it up. I was eating it up secondhand. She sounded very sexy making those tender little sounds, and bless my little heart, I wanted to make love to her so bad right then I thought I'd cry.
Leonard came out of the barn and started in our direction. On his way over, he stopped, knelt down to reach his fingers through the wire of Switch's run so the dog could lick his fingers. 'Get in your doghouse, boy. You gonna freeze your nuts off.'
Switch was acting like a pup, wagging his tail so hard his entire body shook. I walked down to them, and forgot about Trudy. She came after me and suddenly knelt between me and Leonard and put out her hand to pet Switch the way she had Cal.
Switch, quick and silent as an arrow, leapt for her extended fingers. Leonard snatched her hand back and Switch's muzzle went against the wire. He grabbed it with his teeth, pulled, let it go with a snap. Foam flecked out of his mouth and splashed on the knee of my jeans. Trudy hadn't even had time to flinch.
Leonard let go of her hand, and Trudy stepped back. 'Jesus! What's in him?'
'Protective,' Leonard said. 'He doesn't like anyone near me he doesn't know. That dog and men like me, probably the only males you can't twist the way you want.'
'You think it's funny, don't you, Leonard?' Trudy said.
'He got your fingers, I wouldn't. Since he didn't, yeah, I think it's funny.'
'You can have your old dog. I hope he freezes to death.'
'Good thing I don't think you mean that, lady.'
Trudy walked away quickly.
'Glad you don't like women,' I said, 'because you don't exactly have a way with them.'
'I like women fine, just not to fuck. And I don't like that woman to do anything with. You think the dogs are gonna be cold?'
'Hell yeah. But the way you got their houses fixed up, they'll be all right. Warmer than we're going to be. Calvin comes to feed them, sees they're uncomfortable, he'll do something about it.'
'Yeah... guess so.'
Then we were all in the Buick, easing along with Leonard at the wheel, me in the front, leaning on the door as if contemplating a leap, and Trudy dead center of the backseat with arms and legs crossed tight as the coils of the Gordian knot.
The car leaked carbon monoxide through a hole in the floorboard and we were all a little dizzy from it. The wipers beat at the snow and ice and the near-bald tires whistled a tentative funeral march. We made it slow and easy, without much talk, into Marvel Creek about half-past noon.
Chapter 7
The town really started before the city limits. There was a line of beer joints on either side of the highway, ramshackle fire hazards with neon pretzels on their roofs and above their doorways.
Among them were two places I well remembered: The Roundup Club and the Sweet White Lilly.
Next came the long, wide river bridge and the city limits sign that read POP. 5606. Then we were on Main Street, coasting past closed businesses with boarded windows and bolted doors, service stations with oil-spotted drives and greasy-capped men with their hands on gas nozzles or leaky tires.
As we went deeper into town, it got better. Open stores and more people. But the place still looked sad. Not that it had been any budding metropolis when I lived there.
Trudy had us turn on a brick street slick as Vaseline, and we went past the bank, around a curve and past what had been a Piggly Wiggly but was now called Food Mart. I used to buy Cokes and peanut patties there, hang out with the boys and lie about all the fights I'd been in and all the tail I'd banged.
We glided past car lots and the empty spot where the Dairy Queen had stood and old Bob used to make us chocolate shakes with more water than milk in them. On down the highway we went, onto a blacktop and back into the pines, and finally down a soggy clay road that ended at a small house that was mostly weathered gray with strips of paint peeling down its sides like melted candle wax. The front porch leaned starboard and the smoking, crumbling chimney was held upright by the slanting support of ten feet of warped six-by-six. Pine sap corrosion had turned the mouth of the chimney dark as the devil's shadow.
Parked off to the right on the dead grass were a red, dented Dodge mini-van and a jaundice-yellow Volvo with a sheet of cardboard in place of the left front window. Two more letters on the end and the writing on the cardboard would have read
MONTGOMERY WARD
Leonard killed the engine, looked at me, and said, 'And I thought we lived like trash.'
Trudy got out of the car without saying anything and we stayed where we were. Before she was all the way up the porch steps, the door opened and a big, handsome blond guy with a slight gut, wearing jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and old hightop white tennis shoes came out. He took Trudy in his arms and kissed her in a more than cordial fashion.
'Flexible, ain't she?' Leonard said. 'And you know, bubba, he's prettier than you are.'
The guy who had to be Howard looked at us. He said something to Trudy and they came out to the car. We got out before they could get there and leaned on the hood and tried to look thuggy.
'This is Howard,' Trudy said.
'You must be Hap,' Howard said. 'I've heard a lot about you.'
We shook hands.
