She shrugged, wiped her runny nose with the back of her wrist. They’d tipped her in there, all right. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t. He’s always needing something from somebody. He’s back in Lee County, maybe you didn’t know.”
“Oh yeah? Whereabouts is he living?”
“This big old house belonging to some lady. They call it Spurlock around there, but it’s not really a town, more or less by Duffield. It’s a hard place to find.”
Rose flicked at something on the knee of her jeans, adjusted the strap of her sandal. Thunder was rolling around between the mountains to the east of us. Then the sky got a lot darker, in that sudden way that feels like a power outage of God. I lit a smoke of my own, since Rose hadn’t offered. We sat looking at the collection of vehicles that seemed to belong to the Woodway crack house. Some living, some dead, some fallen prey to target practice.
Rose blew out the last of her smoke and ground out the butt with her heel. “You know what, this is my last delivery and I’m going over there now.”
“To where?” My mind had wandered.
“To Fast Forward’s. If you want to follow me over there. Come by and say hello.”
I told her not to do me any favors.
“I’m not,” she said. “Actually, I’m thinking the next time he needs somebody to come scratch his balls, maybe he could whistle for you instead of me.”
Maybe, if I still bowed to the pull of the Fast Forward magnet. But I’d decided some while ago, if I spoke to the bastard again, it would not be in kindness. A fallen hero shatters into more sharp pieces than you’d believe. Emmy was the one that finally stuck in my throat. I tasted bile in my gullet. Then surprised myself by going inside to collect Maggot. We tailed Rose’s pickup out of Woodway.
Before we were back out to 58, rain started slapping the windshield in big fat drops. The Impala needed new wiper blades, but that was far down the list of what that Impala needed. The title transferred out of a dead man’s name, for a start. I squinted through the blur, wishing I were a hair more sober, and tried to keep a bead on the red taillights ahead. She turned off the highway sooner than I expected, on Dry Creek Road, which went no place you’d want to be. Not a sensible way to Duffield, but maybe it was like she’d said, his place wasn’t there exactly. About a mile in, we came on a stranded pickup halfway blocking the road. She edged around it, but I stopped, because I’d come across that vehicle stalled once before. This time I knew the owner and the damage was repairable. Hammer Kelly, left rear flat.
I rolled down the window and yelled hey. Not sure why rain makes you yell across six feet of distance, but it does. Poor Hammer, a drowned cat could not have looked more pitiful. Rain dripping off his nose, white T-shirt soaked like a second skin so his nipples and chest hair showed through. He pushed the wet flop of hair out of his eyes and stared at us, and I saw he was not a sober man. He had tools out but seemed stuck as far as next steps. I got out, assuming Rose would go on and leave us. She must have been watching her rear view, because she backed up.
I yelled at her that we’d have to make it some other time. But she said no, she’d wait, because how long could it take for three stooges to change one tire. It was quickly down to one stooge. I sent Hammer looking for something to wedge the tires on the opposite side, which he did, while I set the jack. But then Maggot yelled for him to come get in the Impala, and he did. I could see Maggot getting out the goods in there. Of all casualties of the Emmy/Fast Forward disaster, the sorriest one was Hammer. He’d said he wasn’t going to get over her, and was keeping his word. Getting ripped with him had become one of our pastimes, to the point of Hammer being one woeful, weepy shitfaced fucker. The guy did not hold his liquor. The downside to his keeping so much on the straight and narrow through his formative years: no conditioning. I’d warned Maggot against getting him into anything stronger, at least till he got his training wheels off. But at that moment while I was pulling the lug nuts off his flat, I saw him snorting crank from the dash of my Impala. Rose saw it too. She never missed a trick.
I was unthrilled to be out there by myself changing Hammer’s tire in a frog-strangling rain, and coming to understand why this was called Dry Creek Road. It was a creek bed. Not dry at this time. Muddy water gushed all around me and under the car, getting me worried about whether the jack would hold. I got the tire off and the spare on, lickety-split, but then, goddamn it to hell, the lug nuts. I’d set them out in a neat line right next to the hubcap, as you do. Now they were nowhere, and the hubcap was bobbing away like a fucking duck. I got frantic, cursing the rain, feeling around with both hands under the rushing water, trying to find lug nuts in the wet rolling gravel. Shit, shit, shit, shit. I was aggravated to the point of murder. Threw open the door of the Impala and yelled for them both to get out there and help me find the fucking lug nuts. But even if any of us had been sober, it was a lost cause. Like noodling for crawdads. Our chance of finding crawdads actually in that mess would have been better.