“That’s original.”
“Wish I’d thought the line over better, but that’s what came out. Horse Dick threw a right cross at my head, and I drilled his arm on the inside with my stick, went to knockin’ apples on his head. That first noggin shot I hit him so hard I bet his fuckin’ dog back home shit a turd in the shape of a praying Jesus. All this happened quick-like, and these guys decided they were gonna skin me for knockin’ their buddy, so I pull my pistol, shoot a hole in the floor and scare them back. I go out to the car and they follow.”
“And you pull the twelve-gauge and shoot out the neon sign and blow up some bikes.”
“You heard about that?”
“Same place I got the news about the shotgun, the broom handle, and the revolver. Charlie.”
“That goddamn Charlie is one knowledgeable sonofabitch, ain’t he?”
“That he is.”
“So I went away from there, and a few of these guys followed, but I lost them. Or thought I did. I decided Duffin’s pasture was a good place to hide. I pulled in, killed the lights, parked, and sat. I think, all right, I’ve lost them. I start to relax. I have a bag of cookies in the car there, and I’m eatin’ them, and I glance in the rearview mirror, and what do I see?”
“An old gentleman and eight tiny reindeer.”
“The biker fucks. I wasn’t slick as I thought. They’d seen me turn in, left their bikes down the road somewhere, and were sneakin’ up on my highly attractive shiny black ass.”
“But you were sneakier.”
“I slid to the other side of the car, opened the door and slipped into the grass, draggin’ my twelve-gauge with me. I crawled along for a bit, then got up and ran. Them sonofabitches seen me. They let out a whoop, and the race was on. I went into the woods. I looped wide and doubled back and got down in the creek and saw them crossin’ down a ways, goin’ up on the bank. I went down the creek about a mile and came up in the woods, and goddamned if some of them hadn’t wandered up right where I come out. Asswipes had me surrounded.”
“So they scalped you and ate you.”
“I crawled right between those fuckers, and they didn’t hear nor see me, so I kept on crawlin’.”
“Isn’t this story attributed to Daniel Boone?”
“You know Webb’s hog farm?”
“Yeah. And I see this comin’.”
“I crawled up to the edge of the farm, through the slats of one of the hog pens. They say hogs shit in one corner of the pen, but someone forgot to tell these fuckin’ hogs that, or Webb needs to get his ass out there with a shovel more, ’cause I can seriously testify that this entire pen had the intense aroma of pig shit gone bad and then made worse.
“I was in this swill, lookin’ out, and I seen the bikers trottin’ along the side of the farm there. I knew they hadn’t seen me, but they were close enough I could have smelled them, if I hadn’t had my nose full of pig shit. You know what I did, Hap?”
“Is this question rhetorical?”
“No.”
“You eased into the pig shit and hid.”
“You ought to be on fuckin’ Jeopardy!, Hap. That’s exactly what I did. I slid myself into that muck so there wasn’t nothing but my head and arms and that twelve-gauge stickin’ out. I made up my mind they came for me I was gonna’ start blowin’ kneecaps off. But when they got downwind of that pig shit, they began to cuss and head back into the woods.”
“It takes a real man to lay down in pig shit and not complain,” I said.
“I fought off a couple of amorous pigs, climbed through the fence, made the road, but stayed more in the woods. After a while, I heard their bikes and hunched down in the underbrush and watched them drive by. I waited a few minutes, thought about going back for my car, decided they’d expect that and might have a guard there. I crossed the road, went across Murdoch’s old pasture, crossed into the woods behind your house, jimmied a window with a tire iron out of your truck, and climbed inside. I was plumb tuckered out. I lay in your bed there all the mornin’ and the day until you showed up and woke me.”
“Just like Goldilocks and the three bears.”
“Well, yeah.”
“What about my tire iron?”
“It’s under the porch. Damn, Hap, you’re supposed to show me some sympathy. Fuck your tire iron.”
“You brought this on yourself, man. And you fucked up my sheets. And you damn well better not have lost my tire iron.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’ve got hog shit in my twelve-gauge.”
“I’m tryin’ to figure on this thing, Leonard, and it isn’t adding up so good. Horse Dick lost his head out by Old Pine Road. That isn’t anywhere near the Duffin pasture. But all these bikers were chasin’ you and he wasn’t. Seems to me, I was Horse Dick, and it was my noggin with the bumps on it, I’d have been leading the pack. But he went off in another direction and got himself shot.”
“Maybe he got confused. Those were some serious adjustments I made on his punkin. I hit him so hard I may have even changed his past, but I didn’t kill him.”
“Oh, by the way,” I said, “you know your Rambler? They burned that mother to the ground.”
“Crap! You enjoyed telling me that, didn’t you? You’ve always hated that car, and this from a man with a Datsun pickup.”
“I think you ought to turn yourself in, Leonard. Not just because you drove a Rambler, but because Charlie will make sure the right thing is done.”
“I’m not sure there’s much Charlie can do.”
“Once we start shooting holes in what at first seems obvious, we can clear you. You don’t turn yourself in, they can say you’re runnin’ and hidin’ because you’re guilty.”
Leonard shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell to do. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.”
I heard the phone ringing in the house. I said, “I’ll answer that while you clean the hog shit off my floor and carpet.”
“Do I have to?”
“Damn straight. And don’t just wipe the surface. You use some cleanser and de-stinker. It’s all under the kitchen sink.”
“De-stinker?” Leonard said.
It was Doc Sylvan on the phone.
“Are you out of your mind?” he asked.
“I’m not sure one way or the other.”
“I can believe that. You have to have those shots, Hap, or you will die.”
“Come on, Doc, I got five days before the next one.”
“What about the insurance problem? You forgot about that?”
“Can’t you fudge a little? I had to leave the hospital. It wasn’t by choice, but I had to.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t done laundry in days.”
“You went home to do laundry!”
“I had some bills to pay.”
“Why don’t you just say you needed to wash your hair?”
“Well, it does need it.”
“Hap, listen here. You come back to the hospital tonight and stay, and I’ll work something out. But you got to be there tonight. I can rig something for you being out of the room a while. Say I had you over at the office for tests, but that’s as far as I go. Doing something like that, getting caught, I could lose my license, and I don’t think you make enough to support us both.”
“Not in the style to which you are accustomed. Fact is, I don’t make enough to support me. In any kind of style.”
“You be in the hospital tonight, and I promise I will have you out of there within two days, and still make the insurance work. It’ll take some finagling, but I’ll do it. Just to get you out of my hair.”
“Got you.”
“I will be by the hospital at eight-thirty tonight, Hap. Be there. In bed.”
“In one of those little gowns?”
“You bet.”
“Shall I wear a little perfume?”
“Please do.”
“I think you just want to see me naked, Doc.”
“It’s all I think about.”
Leonard came in with a scrub brush full of hog shit, a pail of stinky water, and a couple of towels.
“These towels weren’t the good stuff, were they?” he asked.
“Not anymore.”
“They have holes in them.”
“Yeah, and the bad towels have more holes in them. You clean the mess up?”