Текст книги "The Last Call"

Автор книги: George Wier

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CHAPTER FIVE

“Well. I will just be damned,” Hank said.

“Yeah,” I nodded in agreement.

Julie was all done and just sitting there, sipping on her beer.

I could tell by Hank's serious demeanor that he'd arrived at some important thought or decision. A crossroads, as it were.

“You tell her all about me, Bill?”

“Just that you’re handy in a tight spot, that you’re a client of mine, and that you’re alright. That’s about it.”

The toaster oven timer dinged. My stomach was doing little whirly-gigs, and the smell of toast, butter and cheese had become maddening.

We took time out for Hank to fix us up a plate each and a tall glass of iced tea. The tea tasted like it was a couple of days old, but at least it was sweet.

“Okay,” he said when he was back at the table with us. “So who are Jake and Freddie?”

Julie sat back in her chair. She didn’t seem very interested in Hank’s toaster oven cheese sandwiches. Mine, however, didn’t stand a chance.

“They’re Lefty’s and Carl’s sons. They’re about as stupid as a couple of snipe, but they’re like hound dogs. They never give up.”

“When was the last time you saw them?” Hank asked.

Julie turned to look at me. There was a strange look in her eye. Something she didn’t want to say.

“Better tell him,” I said.

She reached out, wrapped her fingers around her bottle of beer on the table and drained the last quarter of it in one long gulp.

“About an hour ago,” she said.

“What?” Hank and I chimed in at the same instant.

“Following us from Hank’s mall.”

Hank and I were on our feet.

My life is not very exciting. I don’t like excitement. I don’t even watch exciting movies. I like things nice and calm. You put in your day of work, you watch the sun fade from the sky and you draw your dollar. But sometimes you just have to move quickly.

Hank and I were moving before we could think.

He jumped up and locked the back door with a flick of his wrist.

I was into the front room and dodging stacks of old, dust-coated thirty-three rpm records and nineteenth-century legal volumes to get to the front door.

“Lock it, Bill,” Hank called out from the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I said.

The living room had two large windows, one of which had the shade pulled four-fifths of the way down. The shade for the other one was missing completely.

I made it to the front door, peeked out of one of the rectangles of glass that was at eye level.

The front yard was empty. Well, not exactly empty.It was Hank’s yard, after all. There was his car in the driveway. Across the street was my Mercedes. There was beat up Ford F-150 parked behind that.

“Bill, what are we doing?” It was Julie. I turned back toward her voice. She stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room in the center of the house.

“Julie. Get back in the kitchen,” I urged. From the kitchen I heard the sound of a slamming drawer. Hopefully Hank was fishing for a gun somewhere.

I looked back quickly toward the truck. I couldn’t see anyone in the cab for a moment, but then again there was a bit of a blur there.

Something had moved.

Then I saw the barrel of the rifle and recognized it for what it was about an instant before it barked a spark of flame.

Things happened pretty fast.

The glass from the window pane on my right crumpled in on itself in three large shards. I hadn’t fully registered what was occurring yet. My first thought on it was a bit odd: windows aren’t supposed to do that!Then I connected it with the rifle barrel about a hundredth of a second later and turned back toward Julie.

She just stood there, bringing her hands to her face.

A large divot of splintered wood had appeared on the facing of the kitchen entryway about shoulder-high not a foot from her. I could see the splinters on her neck and ear.

In the next instant Hank hit her from behind and took her down to the floor. I heard a loud grunt.

“Bill,” Hank called out. “Head’s up.”

Something sailed through the air toward me from their direction behind the tallest stack of books. I snatched it out of the air and was pulling the slide on the object before I could think much about it. It was a thirty-eight.

I looked again out of the small doorway glass in time to see the passenger door on the other side of the truck fly open.

An engine roared into life.

I don’t know what came over me after that. The moment became somewhat surrealistic, with dark, pulsing, purplish and red tendrils creeping into the corners of my vision. It’s happened to me a few times before, and each time it has, by the time I saw the colors and recognized them for what they meant, it was too late.

The front door was suddenly open and I was across the porch and sailing off into the brilliant green too-tall grass and the too-bright sunlight, and the funny thing about it was I couldn’t even feel my feet touching the ground.

