Текст книги "Foodchain"

Автор книги: Jeff Jacobson

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

It looked to Frank like they were prepared for more people, a lot more.

Everything sat in rapidly melting ice—The family had gone to the local supermarket for only two things during the chicken wire fence construction; the ice machine and horizontal freezer. It had taken the entire family to accomplish this, but now they had the ice machine running nonstop, filling it with water from the garden hose.

Three picnic tables were clustered in the shade down on the south side of the park. A shooting bench had been placed apart a ways, out in the sun; a large locked toolbox sat on top.

The hunters ate like they hadn’t seen food in two or three days.

Frank gave up looking for any kind of soap and simply plunged his hands into the icewater surrounding a bowl of honey mustard to clean them. The water calmed him right down, as if he just slid on his back out across a frozen lake at night. It felt so good that he splashed it back into his face, and more across his scalp. This was met with great enthusiasm and everybody tried it.

Frank got a plate and eyed the meat. Before he got any food, he got a freezing cold can of Milwaukee’s Best Ice beer. Icewater and sweat ran down the cracks in sheep’s blood on his face. The beer tasted so good that he finished it and went for three more. These went into hip pockets. Then he got some French bread slices, took another beer, and drifted through the tables in the shade and made his way around to the north side of the park, and sat in the shade on the running board of the old fire truck, away from the festivities.

“Okay, like your attention please,” Sturm’s voice came floating out across the park. Except for the men, the park was unnaturally still, as if nothing lived in the limp tan grass and brittle leaves. “It’s time to hand out some guns.”

The men cheered. Frank opened another beer, slumped against the wheel well, and listened to Sturm unlock the toolbox. “Have to introduce our referee first. This here’s Wally Glouck and he did a damn fine job keeping score.”

Later, Chuck told Frank that Sturm had gotten all the men to pay for the chance to shoot and win guns, something like five grand apiece. The pistols were handed out according to cost, most of the guns, all of ’em handguns, came in around two to three grand at the most. Girdler took third place and won a German Luger. Asshole #2 beat Girdler, but just barely. He got a nine-millimeter Beretta.

Sturm took first, winning a pair of beautiful Old West Colt .45 bright silver revolvers, like a TV cowboy’s gun. Scrollwork was etched into the barrel and the intricately carved handle. Chuck said that Sturm knew he was going to win; he wanted the twin six-guns from that dealer, and went and bought the guy’s entire collection out, for a low, low price. With that amount of cash and no paperwork, the collector couldn’t refuse. He kept the cash and hired a few guys to burn his house down. The other guns weren’t worth near as much; basically, the clients had paid for Sturm’s guns.

* * * * *

“This very afternoon,” Sturm said, “you all are going to have a chance to hunt that goddamn monkey you all saw on those wanted signs. So don’t go wandering off just yet. Remember, there’s a goddamn twenty grand bounty on its head. I have it on very good authority that he’s gonna make his escape in this very park—and just to make things interesting, he’s gonna be bustin’ loose with all his monkey buddies. That’s right. I promised you some shooting, and it’s shooting you’re gonna be doing, by God.”

Frank cracked open another beer.

“But—but here’s the only rule. You can only hunt with the pistol you won here today. That’s the only rule.”

The guy who won the .22 groaned; so did Asshole #3. He’d won a snub-nosed .38, which was accurate all the way up to about three or four feet. Everybody else laughed.

* * * * *

Frank found himself in Sturm’s cab as they drove to the vet hospital. “First off,” Sturm said, “you have to realize a couple of facts. One. We don’t have enough cash to pay the winner of this particular operation. Two. We don’t pay these boys off, then this whole operation is bust. You add that up, son, and you’ll come to understand that if we don’t win here, you don’t get paid. You understand that?”

“Yeah.” Frank understood all right, but he wondered where the hell all of Sturm’s cash had gone. Sturm had gone down to Chico a few days earlier and cleaned out his bank account, bringing back at least five Army duffel bags full of bills. Frank got the feeling that it was bullshit, that all that was really going on was that Sturm simply didn’t like to lose.

