Some We Run From (Preacher Book 2)

by Noel J. Hadley

  Meanwhile, the hound dog helped himself to the basket of bread on their table. I didn’t stop him. He woofed those down in seconds and then started on the plate of butter. As testimony to that fact, a woman behind me cried: “THOSE TWO MEN ARE LETTING THAT BIG DOG EAT OFF THOSE NICE PEOPLE’S TABLE!”

  The adulterer whom Desarae came in with exited the bathroom, as though on cue. He was professionally dressed in a slick-fitting button-up shirt and slacks, a thick head of gray hair parted on the side, well groomed, and genuinely handsome. I immediately took note that his hands were dry. He’d written phone numbers on the palms of them. One number had a 202 area code. Washington DC. I considered the dryness of them and how preserved the writing was and the mere fact that he’d just come out of the bathroom.

  “Is that him?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Hi Preacher,” Ellie finally acknowledged me. “Here for a repeat performance? You know, it doesn’t work, keeping your friend here on a short leash if all he ever does is pull you around.” She nudged towards Michael though, and not the hound, when pronouncing leash. “Perhaps this and that hound of yours is all some ironic metaphor for your relationship with that god of yours.”

  “This must be your date,” I said.

  “His name is Simon. Simon Hunt.”

  I nodded at Simon. Simon didn’t return the same favor.

  “Is that him?” Michael repeated the question.

  “Yes.” Desarae dropped her head after a time. “His name is Barry.”

  I said: “We finished what we came for, to feed the dog, now let’s go.”

  If the hound felt satisfaction, he showed little of it, and though tied to his leash began scouring the tabletops with a visual search to match all the many wonderful smells that had already consumed him. That same woman said: “OH DEAR, ROGER, I THINK THAT BIG DOG WANTS TO EAT MY LAMB SHANK. DO SOMETHING!”

  Ellie added: “Between this and the genocide of the Native American people, which you religious types call Manifest Destiny, you’re very slow to catch on.”

  “Come off it, Ellie.”

  “Hi Barry,” Michael extended his hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Desarae has told me so much about you.”

  “Michael, be nice,” Desarae.

  “And you are?” The man who had moved in on Michael’s marriage turned his head slightly sideways like a dog. He grudgingly extended five fingers. Yeah, I was pretty sure he didn’t wash them.

  “I wouldn’t….” I said, regarding his unwashed hand, but it was too late.

  He and Michael shook.

  “My apologies, Barry, I’m one of Desarae’s old high school and college buddies,” Michael said. Desarae dropped her head again, this time into both hands. “She’s probably mentioned something about me in passing.”

  I said: “Quick question, when you were in the bathroom did you go number one or number two?”

  “Excuse me?” He performed another dog-head twitch, but in my direction.

  “You just came out of the bathroom, right? Did you go number one or number two?”

  “Preacher,” Desarae spoke into her hands.

  “Um, I went number two.” Barry splashed a coating of annoyance into his otherwise professional tone. It was a nice radio voice though. He’d probably already decided that we were two pathetic little worms. I knew he was.

  “Barry,” Desarae retracted her head from the depth of her hands and caught what little breath remained. “This is my husband, Michael. Michael Holmes.”

  The adulterer reeled back. He opened his mouth and closed it. Simon scooted his chair and promptly stood.

  “Maybe you should leave,” he said, and started around the table.

  I stepped in front of him.

  “Excuse me. Are you trying to block my path, Dixie-boy?” Simon said. “Because I don’t recall that you were ever invited into this conversation.”

  “Just for that, the south shall rise again!” I erected my pointer finger as an illustration of my point.

  Ellie touched her forehead with tender care, as though the very sight of me hurt. “Geez, Preacher, even that god of yours is embarrassed by you.”

  Meanwhile Michael kept his focus on the adulterer and said: “You look familiar.” He then waited for a response. The adulterer didn’t give one. “Barry, Barry, – I feel like I’ve seen you before.” He even snapped his fingers trying to recall.

