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  I listened to them clunk up the stairs and opened the door before they could knock.

  “My man,” Charlie said.

  “How are you, Charlie?”

  “All right. I got someone needs to see you. Can we come in?”

  “What’s the password?”

  “I’m throwing out your old parking tickets.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Well, if you had some.”

  “Come on in. Sorry about the place, maid’s day off.”

  The guy in the suit hadn’t cracked a smile, not even a sly grin. I couldn’t tell if he was humorless or if Charlie and I were just boring. Probably the latter.

  I motioned them to the couch. It had come with the place. It had one spot that nearly sagged to the floor. I had slipped a piece of plywood under the cushions there, and though it no longer sank, it was seriously hard on the ass.

  “Coffee?” I asked.

  “I could use some,” Charlie said, then to the man in the suit. “You?”

  The man shook his head.

  Charlie gave me the bag. I put it on the table and opened it. Doughnuts.

  “The stitches come out soon?” Charlie asked.

  “Pretty soon.”

  I pulled down nonmatching cups, poured coffee. Charlie sat on the couch and drank his, I leaned against the sink. The man sat by Charlie with his hands in his lap, looking around. It was as if he was avoiding placing his arms or hands on the sofa for fear of contamination, or a possible attack from a rat hidden in the cotton.

  “I’m just living here till they get my condo built,” I said.

  He turned toward me. This time he did smile. Nothing to get excited about, but teeth were involved.

  “This is Elmer Bond, Hap,” Charlie said.

  The name hit me. That had been the girl’s name, the one that had been stomped by the maniac. Bond. Sarah Bond.

  I switched my cup to my left hand, stepped over and shook his hand. “I presume you’re kin to Sarah Bond.”

  “Father,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about what happened. How is she?”

  “Not good. But better. She’ll live. She lost an eye. There’ll be extensive plastic surgery. But, thanks to you, she’ll live, and the bastard who did this to her is in custody. I hope he decides to hang himself, but if he doesn’t, I hope they give him the needle. I’m not very sympathetic to him.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to be,” I said.

  “Mr. Collins,” he said. “I—”

  “Hap. My dad was Mr. Collins, and he didn’t like being called that either.”

  “Hap. I came here to thank you personally for saving my daughter’s life.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I want to show my appreciation by giving you a check for a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Do what?”

  “A check, for a hundred thousand dollars. I’ll write it out now.”

  “Hey, you don’t owe me anything for that.”

  “I’d like to give it to you anyway.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Not to me. It’s a drop in the bucket. I’m wealthy, Hap. Money is not a problem. A hundred thousand is not a problem. I’m not paying you for doing what you thought you should do, I’m showing my appreciation. Thanks and a handshake is very nice, but a hundred thousand dollars is better. I did the same for Miss Drew.”

  “Drew?”

  “Ella May,” Charlie said.

  “I don’t want to be paid, Mr. Bond.”

  “Elmer. If you’re Hap, I’m Elmer.”

  “I don’t want to be paid, Elmer.”

  “Certainly, I can’t wrestle you to the floor and make you take it and spend it on yourself, but hear me out. My daughter is sixteen years old, Hap. Sixteen. A baby. She was attending a church function. Just got her driver’s license. Has hardly been driving at all. This … human … No … this animal, this thing. A man named Bill Merchant, he knew my daughter. They went to school together, though he dropped out his junior year. He’s a few years older. Did you know that he’s only eighteen?”

  “I knew he was young. One of the reasons I was amazed at the way he fought.”

  “Drugs,” Charlie said. “Pills. Alcohol. Ritalin. Lots of Ritalin.”

  “I thought that was a medicine for hyperactivity,” I said. “Attention deficit.”

  “It is,” Charlie said. “If you have those problems. But if you don’t, it works like speed. Bruce Lee couldn’t have beat that guy that night, Hap. He was on that and everything else.”

  “I want to finish,” Elmer said.

  “Sorry,” Charlie said. “Please.”

