Jeff Jacobson - Foodchain

“Ernie. And he’s gonna kick aaaasssss ,” the same girl called out.

The deputy chuckled. “Yeah. He oughta, that’s for sure, that’s right. But still, that don't have nothin’ to do with what we got going on here.”

The younger deputy slowly made his way over to Frank. He touched the edge of the round brim. “Howdy.” A brass bar identified him as “DPTY HALFORD.”

Frank nodded back. “Hi.” He grinned, easy, smooth, and loose.

“They give you a hard time?” Halford tilted his head at the dead tree.

“No, not really,” Frank said.

Halford’s gaze slid back to the pockmark in the glass. “Looks like they cracked your window some.”

Frank felt his crooked grin slipping off his face like the pair of oversize black shoes. “Aw hell, I think that might of already been there. I think the lady inside was just trying to look out for me.”

They both looked at the grimy window and found the woman glaring back at them. Halford laughed. “Yeah. Myrtle can get a little fired up sometimes. She don’t like that family much. To tell the truth,” he lowered his voice, just a bit, “Hell, neither do I. Them kids, they’re…they’re a handful.”

Frank nodded back, Mr. Agreeable.

Across the street, the older deputy was wrapping up his lecture. “Now you listen, and listen good. If I gotta come back here, you’re gonna wish you never, ever met me before. You got that?”

The kids were smart enough to stay quiet. Frank thought, oh yeah , those kids have got it. They looked scared to death, all right. He figured the deputies would be lucky if they made it back to the cruiser without getting cracked in the head with something hard and sharp.

Halford asked suddenly, “You in town for the rodeo?”

Busy sifting through possible responses in case the deputy asked for his driver’s license, Frank just said, “Yeah.”

Halford nodded. “Thought so. Tell you what, we’re heading out there, you just follow us.”

“Thanks. Appreciate it.”

“No problem. Just follow us.” Halford and the older deputy climbed back into the patrol car. Frank pulled the long black car out of the gas station and followed the cruiser into town.

* * * * *

Whitewood was nearly as dead as the oak tree. Frank saw a few pickups here and there, parked in the center of the wide streets, one or two people on the wooden sidewalks, but that was all. Nearly all of the businesses facing the wide main street sported squared-off false fronts and plywood over the windows.

Frank thought of the wasps he used to kill. He’d wait patiently on the warped steps of the church until a wasp landed at the edge of the one of the pools that collected in the knotholes after a thunderstorm. Slowly, slowly raising the softbound Bible above his head, he’d slam it down, smashing the wasp into the soft pine woodgrain with the whipcrack sound of a .22. But no matter how quickly he brought the good book down, no matter how hard he smashed the insect into the plank, it never died quick. The wasps always twitched for a long time, fighting death with every fiber of their doomed bodies, waving the segmented limbs around in agony, always trying to crawl away, and always, always curling their abdomen, thrusting that vicious dripping stinger into the air at the unseen attacker, a last stab at vengeance.

This town was like a wasp. It didn’t have sense enough to know when to die.

They passed a small park, anchored at the four corners with oak trees and covered with brown, dead grass. The town’s only stoplight waited at one corner, hung from wires strung from telephone poles. The deputies didn’t bother waiting for the light and slid right through the red.

For a moment, Frank panicked. He didn’t know if he should stop and wait for a green signal, or just slip on through like the cruiser. In the end, he slowed to nearly a full stop, then gunned the long black car quickly across the empty intersection. The deputies kept going.

They led him into a large gravel parking lot a quarter full of pickups at the fairgrounds. Frank parked and climbed out, remembering the sunglasses this time. They were decades old, thick, with squared corners, like something an old man would consider cool from his youth, but didn’t have enough fashion sense to know or care they were outdated. He put them on, feeling a little ridiculous, and waved at the cops, pretending to head into the fairgrounds. Halford tipped his hat at Frank as he pulled in a tight circle and steered the cruiser back into town.

Frank’s steps faltered and stopped. He took a deep breath of the dry, hot air. Even his short, squat shadow, weirdly textured on the rough gravel, looked like it wanted out of the sun. He glanced back at the long black car. It had nearly a half of a tank of gas left. His wallet held a little over thirty dollars.

The way Frank figured, he had two options. He could climb back in the car and keep heading north, take his chances on the road, hoping that the money would last a bit longer, and the cops wouldn’t see him. Or he could simply stay, lay low for the afternoon at least. Weariness settled over his head like a thick wool blanket, and he wondered if there might be any gambling possibilities inside the gates. A horse was a horse, it didn’t matter if it was running a mile in seventy seconds or trying to shake off some fool clinging to its back.

For a moment, Frank wondered what the trucker’s pills might do to a horse.

* * * * *

Frank passed a rusted steam engine and the coal car stranded on a strip of railroad track just 100 feet long. He followed quaint little street signs that directed him along narrow streets, lined with tired trees and dead flowers. The asphalt felt soft beneath the boots.

Just inside the fairground gates, a greasy guy with loose skin sagged against a stool, wearing a mustache so thin it looked like a drunk old woman had drawn it on with an eyebrow pencil. Frank nodded at the jagged mustache and kept moving, acting like he’d just stepped out for a smoke.

The guy snapped his fingers. “Five bucks, pal.”

Frank wasn’t happy, but he paid. The guy slid the money into his pocket and scratched a tiny slash mark in a notebook even greasier than his hair. He jerked his head.

Frank asked, “No program?”

The guy squinted at Frank for a moment, unsure if he was joking. He looked as if he sure as shit didn’t want any goddamn city cocksucker making fun of him, but he also didn’t want to offend anybody important. In the end, he just shrugged and stared off into the distance. Frank went on in.

It wasn’t much of a rodeo. The heat had thoroughly baked the energy out of every living creature. The calves wouldn’t run; they simply stood still, rooted in place, tongues hanging dry and purple in the searing sun. Barrel racers cantered and trotted instead of galloping. The announcer’s voice, crumbling apart in slivers of static, sounded half-asleep. Even the wild broncs bucked and kicked in a bored, listless fashion.

The small stadium stand rose fifty feet; twenty-five benches slanted up to the rippled aluminum roof. Twenty or thirty people, mostly older couples, were scattered across the wooden benches. Frank kept his face down and climbed the creaking stairs. When he hit the shade near the top, he sank onto a bench. The stands overlooked a dirt racetrack that encircled nearly five acres. The center was full of grazing fields, paddocks, and chutes that surrounded the center rodeo ring like a blocky spiderweb.

Frank lasted a half-hour before visiting the beer garden in the back, under the stands. He stood in the shadow on the north side of the stands and sipped his beer, listening to the knots of men that had gathered in the shade. The men talked weather, crops, sheep, cattle, fishing, hunting, and their boys, whether they were playing Pop Warner football, riding the bulls, or in the fights.