueenBee’s buzzing, got a city kitty tailwind, and a sixteener with a low seater’s trying to wipe my nose.” Bubba spoke in code, letting Smudge know that Bubba’s wife was trying to get hold of Bubba, he had a city cop riding his ass and a 4x4 driven by a punk was trying to swipe in front of him.
    “I’ll leave ya lonely.” Smudge signed off.
    “Throwin’ ya back. Catch ya later, good buddy.” Bubba signed off, too.
    By now, the kid in the Explorer seemed challenged and might have become violent but for the cop one lane over. The kid decided to default. He got in the last word by laying on his horn and giving Bubba the finger and mouthing Fuckhead. The Explorer disappeared in the current of other traffic. Bubba slowed to communicate to the cop one more time to get off his rear bumper. The cop communicated back by flashing his red-and-blue emergency lights and yelping his siren. Bubba pulled over into a Kmart parking lot.

4
    O FFICER J ACK B UDGET took his time collecting his silver anodized aluminum Posse citation holder and dual clipboard. He climbed out of his gleaming blue-and-red-striped white cruiser, adjusted his duty gear and approached the red Jeep with the Confederate flag rear bumper sticker and BUB-AH vanity plate that he had been staring at for miles. Its redneck driver rolled down the window.
    “Am I to assume you go by the name Bub-ah?” Budget asked.
    “No, it’s Bubba,” Bubba rudely said.
    “Let me see your license and registration.” Officer Budget was rude, too, although he might not have been had Bubba not started it.
    Bubba pulled his nylon wallet out of his back pocket. Velcro ripped as he opened it and got out his driver’s license. He fished around in the glove box for his registration, then handed both proofs of identification and ownership to the cop, who studied them for several long minutes.
    “You have any idea why I stopped you, Mr. Fluck?”
    “Probably because of my bumper sticker,” Bubba stated.
    Budget stepped back to look at the Jeep’s rear bumper, as if just now noticing the Confederate flag on it.
    “Well, well,” he said as images of white pointed hoods and burning crosses violated his mind. “Still trying to win that war and round up Negroes to pick your cotton.”
    “The Southern Cross has nothing to do with that,” Bubba indignantly said.
    “The what?”
    “The Southern Cross.”
    Budget’s jaw muscles knotted. It had not been so long ago that he had been bused to one of the city’s public high schools and had watched seats empty one by one as other black kids got locked up or killed on the street. He had been Buckwheat, Sambo, drone, porch monkey, Uncle Tom. He had grown up in the niggerhood. Even now on some calls, white complainants asked him to go around to the back door.
    “I guess you know it as the Confederate flag,” the white redneck asshole was explaining to him. “Although it was really the battle flag, versus the Stars and Bars or Stainless Banner or Naval Jack or Pennant.”
    Budget knew nothing of the various official Confederate flags that had gone in and out of vogue for various reasons during the war. He only knew that he hated the bumper stickers and tattoos, tee shirts and beach towels he saw everywhere in the South. He was enraged by Confederate flags waving from porches and graves.
    “It’s all about racism, Mr. Fluck,” Budget coldly said.
    “It’s all about states’ rights.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “You can count the stars. One for each state in the Confederacy plus Kentucky and Missouri. Eleven stars,” Bubba informed him. “There’s not a single slave on the Southern Cross. You look for yourself.”
    “The South wanted out because it wanted to keep its slaves.”
    “That’s only part of it.”
    “So you admit that it’s at least part of it.”
    “I’m not admitting anything,” Bubba let him know.
    “You were driving erratically,” said