“Good.”
“All I’m saying is, we need to think this out from all angles. It’s a big decision. Order me a salad, would you? And a Diet Coke.”
Shiner said, “You wanna split some fries?”
“Sure.”
Later, sitting at the traffic light near the turnpike ramp, Shiner heard Amber say: “What do you think they did to your buddies? Back on the land, I mean. What do you think happened after we left?”
Shiner said, “I don’t know, but I can guess.” Sadly he examined the mutilated militia tattoo on his arms.
“Light’s green,” Amber said. “We can go.”
26
Bodean Gazzer watched the Negro woman pick through his wallet until she found the condom packet. How could she have possibly known?
Another mystery, Bode thought despondently. Another mystery that won’t matter in the end.
As nonchalant as a nurse, the woman unrolled the rubber and plucked out the lottery ticket, which she placed in a pocket of her jeans.
“That ain’t yours,” Bode Gazzer blurted.
“Pardon?” The Negro woman wore a half smile. “What’d you say, bubba?”
“That one ain’t yours.”
“Really? Whose might it be?”
“Never mind.” Bode didn’t like the way her eyes kept cutting to the shotgun, which she’d handed to the white guy while she searched the wallet.
“Funny,” she said. “I checked the numbers on that ticket. And they were my numbers.”
“I said never mind.”
Chub began to moan and writhe. The white guy said, “He’s losing lots of blood.”
“Yes, he is,” said the Negro woman.
Bode asked, “Is he gone die?”
“He most certainly could.”
The white guy said to the woman: “It’s your call.”
“I suppose so.”
She walked briefly out of Bode’s view. She reappeared carrying a flat white box with a small red cross painted on the lid. She knelt beside Chub and opened it.
Bode heard her saying: “I wish I could stand here and let you die, but I can’t. My whole life, I’ve never been able to watch a living thing die. Not even a cockroach. Not even a despicable damn sonofabitch like you… ”
The words lifted Bode’s hopes for reprieve. Covertly he began rubbing his wrists back and forth, to loosen the rope that held him to the tree.
The shotgun blast had excavated from Chub’,s left shoulder a baseball-sized chunk of flesh, muscle and bone. He was not fortunate enough to pass out immediately from pain. The woman’s touch ignited splutter and profanity.
Firmly she told him to be still.
“Get away from me, nigger! Get the hell away!” Chub, wild-eyed and hoarse.
“You heard the man.” It was the white guy, holding the Remington. “He wants to bleed out. You heard him, JoLayne.”
Another agitated voice. Sounded like Bode Gazzer. “For God’s sake, Chub, shut up! She’s only trying to save your life, you stupid fuck!”
Yep. Definitely the colonel.
Chub shook himself like a dog, spitting blood and sandy grit. The bicycle patch had peeled, so now he had two open eyes with which to keep a bead on the nigger girl; more like one and a half, since the unhealed lid drooped like a ripped curtain.
“What’re you gone do to me, if I might ast?”
“Try to clean this messy gunshot and stop your bleeding.”
“How come?”
“Good question,” the woman said.
Craning his head, Chub saw it was attached to a striped, sand-caked body that could not possibly be his. The cock, for example, was puckered to the size of a raspberry; definitely not a millionaire’s cock.
Had to be a nightmare is all, a freak-out from the boat glue. That must be how come the nigger girl looks ‘zackly like the one they’d robbed upstate, the one clawed the shit outta us with those hellacious electric-looking fingernails.
“You ain’t no doctor,” Chub said to her.
“No, but I work in a doctor’s office. An animal doctor—”
“Jesus Willy Christ!”
“—and you’re about the dumbest, smelliest critter I ever saw,” the woman said matter-of-factly.
Chub was too weak to hit her. He wasn’t even a hundred percent sure he’d heard it right. Delirium slurred his senses.
“Whatcha gone do with all that lottery money, nigger?”
“Well, I thought I’d buy me a Cadillac or two,” JoLayne said, “and a giant-screen color TV.”