Free Just North of Nowhere by Lawrence Santoro Page B

off him clacking as he shifted his fatass down the bank and through Fall mud – even the dead Injuns down by Engine Warm probably heard him!
    “Aw, cripes,” Bunch muttered, his eyes still shut.
    “Shitstorm!” Vinnie said, louder.
    Bunch peeked an eye. There was Vinnie, cool and comfortable, like his daddy, Sheriff Erikson, would have been: No sweat, no bother, Vinnie standing casual, half-way to his ankle in river muck.
    “Vinnie,” Bunch said.
    The big cop shifted, one foot to another. “Hey there, Bunch. Let me get to the point, here. Mizz Chiaravino, you know? Cristobel, the Italian lady, there? She's coming at me, yellin' about you. Says you're peepin' her. That so?”
    Bunch squinted. “Huh?” he said.
    “Says you been hanging out in her bushes, there. Looking in at her windows.”
    “Me?” Bunch said.
    Vinnie nodded. “Now, I understand. She's a kind of looker, you know.”
    They both took a moment, thought about Cristobel Chiaravino.
    “Yep,” Vinnie said, “she's a looker, I give you that there. But, now, I don't want her coming up to me at the Wheel, off duty or not. Least I don't want her yelling about you and, in particular, I don't want her waving her arms on the street at me, making a whatshacallit? Scene. Gives a bad name, you know? You know? The whole town, here? Tourists you know!”
    Vinnie shifted and sank another inch into the mud. “AW, shitforbrains!” His bellowed then recovered. “Summer folk're about used to you making noises on the trail, you being a little off. Regulars, anyway. But if now people start figurin' they're maybe not safe in their own recreational vehicles, there, or that you'll be sticking your head in their tents and whatevers, nights, well they're gonna start takin' their tourist businesses somewhere's else. You get me?”
    “Yep,” Bunch said.
    “Okay, then Bunch,” Vinnie had said. His leathers creaked some more. “A word to the wise is enough, huh?” Vinnie made a gun with his finger and clicked his tongue.
    “'Betcha...” Bunch said.
    “Okay, then. Getchya later,” he said. Cop boots sucked muck as Vinnie hauled his fat up the bank to the road and into the prowler, scrapping his feet in the spalls by the roadside.
    “Hey there, Vinnie,” Bunch called. He was awake by then. “Say, you don't figure you're gonna want any more work done on that engine, now, do you? I mean soon? She sounded like she picked up kind of a cough, there you know...”
    Vinnie winked down from behind the wheel, and shot Bunch with his finger again. “Later,” he said. The prowler growled to life smooth as snot, and purred back toward town.
    “Guess not,” Bunch said.
    Then it hit him. Vinnie! Vinnie Erikson, Bluffton born and raised, comes out on a chilly morning, because that Italian woman complains. “Complains about me!” he wondered aloud. “Says I’m peeking her, and Vinnie believes her!” His mind started in: Peeking! Peeking her? Peeking her what? Peeking when? When she's getting up for one of her three, four baths a day? Peeking when she's going to bed or getting up and it still dark, maybe, or when she's walking around by candle, nights, barefoot everywhere, walking in that thin blue slip she wears—the pale one with the little rip down the side under her right arm, there...?
    ...He touched himself where, thinking about it...
    He looked at the day. Hardly sunup and he was halfway started.
    Then he thought: folks worried I'm getting a little nuts, are they! Then he thought aloud, “...well piss and hell, maybe it's time to go on and get indoors, then, okay?!” Maybe he was a little off. Okay?
    Okay, he'd head to town. He’d find a place! Put up with all of it for a while. He had before, winters. Shoes and other clothes, his own stink coming out of his shirt holes and pants. He'd find somebody who'd put up with him.
    By the time he climbed to the roadway, he was thinking deeper. Folks wanted money for rooms nowadays. He didn't have any of that, didn't want