The pickup truck was moving, slamming the corner of the rear fender of my Mercedes in an effort to escape. There was the shatter of glass and the crunch of metal. I didn’t much care, though, at that moment. The red and purple pulses were forming interesting tributaries around the movie theater screen my vision had become. And there was a part of me that was watching the whole thing with a sort of rapt fascination, like a kid at the movies with a box of overly buttered popcorn on his lap and an awed look on his face. But, when you’re watching a movie, you’re safe. The bullets aren’t real bullets and the crunching metal is all staged and all is right with the world. That was how I felt.

It looked as though I was going to beat the truck.

I pointed my right hand at the truck cab and the blurry figures inside it as the whole thing loomed suddenly very large in front of me. My hand bucked once… Twice.

The driver was trying to put his foot through the floorboard of the thing. Tires squealed on the hot pavement and a carburetor whined with a steep over-abundance of horsepower.

The center of the pickup windshield blossomed with a huge, elaborate spider web. Another, duplicate, spider web appeared in front of the driver.

The truck came on.

It had been perhaps thirty feet away a second before, but suddenly it was about half that, or maybe more.

Oh, I thought. Okay. Move!

I did this funny thing with my legs-I did a sideways frog-movement. Sort of a cross between a hop and a dive.

I felt a numbness in my left foot, even as my shoulder slammed into the bottom of the ditch across the road from Hank’s house. Anyone who has ever been bitten by a shark while swimming would know how it felt. First there was a bit of a jolt traveling up my leg, a distant cousin to the electrocution variety, then sudden and intense numbness. Last came pain. But that was okay. What was even more noteworthy was the interesting sensation around the crown of my head, and the darkness that came on. Which in itself was interesting because I had been fairly certain that it was early afternoon.

CHAPTER SIX

I’ve had a few rude awakenings in my life. When I came to in the near dark, that first instant was unsettling. I wanted to swat at the wasps that were stinging my head, only there were no wasps.

“Settle down, Bill.” It was Hank’s voice.

“What happened?” I asked.

We were inside a garage. A bare forty-watt bulb cast the only light into the room. I heard a gentle snore nearby.

“That’s Julie,” Hank said. “She’s asleep. Napping. Don’t worry… She’s fine.”

“The last thing I remember was seeing Julie standing in your kitchen doorway. Somebody shot at her.”

“According to Green-Eyes over there, that would be Jake Jorgenson. He’s the one with the rifle. Also, she says he’s a pretty good shot. But he was looking in through glass at an angle, and I think refraction saved her life.”

“Yeah?”

“Also, you tried to tackle a speeding truck. How’s that foot?”

“What foot?”

I looked to where he pointed. My shoe was off and I had one leg partially elevated. My foot was wrapped up with an Ace bandage.

“What the hell?” I said.

“You must have kicked that truck. Or else somebody ran over your foot. I don’t think anything’s broken, though. It’s not as big as it was a few hours ago.”

“Geez. It hurts,” I said. “But not like my head.”

“Good,” Hank said. “Probably you’ll just limp for a few days. But you’ll need to walk on it soon. You know. To see if anything… gives.”

I looked down past my foot and saw an army cot boxed in by a couple of old steel filing cabinets. It was Julie. She was wrapped up in a sleeping bag.

“Carpin wants her dead,” I said.

“Yeah,” Hank replied. “I don’t know the guy, and he sounds like a real asshole. But,” he chuckled, “if somebody did to me what she did to him… Well.” He was sitting in a folding chair facing me, one of the kind you’d use on a fishing trip that is nothing more than a couple of pieces of bent pipe and two swatches of canvas. He had a three-fifty-seven Smith amp; Wesson Magnum on his lap and a large night watchman’s flashlight in his hand.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I put Dingo in the house,” Hank said, offhand. “Anyone tries to go in there, she’ll have them for dinner. Also, we’ll hear it out here.”

As I recalled, Dingo was a cross between a German Shepherd and an Australian Blue Heeler. One of the smartest dogs I’d ever seen. I’d forgotten all about her.

I moved to get up but felt a wedge of cold pain at my temples.

“Take it easy, Cowboy,” he said. “You’ve got a minor concussion.”

“Feels like… Goddamn wasps nest in my head. Why the garage?”

“No windows.”

“Oh,” I said. “Say… What time of day is it?”

Hank looked down at his watch. “About three in the afternoon. Anyway, I can’t let you go back to sleep. Not for awhile.”

“I thought it was night. It’s sure dark in here.”

“We won’t be leaving until it isdark, or at least we won’t unless we have to. Also, I took the liberty of moving the vehicles. They’re at a friend’s house about a mile from here, out of sight. I wanted it to look like nobody was home.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good enough. So what do you want to do?”

