Free Ranchero by Rick Gavin

decent and proper and seemly. He gave the impression of being civilized there at the dining table until he pulled out his pack of generic cigarettes and shook one out for Pearl.
    “Take it outside,” I told him, and he looked at me stricken and shocked that there could be a place where a fellow couldn’t light up at the table and then crush his butt out on the dab of casserole he’d left.
    “Out,” I said.
    Luther decided instead he’d be better off helping Pearl clear.
    Pearl and Luther eventually went back to pilfering through Gil’s wardrobe while me and Desmond and Angie stayed at the table and drank weak coffee.
    “Did Pearl tell you about Gil’s car?” I asked.
    “What car?”
    We all walked outside to the car shed, and I opened the doors on the empty bay. Angie looked a little shocked to see the state of it. Not that it was empty but that it was tidy and all but antiseptic.
    “Wow,” she said. “I don’t guess Pearl was ever in here.”
    “Gil had a Ranchero,” I told her. That was news to Angie. “Must have been his baby. It was all buttoned up in here.”
    “Where’d it go?”
    I told her the whole story. I didn’t polish it up, and I just laid it out like it happened, even the parts that made me look foolish and irredeemably rash.
    The nut of it was that I’d made a binding pledge to Pearl to bring Gil’s Ranchero back just like I’d driven it away, and I explained to Angie how it didn’t matter if Pearl wanted it back or not and if it ever left the car shed bay again. The point was I’d sworn an oath, and I intended to fulfill it.
    Angie turned to Desmond and asked him, “Is he always like this?”
    Desmond nodded, told her, “Pretty much.”
    “Might take a few days,” I told her.
    “Okay,” was all she said.
    Just then Luther popped out of the house in a pair of Gil’s immaculate coveralls, which he was wearing under a double-breasted suit coat. The shoes he had on now had taps on the toes as well as the heels.
    “Gil tapped?” I asked Angie.
    Angie shrugged. “Didn’t know that, either.”
    Pearl followed Luther out. She looked about as pleased as I’d ever seen her. Luther’s enthusiasm at getting something for nothing was serving as an elixir for Pearl. Of course I couldn’t help but wonder how Gil was making out in the churchyard by now, if he was only rotating or had achieved full Mach 2 spin.
    “Did you tell him about the officer?” Pearl asked her niece.
    “The one you hit,” Angie said to me. “Dale?”
    I nodded.
    “He came by a couple of hours ago looking for you.”
    “Just him?”
    She nodded.
    “How was he?”
    “His head was all wrapped up. Otherwise, just big and dumb.”
    Luther had gotten busy putting on his own spontaneous fashion show. He was twirling around in the driveway, raising clatter with his taps. He kept inviting us to admire his suit coat and the way it draped and hung.
    “Tell you the truth,” Luther said while picking a speck of lint off of his sleeve, “I wouldn’t ordinarily much like getting snatched and hauled up here. Where the hell are we, anyway?”
    “Indianola,” Pearl informed him.
    “But I’ve got to say,” Luther went on, “this thing is sort of working out.”

NINE
     
    I can’t say I had a legitimate plan, but I did have an idea. Pearl dug up a couple of pairs of scissors, and I left Desmond and Luther in her kitchen cutting dollar-bill-sized sheets out of her accumulated newspapers. Luther had gotten into Gil’s dress hats by then and was wearing a Dobbs fedora, the kind with the jaunty feather in the band that made the work seem festive and gay.
    For my part, I conscripted Angie to drive me to the shopping plaza in her car, just in case Dale and his buddies were out there laying for the Geo. I had her park up between the dollar store and the KFC and wait for me while I walked down to K-Lo’s and slipped up from the rear.
    Everybody who worked for K-Lo knew how to get in the store without the