“You know you can get ’em made of rubber these days.”
“I know,” Armon said. “I seen ’em at the drugstore.”
Jones pulled the bucket back to daylight and used that old dipper to find a drink just a mite cooler than the air and tasting so deeply of rust and minerals that it soured his face. The action wasn’t lost on Weatherford, who foxed those eyebrows and wandered over to a pen with a couple fat sows and piglets wallowing in caked mud and slop, chickens scrambling and clucking at his feet, waiting for them to drop a crumb. Too dumb to find some shade.
“Radio said it might break a hunnard today.”
“That so?” Jones said, placing the dipper back on a twisted nail and wiping the rust onto his pressed pant leg.
“Our water ain’t cold branch, but glad we got it,” Armon said. “Say, would you boys like to share a watermelon? She’s a mite puny but just sure would wet the whistle.”
The men sat along the open porch, Armon Shannon cutting into the small, round fruit with a pocketknife and handing over generous slices-for the size-to the two men. Jones pulled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket, careful not to expose the thumb buster, and gripped the rind.
“You got some salt?” Weatherford asked, before sinking his big teeth into a slice, the red juice running down his chin onto his silk tie. He took aim at the old hound, who’d come back out from under the porch, and spat seeds at the dog’s head.
Armon skedaddled on in, fetching some salt. Door thwacking closed behind him.
“How’s the comparison?” Weatherford asked.
“What do you think?” Jones said, tasting the watermelon, and making out the tin of a barn roof reflecting a mile or so to the southwest, thinking he wanted to meet Boss Shannon before the sun went down.
Armon came back with a saltshaker and passed it to Weatherford.
The baby followed, naked as Eve, stumbling for her daddy’s leg and tugging for a slice of watermelon, pointing to her mouth like a jaybird. Shannon shook his head and cut off a miserly slice, placing it into the child’s tiny hands, the father opening the screen door for the child to wander back through. He finished off the watermelon and said he was headed ’round back to throw the rind to the hogs. As he turned the corner, Jones followed the child into the shack, hotter than the porch, catalog wallpaper of red flowers coming unglued from the walls. He heard the small feet scatter and then stop, and a rusted, tired squeak.
The two doors toward the front porch were shut, but Jones tried one, lightly letting it swing open with the natural lean of the house to find a baby’s high chair and a metal bed.
He walked farther into the shack and noted a kitchen to the northwest, and the northeast corner filled with a handmade bench and an old organ with sheet music to an old Fatty Arbuckle picture.
He turned back to the porch, walking soft in his boots, the screen door squaring up a big Texas sky, bright blue with heat, and not a cloud for shade. He saw Weatherford’s back and his hatless, balding crown. The detective continued to launch seeds into the dusty ground while Jones tried the other door to his right. As it opened, he found the teenage girl sitting atop a bare mattress, her gingham dress pulled astride of her fat, round bosom. Both mother and child turned to the old man, the child going back to the nourishment, but the mother had the look of a coyote, her eyes not leaving Jones until the old door, fashioned of square-headed nails and boards, closed with a final, hard click.
Jones returned to the porch as Armon rounded the corner, coming from the hogpen.
“Our thanks for the watermelon,” Jones said.
“I’ll tell Boss you come callin’,” Armon said, shaking the men’s hands before scratching his pecker and looking up high at the sun, as if either one could tell time, and giving an expression like he wished it would get on and set. “Gosh dang, it’s gettin’ hotter than nickel pussy.”
GEORGE STARTED ACTING STRANGE, STRANGER THAN NORMAL, the minute they got back to the Hotel Cleveland. He’d read off the front page of the
“Did they say it was Urschel money?”
“What did I say?”
“Why didn’t you tell me back at the hotel?”
“Because that woulda started a discussion, and I ain’t in no mood for discussin’.”
“George, you are whiskey mean. You can drink beer all night, but the minute you touch the liquor-”
“Go suck an egg.”
They were on Highway 20, halfway to Toledo, before she spoke again, the bumpy road and headlights shooting into nothing but ribbons of road, making her sleepy.
“I got to use the can.”
“Piss in a bottle,” he said.
“It doesn’t function that way, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Ah.”
“Why are you sore?”
“Those Jews didn’t have the money two days before they got sloppy and started to show off.”
“How’d they get pinched?”
“How else? Turned in by some lousy bank manager.”
“You said the Kid was smart and that he knew people, and no one would be the wiser. You said-”
“I know what I said, ’cause I’m the one who said it.”
The bastard drove straight on into the town of Assumption, this being about the time he needed to take a leak, and wheeled on into a roadside gas station and told the grease monkey to fill her up. The monkey unlatched the hood and flipped her open to check the oil, whispering and whoo-wheeing, until Kit got out and found the can herself.
“She sure is cherry,” the monkey said. “Her engine ain’t even broke in yet.”
“And my husband wants to trade her already.”
“Come again?”
“He wants to trade her.”
“Whatsthematta with him?”
“You name it, brother.”
They were back on Highway 20.
And then it was WELCOME TO INDIANA.
“I’m hungry.”
“Well, you should’ve grabbed a pig’s foot at the filling station.”
“You should go into radio.”
“Come again?”
“You should go into radio.”
“How’s that?”
“ ’ Cause you’re a goddamn comedian.”
Toast, eggs, and hash in Angola, staring out at signs south to Waterloo.
“Waterloo?”
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“It’s where Napoleon got his ass kicked.”
She shrugged, and took some more cream in her coffee.
“You wouldn’t know that, ’cause you never went past the eighth grade.”
“Are you gonna sing me the Central High fight song?”
