The Kind One by Tom Epperson

Author:Tom Epperson [Epperson, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-10-14T12:58:03+00:00

Chapter 10

I DREAMT KID McCoy and I were at Custer’s Last Stand. We could see the Indians attacking the soldiers on a grassy hill a couple of hundred yards away, but the Indians hadn’t spotted us yet.

I saw a phone booth. I went in it and tried to call home, but nobody answered. Then I saw some of the Indians leaving the scene of the massacre and riding our way. They were nearly naked and covered in blue paint with yellow, lightning-like zigzags and white spots like hail and they were making terrifying war whoops.

I stepped out of the phone booth. “Run, Kid!” I yelled, and the old champ took off in a scampering, monkey-like fashion as spears and arrows whizzed past and barely missed him. I turned and ran too as the Indians bore down upon me, the grass was up around my knees, it was like running through water, then I woke up. It was ten past ten in the morning.

I sat at the kitchen table in my underwear for a while, brooding over a cup of Folgers; then I called up Wendell Nuffer.

He seemed surprised, but glad, to hear from me. He agreed to meet me at one o’clock for lunch at Jack’s Steak House.

It was on Santa Monica Boulevard, on the corner of Formosa. We sat in a red leather booth, and drank ice-cold martinis while we waited for our steaks.

Nuffer had been a wreck the last time I’d seen him, but today he seemed relaxed and happy.

“You’re looking good, Mr. Nuffer.”

“Why, thank you, kind sir.” He patted his stomach. “I’ve lost some weight, on doctor’s orders. I’ve cut down considerably on my drinking, the present martini notwithstanding. In short, I’m feeling, as they say, ‘in the pink,’ for the first time in many years.”

“Why the change?”

He musingly fingered his martini glass.

“When I came back from Lake Arrowhead, I thought about driving to Pasadena and jumping off Suicide Bridge. But then I decided, to hell with the scandalmongers, Nuffer’s number wasn’t yet up. Now gradually I’ve come to realize it was all for the best. I’d set myself upon a dark and shameful path. I was keeping company with known criminals. I have a wonderful wife and four beautiful children, but I was willing to risk everything for an alluring piece of tail. And I have to tell you I find myself missing Miss Gilbertson not a whit. Well—perhaps a whit.”

He laughed ruefully, and lifted the martini to his lips.

“I plan to leave city government, Danny, in the very near future, and go into some relatively honest line of work—say, graverobbing or safe-cracking. Or have you heard of the Running Board Bandit? He’s an enterprising fellow who jumps on the running boards of cars with women drivers in them and threatens them with a knife and steals their jewelry and purses. I believe this town is big enough for two Running Board Bandits. And I’m sure my doctor would approve; I’d be working all day in the open air and getting plenty of exercise chasing down cars.

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