Page 5

Saverin woke up the next morning on the green couch. The first thing to meet his eyes was the Kimber on the table. The gun held some significance that he couldn’t put his finger on. He rubbed blurry eyes. I’m alive… but why was that surprising?

He touched the bubbly flesh on the side of his face and the scars on his torso. They were smooth and healed. In his dreams he was always unburned, whole.

“Fang,” he called, and in the answering silence he remembered. He shut his eyes and sighed heavily.

Still alive. This is real. Images of the night came and went. Fang is dead. I’m not…who was she? What happened to my head? He opened his eyes. Swinging his feet down, he nearly smashed a ziploc bag full of water on the floor.

What was I icing?

His first suspicion proved right. His knuckles were a rainbow and flexing them open hurt like a bitch. He could recall fighting somebody as they tried stuffing him into his truck.

His collar was stiff with blood, and a cautionary probe told him he was missing the top part of his ear— on his good side.

Ah, fuck.

He picked up the bag and tossed it on the table. That was when he got a good look at the blood-spotted piece of paper the Kimber had been resting on.The drawing in ballpoint pen had been the last frantic act of his whiskey-addled mind. He did remember making the drawing, and he remembered especially the inspiration for it.

From the scrap of paper a beautiful woman stared back at him with eyes he had apparently been determined not to forget.

Tanya.

Distantly in the house he heard something slam shut.

Saverin sat up and leveled the Kimber at the door.

“It’s just me,” came a hoarse voice he knew only too well. "Don’t shoot.”

Roman McCall stepped into the room, followed by the older cousin Saverin had met outside the Turnkey. It seemed like they’d come from outdoors.

“So you’re awake,” Roman said, staring down at him. His cheeks and nose were red; it must be a chilly morning. “We just went hunting. Caught you some meat.”

“I have meat.”

“You could smoke the extra,” said Roman.

“I don’t have the time.”

Roman’s eyes narrowed. “Last night you weren’t fit to drive, so we gave you a lift back. Thought you wouldn’t mind us crashing here.”

“You’re not welcome in my house.”

“I even got your truck up here for you.”

Saverin caught the keys Roman tossed to him.

“Next time just leave me facedown,” he said uncharitably.

Roman flicked his Stetson against his thigh. He was growing his hair out now. It was black and curly like Tanya’s.

“How’s the wife?” Saverin asked sarcastically. Last he heard Roman had a baby on the way. One big happy family.

Roman’s eyes narrowed. “I heard you threw down with Hiram. Heard you were talking big.”

“Maybe I was.”

Roman asked the older cousin to wait in the hall.

“Rat,” Saverin said before the man shut the door. The man gave Saverin a dark look but on a signal from Roman let the insult slide. Look how they leap to his bidding. Like I used to do. Like Sam did.

Roman shut the door; they were alone.

“Saverin, what happened to your brother was regrettable.”

“Regrettable,” Saverin repeated.

“I take responsibility—”

“Then let me have my justice. But you won’t do that, will you? Peace…you talk of peace but the war’s coming and nothing you do can stop it.”

In spite of Saverin’s hostility Roman crossed the room to look at the drawing on the table.

“Who is this?”

“Just a drawing.”

“You always could capture a likeness…Remember when you did that one of Rebel?”

“He hated it, as I recall.”

“Yes…That girl looks familiar. I reckon she works at one of Laura Jane’s places,” Roman said, turning the drawing sideways, as if it helped him see it better. “Appletree, I think.”

Roman was known to never forgot a face. The girl probably did work for Laura Jane. Imagine that.

She set me up for Hiram…She was beautiful and tight…

“Who started the dust-up last night?” Roman asked.

“I did,” said Saverin.

“I don’t want you making static with the Snatch Hills and Green Trees, Saverin. I’ve been trying to get some peace on this mountain for two years. You were alright up until a month ago. What changed?” Roman looked around and almost seemed to answer his own question. “Where’s Fang?”

“Dead.”

Roman looked stunned. His dark eyes went into shadow. “I’m sorry, man.”

“He was old. It happens,” said Saverin brutally. Poor Fang, having his miserable company for the last two years of his life. Awash with sudden self pity Saverin reached for the vintage whiskey, which was exactly where he’d left it twenty-four hours ago. It was like he was living the same day all over again. He’d felt like that since his brother died. But if only he could go back one turn of the clock to the day Sam had gone up to Roman’s house to meet his end. If only he could go back to that morning and trade places with Sam. He was the one that should have taken the bullet. Sam should have been mourning with Fang.