“So here’s the deal.” Sturm laid out the facts.

When they got to the hospital Frank cracked open another beer and led everyone into the barn. Sturm pointed out the monkey. “There’s the little fucker. See his earrings? Okay then. You’re gonna watch us load all these monkeys, every last one ’em, into that truck. Then you’re gonna follow us to the park. There, you’ll have a chance to get your guns ready, and we’re gonna let these monkeys loose.”

Getting the monkeys into the horse trailer wasn’t tough. They backed the trailer up the side of the barn, pried off a plank, and Frank coaxed all them, including the wanted monkey with the earrings, into the trailer with a pile of dried apricots. Sturm made a big deal of locking the gate with a chain and a padlock, presumably to prove that there would be no cheating. He gave the key to Girdler to hold.

Chuck and Frank jumped into the cab. Then, with Sturm following directly behind Chuck’s truck, the Assholes next, and Girdler at the rear, the convoy pulled slowly out of the gravel parking lot. As they turned left onto the highway, Chuck said, “Go,” dropping the pickup’s speed to just a crawl. Sturm made the turn slightly tighter, angling his truck so he was partly blocking the view from Escalade and the Winnebago. Frank stepped out of the pickup and crouched, waiting until the running board of the horse trailer had reached him, hopped on, and crawled inside through the front window.

He had a pair of pliers and ten minutes.

He had kept some of the dried apricots in his pocket and pulled them out now. The movement of the trailer spooked the monkeys, but they quickly surrounded Frank, making grabs at his fistful of dried fruit. He located the big monkey with the earrings and held an apricot. Just before the monkey could snatch it away, Frank dropped the fruit, and in the split second the monkey’s attention was diverted, he grabbed the back of the monkey’s neck and went to work. The hard part was avoiding the nails at the ends of the fingers and long toes. Sturm had warned him about getting any cuts on his face; he didn’t want Frank showing up at the park with any fresh wounds to spark suspicion. The left earring was the easiest, because Frank could handle the pliers with his right hand. The right ear took a while, but Frank had just finished when he heard Chuck start honking the pickup’s horn, pounding out a rhythm.

This was Chuck’s signal that they were nearly to the park. Sturm started hitting his out horn as well, and pretty soon, both the Escalade and the Winnebago horns joined in, the mechanical bellowing echoing down the empty streets. The horns had a sort of formal effect, heralding the arrival of the hunters.

Chuck made another left, slowing down as much as possible, and Frank slithered out of the front window. He scurried up to the cab and hopped inside. Chuck pulled out of the turn and circled the park, turning into the alley in the center of the block on the park’s south side.

Sturm had all the hunters line up along the north sidewalk, facing the bank, while Chuck backed the horse trailer back across Sutter Street. This way, the hunters would be turning and shooting into the late afternoon son, just to make things more interesting.

Girdler returned the key and while Frank and Chuck drew back the bolts and got ready to drop the gate, the hunters loaded their handguns. Sturm said, “As winner of the last competition, I’m sitting this one out. It’s all yours, boys. Get your guns out.”

Everybody already had their pistols and revolvers ready.

Sturm raised one of his new pistols. “But before there’s any shooting, understand this. There’s rules here. We can’t have our own men under fire. You get five seconds. Understand me? You’ll watch as the monkeys get loose. There will be no shooting, none at all for a full five seconds. I’ll be going by my watch here. Anybody fires, anybody—and I’ll shoot them myself.”

Chuck and Frank propped the gate shut with 2-by-4s, and didn’t waste time hopping into the cab. They crouched low in the bench seat.

Sturm held up the other revolver as well, aiming both arms, arms straight, elbows locked, at the bank across the street. The pearl handles shimmered and flashed in the sun.

