Page 6 of Snake

“Hey!” Badger said, raising his voice above the others. “All that’s true, and it’s why we have to tread careful with Kennerman. But he’s got a couple pressure points, so we’ll get him turned in the right direction. The issue on the table right now is we don’t have him yet, and he sold the fucking property. I called Larry, and he’s looking into it, but he says legal channels probably won’t go anywhere. It’s the town that officially owns that property, and the mayor gets to sign those deals.”

The deal they were talking about was the purchase of the abandoned building that had long housed a heavy-machinery repair shop with a small used-machine sales lot. Last year, a commercial development company from out of state started angling to buy that property and the block of small homes immediately behind it. The developer was one of those greedy shithead companies that bought out local businesses, razed the old buildings, and threw up some balsa-wood strip mall full of crappy franchises like payday loan places and convenience marts. Then, once they got a foothold, they kept buying out the locals and throwing up their flimsy town-killers.

“What did he do with the block behind the building?” Len asked. “He can’t sell that. Other people own those houses.”

“Looks like MWGP upped their offers enough that people are biting,” Badger replied.

“We told them we’d keep them whole,” Bart said.

“There’s a difference between being whole and being strong,” Darwin observed. “We can’t fault guys like Jim Miller if he takes an offer that makes him strong. Man’s got four kids and a grandkid he’s supporting.”

“Look,” Double A, their VP, said when crosstalk started to claim the table again. “The priority here is to keep eyes off the quarry, and off us. We gotta stay low-pro until SPD closes that case. We can’t do that and fuck up a big deal already inked. Seems to me, Kennerman and this chick from MWGP win this round.”

The patches processed Double A’s wisdom and eventually, reluctantly, agreed.

“They only get this round, though,” Nolan said. “So how do we get back on top?”

“For one thing,” Mel suggested, “We need to keep a close watch on the redhead. That little chick is the spoiler in all this, and if we don’t get over on her, she will shove all our balls in an air fryer and eat ‘em up like popcorn.”

“Fuck, man,” Cox complained. “Can’t you talk like a normal person?”

Mel grinned blithely.

Badger made an irritated face and moved on. “Kennerman told me she’ll be in town next weekend, for the Spring Fling. I guess she wants to make nice with the locals. We’re gonna need somebody on her ass from the second her wheels cross the town line.”

Double A jumped in to add, “We need to set the work schedules for the Fling anyway, so let’s add redhead babysitting to the list.”

“At least she’s nice to look at,” Saxon said with a slanted grin. “I can think of worse things than following that little ass around.”

“I wish Shannon would let us bug her room,” Dom sighed. “Show—"

Showdown, Shannon’s old man, glowered and cut him off. “That discussion is fuckin’ dead. It’s not gonna happen. The B&B is her career. We don’t bring our families into our shit like that.”

“Asked and answered, Dom,” Badger added. “We keep tabs on her the old-fashioned way.”

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~oOo~

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A few hours later, as the sun was so low on the horizon its rays seemed to set the ground on fire, Cox pulled onto a tidy gravel drive and parked his Breakout behind a 2001 Oldsmobile Alero that hadn’t moved in a good fifteen years. He hooked his helmet over the handlebars and pulled three grocery totes from his saddlebags. Then he went to the side door of the humble little house he’d grown up in and stepped into his mother’s kitchen.

Despite the blazing sunset hitting the west side of the house, the kitchen was dim. All the curtains were drawn. The house was quiet except for the low murmur of the television in the living room—and a plaintive, warbling whimper from the kettle on the stove.

First thing after setting the groceries on the faded vinyl tablecloth covering the round table in the middle of the room, he went to the range and turned the burner off under the kettle. It quieted at once. A quick shake of the kettle confirmed that it was nearly empty; his mother must have started to make tea and forgotten.

“Momma?” he called out as he unpacked the totes and put the items away. “I’m here. I brought groceries. They had pork chops on sale—the thick bone-in cuts you like. I thought I’d fry a couple up and have dinner with you. I got some buttermilk, too. Maybe you could make biscuits?”

Only the television greeted his words. Cox paused for a second, closed his eyes, and got his head where it needed to be. Then he finished putting groceries away—inside the fridge were at least five plates and bowls holding half-eaten meals, but not much else—and did a quick scan of the kitchen for signs that things had gotten very bad in the few days since he’d been by to check on her. They were getting close to one of the points on the calendar where shit got pretty dire around here, but if it had started already, that would be the earliest yet.

Things were never good with his mom, but there were five times of the year, a total of about ten weeks or so, when shit got pretty dire. The first one was in May, almost a month off yet. Three of those times came upon each other quickly enough that the whole summer was usually a nightmare. Though he was used to it by now, Cox did not relish an early start.

He checked the trash under the sink. Nothing out of the ordinary, which meant quite a few beer cans and a wine bottle mixed in with the usual kitchen trash. Nothing worse. The sink was full of dirty dishes, but they’d made it to the sink, and most of them had been scraped off. All decent signs. He grabbed the kettle, filled it, and put it back on the stovetop to heat up. Before he turned the burner on, though, he went to find his mom.

She was in the living room, asleep in his dad’s old La-Z-Boy, which had been Mom’s chair for thirty years. On the table beside the chair was a can of beer in a crocheted cozy, the remotes for the TV, and a prescription pill bottle. Goddammit.

Cox grabbed the bottle; it had no prescription label. Of course not, because his mother didn’t have a prescription for Ambien, which the pills in the bottle were. She didn’t have a prescription for any addictive drugs anymore, because her doctors had stopped prescribing them to her. Cox had made sure of it. Forcefully.

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