I flung an onion ring at Nick. “Come on, we’ve just been hanging out together, that’s all.”
Cash took a gulp of his chocolate shake and swiped at his mouth with a little paper napkin. “So, here we sit,” he said, motioning with his hand to let me know he meant himself and Nick. “A panel of experts on the ladies, at your disposal. Now’s the time to ask questions. The secrets of the universe shall be revealed.”
They both crossed their arms and sat there expectantly, like a couple of elders. But I couldn’t think of a thing to ask.
“All right,” Cash said, “I’ll start off. When you’re kissing a girl, you always gotta play with her hair. You start off twirling the ends, that and those little baby hairs down there on her neck. And then, when things start to get hot, when Teddy Pendergrass starts singing ‘close the door, let me give you what you’ve been waiting for,’ you move your hand in deeper, grab a fistful of hair and give it a little tug. Not too hard, just enough to pull her head back so you can get down on her neck. Women love that shit. And don’t forget the Teddy Pendergrass, either. That motherfucker is cooler than this milk shake.”
Cash swirled his cup and took another drink. Then he gestured toward Nick, turning the floor over to his fellow expert.
Nick tamped his cigarette into the ashtray. He did it slowly, like each little jab might actually have been revealing secrets of the universe. Finally, he offered a sly grin.
“You remember that thing Lyndell used to talk about?”
I knew exactly which thing. “What about it?”
“Well, he was right. It’s something you gotta know how to do the right way. It’s a natural part of a man and woman’s relationship.”
Cash appeared confused, so Nick leaned over and whispered in his ear. Cash’s eyes widened and a smile spread across his face. He nodded his head with conviction.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You gotta go downtown. That’s your key to the city, right there. Because listen, she’s gonna be telling all her little buddies about what you do. And when they hear that, man, they’re gonna be jealous. You’re gonna be getting all you want. You’re gonna be having to take vitamins and shit.”
“What are y’all talking about?” Speedy asked.
Cash leaned over and whispered to Speedy. Speedy jerked away like Cash had stuck his tongue in his ear. “Ah, hell,” he said. “That’s disgusting. You wouldn’t catch me doing that.”
“See right there?” Cash pointed at Speedy. “It’s already whittling down your competition.”
I slid my tray aside. I set my arms on the table and leaned forward to hear Nick’s instructions.
“It’s all a matter of tempo,” Nick said. “Like music. You know how some songs start out slow? You got the acoustic guitar going for a while and then the bass comes in a little bit, then the drummer. You got these layers coming in one at a time, applying more force, and then the tempo starts to pick up, and it builds and builds until the power chords just start raining down.”
“You mean like ‘Stairway to Heaven’?”
Nick grinned. “Exactly.”
He grabbed his uneaten chili dog and held it up as a visual aid. The tube steak was tucked into its bun, caked with a pasty coat of chili. A thin stripe of mustard ran right down the middle of the creation.
“Imagine yourself trying to lick that mustard off without disturbing the chili. It’s a very delicate affair.”
“And that’s the acoustic part?” I asked.
He pointed at me and winked. “You got it. Now what comes after that is all instinct. You gotta look at her as your drummer. She’s gonna be the one giving you the cue. She’s gonna let you know what kind of tempo to keep. And if you follow her along and don’t try to rush things, you’re gonna be bashing out some hellacious power chords before that song ends. You’re gonna be bending notes, hammering, getting major feedback. The whole nine yards. But you gotta listen to your drummer.”
I could picture Rachel sitting behind a drum kit. I was thinking she could probably bash the shit out of those skins. All of the sudden, I felt something like a wave of electricity run through me. In my head, I heard the opening chords of “Back in Black.” My appetite came back in a big way, and I unwrapped my peach pie and took a bite.
“You know you could always give her a puppy,” Speedy said. “That’s what I usually do.”
Nick and Cash started laughing. Speedy cut his eyes in their direction, looking like he regretted having said anything.