Sturm fired. Chuck floored it. The bullets punched the bank sign; the sign buckled inward slightly, but the damage was small, like someone getting playfully hit in the gut. A few pieces of glass the size of quarters hit the sidewalk. Everyone snapped their safeties off and jerked their guns up, itching to turn around and shoot, as the trailer door fell open and monkeys scampered through the cloud of dust and dead grass. The truck tires gripped first grass, then sidewalk and a quick jolt of grass again, finally bouncing down onto pavement.

“Three seconds,” Sturm hollered. Nobody knew if he meant that three seconds had passed, or if there was three seconds left.

Chuck’s truck made it to the alley and started gaining speed. The horse trailer bounced once as the hitch hit the center of the road. Most of the monkeys went for the trees immediately, but some stayed in the trailer, looking for the dried apricots that Frank had wedged between the loose slats in the floor.

“Set” Sturm shouted.

Hammers clicked back.

The monkeys shook dust into the air as they clambered into the dead trees.

Sturm turned his pistols to the bank sign again, yelled, “Shoot!” and kept squeezing the trigger until he was empty.

The hunters turned and fired, nearly as one, an explosion of gunfire that reverberated through the town and went rolling out through the pasture and fields until dying in the ravines and creeks and hills.

Girdler had thought ahead. Where the Assholes had laboriously spent half an hour carefully shoving shells into brand new bandoliers, he’d simply dumped all his shells into the hip pockets of his safari jacket. He’d fired and reloaded a thirteen round magazine four times before Asshole #3 could pinch six shells out of the bandolier to reload just once.

Dead and dying monkeys fell out of the trees like rotten fruit.

* * * * *

Chuck and Frank pulled around the block and parked alongside the lunch tables. The tubs of ice were just tepid bowls of water, now alive with wasps. Frank got low and tried to come in under the wasps and ended up getting stung twice as he groped for three warm beers. He danced away, crushing one wasp in the crook of his neck, and another against his chest with a beer can. A couple followed him for a while, but gave up when Frank dumped two beers in his pockets and shook up the third one, but instead of spraying it at the wasps, Frank cracked the beer open into his mouth and then spit beer at the insects. He was glad that that all of the hunters were too busy shooting monkeys to see him. Chuck didn’t see Frank either, because he was too busy going for his shotgun in the back window of his truck. Chuck pumped it quick and announced he was gonna join the hunt.

Frank retreated to shade of the fire truck. Behind him, the shooting gradually tapered off. Girdler and Asshole #1 ran out across Sutter Street, firing at the rest of the monkeys that had scattered down the alley, but the heat of the day made them walk back to the park, gasping and sweating. The rest of the men kicked through the monkey carcasses, arguing over who shot which monkey.

* * * * *

The low, purring sound of a luxury car rose slowly above bickering. Frank bolted upright, convinced, for just a second, that the quiet gentlemen in one of their long black cars had finally found him.

But the Mercedes that rolled up Main Street was pale blue, not black. It turned left on Third Street and parked next to the tables. The man that got out wasn’t as short as Sturm, but was quite small nevertheless. He wore a white linen suit with a matching white hat and some kind of red ascot and carried a tiny dog close to his chest, like a fragile egg. The dog had huge, bulging eyes and some kind of fluffed mane, like some hair stylist’s idea of a toy lion.

“I em lookeeng fah Meestah Hoooreece Stahmmmmm.” It sounded like the stranger’s voice was coming out of his nose, and every syllable ran together, as if enunciating the crisp notes of each word was simply too much trouble. He tilted his head so far back Frank was surprised that white hat didn’t toppled backwards into the street. It was an odd accent; definitely French, but he wasn’t from France. Maybe Quebec.

Sturm ambled up to the man, not quite eye-to-eye, more like eye-to-nostrils. Sturm now wore his new pistols strapped into a glittering silver-studded gunbelt and holsters. “That’s me. What can I do for you, Mr….?”

“Meester No-hweee.”

“No-weee?”

“Meester No-hweee, yes.”

