Savage Season (3 page)

I went by the pens and the dogs barked and leaped.  I put my fingers through the wire as I came to each run, and the dogs licked them in turn, wagged their tails and yipped.

When I got to Switch's run, I knelt down and spent more time with him.  I hated to play favorites, but hell, there was something special about Switch.  There was a kind of sad nobility in his eyes, like maybe he had seen some things he'd rather not have, but was the wiser for it.  Which was damn silly, of course.  Even a smart bird dog is a pretty dumb variety of dog.  But he did have some class.  He was protective of Leonard, too, and if he didn't know you and he was loose and you were standing too close to Leonard, you had to watch yourself.  He'd leap at you and try to tear your face off, without so much as a bark or a warning growl.

From the barn I could hear a steady thumping and knew Leonard was making that sound.  He was regular about that sort of thing, even if the night before he had been up until two A.M.  drinking.

I downed the rest of my coffee, finished petting Switch, stood up and leaned forward on the pen and looked out at the thick dark woods back there; they seemed to be expanding as the sunlight widened and redefined them.  Leonard had a beautiful place here.  The creek was maybe a little too close to the house and he'd steadily been losing his land to erosion, something his having trenches of gravel put in alongside the creek hadn't helped.  For a while it was okay, but soon it broke down and the gravel started to wash away, and now sometimes in the summer we'd go stand out there on the bank and throw the gravel at the water and later sit on his porch scraping it and the clay out of the treads of our shoes.

When we were really in a Huck Finn mood, we'd go down to the Robin Hood Tree, a big oak in a clearing in the woods behind Leonard's house.  I don't know who all that woods belonged to, but in our minds that tree belonged to us.  We'd named it that a few years back, after the big tree Robin Hood held his conferences under in Sherwood Forest.  We sometimes went there to talk and enjoy the woods.  Occasionally Leonard brought his rifle so he could pretend to be scouting for squirrels.  But we always ended up at the Robin Hood tree, sitting with our backs against it, talking until nightfall.

My place was nice but I had to admit, I preferred Leonard's to mine.  I let the look of the place soothe me while I thought about what Trudy had told me last night, and tried to figure some way to convince Leonard to go in with me.  Leonard hadn't been part of Trudy's thinking, but he was damn sure part of mine.  I tried to tell myself it was because I liked Leonard and wanted to see him make some money, and though this was true, I knew too it was because I had come to depend on him so much.  He had bailed me out of hell so many times, he had become my spirit guide through life.

Inside the barn the light was weak, but I could see Leonard working over the heavy bag he kept hanging from a rafter beneath the hayloft.  He was stripped to the waist, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants, low-cut tennis shoes with white socks and a pair of worn bag gloves.  His face and hard upper torso looked like wet chocolate, and when the light caught him right, the thick beads of sweat gave the impression of greasy boils covering his skin.  He was snorting plumes of cold exhaust.

He had the bag rocking, pounding it with combinations and kicking the sides of it.  When he hit the bag it moved a good distance and never quite came back to rest before he hit it again with another round of combinations and kicks.

I put the coffee cup on one of the two-by-fours that helped support the unadorned wall, leaned back and watched.  I guess I stood there a full five minutes before he noticed me.

"Well," he said, "you look like a man who's had sex."

"And you act like a man who hasn't.  That's why you got to pound that bag, to work off frustrations."

"Tell me about it.  No, don't.  Just makes me feel bad." He did a combination on the bag, then smiled at me.  "Unlike you, I could have all the women I want."

"Go on, talk some shit."

"Could...  lots of them, anyway.  Ain't that the shits? They want me and I don't want them.  They're lined up for me, and me the way I am."

"Maybe you should try to be another way.  It's bound to beat jacking off."

"Don't think it wouldn't be easier, but it's like taking up knitting or backgammon.  Doesn't work for me."

"Just saying how things could be easier."

He gave the bag a flurry, then winked at me.  "You could always help me out, you know.  A little relief for a friend."

"I'm not that friendly."

He flurried the bag again, caught it with his forearms and smiled at me.  "Got you nervous, didn't I? Tell you a truth, ol' buddy.  I like you, but you're not my type."

