“Maybe later, or if not me, Cason, my buddy.”
“No thanks,” I said.
“He’s kind of shy, ain’t he?” the woman said.
“Naw, he’s just polite, Conchita.”
Booger picked us a table, got us both a cold beer and brought them back and put them down in front of us. He sat down and grinned and said, “You sure you want to go back to Texas?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“What about that hot little Mexican meal over there? Ain’t that got no enticement? You could stay, shack up for a few days. I’ll pay. She’ll turn you every way but loose, that I can guarantee you. She’s finished with you, you won’t know which end your asshole’s on.”
“Booger, I don’t know how to turn down such an appetizing and aptly phrased offer, but I’m going to pass.”
Conchita had the ears of a fox. She said, “What? You don’t like some pussy?”
“It’s very nice actually,” I said, “and I’m a big fan, but I’m going to have to pass. Thank you.”
“It’s a racial thing,” she said.
“No,” I said.
“Hey,” Booger said. “Don’t diss my boy with that. He hangs with me, don’t he? Ain’t nobody knows what I am, not even me. The only color pussy comes in is pink, honey.”
“There you have it,” I said to Conchita.
Booger turned back to me, looked perplexed. “You haven’t gotten a taste for the red eye, have you? Something go on in the showers in Iraq I don’t know about?”
“No. But I’d rather go home.”
“Man, anyone would rather drive to Texas than fuck in Oklahoma, that do be on the confusing side, partner.”
“That’s kind of homo,” Conchita said.
“Naw, he ain’t no homo,” Booger said, feeling it necessary to leap to my defense. Then he turned back to me and shook his head. “Texas. Man, why? It looks like right where you are now. Texas is just the ass end of Oklahoma.”
“East Texas. Lots of big trees and plenty of water. It’s better to me.”
“So it looks like here with trees and a fucking lake. Stick here with me.”
“I got a job interview.”
“That newspaper shit?”
“That’s the stuff.”
“It’s really that Gabby gal, ain’t it?”
“I think that’s over.”
“No you don’t. And I’ll tell you now, bubba, you ought to drop her like a hot rock. I mean, hell, she dropped you. Come on, man. Stick.”
“I’m going to pass, buddy.”
Booger ran his slightly damp hand over his scalp. “I could make you a partner in the range,” Booger said. “You could run it when I’m not there.”
“You’re always there. Only reason you’re not there now is it’s dark, and if the moon was full, you’d be there.”
“I’d be there if it was half full.”
I knew this was true. Booger was the kind of guy that always had a weapon on him, and he carried a duffel bag in his car that had weapons in it, including a rifle you could put together with nothing more than the edge of a coin and a determined attitude. Even had a silencer, and of course plenty of ammunition. I don’t know why he needed the rig or what he used it for, and I didn’t want to know.
“So, what you say, you gonna stay?”
“Thanks, Booger. But no.”
“The bar, you could run the bar.”
“You have Runt to run the bar.”
“I could fire Runt.”
Runt was about six-five with a shock of blond hair, a chest like a fifty-five-gallon drum, and two and a half teeth—the latter being snaggled from taking a tire iron in the mouth. I didn’t get the details, but the guy who hit him was a traveling salesman for industrial vacuums from Arkansas. Booger said Runt just grinned some ragged teeth at the guy and told him he should have brought a Tootsie Roll instead of a tire iron, because they were a lot easier to eat.
I was glad I wasn’t there. I wouldn’t have wanted to see it or know about it, at least not firsthand. It all happened in the parking lot, same place where Booger had inserted the antenna. Bottom line is, somewhere in Arkansas, a vacuum cleaner company is missing a salesman.
“I don’t think I’d want to be the one that told Runt I was taking his place.”
“Oh, hell,” Booger said. “I’ll tell him.”
“No. That’s all right.”
“How about another beer?”
“I’ve had all I want of this one. I’m about to get behind the wheel.”
“Hell, you could drink three or four of those before you needed to worry.”
“No thanks.”
Booger looked at me in that way that made me hope I hadn’t somehow offended his hospitality; it was that little shift I saw in his eye that made me decide, right then and there, I had had enough of Booger.
I got up and smiled and stuck out my hand.
Booger stood up. He shook my hand like he was pumping water, then slapped me on the back.
“Damn, boy,” he said. “We had us some time over there, didn’t we?”
“We did,” I said, remembering it a whole lot less fondly.
“I miss getting up every day and looking forward to blowing some Man Dress out of his knickers.”
“Well, got to go,” I said.
“You missing out,” Conchita said. “I got some business, baby. I can shoot Ping-Pong balls out of it. I had some, I’d show you.”
“As enticing as that is,” I said, “I’m going to leave.” I turned to Booger. “Okay, man. I’m out of here.”
Booger grabbed me and hugged me, shifting one of my ribs a little. “You need anything, call me.”
“I will,” I said.
“Good.”
As I started out, Runt yelled, “See you, Cason.”
“So long, Runt.”
“Hey,” Conchita said.
I turned. “Yeah.”
“You don’t say bye to me?”
“Bye.”
She shifted on the stool, smiled, said, “You ever want some stinky on your dinky, you know where to show. And maybe you bring some Ping-Pong balls, I can show you that trick, man.”
“I’ll certainly give it some thought.”
I went away then, hoping, praying, I’d never see any of them again.
Well, maybe Conchita.
But now that I had heard Booger’s voice on the phone, I felt a strange kind of yearning to see the crazy bastard. And the fact that I wanted to bothered me.
Back at the paper, I forced myself to write a column that had nothing to do with Caroline Allison. I wrote a moderately humorous piece on how much I had loved Tarzan when I was young. Jimmy had got me thinking on this. I told about being up in the tree in my underwear and getting sunburned, but I left the part out about my cooked testicles. A mention of that would have had Baptists on the paper’s doorstep, all of them carrying pitchforks and yelling Bible verses.
