Running Loose by Chris Crutcher

Author:Chris Crutcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1983-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Most people around Trout who drive pickups—which is most people around Trout—have gun racks behind the seat, and the bulk of those racks have loaded guns in them. I guess a lot of people around here like to kill things. You get a lot of “accidents” due to that. You’d be surprised at the number of times, just in my lifetime, that two guys who didn’t particularly care for each other went out deer hunting and only one came back. Pleading “I thought he was a deer” around here is a lot like pleading “temporary insanity” in other places. And every once in a while one of those guns will “accidentally” go off during cleaning and kill some guy who’s been sleeping with the gun cleaner’s wife. Guys clean their guns in the strangest places.

Anyway, I’ve got a gun rack in my Chevy, too, but I don’t carry a gun in it. Guns scare me. I carry a huge pepperoni I got down at Smoky Joe’s just outside Boise. Had it custom-made. If I’m ever caught in a blizzard, I may freeze to death, but I sure as hell won’t starve. It would take me three years to eat that thing. I’ve had it almost eight months, and though it’s getting pretty hard, it’s still good. Smoky Joe said it would live longer than I would.

Once it almost got me beat up. Guess who. Right. Boomer asked me why I had it, and when I explained it was my survival kit, he said bullshit, it was because I was too yellow to carry a gun, that I was always doing stupid things to cover up what a wussy I was. When I told him the sheriff made me check my shootin’ iron at the jail when I came into this tinhorn town, he came after me. Did I say the guy’s got no sense of humor? Luckily Carter was around.

Later Carter told me we might have to load up my pepperoni one of these days and hunt that bastard down like a dirty dog. There’ve been times when that didn’t sound like such a bad idea, but it’s so big I’d be afraid to shoot it.

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.