“In Troy.”
“What the fuck for? I’m an hour from home now!”
Bubba circled the cul-de-sac, popping his high beams to spotlight each yard’s freshly laid sod. In every verdant ocean bobbed the same customized landscaper flag. Meisel’s Lawn Care, the flags read. Tim “Tiny” Meisel, Proprietor. Let Us Do Your Dirty Work.
“You gotta be blotto.” Romy held the jug to the moonlight. According to the translucence, the vodka was three-quarters gone. “We get pulled over, you’ll blow a 0.15. That’s mandatory jail.”
“I’m already doing hard time.”
He took them to a bar called the Double Branch Lounge. Its wood exterior and checkered awning made it look more country-western than it was. Once upon a time Hank Williams commanded its stage, but nowadays the DB was a Top 40 dive for students at a nearby university. In the lot the wobbly bartender searched for his sea legs before retrieving a throw pillow and belt from his truck bed.
“Thirty-three years hoisting kegs...” Bubba stuffed the cushion into his back waistband. “Insurance covers steroid injections in my sacroiliac joints, only I don’t have insurance. I treat sciatica with a goddamn pillow.”
He made Romy embrace him from behind and guided her hands tightening the belt under his shirt around the cushion. Then, as onlookers gawked, he wrapped her arms across his chest, hoarding the rub of her body.
“That part about never taking advantage,” Romy whispered. “You won’t forget it, however shitfaced you get? I’m an hour from home without my own ride.”
“Naw. This bender’s entirely platonic.”
Inside the Double Branch, Bubba ordered tomahawks — amaretto with cinnamon schnapps.
“Where were we? Oh yeah... so Iv’ry installed Otis in a warehouse to train two dozen budding hackers, mostly high school dropouts. In time the operation loots maybe $30,000, but that’s nothing compared to the millions newspapers tell Iv’ry cryptokleptos are heisting. Meanwhile, Otis’s reading about Bitcoin thieves pulling ten-year sentences. Otis starts stressing. Ulcers, insomnia. For all I know his sacroiliac joints lock up. Eventually he begs Iv’ry to pull the plug, but Iv’ry’s got an investment to recoup. You want out, Iv’ry tells Otis, pay me $100,000. Dr. O’s already blown $80k gambling. No way he — what’s wrong?”
Romy was slumped in her chair, sullenly watching a band soundcheck. “If you don’t get to the point, when the music starts I’ll be dancing, not listening.”
“This part’s the best. The love story starts now... Has Otis talked lately about a woman?”
“He’s mentioned in passing he’s seeing someone. Her name’s weird: Marcella.”
“That’s her — Marcella Meisel.”
Romy turned toward Bubba. “Meisel? That’s the name on those landscaper flags...”
“So you are paying attention!” He scooted a tomahawk at her. They had to sip these shots because their stomachs felt oily. The vague nausea didn’t keep Bubba from ordering kamikazes — vodka with triple sec and lime juice.
“The Double Branch is Otis and Marcella’s personal love shack. She first landed on him like a heat-seeking missile up in Montgomery, but she’s from Troy, so once Otis’s smitten he’s burning rubber to Pike County every night. They party hard — Marcella’s got a nose for coke. They fuck hard too. Otis hasn’t made love in a long time. He’s forgotten how wonderful women’s bodies are, forgotten the pleasures of hands and holes, napes and crannies...”
“You’re scaring the sorority girls.”
“Dr. O’s in love, but he’s still Iv’ry Cole’s bitch. Marcella can tell he’s plagued. Takes her some time to coax the sad shebang from him. Then, in bed, right after a hot rut, she proposes a solution. Her ex-husband, this landscaper Tiny Meisel, inherited a coin collection worth $200k. Marcella won half in their divorce, but Tiny staged a bogus theft to avoid paying. He’s buried the coins somewhere on his family’s two-hundred-acre cotton farm. Marcella’s bought a souped-up metal detector to find them. The thing’s built like a rocket launcher, too heavy for her to lug. But if Otis can locate the coins, Marcella’s willing to split the sale and buy his freedom from Iv’ry.”
“So now we’ve gone from Bitcoins to real coins?”
“Not just any coins. We’re talking Confederate half-dollars and nickels.”
“I feel like I read this in a book once.”
“For ten straight nights Otis humps this contraption over two hundred cotton acres. Guess what happens next.”
“Dr. O is abducted by aliens.”
Bubba laughed and celebrated by making Romy join him in shooting a kamikaze.
“What happens is the gizmo pings. Otis uncovers genuine Johnny Reb silver and copper. He can taste his freedom. He rushes to tell Marcella, only something awful’s happened to her—”
“She’s been abducted by aliens,” suggested Romy.
“This gets serious now. Otis finds Marcella beaten raw. Tiny Meisel’s been trailing his ex-wife, peeping through her blinds when she and Otis knock boots. He knows they’re stealing his coins, so he fractures Marcella’s jaw and blacks both eyes. Otis wants to go to the police, but Marcella refuses. Now that Otis found the coins, she’s got a better idea.”
“Take the money and run. Start a new life under a new name.”
“Nope... Marcella wants Otis to kill her ex.”
Romy pressed at her stomach. “I don’t feel good. I need to eat.”
Bubba agreed. It was time to move on anyway. He ordered his tab, but when the barkeep broke his hundred-dollar bill she had to make change with four rolls of quarters. The Double Branch was fresh out of dead presidents. There are no accidents, Bubba decided. Only opportunities. He squeezed a roll in each fist; the quarters felt like brass knuckles.
In the truck Romy asked if Bubba seriously expected her to believe that a prof she once banged would agree to kill somebody. “I have standards,” she insisted.
“And I don’t meet them,” Bubba replied. “But Otis did agree to shoot Tiny dead in his sleep. Marcella gave him a gun and a key to Tiny’s house.”
It’d happened less than twenty-four hours earlier, Bubba insisted. Otis emptied seventeen rounds from a 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P into Tiny’s bedroom until something thumped to the floor.
“Guess what Otis discovered when he flipped on the light?”
Romy played along, indifferently. “Tiny Meisel’s body.”
“Nope... He discovered Iv’ry Cole’s body.”
From the DB they retraced seventeen miles on 231 to a greasy spoon called the BBQ House. Bubba’s vision was fuzzy, but the shack couldn’t be missed. Its driveway was marked with a pink neon pig in sunglasses kicking out a can-can leg over two flaming slices of Texas toast. “Nice tits,” Romy said, observing the blinking ͼͽ on the sow’s chest. Beside the pig sat a portable billboard with plastic letters: In All Things Give God Your Gratitude.
“When Southerners finally admit the contradictions splitting us down the middle,” slurred Bubba, parking, “we won’t call our impulses hell and heaven, or the agony and the ecstasy even. We’ll call them pork and pray.”
“You’re gonna tell me Tiny Meisel loves this place,” Romy predicted.
“Indeed. Tiny can eat the motherfucking love out of some pork.”
Bubba ambled to the highway’s edge. There was no oncoming traffic, but the rolls of quarters in his pocket weighed him down anyway. “Bitcoin, Confederate coin,” he mumbled. “Always the coin of somebody’s realm. I want free of money and pain.” He hurled the quarters into the woods across the blacktop.