King Suckerman

Cooper sang along to the tune coming from the radio: “Are you man enough, big and baaad enough?” The Four Tops had seen their best days, Cooper knew. But this cut was kickin’, and Levi Stubbs, you could always count on him to be bad. Cooper took a long swig of his Near Beer, put the can down on the stained green carpet by the bed.

Clagget swallowed hard. Ugly and skinny as he was, he had never had a woman, had never expected to have one. What Wilton was doing to him, he had not considered it himself. Strangely, Wilton’s touch, it didn’t feel all that wrong. After all, Wilton was family, like an older brother, or an uncle, someone like that.

Or a father. That was something else Clagget had never had.

There was his own father, not even a memory, gone before he had even gotten up on his own two feet. And then there was the stepfather with the sour-mash breath who beat him near bloody every goddamn night, until Bobby Roy had to hurt someone, anyone, or anything else, had to give some of that pain back. But Clagget had been too thin and weak to put a hurting on any of the farm boys who called him names in his hometown. Animals, now — animals were something else. Animals were easy. Clagget started with chickens, pulverizing them with buckshot and sometimes cutting them slowly at the base of their skinny necks with the buck knife he always kept whetting-stone sharp. Then barnyard kittens, so many of them always around they would never be missed. You could get one to like you real easy, so that it crawled right into your lap. While it was purring, just a hard, sure push of your thumbnail into the soft spot right behind its ear. Or shove the buck straight up into its chest while the kitten squirmed in your hand, the warm blood splashing across your fingers.

Warm. Like the warmth of being held by a father.

Clagget winced as Cooper’s finger slipped inside him.

“Wilton,” whispered Clagget.

“Hush,” said Cooper. “Just gettin’ friendly, is all.”

The song ended, and the station’s jock went into a commercial about a place called the Style Shop. The Style Shop, the Style Shop, the Style Shop... he must have repeated it a half dozen times.

Clagget said, “Wilton?”

“Yes, little brother?”

“What are we doing here?”

Wilton’s voice was silk. “Oh, a little bit of this and that. Gonna go out to that farm tomorrow, pick up that cocaine from those biker boys. Gonna need your help there, B.R. Give you a chance to realize the promise I seen in you back at the drive-in.”

“And then?”

“Get the money back from Trouble Man, I guess. After that, hang out, enjoy that Bicentennial thing they got planned up here. Then take the ’caine back to Carlos, keep all the money, Carlos’s drug money and the money we get back from Trouble Man, for ourselves. Carlos, as far as we are from Miami, he won’t know a thing. How’s that sound to you?”

Clagget concentrated on the brown curtain, the blue reflection rippling against the fabric. A thick black bug crawled across the curtain, its antennae wiggling in the light.

“B.R.?” said Cooper. “I asked you how that sounds.”

“Sounds good, Wilton.” Clagget swallowed. “Sounds good.”

Wilton Cooper undid his belt buckle as he stood away from the bed. He looked at the skinny boy lying there, the bare-twig arms, the acned buttocks and back. Well, the boy sure wasn’t no prize. But he was his for the trip, and he was steady with a gun.

Cooper stepped out of his drawers. It wasn’t like he was anybody’s sissy, nothing like that. Uh-uh. And he would cut any man who dared call him a punk. He had learned something in prison, though, and once you learned it you never went back: There wasn’t no pussy in the world tighter than the brown eye on a young boy. You could take that motherfucker to the bank and draw interest on it, every goddamn time.