Pistol Fanny's Hank & Delilah (28 page)

Pistol sighed. “Well, ain’t no use cryin’ over black buns and late mail. We just have to move on and make a new batch is all. And threaten the mail man’s boss.” She almost laughed. If the situation had been any less serious, it would be comical.

“I suppose. You’re not upset about the burnt buns? I sure as hell am!”

“Well, we’ll just bake a new batch. It’s not that hard. You just gotta remember to take them out before they get too dark, you know. Try a new recipe. Shock everybody.”

“If you don’t care about all my burnt buns, what are you caring about, baby girl?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Red buns, I guess.”

“Red velvets?”

“Red velvets. I’ve been cravin’ ’em real bad. They got me going a little crazy, wantin’ ’em so madly.”

“Huh.” There was a pause. “You’ve never craved those before. We’ll have to do something we’ve never done before. We’re going to have to have a red velvet party and we can all cry over my burnt buns.”

Pistol smiled lightly. “I suppose.”

“Oh, and you know what’s worse than burnt buns?”

“Can’t be much worse.”

“Yes it can. Dirty old mud pies. You remember those old boys? Billie and Mack? I was thinkin’ real hard about hitting them right in the face with their own patties. Or disguising it as a Mississippi mud pie and feeding it to them. I guess that would be just fine, considering how they been checkin’ out your new car real steady and all, but…” There was a long string of profanities.

“Did you say mud pies?”

“I did. The kind that gives you worms.”

“I see.”

“Take care of yourself, baby. And don’t let no buns get you down. I’ll have everything ready for you. New batches without the char, and a whole bunch of reds to replace the ones you been missin’.”

“Sounds good.”

“
Woo hoo
,” they said in unison.

Pistol hung up and dialed another number. Two rings and she heard, “Hello, baby.”

“Hey, baby,” Pistol rested her head. “How’s business?”

“Good, real damn good. I’ve had six or seven come through here already.”

“Good, real good. It’s good to have that many. Four or five would be perfect, but six or seven. Wow.”

“Wait.” There was a short pause. “Did you say four or five?”

“Yeah, I sure did.”

“All right. My phone was breaking up, wasn’t sure I heard you right.”

“No, you heard right. Crappy reception, I guess.

“Hey, you know what I found out about your new car? I did some research. Car history and all that.”

“Anything good?”

“Real damn good, Pis. Well, I guess it just depends on how you take it. That car of yours, the value has sky rocketed. It’s got a history with blood on its tires. It’s like an old artifact with Napoleon’s history attached to it, or like a celebrity, or even a pirate, if they drove cars instead of boats.” A piercing whistle shot through the receiver. “Imagine that! Good thing, huh, Pis, that pirates no longer exist? They’d probably want that car back, if they drove cars. Pirates always want their gold, and that car has a history. Like I said.”

“Big pickin’s, huh?”

“You got that right. Hearsay has it the only reason it hasn’t been touched is because a rough little gal named Little Sister has been hiding in the back seat. And you know how people feel about her. They terrified. I say you should just trash it. Sell it, get rid of it, go ahead and dump it in the river. Drown it. Too much trouble for such a thing. Too many people want to touch it, when it’s probably not even worth that much.”

“Have you heard from Older Brother?”

The laugh that came from the other end was just like an extinct animal coming back from the dead. A rare noise, if there ever was one. “Boy, did I! He’s so mad. He thinks you foolin’ around on the side on him. Called me up demanding I tell him who the new meat was. ’Cause nobody told him, and he was in a very precarious situation.”

“I see,” Pistol said, closing her eyes.

“You all right, baby?”

“Fine. Just fine. I’ll see you soon, all right?”

“All right.”

“
Woo hoo
,” they said in unison, and then the call went dead.

H
ank was hurtin’ real bad without his Delilah. Four days ago, they had driven to the airport together. Once there, she squeezed his hand, and in the next breath, she was gone through a crowd of people. He had called Dylan and Jesse to pick him up. And if Dylan hadn’t offered his place, Hank would be staying in Wild Thang. June-bug was bugging him to come home and stay with her. She was overflowing with questions that he didn’t have the energy to answer. When he told her he wasn’t coming home because he was having a problem with Preacher John, she hung up.

Just four days
. Hank was aging before his very eyes. Those four days felt like forty years and four million miles. He had bags forming under his eyes. He was constantly yawning. His hair needed to be washed. All he seemed to want to do is sit on Dylan’s couch and watch old
Flintstones
reruns. He always kept the volume loud to drown out the sound of her voice. His friends sat there and watched as his form started to sink into the couch. They would occasionally give him a beer for his cause, but he forgot how to communicate with the outside world. To even say thank you or piss off.

Hank couldn’t stop thinking while he watched the
Flintstones
. He thought about the stone and glass house, the beers, the poison, and he thought about the payphones. Those damn payphones were haunting him like the rest of the ghosts. Hank knew exactly how they felt now. Disconnected, disappearing like they were never once a part of this world.

Eight days.
Hank was angry and ornery. His friends tried to talk to him, involve him in useless chatter, but he ignored them. Dylan made tacos—it was the only thing he knew how to make—and Hank thought he was making a sick joke. He crumpled them in his hands and threw them out the door.

More days passed
. Hank wasn’t keeping count anymore. He started to drink a little more, started talking a little more. Mumbling things like, “Patsy and the baby are going out with the bath water.” He would cry sometimes when he would drink, begging her to come back to him in his sleep. He had tried calling her, but she refused his calls.

He couldn’t walk away. He felt like he was still standing at the door, trying to block the wind from blowing out of it. Even if it had, sometimes he had to believe the lies to give himself enough motivation to keep moving forward. He even took a trip to Nashville, against Curly and Tommy’s insistence that he should just stay put. He just couldn’t stay away. As soon as he walked in the door, Freud howled and he heard a door slam.

