Leo figured it was midafternoon. Living almost seventy years can give you a handle on time, even through a less than routine day, when half of you is numb and the other half aches as though from a fever that could melt iron.
Most of the last hour the punks had left him alone. Bass paced, using a makeshift walking stick he’d found, rapping it on the floor in jazzy rhythms. Denny sat in a captain’s chair, whittling a hunk of two-by-four into a cylinder. The driver sprawled on the floor leaning against the wall, his hat tipped over his eyes as though imitating the hombre in white and a sombrero who takes his siestas in the shade of a cactus.
Leo felt remote from his brain, as if it were a distant radio station with a feeble transmitter. Whenever he gave up, a signal would cut in loud and clear before long, through the static. The last time, it had sent a message he labored for minutes to understand.
“Bass,” he mumbled. “I got a deal.”
The man halted mid-stride. “Let me hear it.”
“Give me a pen and paper.”
“What for?”
“A letter. To my pal, Tom Hickey.”
Bass cackled. “Hey, Denny. What do you think, ain’t the old guy a character? What’re you gonna say to him, Pancho? Maybe you want to give him our address, huh?”
For pride’s sake, Leo wanted to throw out a wisecrack, but every word sapped him like swimming a mile in breakwater used to. “I’m gonna say, Let it go, Tom, whatever happens. If they take me out I’m leaving Vi, Una, Magda, Elizabeth, Wendy, and the kid all in your hands. So drop it. That’s all.”
Bass squinted and peered at Leo as though with X-ray eyes. “I get it Pancho. You’re trying to spare his ass and save us the trouble. Yeah, why not? Denny, run upstairs, rifle the desk for a pen and paper and a book or something to write on. Pancho’s doing us a favor. Helluva guy, no?”
While Denny ambled toward the stairs, Bass lifted his walking stick into both hands as though preparing to dance a soft shoe. He stepped behind Leo, hitched the walking stick under the old man’s chin, and leaned backward. Instantly it cut off Leo’s wind. In seconds his eyes bulged and his tongue swelled even bigger than their blows to his mouth had left it. His skull seemed to fill with tepid water.
Bass pulled harder. A large splinter pierced through the skin of Leo’s neck and stabbed his Adam’s apple. When Bass let go, the splinter remained.
Denny loomed overhead, offering Leo a telephone book and stationery. “This is classy stuff. Got perfume on it.”
Before he accepted the stationery, Leo reached up and tried to pluck out the splinter. The tip broke off in his skin. When he swallowed, it jabbed viciously. He took the stationery, set it on the phone book in his lap, accepted the pen. The stationery had a border of morning glory vines. Leo’s hands were too stiff to write. He printed in letters composed of straight lines and sharp angles.
When he’d finished, Denny gave him the envelope. He wrote Tom’s name, rural route number, and town, stuffed the letter inside, licked and sealed it, and gave it to Bass. “Put your address in the return corner,” he muttered. Then his head and shoulders slumped forward. His eyes shut. Both hands dropped to his sides as his brain discovered a cool, dark cavern to rest in.
“There’s stamps in the desk,” Denny said. “How about I go stick it in the mailbox?”
Bass tossed him the letter. “Yeah, and walk down to the grocery. Buy some gum and candy. See if they got those nonpareils.”