I wiped a glob of pie filling off my chin. “That’s not a bad idea.”
Speedy’s face brightened. “You know, I need somebody to keep Brute for me. I mean if Cash is really gonna turn me in and all.”
Cash’s mouth dropped open. He looked like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Man, what do you mean, if? There ain’t no if about it. If hell froze over right now, I’d put chains on my tires and drive your ass back to the courthouse.”
I pointed out to Speedy that Brute wasn’t exactly a puppy.
“He’s only a year and a half,” he said. “That’s just a baby. And he’s pretty easy to take care of, too.”
Speedy gave me the rundown on Brute’s upkeep, the kind of food he ate, the times that he liked to go outside to use the bathroom. It turned out his favorite snack was Krystal cheeseburgers. Speedy would put one end of a burger in his own mouth and let Brute take the other end and eat away until he was licking Speedy’s face.
“Giving me some sugar,” Speedy said with a smile.
Cash and Nick looked like they might puke.
“What you gotta do, though,” Speedy said, “is get yourself a thick strand of rope and double-knot it from a tree limb so it hangs to about five feet off the ground. Then take Brute out there and let him jump up and latch on to it with his mouth. Man, he loves that. He’ll hang there for an hour, just jerking his head all around and swinging his body. It’ll take some of the piss out of him, too, so he don’t bite too many people.”
Nick had a frightened look on his face. “You’re not bringing that mongrel into my house,” he said.
“I wouldn’t give it to a girl, either,” Cash said. “Shit, she might lose a hand or something. You don’t wanna be dating no one-handed girl.”
“I think it’d be all right,” I told them. “In fact, I think Rachel might like Brute. She told me, for a fact, that she likes strays.”
“God himself would put that dog to sleep,” Nick said. He grabbed the flap of fabric that Brute had torn loose from his shirtsleeve and held it out as material evidence.
“Yeah,” Cash said. “Trust me. Once she sees this dog, she’ll be sending your ass out to buy one of those poodles.”
“Or a goldfish,” Nick said.
I didn’t trust their opinions on every matter of the heart. I knew Rachel well enough, and that’s why I struck a deal with Speedy. I agreed to take Brute off his hands, but only if it was permanent. He couldn’t come back for him once he’d gotten out of jail.
“It’s probably for the best,” Speedy said. “I don’t hardly have time to look after him, no ways. That’s why he’s so wild.”
I asked Speedy if Brute had really been a stray.
“He sure was. Somebody tossed him out of the car right in front of my house. Poor little thing. I cleaned him up and fed him, then I tied a bow around his neck and gave him to this woman I was seeing. She told me she was gonna name him after me. That’s how he got the name Brute. She used to call me her little brute, on account of the way I race and all.”
Cash was polishing off the last of his rings. “She should have named him Asshole.”
Nick asked Speedy what had happened with him and the girl. He sounded genuinely interested, for some reason.
“Ahh, she left.” Speedy swatted at the air with an open hand. “She said if I could channel some of my tenacity on the track into other stuff, I might really make something of myself.”
“So why didn’t you?” Nick asked.
Speedy shrugg
ed. “Hell, I don’t know. I guess I care more about racing than I do about anything else.”
Nick leaned back and drummed his fingers on the table. “My girl doesn’t even want me to get a real job. She gets mad at me when I start talking about going legit. Ain’t that a kick in the ass?”
“It’s blind luck,” Cash said, “who you bump into when your dick gets hard.”
“That’s why there’s so many sad songs,” I said. “Claudia told me ninety percent of the people aren’t with the person they really want to be with.”
“More like ninety-nine percent,” Cash said.
Nick studied my face for a moment. “You just be careful,” he said. “Sometimes you get hooked up with somebody, not really meaning anything to come of it. And then, the next thing you know, ten years have gone by and you’re stuck with one another.”
“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” Cash said.
Nick got this embarrassed look on his face, like he’d just dropped a bag of pot on the floor in plain view of everyone.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “Me and Bev aren’t the Cleavers, but we’re good for each other.”
