At first, he thought it was a pit bull, but the dog was larger than any pit bull he’d ever seen. It had the wide head knotted with clumps of muscles so large around the jaws that it looked like it had the mumps. The short bluish hair was shot through with flecks of gray. The teats hung loose and low. One eye was gone, leaving just jagged folds of scar tissue. She looked like she’d happily chew on the rusted engine blocks all day and fire sharpened nails out of her butt.
Frank found out later the dog’s name was Petunia.
Petunia fixed her good eye on him and growled again.
With a sinking, numbing certainty, Frank realized that his gift with animals, his ability to somehow calm them, even talk with them, wasn’t going to work with this particular dog. He jammed both hands back in his pockets and clenched his fists and weighed his options. He could either keep walking forward to the dead tree, which meant almost certainly facing the dog, not to mention the onslaught of slingshots and BB guns, or he could back away and pretend nothing had happened.
The gas pump stopped clicking.
Frank didn’t like it much, but he backed across the street.
The girl laughed. “You fuckin’ pussy.”
Frank suddenly wished he had one of the quiet gentlemen’s guns, just one, so he could shoot a couple of the boys out of the tree like goddamn pigeons. He just wanted to pay for the gas and get the hell out of here. As soon as he reached the car, they fired. Rocks, marbles, BBs, and grapes struck the car and the pavement in sudden, crackling, popping sounds, like Drano poured into Rice Krispies. Frank didn’t turn around, refused to even look back across the street. He replaced the gas nozzle and went into the small convenience store.
* * * * *
It was a little cooler inside, but that was like saying that stepping into a Port-A-Potty would get you out of the sun. The place wasn’t a whole lot bigger than a Port-A-Potty either, with two aisles filled mostly with junk food. A plump, middle-aged woman leaned over the counter. “Those kids giving you a hard time?” she asked eagerly under bangs so red they hurt Frank’s eyes. Her hair looked stiff, brittle, as if it would shatter if he looked at it crooked.
He shrugged, shook his head. “Nah. They’re just…kids.” He flattened a twenty on the counter.
“Bunch of savages if you ask me. They’re downright vicious, I’m telling you. Believe you me, I know what I’m talking about. Sit here all day, every day; I could tell you plenty. They didn’t hurt your car, did they?”
Frank shook his head again, hoping that she would just take the money and give him his change. But the woman ignored the money and glanced back out the grimy front window. “Half of ’em aren’t even related.” She flashed him a look with raised eyebrows, lips drawn tight, nodding. “Them two women, couple of…” She dropped her voice, as if someone could hear her outside. “Lesbians. Them two women,” in case Frank wasn’t sure who she was talking about. “Don’t know how many times they been married, see? Just up and decided one day they liked women.” She shook her head again, looking as if she’d just chewed up and swallowed a bug and couldn’t decide if she liked the taste or not. “This was after they had all them kids. All different fathers, of course. So when they got together, it’s all one big happy family. Kinda’ like the Brady Bunch.” She giggled, startled at her own wit, and raised a hand to her mouth, then finally took the twenty.
“Yeah,” Frank said.
“All them boys, they’re a bunch of holy terrors. Sometimes,” she said in a confidential whisper, twenty clutched tight in fingers that tapered off into inch long purple nails, “things get kinda slow around here, I’ll just call the cops on ’em, just to see what happens. But I try not to do it too much, you know?” She jabbed one of the purple nails at the cash register. “It’s better when I got a legitimate reason. Like just now.” The drawer sprang open with a tired ding and the purple nails scratched at the change.
“I’m sorry?”
“The deputies. Olaf and Herschell. They don’t take any crap from that family, I’m telling you.”
“You…already called the cops?”
“Of course. I watched those kids give you a hard time out there and thought…” She looked up into Frank’s face and didn’t like his attitude. “I thought…I thought that that’s what you would want. Decent people appreciate it when you try to help ’em out.” She slammed the change on the counter. “You sure weren’t gonna stop ’em, make ’em pay for what they did by yourself.” The woman drew back. “No sir. Didn’t take you long to come runnin’ in here.”