"That shatters me.  I want to go right on out of here crying."

He hit the bag with two hard lefts, one high, one low.  "Work the bag with me.  I like to see a peckerwood sweat."

I slipped off my jacket and shirt, got the spare bag gloves off a nail, put them on, and went over to the bag.  I made some slow, soft moves on it to get the muscles loose.  It felt awkward at first, way it always does when you start.  Then my muscles began to warm and loosen and I got my rhythm and I was circling and exploding into the bag whenever the mood struck me.  Leonard was circling too, staying directly across from me, the bag between us, and no sooner would my flurry end than he would hit with a series from his side, and pretty soon we were making conga music with that old canvas.

When we stopped my hands ached slightly from clenching my fists, and I was beginning to breathe heavily.  I took off the bag gloves, hung them up, flexed the tension out of my hands.

"You're getting soft," Leonard said, taking off his gloves.  "Haven't been working out enough."

"I'm preferring my rest in my dotage."

"Want to spar some?"

"Sure."

He went over to a shelf, got down the boxing gloves and kick guards and tossed a pair of each to me.  I fastened the kick guards over my tennis shoes, then pulled on the gloves.  They were the kind without laces; they slid over your hands and tightened at the wrist with elastic, so you didn't need help to get them on.

We had been using the light from the open side door, but now Leonard went over and opened the big double doors and the sun flooded in and I could see dust motes rising from the barn's dirt floor like little slow tornadoes.

Leonard put on his equipment, shuffled his feet, put up his hands and made his way toward me.

"Gonna suffer, honkie."

"Hope you know a home for invalid niggers, cause you're gonna need it."

"Name-calling, huh? Racial slurs."

"Call 'em like I see 'em."

"Minute from now you aren't gonna see anything."

Then we were at it.

It was like Leonard turned into oil and flowed over me.  I covered up, but the oil turned hard and the hardness hit my forearms and made them weak, hit the side of my head and ribs and made sounds on my hide like the sounds Leonard and I had made on the bag.

When I got him away from me, I said, "Won't lie to you, that was nice."

"I know," he said, and came again.

I let him think he had me.  I jabbed out with a weak left and when he slipped it, I kicked with my forward foot in a roundhouse motion and caught him hard enough in the breadbasket to force his breath out.  I swarmed him then, hit him with a right cross above the left eye and tried to hook him with my left, but all I got was one of his forearms.  He flurried me, and he was fast, but I had his timing off now, and his blows skimmed across my face and slid on my sweaty chest and didn't really hurt me.  I kicked off my back leg this time and my kick caught him in the solar plexus again and drove him back and I came off the other leg and tried the same thing and glanced his side with the ball of my foot.  He backed up fast, and I went after him.  He turned his back on me as if to run.  Instinctively I rushed in for the kill.  He swiveled on his left foot and brought himself completely around to face me and his right leg arched into an outside crescent kick and the ridge of his foot caught me on the side of the head and I went down and dirt filled my nostrils.

Suckered.

Leonard bent down.  "How are you, peckerwood?"

"I been worse....  Barn's moving, though."

"You're always impatient.  I set you up." He patted me on the back.  "Lay there a moment."

"No other plans."

A few minutes passed and Leonard helped me up.  The barn was still a little wobbly, but starting to shape up.  He helped me get the gloves and kick guards off.  I weaved over and put on my shirt and coat while Leonard did the same, then I got the coffee cup off the two-by-four and Leonard put his arm around me and walked me to the house.

Leonard put on a Patsy Cline album, turned it down low and started fixing breakfast.  I took a seat at the kitchen table and dipped my head between my knees.

"You eaten?" he asked.

"No."

"Able to?"

"Yeah."

"Eggs and toast sound okay?"

"Fine."

He chuckled.

"White boys in distress," I said.  "You love it." -

He cracked an egg in the skillet.  "You're over here for a reason, Hap.  You don't get up this early on Sundays.  What happened, that woman leave already?"

"Nope.  But I am here for a reason.  An important reason." I lifted my head.  Nothing was spinning.