Everybody dies, boy.

“Get out,” he said to Roman. He wanted to get drunk.

He wanted her.

Better than whiskey…

“I need to hear you say you won’t go after the Snatch Hills again, Saverin. I need you to swear it.”

“Get out of my house.”

“For two years you’ve been holed up here drinking your feelings. Come back to us. You know I see you as my own brother –-”

Saverin threw the bottle at Roman with all his strength. It smashed against the wall, shattering the family picture of the Baileys instead of Roman’s skull. Roman had ducked just in time. The fucker always had the reflexes of a cat. Ancient whiskey rained down the wall.

The McCall stooge came running. “What happened? What’s going on in here?” he bellowed stupidly.

Saverin pointed the Kimber at his cousin’s chest, trying to recall if it was loaded. The stooge scrambled for his own gun but Roman stopped him.

“We’ll leave,” the McCall leader told Saverin slowly. “If that’s what you want. We’ll go. Alright? Now just put the fuckin’ gun down.”

“I’m not your brother.” Saverin could barely form words. “I had only one brother. You— you’re nothing to me.”

More than anything he wished the bottle had found its target. He could recall seeing his brother’s head like a burst melon — the pictures—

“Saverin,” said Roman. “Saverin, just hold the fuck on.”

“You McCalls…You sleekit bastards would have never risen so high without us. Every step of the way, we Baileys had your back. Like faithful hounds. It ends here and now.”

“Hounds,” said Roman. “That’s the word. You know what we do to mad dogs?”

“Get off my land.”

“It didn’t have to be this way.”

Saverin stood up. “What did I say?”

“You’re off the roll,” said the clan leader, “Until you can control your temper.”

“I realize my shares,” Saverin snarled. “I quit the business. I wash my hands of every McCall.”

“Be damned to you, then.” Roman backed away from him, looking sick. “You’re my brother, maybe not in blood, but we raised up together. You think I don’t wish it was different? I sent him to his death— you think that means nothing to me? I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, I think of them I killed. Your brother— Sam—”

Saverin’s finger flinched on the trigger. Roman had benefitted the most from his brother dying. Sam died to protect Roman’s woman, and now Roman got to live happy and free while Saverin’s whole family was buried in the dirt. He deserved to live with the guilt, if Saverin had to live without Sam.

Roman saw the intention in his cousin’s eyes. It was the first time he truly understood that the rift between them would never be healed. Sorrow filled them both in that moment; words were not enough and they would never be. The ages-old alliance of McCalls and Baileys was done.

Roman turned with his henchman and left.

Silence, again.

He was back on the couch.

Whiskey, a gun, a paper.

Skeeeyeee.

Saverin picked up the drawing he’d made in his half-drunk state and stared at it for a long time. Then he dug in his pockets.

Yes, it was still there.

Her delicate, pretty panties. Soft lace. Red as a poppy. Smelling like a flower. He leaned back and held it to his scarred face, losing himself in the memory. One bright note of pleasure in the pain.

He forced everything from his head but her. It was easy. She felt good, so good, like a warm fire on a lonely night.

Find her. I have to find her.

It was right there his obsession started. Right there with her panties in his face, the memory of her squeezing tight on his cock, running her hands through his hair. Gently. As if she knew it was a deeper comfort he truly needed, not just the blind ravages of lust. Her moans— so real. Nobody’s ever done me that before.

Was she putting one on?

If she was, she’d probably let every Snatch Hill fuck on her, like they said Roman’s wife had done.

But still, a little voice in Saverin’s head insisted he’d pegged her wrong…

He grit his teeth. Idiot. He was desperate to find her innocent, thinking with his dick instead of his brain. No doubt the girl was bait. A Snatch Hill whore.

And if she had been telling the truth?

He couldn’t claw his way out of the fantasy. He’d been so sure that she was just a beauty down on her luck, needing fast money for some personal shit. He had sworn it was her first time working that night.

If she was innocent…what if she went out again? What if she got another Poncey, a dozen of them…Her petals stained and ruined, crushed under the stinking weight of other men.

Saverin’s eyes flew open, his teeth bared. You know what we do to mad dogs?

