Read Online Dead Man Walker by Duffy Brown - Free Book Online

have any problems, any at all, call me.”
    â€œProblems? Oh that is rich to be sure.” Tucker went to the bar and took out a bottle of Double Oaked. He poured himself a stiff drink, neat. “Walker Boone is the answer to everyone’s problem, just ask Conway. Oh wait, Conway’s dead as a mackerel so we can’t ask him, but we already know the answer, don’t we? Walker Boone knows how to fix everything. He’s the best. No one else can measure up; I know I never did.”
    Tucker held up his glass to me. “Got a problem? Walker Boone can fix it. He’s Savannah’s wonder boy.”
    â€œI should go.”
    Tucker blocked my path. “And leave the family at this dire time? Now why do a thing like that?”
    â€œFor heaven’s sake, Tucker,” Steffy Lou said, going over to him. “Have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind? Let Walker here leave. He wants to go home and you need to go to bed.”
    â€œI just came to tell Steffy Lou about some trouble at the theater that couldn’t wait. I’m sorry to have intruded on your time.”
    Tucker didn’t budge, his bloodshot eyes like little road maps imbedded in his pudgy face. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
    â€œI get that you’re hammered.”
    â€œI think you’re putting on an act. That’s got to be it. How can I know and not you?”
    â€œKnow what, Tucker?” I was tired and fed up with Tucker the Sloshed. “That the earth is round? Stars are in the sky?”
You’re a jackass?
    â€œHow can you be so stupid?”
    â€œI work at it, especially today.” I shoved past Tucker. He took a swing at me, missed, and stumbled against the wall.
    â€œTucker!” Steffy Lou helped him up. “What is wrong with you?”
    â€œHim!” Tucker jabbed his finger at me as he staggered to his feet. “For years now it’s been him. I never kept pace, was never as good. Walker’s a self-made man, Walker can handle himself, Walker gets respect, Walker can leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
    â€œWe don’t even know each other, Tucker.” I opened the door.
    â€œOh but we do. Brothers always know.”
    â€œTrust me, you are not Seventeenth Street material.”
    â€œLook at me.” Tucker grabbed the back of my shirt, yanking me around, his hot whiskey breath on my face, his eyes hating me. “Conway’s your father.”
    â€œYeah, this is what happens when you drink and watch
Star Wars
and start identifying with Darth Vader. You’re wasted and don’t know what you’re saying. Conway Adkins is not my father. Conway is
your
father. You lived in the big house, you went to private schools, you had clothes, a bed, you had food, you’re the one with parents, and you didn’t watch your grandmother die in some roach-infested room at fifteen and not know what to do.”
    Shaking I grabbed the front of his shirt. “Go sleep it off, Tucker Adkins, and stay the hell out of my life.”

Chapter Seven
    I got the bucket, sponges, and soap out of the trunk. I turned on the hose and pulled it around the corner of the house to the street. I dipped the sponge and swiped suds across the red hood of the Chevy, the porch light not really enough to see what I was doing, not that it mattered. I’d washed this car in front of my house every three days like a religion for as long as I’d had it. I knew every strip of chrome, every curve. I’d only washed it two days ago but I needed something I knew was real, something I knew was mine.
    I swiped again, watching the white suds skate across the shiny red, another swipe of suds now from Big Joey on the other side. I handed him the hose, then he passed it back, the suds dripping into the street. We kept it up, washing and hosing in perfect unison like we’d done for everything all these years.
    We packed up the gear then sat on the steps. I