'Hell,' I said, and gave him some of the money Charlie had given me.
About ten P.M. the rain slacked. I hadn't moved much from my position on the couch, and that had been a mistake. I was very stiff now. Bacon fixed some fried egg sandwiches and finally got the TV to work. He found an old black-and-white movie about gangsters, interspersed with long stupid commercials, and we watched it. When we finished the sandwiches, Bacon said,
'You want some whiskey? I likes a little jolt or two before bedtime.'
'I gave up drinking anything but nonalcoholic beer.'
'You a drunk?'
'Nope. Just felt it wasn't healthy.'
'I'm gonna take me a little jolt. All that pain and such, you might want you a little.'
'Oh, all right, what the hell, just a shot.'
He poured us both some in plastic glasses and gave me a handful of aspirin. I took the aspirin and we sipped and watched the movie. I finished off my whiskey and began to nod. The gangsters were taking another gangster for a ride when I lost track of the plot. Next thing I knew it was morning.
Chapter 20
I tried to get up and go pee, but it wasn't as easy as I would have hoped. It was a job just to get my legs over the side of the couch.
I saw Bacon in the kitchen, sleeping on a cot with a blanket pulled over him. I finally got up and old-man- stepped to the bedroom/bathroom, pissed and checked on Leonard. He opened his eyes and looked at me.
'I got to go,' he said.
I pulled back the covers, discovered he had been dressed by the doctor in some of Bacon's old clothes. Helping him took about twenty minutes from bed to toilet. I wasn't all that brisk myself. Leonard took a leak and looked in the mirror. 'Oh, my God,' he said. 'I look like the Elephant Man.' I led him back to bed. We were doing better, it only took ten minutes to get back.
'I feel awful,' he said. 'Where are we?'
I filled him in.
'Bacon? His name is Bacon?'
'Yeah, and he's grumpy. The doctor, you remember him?'
'Not really.'
'He was grumpy too. And he's a vet, not a real doctor.'
'That figures.'
'Everybody is grumpy in Grovetown. I want to go home.'
'Me too. Hap?'
'Yeah.'
'This Bacon, he can't hear me, can he?'
'No.'
'Then I got to tell you, just between you and me, I was really scared. I mean really. I don't know I could face any of them guys again. I'd wet myself.'
'You already have.'
'Oh yeah.'
'And I forgot to tell you, you cut a big fart when you fell down in the alley. I was really embarrassed for you. And they messed up your hat too.'
'I looked good in that hat.'
'No, you didn't.'
'I been whipped before, but not like that,' Leonard said. 'I've never been humiliated that way. I've strapped three and four fuckers at a time. So have you. Like the assholes next door. The crack house. I whipped them like they were nothing.'
'In this case, we were vastly outnumbered, the space was small, we did not have the element of surprise, we're older today than we were yesterday, and to be just goddamn honest, Leonard, those bastards, young and old and female, were about as tough and determined as any I've fought, and they came on like a tidal wave. Under the circumstances we did pretty good, and the fact that we're mostly bushed and stove up and not broken and killed is due to the fact that we have some manly skills in the art of self-defense.'
'I figure we just lucked out.'
'Actually, me too.'
'I really want to go home. For the first time, I really want to give up. Why'd you have to tell me about the fart and the dick part? The pissin' on myself was bad enough.'
'I didn't think you'd want it coming from someone else. And besides, misery loves company.'
'We were certainly cocky before all this, weren't we?'
