MYER HAD TAKEN CALL after call. Get these people out of my garbage cans. Get these people off my street. Get these people away from my storefront.
He pulled alongside the woman and the boy as they walked back out of town and toward the valley. Slowing the cruiser and talking to them through the open window. Asking if they needed a ride. But the woman said no and the boy said nothing. He drove ahead, looking for the spot and he found it. The Cadillac camouflaged off the road, inside the trees and draped by the vines. He parked and got out. The woman and boy a quarter of a mile back. He walked down into their camp and the man was lying on his back on the hood. Sound asleep.
“Hey,” Myer said.
The man didn’t move. Myer slapped the hood and his head popped up.
“Sit up and let’s talk a minute,” he said.
The man wiped at his mouth. Raised himself and slid from the hood. Stretched his arms over his head.
“I thought y’all were gonna get this thing fixed and head on for Tennessee,” Myer said.
“I thought we told you we didn’t have no money to fix it.”
“I came back the next morning. Had it worked out with Henry Junior at the garage to have a look at it. Maybe give you some help or a little work to pay it back.”
The man smacked at his gums.
“Where did you say you came from?”
“We didn’t say it.”
“Then where’d you come from?”
The man smacked at his forearm as if being bitten. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a halfsmoked cigarette. He held it in his mouth and crossed his arms.
“Did you hear me?”
“If you would jot down on a slip of paper what you’d prefer me to say, that’d sure speed this along.”
The sound of a rattling cart came closer. Myer walked around the hovel, looking at the scattering of clothes and water jugs and trash.
“Where you come from and I ain’t asking again.”
“Somewhere around Tunica.”
“What somewhere?”
“I don’t know. All them little shit places out there you can’t never figure out their names.”
“You can’t live here,” Myer said.
“What the hell do you care?”
The rattling stopped on the roadside. The boy and the woman then came down into the hovel. The woman held a brown bag with a grease spot on the bottom and the boy had taken his shirt off as they finished their walk and it was draped over his shoulder. His ribs and collarbones pushing against his skin.
“He do something?” the woman asked.
“He’s a smartass,” Myer said.
“I been knowing that. Did we do something?”
“No.”
“We don’t steal nothing.”
“I haven’t heard if you did.”
“We ask for work.”
“I just wanted to see where y’all were,” Myer said. “You come get me when you get ready to get this car fixed. I told him I’d help with it.” He gave the man one more look and then he walked out of the hovel and opened the door of the cruiser. He looked down the road toward town. It seemed a world away.
One of the twins pushed the bicycle and the other swung a hatchet as they walked along the side of the valley road. Myer slowed the cruiser as he approached them, easing close behind and then hitting the siren and with the sudden wail they jumped. The bicycle and the hatchet hit the ground as quick screams came from their identical mouths.
“Damn shit,” one of them yelled.
Myer laughed with his head thrown back, laughing so hard it hurt his back and then the laugh turned to grimace. He shifted in the seat and got himself comfortable again and then he rolled down the window and pulled next to the boys. They picked up the bicycle and hatchet and glared at Myer like little mad men. The same blond hair and the same crooked, homemade haircuts. They both wore jerseys. One number 12 and the other number 32.
“That ain’t funny,” one of them said.
“Your momma know you got that hatchet?” Myer said.
“She knows.”
“How’s she feeling?”
“Fine I guess.”
“She’s got another headache,” the other said.
“Which is it?” Myer said. “She’s fine or down with a headache?”
They looked at each other and shrugged.
“Where you two going?”
“Going to build a fort down in there somewhere,” one said.
“When we doing scouts again?” the other asked.
“I don’t know,” Myer said. “Didn’t have but you two and one other show up last time. But maybe we can figure out something to do. Throw up a tent out by my pond and we can fish and build a fire. How’d that be?”
“That’d be fine.”
“Ask your momma.”
They nodded.
“Don’t go back that way,” Myer said.
“How come?”
“Somebody else already built a fort. You go on this way.”
A length of rope was curled on the floorboard of the cruiser and Myer grabbed it and held it out the window to the twins.
“What’s that for?”
“You might need it. More than I do. Just go on this way like I said.”
“Okay.”
Myer shifted into drive and pulled away, watching them in the rearview mirror as they crossed the road and stood at the edge of the valley. Their figures shrinking in the distance. And he wondered if he should have told the twins more about the man and the woman and the boy.