The Adventures of Slim & Howdy (4 page)

8

TAMMY FOLLOWED SLIM TO THE LIVING ROOM. “WHAT’S
funny,” she said, “is that he ain’t black and his name ain’t Tony.”

“Yeah, that’s hysterical all right,” Slim said, looking past her, waiting for Howdy.

Tammy explained that Black Tony was a guard at the East Texas Correctional Institution for Women. She wasn’t sure where he got the nickname, but she knew from personal experience that he was fond of offering privileges to the incarcerated in exchange for certain types of favors. Problem was he didn’t always come through on his end of the bargain, which is how he had earned more than a few enemies, including Tammy and Crystal.

“So anyway,” she said, “he jacked this truck heading for the Transistor Town and, as always, had to brag about it to somebody and you know how word gets around and, well, here we are.” She gave him a wink and a sexy little smile. “Whaddya say we get one of these big screens in the back of the truck?”

“Not interested,” Slim said. “Howdy, let’s go!”

That’s when Tammy started rooting through her purse again.

Slim looked at her and said, “What the hell made you think we’d go along with this?”

She pulled a gun from her purse. “This,” she said, not showing it to him so much as pointing it at him.

Slim held his hands up slightly as he stared at the .32. It looked familiar. “Where’d you get that?”

“The trash can where your partner tossed it after y’all shot Brushfire Boone.”

“We didn’t shoot him.”

“Well, you should have,” Tammy said, a little irritated. “That creepy shit’s always coming down to the pool when we’re tannin’, hittin’ on us, like we’d even consider it.” She shuddered. “Can you imagine kissing those lips?” She shuddered again, but kept the gun on Slim. “Anyway, I figured anybody who’d just kick in a man’s door and shoot him in the middle of the afternoon would be happy to get in on a sweet little deal like this,” she said, gesturing at all the stolen goods.

“We didn’t shoot him,” Slim repeated.

“Well, why not?”

“Wasn’t called for,” Slim said. “We just . . . shot his fridge.”

This tidbit seemed to come at Tammy like a knuckle ball. She ducked her head a bit and said, “You shot his fridge?”

“Not me. Howdy.” Gesturing down the hall, wondering where the hell he was.

“Howdy shot his fridge?”

“Yeah. All I had was hedge clippers.”

“Uh-huh,” Tammy said, looking at him like he was nutty as a Stuckey’s pecan log.

“Well, he stole my guitar.”

“So, naturally, Howdy shot his fridge.” She gave a wise nod. “It’s all startin’ to make sense.”

Slim turned and yelled down the hall again, “Howdy!”

“Howdy is right.” Tammy and Slim both jumped when Black Tony’s deep voice came from behind them. He was standing in the doorway with a twelve-gauge pump. Black Tony was big enough to have played football for the University of Anywhere. The only thing that kept him off the team was his lack of speed, both in the forty and on the SAT. And, considering how much academic leeway football programs give their athletes, this didn’t speak well of Black Tony’s chances of winning the Nobel prize in anything. He spit on the floor and gestured at Tammy with the shotgun. “I mighta guessed it was you up in here.”

Tammy turned the .32 on him. She sounded angry and betrayed when she said, “You supposed to be working tonight!”

Black Tony smirked. “Yeah, well I meant to send you an e-mail about that but—”

Then she shot him.

Slim dove behind a boxed-up big-screen television as the .32 slug spun Black Tony a little sideways. But he still managed to squeeze his trigger. The shotgun boomed like a thunderstorm in the living room. Glancing up at the pattern of holes in the wall, Slim figured he was shooting triple-ought buck. Probably a riot gun from the prison.

Howdy came tumbling out of the back bedroom. The only thing he’d managed to put on all the way was his hat. The socks he’d never bothered to take off. He had his boots in his left hand and his jeans were dangling around his right ankle as tried to hop into the other pants leg while he hollered, “What the hell are you two doing out here?”

Tammy had taken cover behind a stack of microwave ovens. She was cussing Black Tony between each shot she fired. He was bleeding a little from his shoulder but didn’t seem too bothered by it. When Tammy started to make disparaging comments about the lineage of Black Tony’s mother’s side of the family, Slim took the opportunity to scamper down the hall where Howdy was still hopping around like the one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. “I told you to come on, didn’t I?”

“The hell’s going on?”

“Some guy named Black Tony,” Slim said. “It’s his house. Let’s get the hell outta here.”

