as big as a small Shetland and covered with scars. His hair grew in patches around the scar tissue, and his eyes were yellow and bloodshot. A.J. likened the dog to a creation by Dante on LSD. He was a hound from hell, and A.J. had no doubt that if Rufus ever got hold of him, there wouldn’t be much left to bury, except maybe a half-eaten shoe or a few small pieces of the Louisville Slugger.
A.J. backed up slowly, then turned and headed on his way. Rufus stayed where he was and watched. It was always that way, as if the dog was just letting A.J. know he was still around, waiting for the day when his foe forgot to be cautious. For the life of him, A.J. couldn’t remember any incident that might explain the dog’s ire. It didn’t really matter much, anyway. The ritual of defending his life had evolved into a routine nuisance, akin to paying taxes, going to the dentist, or listening to his neighbor, Estelle Chastain, talk about the hard old days when her long-suffering and now-deceased Parm had gone off to fight the Hun, leaving her, a mere girl of seventeen, pregnant but still petite, mind, to fend for herself for two long, cold, lonely years.
A.J. entered the homestretch, the last quarter mile of his trek to Eugene’s home. Just ahead was a wide place in the trail, and parked there, rusting peacefully, was The Overweight Lover. It was a 1965 Chrysler Imperial with fine Corinthian leather interior and a 440 cubic-inch motor. It sat where it had finally died and, in A.J.’s opinion, this was hallowed ground. The car was green and wide, and it had
“How long would you say this car is?” A.J. had asked Eugene upon his first glimpse those many years past. “Thirty, maybe thirty-five feet? Nice wide whitewalls, too.” He was standing by the car, hands in pockets, lightly kicking at one of the tires as if he were a potential buyer.
“Don’t talk about my car,” Eugene had replied from under the dash. He was in the preferred position for eight- track tape-player installation, upside down with his legs hanging over the back of the front seat.
“What name would you put on this shade of green?” A.J. had continued, running his hand down the front fender. “I’ve seen this before, somewhere.” He was enjoying himself. He had been listening for some time to Eugene’s derisive comments about his own humble vehicle, a 1963 Chevrolet Impala that Eugene called the Hog Farm. So A.J. had been praying for a vehicle of the Lover’s pedigree to appear.
“I told you to quit talking bad about my car,” Eugene said, sitting up while he plugged in a Led Zeppelin tape to try the stereo. Jimmie Page and Robert Plant sounded like they were gravely ill.
“Led Zeppelin is a little raw for an automobile of this stature,” A.J. had observed, reaching into the ice chest for a beer. Eugene gave him a hard stare. Then he secured a beer of his own and began to wash the car. When he got around to the windows, A.J. noted that they could probably scrape the name off with a razor blade.
“You have got to be kidding,” Eugene had said, looking at A.J. with disbelief. “The name is the best part.”
A.J. emerged from his reverie of times dead and gone and smiled a little wistfully as he passed. He felt strangely happy to see the old Lover again. It was a monument to simpler days. Even now, long past her glory and rusting away on the side of Eugene’s Mountain, The Overweight Lover was one of a kind.
A.J. entered the clearing that held Eugene’s cabin, a euphemistic term for an assortment of structures and objects that had been tacked together over the years. The core of the abode was a Ford school bus he and Eugene had accidentally acquired late one night many years upstream of the present. They were seniors in high school, and they were busy on that fateful evening borrowing a little gasoline from each of the school buses parked behind the school gym.
This activity was considered to be entrepreneurship rather than theft by all the local boys, and Eugene and A.J. were up in the rotation on the night in question. As they were siphoning the last bus, Eugene discovered the keys hanging in the ignition. They both pondered the development briefly before deciding to borrow and hide the bus for a couple of days prior to easing it back into the bus line when no one was looking. They agreed that this course would be a good joke on Slim Neal, the local policeman, who would be quite upset by a missing school bus. In retrospect, it turned out to be one of those deals that looked really good on paper but in actual fact should have been reconsidered.