  “He had just been released from a juvenile facility. He was there for rape. This happened shortly after he dropped out of LaBorde High School. He’s been a problem kid all his life. When I say just released, I mean the day before. For whatever reason, he parked his mother’s car outside the church and began to drink and take pills, or whatever it was he took. When Sarah came out, he spotted her, and perhaps because he knew her, or because she’s pretty—or was pretty—he went over to speak to her, pulled her in the car in front of half a dozen witnesses. He drove her to a little stretch of woods on the edge of town, pulled her out of the car, into the woods, and raped her. She escaped. He chased her. The woods came out against the chicken plant fence. He caught her there. He raped her again. He bit … Do you hear me, Hap? He bit, one of her nipples off, then he began to beat her and stomp her. He stomped her face in, Hap. In! Just like it was made of cardboard. Crushed her jaw, her cheeks. Knocked out teeth, and he stomped out her eye. Stomped it out. She’s going to have to have a glass eye. A fucking glass eye.”

  “Easy,” Charlie said.

  Elmer had started to tremble. Tears were running down his cheeks, and I was just about to cry myself.

  “My daughter was beautiful, Hap. She wanted to be a model. They’ll fix her some. Her face will probably be all right, for the most part. She’ll have a glass eye, a false jaw and teeth. That’s just one bad side. Worse, she’ll have this asshole who did this to her inside her head the rest of her life. But you know what?”

  “What?” I said.

  “She’ll remember you too. You’ll be there too. When she gets well she’ll want to see you. She said you’re her knight in shining armor. You came over that fence when she had given up all hope. She knew her life was gone, and you saved her, Hap. You fought the dragon, and you defeated him.”

  “With help,” I said.

  “You laid him low. I only regret you didn’t kill him.”

  “It crossed my mind,” I said. “I had it to do over, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “But you saved my baby, Hap. I want you to take the money. God, may I use your bathroom to wash my face.”

  “Sure.” I pointed it out to him.

  When the water was running in the bathroom, Charlie said, “Take the money, Hap. It would make him feel better. And it’ll make you feel better. You could use it. This is a break you deserve. For Christ sake, take it. And hand me one of those doughnuts.”

  A moment later Elmer came out of the bathroom. He reached in his pocket and took out a small photograph of a beautiful young woman. “That’s Sarah,” he said. “Before the beating. Look at her. She was beautiful. And inside, she’s even more beautiful. More than her face, he stomped on her spirit.”

  “I can’t find the right words,” I said. “All I’ve got is I’m sorry. And I’m glad I was there. I only wish I had been there earlier.”

  “And I have to wish you had killed the sonofabitch, but what you did stopped him from killing her. That’s the important part, Hap. You saved her life.”

  Elmer looked at the photo once more, put it back in his pocket. He looked teary again. He said, “I’ll take that cup of coffee now.”

  I got down a cup and poured him some. When I gave it to him, he said, “I want you to take the money. I want you to go on vacation, or buy something for yourself
, take a month off from the chicken plant. Take that buddy of yours”—he turned his head to Charlie—“what’s the name?”

  “Leonard,” Charlie said. “Leonard Pine.”

  “Charlie told me all about you, Hap. About you and Leonard. I want you to take the money. Please take the money.”

  “I’ll take the money, Elmer. But as for the vacation and the month off, I don’t think so. The chicken plant frowns on that sort of thing.”

  Charlie grinned.

  Elmer said, “No it doesn’t. Not in this case. I own the plant.”

  4

  LEONARD AND I were shooting pool with John at the LaBorde Rec Center, which in spite of its name is not for kiddies. It was a place where you could buy a beer, shoot some pool, see football games and boxing matches on a huge television, and watch guys scratch their nuts and try and pick up women. And from time to time guys try to pick up guys and women pick up women.

