that didn’t make any sense. He was still out of his head.
Junior took a swig of the whiskey, said, “You two going to have to hold him.”
I got his shoulders and Jane got his left ankle, where just above it, in the calf, was the wound.
“Young’n,” Junior said to Tony, who was standing in the doorway, “you come over here and sit on his good leg.”
Tony did just that.
Junior said, “Now, he’s going to scream, but don’t let him go.”
And Junior went to work with the knife.
Gasper had good lungs. He screamed so loud and so long, when we was finished, my ears hurt.
Junior put the buckshot he dug out of Gasper’s leg into a bowl on a table beside the bed. He poured more whiskey on the leg when he finished, drank a bit for himself, then wrapped the leg.
We rolled Gasper on his back, and within a moment, he was asleep. Junior touched his forehead. “Fever done broke. Figured it would, soon as I got that lead out of him.”
We went out on the porch and let Gasper sleep. Junior gave some scraps to Nasty and had us tell all that had happened to us. Jane told him, and managed not to gussy it up with a lie.
“No one is going to miss Sheriff Big Bill Brady,” Junior said. “Unless maybe he’s got a dog. It’s good his nonsense is over with.”
“Thing is,” Jane said, looking over at the sleeping Gasper, “Gasper has no place to go. I don’t want to leave him, but we’re on a mission. And well, frankly, they ain’t gonna let a colored go where we go.”
“I know that,” Junior said. “I know that every day. That’s why I live up here in these woods, where white folks can’t tell me what to do and when to do it. Ain’t nobody can.”
“Maybe we ought to ask Gasper what he wants to do,” I said. “It ain’t right to make a decision for him.”
“It might not be right,” Junior said, “but with that leg he ain’t going nowhere for a spell, and don’t need to have a choice about it. But what did you mean about a mission, girl?”
She explained to him about Strangler and the gangsters. She told it straight, but it sounded like a lie, it was so wild.
“That’s some situation,” Junior said.
“I know how it sounds,” I said. “But it’s real.”
“I reckon it’s true,” Junior said. “Though I get this feeling that you, girl, you might stretch the blanket a little. You got some storyteller in you, which is sometimes a word for liar.”
“Now and again,” she said, “even a true story needs a little something to spice it up.”
42
“Now,” Junior said, handing me the keys. “That ole pickup ain’t much, but it’ll run. I just don’t know for how long. You can take it and go find your man, and when you get through, you can bring the truck back if it’s still running.”
I got in behind the wheel, and Jane and Tony went around to the other door and slid onto the seat, Jane in the middle. Junior was holding my door open. Nasty was sitting on the ground wagging his tail.
“What’s that dog’s name?” I said. “I been calling him Nasty.”
“Name?” Junior said, glancing back at the dog. “He ain’t got no name. I just call him Dog. But Nasty will do. It fits. He stinks.”
“Thanks, Junior,” I said. “You’ll watch Gasper?”
“He’ll be fine,” Junior said. “His fever is broke, and he’ll wake up hungry and thirsty, you can count on that.”
“He don’t have a home or no people, besides us,” I said.
“He can stay here long as he likes,” Junior said. “I could use the company. Here. You going to need a few dollars.”
He gave me five dollars in coins.
“You can’t do that, Junior,” I said.
“Yes I can,” Junior said.
I took the money and gave it to Jane.
“Not many people would help strangers like this,” I said.
“I’m not many people, son,” he said, “and the way I figure it, you ain’t either. I mean, didn’t the girl say you folks was on a mission? That makes you special, don’t it? Besides, I kept the good truck. This one goes to pieces, it’s no big loss. I was going to sell it, but I figure I wouldn’t get much for it anyway. So I’m not being as nice as you think.”
“If you say so,” I said.
“Watch your hands,” Junior said, and closed the door.
A moment later, I was driving the truck up the little road that led out to where Junior told me I should go.
As we rode along, Jane said, “We’re like Odysseus.”
“Who?”
“Odysseus. The Romans called him Ulysses.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“He was an ancient traveler who went to war, and then, after ten years of it, he decided to go home. On his way he ran into all kinds of problems, and it didn’t look like he was going to make it, but he got through them and finally did go home. Of course, he had to put a giant’s eye out with a sharp stick and kill a bunch of people, but he made it.”
“We aren’t going home. We left home.”
“So we did. Well, maybe it’s more like we’re Jason and the Argonauts. I’ll be Jason and you be somebody on the boat.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“She reads a lot,” Tony said.
“Jason took a boat with heroes on it and went in search of the Golden Fleece.”
“Did he find it?”
“He did,” she said. “Point is, he left home, did a great deed, got the fleece, went back home.”
“Are we going back home?” I asked.
“I’m not,” she said.
“Me neither,” I said. “So how’s that like Jason and the whatevers?”
“Argonauts. You’re missing the point. We are having a great adventure. I’m speaking symbolically again.”
“As you noted, I quit school before that lesson.”
“Oh yeah,” she said, grinning. “I did say that, didn’t I. Well. It’s true. But still, we’re having an adventure.”
“Even if we are, we may not be in time to help this Strangler. He could have been dead for days now.”
“Could be,” she said, “but sometimes it’s just about the quest.”
“Strangler might think it’s about us telling him two gangsters who don’t like that he took their stolen money are going to kill him. So for Strangler, it’s not just the quest.”
“That’s an excellent point,” Jane said.
We rode on through the late afternoon until we came to the edge of Tyler. We stopped and got a dollar’s worth of gas at a station; then we stopped at a barbecue joint and got some sandwiches. We took them outside by the building, sat on the steps, and ate them.
While we were eating, Tony got up and went over to look at a poster on a telephone pole near the street.
“Ain’t
We got up and went over to look at the poster. It was for a carnival. It said, COME DEFEAT OUR MAN AND MAKE SOME MONEY! COME BATTLE THE UNDEFEATED STRANGLER NUGOWSKI! Then there was a painted picture of him that made him look a little like a redheaded movie star.