What if? What if?

Saverin stood up and left the room. He walked out the front door, no coat and no hat, though the morning was cold and storm-blown from the previous night’s rain. First he went to Fang’s grave, making sure the young maple he’d planted there was holding in the wind. Wildflowers bobbed and swayed; barn swallows flew overhead, and a brace of rabbits jumped across his way as he left his old friend. When he made it to the Bailey forest it began to rain again. Following the path through the trees his ancestors had cut so very long ago, he journeyed into a quiet meditation.

His life had been perfect. A fortress of happiness.

Careless, juvenile, he spent his days drinking and fucking and riding along with Roman for the occasional adventure.

Those days were over. It was time to look ahead.

To wake up.

He was wide awake now.

The rain spoke its secret tapping language to the trees. A robin crossed his path, followed by another.

Mushrooms were sprouting after the rains. Saverin used his boot-knife to cut the edible ones. Venison stew for a cold day.

But the weather didn’t fool him; he knew in a day or so the flowers would explode into perfect July blossoms. The forest would go singing into a Virginia summer like it had since the beginning of Appalachia. And all would be right with the world.

It’s not my time. The realization hit him in waves of agony and grief, and then in joy. It was the kind of joy that made him want to fall to his knees.

He was going to hold on.

“I ain’t sure,” said Laura Jane slowly, turning over the drawing. “Might be one of my employees, but I don’t handle the hiring.”

“Who would handle it?” Saverin subtly shook his shoulders out in the too-small shirt. He’d put on more muscle than the last time he’d worn a good shirt, but he felt it only decent to dress up a bit for a rare visit to one of his few female cousins.

“My nephew Kyle manages the Appletree,” said Laura Jane. “What happened to your ear?”

“Know anything else?”

“What is this girl to you, exactly? I don’t see you in over a year and the first thing you come knocking down my door about is some woman!”

“She’s a person of interest.”

Laura Jane sniffed. “I say you’re better off sticking with your own kind.”

He folded the drawing. “Some say that little section of Florin is pretty much an untapped spring.”

“Don’t be crude, Saverin. There’s a reason we stay separate from the Blacks.”

For whatever reason the way she said that word annoyed him. Blacks .

“Thanks for your help, Laura Jane.”

“Where did you meet this girl?” His cousin pressed, passing him a hot biscuit on a blue china plate. “Church?”

“I met her at the Turnkey.”

Laura nearly dropped a spoon of gravy in his lap. “That whorehouse?” She shrieked.

“She wasn’t a whore.”

“ You’re sure about that ?”

Frowning, Saverin tried to put his mind back to the previous night. Getting notched by a stray bullet had fucked with his memory. Go deeper… He thought back to the girl’s soft touch and her pretty eyes, her fierceness.

Her taste.

It doesn’t count if it was her first time.

But she was working for the Snatch Hills, wasn’t she? It was all a lie.

“What else do you know about her?” Laura Jane was now on a mission for information.

“She’s got a son named Amari,” said Saverin remembering the tattoo on her breast.

His cousin looked ready to brain him with the jug of sweet tea. “Your son?”

He gave her a sardonic look. Laura Jane flushed. “Don’t bring that business to my door. If she does work for me, she won’t be for much longer, you can be sure of that !”

“Now hold on a minute,” Saverin protested, moved for some insane reason to defend the girl that had nearly got him killed.

Maybe she had worked with Hiram to set him up…But he wasn’t so sure. Thinking back, it didn’t make sense that Eugene would have harassed her on the way out the door for money if Hiram was really her pimp.

What if Eugene didn’t know? It still doesn’t prove she was innocent.

Saverin had been the one to request her services…She hadn’t lured him further than the bar. He’d been the one in control, and she’d gone along with his every suggestion. Did he see her reach for her phone? Give a signal? No, nothing like that.

It had been his idea to go upstairs, then his idea again that they ditch that room to fuck in the parking lot. His fault too for leaving behind his gun– which in all truth shocked him more than anything else that had happened that night.

He’d blamed the girl for Hiram’s setup, but he’d been the one announcing to all and sundry that he was hunting for Snatch Hills. The memory of the girl’s face as he roughed her up came unbidden. She’d been scared, not guilty. Her expression when she realized the condom broke…

She couldn’t be working for Hiram. It made no sense.

I wronged her.

