Page 26 of Havoc

Cricket watches the door swing.

"Does he ever sit down?"

"Once," Junie says. "Two thousand nineteen. Deacon's mama died."

Storm comes out of his office around five and the room drops the way it drops.

"Pawn shops."

"Nothin' yet." I've got the answer ready because I've had it ready since I woke up. "Six between here and Baton Rouge that'll take somethin' without paper. Two of 'em said maybe."

"Maybe."

"Maybe means no. It means they want somethin' for sayin' yes later."

"Ransom." Storm doesn't turn his head. "Give him somethin' for the two maybes."

"How much somethin'?"

"Enough they call us before they call anybody else."

Ransom's already got his rings off. He's been sittin' at the end of the bar for an hour with a receipt book and a cigarette he ain't lit, and now he starts writin' without lookin' up.

"You want it to be the kind they remember, or the kind they don't."

"The kind they don't."

"Then it's smaller than you think and it comes in twice." He tears the page. "A man you pay once is a man you paid. A man you pay twice is a man who's waitin' on the third."

Deacon comes through the doorway wipin' his hands on a towel, which is more towel than Cricket's ever been allowed.

"Y'all eatin' or am I cookin' for the walls."

"You're cookin' for the walls," Blitz says.

"That's fine. Walls appreciate me."

"Deacon, if I told you the rice was dry, what would you say?"

"I'd say you're a growin' boy and there's a spoon."

"No, I mean, would you cuss at me?"

"Nope."

"Not even a little bit."

"Nope."

"Everybody in here cusses. Warden cusses."

"Warden's got his own arrangement." Deacon folds the towel over his shoulder. "I got mine."

"It's not natural."

"It's the most natural thing in this buildin'," Deacon says, and goes back in the kitchen, and Blitz sits there like a man who's lost an argument he didn't know the rules of.

Ransom lights the cigarette finally.