“Your what?” Chub sneered.
“That’s what the Bible calls it. Seed.”
“Man can’t get enough guns and pussy. You said so yourself.”
So I did, Bode thought ruefully. The truth was, he didn’t want Chub distracted by a Hooters babe or any other woman until they collected the lottery money. Then there’d be plenty of time for wild poon.
Bode tried to improvise: “There’s good and bad of everything, Chub. Us white men’s got a responsibility—we’re an endangered species. Like the unicorn.”
Chub didn’t fold. He recalled that he once owned a.45 semi, made in Yugoslavia or Romania or some godforsaken place, that misfired every fourth or fifth round. “Now that was a bad gun,” he said, “but I ain’t never had no bad pussy.”
They debated until closing time, with Bode holding to the position that militiamen should have carnal relations only with pure white Christian women of European descent, lest the union produce a child. Chub (not wishing to limit his already sparse opportunities) insisted white men were morally obliged to spread their superior genetics near and far, and therefore should have sex with any woman who wanted it, regardless of race, creed or heritage.
“Besides, it’s plain to see,” he added, “Amber’s white as Ivory Snow.”
“Yeah, but her boyfriend’s Meskin. That makes her Meskin by injection,” said Bode.
“You can shut up now.”
“Point is, we gotta be careful.”
The manager flicked the lights twice and the restaurant began to empty. Bode asked for a box of chicken wings to go, but a Negro busboy told him the kitchen had closed. Bode paid the dinner bill with the stolen Visa, leaving another ludicrous tip. Afterwards Chub insisted on hanging around the parking lot, in the remote likelihood Amber needed a lift. After fifteen minutes she appeared, brushing her hair as she came out the door. To Chub she looked almost as beautiful in faded jeans as she did in her skimpy work shorts. He told Bode to honk the horn, so she’d see them waiting in the truck. Bode refused.
Chub was rolling down the window to call her name when none other than Tony himself drove up in a new jet-black Mustang convertible. Amber got in, and the car sped away.
“What the fuck?” said Chub, despairingly.
“Forget about it.”
“Asshole must be loaded to ‘ford two cars.”
Bode Gazzer said, “For Christ’s sake, it’s probably a rental. Now forget about it.”
Half drunk, Bode struggled to back the pickup out of the handicapped slot. He paid no attention to the blue Honda on the other side of the lot, and failed to notice when the same car swung into traffic behind them, southbound on Highway One.
Before the two rednecks broke into her home and attacked her, JoLayne Lucks had in her entire adult life been struck by only two men. One was black, one was white. Both were boyfriends at the time.
The black man was Robert, the police officer. He’d slapped JoLayne across the face when, with ample evidence, she accused him of extorting sex from female motorists. The very next morning Robert found a live pygmy rattlesnake curled up in his underwear drawer, a discovery that impelled him to hop and screech about the bedroom. JoLayne Lucks gingerly collected the snake and released it in a nearby pasture. Later she teased Robert about his girlish reaction, noting that the bite of a pygmy rattler was seldom fatal to humans. That night he slept with his service revolver cocked on the bedstand, a practice he diligently maintained until he and JoLayne parted company.
The white man who hit her was, of all people, Neal the codependent chiropractor. It had happened one night when JoLayne was an hour late getting home from Jackson Memorial Hospital, a delay caused by a short-tempered cocaine importer with personnel problems. Four multiple-gunshot victims had arrived simultaneously in the emergency room, where JoLayne was on duty. Although the shooting spree was the lead story on the eleven o’clock news, Neal the chiropractor remained unconvinced. He preferred to believe JoLayne was late because she’d been dallying with a handsome thoracic surgeon, or possibly one of the new anesthesiologists. In a jealous tantrum, Neal threw a wild punch that glanced harmlessly off JoLayne’s handbag. She was upon him instantly, breaking his nose with two stiff jabs. Soon Neal the chiropractor was sniveling for forgiveness. He rushed out and bought JoLayne a diamond tennis bracelet, which she returned to him in mint condition on the night they broke up.