Read Online Helltown by Jeremy Bates - Free Book Online

circles. You could stroll right over and pluck them up by their ears, just as easy as picking daisies. Floyd and Earl caught as many as two dozen a day this way. They sold them to Pete Scoble in town, who in turn butchered them and sold them as meat in Akron. It didn’t make anybody rich, but it paid the bills and put food on the table.
    On the day Floyd lost his hearing he’d been sitting in the pickup while Earl strapped a stick of dynamite to the rabbit they’d caught in the trap. When he let it go, however, it didn’t go underground; it made like the devil to the pickup, TNT strapped to its back, fuse burning. Earl had his rifle and tried to shoot it, but he didn’t have the best of aim, and a moving rabbit was a tough target. The critter took cover under the truck. Earl yelled at Floyd to haul ass, but Floyd had never been quick upstairs, not even back then.
    According to Earl, the truck did a big cartwheel, flipping ass over tits before landing on its wheels again. Floyd received a dozen deep gashes to his face and complained of ringing in his ears for a good week. None of the cuts healed properly because he kept picking away the scars, and his ears didn’t heal either, because he kept digging his fingers into them all the way to the knuckles.
    Nevertheless, Cleavon thought now, being ugly and deaf didn’t give him the right to be a pissing slob. Who couldn’t make a bowl of cereal without spilling shit all over the place? Cleavon scowled. He would get the lazy oaf to clean up the mess later; he didn’t want to deal with any more idiocy right then. He just wanted a beer and a cigarette and some peace and quiet.
    Stepping on the cereal, crunching it beneath his boots, he opened a counter drawer and rifled through Scotch tape and screwdrivers and a bunch of other junk until he found a bottle of Aspirin. He popped the cap and upended the container to his mouth. He chewed the five or six pills that flopped onto his tongue, thinking they’d get to work faster ground up. Then he opened the old Kelvinator refrigerator and snagged a cold Bud. As an afterthought he bent back down and scanned the near empty shelves. There were another six beers, a bag of carrots, a carton of milk, a couple loafs of bread, a bowl of eggs, a jar with two pickles floating in it, and not much else.
    He closed the door, twisted off the beer cap, and was about to head outside to have his smoke in the cool night air when the telephone jangled.
    He picked up the handset. “Yeah?”
    “That was fast you quick sumbitch,” Jesse Gordon said.
    “I was standing next to the phone,” Cleavon said.
    “What you doing standing next to the phone? You some mind reader now, know I was gonna call?”
    “I was getting a beer from the fridge. On account of the fridge being in the kitchen, and on account of the phone also being in the kitchen, I was standing next to the phone.” He paused. “Listen, Jess, what’d’you say about coming over tomorrow for a coupla beers, throw some steaks on the grill?”
    “And I’m guessing you want me to bring the steaks?”
    “Now there’s an idea.”
    “As much as I’d like to sit around and listen to you bitch about your dumb ass brothers, Cleave, I got other plans.”
    “Other plans, huh?”
    “Plans with the missus.”
    “Connie? Since when you start having plans with Connie, that fat cow?”
    “Since she told me she’s making her famous roast pork tomorrow night. She stuffs it, you know? Only cooks it on special occasions. You wanna guess what this special occasion is? I’ll tell you—she’s starting a diet.”
    “She gonna cook a roast pork to kick off a diet? Shit, Jess, that’s why she’s so fat all the time, all she does is cook and eat what she cooks. No way this diet’s gonna work. She ain’t gonna last two days on no diet.”
    “I don’t care she lasts until her midnight snack. I’m still getting her roast pork tomorrow night.”
    “Maybe I’ll come by and try some of that famous