“I remember,” Frankie said, “the last time he’s up at the farm. I had to take him up there, and he was, well, it was mostly my mother. She told me: ‘You’re twenty now. You take care of him. I’d do it but I’ve had enough. You take him up.’ So I took him up to Dropkick’s. Doctor P. K. Murphy’s farm. And I checked him in and he was as bombed as you can get. So, he just had new teeth. And he says to me, well, I knew what he was trying to say to me, he wanted me to take his teeth. Paid two hundred and sixty dollars for his teeth. Now what the fuck was I gonna do with the old man’s teeth? I’m probably gonna lose them myself. So I said to the guy, I said, look, he was probably gonna come out of it, one way or the other, they better keep his teeth. And they put them in a box. I saw them do it.
“I go back about a week later,” Frankie said. “I mean, I liked the old bastard. He never hit anybody. Used to drive him nuts, Sandy’s running around the way she did, he couldn’t do nothing about it. But he wasn’t a bad guy. So I went up there, go up there and see him.
“They used to sit around in the back room,” Frankie said. “It looked, they had these tables and a television and it looked just like a fuckin’ bar. I dunno, probably they wanted it that way. They got a drink at nine o’clock and one at lunch and one at six, and some of them, Christ, the whole place, the woods’re full of botties. A guy’d decide, he was gonna check himself in, and he would, and before he did it he’d get a couple friends of his and they’d come down every day and put ten nips in the woods where he said. The guy told me, he said there was one guy, he was stoned all the time and he never went near the woods, and they could tell. they could tell when one of them was stiff, and they started watching him, really careful. And when they, he didn’t think they were watching them, see, he come up in his car, and he’d go out in the yard and get under the car with a cup or something, he filled up the radiator with vodka before he checked in. They thought he was drinking antifreeze. They always had guys bringing in enema bags full of the stuff. At night they’d go around and look in the tanks of all the hoppers. Guys always used to stash pints in there.
“So I go up there,” Frankie said, “and the old man’s got a buddy. One of the guys he used to work with. They’re both on paraldehyde. A little glass of water and the guy comes by every so often and he’s got an eyedropper, and a pitcher, and he puts some of the paracki in the glass and some water and they sit there and they sip it, and they, the television’s going, they’re watching quiz shows or something, they dunno what they’re watching, they got cigarettes in their hands and those butts’d burn right down between their knuckles and you could smell their skin burning and you’d tell them and honest to God, that was the first they’d know about it. You’d tell them and they’d look and they’d say: ‘Oh, yeah.’ And take the cigarette out and look at their fingers and then put the fuckin’ thing back. They couldn’t feel nothing.
“The guy’s name was Burke,” Frankie said. “My old man’s friend was Burke. They were both on paracki and they both smelled like skunks. Just like skunks. That stuff makes booze smell like perfume. And the old man’s complaining. He’s been up there a week and he’s feeling lots better and he wants his teeth. And the guy can’t find his teeth. He goes on and on. Brand-new teeth, guy can’t find his teeth, where the fuck’s his teeth, now he feels good, he wants to eat, where’s the teeth. Burke’s asleep in all of this. I think he was asleep. His eyes were closed. I know he wasn’t dead.
“I go see the guy,” Frankie said. “ ‘Look,’ I say, ‘my old man wants his teeth. He’s in fairly good shape now. Not gonna bite anybody. Where’s his teeth?’ And the guy tells me, same thing the old man tells me. ‘I dunno where his teeth are,’ he says. ‘I put the damned things inna box, and the box’s still there but the teeth’re gone. Him and Burke, they been talking about his teeth ever since he come in. I just don’t know. I don’t find them, I’ll buy him new teeth. I can’t understand it.’
“So I go back,” Frankie said. “Burke’s awake now, at least his eyes’re open, and the old man’s all pissed off, talking the best he can without his teeth, ‘Fine fuckin’ place this is, you come in here and they take your teeth, fuckin’ bastards,’ it’s all ung, ung, ung, he hasn’t got no teeth, and Burke’s sitting up straighter and straighter and finally Burke laughs. And he’s got two sets of teeth. His own, that’re his, and my old man’s. Looked like a fuckin’ man-eating shark. I thought the old man was gonna kill him. Gets his teeth back, wipes them on his sleeve, puts them in his mouth, I think the old bastard was almost sober. ‘See?’ he says. ‘See, you little shit? Make something of yourself and stay off the fuckin’ booze. See what happens to you? Get out there and make some big money and stay the fuck away from Burke. You cocksucker.’ Then he’s gonna beat up Burke.
“I tell you,” Frankie said, “I think he was right. I always thought he was right.”
“You got caught doing it, though,” Russell said, “that fat little fuck. And now you’re gonna go out and get caught again.”
“I didn’t meet you at the ball park,” Frankie said. “Keep that in mind. You’re already pushing your luck again, and you could get grabbed too.”
“For what I’m doing?” Russell said.
“Not gonna matter very much,” Frankie said. “What’ve they got over you?”
“Year and a half,” Russell said.
“Plus what they give you for doing it,” Frankie said. “And all the guys, they’ll be shitting all over you, stealing dogs, for Christ sake.”
“You know something?” Russell said. “I bet they wouldn’t. I bet they wouldn’t even violate me for that. I bet they wouldn’t. And Jesus, it’s gotta be the easiest thing a guy ever did. This morning there, we go out to Sudbury? Those silly shits. They get up and they come downstairs and they let the dog out. They don’t know what they’re doing. You sit there, I think you could park right in their yard if you wanted. They wouldn’t even see you. They let a four-hundred-dollar animal out, right out the door at you, woof, woof, woof, ‘Here, boy, here boy,’ and you wave a little meat at him. Jumps right in. You tried to go in that house and he was in there, he’d take your fuckin’ leg off, probably. But you show him eighty cents’ worth of cheap lamb chops and it takes about two minutes and you’re on your way. I got this Labrador today, beautiful dog, scoffing down the meat and drooling all over the place before they get the door shut, big tail going whump, whump, whump, happy as a pig in shit because he’s eating and he’s getting his ears rubbed. That dog loves my ass. You talk about money? It’ll be Saturday before those stupid bastards even know he’s gone, and I’ll sell him in Florida next week for two hundred without even pushing the guy. Don’t take no brains. Just the rocks.”
“Two hundred,” Frankie said. “John’s talking about ten apiece.”
“Yeah,” Russell said, “but he didn’t say, he didn’t say how we’re gonna get it, that he’s too chickenshit scared to do it himself so he wants us to do it and he just sits back there and takes his piece without doing nothing. I didn’t hear him say nothing about that. He just decided he wanted to get all pissed off because somebody might’ve used something or maybe was doing something or something.”
“If he says it’s there,” Frankie said, “it’s there. And you got to, if the guy’s worried about something, well, he doesn’t want to go and fuck it up, is all. You can’t blame a guy for that. He’s all right.”