Free PIKE by Benjamin Whitmer Page A

family puther up to it. Bunch of backwards hillbilly motherfuckers. They don’t like me being with her neither, saying I ain’t good enough. Ain’t that some shit? Bunch of shitass rednecks straight out of the hollow like some kind of apes crawling out of the mud. And I ain’t good enough.”
    “Hard to see what they might have against you,” Pike says.
    “Fuck you. Anyway, one of them cocksuckers, her brother, came up on me, started talking shit about this and that and how I wasn’t fit for his sister. Pissed me off, so I knocked about half his teeth out with a length of pipe. She got all salty over it. Said me being around wasn’t good for the kids. I ain’t seen none of them for almost a month.” His eyes water and he puts his hand up to them. “Shit,” he says. “I hate crying in front of motherfuckers.”
    “How many kids you got?” Rory asks.
    “Two. Girls. I’m telling you, I can’t live without them. When I’m asleep I’m dreaming about them. When I’m awake I get no rest.”
    “Get a job,” Pike says. “Clean up.”
    Bogie shakes his head mournfully. “I got habits, man. There ain’t no getting away from it. I can only be what I am. If I could be something else I would.”
    “Well, it’s a hard row to hoe,” Rory says.
    “It is that. Sixty miles through rock, forty more through sand.”
    “Whyn’t you two shut the fuck up before I start crying?” Pike says.
    Bogie clutches his stomach and farts loudly, filling the cab with a sick rumble. “I been drinking beer all day. I need food,” he whines.
    Rory sticks his whole head out the window, his Adam’s apple spasming. Pike brakes the truck at a cross street. “Which way?”
    “Left. Then take a right at the light. Dana’s old lady lives over in Hyde Park, we got a ways to go.” Bogie’s stomach makes a sound like a bull elephant being garroted. “I was so hungry once I ate a robin.” He farts again. “Oh Jesus.”
    “Please stop,” Rory croaks.
    Pike wheels the truck into a restaurant parking lot. The building’s whitewashed and stained all over with black snow-water and dirt. The sign says Bar & Grill, nothing else. “One burger,” Pike says. “But I swear to God, if you fart one more time I’ll beat you to death with my bare hands.”

CHAPTER 26
~ Like I ain’t fit to eat with normal folks?~
    T he door rings open into a dark, dingy, windowless room with no grill to be seen. Nor customers. Behind the bar, a bone-thin, balding and bespectacled bartender in a Motley Crue T-shirt watches them. “You got any food?” Pike says.
    “We got food.” He nods at a door at the back of the bar. “Got three Mexicans in the kitchen.”
    “We don’t eat Mexicans.”
    The bartender looks at him. “They do the cooking. That’s what I meant.”
    “Well, give me three burgers. And some fries. Can I get it to go?”
    The bartender’s writing his order down. He looks up. “Sure.”
    Pike turns to Rory. “Take this little fucker to the bathroom and don’t let him out until he’s clean.”
    “I’m right here,” Bogie says. “You ain’t got to talk about me in the third person. Motherfucker.”
    Rory grips him by the back of his neck and shoves him down the bar towards the sign at the back of the bar. “Them bathrooms are for customers only,” the bartender says in a creaky voice, peering at Pike over his hooknose, his eyes watery behind his glasses.
    Pike drops a bill on the counter. “One of the burgers is his.”
    The bartender purses his lips and picks up the bill. “I’ll tell the Mexicans to get on your order.”
    “Fine. You got a payphone?”
    The bartender returns Pike’s change, his lips squirming like night-crawlers in the hot sun. “Outside the front door.”
    Pike steps outside and stands in front of the pay phone. He stands for a minute, lighting a cigarette and watching traffic waffle throughthe dirty snow. Then he rolls his shoulders and grins a lean grin, the cigarette smoke playing in the winter