  The bartender, Marlie, was a bull dyke with a flattop and a body the size and shape of a small sumo wrestler, or if you prefer, a three-hundred-pound potato. Fortunately, she didn’t dress like a sumo wrestler or a potato. She always wore gray coveralls with the sleeves cut out, so you could see her big biceps and tattoos, like: MOTHER NEVER LOVED ME, AND SO WHAT?

  Marlie owned and ran the place. She was noted for her uneven temperament. I had seen her use a taped axe handle to subdue rowdy customers, and she had a mean left hook and she didn’t mind kneeing a man in the balls either. Saturday nights, the Rec Center could get pretty rowdy, and so could Marlie.

  Marlie always looked as if she were about to break out into a string of obscenities. Which, of course, she often did. Stuff like: “Quit fuckin’ up that pool cue, you limp-dicked cocksucker,” and “Do that again, motherfucker, gonna wake up peein’ through a tube.”

  She had a girlfriend who looked like a Vogue model.

  Leonard and I were the lousiest pool players ever produced. We were playing colored and stripes. I was stripes, Leonard was colored. He thought that was funny.

  I took a shot and knocked my last striped ball in the hole, eased around to shoot in the black one. Leonard had two colored balls left, red and green, and neither in a good position. I grinned at Leonard as I lined up the shot, an easy one.

  I boosted the ball with the stick. It went in the hole. I said, “That’s another ten cents you owe me.”

  “Damn,” Leonard said. “What is that now, forty cents?”

  “Fifty.”

  “You’re not countin’ the first game, are you?”

  “Why not?”

  “That was a warm-up game.”

  “You didn’t say anything about a warm-up game. Did he say anything about a warm-up game, John?”

  John shook his head, said, “And you owe me all the games I beat you, Leonard. Don’t try and weasel.”

  “I’m not weaslin’.”

  “I call it weaslin’. Hap?”

  “Weaslin’.”

  “I just think you ought to have least one warm-up game,” Leonard said.

  “John, we do that, does that mean I don’t owe you first time you beat me?” I said. “Could that be a warm-up game? You want to do that, I’ll go with Leonard.”

  “Everybody owes,” John said.

  “Yeah, you say that,” Leonard said, “ ’cause you’re the only one hasn’t lost a game.”

  John said, “My turn. It’s you and me, Hap. Loser racks.”

  Leonard fed some quarters into the slot on the side of the table and the balls were released. Leonard gathered the balls, racked them.

  It was my break, but I let John go first. He burst, and I never so much as picked up my stick after that. He ran the table. When he was finished twenty minutes later, he said, “Ten more cents.”

  I looked at Leonard. “Give him a dime out of the money you owe me.”

  John held out his hand and Leonard gave him the ten cents.

  “That’s a beginning,” John said.

  Leonard bought beers for himself and John, got me a Sharps. We sat at a table and watched some women shoot pool. One of the women, a blonde with black roots, had a large but well-formed butt, like the kind R. Crumb draws. The other one was tall and thin with brown hair and big doe eyes. They were in their thirties, attractive. They were interested in two guys at the bar, however, and they were playing pool with them in mind, moving their butts so that those two got a good view.

  I kept an eye on them, just in case I might pick up a few pool-shooting tips.

  Leonard said, “It’s so interesting to watch a straight guy work. The way you casually observe those women, check the men out over at the bar, know they are the object of those two gals’ attention. Then I get to see you feel sorry for yourself because the women don’t know you’re alive. It’s all so … curious. And pathetic.”

  “Yeah,” John said to Leonard, “like you haven’t been checking those guys out over there.”

  “I suppose,” Leonard said, “I did turn an eye in their direction.”

  “I think it was both eyes,” John said. “Don’t turn it there too often, okay?”

  “Okay,” Leonard said. “Besides, those guys are straight.”

  “Well, don’t overdo the looking anyway,” John said.

  Leonard reached out and gave John’s hand a pat, then turned his attention to me. “So he offered you one hundred thousand dollars and a month off from the plant? And a month for me?”

  “Yep.”