Howdy did a one-leg lean against the wall and caught a glimpse of the big man with the shotgun. “That man’s not black,” he said.

“His name ain’t Tony either,” Slim said. “You wanna go ask him about it, I’ll be waiting in the truck somewhere near Dallas. Now get your pants on!”

Howdy started to hop again just as Crystal came charging out of the room, a blur of bra, panties, and chrome. What looked like a .45. She knocked Howdy over like a ten pin, without so much as a “pardon me.” She fired a blind shot toward the living room, yelling to Tammy that she was on her way and needed cover fire.

Damndest thing either one of them had ever seen.

Howdy managed to get his pants and boots on real quick once he was lying on his back. He popped to his feet and said, “We can’t just leave those two in there with that big sumbitch and his shotgun.”

“We ain’t got a dog in that fight, c’mon!”

Howdy shook his head. “Wouldn’t be right,” he said.

Slim rolled his eyes and said, “Fine.” He ducked into the bedroom and found Crystal’s purse. “Where’re the keys to the Trans Am?”

Howdy fished them out of his pocket. Slim snatched the keys and said, “Come on.” He opened the bedroom window and jumped out. Howdy was about to follow, but when he saw that brand new Viper RX-650 radar detector, still in the box, he paused long enough to snatch it before slipping outside while the shooting and cussing continued in the living room.

When they got to the front yard, Slim noticed the box. “You just stole that?”

“You kidding? From the looks of things, I’d say it’s already been stolen. I’m just gonna try to find its rightful owner.”

“Uh-huh.”

Another round of gunshots caused Slim and Howdy to look toward the house. They could see Black Tony’s silhouette in the bay window as he stalked the girls with the shotgun poised in front of him. “Come on out, ladies,” he said. “The gig’s up.”

Black Tony paused for a second when he saw headlights cut across the wall. He got the feeling it had something to do with him. He stood there, trying to do the math on the whole thing when, much to his surprise, that Twentieth Anniversary Trans Am came crashing through the bay window behind him, caught him on the hood, and proceeded to pin him against the brick fireplace like a big Christmas stocking.

The horn started to sound. This was followed a second later by a couple more shots.

On the street out in front, Slim said, “That sound like a .32 or a .45?”

Howdy got in the truck and started the engine. “More like a .32,” he said.

“Either way, I guess they’re all right now.”

Howdy nodded. “Shame to wreck that Trans Am though,” he said as he put the truck in gear. “On the way out here, I got that puppy down a quarter mile in fifteen flat.”

9

HOWDY WOKE UP THINKING ABOUT HOW NICE IT WOULD HAVE
been to spend the night with Crystal or, lacking that, just to have spent the night in a bed that wasn’t the back end of a pickup truck. As it was, he felt like he’d been trampled by a bull and pinned against a fence.

Stiff, sore, and hungry, he sniffed the air and caught the scent of coffee brewing, so things weren’t all bad.

Howdy lifted the black Resistol from his face and squinted against the early-morning sun. He rubbed his mustache, then propped himself on an elbow and peered over the side of the truck, clearing his throat in the process.

“Got coffee if you want it,” Slim said without bothering to turn around. He was sitting on a log by the fire pit, a good bed of coals heating a percolating coffeepot.

Howdy said, “How ’bout three scrambled with bacon, toast, and hash browns?”

Now Slim turned around, aimed his dark glasses at Howdy, and, without a trace of humor in his voice, said, “This look like a Waffle Ho to you?”

Howdy had to admit it looked more like a campsite at the Village Creek State Park which is where they’d spent the night. It was about ten miles north of Beaumont, in the middle of nine hundred acres of dense bottomland forest and a fine float stream smack in the middle of what’s left of the Old Texas Big Thicket.

Howdy put his boots on and slid out the back of the truck where he stretched a bit while glancing around at the noisy woods. Willows, beech, black gum, and oaks filled with chatty bluebirds and woodland warblers, while woodpeckers machine-gunned at the bark of evergreen pines. He took a deep breath, savoring the smell. Olfactory memories of days spent in the north Louisiana woods where he used to hunt and hike with his dad and his cousins.

“Be right back,” Howdy said as he wandered off. “Gotta check the timber, as they say.” He came back a minute later, sat down on a stump opposite Slim, and poured some coffee. He tipped his cup in a show of gratitude.

