Ring Game (53 page)

Chester and Festus began baying for no apparent reason. Sam, who was leaning against the front fender of a rusted-out 1968 Roadrunner smoking a cigarette and surveying his kingdom, banged on the hood and shouted a string of obscenities to no effect. Chester charged the fence on the south side of the yard and leapt. His front paws missed the top by a good six inches; Chester fell to the ground, picked himself up, and howled his fury, joined by Festus, his less assertive number-two hound. A few years back, Chester had been able to claw his way over the top of the fence. He’d made it his custom to disappear for days at a time, servicing every uncaged bitch in a three-mile radius. But Chester had been younger then. These days, being a middle-aged hound, he was more subdued. Not that he couldn’t spread his seed from one end of St. Paul to the other—Chester’s jewels were working fine—but these days he took his own personal comfort more seriously. He liked his old mattress and his food bowl. Sam figured that on a good day, Chester could still make it over that fence. He just hadn’t done it lately. A few seconds after the howling began, Sam heard the throaty sound of a 400 cubic-inch Ram Air III engine coming up the block. His damn kid, getting the dogs all riled up. Sam smiled. He screwed his cigarette into the corner of his mouth, hitched up his jeans, sauntered toward the gate, opened it up. The kid pulled in slow, revved the engine a couple times, shut it down.

As soon as the dogs recognized Joe Crow they quit barking. Sam asked, “How’s she runnin’?”

The kid got out and gave the dogs’ heads a scrubbing. “Pretty good,” he said. “Real good, in fact.”

“How ’bout that little health club? How’s that going?”

“Great. I talked to a reporter from
Mpls./St. Paul
magazine this morning. They’re doing a feature on us.”

“Well, don’t that beat all! How ’bout Ax—he keeping his nose out of your joint?”

“Axel’s fine as long as he gets some kind of check every now and then. You hear about him and Sophie?”

“Sure did. Gettin’ hitched. Like once little Carmen’s wedding deal didn’t work out, Sophie still needed her wedding fix. I get to be best man. Get to use my suit again.”

Joe laughed. He seemed a lot happier these days. Now that the kid had a business to worry about, he wasn’t brooding so much.

Sam said, “Carmen’s gonna be maid of honor, if they can get her out of that little car of hers.” Carmen’s brief media adventure—there was a week there when you couldn’t hardly turn on the TV without seeing that little face—had landed her a little chunk of cash, which she’d immediately dropped on a teensy black Porsche, nothing but a glorified 150 mph Volkswagen; cost a fortune to fix when it broke down, which sooner or later it damn sure would.

Joe said, “I’ll be there, but I won’t be driving a limo this time.”

“I’m sure Ax’ll be real disappointed.”

“Yeah.” He looked at his watch. The kid was all the time looking at his watch these days. “Sam, I got this problem. It seems like now that I’ve got this gym I’m always needing to haul stuff around. Like this afternoon I’ve got to pick up a couple benches. I need a van or something.”

“That a fact?” Sam jerked his thumb at a GMC he’d been working on, on and off, for the past few months. “How about that’n?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“What makes you think it’s broke?”

“Just a feeling.”

“She’s got a little rust, and she might need a tranny rebuild pretty soon. She’ll get your benches delivered for you.”

“I was thinking of something more permanent. You know, a swap.”

Sam said. “You sayin’ you want to trade the Goat?”

“Right now I need a van. Only I don’t want one that’s going to die on me.”

“Tell you what. You want to swap me your Goat for that van, I’ll make you a deal.” What the hell, the kid was his own flesh and blood. “I’ll fix ’er for free anytime she breaks, plus I’ll throw in a tranny. You change your oil every couple months, she’ll run forever.”

“You sound like an Amaranthine.”

“I don’t know what one of them sounds like.”

“You want to know what amazes me, Sam? That whole crazy mess with Hyatt and the Amaranthines and so forth, and nobody got killed. Maybe some people really are immortal.”

“People die, son. Just a question of when.” Sam had made peace with his own mortality back before they put seat belts in cars. His philosophy was, you get ready to go, then you don’t think about it no more. He said, “You want the van, or not?”

“You say it’ll run forever?”

“Son, I guarantee it.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Peter Hautman

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

978-1-4804-0623-0

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