Frank already hated the guy. Only an asshole would wear a fucking ascot in this heat. The little dog yipped and struggled within Noe’s arms. Frank couldn’t even call it a bark. He thought back to the little dogs he’d treated as a vet student and none of them were any damn good.

“Hush, Maxeemus, hush.”

“Well, Mr. Noe. What exactly can I do for you?”

Mr. Noe smiled. “I am here to hunt, yes?” he said simply, looking at the dead monkeys strewn across the brown grass.

* * * * *

Something cold nuzzled Franks’ palm. He looked down and found it was Petunia’s nose. She stared up at him, her thick stump of a tail wriggling frantically. “Well, I’ll be damned. How are you, you big girl you.” He crouched down and let Petunia lick his face, scratching her haunches, her chest, her ears with both hands in long, slow strokes. “What are you doing here, huh?”

“She missed you.” Annie smiled down at him, all aglow in a scandalously short baby-doll dress and cowboy boots. She’d come up behind Frank while he was watching Mr. Noe and his little rat, Maximus. “She thought she should come visit.”

“Did you now,” Frank said, massaging the loose folds of skin around Petunia’s neck. The dried blood on his head and neck itched.

Annie sat down next to him on the fire tuck’s running board, and he could smell something sweet, not perfume exactly, more like she’d washed her hair in honeysuckle. Her tan skin glowed in the shade. She patted his thigh and he was glad they were out of sight from the hunters.

Frank was trying to think of something clever to say, something maybe even downright romantic, when Mr. Noe’s dog, all four pounds of pop eyes and bristling fury, came around the corner, strutting through the dead grass with his sharp nose and sharper teeth, and caught sight of Petunia.

But instead of flinching and barking, as Frank expected, he pranced right on over, and now Frank could see quite clearly that Maximus was indeed quite male, as his penis suddenly erupted like an embarrassingly red and swollen cocktail straw.

Before Petunia even knew Maximus was there, the little dog was on her. Frank didn’t even have a chance to stop scratching her ears. Maximus rose up and launched his pelvis at the base of Petunia’s wriggling stump of a tail. Petunia jerked sideways at first contact, somehow swiveling with her front shoulders, kicking her hindquarters into space; she brought her sledgehammer head around faster than Frank’s eyes could follow, and crushed Maximus’s skull in one chomp. It sounded like hitting a shotgun shell full of #9 shot, when you’ve got it in a wood vice and you’re bashing away at the primer with a ball peen hammer, all dry and crackling.

Petunia wouldn’t let go. If anything, she sunk her teeth even deeper, locking those jaws into place. She shook the tiny dog’s body viciously, like she was trying to water the lawn with his blood.

“I guess Petunia wasn’t in the mood,” Annie said.

“Was she in heat?” Frank asked. For some reason, this seemed important, as if it might be some kind of shelter in the face of the inevitable storm.

Petunia tossed the little sack of bones and skin into the air, then pounced as soon as it hit the grass. She shook it again, just for the hell of it, and proudly brought it over to Frank and Annie, dropping it at their feet. She sat back and panted at them, mouth open in a toothy grin, bloody tongue lolling wildly.

“Oh, oh, you’re fucked.” Theo peered around the back end of the fire truck. “You are fucked but good. Dad! DAD! That Glouck dog just killed Doctor No’s dog!”

* * * * *

“Maxeeemussss!” Mr. Noe shrieked and wobbled in front of his dead dog. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch the corpse. Petunia rolled her eyes towards him, decided he was harmless and had no food, and turned her attention back to Frank and Annie, that stump of a tail just a blur. Mr. Noe’s horrified stare went from his dog to Petunia and back to what was left of his dog. He rose and slipped backwards through the knot of hunters crowding around the two dogs.

“For a dead dog, he sure is excited,” Girdler said, nodding at Maximus’s erection.

Sturm’s icy gaze slid over Frank and Annie, noticing everything. “Just what in the hell happened here, Frank?”