Frank didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to look at the woman. He scooped the change off the counter and was outside before she finished. “Thought I was doing you a favor,” she called.
* * * * *
He had just reached the long black car when the police cruiser suddenly appeared on the highway and his stomach rolled and flopped. He forced himself to move in slow motion as the cruiser slid to a stop in front of the satellite. He realized the cops had been there plenty of times, parking in the same spot every time, because the giant satellite protected the car from the slingshots and BB guns in the dead tree. Still moving nice and easy, he nodded at the cops, and opened the driver’s door.
But just as Frank was about to slip into the long black car, one of the deputies held up a finger, wordlessly telling Frank to sit still, to just wait a minute. The deputy had a flat, squashed face pinched in the center by a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. He pinned Frank with an eyeless stare and parked his hands on his hips. Frank nodded back, polite, just a regular citizen. Still, he settled himself into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition.
The other deputy, a short young guy with a crew cut so severe he was damn near bald, fastened his round hat over his skull. The deputies ambled out past the safety of the satellite dish, all casual and patient. They tilted their heads and quietly regarded the children for several moments.
Hot, stinging sweat trickled down the back of Frank’s neck.
The older deputy, the one with the face that looked like he’d kept his face mashed against a brick wall for thirty years or so, finally called out to the tree. “Thought we made it real clear last time. Thought it was understood that you and us were gonna have some serious problems if we had to come back over here.”
The girl’s voice shouted back, “We didn’t do nothin’!”
The deputy nodded. “Is that right? Then why are we here then?”
Nobody answered. The deputy asked, “Your mom around? Either one of ’em? No? They out at the auction yard? Heard one of your brothers was fightin’ this time.”
“Ernie. And he’s gonna kick aaaasssss,” the same girl called out.
The deputy chuckled. “Yeah. He oughta, that’s for sure, that’s right. But still, that don't have nothin’ to do with what we got going on here.”
The younger deputy slowly made his way over to Frank. He touched the edge of the round brim. “Howdy.” A brass bar identified him as “DPTY HALFORD.”
Frank nodded back. “Hi.” He grinned, easy, smooth, and loose.
“They give you a hard time?” Halford tilted his head at the dead tree.
“No, not really,” Frank said.
Halford’s gaze slid back to the pockmark in the glass. “Looks like they cracked your window some.”
Frank felt his crooked grin slipping off his face like the pair of oversize black shoes. “Aw hell, I think that might of already been there. I think the lady inside was just trying to look out for me.”
They both looked at the grimy window and found the woman glaring back at them. Halford laughed. “Yeah. Myrtle can get a little fired up sometimes. She don’t like that family much. To tell the truth,” he lowered his voice, just a bit, “Hell, neither do I. Them kids, they’re…they’re a handful.”
Frank nodded back, Mr. Agreeable.
Across the street, the older deputy was wrapping up his lecture. “Now you listen, and listen good. If I gotta come back here, y
ou’re gonna wish you never, ever met me before. You got that?”
The kids were smart enough to stay quiet. Frank thought, oh yeah, those kids have got it. They looked scared to death, all right. He figured the deputies would be lucky if they made it back to the cruiser without getting cracked in the head with something hard and sharp.
Halford asked suddenly, “You in town for the rodeo?”
Busy sifting through possible responses in case the deputy asked for his driver’s license, Frank just said, “Yeah.”
Halford nodded. “Thought so. Tell you what, we’re heading out there, you just follow us.”
“Thanks. Appreciate it.”
“No problem. Just follow us.” Halford and the older deputy climbed back into the patrol car. Frank pulled the long black car out of the gas station and followed the cruiser into town.
* * * * *
Whitewood was nearly as dead as the oak tree. Frank saw a few pickups here and there, parked in the center of the wide streets, one or two people on the wooden sidewalks, but that was all. Nearly all of the businesses facing the wide main street sported squared-off false fronts and plywood over the windows.
