The young woman who had been beaten was in intensive care, and word was she wasn’t doing too well. One thing was certain, she had lost some teeth and an eye.
“Well,” Leonard said, “you did say you saw a wood rat out by the trees.”
“I just didn’t know he was so mean.”
“Yeah, he wasn’t as afraid of you as you thought.”
“I don’t think this sonofabitch was afraid of anything. I tell you, Leonard, he was the toughest dude I’ve ever fought. I’d rather fight three guys than fight him again, and me with a pipe wrench. I think Ella May wants a piece of him, though.”
“Ella May,” John said, “hasn’t got the sense of two nickels rubbed together. I’ve known her all my life. Before she was cutting chicken throats, she worked at the aluminum chair plant with me. She put the damn riveter through her fingers two or three times. I’m surprised she hasn’t cut her own throat at the chicken plant.”
“I’m not accusing her of intelligence,” I said, “just her willingness to fight. Come to think of it, her and this guy, they’d make a great tag team they wanted to get together. They’d be unbeatable.”
“Good thing she wasn’t on his side tonight,” John said.
“She hadn’t been there,” I said, “that sonofabitch would have gotten away. I wonder how bad messed up he is. I’d feel better he looked worse than me.”
“Well,” Leonard said, “it ain’t like you got to worry about your native good looks.”
“What I’d like to know,” John said, “is what’s this guy’s story?”
“Whatever it is,” I said, “it isn’t a fairy tale. More like a horror story, I figure.”
“Speakin’ of horror stories,” Leonard said, “that shirt Charlie had on, where in hell did he find that? It looked like it had been used to wipe up paint.”
“It’s colorful,” I said.
“Colorful is a nice word,” John said.
In that moment I realized since Leonard had been seeing John he dressed nicer himself. Nothing fancy, but a little slicker. John always dressed that way, like he was going to a casual prayer meeting.
“Charlie just looked like hell in general,” Leonard said.
“He’s divorced and not happy about it. He gave up cigarettes because his wife wouldn’t give him any unless he did. Turned out she was seeing a guy on the side who smoked. It really got his goat. Worse yet, now he finds he can quit smoking. Thing bothers him most, besides the wife gone, is he’s gotten hooked on this shitty Kung Fu television series. He said when he got to taping it while he was at work, looking forward to it at nights, he knew he had crossed the line into dark depression.”
“I don’t know,” John said. “Nothing to do, it’s not so bad.”
Leonard and I looked at him.
“I mean, I watch it sometimes,” he said. “I got nothing else on tape, you know. Now and then.”
We kept looking at him.
“Jeez, guys. I’ll quit. Promise. Really.”
I took a couple days off from work, enjoyed being a hero for about fifteen minutes. Me and Ella May. I wondered how she was doing. Probably still cussing and wanting to fight.
Night it happened I was so wired I didn’t sleep, and the next day I was still wired, and the next night too. I was not only wired, I hurt too. I felt as if I had been wrapped in duct tape and rolled down a rocky mountainside into a brick wall with my nuts in my teeth.
Friday some of it passed and I got a good night’s sleep, slept in late without the bad dreams, and was a lot less sore. Saturday morning, near eleven, I was up in my sweat pants, T-shirt, and bare feet, making coffee.
My new place was in town, a duplex. It was upstairs with a connecting kitchen/living room, a small bedroom, and a bathroom with a toilet that sagged into the floor when you sat on it. I figured some morning I’d be in there taking my morning constitutional and find myself flying through space, down to the bottom floor, having firemen dig my corpse out from under busted ceramic and a pile of shit.
There was some good news. The duplex was cheap. Mostly because the bottom floor was burned out. Before I moved in, according to the landlord, some drunk had left a frying pan on the stove and it and the grease and the chicken leg floating in it caught on fire and the blaze spread through the kitchen/living room like a yeast infection. The drunk had been sleeping on the couch at the time. He was in some kind of burn center, probably wishing he’d just opened a box of crackers and pulled the tab on a can of beanie weenies.
The place wasn’t going to be rented for a while, not until the landlord fixed it up, so he let me store some stuff down there in the only rooms that weren’t burned, the bedroom and the bathroom. Long as there wasn’t someone under me, the duplex wasn’t so bad, though now and then the burn smell would come up through the floor and stink the place up, make my eyes water, wake me in the middle of the night, and I’d get up to make sure I hadn’t left something on the stove myself.
All in all, it was all right, though living in town wasn’t my preference.
Anyway, I was making coffee and thinking about toast with jelly for breakfast, when I heard a car drive up. I went to the kitchen window over the sink, looked out. It was Charlie Blank. He was getting out from behind the wheel of a clean white Ford. A middle-aged, gray-haired guy in a brown suit got out on the passenger’s side. He looked up at the duplex as if he were observing some prehistoric hovel. Of interest, but surprised people once lived there, even more surprised to think someone might be squatting there now, perhaps supping on mastodon marrow.
Charlie, as usual, was wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt, slacks, tennis shoes, and a sports coat the color of mustard, or if you really want to get technical, baby shit. A straw boater had replaced his felt porkpie. The new hat, I presumed, was part of his spring ensemble. The shoes he had on were the kind you might dress a juvenile Frankenstein monster in, black, thick-soled, and solid enough to drive a nail. He had a greasy brown bag in one hand.
I listened to them clunk up the stairs and opened the door before they could knock.
“My man,” Charlie said.
“How are you, Charlie?”
“All right. I got someone needs to see you. Can we come in?”
“What’s the password?”
“I’m throwing out your old parking tickets.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Well, if you had some.”
“Come on in. Sorry about the place, maid’s day off.”
The guy in the suit hadn’t cracked a smile, not even a sly grin. I couldn’t tell if he was humorless or if Charlie and I were just boring. Probably the latter.
I motioned them to the couch. It had come with the place. It had one spot that nearly sagged to the floor. I had slipped a piece of plywood under the cushions there, and though it no longer sank, it was seriously hard on the ass.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“I could use some,” Charlie said, then to the man in the suit. “You?”
The man shook his head.
Charlie gave me the bag. I put it on the table and opened it. Doughnuts.
“The stitches come out soon?” Charlie asked.
“Pretty soon.”
I pulled down nonmatching cups, poured coffee. Charlie sat on the couch and drank his, I leaned against the sink. The man sat by Charlie with his hands in his lap, looking around. It was as if he was avoiding placing his arms or hands on the sofa for fear of contamination, or a possible attack from a rat hidden in the cotton.
“I’m just living here till they get my condo built,” I said.
He turned toward me. This time he did smile. Nothing to get excited about, but teeth were involved.
“This is Elmer Bond, Hap,” Charlie said.
The name hit me. That had been the girl’s name, the one that had been stomped by the maniac. Bond. Sarah Bond.
I switched my cup to my left hand, stepped over and shook his hand. “I presume you’re kin to Sarah Bond.”
