railing and pushed across their faces, Jones and Kirkpatrick sitting in that last car, watching the brick warehouses and ramshackle houses fading from view until there were only wide rolling fields of dry grass and dead cornstalks.
“Right side,” Jones said. “I’ll watch the left just to make sure.”
They made it all the way to Tyson when the car door slid open and an attractive woman dressed in black with dark lipstick asked if she could join them.
Jones stood and said: “Please.”
She smelled just like the flowers Mary Ann cut fresh and kept in the house till they dried and turned. The turning seemed to make ’em even more sweet.
HARVEY AND VERNE WATCHED GEORGE, KATHRYN, AND ALBERT Bates pile into that big blue Cadillac and disappear down the country road. George said they were going to visit some old speaks, Kathryn wanted to see
“How’s the farm, Boss?”
“Fair to middlin’,” he said. “Don’t have enough water. Got me a hog that’s turned on me. He’s supposed to be ruttin’ but the other day damn near tried to kill me. I can’t figure it out.”
Miller looked to Harvey. Harvey flicked the long ash from his cigar and shrugged.
“Can we go take a look at that hog?” Miller asked.
“Sure thing, boys,” Boss Shannon said. “Let me get a lantern.”
“Say, Boss,” Harvey said, “where’s ole Potatoes these days?”
“You know he got that girl from down the road with child? Well, he married her, and now she’s knocked up again. I ’spec you could say he’s taken on responsibility. He don’t like it when I call him Potatoes no more. But I can’t seem to wrap my mind ’round it. That kid will always be Potatoes to me. Hold on there, fellas.”
Harvey worked on the cigar. The late-night light, not dark but almost purple, still burning deep to the west, almost making him feel like he could see clear over to California and the Pacific Ocean, all wide and endless like a filthy dream.
“Why don’t you just ask him, Verne?”
“Where’s the fun?” Miller said. “Besides, you think he would talk that easily?”
“He’s going to scream.”
“Let him scream.”
“What if he gets killed?”
“He won’t get killed,” Miller said. “Whoever heard of a hog killing a man?”
“I have,” Harvey said. “You know, I grew up on a farm.”
“You don’t say.”
“I still have a farm,” Harvey said. “Just what do you know about me, Verne?”
“I know enough.”
Boss Shannon was wearing his finest pair of Union overalls with high-laced boots and an almost clean undershirt. He’d taken a plug of tobacco from a tin in the kitchen and was sucking and spitting as they followed a hog path down along the barbed-wire fence. Pigs wallowed and grunted in a mud enclosure, and nearby the men found a rambling cage of wire and barn wood where a huge hog looked into the lantern light with tiny red eyes.
“What do you call him?”
“ Hoover,” Boss Shannon said, spitting. “Armon named him. Ain’t that a hoot? Hoover. Don’t he look just like him?”
“You called him Armon there.”
“See?” Boss said. “I’m trying.”
“I wish he’d come down and see us,” Miller said. “We could have a drink. He might like some whiskey we brought from Kansas City. He could play organ for us. I wonder if he knows ‘We’re In the Money’?”
“I’ll tell him, but he can’t leave the house much on account of his wife’s condition. ’Sides, he only plays church music.”
“They have some company?”
“No, sir,” Boss said. “Alone, besides that ole hound. Yep, just Armon and his bride. And like I said, that dog.”
Miller drew a.45 automatic from his belt and said, “Take your clothes off, Boss.”
“You boys always joking,” the old man said with a smile.
“He ain’t joking,” Harvey said.
“Come on, now. Y’all lost your senses. I don’t have no money.”
“We don’t want money,” Miller said.
“What do you want?”
“For you to drop your drawers and crawl in the slop with ole Hoover there,” Miller said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“You boys lost your mind. I just finished telling you that hog has something wrong with its faculties. He could right kill me.”
Miller squeezed off a round at Boss’s feet, and the man jumped like an impromptu reel had started up. Harvey laughed and turned his head so Boss couldn’t see the smile and think they didn’t mean serious business.
“Socks and underwear, too.”
“I ain’t goin’ in the cage with a hungry hog with my pecker freed.”
Miller fired off another round. And Boss danced a jig till he wore nothing but his T-shirt, like it was a long flour- sack dress. Harvey slid back the lock on the cage and waved his hand, a doorman at the finest speak in the city. “Your party awaits.”
“You two crooked sonsabitches. Want to see me cornholed by a filthy swine. That’s a sickness. The plagues will come on you tenfold. You know it.”
Harvey slid back the bolt. He got the cigar going again to a glowing red tip. He checked the time.
“How long?” Miller asked.
“I’ll say ten minutes.”
“I’ll say five or less.”
“How much?”
“Hundred dollars.”
“This some kind of sport!” Boss said. “Goddamn you both to hell in your underbritches.”
There was a guttural snort, red eyes in the passing beam of the kerosene lantern. Light scattered from Boss Shannon’s hand down into the mud and muck and pig shit before a high squeal sounded that the men took for the animal but would later figure out was only Boss.
Miller only had to ask once, “Just what have George and Kit gotten themselves into, and how can we get a slice?”
KATHRYN BOARDED THE TRAIN IN MUSKOGEE AFTER TAKING another line from Denison, Texas, and waiting it out for the
