Free Dirty Work by Larry Brown Page A

asked me if I was fixing to walk back home. I said yeah, but I was thinking about opening me one of those beers before I started, though. If she didn’t care. She said naw, she didn’t care. So I got me one. Then I asked her if she wanted one. She said she wasn’t supposed to drink on duty. I told her she wasn’t supposed to sell me the shit, either. I tried to give her one twice. She wouldn’t take one, though. Went back there and got her a Miller out of the cooler. I thought about getting me some chicken, but hell, they’d cooked it about dinnertime you could tell. It had flies on it and all. I decided I didn’t want any chicken.
    “So hell she came on back up there and sat down and opened her beer and lit her a cigarette and told me her name was Beth. I mean it was getting cozy all of a sudden and I couldn’t understand why. And then guess what she does? Starts asking me about going over there. Hell. You don’t want to talk about that shit unless it’s with somebody who was over there. I didn’t want to talk about it. Told her I didn’t want to.
    “So she asked me if I knew why I scared her so bad. She reached under the counter and pulled out a dinner plate loaded with sensimilla, about a lid. She’d been cleaningit. Asked me if I wanted to get high. I said
Hell
yeah. So she rolled one up right quick. It was as tight as a Marlboro. And I mean rolled it in like nothing flat. She said we just needed to go outside and smoke it. So I followed her out back there and we lit it up. We sat on this old drink cooler out there. I knew it was bad shit when I first hit it. I got fucked up almost immediately. It was the best I’d had in a while and I just kept smoking it. I think that’s what messed me up. I’ve noticed that it happens more often when I’ve been smoking a lot. So I try not to do it all the time. We smoked the whole thing, though. I couldn’t hardly talk. I got to looking at her again. And she didn’t care, man. She was sweet.
    “We finally went on back inside. Got our beers. I gave her some Visine for the redeye. I was ready for the movie then. I knew it would take me all night to walk back home, just from everything slowing down. I got to thinking about how heavy those two six-packs of beer were gonna get. But, hell, I had to go. So I told her I was fixing to. She asked me what I’s gonna do. I told her just go home and watch a movie. And I don’t even know what in the hell we said. But the next thing I knew she’d done locked the store up and we were out in her car. I remember taking a drink or two of beer. And then the next thing I knew I was waking up.”

H e hushed for a while. Turned his head away. I closed my eyes. I wanted to have a dream about Jesus and I had it. Had part of it and made up part of it. I’ve seen Jesus. He just looks like you and me. You could meet Him out on the street and you wouldn’t know Him. I know why He ain’t come back. The world would probably find some way to kill Him again. Don’t think He don’t know how the world is. Seen that when He come down the first time. He give this thing His okay, in a way. He sat on the side of my bed. Had gold dust on His sandals. Sat there scraping it off with one of them little wooden sticks they look down your throat with.
    He said, “Listen, Braiden. Ain’t nothing for you to do but lay here. I can’t take your life. This guy over here, that’s something else. I ain’t got no control over what you talk him into. But be careful. You treading on shaky ground here. You know what I’m talking about.”
    I said, “Jesus, you know I’m suffering.”
    “Yeah, I know it. A lot of people are suffering. I know you believe in Me and God and all. I know you been laying here a long time. Lot of people been laying in a lot of places a long time. A lot of them longer than you.”
    I said, “Jesus, I know everything You saying. You know my mama, don’t You?”
    He wouldn’t look at me. “Yeah, I know your mama. I ain’t met