Bobcat's Summer of Wonders(2.1): A deposit.

I applied my gumption and took it upon my own weakling's shoulders to go see Mike, and on my way out of the house, people were coming in.  First, Crystal had brought a checkerboard and was playing "jump me" with Ard.  They were deep in thought and paid me no mind, which I was fairly used to by the advanced juncture of my own middle age.

Thomas, Geffen and Lisa-Girl were coming in the side door, at the utility alcove in the old house, with the two men each having a hand on a heavy five-gallon bucket past half-full of quarters.  Lisa-Girl had one of those vinyl pouches that the banks give businesses to make money drops with, and she was holding it like it did not mean much to her.  Which it was a side hustle the family had, the Washerette in the old gambling hall near the North Carolina line: some company had built a bunch of poker rooms near the border on every major roadway to the north, then it was all made illegal after the governor that started it bounced-out.

So here we come to swoop-in like the whitebread heroes we are, or well, Momma and Deddy put their money in the place, buying some machines and stuff, folding tables and carts and such and so forth.  And every few days, they bring it a big bucket of quarters from the place and leave that sitting in Momma's icebox cave of horrors that they don't let the others, including me, enter without explicit consent.

At Mike's trailer, he was set back watching cage-fighting: barefoot men with half-gloves on, circling each other.  He was cool and relaxed, and might have been in the throes of some kind of pain medication given to him by the emergency room, but when I asked what had upset him, he leaned forward and his eyes grew wide.

"She left a turd on my floor" he said.

"The hell?" I said.  "Who?  The girl from High Point that attack you?"  He had forget the MMA match and was staring at me; it was crazy, what was in his eyes, like some kind of pure dementia or retardation, like he didn't get enough spring rolls in his Chinese bag or something.

"I know it was her" he said, leaning back, brow furrowed, looking back at the screen.  "No one else would."

"Okay" I said, "well you been okay over here on your own, but we can't have these other people coming around causing a bunch of noise and mischief."  Deddy(Oxcart) had already told him well enough, and maybe, by some quirk of fate, Mike may have read the fine print in his rental agreement.

"I got Rug Doctor at the grocery store" he said, reaching for a can of diet soda that was on his end table.  "Nothing for you all to trouble over.  It's done, like fun is fun and done is done."  One of the barefoot men in the swim trunks on screen missed with a roundhouse kick on the other man, and he toppled over so awkwardly that he was down low enough to put his hand on the mat to steady himself.

"Deddy won't like all that"  I told him, and it was usually the way that the people show their rear ends eventually, any of these people that had rented the house, themselves or their girlfriend or boyfriend.  It was like a dairy section where the stock always stayed long enough to curdle and turn sour, and we would have to toss it out, with usually me and Thomas cleaning up all the mess, the pet droppings and piss stains in the carpeting and all.  Crayon marks on the walls.  Some had even punched holes in the walls, times past.  "What is that woman mad about anyway?  What the heck did you do to her?"

"Well, Bobcat" said Mike, a trace of a smile.  "She was more mad about what I wouldn't do, than I would do."  The men on the screen were stumbling to their corners of the ring, one with a blood trail coming from the big bone over his eye.

I laughed, and I couldn't help it: that same breath laugh, exhalation.  It wasn't happy or surprised, really, but kind of a punctuation mark I threw out on different remarks.

"To her."

"That's tough luck, Ralph" I told him, not believing what he said, and frankly not much caring as long as the person from High Point didn't come at me looking for trouble.

"FOR HER" he said, a bit loud for such a quite room.

"You might have to go through with something before all is said and done" I told him, still not much caring, "to rectify the matter."

"I reckon it'd be better off if I moved to Afghanistan or somewheres where Nickey can't find me and bugger me" he said.

"Well those people already have enough to worry about, Mike" I said, smiling.