The inscrutable Slim, always lurking behind his shades, gave a slight nod that seemed to say, “No problem.” Slim sipped his coffee, sitting quietly, looking off toward the horizon, occasionally combing his fingers through his goatee while grooming the edges with his tongue and lips. After a minute, he pointed off in the direction opposite of where Howdy had come from and said, “For future reference, there’s a proper restroom over there.”

Howdy looked where Slim had pointed. “Sure enough,” he said, wondering why Slim hadn’t bothered to say something about it earlier.

Another five minutes passed where the only sounds in the camp came from the birds or the fire, snapping and cracking after Slim laid on some fresh dry wood.

At one point Howdy glanced at Slim’s sleeping bag, rolled up next to him, all ready to go, as if he had a notion of where he was going. Howdy thought back on their late-night shopping spree after leaving Black Tony’s House o’ Stolen Goods.

They got to the Wal-Mart just as it was closing. The manager, an efficient-looking girl by the name of Dee who displayed a fondness for mascara and hair coloring products, was in the process of locking the door when—much to Howdy’s surprise—Slim opened up a six-pack of sweet talk that got ’em into the store for two sleeping bags, the graniteware percolating coffeepot, a couple of tin cups, and a half a sack of groceries.

Howdy let out a chuckle.

Slim said, “What’s so funny?”

“I was thinking about how you smooth-talked Dee at the Wal-Mart last night,” Howdy said. “You don’t say much, but when you do, I swear, I bet you could talk a priest off an altar boy.”

Slim just lifted his cup and sipped his coffee, not arguing the point and not showing the slightest interest in having a discussion about it. He maybe gave a nod, it was hard to say for sure. He knew he had a silver tongue, just didn’t see any point in bragging on it. Just a gift.

Slim’s reticence wasn’t enough to quiet Howdy. Apparently it only took one cup of coffee to get his motor going, at least the one for his mouth. He shook his head wistfully. “Yeah, you know, I sure wish Black Tony could’ve waited another five minutes before showing up last night,” Howdy said, his nod inviting agreement. “That Crystal was just starting to get enthusiastic.” He cocked a dark eyebrow and looked over at Slim to see if he would engage in a smutty conversation.

Slim showed no signs.

Howdy decided to change tack, trying to get his new friend to open up a bit. He bent his torso left and right and stretched like he was warming up to run a mile or something, grimacing as he worked the sore from his muscles. After a minute of this he said, “You know, I think if I had it all to do over again, I woulda got one of those sleeping pads at the Wal-Mart. Bed of the truck ain’t exactly a Spring Air mattress.” He gestured at the ground. “How about you? You sleep out here?”

Slim tossed the last trace of coffee from his cup. “Started in the cab,” he said, shaking his head. “Wasn’t long enough.” He stood up, six feet and change, damn near gangly. He gave Howdy the once-over and gestured at him with his cup, saying, “Probably be all right for somebody your size though.”

Howdy made a show of looking down at himself, as if to see if he’d shrunk or something overnight. The snarky comment had taken him by surprise, but he decided to let it slide.

Slim grabbed his sleeping bag and tossed it in the back of the truck next to Howdy’s saddle. “You about ready to go?”

Howdy poured himself another cup of coffee and said, “What’s your hurry? Have another cup.” He motioned at the log where Slim had been sitting. “I was just thinking, with all the fun we had last night, we didn’t get a chance to find out much about each other.”

“So?” Slim checked his goatee in the truck’s side mirror. “We ain’t datin’.”

“No.” Howdy shrugged. “But I figure we’re going to be running together, we oughta get to know each other, at least a little. You know, get our story straight if it comes to that.”

“Listen,” Slim said. “I’ve known you for all of what, eighteen hours? All the sudden you want me to start divulging personal details of my life? Bare my soul like you’re Oprah or something?” He shook his head.

“Okay,” Howdy said, pointing at Slim. “You’re not a morning person. See? That’s a start. Getting to know each other already. And I know you make a decent cup of coffee.” He held his up in the air as proof. “So, you know, like, I’m from Shreveport, how about you? You wanted in any of the lower forty-eight?”

Slim was still shaking his head. “I’m startin’ to think this was a bad idea.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Howdy said. “If the last eighteen hours ain’t the most fun you’ve had in a long time, I sure want to hear about your week.”

Slim folded his arms over his chest, leaned against the truck, and said, “Nearly getting killed is your idea of fun?”