Frank thought of the wasps he used to kill. He’d wait patiently on the warped steps of the church until a wasp landed at the edge of the one of the pools that collected in the knotholes after a thunderstorm. Slowly, slowly raising the softbound Bible above his head, he’d slam it down, smashing the wasp into the soft pine woodgrain with the whipcrack sound of a .22. But no matter how quickly he brought the good book down, no matter how hard he smashed the insect into the plank, it never died quick. The wasps always twitched for a long time, fighting death with every fiber of their doomed bodies, waving the segmented limbs around in agony, always trying to crawl away, and always, always curling their abdomen, thrusting that vicious dripping stinger into the air at the unseen attacker, a last stab at vengeance.
This town was like a wasp. It didn’t have sense enough to know when to die.
They passed a small park, anchored at the four corners with oak trees and covered with brown, dead grass. The town’s only stoplight waited at one corner, hung from wires strung from telephone poles. The deputies didn’t bother waiting for the light and slid right through the red.
For a moment, Frank panicked. He didn’t know if he should stop and wait for a green signal, or just slip on through like the cruiser. In the end, he slowed to nearly a full stop, then gunned the long black car quickly across the empty intersection. The deputies kept going.
They led him into a large gravel parking lot a quarter full of pickups at the fairgrounds. Frank parked and climbed out, remembering the sunglasses this time. They were decades old, thick, with squared corners, like something an old man would consider cool from his youth, but didn’t have enough fashion sense to know or care they were outdated. He put them on, feeling a little ridiculous, and waved at the cops, pretending to head into the fairgrounds. Halford tipped his hat at Frank as he pulled in a tight circle and steered the cruiser back into town.
Frank’s steps faltered and stopped. He took a deep breath of the dry, hot air. Even his short, squat shadow, weirdly textured on the rough gravel, looked like it wanted out of the sun. He glanced back at the long black car. It had nearly a half of a tank of gas left. His wallet held a little over thirty dollars.
The way Frank figured, he had two options. He could climb back in the car and keep heading north, take his chances on the road, hoping that the money would last a bit longer, and the cops wouldn’t see him. Or he could simply stay, lay low for the afternoon at least. Weariness settled over his head like a thick wool blanket, and he wondered if there might be any gambling possibilities inside the gates. A horse was a horse, it didn’t matter if it was running a mile in seventy seconds or trying to shake off some fool clinging to its back.
For a moment, Frank wondered what the trucker’s pills might do to a horse.
* * * * *
Frank passed a rusted steam engine and the coal car stranded on a strip of railroad track just 100 feet long. He followed quaint little street signs that directed him along narrow streets, lined with tired trees and dead flowers. The asphalt felt soft beneath the boots.
Just inside the fairground gates, a greasy guy with loose skin sagged against a stool, wearing a mustache so thin it looked like a drunk old woman had drawn it on with an eyebrow pencil. Frank nodded at the jagged mustache and kept moving, acting like he’d just stepped out for a smoke.
The guy snapped his fingers. “Five bucks, pal.”
Frank wasn’t happy, but he paid. The guy slid the money into his pocket and scratched a tiny slash mark in a notebook even greasier than his hair. He jerked his head.
Frank asked, “No program?”
The guy squinted at Frank for a moment, unsure if he was joking. He looked as if he sure as shit didn’t want any goddamn city cocksucker making fun of him, but he also didn’t want to offend anybody important. In the end, he just shrugged and stared off into the distance. Frank went on in.
It wasn’t much of a rodeo. The heat had thoroughly baked the energy out of every living creature. The calves wouldn’t run; they simply stood still, rooted in place, tongues hanging dry and purple in the searing sun. Barrel racers cantered and trotted instead of galloping. The announcer’s voice, crumbling apart in slivers of static, sounded half-asleep. Even the wild broncs bucked and kicked in a bored, listless fashion.
The small stadium stand rose fifty feet; twenty-five benches slanted up to the rippled aluminum roof. Twenty or thirty people, mostly older couples, were scattered across the wooden benches. Frank kept his face down and climbed the creaking stairs. When he hit the shade near the top, he sank onto a bench. The stands overlooked a dirt racetrack that encircled nearly five acres. The center was full of grazing fields, paddocks, and chutes that surrounded the center rodeo ring like a blocky spiderweb.