Frank shrugged. “I guess Petunia was in heat…and the little dog here thought he’d help himself…and well, Petunia wasn’t…ready.”

Sturm stared at Annie. “What’s that dog doing here?”

“She’s with me,” Annie said, voice sharp and definite.

“Well,” Sturm said, “this is one major fuckup, that’s for goddamn sure. I’m gonna have to give Mr. Noe some kind of a discount…where is he?”

“Here he comes,” Asshole #3 said. “Looks upset. Where’d he get that rifle?”

Mr. Noe shouldered his way through the cluster of hunters, brandishing some kind of stocky European rifle with a banana clip. He jerked the bolt back and let it slam home. Everybody suddenly gave him some room to move; it was like Mr. Noe exhaled, and his breath blew everyone back five feet.

“Now just hang on here now—“ Sturm began.

Mr. Noe pulled the rifle to his shoulder and the barrel found Petunia.

Frank was on his feet, fist around an unopened can of Milwaukee’s Best Ice, and as Mr. Noe’s finger settled over the trigger, Frank flung the can at Mr. Noe’s head. Twelve full ounces of cold beer encased in whisper-thin aluminum cracked into Mr. Noe’s forehead and his rifle spit out a bullet that took out the side mirror of the fire truck instead of Petunia. Mr. Noe’s head snapped back and this time, his hat did fly off.

Annie smacked her open palm across Petunia’s hind end and hissed, “Home! Now!” Petunia was disappointed, but she waddled away.

Mr. Noe shook his head, blinking rapidly. He found a white handkerchief in his coat pocket, fluffed it out and pressed it to the red half-moon on his forehead. His small eyes found Frank. “I think, Meester, you make a very big mistake.”

“Yeah,” Frank said.

I think, Meester, that I will shoot both you and the dog, yes?” Mr. Noe said, reshouldering his rifle.

“You do what you think you have to,” Frank said.

Mr. Noe pivoted, aiming at Petunia in the street. The hunters parted like the Red Sea, giving him a clear shot. Frank was all out of cans, so he simply whipped one of his long arms out and snatched the rifle from Mr. Noe’s hands. He jerked the banana clip out, aimed up at the sky, and fired off the remaining round.

“You aren’t shooting that dog today,” he said, tucking the clip into the back pocket of his jeans. Frank advanced on Mr. Noe, his eyes glowing with an unnatural light from deep within his blood caked skin. “Understand, I’m sorry about your dog. It’s tough to lose a pet, I know. But your dog asked for it. Now, I’d be happy to bury your dog. I’ll show it the respect you demand. But I’ll be damned if you’re gonna shoot her dog.” He handed the empty rifle back to Mr. Noe.

Mr. Noe stared uncomfortably at this man who looked like he’d just crawled from inside of a gutshot elephant and took the rifle gingerly, keeping it well away from his white suit.

“Okay, Frank, okay,” Sturm said. “It’s been a long day already. Why don’t you head back to the hospital, get yourself cleaned up. You’ll feel better.”

“C’mon Frank,” Annie said, taking his arm. “Let’s get you home.”

* * * * *

She led him across the street. Sturm said something quiet to Mr. Noe, then called to Frank. “Frank. Hold up. Frank!” Sturm trotted over to them. He glanced at Annie for a second, but Frank couldn’t read the expression. “Listen,” he took Frank by the waist, since he couldn’t reach Frank’s shoulders, and led him into the center of Main Street. “Listen, I, ah, don’t worry ’bout this. With this client, I mean. We’ll get his money.” He steered Frank on farther, down to the intersection. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry. You just worry ‘bout them cats, okay? You make sure Lady and Princess are in the best of health, okay? That’s all I’m asking for.” He glanced at Mr. Noe. “I’ll take care of Mr. Dipshit here. You just go on back to the office and get cleaned up. And keep them cats happy.”