“Well, I was thinking about that.” Hank turned to the side in his chair and reached down toward the floor. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see what he brought back up.

“It’s time for the world-series,” he said. “Best two out of three. Or three out of five. Or whatever.”

He unfolded the cardboard square, put it down flat on a small pedestal beside him, and held out a transparent plastic bag.

“What’ll it be?” he asked. “Red… Or black?”

“Goddammit,” I said. “Not Checkers.”

It was dark-thirty out.

I wouldn’t have minded saying that I felt fine. That simply wasn’t the case. I was nursing a head that felt like the inside of a bell tower that was constantly striking the hour, I was wincing with every step I took, but thankfully, I didn’t think anything was broken, and I had lost all but two games out of the last forty at checkers. The two times I had won, Hank had cursed and blamed it on the ill-lighting. Probably he was right.

We left the garage and Julie and I followed Hank inside the back door of his house under cover of darkness.

I felt safe, though.

I don’t normally carry a gun. There are many reasons for this, the first being the most obvious: they’re illegal in Texas unless you carry a permit, which I don’t. Also I have a bit of a superstition about them. I’ve come to think that guns actually draw trouble. It’s like walking around with the Queen of Spades in your shirt pocket. It’s just asking for it.

Except for one thing: sometimes you really need one. Just in case.

In light of recent events, it felt good having one tucked into my belt. It was the thirty-eight that Hank had lobbed to me earlier in the day.

Dingo was happy to see Hank. The dog put her paws up on his chest and he gave her a good petting. When she was done with Hank, she got one good noseful of me, ignored my attempts to be friendly with her and put all of her attention on Julie. Julie smiled and made friends with the dog.

“So what now?” Julie asked. She looked rested and composed and beautiful there in the silvery moonlight coming in through Hank’s kitchen window. Other than a couple of tiny Band-Aids on her cheek and neck, there was little else to show that she’d lived through a close call.

“What do you think, Hank?” I asked. “Hotel?”

“Hell, no!” he said. “I’ve got better accommodations in mind for us.”

*****

Hank made a phone call there in the dark and ten minutes later there was a black Chevy Suburban idling in his driveway.

Hank and I checked out the lay of the land and then I stepped back inside Hank’s front door and prodded Julie out into the night, hurrying and hustling her into the back seat of our ride while Hank took the front. I would have made a fine Secret Service Agent.

When we got a little way down the road Hank introduced us to our driver.

“Bill, Julie,” he said. “Meet Dock Slocum. That’s ‘Dock’ with a ‘k’, like when you dock your boat.”

“Hello Bill, Julie,” the driver said, taking one hand off the wheel for a second and giving us a cursory wave.

“Hi,” Julie and I said together.

There wasn’t much to be said after that, so we all lapsed into silence. I guess Dock didn’t feel like talking.

He was an elderly fellow with perhaps a good fifteen or twenty years on Hank. So far he was little more than Hank’s mystery friend, someone I’d not heard Hank mention before.

Julie leaned into me and I slid my arm around her. My head still throbbed, but not as bad as before.

I could tell we were on the edge of town. The Suburban threw a wide swath of illumination into the night before us, revealing stunted trees and scrub brush along the side of the road and the sporadic lights of the dwindling city winked behind us as we topped a hill.

After a few minutes we turned off the main highway going out of town and began to ascend one of the many steep and lofty hills surrounding Killeen. Dock shifted down into low and I turned to watch behind us. Overhead the moon was full and bright and I could see no headlights behind us, nor could I see anything else but a broadening vista of city lights shimmering like a galaxy across the dark landscape below.

So much for the hound-dog persistence of Jake and Freddie.

Hank, Dock and I sat up late into the night drinking several bottles of Dock’s home brew, a very sweet Muscadine wine unlike anything I’ve ever bought at a liquor store. I’d say the alcohol percentage was a little higher. At the same time it was dry and smooth and it evened out the ache in my head. If I didn’t slow down soon, though, I’d end up hogging the bottle. Or hugging it. While we drank we played matchstick poker and talked.

“The game, gentlemen,” Dock said, “is Maverick.”

“Just deal, Dock,” Hank said. “Bill knows how to play.”

“Sure he does,” he said and smiled, looking at my dwindling pile of matches.

“How did you run across this girl, anyway?” Dock asked.

Julie was in an upstairs bedroom, fast asleep.

“My partner referred her to me,” I said. “I haven’t talked to him about it yet.”

“Okay,” Dock said. “Interesting girl. Right pretty.”

