Himebaugh was giggling softly, eyes squinting slightly under his bushy black eyebrows. There was a prudery in him that usually drove him from such gatherings as this — he was a common visitor to this table, but seldom stayed long. Now he tittered and stared at his hands, nervous on the tabletop. Fisher, a flabby old man, sat leaning back on two legs of his chair, chin tucked in the soft fleshfolds of his neck, a smile on his poker face — he frankly enjoyed the story, rarely interpolated. Castle guffawed abruptly from time to time, but not in strict cadence with the tale. He had round leathery cheeks that ballooned when he laughed. Castle could tell at a glance where a man bought his shoes, and, if they weren’t from his place, it didn’t pacify him to explain you had to spread your business around.
“Meanwhile, our man in Waterton is taking it easy with the alcohol. He pumps in a couple stiff swallows, avers it prolongs the action, but too much and he might not fire off at all—”
“Yes, that’s true!” Mick sang, then flushed when everyone roared. Fisher even had to ease his chair down on all four legs momentarily for fear his convulsions would spill him.
Jones smiled around his dead cigar, continued: “Patience pays its way. The whore spreads on the bed and commences to chatter. Carl learns who her brother was and some miscellany about him. She kicks off her shoes. Carl, coolly denying still his throbbing rod, pumps her more about the brother. She tells all. Tears. Very touching scene. Carl waxes sympathetic. It is very sad indeed. He even works up a kind of tear and rubs his eye red. Advises her she ought to turn in for the night, forget all about it, head off tomorrow on that trip she’s been thinking about. She’s grateful. Says by Jesus he understands her. She tells him nighty-night and flops over to the wardrobe, stopping by the dresser to puddle out another tumblerful. Sets the tumbler on the floor by the wardrobe, hauls off her blouse, skirt, and bra, drops her drawers, wriggles into a traditional scrap of lingerie.” Jones paused to light the cigar again, while the others exchanged commentary. Lou could never keep a cigar going and tell a story at the same time.
Miller had finished the hamburgers, delicious in spite of the charring, and wanted another beer, but Mick was hunched over the table in such unabashed absorption, he didn’t have the heart to break the spell. Fisher smoked and chuckled drily, leaning back. Castle brayed and shouted, “Come on!” and beat the table. Himebaugh giggled to himself and stared at his glass, still full of beer.
“She squats for the tumbler and is surprised to discover our boy still in the picture. Look, she says, I’m going to bed. Like you said. Good night. Thanks, but good night. Carl shrugs, tells her don’t mind him, he’s just finishing his drink, and before she can object he switches back to the belovèd brother, jaws on like he has known the poor bastard all his life. So she doesn’t complain now, just quaffs the rye, then nests into the sheets, her famous bun to the breezes, and listens to him. Carl says she holds her goddamn hand curled up against her mouth and reminds him of how his little daughter sucks her thumb at night.”
“A detail only a doting father could provide,” Miller interposed. Fisher laughed drily, but the others seemed not to have noticed there had been an interruption. Jones downed his beer. Himebaugh’s glass sat untouched in front of him. The man’s soft flabby titter was nearly inaudible. Seemed in some world of his own. On the screen above, pain pills were Bigmouth’s product now. Disturbingly graphic.
Jones said, “Carl’s knob, caught wrong in his pants somehow, is paining him, so he decides the time is come. She is gazing placidly and weepily through the far wall, so he quietly slips his pants off and, talking all the time, hooks them on the foot of her bed. Then, just as the whore seems about to emerge from her distant focus, he jumps her, pins her arms behind her, and says: Your brother was the biggest shit I ever knew, he deserved to die!”
“Jesus Christ!” cried Castle, slamming the table, half out of his chair.
Mick was stunned, jaw slack, and even old Fisher lowered his chair, smile sliding to frown.
“Mad!” whispered Himebaugh, glancing at the others. “The man is a psychopath, a lust murderer!” But, strangely, it was as though he were still giggling.
“That cocksucker!” Castle thundered, as always the most vocal. “Why, he’s a damn, a damn, a goddamn — what did you say, Himebaugh?” With that, they started to laugh again.
While Jones relit his cigar a fourth time, Miller ducked behind the bar and pulled five more beers, omitting Ralph. Castle, Fisher, DeMars, and Himebaugh stared at each other with astonished half grins and exchanged condemnations. “No, what I mean, that sonuvabitch oughta hang!” Mick declared in summation.
“Well, the hapless lady is too shocked even to fart,” Jones resumed. “She starts a fierce struggle to break loose, but Carl is twice her size, and, besides, she’s at a real disadvantage there on her belly with two hundred and fifty pounds of hot raging beef saddling her, pinning her wings. And all the time he keeps rubbing it in what a cheap rotten punk her goddamn brother was.” Castle banged. Fisher was over the table. “Only trouble is, Carl complains, he can’t get his reamer in the slot from behind, nice inspirational view of these great nates butting and flushing, but from the style he has her pinned, he can’t jack her up enough to bore in without losing his hold. He tries to tap the devil’s porthole, but there’s too much angry muscle there.” Himebaugh, wide-eyed, watched it in his beer glass. Mick gaped. On the screen, Bigmouth was panned offcamera and a sniveling grandmother admired her new prizes. “Carl clamps both her wrists in one hand, perforates and diddles her with the thumb of the other. She screams and bawls and then suddenly she twists out of his grip and they punch and wrestle and peck and claw, but Carl downs her finally and plunges it in and she shrieks like she’s been stabbed for the first time. Carl’s getting edgy about the cops or Mrs. Dopey, it’s a scene like that, figures you can hear her all the way to West Condon, but he has locked the door and the time it’ll take them to break it down he reckons will be time enough and he doesn’t give a damn. He digs her how her brother was queer and about the fruity silk shirts he always wore in all kinds of nigger colors, she’d just cut him in, see, on how she had bought the boy all these silk shirts, and that the brother sucked everybody at the mine, and on and on, and she’s screeching and flapping and belting the shit out of him, and now he says there’s a real sweet stink rising, and she tries to pitch him out, but he’s got his talons deep in her tail and doesn’t let go no matter what, and she twists and doubles and sweats and even somehow gets her feet once against his chest, and, boy, he says he is flying blind but there is nothing like it!”
Jones drank beer to let Castle and Mick get a few choice pent-up expletives off their chests. Himebaugh was pale. “I’ll be goddamned!” muttered Fisher, now smiling broadly.
“So they’re crashing around on that bed, blood and feathers flying, she clawing at his eyes, him grabbing a fistful of her hair and arching her head back so she can’t take good aim, and first thing you know they’re whamming away in rhythm and she’s clutching him in the ass and warbling his goddamn name and they both come in a tremendous simultaneous explosion and collapse in a tremor of secondary spasms.”
Castle whapped the table and Mick, in his peculiar twitter, cried out the name of the Savior over and over. Beer was spilled. Jones calmly examined his mutilated cigar. Himebaugh’s eyes lacked focus. “I’ll be goddamned!” Fisher rumbled again, reaching for a wet pack of cigarettes on the table.
“But, Jesus, Lou! Do you mean to say — did she—?” Mick lacked the words for it.