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Wayne took off his cowboy hat and rubbed the back of his neck and ran his hand over the top of his head and back again. The sweat on his fingers was thick as lube oil, and the thinning part of his hairline was tender; the heat was cooking the hell out of his scalp, even through the brown felt of his hat.
Before he put his hat on, the sweat on his fingers was dry. He broke open the shotgun, put the shells in his pocket, opened the Chevy’s back door and tossed the shotgun on the floorboard.
He got in the front behind the wheel and the seat was hot as a griddle on his back and ass. The sun shone through the slightly tinted windows like a polished chrome hubcap; it forced him to squint.
Glancing over at Calhoun, he studied him. The fucker was asleep with his head thrown back and his black wilted hat hung precariously on his head—it looked jaunty almost. Sweat oozed down Calhoun’s red face, flowed over his eyelids and around his neck, running in rivulets down the white seat covers, drying quickly. He had his left hand between his legs, clutching his balls, and his right was on the arm rest, which was the only place it could be since he was handcuffed to the door.
Wayne thought he ought to blow the bastard’s brains out and tell God he died. The shithead certainly needed shooting, but Wayne didn’t want to lose a thousand dollars off his reward. He needed every penny if he was going to get that wrecking yard he wanted. The yard was the dream that went before him like a carrot before a donkey, and he didn’t want any more delays. If he never made another trip across this goddamn desert, that would suit him fine.
Pop would let him buy the place with the money he had now, and he could pay the rest out later. But that wasn’t what he wanted to do. The bounty business had finally gone sour, and he wanted to do different. It wasn’t any goddamn fun anymore. Just met the dick cheese of the earth. And when you ran the sonofabitches to ground and put the cuffs on them, you had to watch your ass ’til you got them turned in. Had to sleep with one eye open and a hand on your gun. It wasn’t any way to live.
And he wanted a chance to do right by Pop. Pop had been like a father to him. When he was a kid and his mama was screwing the Mexicans across the border for the rent money, Pop would let him hang out in the yard and climb on the rusted cars and watch him fix the better ones, tune those babies so fine they purred like dick-whipped women.
When he was older, Pop would haul him to Galveston for the whores and out to the beach to take potshots at all the ugly, fucked-up critters swimming around in the Gulf. Sometimes he’d take him to Oklahoma for the Dead Roundup. It sure seemed to do the old fart good to whack those dead fuckers with a tire iron, smash their diseased brains so they’d lay down for good. And it was a challenge. ’Cause if one of those dead buddies bit you, you could put your head between your legs and kiss your rosy ass goodbye.
Wayne pulled out of his thoughts of Pop and the wrecking yard and turned on the stereo system. One of his favorite country-and-western tunes whispered at him. It was Billy Conteegas singing, and Wayne hummed along with the music as he drove into the welcome, if mostly ineffectual, shadows provided by the Cadillacs.
My baby left me,
She left me for a cow,
But I don’t give a flying fuck,
She’s gone radioactive now,
Yeah, my baby left me,
Left me for a six-tittied cow.
Just when Conteegas was getting to the good part, doing the trilling sound in his throat he was famous for, Calhoun opened his eyes and spoke up.
“Ain’t it bad enough I got to put up with the fucking heat and your fucking humming without having to listen to that shit? Ain’t you got no Hank Williams stuff, or maybe some of that nigger music they used to make? You know, where the coons harmonize and one of ’em sings like his nuts are cut off.”
“You just don’t know good music when you hear it, Calhoun.”
Calhoun moved his free hand to his hatband, found one of his few remaining cigarettes and a match there. He struck the match on his knee, lit the smoke and coughed a few rounds. Wayne couldn’t imagine how Calhoun could smoke in all this heat.
“Well, I may not know good music when I hear it, capon, but I damn sure know bad music when I hear it. And that’s some bad music.”
“You ain’t got any kind of culture, Calhoun. You been too busy raping kids.”
“Reckon a man has to have a hobby,” Calhoun said, blowing smoke at Wayne. “Young pussy is mine. Besides, she wasn’t in diapers. Couldn’t find one that young. She was thirteen. You know what they say. If they’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to breed.”
“How old they have to be for you to kill them?”
“She got loud.
”
“Change channels, Calhoun.”
“Just passing the time of day, capon. Better watch yourself, bounty hunter, when you least expect it, I’ll bash your head.”
“You’re gonna run your mouth one time too many, Calhoun, and when you do, you’re gonna finish this ride in the trunk with ants crawling on you. You ain’t so priceless I won’t blow you away.”
“You lucked out at the tonk, boy. But there’s always tomorrow, and every day can’t be like at Rosalita’s.”
Wayne smiled. “Trouble is, Calhoun, you’re running out of tomorrows.”