“You know it,” I said.

“What I’d like to know is to what degree you believe her, and if what she says is true, what you’re planning to do about it.”

“Tomorrow,” Hank began, “first thing we’ll do is go looking for Amos and Andy.”

“You mean Jake and Freddie,” I said.

“Yeah, them.”

We played out the poker hand. I tried to put together an extra queen with the one I had showing and the one down under, but drew a mate to the nine on top. Dock raised the stakes and Hank and I called. Dock beat us both with a flush.

“How do we find them?” I asked.

“Oh,” Hank said. “Julie told me while you were out.”

“Well,” Dock said as he pushed back from the table and squared up the cards. “It’s past my bedtime. What time do we start in the morning?”

“We?” Hank asked.

Dock looked from me to Hank and back again.

“You can’t expect to tell me all this shit and not bring me along. It’s not neighborly. I just assumed…”

“Hold on there, Tiger,” Hank said. “I wouldn’t want you to miss out. What do you say, Bill? Dock’s a fine hand in a tight corner.”

“Is that what we are?” I said, smiling. My head was spinning a little, and it felt just fine. “A couple of tight-corner people?”

Hank grinned.

“Fine, Dock,” I said. “You’re welcome. In fact, let’s take your Suburban. My tail light is out and Hank’s old Ford should have been sold for scrap about the time that Carter was finishing up his term.”

Dock slapped his hands together with a loud crack.

“Yippee,” he giggled.

The three of us stood. I got a slight twinge from my swollen foot, but I was able to put my weight on it without it killing me. I think the wine helped about as much as any of the pain-killers that I had taken in Hank’s garage.

“You two can sleep upstairs,” Dock said. “I’ll stay down here on the couch.”

“Come on, Dingo,” Hank called. Dingo got up from her post by the back door and walked across the linoleum in Dock’s kitchen. She followed us up the stairs.

About half way up, I blurted out the question that had been bothering me for a long time.

“Hank? Whatever happened to McMurray? That IRS agent. We never did talk about that.”

Hank stopped in mid-step ahead of me, turned slowly around on the stairs and looked down at me.

“Bill,” he said. “There are some people that make it a point to go around sticking their nose into the wrong crack.”

“That happened with McMurray?”

“Maybe I’m talking about you. You ever think of that? I didn’t think so. Let’s talk about Mr. Dipwad later, though, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure,” I said. “Fine.” I shrugged.

“Okay,” he said.

Softness and warmth in the night. There are benefits to sleeping with someone on a regular basis. I’d almost forgotten what it was like until Julie came along.

We whispered in the darkness. A cool breeze blew in through our second-story window and I could see megalithic radio towers blinking rhythmically in the clear, moonlit night sky.

“Why didn’t you tell us we were being followed?” I asked.

The two of us were in Dock’s bedroom. Hank slept on a rollaway bed in the upstairs family room. It was a pretty big house. There was some kind of a story here about Dock. I’d have to learn what it was. He was an intriguing character. I’d probably be like him in another thirty years or so: living alone in a large house, sleeping downstairs and entertaining folks on the lam.

“I wasn’t sure it was them,” Julie whispered. “They were a long way back there.”

She sounded sincere. I believed her.

“Why a couple of jockey’s sons? I don’t get it. Carpin’s people are thatloyal to him?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s it.” I could tell from her voice that she knew damned well that wasn’t it. But I wasn’t upset… yet. I did, however, want to know exactly what she was hiding, and why. I waited.

A particularly heavy mass of air lifted the gauzy curtains and we both watched as they fluttered slowly back down.

“You know I didn’t tell you everything, Bill.”

“I know,” I said. “You’ve been… afraid.”

“I hate that word, but yeah. Some things I maybe should have told you and haven’t. And there are definitely some things I’ve done that I shouldn’t.”

“Like?”

“Let’s go to sleep,” she whispered, turning toward me and putting her chin on my shoulder. “Make me warm, Bill Travis.”

“Fine,” I said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It felt good to be back in Austin. Or as good as it can feel with a mild concussion and a bunged-up foot.

The weather was hot and the traffic was heavy. About usual for mid-afternoon.

There were four of us and a dog in Dock’s Suburban, tooling down Interstate 35 toward downtown.

“Exit here and take the next left,” Julie called forward to Dock.

Only a week before our chance meeting in traffic, Julie had caught Freddie and Jake tailing her down Riverside Drive in Austin, just south of Town Lake. And of course, being Julie, she proceeded to pull a fast one.