“Hello?” his cousin spoke up, interrupting his thoughts.

Right. “Don’t fire the woman, Laura Jane, for Chrissake.”

“I won’t have a hussy like that working for me,” his cousin said, her mouth in a line. “No matter what kind of spell she put on you.”

“There wasn’t no spell.”

“I beg to differ, Saverin Bailey! Some jezebel of loose repute has your head spinnin’ in circles, and with you so vulnerable after the tragedies you’ve had to endure...”

“Enough!”

“See how Satan feeds on a man’s grief! You’d be wise to leave that girl alone.”

Saverin picked up his hat, in no mood for a lecture. “Thank you for the biscuits.”

“You better take some with you,” said Laura Jane wearily, fetching a Tupperware. “I don’t know how you’re eating up there with no woman to cook.”

“I manage.”

“You should think about getting married.”

“Goodbye, Laura Jane.”

On his way out the door he was stopped by an elderly Black woman in church clothes standing at his cousin’s gate. She looked familiar but he didn’t have Roman’s talent with faces. The woman seemed to be wilting in the heat, leaning heavily on Laura Jane’s fence.

“Alright, Ma’am?” Manners moved him to ask. Once he’d have been mocked for it. The code of behavior that ruled the south had its exceptions. You just weren’t nice to Them. Before Roman broke the barrier between Black and White Florin, maybe Saverin would have just kept walking.

“Could you do something for me, son?” The old woman wiped her brow with a sugar-white handkerchief. “It’s only a small favor. I don’t mean to trouble you.”

She was an old lady. “Alright,” he said.

“Will you take this down the hill for me?”

Laura Jane stepped outside, looking ready to tell the woman to get lost, but for some reason Saverin’s cousin stopped dead, turned pale, and vanished back through her front door.

Strange. Saverin took the paper bag the old Black woman was shoving at his stomach. It was warm to the touch, like the biscuits he was carrying in the Tupperware.

The old lady thanked him. “Could you deliver this to my friend? His name is Wilks Johnny. I’m sorry to ask it, but I just can’t make the walk today. My car is just too low for that road.”

“Alright,” Saverin agreed with some reluctance. He supposed her friend was old, too. Or was this a trap? He half expected his cousin to come out waving her shotgun.

“You’re doing a good thing, baby. Here-- you take this as my thanks.”

The granny dug in her purple purse and handed him a little metal tub, like for cold cream.

“Um— there’s really no need.”

“No, please. Something special I make for my scars,” the old woman answered. “Old country recipe. Use it on your handsome face, you’ll see a difference.”

“I’ve tried everything already, Ma’am.”

“You haven’t tried my recipe, though. Now you tell Wilks Johnny that I’ll be back later, when it cools down.”

He supposed Wilks Johnny was her friend down the hill. He didn’t have a polite way to refuse her little ointment, so he just said gruffly, “Alright, Ma’am. No trouble.”

“I love your generation.” The old woman smiled. “So polite.”

Laura Jane was watching them through her blinds.

Where have I seen her before? Saverin wondered as the old woman made her way up the hill. But in time he would forget ever meeting her, and he would argue with Wilks Johnny years later about what exactly had sent him down the holler road that day with a paper bag in his hand.

It was the last house in the holler and the land beyond it was a wilderness. Saverin regretted not taking the truck. He was sweating fearsome in the heat and did not look forward to scaling the hill back up. He hoped this good turn could be over as soon as possible.

There was an old man sitting on the porch.

The old man had no legs.

“Hello,” he called to Saverin, friendly.

The man’s wrinkled skin was a deep brown color. He was clean-shaven except for a mighty gray-flecked moustache. His kinky hair was short–no doubt he buzzed it himself. Two lively eyes peered out from pouchy lids.

“Are you Wilks Johnny?” Saverin asked.

“Yes I am.”

“Somebody told me to bring you this.”

“That must have been Julette,” Wilks Johnny nodded. “She makes me a plate every day, rain or shine. But the roads have been messed up ever since that storm. What does my sugar mama have for me today?”

Saverin handed the old man the paper bag, which held a foil-wrapped lunch: fried chicken, rice, cornbread and tossed greens.

“Delicious,” the old man said in happy satisfaction. “And to answer your question, the legs went off in Vietnam, and yes I am the oldest veteran still living in Florin.”

