Bobcat's Summer of Wonders(1.4): Ode to a Two-Dollar Assassin.

Crystal came drifting around the house like a stray thought on a spring day; but it was the hell of summer, such as it was, and she was less pleasant than a daydream by far.

"Smells like something dead somewhere around" said Crystal, staring at Thomas's work on the porch.

"I think a snake was in that horsebarn over yonder", I said.

Crystal didn't care, cold-hearted little appliance that she was, a machine built for devilment; if it didn't evaporate life, she wasn't too concerned about it, I suppose, not evaporating life into a sour little tepid puddle in which which she could rinse her feet like girls in the old days.

There was that WOOSH again, of a car on the road.

"Imma have a little talk with Geffen" said Oxcart, which I thought to be some kind of stupid threat towards me for going to see my own mother.  I didn't brook kind on that, but I did not spark to it because I did not feel like getting in an argument with the man in front of everybody.

A police cruiser came around the end of the trailer, and I could see Mike's placid face in the backseat.  The cop driving was a familiar, one we had seen a lot around the town nearby, one that pretty much everybody knew.

"AAAAAY!" said Oxcart merrily as the cop opened his car door.

"Hey there old man" said the cop, climbing out of the car.

"What you got there?" said Oxcart smiling.  "What Mike done did?"  There was an implicit threat in that, Oxcart being the official landlord of Mike, and with the implication of proper conduct, with him somehow hiding his own protocols in the rental agreement; Mike did not act right, he could be out of a place to live, at Oxcart's discretion, his own judgement of right and wrong--whatever that might entail.

Like someone talking to my mother might piss him off.

"Listen to me, Ox" said the cop, a shadow coming over his face.  "He got assaulted.  Minding his own business, and assaulted.  They ain't sure if it was a man or woman: they seen him, but it was a kind of weird built person with short hair.  Hit him in the head, and while he was out of it, she or it put a rag in his fuel filler and lit it.  Saving grace, it fell out to the ground and made his left rear tire explode."

Thomas laughed heartily, a devil sound, and Crystal was smiling the smile of a butcher getting a load of dead meat.  Maybe they were all secretly assassins I thought.

"When the tire blew up, it popped like a gunshot" said the cop.  "So everybody ran away and a few of them called us."

"Well I be dogged" said Oxcart. Looking from the cop, to the rear of the car where mike sat, staring out.  "Where this happened at?"

"Bojangles" said the cop.  "He said he was there getting tea.  He keeps saying the girl was someone he knew from back in High Point, some old girl with some kind of history with him.  He don't have a what why or how.  Just says she did it.  Incidentally, he has a gallon jug of Bojangles Sweat Tea."

"Hm" said Crystal.

"Yall help him out of the car, so he can go rest" said the cop.  Thomas and me moved forward, knowing the car door couldn't be opened from the inside: a cop door for arrested people, and we grabbed and offered hands to the injured Mike.

Mike groaned and moaned as we helped him by his upper arms, moaning and groaning, and swatch of gauze around his head, he spat out: "F*CKING WHORE!".

"The boy's impressionable" said Thomas, flatly.

Crystal smiled, and looked Mike head to toe, like she was surveying him for something, smiled so big, it was like she just pooped in her own diaper and felt so good she couldn't and wouldn't dare hide the pleasant feeling of relief.

"Confused, Mike?" she said.  Then giggled lightly when he glanced over at her, us at his flanks, me and Thomas, that is, about to help lift him up his own rear stoop.  Mike did not say anything to that, and I suppose he either did not care, or did not know what it meant, but either way, he said nothing, but moaned and groaned from deep down.

He was inside of the house for about a minute, on his own suddenly, and we were all in silence when Mike yelled, probably at the top of his lungs, "GODDAMMIT, THAT...... B*TCH!".  

And for the life of me, I knew they would send me to find out what this problem was, and I of course, did not want to do it.  Just a point of fact, that they would not let me see my own mother, but would urge me to go in Mike's house to check on him.

I think I felt like Mike felt about the whole thing.