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“Yes, you are. Inside you’re a very frightened man. That’s why you’re a drunk.”
“Watch and see,” I said.
I removed the muzzle of the .45 from his jawbone and started to release the magazine. There was a small red circle where the steel had been pressed against his skin.
Suddenly he sat up and dropped his legs over the side of the mattress and pulled the sheet off his body. He was naked, his thighs and torso ridged with hair, like soft strips of monkey fur, his phallus in a state of erection.
“I can still put a hollow-point between your eyes,” I said.
But he didn’t try to rise from the mattress. He tilted his head back and his mouth parted. A long, moist hiss emanated from his throat. His breath covered my face like a soiled, wet handkerchief.
I backed out of the bedroom, the .45 still pointed at Legion, then hurried through the kitchen and out into the night.
I started the truck and roared away toward a streetlight burning inside a vortex of rain, my hand shaking violently on the gearshift knob.
The next morning I ate breakfast at the kitchen table with Bootsie. Outside, the sky was a washed-out blue, the trees a deep green from last night’s rain. Through the side window I saw Alafair lead her Appaloosa, whose name was Tex, out of the horse lot and begin brushing him down under a pecan tree. “You get enough sleep?” Bootsie said.
“Sure.”
“Where’d you go last night, Dave?” she asked, her eyes not quite meeting mine.
“I broke into Legion Guidry’s house. I held a gun to the side of his face,” I said.
There was a long silence. She set her spoon down on the plate under her cereal bowl and touched her coffee cup but did not pick it up.
“Why?” she said.
“I haven’t been working the program. I’ve been fueling my resentment against this guy and thinking of ways to drill one through his brisket. The consequence is, I want to drink or use. So I thought I’d do a Ninth Step with him, make amends, and let go of my anger.”
“You don’t make amends with rabid animals.”
“Maybe not,” I said.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Not much.”
“Look at me,” she said.
“I threw his piece in the toilet and left. Did Alafair hear something from Reed College yesterday? I thought I saw an envelope on the couch.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“The guy’s got another voice. One with no accent. Like words floating up from a basement. He’s got somebody else living inside him. What’s it called, dissociative behavior or personality disorder or something like that?”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Nothing happened, Boots. It’s a new day. Evil always consumes itself. People like us live in the sunshine, right?”
“God, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. It’s like talking to a cryptologist.”
“I’m coming home for lunch. See you then,” I said, and went out the door before she could say anything else.
I started the truck, then looked through the windshield at Alafair grooming her horse under the pecan tree. We had not spoken since she had taken me to task the previous afternoon, either out of mutual embarrassment or the fact that, as far as she knew, I had done nothing to rectify the problems I had caused in my home. I turned off the ignition and walked across the yard, through the dappled shade and the unraked leaves that had pooled in rain puddles and dried in serpentine lines. I know she saw me, but she pretended she did not. She smoothed down a quilted pad on Tex’s back, then started to lift his saddle off the fence rail.
“I’ve got it,” I said, and swung the saddle into place on Tex’s back and lifted the hand-carved wood stirrup from the pommel and straightened it on his right side.
“You look nice,” she said.