He ran to the back of the bar, to her office, ignoring the voices around him telling him to stop. He heard Hennessey talking from the side of his mouth.

“This ain’t no dame storm. This is a lover’s storm. Sisters, stay out of it.”

As he walked in, one of the papers on Delilah’s desk drifted to the floor, as if a slight wind had blown it off. He looked everywhere for her but couldn’t find her. He knew she could hear, though, because he knew her. He knew she was close to him. If only Hank had the energy to look up. He would have found her sitting above him, hiding in the rafters, like a leopard perched on the highest branch.

He stood in the middle of the office and closed his eyes. “I’m real sad without you, darlin’. I can’t think straight or eat straight or move straight or even talk straight. I know what you think, but I have my reasons, Delilah. Yes, I love her. I don’t understand it, like I don’t understand why I’m in love with you. I just…I just don’t know what to do. I know I love her, but I don’t even think of her anymore.

“All I think of is you. How you felt beneath my hands, the best thing ever in them. I can hear you tell me you love me, and it forces my heart to beat, like it does after it has been shocked back to life. I see your smile, and nothing else matters. Then all those things I love the most about you haunt me. You’re really not here with me, but you’re here and I can’t see you or touch you or kiss you. I’m not me without you. Hank without Delilah is just…Hank. And this I promise you, I hate Hank without his Delilah. I’m a damn fool. Nothing but a damn fool. If I lose you, darlin’…” Hank couldn’t go on. What are words when they feel worthless in expensive situations?

“Go away, Hank.” Her voice came quick and deadly with its intensity. “Go away, and just let me be.”

Even though the words were fueled by something other than love, Hank heard the crack in her voice. As he shut the door behind him, he could’ve sworn he heard the wind crying. When he reopened the door, it was silent. He headed back to Tupelo after that, much worse for the wear.

He took his title back as king of the couch potatoes. Apart from watching old reruns still, all he did was talk about her. He felt he was inching closer to something else. One teaspoon away from an angry outburst he might never recover from; just half a teaspoon away from madness. He was creeping toward it, slow and steady, his pieces disappearing in the wind, just like miniscule grains of sand.

That night
, the pressure had gotten to him. A man could only take so much. He had one too many. Hank wasn’t keeping score. He was getting carried away, lost in the count, lost in the amount, lost in the sadness, and totally consumed by life. Hank felt there was nothing more horrendous than when a man causes his own demise, and this time he had caused it
and
pretty much buried himself underneath his own mistakes.

He was singing to himself “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. God Almighty, he couldn’t get her music out of his head. Her music was the Dear John of the country music world. He made himself switch over the channels in his mind, to another one, one that was sad but different than Patsy. But he couldn’t stop it; he was flipping back and forth, merging the two. Confusing the hell out of him.

Dylan sat back and shook his head, watching him. “You know all that stuff she sings about? Being crazy and all that? She was singin’ about you. You have gone off the deep end. Big splash and all.”

Hank put his empty bottle on the floor. “Patsy Cline, Dylan. Can you believe it?”

“Yes, because you’ve told me a million times. I didn’t believe you at first, but by time twenty, I was a firm believer.”

“Good. You should be. I wouldn’t lie about a thing like Patsy.” Hank sat back and sighed. “I had it all planned out. We would always be ‘Hank & Delilah & Freud the gentleman dog.’ We were going to take our show on the road, and we would do all these little funny skits about our life. She would poke fun at me for hating her robbing banks, and I would poke fun at her for being a bank robber. It’s almost contrary how the roles are reversed, wouldn’t you agree? The man usually does the robbin’ while the little woman stays home and pines after him. Ain’t it a damn funny life or what?”

Jesse hit Dylan’s leg, one eyebrow cocked, answering the silent question hanging between the three of them, even if only two were paying any attention to it—Hank was on the edge, and they needed to stop him before he fell to his doom.

“Hank, what did you do while you were off running with her? What did you accomplish besides falling head over heels for this woman? The purpose of you going was to ask her who she really was. To find out, not beat around the bush and then suddenly be surrounded by the flames of a wild fire you can’t fight your way out of. Why didn’t you just ask her, Hank? Before the California robbery? Why didn’t you just tell her: ‘I love you and I want to know who I’m spending the rest of my life with.’ That’s not too much to ask of someone you plan on loving,” Dylan said.

Hank moved his fingers up and down, staring off into space. “I thought I had it all figured out. I knew her dark side. I wanted to know her good side. How many times do people meet and fall in love with all the good stuff first? All that other shit is hidden behind walls. And over time, all the bad things just creep over that wall, and then you have to adjust everything you’ve ever known about that person because they couldn’t come clean in the beginning, because they were afraid. I met her bad side first, and I fell head over heels. When I met her good side, well, look at me.

“I had two pleas, that she never cheats on me, and that she never left me. Even though I always thought of them as two women, she was one person to me. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just did. They morphed, and Delilah somehow became everything. Everyone.”

“Why didn’t you ask her, Hank?” Dylan said again—a stern edge to his question this time.

“I fell in love with them both, the instant I saw them. It was like falling in love with the air, before you even knew what the air was. That first breath you take in this world, unconsciously, but consciously knowing you’re breathing the stuff that keeps you moving. Instinctual. I was sitting in Delilah’s kitchen while she was singing this little song to me about Hank loving her pancakes, yes he
do
, when I truly understood. I couldn’t live a day without her. Just like the day in school when you learn how come you can’t live without air. They explain why, but it’s a true mystery as to why it’s air we have to breathe instead of, let’s say, water.