"How important?"

"You wouldn't have to go back to the rose fields.  Least not for a long time."

He stopped unwrapping the bread and looked at me.

"How long a time?"

"Quite a few years.  You might start your own business.  Understand you people do well with barbecue stands, stuff like that.  Whatever you want."

"Barbecue sounds like work.  You know us, loose shoes, tight pussy and a warm place to shit."

"Way I heard it."

"Come on, Hap, quit dicking with me.  What's the deal?"

"One hundred thousand dollars for each of us."

"Shit.  What we got to do, shoot someone?"

"Nope.  We have to swim for it."

Chapter 4

I drove Leonard to my house and parked next to Trudy's faded green Volkswagen with the Greenpeace sticker on the bumper.  We went inside and found Trudy at the kitchen table drinking coffee.  She was wearing one of my shirts, and it was much too large for her.  That and her tousled hair made her look girlish.  Less so when she crossed her legs and looked at me.  "I was worried about you.  I couldn't find a note."

"Didn't leave one.  Thought I'd be back sooner."

She decided to notice Leonard.  "Hi, Leonard."

Leonard nodded.

"What you told me last night," I said.  "I want you to tell Leonard."

Her face showed me she didn't like that.  "No offense, Leonard.  But that was between me and Hap.  He shouldn't have said anything."

"I'm dealing him in for half my share."

"There may not be a share if you keep this up, Hap."

 "That's okay, too.  Find some other sucker."

"You're awfully tough in the morning."

"Controls his glands better in the daytime," Leonard said.  "They tend to get overactive at night."

"I don't care for the sound of your talk, Leonard," Trudy said.

"Wasn't supposed to be music," Leonard said.  "Maybe you prefer a classical Negro dialect? A little foot-shuffling?"

"Can it, both of you," I said.  "This is coming off worse than I thought.  I want to deal Leonard in.  What's it matter? It's not costing you any more, and you'll have an extra hand.  Way you talk, we could use him.  He's had some diving experience, for one thing.  We need that.  I been in the water a few times with a suit on, but that's about it."

She turned to stare out the window at the field.  My mother did that when she was exasperated with me.  I almost expected Trudy to threaten me with a paddling.

She turned her coffee cup around on her saucer.  The light from the window was on her face and showed some of her age.

"Sometime today," Leonard said.  "After a couple minutes, pouting bores me."

She looked at us.  "All right, but I don't like being railroaded this way, Hap.  You should have discussed it with me first.  There's enough between us you could have done that."

"I didn't ask because I knew you'd say no, and I want Leonard in.  It's not anything I'm trying to put over on you.  He's stood by me through some tough times, some of them your fault.  I want to see him profit the way you say you want to see me profit.  You don't want both of us, no problem.  Deal us out."

"It's something else to explain to Howard," she said.  "He wasn't keen on me asking you in, Hap."

"I've got faith you can wrap this Howard around your big toe," Leonard said, "and I don't even know the poor sap."

"You know what's wrong with you, Leonard?" Trudy said.  "You're jealous.  You're in love with Hap here and you're jealous of me."

"Hap's all right," Leonard said.  "He's got a nice, perky ass, but he's not my type."

"You two be friends," I said.  "It's easier that way."

"I'll put a lid on it," Leonard said, "but with me and her it's business associates, not friends."

"It couldn't be any other way," Trudy said.

Leonard and I sat at the table, Leonard by the wall and me across from Trudy.  She glared at Leonard, then me.  "One hundred thousand is a lot less than two hundred thousand, Hap.  Sure you want to do this?"

"Yep, and I want him to hear the story from you.  I haven't told him anything except there's some money to be made.  He hears what you got to say, he may not want in."

Trudy got up, poured another cup of coffee and came back to the table.  She sipped it and started her story.

"My last husband, Howard, was involved in nuclear protests.  Traveled across the country speaking against nuclear reactors, leading marches against their sites.  During a protest in Utah, he was responsible for cutting a fence and getting inside a compound and damaging government property.  He felt that it was his responsibility as a human being—"

"No politics," Leonard said.  "It affects my heart.  Just the straight goods."