Scare Tactics Read Free

more tequila, and wondered how his heart could stand up under the strain. Some of the tequila dribbled into the ruff of his coarse beard. “But surely,” I said, “others have told you that.”
    “No. Not another living soul but you has read a word of my book. I moved to San Augustin because—I knew that you were here.”
    Rather than watch him suffer through more agonies of gratitude, I turned again to his worktable, noticing a copy of Tug of War atop a pile of badly worn paperback dictionaries. I picked up the book, which obviously he’d rescued from a stall in a secondhand store. Just inside the cover was a recent clipping from the local newspaper, my photo accompanying an announcement of the summer writers’ workshop I had established on campus.
    By now the odor of violets was all but gone from the room; I could smell his trickling toilet in one corner, and the sordidness of the casita became oppressive to me. Obviously before David Hallowell settled in, the casita. had served as lodging for numerous wetbacks. Chickens quarreled in the yard; a child wailed.
    “How long have you been living here?” I asked him.
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. Three months? Closer to four.”
    “And where is your home? I believe you mentioned Alabama.”
    “Eufaula, Alabama. That was a vereh long time ago. I haven’t been back since—” It was an effort, or an ordeal, for him to recall. “Anyway,” he said quietly, “there’s no reason for me to go back. Everyone dear to me has long since passed to his or her reward.”
    “You have no family?” He shook his head. “Oh, I’m very sorry, David.”
    “An insufficiency of the genes, I’m afraid. No Hallowell or Radburne was ever celebrated for longevity.” He clutched his blanket more tightly around him, smiling wanly at his expected fate. Then he looked at me with the sweet, devoted expression of a setter dog. When it was I who should have been wagging my tail at him.
    “You will be celebrated,” I assured David Hallowell, “beyond your wildest dreams. Leave that to me.”
    “Thank you,” he said. “My friend.”
    I was braced for tears again; but the Mexican woman came to the door of the casita with a little tray: she had brought tea, some sugared oatmeal in a bowl. I took the tray from her. She look worried.
    “Eat nothing,” she said. “Many days, no comidas. ”
    “I’ll see that he has some of the oatmeal. Muchas gracias .”
    David was willing to be fed. But after a few gummy spoonfuls and half a cup of dark, aromatic tea he could manage no more. He lay down wearily, eyes closing.
    “I’ll sleep for a few hours,” he said. “Until my muse shows up.”
    “Do you have much more to go?”
    “It’s almost done,” he murmured.
    “With your permission, David, I’ll take these pages you’ve completed.” I hesitated. “You have a copy of the manuscript, of course.”
    “No. Couldn’t afford to make copies.”
    “Well, then. I’ll see to it. And I’ll be back tomorrow.” He thanked me, coughed, pressed a fist to his mouth, and drifted off to sleep that way. I let myself out and all but ran to my car.
    I read the twenty new pages then and there, in an excruciating state of excitement. They were excellent. The wasting of his body and quantities of tequila had not in the least diminished his art. He was Faulknerian in his prodigality. Oh, a word might be changed here and there, a redundancy deleted. Nothing more.
    For the next four days I arrived promptly at noon. I had forsaken pride and borrowed a hundred dollars from a faculty colleague with whom I had had an affair and who still entertained some hope the affair might be renewed, although she was one of those women for whom the sexual act seems to have the caloric input of a two-pound German chocolate cake: she had put on forty pounds through trysting. I purchased cough remedies which had only a temporary flagging effect on David’s consuming cough, more tequila, painkillers. And many legal