  “Hmmm, that’s interesting, because I never forget a face, and I’m absolutely certain that I’ve never seen you before. And from here on out I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Desarae buried her head back into her hands and Ellie touched her hurting head all over again.

  “I think it’s time you leave,” spoke Simon, still standing at my side. “And take the spirit of the Confederacy here with you.”

  I stared at him, never flinching, never blinking, and even considered unleashing the rebel yell that I’d once practiced for days on end, for such an occasion.

  “No harm,” Michael smiled at the table. “I was just hoping to make some conversation, say hello to my wife; maybe invite you over for a friendly chat at THE GUIDE DOG.”

  “Beers on me,” I said.

  Michael sighed.

  “You heard what my friend said.” The adulterer sat down at Desarae’s side. He patted a leg and threw an arm around her. It was a dreadful picture, but more horrific an image is what Michael likely wanted to do to him. I could only imagine, since I’d probably consider something just as illegal “I think it’s time for you to leave before I call the cops. Expect a restraining order within the hour.”

  “Please do,” Michael grinned. “Guys like you are all talk. Let’s see how you do with this little affair you’ve got going plastered up in the news, being a local public figure.”

  “You do realize,” I kept my conversation strictly with Ellie, “that Barry didn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom. I’d shake hands, but that’s the basic equivalent of wiping my fingers all over the crack of his ass.”

  Desarae made yet another return visit into her hand.

  We promptly left, Michael, me and the hound, neither following the other, and nobody came in pursuit.

  “So that was your plan, huh?”

  Another car squeezed its breaks and honked. It too avoided the hound, just not my only good leg. This one was a Mercedes. It’s driver screamed: “I SHOULD REPORT YOU FOR ANIMAL ABUSE!”

  Michael said: “I can’t believe it. I just met my mortal enemy.”

  “I think you’re being a little dramatic, buddy,” I said. “Now Simon on the other hand, crossing the Mason-Dixon line in an attempt to evoke the sleeping Confederate….”

  “No, you don’t understand. That man she’s seeing, that’s Barry Phillips. He’s our city council leader. And I voted for him.”

  I said: “But isn’t Phillips a Democrat?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “We’re both Republican.”

  “That’s what makes this so painful.”

  c

  IF I LIMPED BACK TO PREACHER HOUSE, it’s all thanks to the Mercedes and Buick, but in reverse order. On my return trip Robbie Larson and friends could still be found hanging around the corner, hoping for a handout.

  Robbie said: “Hey, where’s our beer?”

  “We’re twenty-one, you know!” The girl with him said.

  But she wasn’t the only under aged female standing in his awe-inspiring presence. Amanda Webber had joined the ranks since I’d last encountered them. She was perhaps as stunned to encounter me as I her, and tucked herself behind Robbie’s shoulder, hoping to remain unseen, like the cigarette smoke that often fled her mouth.

  I continued on my way with the hound, with the nagging limp as I went, and as I turned the corner towards the Bay Street Bridge, I heard Rotten Robbie calling after me (roughly translated): “Yeah, well fork-you, you fork-tard!”

  c

  NOBODY FOLLOWED FROM WHAT I could tell. I arrived at Preacher House
just in time too. That cute college-aged girl was walking her basset hound down Oak Row. I stopped to pay my respects, appreciating beauty in all its forms and curves, and noticed a mysterious car, it was a Chrysler 300 (I’d seen it across the street from The Guide Dog, now that I thought about it), presently parallel parking where Sean's Mustang had spent the night, and had probably since been towed.

  A shadowy figure in a silk shirt and fedora idled behind the wheel, engine running, and when he saw me standing there, he covered his face with that day’s copy of The Driftwood Delivery. There had been at least two-dozen suspicious automobiles and just as many pedestrians on the walk over, but nobody had been wearing a fedora or reading The Driftwood Delivery. If I followed anybody I'd probably wear a fedora, and four out of five crime lords recommended a Chrysler 300. The thought occurred to me that maybe I was just paranoid. Or maybe I just really liked fedoras.

  Schmuck, Great-Uncle Jack's voice said.