She’d parked along Congress Avenue not a block away from the Capitol where there is an ever-present State Trooper at the front gate and only a stone's throw from the Governor's mansion, then walked into an upper-crust dress shop. A quick change of clothes and a purchase later, she ducked out the back entrance into the alley and walked a block around and hailed a cab. She paid the cabbie to sit with her for nearly an hour as she watched Jake and Freddie while they watched the front door of the dress shop. Then when the store manager came out to feed her parking meter for her, the two North Texas yahoos must have realized that something was up. They started the pickup and darted away into traffic. But not fast enough. Julie and the over-tipped cabbie trailed the two back to East Austin, just across the Interstate from downtown, to a ramshackle duplex in a lower-class neighborhood.

She simply noted where they could be found, and drove away.

After that she altered her patterns and spent whole days at a time away from her new home in northwest Austin. She didn’t tell Hank and me where she’d gone during those times and neither one of us pushed it. Julie was that kind of girl. You could only prime the pump so far, fill your bucket about halfway, and satisfy yourself that you’d be making another trip.

I was sure there was plenty more that she felt she couldn’t-or just wouldn’t-tell us. We’d find out sooner or later. But hopefully before it was toolate.

Hank was up front with Dock. Under his feet there was a burlap feed sack with some guns in it.

In the backseat beside me, Julie laced her fingers with mine.

Following Julie’s “turn here-turn there” directions, we found ourselves off Chicon Street; not the best side of Austin. We were maybe ten blocks from Lawrence White’s barbecue stand.

The houses passed by. Chain-link fences sagged in places. There were not just a few overgrown lots going to seed. Dock had to slow down once so that a tamale peddler on a three-wheeled bicycle could cross the road-I’ve often wondered how those guys could make a living by selling tamales out of a small refrigerator box perched on the front of their bikes. Maybe they didn’t. Who knew?

Occasionally I caught sight of a portable basketball hoop set up in the street and looking like a howitzer.

We had our windows down and the wind felt comforting. I was sweating, though, and it was a cold sweat. Also, it felt like I had a ball of hot lead rolling around in my gut.

“It’s there, on the left,” Julie said. “Third duplex. Right side.”

Dock drove us past slow and easy and we craned our necks. There was no light-blue pickup in the driveway. The place looked like a dump. Also it looked nothing like I would have figured for the base-ops for a couple of sons of North Texas quarter-horse jockeys, but go figure.

Dock circled the block and we parked across the street from Butch and Sundance’s duplex.

Hank distributed firearms from the front seat. The thirty-eight for me and a little Walther for Julie.

“What about me?” Dock asked.

“What about you?” Hank replied.

“Where’s my gun?”

I thought Hank was going to laugh. He didn’t.

“You’re staying right here,” he said. “Now don’t raise a ruckus. Looks like nobody’s home, so I don’t think there’ll be any shooting anyhow. But if there is, for some reason, I’d advise you to duck.”

“Is that all I am? Your chauffeur?” Dock asked.

We ignored him and climbed out. Julie and I exchanged smiles.

It had been an hour-long ride and my legs felt like they needed a good stretch. I winced at my first step across the road, but the going got easier as I walked.

“You stay here, Dingo,” Hank said. The dog barked once as Hank slammed the door.

The thirty-eight felt cold in my sweaty hand.

“What're ya'll doin' over there?”

The three of us nearly leapt out of our skins.

We were hunched opposite each other, me and Julie to the left and Hank to the right of one of the duplex windows, trying to see inside and determine whether anybody was home. The voice took us by surprise.

“Good God! Glad I had on the safety,” Hank said.

It was a girl, a little kid about eight or nine, standing there at the back corner of the duplex where a section of rotted wood fencing had fallen down and an outdoor heat exchanger was converting over to rust and ruin. She had on a dirty pink paisley dress and an arm around an old cabbage-patch doll that was missing a limb. She was thin, terribly so, but there was strength in her stance and wonder and curiosity in her eyes. This was her space and we were the invaders and she looked to be not the least bit intimidated.

“You live here, darlin'?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Of course she does,” Hank said.

“They’re gone,” the girl said.

“Who's gone?” Julie asked her.

“The bad men.”

“Oh,” Hank said.

There was a long story here, in the side yard of a dilapidated duplex in a dilapidated neighborhood, in the little girl's eyes and her wan frame. I could already see the additional trouble brewing, coming on with the inevitability of bad storm.

