Leather Maiden Read Free Page B

hadn’t seen them in a while, and I was working up to the moment.
    Then there was Booger. I don’t know why I thought of him. I was trying to get rid of him, lose all the old connections from the war. But I knew he’d like to hear how I had turned out, even if he did think it was kind of a weird job for a grown man, writing for a newspaper. Booger thought man had been put on earth to find out if he was ruler or slave, and to eat meat, especially anything chicken-fried. He liked women too, but they came third in his business plan, and then there was nothing romantic about it to him. It was all just a service.
    It was Gabby I really wanted to call. And not about the job, either. I just wanted to hear her voice. I drove by the veterinarian office. Her car was there. The same one she had owned when I left for Afghanistan. There were two other cars and a pickup. A big black mixed-breed dog was in a cage in the back of the truck, and a lady who looked as if she might wrestle alligators for a living was letting the dog out, placing a leash around its neck.
    As I drove on, I looked back in the side mirror. The door to the office opened and the alligator wrestler and the dog started through it. I thought I got a glimpse of Gabby, but the truth of the matter is, it was so quick, and I was out of sight so soon, I couldn’t be sure. It could have been a dancing bear or a nude man carrying a slide trombone. It could have been anyone.

4
    I drove over to Mom and Dad’s house, parked at the curb, sat in the car and looked at the place. There was a new, white wooden plank fence between their house and the next-door neighbor’s house. It was straight and freshly painted, so I knew it was my dad who had put it up. The vines that ran up twine runners all along the fence I recognized as my mother’s work. The sun-yellowed grass that was ankle-high in the next-door neighbor’s yard was all the work of nature.
    When I lived at home, there wasn’t a house next door. Just an empty lot with a couple of big elms, one of which grew next to the fence and extended boughs into Mom and Dad’s yard, splashing shadow onto the roof.
    When I got out of the car with my suitcase, I locked the car doors and walked up in the yard. A small voice from over the fence and from the boughs of the elm called down to me.
    â€œYou don’t live here.”
    I turned and looked up. There was a little platform tree house up there in the elm, hidden behind smaller limbs and lots of leaves, and on the platform was a little girl about nine or ten with blond pigtails, wearing a sloppy T-shirt and blue jean shorts and no shoes. She was cute in a rawboned sort of way, would probably grow up and fill out her features and be quite beautiful. She sat on the edge of the platform and let her feet dangle. She had a lot of tomboy bruises and scratches on her legs, a couple of scabs.
    I smiled up at her, said, “I used to live here. Long ago when I was your age.”
    â€œAre you Mr. Statler’s little boy?”
    â€œI was once. I mean, I’m still his boy, but I’m not so little.”
    â€œYou’re big. Are you six foot tall?”
    â€œSix-two if I have on good shoes and I hold my shoulders straight.”
    â€œWhy do you wear your hair so long?”
    â€œBecause for a long time I had to wear it real short.”
    â€œOh. Did you know your daddy beat my daddy up?”
    I took a moment to regroup. “And why was that?”
    â€œHe wasn’t really my daddy. I was just supposed to call him that. He drank. He hit my mama and run her out in the yard with the leg off a chair, and your daddy knocked the shit out of him.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t talk like that.”
    â€œThat’s what your daddy did. Daddy Greg, that’s what I called my daddy your daddy beat up. Daddy Greg messed himself and me and Mama could smell it standing out in the yard. It run down one of his pants legs. Mama thought