Chaingang

Only a few weeks had gone by, and Mary was already tired of the weight of worry. Tired of wallowing in what she perceived as disgusting self-pity. Tired of not knowing.

Tired of the nice people who kept saying things to her that made her flinch, cringe, shudder, or weep. Tired of the limelight already. Even in a town of less than seven hundred, there were nuts who'd call—one in particular phoned every afternoon with a hang-up.

There were sickos out there. She'd opened up a handwritten envelope with one of the reward announcements folded up inside. Some wit had written, “Sam Perkins is now a forward with the Lakers.” She'd had to get Royce to explain the thing to her, assuring her that it was some cretin's idea of a joke.

She was tired of shocks and surprises. Tired of opening the top drawer of his dresser and finding all those white shirts stacked up so neat and clean, the shirts done the way he always preferred them, the collars just so. The second drawer with his button-down oxfords. The bottom drawer containing Sam's cashmeres. The sweaters he loved to wear on Saturday, soft and cuddly to the touch, folded and waiting.

His clothing smelled so sweet and clean. She had opened his closets and examined all his suits, ties, and shoes. Tried to remember exactly what he'd been wearing that Friday. Tried to think if anything else was missing. Shamed herself as she hunted for luggage pieces and shaving gear and airport carry-alls from old trips.

She was tired of knowing less than she imagined, of wondering what to fix that evening and then realizing it didn't matter, of remembering the look of his square-trimmed fingernails, of hearing his voice inside her head.

Tired of asking the same question: Where the hell are you, Sam?

It was beautiful. God, it was something. Perfect. The sky was bright blue and full of cottony clouds, the sun was shining, it was warm, fragrant, spectacular, and Royce Hawthorne was in the salty darkness of the beer joint, sitting in the stall of the men's room, breathing disinfectant and tooting flake. He did another hit and put his coke spoon away. His sinuses felt frozen.

He was so cool, his jones was frozen. His johnson was asleep. His brain, however, was going eighty-four thousand miles a second. He tipped back the can of Oly Light he'd brought into the john with him, and tossed it unerringly into the corner basket, his over-the-stall-top blind free throw, made from lots of practice.

Get it done, chump, he said to his legs, and he got up and walked into the main room of The Rockhouse.

“Yo, Royce.” Vandella said.

“Gimme a shooter.'

The bartender gave him his drink and started wiping glasses. The day was fabulous, but by ten-thirty the place would be lousy with boozers, dopers, and bust-out degenerate gamblers. Hawthorne took his tequila and moved away from the bar, settling down in the first-base chair of the open twenty-one table.

“Morning, sir,” the dealer said. Crisp. Young. Very quick, and cold as the thermometer in an L.A. anchorwoman's poot-chute. He had a name tag that read “Doug.'

“Morning, Doug. Wanna play some blackjack?” The man shuffled and made a show of putting a new shoe together. There were maybe six decks in there at the moment, as if The Rockhouse had to worry about a card counter cleaning them.

Doug-baby was all business. Very good, in fact. He took three or four hundred off Royce before he had time to pull the wedgie out of his crotch.

He asked for a pile of quarters and dimes and played push with Doug for the rest of his shift, pushing twenty-five-and ten-dollar chips back and forth.

Dougie finally took his crisp white shirt and string tie out of Royce's face about forty-five minutes later, with a heavy early lunch shot starting to pack the bar. Tia came in on Doug's break, and he was more than a little pleased to see her—wrinkles, artistic brows, and all.

“Hi, doll.'

“Good morning, sir.” She smiled professionally, flipping in a new shuffle with her Dracula fingernails and long, slim fingers. Her hair was the color of anthracite coal, the Shadow Blue Coal.

“Rock and roll,” he told her, feeling a rush through the nasal passages, feeling the tequila earn its keep.

She dealt him a succession of dime-ante bust-out losers, and he pulled everything in his pocket out onto the felt. James Brown was on the juke and he felt good, y'all. Royce's heart was keeping time with the Rockola. He bet it all.

“Let's ride that—you want to?” This time he imagined he could see it register in that pale, expressionless face.

“You got it, sir,” she said. She dealt him a straight ace-queen, stood on nineteen, and paid the gambler. He walked out of The Rockhouse with more money than he'd been near in a long time. He got in his ride, put Mary's five away for safety, and headed down the hill to find his main man. They were still pricks, but he understood why they had to be. If they'd made it too easy for him to lay hands on the dough, it would have put both himself and the thing they were building at risk.

Now everybody was covered. The business with Drexel, the five-K loan from a straight citizen, these had not been pieces of stage business—they were real—and they'd stand up to quiet inquiries by interested parties, parties such as Happy Ruiz and the men he worked for.

Royce caught himself singing Sam and Dave's “Soul Man,” tapping time on the wheel as he drove. Feelin’ good, y'all. It's so easy when the slide is greasy. He hadn't felt so unburdened in years.

In tempo with the driving beat he could imagine the voice of a sportscaster whose name was lost to childhood memory, broadcasting over the roar of the excited home-team crowd:

“An amazing catch by seventy-four! This could prove to be the most important play in the game; with Waterton trailing Maysburg by a field goal, an incredible third down dive by sticky-fingered, lightning-quick varsity wide receiver Royce Hawthorne, makes it first and ten, goal to go! Hawthorne is sure to be all-city, all-state, all-conference, all-pro, all-star, and all-hero! Yes, fans, it's Royce Hawthorne, the allllllllll-American boy!'

For the first time in a long while he remembered the way it used to be—when his only worries in life had been scoring, and kicking the Eagles’ collective ass.

12

SLABTOWN

The beast was very hungry. He felt clearheaded for the first time since he'd been given his freedom, really strong, coming awake with a roaring hunger. He wanted real food. Then he wanted a heart.

He tried to sort out the hazy details of the preceding day. The drugs had simply neutered him. He remembered sitting beside the river, suddenly aware that he was holding a bamboo fishing pole in his hand. He angrily tossed it aside, and heard an old man telling him to “—come on down here. I think they're bitin'.” He looked down and saw the old bum sitting on some drifted logs in a small eddy that had bitten into the riverbank, fishing. Why hadn't he just buried this geek?

He could have dropped down the bank and nudged this pitiful skin-sack of nothing into the river with no effort, and the corpse might float a good distance before some fisherman would gag on his Budweiser and notify the authorities. He patted the big canvas pocket for his chain and recalled that it was somewhere on the bank behind him.

Perhaps it would be better to bring the body back up the embankment and just stuff him down in this hole where he was now sitting. He could tamp in the sides of the hole, and find some broken pieces of slab to drop on the impromptu grave.

Cottonwoods, ash, and willows grew out of the riverbank. Backwater marks of tide, slime, and flotsam had written history in the bark of the mighty trees. He could select one of the younger trees and fell it with his big fighting bowie. He could see himself bringing down a small tree with a few angry chops, swinging a steel-muscled arm that wielded a blade sharp enough to sever hanging one-inch hemp. He'd checked the blade when he first got loose, and it had been recently honed. It was razor-sharp. They'd not only given him his old survival tools and