Free Payback by Sam Stewart Page A

appeared startled. “Plans? About what?”
    â€œWhat you’ll do when you’re at home.”
    â€œSweet Jesus but you are the little thinker though, aren’t you. Plans. I don’t plan. I’m going back to war again just the way you are. If I live seven days then I’ll think about a plan.”
    â€œI was thinking of Lauderdale.”
    â€œOh,” Mack said. “Her. Dumb cunt. Thing in her favor, she provides a lot of excellent Tiajuana weed. Now she’s a little planner. Got a plan we’ll get married. Got a father with a fortune so of course the guy’s saving her for something very cool. So of course little Ginger wants something very hot, or let’s say controversial—a no-name bastard with the future of a bum and wouldn’t that fix daddy. So of course he has a perfectly predictable reaction, turns purple, grabs his chest. He’s concerned—are you ready?—he’s concerned about the gene pool. He says to her, ‘You don’t know what’s in there,’ he says. So I tell her you can tell him it’s a three-to-one shot that what’s in there is a junkie hooker and a john. Lusty copulations under pink-shaded lamps. Highly degenerative venereal disease. Psychopathic catatonia. Hereditary mumps.”
    â€œRight.—Won him over in an instant there, did you?”
    â€œYeah. Okay. So fuck him,” Mack said. He looked over at the street.
    They were silent for a time. Catlin lit a cigarette and squinted at a couple of hookers on the hoof. “You ever think of going up to Canada?” he said.
    â€œAlmost every morning.”
    â€œRight. I mean—”
    â€œNo. I figured this was part of my karma,” Mack said. “Did you?”
    â€œNot a chance. I was too fucking stupid. I figured I was stuck, I’d get it over with or something. I don’t know,” Catlin said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
    â€œOr maybe you were thinking it was some kind of game,” Mack said. “Our team and theirs. Halftime, you get a buncha titties with pom-poms.”
    â€œNo,” Catlin told him.
    â€œWell, that was me then. Me, I was gonna be the captain of the team.”
    â€œNo, I just thought it was …” Catlin shook his head again. “Long dull story. Short of it’s I hit sixteen and the road. My old man and I came to partings of the ways, I imagine you could call it. We parted with my finger on the trigger of a rifle and I’m just about to kill him. No shit. It was close. So anyway, I’m gone. I’ve been gone a few years except daddy knows exactly where to forward my mail.”
    â€œSo he forwarded the Greetings.”
    â€œThat’s what he did.”
    â€œDear son, drop dead.”
    â€œYeah, that was daddy. I mean he wasn’t even into ‘patriotic duty’ or ‘make a big man of you,’ he just wanted blood. Vengeance for something.”
    â€œWell,” Mack yawned. “What the hell. That’s what war’s about anyway, isn’t it? Old men at desks getting pissy cuz they can’t get it up like they used to. They want to get even. Make certain that youth is getting wasted on the young. Or that youth is just wasted. Period. Christ. It’s like some kind of second childhood they go through. They play tin soldiers and the soldiers is us.” He leaned back slowly and yawned again.
    The waiter came back with the check.
    Catlin said suddenly, “So how do you do it?”
    â€œDo what?”
    â€œWhat you do.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Mack said. “Play the good tin soldier? Why? You think I play it any easier than you?”
    Catlin felt dumb but he eventually nodded.
    â€œOh Christ,” Mack laughed. “You want the secret of life. You want to be the sorcerer’s apprentice, that it?” He laughed a bad laugh again and pushed back his chair. “Okay.” He tossed a clump