“I don’t,” Blue said. “Why I’m asking.”
Elgin said, “I’ve been at my trailer or down at Doubles, same as usual.”
“With Shelley Briggs, right?”
Slowly, Elgin said, “Yeah.”
“I’m just asking, buddy. I mean, when we all going to go out? You, me, your new girl.”
The pits that covered Blue’s face like a layer of bad meat had faded some from all those nights in the tree.
Elgin said, “Anytime you want.”
Blue put down the bolt. “How ‘bout right now?” He stood and walked into the bedroom just off the kitchen. “Let me just throw on some duds.”
“She’s working now, Blue.”
“At Perkin Lut’s? Hell, it’s almost noon. I’ll talk to Perkin about that Dodge he sold me last year, and when she’s ready we’ll take her out someplace nice.” He came back into the kitchen wearing a soiled brown T-shirt and jeans.
“Hell,” Elgin said, “I don’t want the girl thinking I’ve got some serious love for her or something. We come by for lunch, next thing she’ll expect me to drop her off in the mornings, pick her up at night.”
Blue was reassembling the rifle, snapping all those shiny pieces together so fast, Elgin figured he could do it blind. He said, “Elgin, you got to show them some affection sometimes. I mean, Jesus.” He pulled a thin brass bullet from his T-shirt pocket and slipped it in the breech, followed it with four more, then slid the bolt home.
“Yeah, but you know what I’m saying, bud?” Elgin watched Blue nestle the stock in the space between his left hip and ribs, let the barrel point out into the kitchen.
“I know what you’re saying,” Blue said. “I know. But I got to talk to Perkin about my Dodge.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s wrong with it?” Blue turned to look at him, and the barrel swung level with Elgin’s belt buckle. “What’s wrong with it, it’s a piece of shit, what’s wrong with it, Elgin. Hell, you know that. Perkin sold me a lemon. This is the situation.” He blinked. “Beer for the ride?”
Elgin had a pistol in his glove compartment. A .32. He considered it.
“Elgin?”
“Yeah?”
“Why you looking at me funny?”
“You got a rifle pointed at me, Blue. You realize that?”
Blue looked at the rifle, and its presence seemed to surprise him. He dipped it toward the floor. “Shit, man, I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking. It feels like my arm sometimes. I forget. Man, I am sorry.” He held his arms out wide, the rifle rising with them.
“Lotta things deserve to die, don’t they?”
Blue smiled. “Well, I wasn’t quite thinking along those lines, but now you bring it up …”
Elgin said, “Who deserves to die, buddy?”
Blue laughed. “You got something on your mind, don’t you?” He hoisted himself up on the table, cradled the rifle in his lap. “Hell, boy, who you got? Let’s start with people who take two parking spaces.”
“OK.” Elgin moved the chair by the table to a position slightly behind Blue, sat in it. “Let’s.”
“Then there’s DJs talk through the first minute of a song. Fucking Guatos coming down here these days to pick tobacco, showing no respect. Women wearing all those tight clothes, look at you like you’re a pervert when you stare at what they’re advertising.” He wiped his forehead with his arm. “Shit.”
“Who else?” Elgin said quietly.
“OK. OK. You got people like the ones let their dogs run wild into the highway, get themselves killed. And you got dishonest people, people who lie and sell insurance and cars and bad food. You got a lot of things. Jane Fonda.”
“Sure.” Elgin nodded.
Blue’s face was drawn, gray. He crossed his legs over each other like he used to down at the drainage ditch. “It’s all out there.” He nodded and his eyelids drooped.
“Perkin Lut?” Elgin said. “He deserve to die?”
“Not just Perkin,” Blue said. “Not just. Lots of people. I mean, how many you kill over in the war?”
Elgin shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“But some. Some. Right? Had to. I mean, that’s war — someone gets on your bad side, you kill them and all their friends till they stop bothering you.” His eyelids drooped again, and he yawned so deeply he shuddered when he finished.
“Maybe you should get some sleep.”
Blue looked over his shoulder at him. “You think? It’s been a while.”
A breeze rattled the thin walls at the back of the house, pushed that thick dank smell into the kitchen again, a rotting stench that found the back of Elgin’s throat and stuck there. He said, “When’s the last time?”
“I slept? Hell, a while. Days maybe.” Blue twisted his body so he was facing Elgin. “You ever feel like you spend your whole life waiting for it to get going?”
Elgin nodded, not positive what Blue was saying, but knowing he should agree with him. “Sure.”
“It’s hard,” Blue said. “Hard.” He leaned back on the table, stared at the brown water marks in his ceiling.
Elgin took in a long stream of that stench through his nostrils. He kept his eyes open, felt that air entering his nostrils creep past into his corneas, tear at them. The urge to close his eyes and wish it all away was as strong an urge as he’d ever felt, but he knew now was that time he’d always known was coming.
He leaned in toward Blue, reached across him, and pulled the rifle off his lap.
Blue turned his head, looked at him.
“Go to sleep,” Elgin said. “I’ll take care of this a while. We’ll go see Shelley tomorrow. Perkin Lut too.”
Blue blinked. “What if I can’t sleep? Huh? I’ve been having that problem, you know. I put my head on the pillow and I try to sleep and it won’t come and soon I’m just bawling like a fucking child till I got to get up and do something.”
Elgin looked at the tears that had just then sprung into Blue’s eyes, the red veins split across the whites, the desperate, savage need in his face that had always been there if anyone had looked close enough, and would never, Elgin knew, be satisfied.
“I’ll stick right here, buddy. I’ll sit here in the kitchen and you go in and sleep.”
Blue turned his head and stared up at the ceiling again. Then he slid off the table, peeled off his T-shirt, and tossed it on top of the fridge. “All right. All right. I’m gonna try.” He stopped at the bedroom doorway. “‘Member — there’s beer in the fridge. You be here when I wake up?”
Elgin looked at him. He was still so small, probably so thin you could still wrap your hand around his biceps, meet the fingers on the other side. He was still ugly and stupid-looking, still dying right in front of Elgin’s eyes.
“I’ll be here, Blue. Don’t you worry.”
“Good enough. Yes, sir.”
Blue shut the door and Elgin heard the bedsprings grind, the rustle of pillows being arranged. He sat in the chair, with the smell of whatever decayed in the back of the house swirling around his head. The sun had hit the cheap tin roof now, heating the small house, and after a while he realized the buzzing he’d thought was in his head came from somewhere back in the house too.
He wondered if he had the strength to open the fridge. He wondered if he should call Perkin Lut’s and tell Perkin to get the hell out of Eden for a bit. Maybe he’d just ask for Shelley, tell her to meet him tonight with her suitcases. They’d drive down 95 where the dogs wouldn’t disturb them, drive clear to Jacksonville, Florida, before the sun came up again. See if they could outrun Blue and his tiny, dangerous wants, his dog corpses, and his smell; outrun people who took two parking spaces and telephone solicitors and Jane Fonda.
Jewel flashed through his mind then, an image of her sitting atop him, arching her back and shaking that long red hair, a look in her green eyes that said this was it, this was why we live.
He could stand up right now with this rifle in his hands, scratch the itch in the back of his head, and fire straight through the door, end what should never have been started.