“More like fifteen.”
“More like twelve, now that I think about it. I ain’t as good with colored faces.”
“We all look alike, huh?”
“Far as I’m concerned, everybody looks alike, but coloreds look more alike. I hope you ain’t working for the law now.”
“Why would I?”
“Sometimes it happens. It’s not something I like. I tend to become angry something like that goes on.”
“Don’t try and scare us,” Leonard said. “It isn’t necessary.”
“There’s lots of fellas weren’t scared that aren’t scared even now, but they ain’t happy neither. They got dirt in their faces and they lay nearby.”
“The garden?” I said.
“What?” Haskel said.
“You know, the garden,” I said. “For fertilizer.”
“You could talk yourself to death,” Haskel said.
Leonard said, “Listen here, Haskel, that gun in your pocket, it’ll only get one of us. Maybe. Then the other one will clean your clock.”
I jerked a thumb at Leonard and said to Haskel, “Be sure you shoot him so I’m the one does the clock cleaning.”
“You might find my clock hands harder to wind than you think, boys,” Haskel said, then noticed his children standing around. The little girl had her mouth open and was picking her nose. The other two boys were watching Haskel as if waiting for him to offer them their medication.
“You goddamn kids run along to the house now,” Haskel said. “Go squirrel huntin’. Fish. Make yourself useful. Don’t make me tell you twicet. And get your fuckin’ finger out of your nose, Sherilee.”
The goddamn kids evaporated, though Sherilee kept her fuckin’ finger in its probing position. Maybe it was latched there.
Haskel said, “Little shits.”
“You always greet people want to do business with you like this?” Leonard said.
“I’m cautious,” Haskel said. “You can’t be too goddamn cautious these days. Consider what happened to those folks in Waco.”
“You mean the religious nuts who were abusing their children?” I asked. “You know what I think, except for those poor children and the government folks, fuck ’em. Far as I’m concerned the only thing wrong with that operation was the government folks were stupid and the folks inside the compound were even more stupid. I figure you’re that stupid, you ought not be in the gene pool.”
“You’re awful uppity for a man who’s come to see me,” Haskel said.
“How you know I’m not here to give you a Jehovah Witness tract?” I said.
Haskel turned to Leonard: “What can I do you for this time, colored fella?”
“Leonard’s the name.”
“I don’t like to get too personal,” Haskel said. “Fact is, I’ll tell you right now, I don’t shake hands. Now. Later. On the deal. Anything. I don’t like being touched. I ain’t one for having fingers run through my curly hair, you know what I mean.”
“And it’s such lovely hair,” I said. “Very gritty.”
“What?” Haskel said.
“Forget it,” Leonard said. “Don’t pay him any mind.”
“I tell you what,” Haskel said, “you two jerk-offs get back in that there truck and haul on out of here. I don’t like you much.”
“We’re not here to be friends,” Leonard said. “Hap here, he got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Had to get rolling before he had his coffee and jerked his dick. But you don’t like us, that’s okay. You can like our money.”
“Yeah, well,” Haskel said, giving me a beady eyeball, “now we got that out of the way, you know what I sell, so let’s get on with it.”
“We need some cold pieces,” Leonard said. “And not so old you load them with a ramrod and a powder horn.”
Haskel was all business now. It was like we’d never had a disagreeable moment. “Heavy work?”
“Hard to say. We don’t want machine guns, stuff like that. Simple, effective stuff. Probably close-range. One long-range weapon might be good. Maybe two.”
“Cowboy style?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Stuff like that, it doesn’t come cheap.”
“Let’s see what you got, then talk prices.”
“All right,” Haskel said, then nodded toward me and asked Leonard: “This guy, he gonna have anything to say
