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Mort reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat roll of twenties. There had to be thousands of dollars there. Tristan’s eyes widened.
“Alright,” he said. “You’re buying.”
“Very well,” Mort agreed.
This was getting stranger and stranger by the moment, but Tristan wasn’t going to question free beer.
He went back and put some jeans and boots on. He didn’t bother with a shirt. This was all too good to be true. And probably a figment of his imagination. Not once in Tristan’s twenty-seven years had he ever been saved by anyone. Why would that start today? He thoroughly expected to stumble back into the kitchen and discover the screen door banging against the siding of the house, nobody to be seen for miles.
To his surprise, Mort was waiting when he came back. He looked very real and very solid, standing in the kitchen, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Something furry was twitching by his neck, and another pair of eyes was observing Tristan.
Mort had a kitten in his hood, Tristan noticed for the first time. The little black thing was curled up around the back of his neck very comfortably. That would have given most people a cozy appearance, but with Mort it only served to highlight his gaunt, elegant energy. Mort’s boots were red with dust, his jeans looked marked and ripped. He had all the signs of having been on foot for a long time, but there was none of the desperation or madness that accompanied true strays. He wasn’t displaced from the world. If Tristan had to say, he would have guessed Mort was entirely separate from it.
“Ready to go?” The question slipped comfortably out between Mort’s lips as if it had been asked thousands of times before.
“Uh. Sure.”
Tristan tried to cover for his surprise. He had truly expected to find Mort gone. There was nothing to stay for here, not in this filthy old house rotting from the inside out. Even he didn’t want to be here anymore. But Mort was here. Waiting.
What kind of a person interrupted a guy killing himself and bought him beer?
A good person, that’s who. In Tristan’s experience, there were no such things as good people, so this was turning out to be a very strange day all around.
They passed the noose on the way out. Tristan hooked a finger in it to make it swing. It didn’t occur to him how ghoulish it would look until he spotted the reflection in the house window.
Oh well.
Mort didn’t seem bothered by it. Mort didn’t seem bothered by much. He had a slightly melancholy but otherwise calm air. Most people got very weird around death, but Mort barely seemed to notice it. He hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe he was trying to be polite. That was something good people were rumored to do from time to time.
“Truck’s broken down, we’ll have to walk,” Tristan said as they passed the old, rusted-out piece of junk that hadn’t run in years.
“I like being on foot,” Mort said as they set out together. “I also enjoy riding.”
“Horses?”
“I have a horse at home,” Mort said.
“And where’s that?”
“Hell.”
Tristan laughed, a good belly laugh that drew fresh desert air into his lungs and chased away the stench of misery that had been lurking in there.
Mort smiled ever so slightly, making Tristan think he appreciated his own joke.
“I’m from Hell too,” Tristan said, feeling much better.
He was, of course, curious about his visitor. As they walked down the dusty road, he started to ask questions.
“So you’re not from around here, and you walked here, and you have a cat.”
“I have a cat?” Mort seemed surprised by that revelation.
Tristan pointed to the kitten in his hood.
“Oh,” Mort said. “That cat.”
For the first time in what felt like a very long time, Tristan cracked a real smile. “You’re the weirdest fucking guy I ever met. Normally I’m the weird one.”
“I am much stranger than you,” Mort agreed.
The walk to the store, generally an arduous slog he had to stumble through as best he could with only the promise of a cool beer to drive him, seemed to fly by. They seemed to be there in an instant.
The store wasn’t really a store. It was a gas station where the only fresh, clean thing was the case of scratcher tickets that sold out frequently. The town was a big believer in luck, though nobody had ever won more than fifty bucks. It was commonly believed that they were collectively due a big win, as if the scratchers were a poker machine that hadn’t paid out in a while.
“Two scratchers,” Tristan said. “And two six packs, please.”
Earl was behind the counter as usual. He was a husky guy in his sixties. He had a stained shirt with an alligator on it, an oxygen tank, and a smoking habit. Tobacco smoke curled yellow in front of the old no-smoking sign.
