THUGLIT Issue Seven Read Free Page A

dumb ole redneck mind on the job?"
    It was the job what made me say he was crazy in the first place. Poke ran numbers a lot and sometimes I 'd knock a place off and he did too, but we wouldn't ever do a robbery together on account of there weren't a whole lot of mixed teams running around town in those days and everybody would know it was us who done it. Of course, he wasn't talking about knocking off any five-and-dime or anything like that. Poke wanted to do a smash and grab on Porky Valentine. Like I said: crazy.
    Here 's how come it was crazy, what Poke wanted to do. First of all, Porky Valentine was a big sonofabitch. He had him this great big belly hung over his waist like a bag full of lard, and that's how he came by the name, but his arms was like a couple of oaks made out of meat. Whenever I laid eyes on the man, I always thought how little I'd like to be on the wrong end of a beating from a big sonofabitch like that. And I got punched around all the time.
    Another reason it was crazy to fuck with Porky was the guy was connected. We wasn 't in any kind of town in those days, it wasn't hardly anything more than a bump in the road like most towns in Arkansas, but the way I saw it everyplace had connected guys. Somebody had to be in charge, and it wasn't usually the city council—if there even was one. In our town, it was Porky Valentine. Anybody was involved in something not exactly legal, he probably had a finger in it, and you probably owed him a cut if you didn't want your fingers broke. Never mind the fella was colored like Poke—guy like that can be purple with yellow polka dots and nobody's gonna say boo about it who don't want to sink to the bottom of the Arkansas River. That man got his respect. And Christ knew, taking anything away from him wasn't really all that respectful in most folks' eyes.
    The third and last reason I thought Poke was maybe getting touched in the head was on account of what it was he wanted to take. There was this little storefront in the one-block strip of shit we called downtown, and in the back of it was where Porky did business. Far as I knew, he just set in there all day long smoking menthol cigarettes and playing cards and counting his goddamn money. I never went back there before , but most anybody reckoned he probably had a few thousand cash in a safe or something at any time. Poke didn't want to go in looking for no safe.
    Poke wanted to take Porky Valentine 's fucking leg.
    " Ain't hardly nobody knows about it," he said, leaning in close so it was just between us. "I'm tellin' you, that motherfucker got a wooden leg."
    I thought maybe that 's the kind of thing you'd hear about—and I never heard it—but I put that away because I still couldn't understand why the hell anybody would want to jack a man's wooden leg.
    " Probably he's embarrassed, like that," I said. "You take it off him everybody's gonna know. Then Porky gets mad and you get dead. What's the percentage in that, Poke?"
    " See, I don't think it's secret 'cause he's embarrassed. Shoot, I seen that fat bastard act a fool with the whole world watching—this one time he ate enough crawdads down at Billy's place on the crick to feed ten dudes, then he got so drunk he shit his pants. Did anybody make a fuss or laugh at him? Hell, no. Porky can do whatever he want, because ain't nobody gonna fuss. Not ever."
    I tried to imagine a four hundred pound man shitting his drawers in front of God and everyone, but it almost turned me off my whiskey so I didn 't like that. Instead I fired up one of Poke's little cigarillos and blew smoke and it made the booze taste a little better. Still hurt my lip, though.
    " How come you know anything about his pegleg anyhow?" I asked after a bit.
    He said, "Same as I know there ain't no safe back of that shop he always sets in. This brother goes by Spaceman…"
    " Short fella? Got them…whatcha call it?" I mimed the way Spaceman's hair looked, which was all braided and tight on the skull.
    "