Wyoming by JP Gritton

Author:JP Gritton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tin House Books
Published: 2019-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

For a second, we just sort of stared at each other. Me and Salvation. And then Salvation said, “Jeez Christ.” He was looking at me where I set upon the bed with a pitying sort of fear in his eye. Then he turned to his brother-in-law.

“Clint,” he said after some time, “did you do that to this man’s face?”

“Wish like hell I had,” said Clint, who I was generally liking less and less the longer I knew him. “You see what this cocksucker did to the room?”

Now Carter kind of looked around. Taking the mess in.

“We shouldn’t let trash like this in here,” Clint went on. “We ain’t that kind of business.”

And I remembered Carter telling me one, two, three times there was no guests allowed. And hadn’t he tried to warn me?

Now with a little nod over his shoulder, Carter Landreau drew the door wide. Off a ways stood his wife. Mrs. Landreau was a round shape, with feathery hair the color of dust, hawky eyes, and yellow hands she brought to her puffed-up bosom.

“Well,” said the woman, kind of sneery, “I guess he didn’t like the cookie.”

Carter Landreau turned to give her half a smile, then trained his eyes on me.

“Mr. Corliss,” he said, “Carlie and I are going to come in, if that’s all right with you.”

I nodded, and he did like he’d said. Now he was closer, I could see his left side was empty, no hook and no mannequin hand, neither, it was just a pale stump past the cut of the white bathrobe he had on. I forgot to mention, him and the missus had on matching bathrobes.

“I’ll clean it up,” I tried to tell them, but the hurt snaked from my chin on up to the back of my head and coiled there. I couldn’t find the words to answer Carter’s wife when she begun to squawk:

“Clean what up? Clean what up?”

And drawing her little claw-hands together, as if to pray the whole world might disappear down some great drain in the sky.

“It’s all right, Mother,” Carter cooed.

“All right my ass,” Clint said.

“It’s all right,” Carter said, his voice firmer now. “Mr. Corliss seems to have had an argument with somebody.”

“You ought to see what he’s done the fucking toilet,” Clint said.

And Carter’s little hen hustled past me where I set on the bed, past where her brother stood beside a row of empty coat hangers, into the bathroom. Oh Lord, she said, when she got there. And Carter followed when she begun to cry like that, and for a solid minute there was nothing but thin air between me and the door.

Most days, I wish I’d just run.

“You know who’s done this, Car?” she shrieked. “That junkie in twenty-two. That’s who done it. I told you, Car, saw ’em talking at the door—”

“Look here what I took off him,” said Clint now, and dug Lij’s Luger out the pocket of his jeans.

“Ain’t mine,” I said. But Carter Landreau must not’ve heard me. He never answered.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.