“Yep,” he said.
Jim Bob and Tonto looked too. The Ford pulled up at a pump and a guy about the size of Tonto, and then Tonto again, got out. It wasn’t just that he was tall. He was no taller than Tonto, but he was wide as a truck and had a chest big enough to store a winter’s worth of corn in it. His legs were bigger around than my waist and his head looked like someone had anchored a medicine ball to his neck. He had blond hair and a little goatee and the kind of tan that comes from solar lamps. I figured he had fallen off Jack’s beanstalk and was learning to make his way in our world.
There was another guy in the front of the Ford, and two in the back, and they just sat. After a while, when the gas was done, the others got out and they all came in.
We watched them carefully. The big guy who had been driving and who put in the gas looked back at us and nodded. Just a regular guy, bigger than most regular guys, seeing some other regular guys, acknowledging us. We nodded back.
We kind of huddled over our food and whispered.
“They might not be anything,” Leonard said.
“Maybe not,” I said.
“Lots of brown Fords,” Jim Bob said.
“Yep,” I said.
“Bullshit,” Tonto said. “They’re somebody. They got guns. I can see the bulges under their shirts.”
“Maybe those are cell phone cases,” Jim Bob said.
Tonto looked at Jim Bob. They both smiled.
“But,” Jim Bob said, “probably not.”
“If they’ve been following us without me seeing them,” Tonto said, “they’re good. And Hap, you’re good. You spotted them and I didn’t.”
“They want us to know they’re following now,” Jim Bob said. “They want us to know they’re tired of playing.”
“I didn’t know we were playing,” Tonto said, “but now that I do, I’m ready to get out the toys. Ah, here they come.”
They came back and sat at the table next to us. My side of the bench was closer to the big guy, and on the other side of our table was Tonto, and he shifted a little so that one of his hands was under the table and the other was lying on top of it next to a gnawed chicken leg.
They were all big guys. Only the driver, the guy on my side, was as big as Tonto, but the others were easily bigger than the rest of us. I got to thinking we weren’t nearly as nifty as we thought. These guys had been on us for a while, and though I had gotten glimpses of them, they were good, damn good, at least as far as sneaking went. Thing I was wondering was when exactly did they get on us, and were they FBI guys or guys from the Dixie Mafia. I was voting pretty heavily on the latter.
The big guy had some chicken and was about to eat it. I said, “That chicken isn’t nearly as nasty as it looks.”
The big guy paused with the chicken close to his mouth. “Yeah. That’s good to hear. I was worried.”
“The links, they’re not bad either. You guys, you don’t look like fishermen.”
“Neither do you,” said the big guy.
“We’re just riding around,” I said.
“That’s a coincidence,” the big guy said. “So are we.” He bit into the chicken and chewed, then looked at me and nodded. “You’re right. That’s pretty damn good.”
He paused and wiped his hands on some paper towels that were on a roller in the center of the table. He shifted on the bench and turned toward me, said, “We’re more the hunter type.”
“Now that,” Jim Bob said, “is one big goddamn fucking coincidence. So are we.”
“Really?” said the big guy.
“Oh, yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Big fucking time.”
“What do you hunt?”
“Skunks mostly,” Jim Bob said.
“Oh,” the big guy said. “I don’t believe there’s a season for that.”
“What makes it thrilling,” Jim Bob said. “Ain’t nothing better than sneaking up on a skunk, or a weasel, and blowing them right out from over their ass.”
“I can see that,” said the big man, and he pushed the paper plate with the chicken on it away from him. “It sure was good to chat with you boys. You know, the weather looks as if it’s going to turn bad.”
“Yeah?” Leonard said.
“Oh yeah, big-time. I think I heard it on the radio. Thing is, I wanted to share that because you don’t want to get caught up in a big old storm that might blow you away. That would suck.”
“Yeah, and it would mess up our hair,” I said.
He gave me a smile thin as the edge of a razor blade. “You got any information for us? You might know where we can find a good place to stop for the day, and get some things we need, and then maybe the storm won’t come.”
