Savage Season (5 page)

Chapter 6

When I awoke the next morning, I could hear the wind wolf-howling through the eaves of the house and the pines out beyond the field.  At night I seldom kept the heat going, due to the price of butane, and the room was cold enough to make an Eskimo shiver.

I got up and put on my robe and padded through the morning air, blowing out puffs of whiteness as I went.

I looked out the window.  The trees and the ground were iced over and there were flakes of snow mixed with sleet.  Quite a rarity for East Texas.  Most of the time you didn't even know it was winter; generally the winters were exaggerated falls.  But this year was different.  The cold had blown in hard and vicious on the very day I was supposed to start toward making some money.  A wiser man would have considered it an omen.

I wanted to go back to bed, but instead I struggled to the kitchen, got matches and lit all the heaters, the one in the bedroom last.  Even then, with my butt backed up to the heat, I was tempted to climb under the blankets again and snuggle close to Trudy.  But it might not have been any warmer under there.  She certainly hadn't been warm last night.  She made love like I was paying for it and she had more customers in line, some of them important.  I attempted to bring her to orgasm, but it was like trying to conquer Everest in Bermuda shorts.  She wasn't having any.  She wanted me to rut and feel cheap and miserable, and I did.  But I have no pride and came anyway.  When I finished, she rolled from beneath and turned with her back to me.  I put my hand on her hip, but she didn't move or say anything.  I might as well have been stroking a marble tombstone.

Suddenly I felt sorry for Howard.  Like me, he didn't have a chance with a gal like Trudy.  Not really.  She ruled us with brains and passion and her downy triangle.  It was damn demeaning is what it was.

I dressed and put on my coat and went outside and looked to see if the water in my truck's radiator was frozen.  It wasn't.  There had been enough antifreeze in there, and I had parked it on the south side with the bumper pressed against the house and had put an old horse blanket over the hood.

I got pliers out from behind the truck seat, put the blanket under the truck from the side, crawled on top of it and worked the radiator screw loose so it would drain.  This way, if I was gone for some time, I wouldn't have to worry about the cold defeating the antifreeze and blowing my ancient radiator to pieces.

I returned the blanket to the hood and found a couple rocks to put on top of it in case of high winds, then went out to the edge of my property and pried up the water cover and turned off the water valve with the pliers.  I put the pliers back, went in the house and locked the windows and back door, drained the water out of the faucets, cut down the water heater, and when I heard Leonard coming, cut off the butane heaters.  The air chilled immediately.

I got my gear I had packed last night and brought it into the living room and placed it by the door.

Trudy had got up and dressed during the time I was outside, and all the while I made my inside preparations, she sat on my ratty couch and looked at the wall.  Didn't say a word.  Didn't look to be breathing.

Leonard stepped inside, looked at Trudy, then me.  "I can tell now this is gonna to be fun."

"Trudy, you taking your car?" I asked.

"I'll come for it later.  I'm no good driving on ice."

"Your VW hasn't got a radiator to bust," Leonard said, "but you might want to put it in my barn just the same.  There's some folks in these parts might not mind stealing a car they don't know."

"What about the diving equipment?" I asked.

"In the trunk.  Went in and got it yesterday, and they weren't even open.  Had to talk a blue streak and wave some extra money around to get the owner out of his house and down to the shop.  You owe me a hundred bucks, Hap."

"Put it on my bill."

"Man, your credit level is way topped out....  Look, we wait a few days on this, things will be better.  Ice will have blown out."

"Howard is expecting me," Trudy said.  "And I have to work tomorrow."

"Work?" I said.

"You know.  You go to a job you hate, and they pay you money for it.  You think I'm kept, Hap? Contrary to what Leonard here wants you to think, I'm not a concubine."

Over at Leonard's place, Trudy parked the Volkswagen in the barn and Leonard made up his special dog food from three different brands, poured the contents of the feed sacks into a plastic garbage can, a little bit of each, a smidgen at a time, mixing it evenly.