I looked at Julie and she was looking at the kid, seeing what I'd already figured out, maybe even more. And Julie being Julie, invited the additional trouble right on in to pull up a chair and sit a spell.

“Where's your mama, honey?”

“She gone.”

Of course she is, I thought.

We put our guns away in silent agreement.

“Where’d she go?”

The kid turned her head and gestured back toward the thicket to the back of the property, or maybe just generally back towards Greater Austin.

“Mama wasn't doing nothin' except smokin’ cheese for a whole year.”

Cheese. It was street-slang for crack cocaine in these parts, and I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't traversed certain neighborhoods in Austin where the junkies were brazen enough to shout it out to cars going by.

Hank was talking low, not moving his lips, and he was talking to Julie-as if it would have done any good. “There's agencies that handle this kind of thing,” he said.

Julie darted Hank a quick, angry look. Hank raised both hands a trifle, took a step back, and she turned her attention back to the kid again.

“Then she takes up with Melvin Hobbes one day and they go to the store, only they don’t come back.”

“How long ago, honey? And what's your name?” Julie asked.

“Keesha. Don’t know how long.” This said, Keesha hopped up and sat on the rusting AC unit and regarded us with just a little less interest. I was willing to bet that she'd heard promises and offers to help in the past.

“Those two bad men left this mornin'. I had to act like my mama was here so they wouldn't chase after me no more.”

“Very smart,” Julie said, and turned to look at me. There was a plea in her eyes. I found myself nodding, slowly.

Julie sat beside Keesha, and they chatted away. Hank and I moved around behind the duplex to have a look.

There are some places that simply don't have a good vibe to them. I expect you could probably cut the grass back, replace the bad wood, paint things and generally clean them up, but like as not that vibe would still be there, if only subdued. The ramshackle duplex where Keesha lived and where Jake and Freddie-the friendly neighborhood sniper-patrol-had set up their base camp was like that. The back yard had weeds up to three feet tall in places and had been trampled back and down where little brown feet had often stepped. There was scattered trash here and there which consisted mainly of candy wrappers and chip bags of the convenience story variety. I suspected that there was a sympathetic convenience store clerk somewhere close by that just couldn’t say “no” to sad little brown-eyed girls.

There were two brown-painted doors like twin peepers in the rear face of the building, and evidence that a hog-wire divider had existed between once separate yards. The further door stood slightly ajar on rickety hinges, somewhat crooked. No doubt it was the back door to Keesha's home. I stepped back around for a moment and gently interrupted Julie and Keesha to confirm it, then ducked back around to join Hank again.

Hank tried the back door to Jake and Freddie’s side, but it was locked. Of course. It couldn't be thateasy. On a lark, Hank rambled back around to the front for a try. I waited. He came back. He didn’t say anything, but I knew the answer. I could also tell by the look on Hank’s face that he wanted to have a look inside Keesha's side of the duplex. There was the biggest part of me that wanted nothing to do with the place. I had one of those “I don't want to know” feelings that start in the pit of the gut. Somehow, though, the mystery of not knowing was even worse.

Hank ducked into the gloom through the open door.

I waited two beats, then followed.

It was dark inside. I tried a grimy light switch, knowing full well it was no use. I was right.

The place was a cave.

An unpleasant odor emanated from a clothes washer and dryer just beside the back door. Wet clothes going to mildew and rot. Hank clicked on a little mag-lite flashlight and the stark reality of conditions sprang up in the wake of his roving beam. I followed him through the squalor, seeing things I'd seen before, and some things I'd not and rather hadn't.

I'm not much of a Bible-thumper, but being the product of the deep East Texas Bible belt, tent revivals as a kid and Wednesday night Bible study, some things come to mind unbidden. I was thinking about something I was taught in Sunday School at about nine or ten years of age. Christ had purportedly stood up on a hill and lectured the crowds and said something about “the poor you will always have with you”. It had always seemed to me to be a very simple yet profound statement, and the utter truth of it hadn't altered a bit from the hour that he was reported to have spoken it. Knowing that, though, didn’t make it any easier to confront the condition that Hank and I witnessed inside the duplex.

The living room was a complete wreck. There was no television or stereo or radio or anything. Probably whatever had once served to make the place a real home had long before disappeared, a casualty of habitual drug usage. There was plenty of soiled furniture, though, rescued, no doubt, from the clutches of the quarter-annual bulk trash collector some months or perhaps years past.

Worse yet was the odor; the ever-present, distinct and oppressive scent of burned chemicals mixed with rat and cockroach droppings.