He took a sip of his Coke and made a grab for his cigarettes. I understood this to mean that he’d said all he was going to say on the matter of himself and Bev.
It was hard for me to understand their relationship. They’d fight and drive each other crazy most of the time, but then Nick would go out of his way to act like they were some kind of old married couple. He’d call Bev “dear” in between their scraps and carry that Nikon camera along when we’d all go out fishing or on a picnic or to a Braves game. He’d ask other people to take our picture. Bev and I hated it, but he loved to save photos. He had shoe boxes under his bed filled with photos, going all the way back to when he was a little baby and Claudia looked about twelve years old.
Cash scratched at his neck and chuckled. “So, y’all wanna hear my sad story?”
“Go on,” Nick said. “Break our hearts.”
Cash wadded up his napkin, dropped it inside the empty onion ring box and shoved his tray off to the side.
“Well, I used to go out with this girl back when I worked at the chicken farm,” he said. “First girl I ever loved. Her name was Cassandra. And man, let me tell you, I had it bad. She was all pretty and quiet, and her father was a Baptist preacher. Made me want to be a good man, have babies and all that other shit. But after I came in to work late one too many days and got my ass fired, she told me she didn’t want to see me anymore, said she didn’t see me going nowhere, that all my friends were thieves and card sharks and I was headed down the same path. It shook me up, too. Man, I wanted to go out and knock off a liquor store and get my ass caught just to make her feel bad.”
“Trust me,” Nick said, “you would have ended up feeling a lot worse about it than her. Right after the cops shot your ass.”
“Well, it never came to that,” Cash said. “I was in this bar drinking, when I started talking to this guy. I was telling him what Cassandra had said to me. So he tells me he’s a bail agent, and if I got connections like that, if I know all these criminals, then maybe I should go into the bonding business myself. I set down my beer, and I thought: Shit, I’ll go legit. That would piss her off. So I went to work for that guy. I stayed two years, took a class and got my own license.”
He looked down at the hole in his coveralls and laughed in a sad and quiet sort of way. “I built my whole life out of spite for a girl. That’s the only reason I’m not in jail.”
The three of them stared off into space with these gloomy expressions on their faces. They made me think of those three figures: see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. But with different warnings, of course. I guess they all should have been sitting around that table with their hands over their hearts. Either that, or their dicks.
Speedy was the one who broke the silence. He slid his chair back from the table and stood up. “That hit the spot,” he told Cash. “I appreciate it, but I’m ready now. We can get going, if you want.”
Cash looked like he’d been shaken from a deep sleep. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Listen, Speedy. I’ll tell you what, man. I’ll drive you to the county lockup, but you can go up the steps and turn yourself in. All right?”
Speedy just stood there holding his tray. He didn’t say a word. I suppose he thought that Cash might be playing a trick on him.
“It always looks better that way,” Cash said. “It might save you a couple of months on the tail end.”
Speedy nodded in a slow, appreciative way. He walked over and dumped his and Cash’s wrappers into the trash can. Up on the TV, the Braves were headed into the ninth, trailing by a pair of runs. Ernie Johnson uttered his almost nightly refrain: “Time to go get ‘em, Braves.”
Nick draped his arm around my shoulder as we walked out into the lights on North Avenue. He was smiling and looking content.
“What a fucking night,” he said. “Man, I wish I’d had my camera with me.”
15
It’s amazing how lawful you can feel driving on a suspended license. There I was out on the streets under a bright Sunday afternoon sky, steering toward Rachel’s apartment in Nick’s old Plymouth Fury. Nick had given me the okay, impressed by the skills that I’d exhibited during our high-velocity pursuit of Speedy. He’d tossed me the keys that morning right before he left town with one of his customers, a fellow who drove a white BMW. Nick had his Hogans and his suitcase propped up by the front door. He told me he was headed down to Pensacola for a couple days to do a little business and rattle some jars. My driving liberties extended only as far as the Holiday Inn and Rachel’s apartment.