“Did it hurt?” Saverin grunted, eyeing the knotted ends of the man’s pants, which looked a few sizes too big for him.

“I don’t even remember it. Just a bright light.”

Saverin touched his scarred face with the back of his hand.

“I’d rather have no legs than no face,” mused Wilks Johnny.

“I’d rather have my legs, I reckon.”

“Ha!” Wilks Johnny rubbed his mustache, chuckling. “I couldn’t disappoint the ladies, you know.”

He’d delivered the food; it was time to go. But Saverin leaned against the rail and asked, “Have you always lived back here?”

The tiny house was a wreck, the yard nearly waist-high in jimsonweed. The gate had rusted off. Kudzu vines run rampant about the place. It was as if the forest was slowly digesting the cabin and its owner.

“I have always lived here,” the old man said slowly. “Since I came back from the war. When I was a young man, it was only widows up that road. Sometimes they got lonely.” His eyes twinkled. “Their sons used to come bother me, but they didn’t scare me. Ha!”

“You got family?”

“All dead. Every last one. I might have a cousin in Tampa Bay…Nope — she’s dead too.”

Saverin sat on the man’s step and took out a cigarette. Wilks Johnny refused his offer. “I quit all that stuff. Don’t even drink coffee.”

“You mind?”

“Oh, no. Enjoy yourself.”

Saverin lit his Marls red and leaned back against the half-rotted rail of the step. He took care to blow the smoke away from the old man, who was happily tearing into the plate of chicken.

“My Pa fought in ‘Nam,” Saverin mused.

“What was his name?”

“Boothe.”

“Yeah, maybe I knew him. But we was on different regiments. They put the colored folks separate.”

“Right.” Saverin wondered if the old man knew more about his father than he was letting on. But Wilks Johnny’s expression never faltered. He peered at Saverin with an old man’s directness. “Did your daddy come back in one piece?”

“The piece was missing on the inside.”

“It was like that,” Wilks Johnny nodded. “Yeah, it was like that. Did he shoot himself?”

Country folks didn’t dance around the harsh matters of a tragedy. “He died recently. Heart attack,” said Saverin quietly.

Saverin’s father had rushed to the hospital after getting news of his sons. Sam dead, Saverin nearly burned alive.When Boothe Bailey laid eyes on his eldest son he dropped on the spot. Heart attack.

Boothe made it another week to attend Sam’s funeral. He died not long after that.

“My sympathies,” said Wilks Johnny.

“No need.” Saverin squinted up into the rafters where a mourning dove had made her nest. “You get benefits, don’t you? Why is this place in a wreck?”

“I told you I have no family, boy.”

“But you get benefits.”

“No I do not,” said Wills Johnny firmly.

Saverin frowned. The front porch was clean, but the house itself was a hazard. Infested with termites, possibly mold, falling down around the old man’s head. With his legless situation, the man must be taking in thousands a month, Saverin judged. He was quickly corrected.

“I get a couple hundred a month,” said the old man. “Pays for groceries and the water. I get no help ‘cept for Julette’s charity. She wanted to move me out of here somewhere else I said HELL NO! Julette gets a girl to cash my checks and cooks me a plate when she can. That’s all I allow. And don’t think I’m complaining,” the old veteran added, shaking a finger at Saverin. “I like my life just fine.”

Saverin was stunned. A couple hundred a month? “The VA ought to give you twice more than that, surely.”

“It was zero at first.”

Saverin’s brows could rise no higher. “Were you DD’d?”

“Hell no. I got my Purple Heart. But they never sent me a dime after I came home. I waited months– nothing. Then I got this letter in the mail. Still have it— it said I had to come ‘identify myself’. Mind, the VA office is in Rowanville. How was I supposed to get there with no legs? But I got the checks in the end— the widows vouched for me.” He winked.

“I know a man who got his fingertip blown off and he gets eighteen hundred,” said Saverin, outraged.

The old man seemed to have accepted this injustice. He just shrugged. “Young man, you want something to drink?”

“No— I better get moving, sir.”

“Ha ha ha! Young man, for the sake of the good manners your mama gave you, rustle yourself up a drink from my fridge. Thank you.”

Amused, Saverin laid the cigarette down and went inside. Sure enough the house was orderly. But of course it would be. Life had been toppling his assumptions like a house of cards; why not this one too?

“You get lost?” Wilks Johnny called.

