“You said ‘when they made you.’ You didn’t use God’s name. Like it would be irreverent. Is that just a quirk, or are you saying I wasn’t created by the hand of God?”
“I said it without thinking, that’s all. It was just a joke.”
“Not to me it isn’t. Know why people use passive voice?”
“I know that it has something to do with grammar, but I’m an engineer, Jack, not much on the literary arts.”
“Passive voice involves sentence structure that hides the identity of the doer. It’s a form of linguistic deception. Pronouns that have no referents are also used to confuse and conceal. A linguist can spot a lie faster than any polygraph can.”
“You never went to college?”
“I never went to high school.”
“You’re amazing.”
“That’s a word used by members of the herd. Everything is either ‘amazing’ or ‘awesome.’ You’re not a member of the herd. Don’t act like you are.”
“Jack, eating supper with you is like trying to digest carpet tacks. I’ve never seen the like of it. My food hasn’t even hit my stomach, and I’m already constipated.”
“Look at me and don’t turn around.”
“What is it?” Noie said.
“A highway patrol cruiser just pulled in five slots down. There’re two cops in it.”
The waitress came to the window and picked up the five-dollar tip and lifted the tray off the door and smiled. “Thank you, sir,” she said.
“My pleasure,” Jack said. He watched her walk away, his eyes slipping off her onto the side of the cruiser.
“We got to back out and drive right past them,” Noie said. “Or wait for them to leave.”
“I’d say that sums it up.” Jack bit down on his lip, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat. He removed it and set it on the dashboard and combed his hair in the rearview mirror.
“What are you doing?” Noie said.
Jack got out of the car, yawning, rubbing his face, a weary traveler about to hit the road again. “Ask the cops for directions to the cutoff to I-10,” he replied. He gazed up at the sky and at the network of lightning that was as spiked as barbed wire inside the clouds. “You can almost smell the salt and coconut palms on the wind. Mexico is waiting for us, son. Soon as we tidy up a few things. Yes, indeedy, a man’s work is never done.”
WHEN HACKBERRY ARRIVED at work early the next morning, Danny Boy Lorca was sleeping on a flattened cardboard carton in the alleyway behind the rear entrance, one arm over his eyes.
“Want to come in or sleep late and let the sun dry the dew on your clothes?” Hackberry said.
Danny Boy sat up, searching in the shadows as though unsure where he was. “I ain’t drunk.”
“Where’s your truck?”
“At the house. Krill cut all my tires. I hitched a ride into town.”
“Krill was at your house?”
“I busted his driver in the mouth. There was four of them together. They come up the ravine behind my property.”
“You sure it was Krill, Danny? You haven’t been knocking back a few shots, have you?”
“I’m going up to the café now and have breakfast. I told you what I seen and what I done.”
“Come inside.”
Danny Boy scratched at a place on his scalp and let out his breath and watched a shaft of sunlight shine on a dog at the end of the alley. The dog had open sores on its skin. “You ought to call the Humane Society and get some he’p for that critter. It ain’t right to leave a sick animal on the street like that.”