“Hell no,” Howdy said. “Crystal was my idea of fun. All the shooting and running around just added to the excitement, that’s all.” He pointed an imaginary gun at Slim and said, “I learned the hard way that gettin’ shot is something you want to avoid, if you can. But gettin’ shot
at
is pretty damn excitin’. I mean, that’s the sort of experience can lead to a good song.” His eyes got big and he pointed at Slim. “Hey! ‘The Ballad of Black Tony,’” he said, all excited as he unsnapped his shirt pocket. He pulled out a little spiral notepad and a stubby pencil, like one stolen from a putt-putt golf course. “There’s something there, don’t you think?” He wrote it down. “‘Ballad . . . of . . . Black . . . Tony.’” He looked up, wagging the little spiral pad for Slim to see. “Song ideas.”

“No kidding.” Slim was starting to wonder if this guy had escaped from the Louisiana Laughing Academy. “Are you crazy?” Not that he expected a crazy person’s answer to make much sense.

Howdy smiled. “Let’s just say I got a wild side.” He paused as a thought came to him. “Hang on.” He touched the tip of the stubby pencil to his tongue and wrote on the pad. “‘Got . . . a wild . . . side’ . . .” He looked off in the trees for a second, then continued. “‘Just . . . about . . . a country . . . mile . . . wide.’” He stabbed the pencil at the page. “Hey! That’s good. I’m on a roll.”

“You’re a regular Hank Williams,” Slim said as he picked up the coffeepot and started kicking dirt on the fire. “Let’s hit the road.”

“Fine by me.” Howdy dumped the rest of his coffee on the coals, then went to the truck, rolled up his sleeping bag, slammed the gate. Then he said, “All right, what’s the plan?”

Slim paused. “Don’t really have one,” he admitted. “Nothing specific, anyway.”

Howdy nodded. “I don’t guess either one of us has any specifics,” he said. “But generally speaking, I know you got a plan of some sort.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, you drove across Texas to get your guitar,” Howdy said. “Not only that, but you knew you’d have to deal with that lunatic when you got there and that didn’t stop you. Then you sold your car, instead of the instrument, so I’m guessing that means something.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re not aiming to be a doctor or a lawyer or the manager of a Waffle House,” Howdy said. “Like you want to be a singer, songwriter, picker, something. Stop me if I’m way off track here, but it seems clear enough that neither one of us wants to spend the rest of our days hanging Sheetrock or pouring concrete.”

“Nothing wrong with those jobs,” Slim said, like he was a little insulted by the comment. “I’ve done ’em both.”

“Hell, me too,” Howdy said. “That’s how I know I don’t wanna spend my life doing it. Hell, I can ride, rope, hammer, and paint with the best of ’em, but I know I’d rather earn a living with my music. I’d rather call a honky-tonk my office and have my workday start at night.” Howdy seemed to startle himself with that little nugget. He pulled out his pad again and wrote it down. “‘Call . . . a honky . . . tonk . . . office . . . work . . . day . . . start . . . at . . . night.’” He stabbed the page with the pencil.

He looked at Slim, wagging the notebook as he said, “Ain’t nobody gonna be discovered while nailing shingles on somebody’s roof. You gotta get out there,” he said with a sweeping gesture at the rest of America. “You gotta get out there and do your thing. Put your stuff out on the front porch where folks can see it. Get up on a stage somewhere and sing, show ’em what you can do. Tell ’em what’s in your heart. Then you at least got a chance.”

Howdy shook his head a little and reset his voice before continuing his sermon. “I got this buddy back home, plays guitar, says he wants to make records. But he won’t quit his day job, won’t take that chance, won’t put himself on the line. Refuses to gamble with his life. Just gonna play it safe. I guess he expects somebody’s somehow gonna hear how good he is and come knockin’ on his front door, offerin’ him a record contract, I don’t know. But my point is, that’s why I was going to sell my truck instead of my guitar, same as you. Next thing, if I have to, I’ll sell that saddle of mine, but I’m keeping the Gibson. I’ll busk on the sidewalk for change until somebody hires me to play indoors, but at least I’m gonna get out there and see if I can’t make it happen. You know? Can’t be waitin’ for somebody to do it for you.”

Slim stared at Howdy for a moment waiting to see if he was through talking. Then he said, “You ain’t got to the plan part yet, have you? Or did I miss it?”

Howdy smiled and said, “I know a guy in Fort Worth. Heard he might be lookin’ for a singer or two.” He turned to head for the driver’s side.

Slim stopped him, held out his hand for the keys. “My turn to drive.”