“I’m straight.”

The place showed every sign of belonging to an orderly old bachelor. Nothing on the walls but a giant American flag with the army’s golden fringe, and next to it, a framed plaque of medals centered around the expected purple heart.

In the living area was a TV, armchair, and a side table with the weeks’ newspapers carefully arranged. All wooden furniture was polished to a gleam. No dust anywhere. Even with his handicap the man kept military order over his small and humble world.

Saverin opened the fridge, which was as spotless as the rest of the house. He took two cokes.

A photograph caught his eye before he walked back out; Saverin had been on the lookout for such a thing but missed it coming in. The picture sat in a golden frame on top the old fireplace. In the formal photograph, a much younger Wilks Johnny (with legs) had his arms around a sweet-faced black woman and a baby. The parents were smiling but the baby was asleep. Under the picture ran the script: Love Eternal.

“You were married?” Saverin asked the old man, stepping back outside with the drinks.

“You saw the picture? That was my wife Cynthia. I got called up right after baby Junior was born.”

Every last one is dead. Anticipating his question Wilks Johnny said, “They died right before I came home, when I was in the hospital.”

Jesus.

“Drunk driver hit ‘em in broad daylight. Since I’d lost my legs I couldn’t even get around to find him. I heard he was a Bailey, like that woman that lives up the road. One of the big names.”

“What made you think it was a Bailey?”

“There were witnesses,” Wilks Johnny shrugged. “Burying my wife and son took all the money I’d sent home when I joined the army. It nearly broke me, to tell you the truth. But then I found the Lord. Every day He gave me strength to carry on.”

Saverin stared at the old man. Then he looked off into the hard bright sunlight, eyes hooded.

“You ain’t married yet?” Wilks Johnny asked, opening his coke. His voice was even.

“No,” replied Saverin. He felt suddenly racked by grief.

“The Lord giveth and the lord taketh away. Naked I was taken from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. Blessed be the name of the Lord,” quoted Wilks Johnny.

Saverin cleared his throat. “Hand over that plate.”

Ignoring the man’s protests, Saverin took the plate inside and washed it in the clean sink. He did the rest of the dishes, though they weren’t much. Just a couple coffee cups.

Again before he walked out back to the porch, something caught his eye: not a picture, but a word.

AMARI.

He took the newspaper outside. “Mind I read this?”

“Go on ahead. Son, what was your name again?”

“Uh— Saverin.”

“Saverin what?”

“Bailey.”

“Alright.” Wilks Johnny settled in his chair, staring thoughtfully at the road. If he truly saw the road, or some vision of the past, only he could know.

Saverin thumbed open the paper and read,

The mother of Amari Weaver is desperate for any information relating to her young son’s whereabouts. Amari was last seen in the A&W park lot on Gresham Blvd in the care of his grandmother.

Amari Weaver is an African American male child, 3 years old, 45 lbs and 3ft, 0 inches. Last seen wearing a blue hoodie, gray pants, and red dinosaur slip on shoes. If you have information, please call 911 or the East Rowanville PD, at 844… There was a picture. A very adorable kid… same eyes. Just the same as hers. By God!

Saverin put the newspaper back, his mind humming with the possibilities. Didn’t this prove his theory? Tanya had Amari tattooed on her breast. She said she had a son, but he wasn’t waiting home for her. Looked damn near ready to cry when she said it, too.

He didn’t know her name and the paper didn’t say, but there was a number on the bottom.

And she might work at Laura Jane’s place. That’s another thing.

“I’d best be heading out,” he told Wilks Johnny. “Thanks for the refresher.”

“Come back and visit any time,” the old man said. If it registered that Saverin was related to the man who had killed his wife and child, he did not reveal it.

A yellow dog trotted up the road and stopped in front of the broken gate.

“There he is!” Wilks Johnny scowled.

“What?”

“See that lil’ dog? He’s a criminal. You better get! Chase that mutt off, would you?”

Saverin stepped to the animal, who took off more from amusement than fear.

“I woke up one day and he was clear inside my house. Took my damn hat and run off with it. He’s a thief.”

Saverin smiled. “Does he have an owner?”

“I don’t know if he’s got an owner, but what he will get is an ass kicking if I catch him in my yard again.”

“You gonna kick his ass with no legs?”

Wilks Johnny bellowed in laughter. It was the start of a true friendship.