Rumble Tumble

Back at Leonard’s I packed a suitcase, went into town to see Brett. I took her out to dinner on some of my money, told her our plans, then we went back to her place, sat on the couch and shared a nonalcoholic beer.

I told her about Haskel and the guns, about Leonard and the armadillo. I showed her the notepad with Leonard’s and my names on it I had taken from Haskel.

I took the pad over to her sink and set fire to it. We talked while it burned on the porcelain. When it was finally all gone, I flushed the ashes down the drain and turned on the garbage disposal. Brett got us another beer, and we sat on the couch and passed it back and forth.

“What time tomorrow?” Brett asked.

“Leonard will be by about nine. We’ll leave his truck here, load our guns and suitcases into your car, and start out.”

“I’m a little scared,” Brett said.

“I can understand that, but there’s no need for melodrama. What we’ll do is follow the address the midget gave us, see we can find Tillie, and if we can, we’ll take her home. I don’t think there’ll be any real trouble.”

“You’re saying that to make me feel good.”

“I really don’t think there will be any real trouble, but like I said before, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. But, it’ll be okay. We might have to pop somebody’s nose, but that’ll be the extent of it.”

“Promise?”

“No. I’m not that stupid.”

Brett packed her suitcase, then we got naked and went to bed. The hair on Brett’s mound, as we who read erotica like to call it, had begun to grow back. Mounting her was kind of scratchy, but being incredibly tough, I went ahead with the screwing anyway. Real men don’t whine over scratchy female pubic hair. We just get on with it.

Fact is, I was so tough, I made love to her three or four times.

Consequently, when the alarm went off at eight the next morning, I felt like six pounds of runny shit that had passed through a goose and been washed down-country by a flash flood. Brett opened one eye, looked grim, said, “Oh, dick.”

“Not right this moment,” I said. “He’s tired.”

Brett whacked me. “That doesn’t even interest me. I love you, but right now I could maybe marry anyone got me a cup of coffee.”

I didn’t get her a cup of coffee.

She didn’t get me one.

We lay there for another ten minutes. “All right,” I said. “On the double, we get up.”

We got up, but not quite on the double. We showered together, made love in the stall, then showered again. By the time we’d dried off, brushed our teeth, and dressed, Leonard had arrived.

We gathered our suitcases, locked the place, and met him outside. We loaded the guns, which Leonard had wrapped in blankets, into Brett’s trunk, tossed the suitcases on the back seat. Brett let Leonard drive. She sat between us on the front seat and we started out.

“See your son anymore?” I asked Leonard.

“He rooted up the place last night. He was sleeping peacefully under the porch this morning. I’ve decided to name him Bob.”

“That certainly took some strain,” Brett said.

“I get enough strain without trying to cleverly name an armadillo,” Leonard said.

We stopped at Burger King, bought some breakfast and lots of coffee, then headed for Oklahoma, minding the speed limit, minding our manners, minding our business, praying for hope, expecting rain.

10

We got on 59, headed north to 259, caught I-20 at Kilgore and went west toward Dallas. We skirted the roof of Dallas, hit 35, and except for a couple of pee breaks, we rode it all the way into Oklahoma.

We stopped at Ardmore about eight that evening and had dinner in a steak house. When we finished, we decided to find a place for the night and smoke on into Hootie Hoot early in the morning.

We got rooms at a cheap motel and toted the blanket-wrapped guns into the rooms with us, just in case someone decided to steal a spare out of our trunk and ended up with a bargain.

Brett and I had a small room that smelled strongly of detergent or disinfectant, but after brushing our teeth and washing our faces, we found the bed inviting and the smell less annoying. We didn’t feel like making love, which meant we were probably on our way to a solid relationship. We just slept together, cuddled up spoon style.

When we awoke the next morning it was raining lightly. We collected Leonard, had breakfast at the same cafe where we had eaten our steaks, and set out again. The rain began to fall harder, and the storm followed us all the way into Hootie Hoot, which lay about twenty-five miles outside of Oklahoma City.

When we got there, it was early afternoon and the rain had not stopped. Hootie Hoot was, as Red had said, a burg. There was a long street with old brick buildings. A theater, a cafe, a filling station, and, strangely enough, a taxi stand, with one old battered blue cab out front. I wondered where it took people. Up one side of the street and down the other?