trouser pockets ballasted with folded bills in a begemmed clip, began to wobble and fade. Even half of the money the Colonel had offered was money beyond reckoning. He had worked washing dishes in an Italian restaurant in Black Eagle and he had sold batteries stolen from cars and he had once worked briefly as a hay hand in the Judith Basin, feigning heat sickness after one long hot morning atop a haystack, riding to town on the bus and licking his blistered palms like a dog. From that foray into ranch work Sid White considered himself a cowboy. Four thousand dollars was the stuff of hallucination. “He ain’t going to sit there and wait on us forever.”
“With an offer of what he said he can sit and wait till doomsday comes,” Gload said. “If you come back here without a number in your mouth that is twelve thousand then I am gone home. And I’ll not send you back with a different number. I’ll not dicker like a Mexican over a clay pot. There is one number that will work and I just told you it.”
Sid White stood openmouthed in front of Gload, who had by then turned to the television and begun roaming the stations, his face no more than a foot from the screen as he turned the dial, its crags awash in a kaleidoscope of lurid colors. This old man, White thought, is going to get me fucked over. He considered his options and decided that should the numbers not work he could come back with something in his pocket to take care of John Gload. Gload was an old man and the kid didn’t care about all the things he had supposedly done a hundred years ago. He wastes one queer, so what? He would still go down with a blade in his spine, same as any man would. He could make a deal with the Colonel, he was sure, and who would miss this sonofabitch with anyway one foot already in the grave?
“We could go ten,” the kid said. “Show our good whatchacall. Intentions.”
“I am leaving in the morning with what I said or nothing,” Gload said to the television screen. “And the shit goes back in the trunk.”
In ten minutes the kid came into the room and sat on the edge of one of the beds. Gload did not look up. White sat with his hands on his knees, his mouth slightly ajar. He sat so for some time, his tongue darting out with the regularity of a heartbeat. Finally he said, “Well, I will be goddamned all to hell.” He looked at Gload then. “He said come in in the morning and he’ll have the money.” The kid was looking at Gload’s great sloping back beneath a T-shirt worn to near transparency. A gray fringe of hair bristled at the neck. “Hey, old man, I said he’ll have the money. What you wanted, twelve grand, all of it.” He shook his head. “He didn’t piss and moan or nothing. Just sat there for a half minute and said it: come by in the morning. Unfuckingbelievable.” He was about to clap the old man on the back, but thought better of it.
“You are something else, you know that?”
Gload looked up then. He said, “You left the door open.”
* * *
Morning, heralded by a raw wind that pawed and moaned at the door and by a bar of wan light beneath the draperies, saw John Gload paring his nails in the coned light of a bed lamp and on the twin bed opposite Sidney White was an inappreciable bundle, as though beneath the horse blanket bedspread stickwood and stones were arranged to approximate the shape of a man. A faint whistle issued from under the covers and on the pillow Gload could see but the top of the boy’s head, a medusa of lank blue-black stringlets against the linen. He sat with the knife in his hand for a long time.
An hour later White sat in the passenger seat of the car, bleary-eyed and shivering in his thin denim jacket, and watched as Gload came from the Colonel’s office, slewing bearlike down the ludicrous duckboard walkway. The car was loaded and running and John Gload settled behind the wheel. From an envelope he counted out ten five hundred dollar notes and handed them across
“With an offer of what he said he can sit and wait till doomsday comes,” Gload said. “If you come back here without a number in your mouth that is twelve thousand then I am gone home. And I’ll not send you back with a different number. I’ll not dicker like a Mexican over a clay pot. There is one number that will work and I just told you it.”
Sid White stood openmouthed in front of Gload, who had by then turned to the television and begun roaming the stations, his face no more than a foot from the screen as he turned the dial, its crags awash in a kaleidoscope of lurid colors. This old man, White thought, is going to get me fucked over. He considered his options and decided that should the numbers not work he could come back with something in his pocket to take care of John Gload. Gload was an old man and the kid didn’t care about all the things he had supposedly done a hundred years ago. He wastes one queer, so what? He would still go down with a blade in his spine, same as any man would. He could make a deal with the Colonel, he was sure, and who would miss this sonofabitch with anyway one foot already in the grave?
“We could go ten,” the kid said. “Show our good whatchacall. Intentions.”
“I am leaving in the morning with what I said or nothing,” Gload said to the television screen. “And the shit goes back in the trunk.”
In ten minutes the kid came into the room and sat on the edge of one of the beds. Gload did not look up. White sat with his hands on his knees, his mouth slightly ajar. He sat so for some time, his tongue darting out with the regularity of a heartbeat. Finally he said, “Well, I will be goddamned all to hell.” He looked at Gload then. “He said come in in the morning and he’ll have the money.” The kid was looking at Gload’s great sloping back beneath a T-shirt worn to near transparency. A gray fringe of hair bristled at the neck. “Hey, old man, I said he’ll have the money. What you wanted, twelve grand, all of it.” He shook his head. “He didn’t piss and moan or nothing. Just sat there for a half minute and said it: come by in the morning. Unfuckingbelievable.” He was about to clap the old man on the back, but thought better of it.
“You are something else, you know that?”
Gload looked up then. He said, “You left the door open.”
* * *
Morning, heralded by a raw wind that pawed and moaned at the door and by a bar of wan light beneath the draperies, saw John Gload paring his nails in the coned light of a bed lamp and on the twin bed opposite Sidney White was an inappreciable bundle, as though beneath the horse blanket bedspread stickwood and stones were arranged to approximate the shape of a man. A faint whistle issued from under the covers and on the pillow Gload could see but the top of the boy’s head, a medusa of lank blue-black stringlets against the linen. He sat with the knife in his hand for a long time.
An hour later White sat in the passenger seat of the car, bleary-eyed and shivering in his thin denim jacket, and watched as Gload came from the Colonel’s office, slewing bearlike down the ludicrous duckboard walkway. The car was loaded and running and John Gload settled behind the wheel. From an envelope he counted out ten five hundred dollar notes and handed them across
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