While he did that, Trudy walked out to the dog pens and I followed.  I felt like I ought to say something, but didn't know what.  She had a way of making me feel like a jerk when I hadn't done anything.  We both stood by the dog pens and waited on Leonard.  We were at the end opposite Switch's run, and Trudy had her fingers poked through the wire and was scratching the nose of a dog named Cal, cooing sweet things to him.  The dog was eating it up.  I was eating it up secondhand.  She sounded very sexy making those tender little sounds, and bless my little heart, I wanted to make love to her so bad right then I thought I'd cry.

Leonard came out of the barn and started in our direction.  On his way over, he stopped, knelt down to reach his fingers through the wire of Switch's run so the dog could lick his fingers.  "Get in your doghouse, boy.  You gonna freeze your nuts off."

Switch was acting like a pup, wagging his tail so hard his entire body shook.  I walked down to them, and forgot about Trudy.  She came after me and suddenly knelt between me and Leonard and put out her hand to pet Switch the way she had Cal.

Switch, quick and silent as an arrow, leapt for her extended fingers.  Leonard snatched her hand back and Switch's muzzle went against the wire.  He grabbed it with his teeth, pulled, let it go with a snap.  Foam flecked out of his mouth and splashed on the knee of my jeans.  Trudy hadn't even had time to flinch.

Leonard let go of her hand, and Trudy stepped back.  "Jesus! What's in him?"

"Protective," Leonard said.  "He doesn't like anyone near me he doesn't know.  That dog and men like me, probably the only males you can't twist the way you want."

"You think it's funny, don't you, Leonard?" Trudy said.

"He got your fingers, I wouldn't.  Since he didn't, yeah, I think it's funny."

"You can have your old dog.  I hope he freezes to death."

"Good thing I don't think you mean that, lady."

Trudy walked away quickly.

"Glad you don't like women," I said, "because you don't exactly have a way with them."

"I like women fine, just not to fuck.  And I don't like that woman to do anything with.  You think the dogs are gonna be cold?"

"Hell yeah.  But the way you got their houses fixed up, they'll be all right.  Warmer than we're going to be.  Calvin comes to feed them, sees they're uncomfortable, he'll do something about it."

"Yeah...  guess so."

Then we were all in the Buick, easing along with Leonard at the wheel, me in the front, leaning on the door as if contemplating a leap, and Trudy dead center of the backseat with arms and legs crossed tight as the coils of the Gordian knot.

The car leaked carbon monoxide through a hole in the floorboard and we were all a little dizzy from it.  The wipers beat at the snow and ice and the near-bald tires whistled a tentative funeral march.  We made it slow and easy, without much talk, into Marvel Creek about half-past noon.

Chapter 7

The town really started before the city limits.  There was a line of beer joints on either side of the highway, ramshackle fire hazards with neon pretzels on their roofs and above their doorways.

Among them were two places I well remembered: The Roundup Club and the Sweet White Lilly.

Next came the long, wide river bridge and the city limits sign that read POP.  5606.  Then we were on Main Street, coasting past closed businesses with boarded windows and bolted doors, service stations with oil-spotted drives and greasy-capped men with their hands on gas nozzles or leaky tires.

As we went deeper into town, it got better.  Open stores and more people.  But the place still looked sad.  Not that it had been any budding metropolis when I lived there.

Trudy had us turn on a brick street slick as Vaseline, and we went past the bank, around a curve and past what had been a Piggly Wiggly but was now called Food Mart.  I used to buy Cokes and peanut patties there, hang out with the boys and lie about all the fights I'd been in and all the tail I'd banged.

We glided past car lots and the empty spot where the Dairy Queen had stood and old Bob used to make us chocolate shakes with more water than milk in them.  On down the highway we went, onto a blacktop and back into the pines, and finally down a soggy clay road that ended at a small house that was mostly weathered gray with strips of paint peeling down its sides like melted candle wax.  The front porch leaned starboard and the smoking, crumbling chimney was held upright by the slanting support of ten feet of warped six-by-six.  Pine sap corrosion had turned the mouth of the chimney dark as the devil's shadow.

Parked off to the right on the dead grass were a red, dented Dodge mini-van and a jaundice-yellow Volvo with a sheet of cardboard in place of the left front window.  Two more letters on the end and the writing on the cardboard would have read

MONTGOMERY WARD

Leonard killed the engine, looked at me, and said, "And I thought we lived like trash."