  All the same I knocked on the driver’s-side window. He fumbled with the newspaper, cleared his throat, choked, and then once he realized I wasn’t going away he collected himself and calmly lowered the window.

  I said: “I couldn’t help but notice, back on Bay Street, your blinker wasn’t working right. You may want to have someone look at it when you get a chance.”

  “Hey, I’m kind of busy. So if you don’t mind.”

  “When you say busy, I hope I haven’t been keeping you too busy, with my hectic schedule and all. I did however try to obey all the traffic laws while returning home. I can’t say the same for your blinkers.”

  Mister Fedora widened his eyes, let his mouth hang open, closed it, and then collected himself the best he could. “Yeah, you’ve been a real boy scout with that mutt of yours.”

  “Thanks, it’s nice to be noticed,” I grinned.

  “Hey, get lost.”

  “Poor choice of words.”

  “Then buzz off.” He tightened his lips and eyes, and probably his butt-hole.

  “So whom do you work for?”

  “Frank Sinatra,” he said.

  “I’m detecting a hint of Italian accent there. Fresh off the boat, I like that. It lets me know that America is still the land of opportunity.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk with you.”

  “Very well then, but if one of Mancini’s customer service reps call me up asking to fill out a survey on your work evaluation, I’m afraid I won’t be able to give a very good report.”

  Mister Fedora just stared at me, perhaps frozen in place, for lack of a better phrase, and increasingly taking on the appearance of a little lost puppy, not what I was expecting from someone tasked with following me.

  “I take it you haven’t been doing this very long.” I extended a hand. “I'm Preacher.”

  “I know that.”

  “According to Miss Manners, this is the part where you give me your name. Though according to the Geneva Convention, your rank will suffice.”

  “Who the hell is Miss Manners?”

  “I’ll pretend like I didn’t hear that. Look, we’ve apparently started off on the wrong foot.”

  “And Frank Sinatra wants to keep it that way.”

  “Look, I explained everything I know to Frank Sinatra an hour ago.”

  “Frank Sinatra wants to know why you’ve had two moving vans parked on your driveway all day, with as many as a dozen hired hands to fill them.”

  I looked back at PREACHER HOUSE and scratched my head. Only a mocking bird chirped. A squirrel jumped from one branch of a massive oak to another. But otherwise all was quiet on Oak Row, and the driveway was just as vacant as when Hazelwood and Mello had arrested me.

  “Yesterday, you mean. And there was only one movers van.”

  “Whatever,” he said without any hint of empathy, and licked the tip of his thumb before turning another page.

  I started across the street, walking in a backwards posture, and something very important occurred to me. “Just so you know, I’ve always been more of a Tony Bennett fan. Frank could never put me in the mood like Tony could.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist,” he opened up The Driftwood Delivery, ruffling some of its pages.

  “Okay, well, nice speaking with you. When I leave again I won’t slip out the back or anything. You’ve got my word on that. Pinky swear.”

  The man who claimed to work for Frank Sinatra pretended like he didn’t want my panties in a twist as I turned and waved at him from all the way down the driveway, he never waved back, and then entered the Stable. Had my Great-Uncle Jack attempted what I'd just done, he'd totally have been shot in the ass.

  c

  I PROBABLY STOOD AT THE DOOR for several seconds staring dumbly into a room that had, only hours earlier, been filled with my things. The Stable, with its upstairs loft, was completely empty. Leather sofa, coffee table, wall-sized shelf of vinyl records, even my grandfather’s photos, – all of them, gone. The creaks of my footsteps lifted off its wooden floor boards and bounced over the walls to the elevated ceiling above, echoing through the whole of the building. What remained was the collective dust that outlined or collected up under each missing furniture piece and the nails that had hung each frame.

  Otherwise, the guys who came in the moving vans had stolen everything.

  c

  WELL, NOT EVERYTHING. THE KITCHEN STOVE, it was a 1949 CHAMBERS C-90 model and considered the Cadillac of its day, was beautifully refurbished in its freedom-red paint and still very-much present in my life, just where I had left it that morning. The fridge was too. It was also a refurbished beauty of the past, a SERVIS from the fifties with an ice box on the bottom and a new motor to keep it smoothly running. But I’ve already written about them. More importantly, it was on the door of that cooler where the kidnappers of my worldly possessions took the time to leave a crudely written note.

