Scuffletown by Howard Owen

Author:Howard Owen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579625818
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Published: 2019-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

LAST NIGHT’S second excursion to Trott’s place proved to be at least marginally rewarding.

The Jeff Davis Highway seems to specialize in all things automotive. You have the used-car dealers, the guys selling new and used tires, and, to help separate you from that clunker you bought from the aforementioned dealer, you have the car-title loan guys, who specialize in helping the gullible and desperate make a bad situation worse. You don’t have to worry about the car breaking down when you don’t have a car anymore.

I thought I’d mentally marked the location, but somehow I overshot the entrance to the trailer park the first time and almost missed it coming back. No blue lights to guide me to it this time. Insufficient illumination and a light rain didn’t help, and my fifty-seven-year-old eyes aren’t what they used to be.

I managed to find Jovani Trott’s trailer again, aided by the Keep Off The Grass sign I’d noticed on my earlier visit, planted in the middle of a patch of land as devoid of greenery as a sand pit.

I parked on the side of the gravel path leading to Trott’s place, getting as far off the nameless little street as I could. Dogs were barking all around me. I hoped they were either chained to a tree or locked up inside.

When I knocked this time, Trott answered.

“Yeah,” he greeted me before I could introduce myself. “What the fuck do you want?”

Trott looked to be about forty years old, although it was kind of hard to tell, with the do-rag covering his head and the sunglasses he was wearing to shield his eyes from the searing light of the sixty-watt bulb overhead. He looked like he’d had a hard life. He also looked like a guy who expected trouble when he answered his front door, especially if his visitor appeared to be at least marginally Caucasian. He had on a clean white T-shirt and jeans, but I could see that his fingernails were dirty from whatever scut work he was able to pick up earlier in the day.

I explained, as quickly as I could, that I was the guy who left the note earlier.

“I’m just trying to find out more about your late brother,” I told Trott, who scratched himself while he thought and then surprised me by opening the flimsy-ass door wide enough for me to come inside out of the rain.

“He don’t owe you nothing, does he?” my host asked me. “I ain’t responsible for that boy’s debts, I tell you that.”

I assured Trott that I was not a bill collector, in addition to not being a cop. I told him I was a reporter, and that didn’t exactly set his mind at ease.

“You ain’t gonna write nothing about me in the paper, are you?”

I told him that, no, I was not here to make him famous.

“His momma, she’d just as soon forget all this mess,” he said.

He seemed hesitant about continuing our conversation, but then he shrugged and said he’d tell me what he could.

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