“At the price had to be paid,” Charlie said. “You could have done better. You should have had the law in on it, but the law wasn’t worth a shit on this one. You did all right, Hap. You and Leonard and Jim Bob. There’s anyone ought to feel bad, it’s the law.”
“Long as you don’t,” I said. “Your hands were tied.”
“I ought not to have let them been tied,” Charlie said. “I don’t know I’m thinkin’ clear as I ought to be.”
“Can you keep mention of me and Leonard out of this?”
“Yeah. We can use Jim Bob a little. He don’t mind and it won’t hurt him like it might hurt you. He was hired to do a job, you see, even if being a private detective don’t exactly make everything he did legal.”
“Maybe you could drop the two boys in the cabin,” I said.
“We found them fellas,” Charlie said. “One I thought I knew I did know. The other one’s got a record long as the other. Scumbags, both. We’re gonna blame it on Pierre. That way Jim Bob isn’t put on the spot, and neither are you.”
“Pierre wasn’t the kind to do his own handiwork,” I said.
“Maybe, but we’re gonna make it look like he was.”
“That’s not very nice,” I said.
“No,” Charlie said, “and it ain’t even legal.”
“What about Jim Bob?” I said. “Haven’t seen him since the day we found Pierre with a length of fence up his ass. He didn’t say ’bye or kiss my ass, he dropped us off and was gone.”
“That’s his way. Saw too many Lone Ranger movies when he was a kid. He’s gone back to Pasadena. His job was finished. He can tell his client the stalk-and-rape ring is busted and he can go back to farmin’ hogs and waitin’ for the next job.”
“What about Hanson?”
“I been over to see him, Hap. He’s doin’ pretty goddamn good. Amazing, actually. He gets better, I’ll tell him all this shit. He’d want to know.”
“What about Big Man Mountain?”
“Still hasn’t turned up. He took off in Pierre’s red Mercedes.”
“That ought to show up.”
“My guess is he dumped it right away, caught a bus to someplace hot and dry.”
“Right now, Texas is hot and dry.”
“Drier yet. Mexico.”
“I don’t know I should ask, but how about the wife?”
“We’re separated, Hap. I think maybe it won’t work out, know what I’m sayin’?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s seein’ this fuckin’ insurance guy kind of regular-like. Did I tell you he smokes?”
“Yeah.”
“Sonofabitch,” Charlie said.
“I hear that,” I said.
Ella was buried the next day. I went to the funeral with Brett. Day after that, Leon was put down. Leonard and I got together, made a deal to pay for his funeral. Doing that tapped me out, but it didn’t matter.
It was a hot day with a hot wind and the striped funeral tent rustled as the preacher talked a hot wind of his own. Leon got as good a sendoff as a launch party for the dead can be, considering, as is often the case, the minister who preached the sermon didn’t know him from creamed corn.
Later, when me and Leonard and Brett walked with Clinton out to his car, he said, “Wouldn’t none of that stuff preacher said about Leon true.”
“It’s just the way it’s done,” Brett said.
“Yeah,” Clinton said, “well, they ought to do it some other kinda way. They made Leon all out to be this suit- type man. Shit, I’m gonna miss my bro.”
“I’m sorry, Clinton,” I said. “It’s sort of my fault.”
“More like mine since I asked you and Leon to help out,” Leonard said.
“And mine,” Brett said. “He was helping me.”
“No, it ain’t y’all no kind of way,” Clinton said. “It’s that sonofabitch killed him’s fault. Me and Leon, we knew what we was gettin’ into. You folks hang tough.”
Clinton, trying to hold his head up and stay solid, climbed in his car and clattered away.
“I got to tell you,” Brett said. “I first met those two, I thought they were just a couple of ignorant thugs. I think now they’re better than most of the educated people I know.”
“Leon and Clinton,” Leonard said, “they invented grit. I’m gonna miss ole Scum Eye. He was a stand-up guy.”
Brett took us both by the arms. “So are you two guys,” she said. And with her holding our arms, we walked down to my pickup and drove away from the hot wind and the striped funeral tent, the headstones rising up sad and white and gray.
Next few days weren’t so bad. Things started to sort themselves out. I got a job at a club, bouncing. The pay wasn’t much, but I figured I could do it for a week or two until I found something else. Only thing was, I didn’t start for a couple of days, and I was dead broke.
Brett soothed that. She managed to take some time off from work, even if she didn’t have it coming. We spent a lot of time together, at her place and mine, getting to know each other better, and from my end I certainly liked what I had come to know.
Brett coming out to my house changed the place. She couldn’t stand the way I did things, so she did it her way, and I liked her way better. The dishes were cleaner and neater and the house smelled better. The gym-sock stink in the bathroom was gone and the mold was off the shower curtain.
’Course, Brett made me do all the work to get the place in shipshape condition, and she was one hell of a D.I. I figured next thing coming was I’d have little wooden plaques with slogans on them hanging over the kitchen sink and the bathroom shitter.
On a hot Sunday morning, two weeks after all hell had gone down, the sky began to darken and threaten rain. By eleven A.M. the heat was dissipating and the air turned cool. I got up and opened all the windows. In the distance, in the dark clouds, lightning bolts hopped and squirmed as if mating.
Brett and I had spent a large portion of the morning in bed, making love, and now we were in the kitchen. Brett was wearing one of my T-shirts, and she sure did it more justice than I could have, especially since that was all she was wearing. I liked to watch her move, leaning over the sink, messing with pots and pans, trying to find something in the cabinet worth fixing for lunch.
I was in deck shoes, torn jeans and a black T-shirt so faded it looked the color of ancient cigarette ash. I washed my hands and surveyed the interior of the refrigerator. It was as lonesome in there as Custer on the Little Big Horn.
“Hap,” Brett said, “even I can’t make a meal out of this stuff, and I can toast shit and bricks and make you happy. This calls for severe action. I’m gonna go to town and buy some grub.”
“I’d offer you money, but I don’t have any.”
“Hell, I know that.”
“I’ll pay you back when I get my first check.”
“You can buy me a meal.”
Brett darted into the bedroom, pulled on a dress and shoes, bounced out of there with my truck keys. I stood on the porch and waved. She wasn’t gone thirty seconds before I took notice of the sky. It had changed. The air was neither cool nor hot. I felt as if I was in the middle of a bowl, and the sky, which had gone green, was gradually descending on me. I knew the signs. Tornado.
I wished I had noticed before Brett drove away. Now there was nothing I could do but stand there in the eerie silence, wondering if it would happen, wondering if she would be okay. A car on the road is not a good place to be during a tornado.
I watched to see if a funnel might be forming. The clouds were nervous, though not as nervous as me. They rolled and twisted and at times I fancied I could see them dipping down like the bottom part of a blackened snow cone, but in the next moment it looked like nothing more than a wispy black cloud.
I decided to pour myself a cup of coffee, sit on the front porch and keep an eye on things. Weather turned