Sturm stopped at the crosswalk white line. Frank took three more steps and looked back. Sturm scuffed his boot against the pavement. “And just as important, I also just wanted to apologize for my behavior the other day, when me and Theo were getting a picture of the monkey.” Frank stopped and listened. “Didn’t mean to come on so strong. Sometimes my temper really gets a hold of me and I don’t know if it’s cause of the tumor or what, but it seems like when it happens, all I can do is spit fire. You’re doing a fine job. Keep it up. Now, you take that bottle and go on back to the office and have some fun.”

* * * * *

“Me and Petunia, we’re lucky, you know.”

“Why?”

Annie still had her arm linked in Frank’s, and now she took his hand, interlacing her fingers within his. They were walking south along the highway, towards the vet hospital. The sun was still at least an hour away from the horizon, but Frank couldn’t feel it anymore. Maybe the dried blood acted as some kind of extra-strength sunblock. The Jack Daniel’s was nearly gone.

“’Cause we met you, dumbshit.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You stopped him.”

Frank shook his head. “Nah. I just distracted him.”

“No. You stopped a man from shooting my dog. I owe you.”

Frank shook his head again. “Shit, if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have been there.” He coughed out a chuckle. “Shit, if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t of been there. Hell, I’m the one who brought all this to your town.”

Annie didn’t answer. They walked in silence, past the quiet streets that branched off the main road. “Maybe so,” she said finally. “But this town was dead long before you showed up. Now, for the people left, for my family, there’s a chance to make something of themselves. There’s a chance to make some money.” She caressed his shoulder with her free hand, picking away at the dried blood.

“I don’t know. Sturm doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to pay me. Has he paid your family yet?”

“Of course.”

“All of it?”

Annie thought for a moment. “Well, no, I guess not. He dropped off the down payment, and we used that for supplies.”

“When’s he supposed to pay the rest?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if he doesn’t pay your family?”

“He will,” Annie laughed nervously. “Would you try to cheat my family?”

“No. But I’m not dying of cancer, either.”

They walked in silence for a while.

“All I know is that there’s an awful lot of cash coming into this valley,” Frank said. “And I don’t know if Sturm is gonna share.”

* * * * *

They reached the vet hospital. Instead of going in, she uncoiled a hose, turned the water on, then drank deeply. She turned to him, letting the water hit her chest briefly. “Oops.” The thin cotton greedily drank the water, transforming the fabric into a transparent sheen. “You wouldn’t happen to have some kind of tub around here, would you?”

Frank didn’t take long. “Think there might be something in the barn. Let me check.” Sure enough, buried deep in a pile of junk in the stall next to the rhino, was a metal tub almost three feet deep. He dragged it out to Annie. She had him put in the middle of the back yard, in the direct sunlight, and washed it out.

She said, “Now strip.”

Frank was too tired, too drunk to argue. He peeled off his sticky shirt, and slid his jeans down to his ankles while Annie aimed the stream of water into the tub. Barefoot, but still wearing white underwear, Frank took another swig of whiskey. “In,” Annie said, and flattened her palm against his chest and forced him backwards into the tub.

The water sent sparks through his brain. It felt gloriously cold. Annie grinned and worked the end of the hose along his skull, washing away the flakes of dried blood. She hooked the hose under his knee and let the water continue filling the tub. She handed him the bottle and said, “Drink up. I’ll be right back.”

She went into the vet hospital, leaving Frank alone with his bottle and the hose, shooting fresh, freezing water into his bath. He finished the bottle, deliberately blocking out the day, focusing solely on the field of star thistles and the jagged mountains. He finished the bottle, screwed the cap back on, and let it float around in the tub with him.

Annie came back out with a fresh grin and a bar of soap. She had Frank lean forward so she could work the lather into the short stubble that covered his scalp. “I liked your hair better when it was longer,” she said. “But I can understand why you cut it.” Her strong fingers firmly worked their way up his skull and he shivered. “Sturm told me you had some folks upset with you.”

His vision slipped into liquid darkness. “Sturm told you that?”

