All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

3

KELLEN

August 1980

All Liam said about the pickup in Nagadoches was, “Your job is to be the biggest, scariest son of a bitch in the room.” I shoulda known it wasn’t gonna be that simple. What was supposed to take two days took four and when it was over, I’d done the one damn thing I’d always told Liam I wouldn’t do. I killed somebody.

Driving home, I told myself it was different from Liam sending me to kill some guy on purpose. I didn’t go down to Texas planning to kill them two Mexicans. They tried to kill me first. That was bad enough, but then Vic’s car broke down, and there we were on the side of the road with twenty kilos of coke in the trunk. Plus the cash for the buy.

Vic drove this white ’74 El Dorado Biarritz with red tufted leather seats. The car was waxed and polished and Armor-Alled like a showroom model, but under the hood, it was a goddamn mess.

“How long has it been since you changed the fucking oil?” I said.

Stupid bastard shrugged.

I’d been trying to keep my temper under control lately, stop getting in fights, but I couldn’t believe he was that stupid. I punched him.

“What the fuck?” Vic screamed, catching blood from his nose before it could drip on his shirt.

“You tell me what the fuck, you driving around in a car that doesn’t run. Do you think we can just flag down the highway patrol and get a tow?”

I pushed the car off the main road, sweating through the last pair of clean clothes I had. Then I spent two hours wedged up under the car, trying to get the bitch started.

We limped it to the next town, but there was no way that car was gonna make it back to Powell. So I called Danny at the shop and said, “Bring the flatbed.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to get a tow from there?” Danny was a good kid, but he smoked too much dope.

“Bring the tow truck. Tell Liam we’re running late.”

Six hours later, we had the car on the flatbed and got headed back to the ranch. I drove. As tired as I was, I was too pissed to put up with Danny or Vic driving. People said I was stupid, but at least I could follow some basic rules. Like don’t go on a drug buy in a car that might break down.

It was past ten when we got to the ranch, and Dee smirked at me while Liam tore me a new asshole. Like it was my fault the Mexicans tried to double-deal. Like it was my fault Vic’s car broke down. Goddamn, I was done with Liam Quinn. Or I woulda been done with him, if it wasn’t for Wavy.

I left the flatbed there and rode the Panhead home, just to get some fresh air on me. At the house, I was through the front door, pulling off my boots before I realized the kitchen light was on. Thinking of those dead Mexicans, my guts tightened up. Those boys probably had friends who wouldn’t think much of me plugging them. I walked into the kitchen and leveled my gun right in Wavy’s face.

“What are you doing?” I said. The no sleep and the running on nerves caught up with me. My hands were shaking as I popped the clip. I slammed open the kitchen drawer and shoved the gun to the back.

Wavy looked as shocked as I felt. She was sitting at the table, up on two phone books, with her boots off, her bare feet dangling. The overhead light made her hair gold.

“Come on, pack your stuff up. I’ll give you a ride home.” The back of my shirt was filthy from lying in the dirt working on Vic’s car. Her white sundress was gonna end up covered in it, but that was too bad.

I went stomping back to the front door to get my boots on, but she didn’t come. When I went back to the kitchen, she was still sitting at the table, reading a magazine.

“Now. Goddamn right now. I’m not in the mood for this.”

“Walk.” She slid off the phone books and stood in her bare feet.

“No, you’re not walking home.”

“Walked here.”

“Yeah, well it wasn’t pitch-black out when you walked here, either.”

She shrugged.

“And how’d you get in here?”

She took a key out of her dress pocket and laid it on the table. The spare from under the mat on the back porch.

Looking down at the key, I got an eyeful of the magazine she’d been reading. A skin mag from out of my nightstand. She had it open to a couple things I didn’t like to think she’d looked at. A blow job on one page and some girl taking it from behind on the other.

“What are you doing looking at this fucking shit? You can’t be looking at this kinda thing. And where the hell do you get off? Just coming in here and making yourself at home? This is my house.”

I snatched that magazine off the table and rolled it up. She flinched, like she thought I was gonna hit her with it. The way you’d do a dog. Seeing her ready for me to hit her was a bucket of cold water on me. If I couldn’t be any better to her than that, I didn’t have any business thinking I was sticking around for her.

“It’s my house, okay? You can’t come in here without me.”

She gave me the kinda look makes you wanna curl up and die. Just because she didn’t have any titty mags for me to look at didn’t mean I hadn’t snooped in her bedroom. I went around the table, opened the sink cabinet, and stuffed the magazine in the trash.

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t slept in two days. I’m fucking dirty and greasy and tired and I need a shower and something to eat and there isn’t so much as a clean shirt in this goddamn house, because I had to leave in a hurry. So I’m sorry, but I don’t have—”