Free Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell

secret up to about mid-thigh. She laughed some more, looking at the poses those girls on the screen slung at me. They easily had me convinced as to what I needed and drooling for it.
    “Poor Sammy,” Bev said. Her smile worked great, really hung out an invitation. “I know you have you some dirty hopes, hon, but I want you to understand that I’m not encouraging you when I smile.”

9
    That’ll Make Five
    IT’S AROUND THREE in the afternoon, or close to it, when Rod drops by. I heard his truck out front, heard the pistons sigh when he killed the engine. A door went thunk and I looked outside and he had Biscuit leaping high to lick his face, which had a mustache, the bandito style.
    Rod wore a T-shirt that claimed him for REO Speed-wagon. He displayed the exact look of Classic Rock: large showy belt buckle, tight torn jeans, long black hair hanging from the spots where he hadn’t gone bald. You looked at him and you could just almost hear bigheaded guitar riffs and a cheesy drum solo and an FM disc jockey waxing heavy about those olden times.
    “Who’re you?”
    “I’m Sammy. I been stayin’ here.”
    “Are you in the air force, army, one of those?”
    “Naw.”
    “That haircut.”
    “It’s fresh—just got it.”
    “Jason?”
    “I really like it.”
    “Good. Good.”
    His truck was a pickup, a Dodge that’d been thumped around plenty and not washed much. The color used to be yellow but had gotten to be adorned with a patchwork of black and gray primer sprayed over repair spots. A large orange ice chest and some rusty logging chains lay in the bed.

    “Now, who the fuck are you again?”
     
    ROD HAD BEEN called home by a legal problem. He had ninety days reserved for him in the Howl County Jail.
    Him, me, Jam, Jason sat around in the kitchen, me and him knocking down a jug of bourbon and a twelve-pack of brew. Rod figured to dive drunk into the time he had to do, which began after supper.
    Once he heard I was from Arkansas we started to trade jokes to each other, all those wheezing old jokes based on what state you came from, except I told them on my own state and Rod did the same. It got to be like we had a contest to see who could run their home state down the furthest the fastest.
    “Then the Missourian says, ‘It ain’t the mule’s legs that’s too long, it’s his ears.’ ”
    “She says, ‘Doctor, I can’t seem to use the Pill; every time I stand up, it just falls right back out.’ ”
    “Then the Missourian studies the scrawl of yellow snow and says, ‘Don’t you think I recognize my own daughter’s handwriting?’ ”
    “He says, ‘I’ve got a case of diarrhea,’ and the other old Arkansawyer says, ‘Well, put it on ice, I’ll be over to help you drink it later.’ ”
    “It wasn’t his legs was too long, it was . . .”
    We killed time talking that way, testing each other, adding the refreshments to our bloodstreams. Jamalee and Jason hardly said a word except about the welfare checks, the weather, the problem in the bathroom plumbing and so forth. They only barely tolerated Rod in his own house.
    “I’ll leave my truck parked here,” Rod said, at about the time when the evening TV news comes on. “Since it’s my place and all.” He fell sideways from his chair, grabbed my
shoulder, pulled me toward the door. “There’s somethin’ I need to show you, bud.”
    He took me to his truck. Biscuit slept underneath in the shade behind a tire. That evening heat hung around and made sure nobody enjoyed the outdoors too much. Some old boy across the road and down a few houses kept up a racket trying to cut the grass of his entire yard with a Weedwacker. He stopped and dragged an ice chest along behind him after every five or six paces of whacking. His woman stood on the porch glaring with two crumb snatchers trying to shinny up her legs. He drank fast in the heat and tossed the empties into the road and dragged that ice chest and made his noise.
    “I need you to hold