Free Budding Prospects by T.C. Boyle

in a pincushion, and presented his hand first to Gesh, then to me.
    Phil got the long one. “Flip you for seconds,” Gesh said, the coin already gleaming feebly in the dull glow of the lantern. “Tails,” I said, and lost.
    Phil ran the water till it went cold. Then he shrugged out of his clothes, flung them in a silty heap beneath the sink—where they would undergo a gradual petrifaction as the weeks dragged by—and eased into the tub, moaning like a man in the throes of the consummate orgasm.
    We watched from the doorway. “Five minutes,” I shouted, checking my Benrus.
    By the time my turn came round, the water was tepid, and the color and texture of the Mississippi in flood. No matter. This was real dirt I was covered with—stinking, fermenting, wild-woods dirt—and there would be no peace, no sweet surcease from care, until I got it off me. Besides, I reflected as I lowered myself into the soup, as last man to bathe I could linger as long as I liked.
    I didn’t. The water went cold almost immediately and the tap water was colder still. I lathered up, rinsed off, patted myself with a wet towel and made for the back bedroom, the ominous calendar and my damp sleeping bag. I was beat, every joint rubbed raw. Rain lashed at the roof, tiny feet scratched in the corners. I slept like a zombie.

    We were awakened by a thunderous pounding at the door—Anne Frank’s moment of truth, the men in the black boots come to drag us away. The sound reverberated through the house, deafening, insupportable, terrifying. We’d done nothing illegal—yet. We had no pot, no seeds even. There was no reason to be alarmed, but we were alarmed. No, not simply alarmed—panicked. I rushed out into the main room in my underwear, heart slamming at my ribs, to see Phil’s stricken face peering from the shadows of the front bedroom. It couldn’t have been later than six-thirty or seven. “Hallo?” a voice boomed. “Is anybody in there?”
    “Just a minute,” I called, dancing round the cold floorboards, my nervous system simultaneously flashing two conflicting messages:
Be calm
and
Sauve qui peut.
Phil had vanished. I could hear him thumping into his pants, coins spilling like chimes. Something crashed to the floor. “You’ll—you’ll have to go around to the other door,” I shouted, hugging my shoulders against the cold, “this one’s been …” I hesitated. “This one’s been nailed shut.”
    Gesh’s head appeared at the top of the stairwell, between the rails of the crude banister one of our troglodyte predecessors had erected. “Get rid of them,” he hissed. “We can’t have fucking people—“ but he cut himself off in mid-sentence: the kitchen door had begun to rattle.
    I reached the door at the same instant it was thrust open, and found myself standing toe-to-toe with the very archetype of the rural American, the living, breathing, foot-shuffling image of the characters who populate the truck stops of America, vote for neo-Nazis and mail off half their income to the 500 Club or the Church of the Flayed Jesus. Rangy, fiftyish, he was dressed in overalls, plaid hunting jacket and a Willits Feed cap. His face was seamed like a soccer ball, a wad of tobacco distended his cheek, he reeked of cowshit and untamed perspiration. “Hallo,” he roared—he could have been greeting someone six miles away—and extended his hand. “Lloyd Sapers,” he said, still too loudly.
    “I ranch the place next door?”
    I shook his hand gravely, the elastic band of my Jockey shortstearing at my flesh like masticating teeth. I was wondering both how to get rid of him and how to indicate, without arousing suspicion, that we were antisocial types who neither sought nor welcomed unannounced visits and least of all friendly relations with our neighbors, when he brushed past me and strode into the room as if he’d just assumed the mortgage on the place.
    “Seen the light last night,” he said, drawing himself up and spinning round