Read Online Big Bad Love by Larry Brown - Free Book Online Page A

Kool-Aid?”
    She didn’t say anything. She just looked away, and immediately I felt like an asshole. Sometimes I feel like an asshole about ten times a day. But I didn’t want to be hustled. There I was, all the way off down on the coast, didn’t know how I was going to get back, my friend had gone, and I had less than I’d started out with. Shrimp money. People depending on me, already buying their crab boil and their cocktail sauce. So there was only so much leeway I had. Maybe I could haggle the guy at the boat down, maybe I couldn’t. If I spenttheir money and then couldn’t haggle, I was up Shit Creek. But at that point I wouldn’t have minded legging down.
    In dark places you can’t see much. But on the side of this girl’s face sitting next to me I saw something shining down her cheek. And I thought, Well, you asshole, you messed up again.
    â€œShit,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
    She looked around and tried to smile. “It’s okay,” she said.
    â€œI didn’t mean to be rude to you,” I said.
    â€œIt’s okay.”
    But it wasn’t okay. I knew it wasn’t okay and she knew it wasn’t okay. Here she hadn’t done anything but ask for a three-dollar drink of Kool-Aid and I’d tried to run her off.
    â€œLet me buy you a beer,” I told her.
    â€œI can’t drink a beer.”
    â€œWhat? You don’t like beer? You got some medical problem?”
    â€œOh no. I like beer fine. I’d love a beer.”
    â€œWell, hell,” I said. “Then drink one.”
    She got sort of close to me then. She leaned over to my ear, so I could look right down that Big Valley.
    â€œThey don’t ’low it,” she said.
    â€œDon’t ’low what?”
    She jerked her head. “You know.”
    I looked in that direction. Then I saw the mean-ass momma watching us. Black chick, about thirty, medium fro, teeth probably filed to tiny points. Definitely not a vegetarian.
    â€œListen,” I said. “If I want to buy you a beer, can’t I buy you a beer?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know,” she said. “They don’t like for us to drink.”
    She smelled sort of bad. I was crazy and I knew it. Maybe her husband—if she had one—she probably did—was a shrimper and she shrimped with him in the daytime. Maybe she’d been down in the hot hold all day long shoveling up shrimp with a shovel. I didn’t care about any of that. She was a human being. She had the right to drink a beer. Even a drunk knows that.
    â€œJust wait a minute,” I said. I got up from the table and staggered over to the momma. A hard chick. You could tell it from her eyes. No telling what she’d seen or done in her life. I wouldn’t have wanted to fistfight her. She could have been pretty and might have been at one time. No more, though. All she was after was money. Money to get the hell away from that dive she’d found herself in.
    â€œListen,” I said. “I want to buy this girl over here a beer. Do you care?”
    She turned a cold pair of eyes on me. Eyes that cut me to my soul. They went up and down me, and stopped on my face. How many had she seen like me? I’d never seen such contempt.
    â€œWe don’t ’low it,” she said, nearly whispering. But then she leaned over. “But you can buy
me
a drink if you want to, sugar.”
    She didn’t look bad. She had some huge ones. All I had was shrimp money. I could see the sunshine coming down on my head the next morning while I was trying to find the
Elvira Mulla
or the
Vulla Elmirea
or the
Meara Vulmira
or the
WhatEverltWas.
There had just been whispered, hurried conversations over the phone, and I didn’t even like thepeople involved. What if the nets had holes in them or the shrimp weren’t sleeping?
    Well, this chick wasn’t bad. She was hard. But I could see that she could be soft.