Ahhh, what the hell, I told myself. Play the hand the way the cards are dealt. What do you have to lose?
I backed away from that bit of bravado in a hurry.
I knew what I had to lose.
I stopped in at the baseball-oriented bartender's tavern. He was the friendliest on my beat, and I was just about ready to pull the trigger on a few questions to him. I knew it wasn't going to be tonight, though, as soon as I walked inside. Blaze Franklin was sitting at the bar. It must have been a short date. Franklin had found out the reason for the dark circles under the blonde's eyes, I told myself smugly.
He saw me come in, but he thought it over before he did anything about it. Finally he couldn't leave it alone. He left his stool, which was two-thirds of the way up the bar from mine, swaggered past the half-dozen customers in the place, and pushed himself onto the stool beside mine. His elbows were out wider than they needed lo be. 'Don't b'lieve I've heard your name,' he said in a loud voice.
'Arnold,' I answered.
He waited to see if I was going to say anything else. 'Understand you're quite a dancer,' lie went on. I wondered how much of his tomato face was due to weather and how much to alcohol. Around us the little tavern conversations had died out. Franklin wasn't satisfied to accept my silence. 'I see you peart near ev'y day thumpin' around in the bresh out yonder,' he said. 'You keep it up you're gonna put your number 12 down on someone's still an' git your head blowed off.'
'I carry a spare.'
He didn't get it for a second. When he did, he clouded over. 'You in town for long, Arnold?'
'It depends,' I said.
He took a deep breath as though holding himself down. 'Depends on what?'
I turned on my stool until I was facing him. 'It depends on me,' I told him, and returned to my beer. Franklin put his hand on my arm. I looked down at the hand, and then at him. He removed the hand, his face darkening. I knew the type. He wanted to lean on me just to show he could. I could feel the short hairs on the back of my neck stiffening. The bastard rubbed me completely the wrong way.
Franklin changed his mind about whatever he'd been thinking of doing. He snorted loudly, then got up and walked out the door. Around me the conversations slowly came to life again. The bartender sidled down the bar, his long arm going in concentric circles with a dirty rag. 'That's Blaze Franklin,' he said almost apologetically. 'He's a little—quick. What was that about dancin'?'
'I haven't the faintest idea.' I wasn't supposed to know the blonde was Franklin's playmate. Outside the cruiser roared as Franklin petulantly gunned it away. 'Quick, huh? Who's he buried?' And then as the words hung in the air I shook my head mentally. It was crazy. More trouble I couldn't use. Where were my brains?
The bartender's laugh was a cackle. 'That's a good one. Who's he buried?' He looked up and down the bar to assure himself a maximum audience. 'Well, no one he's stood trial for,' he grinned. It was his turn to listen to the sound of his own words in the stale-beer flavored air. His grin faded. 'I mean an escaped convict or two—things like that,' he amended hastily. He sloshed his rag about with renewed vigor. 'Blaze is one of our best young deppities.' Having retrieved the situation, he favored me with another smile.
I finished my beer and got out. I killed a couple of hours reading at the Lazy Susan while I waited for midnight. I left Kaiser in the room when I went out again. The fights were out in the Dixie Pig when I turned into the driveway except for the night light. There was only one car in back. Hazel's. She was standing inside the back door, waiting, but she came out and turned the key in the lock when she saw the Ford.
'Let's use my car,' she said. She got in on the driver's side. I wondered how much more she'd had to drink, but I climbed out of the Ford and got in beside her. She spun the wheels backing up in the crushed stone.
She turned south on the highway. Past the traffic light in town she leaned on it. She had a heavy foot, but she was a good driver. I watched a full moon rising over the Gulf and the road unwinding in the headlights. There was no conversation. Sometimes I know ahead of time, but that night wasn't one of the times.
Fifteen miles down the road Hazel turned left on a dirt track she must have known about because she couldn't have seen it. A mile in on it she turned left again, and her car bumped along for three hundred yards over deep ruts until a cabin showed up in the headlights. Hazel switched off the car lights and we sat and looked at the cabin in the moonlight. 'I built it myself,' she said. 'And I mean I drove the nails. Therapy. Come on.'
She unlocked the cabin door and we went inside. 'Well?' she challenged me in the soft darkness. 'It's a damn good thing I'm shameless enough for both of us. You weren't going to ask me out. Why?'
'When I think of a good answer, I'll let you know,' I told her. She closed the cabin door and I heard the snick of a bolt. I couldn't make out many details except the furnishings.
She came up behind me and dropped her hands on my shoulders. 'Get into something cooler, Horseman,' she said, and walked into the next room.
I undressed slowly. When I padded after her, barefoot,
she was buck naked in the moonlight on the full-sized bed. She could have been the model for all women for all time. Her eyes were closed. I knelt on the edge of the bed. 'Hazel—' I began.
She opened her eyes and reached for me. 'Don't tell me I've gone and emasculated you,' she said softly. 'You're a man. You'll do all right.'
Some time later when it became apparent even to her that I wasn't going to do all right, she sat up on the bed. 'Get me a cigarette, will you, Chet?' she asked me. She sounded tired. I went back out to my clothes and found my cigarettes. She studied my face in the glow from my lighter. 'Is it me, Chet?'
'It's not you.'
'You're not a queer.' It was a statement, not a question.
'No.'
'But this happens?'
'Yes. Not all the time.'
She blew out a convulsive lungful of smoke. 'You shouldn't have done it to me, Chet.' Then her big hand closed on mine. 'I'm sorry. It was me who did it to you, wasn't il?' The bed creaked as she changed position. 'What do you think It is?'
'Everybody has his own opium for this sort of thing.' I stubbed out my own cigarette. 'Years ago I saw a cartoon in a magazine. A slick looking battalion is marching along in cadence except for one raggedy-assed, stumble-footed type who's out of step. A rock faced sergeant is giving him hell. The tag line had the out of-step character telling the sergeant he heard a different drum.'
'What's your drum?' Hazel asked immediately.
I almost blurted out the truth. 'Excitement,' I said after I caught myself. I'd nearly said 'guns.' With a gun in my hand and tension crackling in the air, I'm the best damn man right afterward that you ever saw.
'Well, I've heard about bullfighters,' Hazel said philosophically. 'And I've known gamblers who were on- again-off-again with women.' She got up from the bed and walked to the chair where she'd left her clothes. Her superb big body glistened in the moonlight that filtered into the bedroom. She came back to the bed when she was dressed and punched me in the ribs. 'Forget it,' she said. 'Let's just scratch tonight from the results, Horseman.'
But it was a quiet ride back to the Dixie Pig to pick up my car.
I've had a few quiet rides in my time.
The next night at the Dixie Pig I couldn't see any change in Hazel's attitude. She made no reference to the previous night. I hadn't gone there expecting to find the details of the disaster soaped on the back bar mirror, but it makes a difference and the difference usually shows. Hazel wasn't big only in her physical dimensions.
'I hear you're picking on our poor little deputy sheriffs now,' she began without preliminary, sitting down in the booth.
'Your hearing's good, but you've got the story wrong.'
'You could be underestimating Blaze Franklin.'
It irritated me. 'I'm not overestimating him or underestimating him. I don't give a damn about him.'
'Don't get narky, Chet. I'm telling you for your own good. Blaze is dangerous.'
'So how come a dangerous man is wearing a badge?'
Hazel frowned. 'I don't think anyone had the full picture on Blaze until he had the uniform. A psychiatrist would probably say it gives him the opportunity to work out his aggression safely.'
'Lucille Grimes must go for aggressive types.'
