Chaingang

half acre of worthless hill, and the awesome sum of $114, he realized what a world of trouble he was in and lurched out into the depressingly wet day.

October spruce trees stood alongside the pathway up Waterworks Hill, boughs heavy with moisture. Hillside milo, russet and golden, seemingly untended, fought to stand tall in fields of rampant blotches of relentless weeds.

Gray clouds the size of aircraft carriers trailed damp tendrils over the upturned face of the Missouri countryside that flanked the hill above the small town waterworks.

Royce Hawthorne had a guy who wanted weight. David Drexel—money in el banco. Drexel was so frightened of copping burn, he'd come to Royce for the connect. Homeboy Royce with a rep for dealing and using, emphasis on the latter. Drexel had not blinked at the tab.

Royce could buy weight from Happy. Keep a piece of the rock for recreational usage, turn the balance for a solid profit. Free enterprise in microcosm—right? On the surface it was too cool.

Never mind that it put Royce-baby in a world of shit. That it might hang him up by his num-nums. Why quibble over the little details?

Happy said he would do the thing, but Royce “better not be jerking his chain.” No way, Royce promised. You get it—I buy it. How had he let himself get squeezed into this nasty jackpot?

Today Mr. Happy was coming with the Right Stuff. Three thousand down. He'd carry Royce for the balance due. If Royce pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his pants, he might as well pull his cock out too, and piss all over Happy's $550 kicks.

Happy would have his goon break Royce's knees, stand him in a fifty-five-gallon Treflan drum full of Sakrete, and drop him into the deepest part of Bluehole Trench. That is—if Happy was in a good mood. The man had all the forgiving warmth of a napalm strike.

“The thing'—as he often thought of it—hovered over him, even while he slept. Within minutes of waking he'd always be slammed back to reality by the dangerous game he'd been coerced into playing. What had it taken to pressure him into becoming a secret player, this guy approaching the big three-zero whose sum total of accomplishments was the shack of a cabin, cool enough in summer but freezing in winter, and a funky cocaine jones the size of a big fat dog? It hadn't been easy to bollix and jumble up so many parts of a life that had once been brimming with potential, as his parents, teachers, friends, lovers, and employers had often said. It had taken an iron will, a steely resolve, and the flinty maturity of a nine-year-old whacked out on LePage's Model Airplane Glue. It had taken a mutha of a jam-up.

“Yo, Royce,” Vandella the bartender said. “You up early.'

“Ten-four,” Hawthorne said, shedding his raincoat and tossing it carelessly in the direction of a Rockhouse coat hanger, holding his fingers apart so Vandella could start pouring.

“Hee ya go.” He wiped the bar around the shot glass. “Beer back?” He asked.

“Yeah.” Royce tilted it back, almost gagging on the taste. Not swallowing the whole shot. The dirty version of “Louie, Lou-eye” blasted from the juke, a three-thousand-dollar Rockola. He gratefully grabbed the cold Oly in his left hand, tilting it and sucking on it, then downing the rest of the shot and washing it down with beer.

“Again?” Vandella jittered behind the bar, singing, “Stick my finger in the hole of love,” as he cleaned a glass.

Royce nodded.

“Happy been in?'

“Not since I been here.'

“How long you been here?'

“All fuckin’ day.” They both smiled. They had a routine. Royce drank another shot of tequila. Cuervo in the right, Oly Light in the left, a two-handed drinker he was. None of that lime and salt and ritual, just put down four or five Mex-Tex boilers and get some hair on the bear.

He carried the next pair over to the open blackjack table when he saw who was filling the card shoe. Only one dealer had come in to work so far, the older woman everybody called Tia.

“What's your pleasure, sir?” she asked, professionally. Then she looked up, and his presence registered in her eyes.

She had lots of wrinkles. A bad dye job. White blouse and string tie. Long, Mandarinesque fingernails. But she was his secret ace, and he hoped she was every bit as good as the Feds had promised him.

He got two-dollar chips and bucked heads with the house for half an hour. Making it look good. Getting half- tanked; the Darvon and the tequila and the brewskis all floating around now in the Feelreal Goodzone while he got his balls up.

“Double down.” He had twenty against a bust. Let it ride, and was suddenly sitting with 180 bucks, without help, and feeling the power.

He pushed two hundred out. Caught a pair of face cards and edged Tia by a point. Four hundred and change.

Got chicken and slowed down for about an hour. Eased back on the booze, letting Vandella kick a free Oly over now and again. Nursing six bills.

He lost eight hands in a row. Bet a ten and stood on fourteen and she took it.

Bet ninety and was down one eighty and change. Bet the one eighty. Changed his mind and swept it all back but a dime. Lost.

Pushed it all out again and caught eighteen. She hit seventeen and caught a ten. He won. Ended up with eight hundred bucks.

Bet it all and about crapped when Tia turned over a bright red king. He was sitting there with a nine and a seven, and he put his stack of chips on it and stood. She flipped the hole card, and it was a six. She tapped it and broke her back, and Royce had to go wee-wee real bad. He pocketed his sixteen hundred-dollar chips, toked Tia half his change, and excused himself.

When he came out of the room with “Trouser Snakes” on the door, there was Happy and his bonebreaker, Luis. Luis was a big, dumb goon. He'd been a pro fighter, and the word was he liked to spar with kids and hurt them. He had a face that resembled the bad side of a heavily cratered planet, and fists like cast-iron doorstops.

“Que pasa, amigo?” Happy called to him jovially.

“Nada.'

“My man,” he told Vandella, who carefully poured tequilas, “whatever my amigo wants.'

“Less sit,” Happy said, smiling only with his mouth. “So.” He drank. Licked his lips. Nodded. Said “So” again.

“So.” Royce smiled.

“I think a cold one would go down real slick,” Happy said, pulling the fourth chair out and putting his cowboy boots up on it, getting mud on the chair seat.

“Yeah.'

“Cervezas, por favor,” he told Vandella without raising his voice, as if he knew the bartender would hear it. Then, in the same tone, as if he didn't care who heard what, he asked Royce, “You gonna take the weight or what, amigo?'

“Sure!” It caught him off guard. “What you think, Happy?'

“Hmm?'

“Don't I always?” Big smiles all around. Big buds having a pleasant drink together.

“Hub?” Happy suddenly had appeared to have lost his hearing altogether. Very hard to talk to. Luis looming at his side.

“Don't I always?'

“Yeah, bro, but you an ounce-pouncer, senor. No offense. I wanna know you gonna take the weight for true now.” Still the fake smile through Columbian tan and expensive teeth.

“No problemo.'

“Okey dokey.” He laughed his loud bray. Looking at Luis. “I like that: no prob-lem-o.” The ferocious-looking dummy beside him tried to look like he was smiling too.

“This is King of Peru now, right?” Royce was going to play it out straight to the end. He even sounded concerned.