But A.J. and Eugene were young and foolish, so they took the bus. A.J.’s partner in crime suggested the perfect place to hide it would be in the big clearing up on top of the mountain. The road had been recently scraped, and they figured they should be able to get the bus up there. Eugene drove, and A.J. followed along in the Hog Farm, and they were both nearly overcome with the hilarity of it all.
When they arrived at school the next morning, they were faced with the realization that some people did not have their appreciation for fine humor. Slim Neal was livid, and there were times during the day when it seemed he might combust. He had called in the county sheriff, Red Arnold, to help with the investigation.
Red was a law enforcement official from the old school and had acquired the reputation over time of shooting first and not bothering much with the questions later. The state police arrived before noon, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation rolled in shortly thereafter. Slim had waited all of his life for the opportunity to use his CRIME SCENE-DO NOT CROSS tape, so the area was roped off and diligently patrolled by an armed and dangerous Leon Neal, Slim’s brother and erstwhile deputy for the day.
Around one o’clock Slim started talking about bringing in a brace of bloodhounds, and Eugene and A.J. knew they had a deteriorating situation on their hands. Their joke had developed significant technical difficulties, and when they heard that a citizen’s patrol had been organized to keep an eye on the gas tanks, they realized it was going to be no easy task to return the bus. Both of their fathers had joined the patrol, and they figured that Johnny Mack, at least, would have them sent down to the state prison at Reidsville as a character-building exercise if he caught them. So, since there appeared to be no other viable options open to them, they kept the bus.
“What the hell are we going to do with it?” Eugene asked a few days later. They stood in the clearing on the mountain and viewed their handiwork.
“We could turn it into a snow-cone stand, but I don’t know how much business we’d get up here,” A.J. replied, staring at that yellow embodiment of ten-to-twenty if they got caught. “Maybe we should run it on into the woods and cover it up with brush,” he continued, thinking this action might prove useful should Slim decide to use aerial reconnaissance.
“I can’t believe we stole a school bus,” Eugene said, shaking his head. But there it sat, quiet testimony to questionable judgment and bad luck.
As time passed, it became fairly common knowledge around town that the master bedroom of Eugene’s cabin was the infamous missing bus. It was a tribute to Slim Neal’s investigative expertise that he was perhaps the only person in north Georgia who had no idea where it was, although Eugene considered it sporting to give him the occasional hint.
As the bus became absorbed into the cabin, architectural necessity dictated the removal of some of its parts. These extra pieces would invariably work their way down the mountain and onto Slim’s front porch. A.J. had urged Eugene to discontinue the practice, but the temptation was too strong. Thus, every so often, Slim would step out with his morning coffee and stumble over a tire, or perhaps a fender. One time the engine was sitting there, cold black oil oozing all over Slim’s
As A.J. neared the cabin, he saw Eugene sitting on the ramshackle front porch, rocking gently in an old rocker. He was methodically loading the Navy Colt his grandfather had left him, the same one that had dispatched Charles Fox in the previous century. Loading the Colt was a complicated business, and he did not seem to notice A.J.’s arrival.
Eugene’s appearance was startling. His shoulder-length white hair was in desperate need of a combing. His long white beard hung to his chest and was reminiscent of Rip Van Winkle’s whiskers. There was translucence to his skin, as if the full light of afternoon was shining through. As he sat there on his front porch, he reminded A.J. of an Old Testament prophet, a modern-day Elijah perched atop Mount Eugene, preparing to read the Law to the unworthy and to enforce it, if necessary, with the Navy Colt.
A.J. cleared his throat to warn of his approach, then stepped up on the porch. Eugene continued loading, and A.J. viewed his surroundings.
An old wooden cable spool sat between the two chairs on the porch and served as an end table. Its contents included a quart of bourbon, several pill bottles, a scattering of loading supplies, one of the Lover’s hubcaps that
