3
Out back we slung the baseball bats in the direction of the ball field. We went and got in the car. Leonard said, “You thanked her? And gave her a diet tip?”
“It just sort of came out,” I said.
“It took the edge off my witty remarks.”
“Sorry.”
“Well,” Leonard said. “You got to be you. How about we go by Wal-Mart, buy some cookies-and-cream ice cream, some vanilla wafers to dip in it?”
“Nothing like leg breaking and dessert,” I said.
“I broke the motherfucker’s hand, and I think I got a rib too,” Leonard said. “You’re the one broke a leg. A kneecap.”
“I can still hear it crack,” I said.
“Maybe we’ll get a couple cartons of ice cream, brother.”
Leonard started up his car and pulled out.
I said, “That really made you feel good, didn’t it, Leonard? Hittin’ that guy.”
“I don’t know good is how I feel, but satisfied sort of fits,” Leonard said. “And he didn’t shoot me, so I feel good about that. Motherfucker would have done better to throw the gun at me, his aim was so bad.”
Leonard took Thomas’s gun out of his waistband and handed it to me and I popped out the clip and cleaned it with a Kleenex. I wrapped the clip in the Kleenex and Leonard drove by a Dumpster behind a mall and I dropped it in. Then we drove out to the edge of town and I wiped the pistol clean and wrapped it in a piece of newspaper from the backseat and gave it to Leonard and he carried it out into the woods. When he came back, he said, “There now, all done. I dropped it down an armadillo hole.”
“If we hear of armadillos taking over possum kingdom, then we know what happened,” I said.
We took off our gloves, Leonard drove us to Wal-Mart, and we bought ice cream and cookies. I didn’t say much when we got to Leonard’s place, which was recently rented and cheap and in a part of town only slightly better than the one we had just left. We went upstairs and sat in fold-out chairs in a corner that served as a kitchen at a crate that served as a table, and with a spoon apiece, and cookies to dip, we ate and counted roaches racing across the floor. There were a lot of roaches, and some of them were bigger than my thumb. I was glad Brett wasn’t around for a change. She would charge a rhino if she felt it necessary, but the clicking of roach legs on linoleum could run her ten miles and make her climb a tree.
When we were done eating, Leonard said, “You want to go home, or you gonna stay?”
“Drive me home,” I said. “Brett will be waiting. Besides, I don’t want to get eaten by roaches.”
“You have gotten so persnickety,” Leonard said. “I remember a time when you would have named them, made them each little hats, and called them your friends.”
4
On the drive to my place, Leonard shifted his eyes over to me and sighed. He said, “You’re sitting there all forlorn.”
“I feel forlorn,” I said.
“Some things you do, not because they’re pleasant, but because they have to be done.”
“But I’m not sure that was one of them.”
“You got way too many feelings, Hap.”
“I suppose.”
“Look at it this way, brother. I got feelings too, but they’re for those who deserve feelings. There are some people don’t have feelings, and don’t deserve yours. The only kind of feelings they got are pain and fear.”
“Governments use that tactic. Never seems to work too well.”
“We ain’t governments,” Leonard said, as he pulled into my drive. I got out and walked around on his side and looked at him through his open window. He said, “I’ll see you tomorrow at Marvin’s.”
I nodded. He looked at me for a while longer, almost said something, but didn’t. He backed the car into the street and I watched him drive away.
I went inside and locked up and went as quietly as I could upstairs and into the bedroom. I could see Brett’s shape in the bed. I took off my clothes and pulled on my pajama bottoms and got in bed as carefully as possible. When I was positioned, Brett said, “What you been doin’?”
“Killing what’s left of my soul, baby.”
Brett rolled over and put her arm across my chest. She smelled good. “You got the old woman’s money back, didn’t you?”
“We did.”
“I figured you were gonna do that.”
“Last thing I said when I went out was I wasn’t gonna do it. I told myself that when I met up with Leonard. Told myself that when we parked out front of the house where those guys were, and I told myself that up until the moment I swung the baseball bat and took out a kneecap.”
“I knew you were gonna do it.”
“But what is it about me that made you know that? What’s wrong with me?”
“You think things ought to be fair, and they aren’t, and you try and make them fair.”
“I broke a guy’s kneecap. Leonard, he broke the other guy’s hand and maybe a rib, and we scared a young woman who was there. I don’t know how fair that was. We were so mean our mean wore a hat and tie.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Brett rubbed my chest a little, said, “Was he a good guy? Guy’s knee you broke?”
“Not in the least.”
“Did you hurt the girl that was there?”
“No reason to… No. Of course not.”
“Okay. Guy’s hand that Leonard broke. Was he a good guy?”
I knew where this was going, but I went ahead with the ritual. “He’s the guy broke the old lady’s hand, took her money.”
“There you go. If he’s the bad guy, you got to be the good guy.”
“Who says?”
“Me. I just did.”
“Yeah, well, you’re sort of on my side.”
“Big-time. A guy takes an old woman’s money and breaks her hand and she goes to Marvin for help, what are you gonna do? She deserves her money back. It’s not the first time you’ve helped someone and had to get rough. Hell, I’ve had to get rough.”
“I know that. But this wasn’t self-defense, and it wasn’t personal.”
“Anytime you can help someone get back at a bully, it’s personal enough. Baby, you got to learn how to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”
“You sound like Leonard.”
“He can be wise when he sounds like me,” Brett said. We lay there for a while. Brett stroked my chest. “I got to leave tomorrow.
Early.”
“Damn. I forgot.”
“Figured you did. You been kind of preoccupied with your morality and your mortality… But it’s okay. I won’t be gone long. A week maybe.”
“That’s too long,” I said.
“Poor baby. You’re in the dumps.”
