I emptied Haskel’s revolver, dropping the shells in my hand. I put the shells in my pocket and leaned down and put the gun back in Haskel’s pocket. I picked up the cloth bag on my way away from there.
Leonard got the armadillo cage, carried it down the hill with one hand, the rifle in the other, the shotgun tucked under his arm. Down at the barn, we went inside and I got the notepad with our names on it and bent it in half and shoved it in my back pocket. We gathered up the guns and the ammo.
We went out to the truck. Leonard put the dillo in the truck bed. I stepped over the dead possum and got inside the truck with my weapons and ammo. Leonard went around and opened the driver’s door and put the guns and ammunition he was carrying inside.
Sherilee, without her finger in her nose for a change, sort of materialized. She said to Leonard, “Ain’t that our armadillo?”
“I bought him,” Leonard said, closing the door and leaning against his truck.
“Pa traps ’em.”
“Uh huh.”
“Where’s Pa?”
“He got a little tired. He’s up on the hill there, resting.”
“In the dirt?”
“He was sort of overcome with exhaustion.”
“You hit him didn’t you?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Sometimes he hits me. He knocked me out oncet with a shoe.”
“Just consider that one for you,” Leonard said, “and call it even.”
“He ain’t so bad sometimes,” the little girl said.
“You ought to tell someone about the hogs. Haskel shot ’em.”
“He does that sometimes,” said the little girl. “When they get big.”
“Well, they ain’t gonna get no bigger.”
“Reckon not.”
Leonard gave the little girl a pat on the head and drove us out of there. When we reached the main road, we saw Haskel’s two boys walking. They had cane fishing poles on their shoulders and sullen looks on their dirty faces. They didn’t wave at us.
When we had gone a few miles down the road, Leonard pulled over to the side, got the cage out of the back of the pickup and walked into the woods, set it on the ground, and opened it.
The armadillo sat quietly, looking at the open space. Lovebugs buzzed around our heads and caught in our hair and clothes.
“Go on and git,” Leonard said.
The armadillo did not go on and git.
Leonard picked up a stick and poked at the armadillo’s rear end, but the beast didn’t seem any more ready to leave. Leonard picked up the cage and gently poured the armadillo onto the ground. The armadillo landed on its feet and turned its head and sniffed the air. It appeared to be in shock, and considering what had happened to his relatives, I couldn’t blame him.
“Now, you go on and stay out of trouble,” Leonard said.
The armadillo moved slightly so that it stood next to Leonard’s leg. It made a snuffling sound, as if smelling Leonard’s socks, or maybe working up to a good cry.
Leonard picked up the cage, and we went back to the truck. When Leonard put the cage in the truck bed, we looked up to see the dillo had followed us to the edge of the woods.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” I said.
“No, me either. I reckon the little fella don’t know he’s comin’ or goin’.”
Leonard went around and got in the truck, started up, and drove off. I looked in the side mirror, said, “He’s standing in the middle of the road.”
“Dammit,” Leonard said. He found a spot to pull around, went back and parked, got out and grabbed the cage. He opened it and set it on the ground in front of the dillo. The beast ambled into the cage and lay down. Leonard closed the cage and put the armadillo in the truck bed and got back behind the wheel, paused to pull lovebugs from his hair and toss them out the window.
“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” Leonard said, rolling up the window. “Couldn’t leave him though. He’d probably end up caught again, target practice for Haskel.”
“Probably. Think Haskel is going to hunt us down and kill us?”
“You destroyed the record.”
“Haskel could have memorized our names.”
“Let him come see us, then.”
“That was one hell of a punch you hit Haskel with.”
“Actually, I must be getting old. Skin on my knuckles scraped worse than usual.”
“Can you still get your pecker up?”
“I can hang an American flag on it and wave it.”
“Then you’re not getting old.”
“What’re you snickerin’ about?”
“Your dillo.”
“What about him?”
“Neat,” I said. “You’ve got an heir.”
9
Back at Leonard’s house, Leonard took the dillo into the woods while I made coffee. He came back a few minutes later carrying the empty trap. I watched him from the kitchen window. I thought he looked a little sad.
I poured us coffee, took the cups out on the back porch. Leonard joined me and we sat on the steps and sipped. I said, “When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“That’s what I figured. That’s what I told Brett.”
“I think we ought to see we can take Brett’s car. We’ll need the trunk room.”
“Done,” I said. “She’ll be glad to do it.”
Leonard nodded. He said, “You want to back out, we can.”
“I didn’t say anything about backing out.”
“I know, but I’m givin’ you the room.”
“I’m committed. I asked you to help me, remember?”
“I remember.”
“If you want to back out, you can.”
“You’ve had to bring a man down before, Hap, and you brood over it still.”
“I’d hate for there to be a time I didn’t brood.”
“What we’re doin’ now ain’t self-defense. We’re goin’ lookin’ for trouble.”
“I know that.”
“You might have to kill someone.”
“I know that too.”
Leonard sipped his coffee, took a moment to study one of his fingernails. He wasn’t looking at me when he spoke.
“There’s things I can live with. Things even you don’t know about. I’m not complainin’, and I’m not apologizin’. I’m just sayin’ there’s things I can live with maybe you can’t.”
“Like killing people?”
“You got more bleeding heart in you than the whole Democratic Congress. You don’t like guns. You’re going against everything you believe because of Brett. You don’t owe this to her. Me, if I know where there’s a nest of poisonous vipers and I can stomp them flat, I think I ought to do it. I figure you’d feed the vipers, try to raise them up, maybe finance their college. I’m not saying one thing or another about this being wrong or right, I’m sayin’ how you are and what you’re goin’ to be dealing with. If what the midget said is true, we got the Oklahoma mafia going on here. We’re walkin’ onto their playin’ field, and we’ll be expected to play. These guys, they take their money, their drug pushin’, their pussy peddlin’, and their murderin’ seriously.”
I sat silent for a while. Leonard took my coffee cup and left, came back with filled cups for us both.
“You’re not altogether wrong, brother,” I said. “But I love Brett. Brett loves Tillie. So I got to do it.”
Leonard nodded. “Since you might stop in the middle of the action to pet a puppy dog, I figure I got no choice than to go in with you.”
“You always have a choice,” I said.
Leonard looked at me and laughed a strange laugh. “The hell I do.”
I didn’t know how to react to that. I eventually just looked away. Out at the edge of the woods, giving us a stunned look, was the armadillo.
“Your son has returned,” I said.
Leonard looked up and saw the dillo. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
We drove over to see my boss at the Black Lace Club, which was essentially a big nasty honky-tonk on the outskirts of town where women shook naked titties on stage to bad country-rock music and sometimes slipped their briefs down to give the drunks a view of the squirrel in the tree.