Frank lasted a half-hour before visiting the beer garden in the back, under the stands. He stood in the shadow on the north side of the stands and sipped his beer, listening to the knots of men that had gathered in the shade. The men talked weather, crops, sheep, cattle, fishing, hunting, and their boys, whether they were playing Pop Warner football, riding the bulls, or in the fights.
Frank got another beer, watching his cash slip away. He knew it was stupid to be wasting money, but it was goddamn hot. He kept his eyes open, but couldn’t see any money changing hands. Nobody seemed to really care what happened with the rodeo, one way or another. He decided he’d rest until nightfall, then get back out on the highway.
* * * * *
He ducked into the men’s room, under the stands, next to the concession booth, and for one particularly anxious moment, he almost wished he had his tire iron. But the place was empty. As Frank was taking a leak, the door opened and a little man came inside. He was short, but that wasn’t what Frank caught out of the corner of his eye. It was the long cattle coat the little man was wearing in the heat; he looked like a dark, oiled canvas traffic cone.
He stepped up to the opposite end of the trough confidently, like he meant business, marking his territory. He reminded Frank of a little dog. In vet school, Frank had encountered plenty of dogs. There’s three kinds of little dogs. There’s the kind of little dog that barks and yaps nonfuckingstop and nine times out ten that little shit will try and take a tiny bite out of you. Then there’s the kind of little dog that’s dead quiet, and flinches if you blink at it. And then, once in a while, there’s that little dog that only looks dead scared until you aren’t watching it closely. And there’s nothing tiny about the bites that dog will take.
The guy in the long coat was maybe in his late fifties, it was hard to say. He took off his cowboy hat with his right hand and slid his forearm across his forehead. He was bald. Actually, he went beyond bald. There wasn’t any hair on his head at all. No five o’clock shadow. No hair in his nose, his ears. His skull looked like a dry eyeball. A puckered scar ran from one ear to another, c
urving around the back of his head in a skeletal smile. Frank fought a sudden, irrational urge to draw a couple of rolling, insane eyes above the smile.
The man caught Frank looking at him.
Frank nodded hello, willing a small, manly grin to grow on his face, as his heart hammered wildly away inside the oversize suit.
The little man just stared at Frank. His eyes, startlingly naked under hairless eyebrows, were the color of frozen granite. He wore a revolver, some kind of cowboy six-shooter, in a holster on his right hip.
Frank zipped up and tried not to hurry as he washed his hands.
The little man stepped up to the sink next to Frank, staring at himself in the heavily graffitied reflective metal. His cowboy hat was back on. It had a flat brim, pulled low over his face. Frank splashed water on his face. Drying his hands on the inside of the jacket, Frank nodded at the little man again and headed out.
* * * * *
A high, wild laugh crackled over the loudspeakers. Frank peeled open one eye. Down in the ring, a rodeo clown, wearing a foot-high rainbow Afro and a pair of shredded overalls, leaned out of the announcer’s tall booth and shouted into the microphone. “It’s that time again, boys and girls, friends and neighbors. Grab your men, grab your women, grab your ass, grab whatever you can and hang ooonnnnnnnn. You folks are about to witness the biggest, the baddest, the meanest bulls that ever roamed this here land. They spit poison and shit fire! And that ain’t no bullshit! No sir! It’s fun for the whole family. You’re about to witness the most dangerous, mostly deadly sport right here in the U.S. of A! I give you…the bulls of Whitewood!”
Polite applause. The crowd had grown slightly, and semi-filled the bottom of the stands. Frank shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He wasn’t going to make any money here. It was time to climb back in the long black car and hit the road.
Two more rodeo clowns jumped into the ring as the opening chords to the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” reverberated into the stands. The clowns energetically threw themselves into a dance routine, all spread legs and thrusting hips. Frank figured they had to have been drinking heavily and that reminded him of the rum in the front seat. He stood, stretched, and headed down the stairs.
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