  It read (in all caps):

  YOU EAT POOP!!!

  That hurt. I opened up the fridge door in protest. What contents I had within remained. The milk had turned and bananas had blackened but the carrot was good, so I pulled a stick from the crisper and clamped my teeth down before returning to the empty living room to chew.

  “Hello?” I spoke into the open spaces of my home.

  Only the echoes of emptiness answered me.

  “Who did this?” I said.

  My voice responded with the very question.

  The hound however had followed his nose to a landline telephone, which was parked alongside the floorboards. How I could possibly have missed it was beyond me. It had a circular finger dial and a pig-tail chord that connected the speaker with the device, only this one was lobster-red in color, like my patriotic Chambers stove, and was displayed on a silver cake platter with a glass dome for a cover.

  There was a second handwritten note on this one. It said (again in all caps and an unjustifiable usage of exclamation marks):

  ANSWER ME!! I HAVE YOUR CRAP!!!

  “How did I not see this before?” I asked the dog.

  Aristotle looked up, perking those sailboat ears of his, and then returned his nose in the direction of the phone. It obviously had my curiosity as well. I bent down to my knees, lifted the lid, carefully set that and the note aside (Aristotle attempted to eat the note before I could retrieve it), and then held the receiver to an ear.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Only a dead ringtone answered. So I hung it up and sat there staring at the circular dial and cake-stand, hoping that the red electronic box would answer all of my questions in time. Just then someone entered through the front door, which my back was facing.

  My Great-Uncle Jack said: “Well, isn’t this a mess?”

  “I know, right?” I answered without turning away from the phone. “Who knew dust collected so quickly?”

  “Any clue as to who did this?”

  “Mancini, I’d guess.”

  “Not his style. Do you have your gun?”

  “I’m pretty sure they took eve
rything, Jack.”

  I then crossed through the back lawn. Jack followed carrying a manila folder in his arm. I paid it no mind. This time, when I opened the back sliding door to Preacher House, the hound didn’t protest. Probably because my grandparent’s former residence too was stripped bare. I thoroughly scoured both floors, up the stairs, through the halls, and in every room, even opening closet doors where I found them, nothing, – even bathroom medicine cabinets, nada. I listened to the hound clip-clopping down hallways and through each room with the overgrown nails that needed trimming. The tag on his collar shaved up against a porcelain tub. The rhythm of his nose reverberated all the way down the stairs to where I stood.

  Jack finally said, “Someone has it out for you.”

  Far more pressing of a matter on my mind, however, were Aunts Nancy and Patty. I said: “The Sisters are gonna kill me first.”

  c

  I WALKED BACK OVER A PATCH OF GRASS for the Stable and Jack called after, “Where are you going?”

  “My fridge,” I said, “for a beer. You want one?”

  “You’ve got to fix this.”

  I selected two Sam Adams from SERVIS (they apparently hadn’t stolen the alcohol either), popped their lids off, handed one to Jack, who still had the manila folder tucked under one arm, nursed a helping of beer and then said: “I left New York to fix a few things in my life, but this wasn’t one of them.”

  I then slid down to the floor for my next drink.

  “Disgusting,” he said, “I can’t believe you, letting some punk steamroll over you like this.”

  “I promised Josephine I wasn’t going to get involved.”

  “I hate to break the news, but you’re involved.”

  Jack took great care to slide down at my side. His hips weren’t in order as they once were. He let out a little gasp. Once he’d settled on a section of the floor, he nurtured his first drink from the bottle and said: “Look, before you drop the anchor on that decision not to get involved, there’s something you’ll want to see.”

  But he’d have to finish that thought, because already we had another intruder. That person entered in the usual manner and then rambled right past us for the fridge, as absent minded as he was, where he bent over into it’s the light of a single bulb and started rummaging through its contents.