Desperation Road(67)

Walt had always been on board with his brother. The bullying. The drinking. He liked the fights. Liked them as a kid. As a teenager. As a younger man. As a man. Particularly liked them when they had the odds like they did most of the time. He had been on board when Larry started talking up Russell’s homecoming. About how he’d killed Jason and didn’t deserve to be walking around and we’ll get even for our little brother who can’t get even for himself. Had looked forward to it. Had liked getting his hands on Russell at the bus station. Liked thinking about the next time they would get to drinking and go after him.

But he didn’t like that shotgun being pointed at him. Didn’t like the stakes that high. Didn’t like being scared. Like he’d found himself when he walked into the room and Russell was standing there with the gun. He’d played tough but something inside him had skipped. Never had a gun pointed at him before. All the bar fights and all the parking lot fights and there had never been a gun. And he had seen the look in the man’s eye who held it on them and Walt believed he was capable of shooting. He would knock somebody’s head against the wall and he missed Jason like any man would miss his brother but he wasn’t going to get shot. And he had to figure out how to tell Larry that.

He asked Earl for another one and he lit a cigarette. He had listened to his brother’s message four times. I need you down here, Walt. Down at the Kentwood jail. Come on and get me. Don’t fuck around. Get on down here. Where the hell you at anyway? Walt knew that if Larry was calling from the Kentwood jail he probably deserved to be there but that didn’t stifle the guilt he felt in ignoring his brother.

Earl brought the beer and set it down and then the door opened. Walt looked and there was Heather. Earl said hey to her and she smiled back and then she asked Walt if he had any rules about what she was allowed to drink while sitting there next to him.

“I don’t give a shit,” he said.

She asked Earl for a glass of wine and while he poured it she reached over and took a cigarette from Walt’s pack that was sitting on the bar.

“Where’s your brother?” she asked.

He took a long drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out his nose. “Where’s your husband?”

“Same place your brother is.”

He nodded. Wondered if she knew what he knew.

Walt kept his eyes ahead on the shelves of liquor bottles. Heather sat sideways and looked around at the empty tables. He drank and then said you are a wonder.

“A wonder? Like how?”

“I’d just as soon not say,” he said. He thought about the conversations he and Larry had about her when Larry was getting ready to marry her. About how leopards don’t change their spots and all that shit and hell I know she’s fine but something fine walks in the door every night and you don’t have to marry it and worry about it like you’re gonna worry about her.

“Tell me,” she said and she bumped his leg with her leg. “How am I a wonder?”

“Not like Wonder Woman. A wonder like goddamn she makes you wonder.”

Heather laughed. She couldn’t help but laugh.

“See what I mean?” he said.

“No. Hell no, I don’t see what you mean. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Does to me. Does to Larry.”

“Larry doesn’t think about me.”

“You don’t know what he thinks about,” he said.

“You don’t either.”

“I know better than you.”

“You want to call me a wonder and then sit here and tell me you know what Larry thinks about. Nobody knows what Larry thinks about. He don’t even know.”

“All I know is you’re a wonder.”

She laughed some more. Tossed her head back and tossed her hair around. Smiled at herself in the mirror behind the bar. “You don’t even know what that word means,” she said.

“I’ll tell you what it means,” he said. He met her smile with a serious stare and his brow had the same bend of Larry’s brow when he meant business. He shifted on his seat. Took a drink from his beer. Looked back to her and said it means that I wonder why the hell you just can’t give him a break. I wonder why you gotta do the things you do. Why you gotta shove it in his face. Why you gotta make him a big joke. I wonder why. That’s what it means. I wonder why you can’t give him a break every now and then. And I’m getting the hell out of here and you can pay Earl. You got Larry’s money in your pocket. You got everything. And I’m a son of a bitch for sitting here talking to you when I should be somewhere else.


They had stuck Larry in the holding cell with the rest of the Monday night roundup. There were ten of them. No window and a bench on each wall. The floor slick and stained. The smell of beer and worse. Larry sat with his arms folded, furious that no one had answered his calls. Furious that it was damn near midnight and he was still sitting there. Three guys in the corner across from him had begun to watch him. Everyone else kept to themselves. Cigarettes and anxious feet tapping and faces in hands.

There were two big ones and one little one. The little guy did the talking and pointed at Larry while the two big ones nodded and grinned. Larry sat with his elbows on his knees but when the two big men walked over to him he sat up straight. There was more girth than muscle on the two men and one of them had his head shaved while the other wore pigtails and it looked as if he might have been wearing a soft shade of lipstick. They both wore overalls. Shirtless underneath. The little guy stayed across the room with his legs crossed and his hands folded on top of his knee as if he were posing for a portrait.