Trudy got out of the car without saying anything and we stayed where we were.  Before she was all the way up the porch steps, the door opened and a big, handsome blond guy with a slight gut, wearing jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and old hightop white tennis shoes came out.  He took Trudy in his arms and kissed her in a more than cordial fashion.

"Flexible, ain't she?" Leonard said.  "And you know, bubba, he's prettier than you are."

The guy who had to be Howard looked at us.  He said something to Trudy and they came out to the car.  We got out before they could get there and leaned on the hood and tried to look thuggy.

"This is Howard," Trudy said.

"You must be Hap," Howard said.  "I've heard a lot about you."

We shook hands.

"This is Leonard," Trudy said.

It was obvious from the expression on Howard's face he was trying to picture Leonard's role in all this.  "So, you gave Trudy and Hap a ride up.  You ought to stay for dinner before you go back.  I'm going to fix my famous spaghetti."

"He's in on it," I said.

"Ah," Howard said, and looked at Trudy.

She wouldn't let him catch her eye.  "He's a good swimmer," she said.  "Hap wouldn't come without him.  It's like they're married or something."

"Just engaged," Leonard said.  "We're still picking china."

Howard had gone mildly red-faced with irritation.  "So, you swim, huh?"

"Like a goddamn eel," Leonard said.

Howard nodded, tried to keep it pleasant.  "Where's your car, Trudy?"

"Leonard's.  I didn't want to drive on ice."

"I see," Howard said.  "What say we go in? I'm freezing."

"Go ahead," Leonard said.  "I'm gonna smoke a pipeful first.  Hap's gonna keep me company."

"All right," Howard said, and put his arm around Trudy as they started for the house.  Howard seemed to be holding her shoulders rather tight.

They went inside and Leonard got his pipe and fixings out of his coat pocket, packed the pipe, and lit it.

"I don't know about you, Hap, but I like him.  He's sweet.  Warmed to me right off, don't you think?"

"I think you talk too much."

"And I could see he warmed to you too, and you to him.  You both got, I don't know, a kind of glow on your faces when you first saw one another.  Guess spreading the same gal does that to you."

We leaned on the hood for about five more minutes, then Leonard tapped out his tobacco and put his foot on it.  "Well," he said, "what say we go on up to the house and meet the rest of the gang? Got a feeling we're gonna love them much as we do Howard."

Chapter 8

The house was sticky-warm and the air wore the smell of incense like a coat, and beneath the coat was some kind of stink.

The incense came from the upraised trunk of a small brown ceramic elephant sitting in the middle of a water-ringed coffee table.  My delicate nose determined that the underlying stink most likely came from the kitchen garbage.  The heat came from a big butane heater with busted grates, and from a small fireplace that needed shoveling out.

The walls were covered with faded newspaper, and the paper was ripped and peeling, and where it was completely gone you could see pocks in the wood and occasional holes stuffed with thick wads of toilet tissue.

There was a couch covered in what was left of a flowered pattern, and a big green armchair with the cloth on its arms worn down to the wood and cotton dangling out of the cushions like some strange animal that had got its guts knocked out by a speeding car.

There were also a couple of folding metal chairs with their seats polished shiny silver by hordes of shifting asses.

"All right," Leonard said.  "Where's everybody?"

As if in answer, Howard came through a door.  Before he closed it, I saw behind him a kitchen with a greasy cookstove, a bullet-shaped refrigerator and smoky-yellow walls that were once white.

I was right about the garbage too.  With the kitchen door open the smell came into the room like a bully and started pushing the incense around.  Howard closed the door, stopped in the center of the living-room and stood there looking nervous and angry, though he was trying not to let it show, and thought he was good at it.  He was all dry smiles and no hand gestures—he had his hands pushed down in his pockets to keep from it, but there was tension in them and they fluttered in his pants like frightened animals trapped in sacks.

"Trudy went to tell the others," he said.  "They'll want to meet you."

"Bet they aren't as excited about it as we are," Leonard said.