“I know,” Neal said in a burst of inspiration, “let’s go to one of the nigger churches. That’s always a hoot.”
“Un-uh,” Hutch said, shaking his fiery head. “My daddy said he’d skin me if we did that again. Last time we went, it nearly started a race riot.” Hutch’s father, Fritz, was the county sheriff. Fritz Jolly had served as the boys’ consciences on numerous occasions.
Their last resort had been to go to the Dairy Barn, hoping that some action would find them. As long as they kept placing orders and behaved themselves, the management wouldn’t kick them out. Of course, there would be hell to pay if Neal was caught with the bottle of whiskey in his coat.
His father, Ivan, had told him before leaving the house not to take any beer with him. “How come?” Neal had asked.
“Because Fritz called me yesterday morning. He was good and pissed off. Said Hutch came home stinking drunk Friday night and that you had supplied the beer. He said the sheriff’s son can’t be driving around town drunk and raising hell. Dora Jolly was fit to be tied, too. I told him I’d look into it.”
“Well?”
“Well, I’m looking into it,” Ivan had thundered. “Lay off the beer tonight.”
“Christ.” Neal slammed out of the house. Once he got to his car, he chuckled and patted the inside pocket of his jacket, where he’d hidden the silver flask of expensive bourbon. Ivan would never miss it.
By now, however, the fun of having pulled one over on his old man had fizzled. Hutch was devouring his second hamburger. His table manners disgusted Neal. He ate each meal like it might be his last, taking huge bites, gulping noisily, not bothering to suspend conversation while he was chewing.
Lamar was always a gutless pain in the ass. He was a perennial worrier whose company Neal tolerated because of Lamar’s culpability. It was amusing to have a sucker around to be the butt of practical jokes and a target for verbal abuse. Lamar was affable and above average-looking, but the only real purpose he served was to be Neal’s punching bag.
Tonight, he was as sullen and nervous as ever. Every time anybody spoke to him, he jumped. Neal supposed Lamar’s habitual jitters came from living with his mama. That old bat was enough to make anybody jumpy.
Myrajane Griffith thought she was hot snot because she was a former Cowan. At one time, the Cowans had been the largest producing cotton planters between Savannah and Charleston. But that had been long before folks nowadays could remember. The Cowans had fallen on hard times; most of them had died. The old plantation house near the coast was still standing, but it had long ago been foreclosed upon and condemned.
Still, Myrajane clung to her maiden name like a runt shoat to a hind teat. She was an employee of the Patchett Soybean Plant, like almost everybody else in the three neighboring counties. She rubbed elbows with coloreds and people she wouldn’t have spit on in better days. She had browbeaten her husband until he died. When Ivan viewed Lamar’s father’s body in the casket, he had remarked that the poor bastard was smiling for the first time in years.
Jesus, Neal thought, no wonder Lamar is nervous all the time, living with that harpy.
Neal was glad his mother had died when he was a baby. A series of nannies, mostly colored women from around Palmetto, had reared him until he got too old to spank and started hitting back. His mother, Rebecca Flory Patchett, had been blond and pale and the worst lay Ivan had ever had, or so Ivan had told Neal when the boy had expressed curiosity about his mother’s nature.
“Rebecca was a pretty little thing, but screwing her was like sticking it in an icepack. She gave me what I wanted, though.” Here Ivan had socked him lightly on the jaw. “A son.”
Neal thought that having one parent to answer to was bad enough, although Ivan was lenient and usually looked the other way whenever he got into trouble. Ivan paid for Neal’s speeding tickets and covered the cost of the things he destroyed or shoplifted.
“For Chris’ sake, do you know who my daddy is!” Neal had shouted to the hardware store clerk who had recently caught him stealing.
Sheriff Fritz Jolly had called Ivan to the scene to smooth things over. Neal had walked out of the store with the hunting knife he had pilfered, wearing a complacent smile that infuriated the frustrated sales clerk. The fellow later found his car with four slashed tires.
Neal wished he had something fun like that to do tonight.
“Church is out.” Lamar’s observation pulled Neal from his musings.
A group of young people filed into the Diary Barn. Neal immediately dismissed the boys as Jesus freaks and thereby unworthy of his attention. But he gave each girl a smoldering once-over. Just that did wonders for a girl’s ego and made her dream good dreams at night.
Besides, it never hurt to prepare a field for future plowing. He might be desperate for company some night and need one of these girls. If and when he called, she would remember the lustful look he’d given her. He had once boasted that he could convert a church-choir soprano into a slut in five minutes flat. It wasn’t an empty boast.
“Hi, Neal. Hi, Lamar. Hi, Hutch.”
Donna Dee Monroe stopped at the end of their booth. Out of habit, Neal’s eyes slid down her body, then back up. “Hi, Donna Dee. Did you get saved tonight?”
“I’m already saved. But I’m sure you’re going to burn in hell, Neal Patchett.”
He laughed. “Goddamn right. I look forward to every minute of getting there. Hi, Florene.”
One of the girls with Donna Dee had been at the country club Valentine’s dance a few weeks ago. The pickings had been slim that night, so he’d flirted with her when ordinarily he wouldn’t even have noticed her. He’d danced with her until she was melting—literally. When he got her outside and slipped his hand beneath her dress and between her thighs, his fingers had come away damp. Just as it was getting interesting, her daddy had come looking for her.
Now Neal lowered his eyelids and, in a sultry voice, asked, “Did you have any sins to confess tonight, Florene? Been entertaining any impure thoughts lately?”
The girl blushed to the roots of her hair, mumbled something unintelligible, and hurried to catch up with the group of churchgoers she had come in with.