  “He didn’t happen to offer me a month off from the aluminum chair factory, did he?” John said.

  “Sorry, John,” I said. “He doesn’t own the aluminum chair factory.”

  “Maybe he’ll buy it,” John said.

  “It could happen,” I said.

  “I’m guessing since the owner’s name isn’t Deerstone, then there isn’t a Deerstone,” John said.

  “There was. He sold out to Bond nearly twenty years ago,” I said. “But they kept the name because it had commercial value.”

  “We get our jobs back when the month’s up, I reckon,” Leonard said.

  “Of course,” I said. “Frankly, I feel funny taking his money. You know, I didn’t intend to, and I tell myself I did it for the guy and because Charlie convinced me, but I know deep down, hell, not that deep, that I did it because I wanted the money.”

  “Hap, you’re about the least money-oriented sonofabitch I know,” Leonard said.

  “That’s because winning all your dimes, I don’t have to worry about money.”

  “You don’t worry about money,” Leonard said, “because you’re goodhearted and haven’t got enough brains to worry about it. Hell, you didn’t do what you did for money. That was just an unexpected end result. You don’t need to feel guilty because you took it. You’d have done it had you known the girl was a pauper and that motherfucker was not only going to fight you like a tiger, but was going to win. You’d have gone on ahead anyway.”

  “I’ll take all that as a compliment. Except the lack of brains part.”

  The blonde with the black roots and the big firm butt was on our side now, the rear of her white shorts pointed in my direction. They were not only short shorts, but they flared dangerously and I could see some of the soft meat up there and a hint of pubic hair. I shifted subtly in my chair for a better look.

  “Your turn to buy,” Leonard said to me.

  I took a last look at the shorts and what was in them and went over to the bar. Marlie came up, “What’ll it be?”

  I sat on the bar stool, said, “Two Miller Drafts, a Sharps.”

  “You drink the Sharps, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What for?”

  “I like it.”

  “It ain’t a diet thing?”

  “I like it.”

  “It ain’t a diet thing and you drink it?”

  “I like it.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s no alcohol in it.”

  “Hell, I thought that was why you
drank beer, ’cause there’s alcohol in it.”

  “Sharps isn’t beer. Not really.”

  “You’re tellin’ me.”

  “Can I just have the Sharps?”

  Marlie finally got the beers and the Sharps. She said, “Those two gals, the one with the big ass, she’s making my clit hard.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Them’s the facts,” Marlie said. “Problem is, the blonde, the one with the dirt in her part—”

  “Dirt?”

  “The black roots.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s interested in the guy at the bar there, one turned toward her, smiling. She’s interested in his tuber, which, from the looks of those pants, is about the size of a banana.”

  “I didn’t think that sort of thing interested you.”

  “It don’t, but I check out the competition.”

  “Well, no offense, but you can’t compete with that if that’s what she wants. I mean, you know—”

  “Hap, you can’t compete with that either.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Like I said, I check out the competition. I first saw you, I just passed my eye over you. You don’t worry me none.”

  “Oh, thanks, beat up on the heterosexual. Besides, aren’t you with Miss Vogue?”

  “Hey, what can I say. I got a rovin’ eye. I get older, I’m startin’ to realize I like my women a little trashy. I don’t even mind they smell a little.”

  “On that note …”

  I carried the drinks back to the table.

  “I’m glad you took the money,” Leonard said, “because now I get to go on vacation, and I say we go on a real one.”

  “What about me?” John asked.

  “See you when I get back,” Leonard said, smiling, patting John’s hand again.

  5

  I ACTUALLY WENT BACK to work at the chicken plant for a couple weeks, made arrangements for time off. I felt guilty about the whole thing, taking off a month with a hundred thousand dollars because I had saved someone’s life. I felt more mercenary than heroic. Leonard, who had done nothing, felt great. He wanted a vacation.

  A week into my two-week notice of vacation, me, Leonard, and John made plans at my duplex while I cooked, and slightly burned, a pizza.