“Yeah.” Her slippery smooth fingers moved down to his shoulders, gripping and squeezing.

“When was this?”

“I dunno. The other day.”

The water felt warm all of a sudden; his vision sparked back over, and the quick sun was too bright. “What were you talking to him about?”

“I dunno. Stuff.”

“You talk about me?”

“Already told you. Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said you were a goddamn genius with all these animals. Idiot savant I believe is what he said.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Annie sat back and wiped her forehead with her forearm. “What are you getting at here, Frank?”

Frank looked back at the mountains. “Are you here ’cause you like me…or did Sturm set this up?”

“Oh for god’s sake, Frank. I like you. Of course I like you. Thought we’d been through this.”

“But did Sturm tell you to come back here with me? Did he pay you to come back here with me?”

She stopped rubbing his back and flicked the soap off her fingers. “Who cares? I’m here with you. That should tell you everything you need to know.”

“No. That’s not…Did he pay you to be here with me today?”

“Christ, Frank. I’d be here whether he paid me or not.”

“So he paid you.”

“Yeah. Fuck, I wasn’t going to turn down money. It was cash, you understand.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen to yourself. It was a chance for me to be here. And he said he’d pay me, got that? So not only would I be here with you, I was going to get paid for it. Fuck, I wasn’t going to turn it down.”

Frank closed his eyes and sank down to his lips in the water. “Go home.”

“Just relax. I—”

“I said, go home. Get the fuck out.”

“Fine. Fine. Okay tough guy. Enjoy your bath.”

He heard her wipe her hands on her dress, hesitate for just a moment, then heard the cowboy boots striding purposefully through the overgrown lawn and out to the street and just like that, she was gone. He fought the urge to call her back. Fuck her. FUCK her.

He eyed the Jack Daniels bottle bobbing around in the bath and wished it wasn’t so empty. He had a couple of beers in the fridge, but they wouldn’t work. They’d just make things worse. But the pills he took from the trucker, they were just waiting for someone, they were waiting for someone with a need. Someone with a purpose.

* * * * *

Frank stood up in his bath and dropped the underwear. It was the first time he’d been naked outside since the night the quiet gentlemen had made him walk up those stairs to the alligator tank. Today, it felt good. He stepped out of the bath and pissed in the driveway.

Off in the distance, he heard shooting. But it never got closer.

There were two kinds of pills in the baggie. Strikingly vivid pale blue pills, the color of ice in the sun, and green and white capsules. Frank tore off a sheet from the prescription pad and folded the paper into quarters. He cracked one of the green and white capsules open and poured the white powder into the creases. He eyeballed it for a while, holding the folded paper up to the light, as if deciphering the chemical breakdown.

Frank scowled. He set the paper down and tossed one of the brilliant blue pills into his mouth and washed it down with beer. He poured the white powder back into the green capsule as best as he could. That one and the rest of the pills went back into the baggie. He slapped a long piece of duct tape across the baggie, opened the cupboard under the sink and wedged the tape and baggie up into the sink molding, in the narrow space between the edge of the counter and the front of the sink.

He took his beer back to his room and got dressed. On his way out front, he stepped into the small room at the back of the vet hospital. The pound. Although the dogs jumped to their feet, all wide eyes and wider mouths, thinking it was feeding time, they didn’t bark. They were used to him by now. Some even wagged their tails. He’d cleaned the concrete weeks ago, and now hosed it out at the end of each day. He kicked open the back door and emptied the bag of food on the ground. Then, before he could really slow down and think about it, he snapped open the lock and swung the door wide.

The dogs blinked uncertainly in the bright sunlight until the tiniest dog, the one that darted forward through the legs of the bigger dogs to snap at intruders, trotted confidently through the open door, crossed the small room, and bounced over the threshold. The rest of the dogs boiled through the open door and ran into the back parking lot, barking excitedly. A few paused long enough to gobble at the dry food on the ground, but the sheer intensity at being outside seemed to override any hunger in most of the dogs.