“Take what kind?”
“When we fought, I wanted to kill you, Loren. I would have done it if Saber hadn’t stopped me.”
“I told you to shut that down, didn’t I? I don’t owe anybody, and that means they don’t owe me. You asked about my old man. My mother had me when she was forty. That was when my father traded her in on a pair of twenties. I grew up rolling winos and breaking into vending machines. Anything Gatesville could throw at me, I’d already seen. I said fuck you to all of them then; I say fuck you now. That’s my flag, a big fuck-you in capital letters. You got my drift?”
“You bet.” I took a plectrum from my watch pocket and formed an E chord on the guitar neck. I drew the plectrum across the strings. “Where’d you get it?”
“Eddy Pearl’s pawnshop on Congress.”
“It has a nice touch. No rattle in the frets.”
Again, he pretended not to care about my interest in his instrument. He bent over the amplifier, smoke from the soldering iron rising into his face, his scars stretching into pale wisps.
“You ever see a photo of the Shroud of Turin?” I asked.
“The what?”
“Forget it.”
“Pardon me for asking this, but do you drop yellow jackets?” he said. “Because frankly, you’re a little strange. No, don’t say anything else. Plug the guitar in. Let’s see what happens. I’m not kidding you, man. I think you fried your Spam somewhere along the track.”
“Thanks,” I said. He rolled his eyes.
I plugged the guitar into the jack on the amplifier and stroked the E chord again. All six notes of the configuration bloomed like magic from the speakers. For the first time since I met him, Loren Nichols smiled. “Man,” he said.
I started to take off the strap and hand him his instrument.
“No, I learned G and D, but that’s it,” he said.
“I’ll show you something,” I said. “You already know D. So this is how you make E, except you turn it into what is called a covered E and run it up and down the neck. Watch, I’m just using E and D.”
I began picking out “The Steel Guitar Rag.” He folded his arms on his chest and raised his eyebrows. “That’s something else, man.”
“You know ‘Malaguena’? Same key of E.” I ran through the first three chords of the famous Andalusian song by Ernesto Lecuona.
“Shit, man,” Loren said.
“Try it.” I handed him the guitar.
He struggled with the chords at first. I fitted his fingertips on each string, then showed him how to slip the chord up the frets, covering all six strings.
“You’re better than you thought,” I said.
“I don’t know about that.” He took a cigarette from behind his ear and put it into his mouth. He slipped a match folder from his jeans, then flipped it onto the workbench without lighting his cigarette and tried sliding the chord up and down the guitar neck again.
“I need to square with you about something, Loren. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t worried about Vick Atlas’s threat.”
“You scared?”
“Call it what you want.”
“You want it straight up?” he said.
I waited.
“You should be worried,” he said. “Atlas has brain damage. His old man hit him in the head or something. When you ’front a guy like that, you don’t let him deal the play.”
“I’m supposed to go after him?” I said.