Half Shell continued barking at the shallow creek and Bubba picked her up and carried her across it, setting her under another thick, winter-bare oak tree.
'Bark at that,' Bubba told her.
Half Shell wasn't interested.
'Come on, girl,' Bubba begged.
Half Shell sat, tongue hanging out. Bubba sighed. He reached inside a pocket and pulled out another pair of marbles and a Cheez Whiz sandwich on white bread. Half Shell started barking and drooling as Bubba waved the sandwich in front of her nose. The dog went crazy. Bubba reached up and stuffed the sandwich in a knothole. Half Shell started jumping up at it, barking and baying as Bubba flung another set of eyes high up in the branches of another slick tree.
This went on until there were only twenty minutes left of the two-hour competition. Bubba had amassed nine hundred points. Smudge had nothing. He had stopped talking forty-five minutes ago. He no longer petted his dog.
'We may as well call it a day,' Bubba proposed. 'There's no way you can catch up, Smudge.'
'It ain't over 'til it's over,' Smudge let him know.
The last chance was for Bubba to default, to quit before the competition was over. Smudge knew he had no choice as they walked deeper into the woods during their five-minute break between segments.
Smudge quietly reached inside his knapsack and grabbed hold of the rubber snake, closing his hand around the rattle to silence it as he withdrew the rattler and uncoiled the monofilament attached to it. Smudge cast the snake over Bubba's head. It landed about six yards in front of Bubba's feet.
'What the hell was that?' Bubba asked with fear in his voice.
'What was what?' Smudge asked as he started jerking the line and the rattle sounded.
'Oh God!' Bubba exclaimed, standing perfectly still and shining his light on a huge rattlesnake wriggling toward him at great speed.
'AHHHHHHHHH!!' Bubba screamed, crashing this way and that, tearing open his coat as the snake jumped and tumbled and rattled after him.
'Run! Run!' Smudge yelled, darting wherever necessary to keep the snake where he wanted it.
Bubba suddenly wheeled around, his.44 Anaconda revolver with its eight-inch barrel and scope gripped in both shaking hands. He fired again and again and again as pieces of the snake flew straight up into the air and Smudge dove over a dead tree and rolled through bushes and over a bank and into the creek.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Weed was chilled and achy as he stared out at the city from the dark, stinking camp he shared with Pigeon, who had fallen asleep after drinking a quart of Colt 45.
Weed wondered what Officer Brazil was doing and if everybody was out looking for him. Weed wondered if the cops had found anything that might cause him a problem. Maybe they could make him doodle on some kind of lie detector and figure out he was the one who painted the statue.
Pigeon had shared two peanut butter crackers with Weed. He had given Weed four sips of water, saying it had to last. Weed decided his hideaway stunk worse than the Pikes' clubhouse, and he thought of his nice home and good food and clean bed.
Weed would never go back to his mama again. He'd probably never see her again. He'd never spend another weekend with his father, not that he really wanted to, anyway. Weed would have to live like Pigeon because the Pikes would always be looking for him. He could never be Free again. He had a slave number to remind him in case he forgot.
Pigeon rolled over and came to about the time his beer wore off. He fluffed the mound of dirty clothes that served as his pillow. His yawn was an open garbage can Weed could smell two yards away.
'You awake?' Weed said.
'Not by choice.'
'How come you live the way you do, Pigeon?' Weed asked. 'You always lived this way?'
'I was a little kid like you once,' Pigeon said. 'Grew up and fought in Vietnam, came home and didn't want to be part of nothing.'
'How come?'
'Way I felt. Still do.'
'Me, too,' Weed said. 'Maybe I'll just hang out with you from now on.'
'The hell you will!' Pigeon said in a voice that startled Weed. 'You ever been shipped off to war, had your foot shot off, part of your hand, too? Ever been in mental hospitals 'til they can't keep you no more so they dump your ass out on the street? Ever slept on the sidewalk in the dead of winter, nothing but a newspaper for a blanket? You ever eaten rats?'
Weed was horrified. 'Did you really get your foot shot off?'
Pigeon raised his right leg and showed his stump. Weed couldn't see it in detail because it was covered with a sock and the morning was still pretty dark.
'How come you were in mental hospitals?' Weed got around to the most important question as he had second thoughts about staying with Pigeon.
'Crazzzzzzy.' Pigeon shook his body and rolled his eyes.
'No you ain't.'
Weed thought of the fence again and if he could get back over it fast.
'Well, I am. Sometimes I see things that aren't there. Especially at night. People coming at me with knives, guns. Cut off arms, legs, blood flying everywhere. They got all kinds of names for it, but it don't matter in the long run, Weed. No matter what you call something, it's still the same thing.'
Pigeon fished another cigarette butt out of his pocket, and when he lit it, Weed saw his mangled hand. All that was left was part of the index finger and thumb.
'What you running from?' Pigeon asked.
'Who says I am?'
'I do.'
'So what.'
'Cops after you for something?' Pigeon asked. 'Don't be shy, boy. They been after me a time or two.'
'So what if they is?' Weed said.
'Huh.' Pigeon blew out smoke, wheezing in the dark. 'Someone's after you for sure. I bet it's some other kid out there. Maybe you stole his drugs or something.'
'No, I didn't! I never even seen drugs! He's just mad 'cause I didn't do what he told me to!'
'How mad? Like maybe he's gonna really get you?'
Tears filled Weed's eyes. He wiped them away, hoping Pigeon couldn't see.
'Huh, one of those bad kids. Shoot people for the hell of it," Pigeon went on. 'Whole new breed. And they get away with it too, for the most part.'
Weed's fury burned hot like the cigarette filter burning Pigeon's lips. Pigeon tossed it and seemed disappointed.
'Kids worse than what I saw in 'Nam. All strapped up with bombs. Hi, nice to meet ya. KABOOMf Pigeon went on. 'Least over there we had a reason. Sure as hell wasn't no goddamn sport, tell you what.'
'He already hurt me more 'an once,' Weed blurted out. 'Made me join his gang and tattooed my finger when I didn't want to and now I'm not in school and ain't been to art class or the last two band practices! And he knows where I live and if I go anywhere he'll find me and blow my head off. He's worse than the devil!'
'Sounds like only one thing to do.' Pigeon pondered the situation. 'You said the cops might be looking for you?'
'Maybe.'
'What'd you do?'
'Painted a statue in the cement-tary.'
'Let them catch you.'
Weed was shocked.
'Why would I want to do that?' he asked.
"Cause you get locked up, the devil can't get you.'
'I don't want to go to no jail!'
'They put you in a home for kids, right across the street from the jail. You get clothes, three meals a day, your own little room, play basketball, watch TV, go to class. You want a doctor, a shrink, they give it to you. How bad's that? Oughta hear the kids on the street. Vacation. Where you been, man? Man, I been on vacation. Rotten little bastards.
'Now kids, I'm afraid of. Been beat up, robbed, rolled, cut on, kicked in the nuts. One time they set me on fire for the helluvit. And what happens to 'em? They go away on fucking vacation for two, three weeks. Come right back out, laughing, strutting under streetlights, big wads of cash in their pockets.'