Read Online Nowhere Nice (Nick Reid Novels) by Rick Gavin - Free Book Online

Lurleen’s—hardly a fit pastime for a hound but maybe better than Eugene’s pen. As Luther was talking, that wounded creature licked me on the wrist. A long, slow lick that she undertook as she rolled her eyes up at me. If a dog could ever tell me, “Thank you, brother,” that hound was doing it then.
    She was as clean by then as the swamp was going to make her, and I could see that she’d gotten away just skinned raw along her spine. There was a spot on her back where the shot took the fur off, and it was seeping a bit.
    “Look in the shed,” I told Luther and pointed at what appeared to be a glorified pile of lumber with a rusty corrugated roof. “See if there’s any grease in there. Maybe a shovel.”
    Luther came out with an ancient pint of some manner of machine grease and a garden shovel with the handle busted three quarters of the way up. I spread a little of the grease on that hound’s raw skin, which she seemed to like a lot less than the swamp bath I’d been giving her. She swung her head around to lick my hand and gnaw on it a little too.
    “Let’s bury the rest of them,” I said.
    Dale told us all, “Shit. Let the gators do it. I’m going back to the car.”
    That’s exactly what he did, swatting bugs as he went, which left us little choice but to talk about him.
    “Why’s he with us again?” Luther asked me.
    “Because that Boudrot wants to cut him up.”
    “Yeah,” Luther said. “And?”
    I looked to Desmond for support, but he just pointed at Luther. “I’m kind of with him anymore.”
    “We’ll use him for bait if we have to.”
    Desmond snorted. He picked up the shovel and started digging a hole.
    The deeper the hole got, the more it filled up with iridescent bayou seepage. The whole business began to feel less like burial and more like makeshift disposal. I had to guess Dale had a point about the bayou wilderness taking care of its own.
    We buried those shot dogs anyway. Me and Desmond took turns digging while Luther comforted the surviving hound. Comforted her in his fashion anyway. He didn’t touch her or anything. His clothes were clean, and he didn’t want to get any swamp dog on them. So he just told that hound, “Hey, you,” every now and again and made clicking noises with his tongue.
    I asked Desmond to say something Pentecostal over the dog grave when we’d finished. He didn’t want to at first. He quoted me a nugget about the beasts in the fields. But I kept at him, told him anyway, “For fuck’s sake,” a time or two. Either Desmond thought better of his misgivings or got tired of hearing from me because he finally mumbled a strain of doxology over that muddy ground.
    Then he turned right around and pointed at the surviving hound over by Luther.
    “Don’t want no grease on my upholstery,” Desmond announced. “Wrap her up or something.”
    That job fell to me, and I climbed up to the platform Eugene’s house was perched on, pulled open the screen door, and went into a place that looked like it had tornado damage.
    I stuck my head back outside to ask Luther, “This looks normal to you?”
    He shrugged. He nodded. “Eugene ain’t so tidy.”
    I called down to Desmond, “Place is busted all to hell.”
    Inside I was surrounded by the residue of that Boudrot’s rage. He was hard on end tables and knickknacks. That stuff all looked like it had been through a chipper or some industrial pulverizer. The pitch of anger required to destroy household furnishing as thoroughly as that Boudrot did had to approach primeval.
    The fuckstick had left a few of the heavy pieces pretty much where they’d been, but he’d been thorough about demolishing everything else. I didn’t see any trace of human carnage, just filth and squalor mostly. I went poking around in the back of the house, looking for any trace of Eugene. That took me into his bedroom. I wouldn’t have wrapped the body of Satan in Eugene’s filthy sheets. The place smelled of socks and mildew, but at