The Fury smelled like grilled onions from the sackful of Krystals sitting at my feet. I’d bought an even dozen to keep Brute in line. I picked him up from Speedy’s disaster of a house, where I also adopted a cable box and about six feet of coaxial that was lying on the bedroom floor. I didn’t think that Speedy would be needing that stuff for a while.
Brute was riding shotgun and smacking on a burger while I made my way back across town. The big fella needed a trip to the vet in a bad way. His ears smelled like sour milk, and his black and brown coat had been hacked up by the mange. It looked like somebody with the DTs had come after him with an electric razor.
I was doing everything by the book, watching the speed limit, staying off the busy roads, keeping the radio volume low even though the Pond was in the midst of a Van Halen rock block. I was incognito as well, my disguise a pair of drugstore aviators and a Braves cap pulled low on my forehead. I could have been headed somewhere to relieve Danno on a stakeout.
The chances of encountering Wade Briggs at a three-way stop must have been pretty damn slim. But it happened. I was sitting there waiting to make a right onto Green Lake Road when his truck crossed my path. He was off duty, driving his black Ford F-150 with his crippled teenage son sitting beside him in the cab.
I tried to pull a Speedy, sliding down in the seat, shielding the side of my face with my hand. It was no use. Wade recognized the car right away. And once his eyes latched on to me, it was like he couldn’t stop looking. You’d have thought he’d seen a long-dead relative sitting behind the wheel. He almost hit the stop sign at the other side of the intersection.
I groaned, punched the steering wheel, and said, “Fuck me,” about a half dozen times. That was right before I remembered the joint in my shirt pocket, the one that I’d intended to share with Rachel. I fished it out and dropped it inside the Krystal sack for safekeeping. Then I tossed my cap and sunglasses onto the dashboard.
Naturally, Wade made a U turn. He followed me down the road, blinking his lights so I couldn’t even pretend to ignore him. I went ahead and pulled over into the weeds by the side of the road.
The steep embankment led down to a dirty cove of the lake. When I got out of the car, I could smell the water, the steamy fishy stench of summer. Out in the distance, the wide blue carpet was dotted w
ith sails and the slim silhouettes of speedboats, most piloted by Atlantans who came out for the weekend, hauling their beer coolers and turning the volume way too high for “Margaritaville.”
Wade climbed out of the truck, leaving Danny inside. Danny was the product of Wade’s troubled first marriage. He looked like Wade, even had a junior set of bags under his eyes, though he’d dyed his hair blond and had grown it down his back. He was wearing a Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt over his bony shoulders and smoking a cigarette, and he looked pissed off about something. I figured he had a right to be, considering how he’d been wrecked by muscular dystrophy.
I leaned against the Fury’s trunk and tried to act like everything was normal.
“Hey, Wade. How’s it going.”
“It’s going okay, Luke. Not too bad.”
Wade was wearing jeans and a Western shirt with snaps on it. His hair was slicked back like he’d just taken a shower.
“Would you believe I’m on a rescue mission?”
Wade couldn’t help but smile a little. It made me feel better, like seeing me had brightened an otherwise gloomy afternoon.
“Probably not,” he said, “but go ahead and convince me.”
“It’s a stray dog.” I pointed at the rear windshield. “I found him a new family, and I’m on my way to deliver him.”
Wade tilted his head and gazed through the window. Brute’s head was bobbing, and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth. It looked like a huge piece of bacon.
“Good God.” Wade’s eyes widened. “That looks like Speedy Brown’s dog.”
“That’s impressive,” I told him. “You must know all the outlaws’ dogs.”
“I just remember thinking I’d never seen a case of the mange that bad before.”
I glanced in at Brute again. “Yeah, I know. He’s gotta see the vet about that.”
Wade straightened himself and considered me with some measure of bewilderment. “So, what the hell are you doing with Speedy’s dog?”
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