Page 66 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

But he swallowed his rising gorge and stammered out, “I-in.”

The man shrugged, hooked a thumb over his shoulder, and said, “Go on, then.”

Harlan went. He stumbled his half-delirious way down the driveway, and up onto the porch, where he was startled by yet another Lean Dog, slumped down in a rocking chair in the shade. He had a trucker cap propped over his face, one that he lifted when he heard the clump of Harlan’s boot soles on the porch.

“Hey, see if–” he started, and then fell silent when he spotted it was Harlan standing there frozen in front of the door, and not one of his club brothers. His gaze, a pale seawater green,sharpened and narrowed immediately. He was younger than the first man, clean-shaven, handsome in a movie star sort of way. “Who’re you?”

Harlan didn’t know how he was going to get through this ordeal – and no matter how badly he wanted to join, itwasan ordeal – without passing out. “I’m here to see the president.”

“Alright,” the man drawled, still reclined in his chair, but his body taut with readiness. “Whoareyou?”

“H-Hank. I’m Hank.”

The seawater gaze moved down to the toes of his boots – used, and not name brand – back up to his face, inscrutable. “You tryin’ to prospect or something?”

“Y-y-yes.” Harlan took a deep breath and stood up straighter; willed his posture to something confident. “Yeah.”

The man smirked. “Is that ‘yes,’ or ‘yeah?’”

Harlan frowned, and the spike of anger in his gut cleared up his wavering, spotty vision. “Yeah.”

The man waited another minute, then heaved himself up out of the chair with the theatrical groan of someone much older. He raked a hand through his hair, resettled his hat, and shooed Harlan away from the door. “Alright. I’ll take you to him.” He smirked in a way that Harlan didn’t like, that suggested some nasty practical joke might be afoot. But when he opened the door, Harlan followed.

The interior was cool – shockingly so, the AC turned up so high Harlan felt its breeze against his face – and dim. His vision went spotty again, this time flecked with white, as he blinked the sunshine glare of outside away and adjusted to the low light here. The door let directly into a wide, wood-floored room that had clearly been remodeled and retrofitted beyond the original specs to house what was essentially a honky-tonk. There was a horseshoe-shaped bar in the center of the space, a living area to its left, with couches, and chairs, and a big-screen TV, anda series of pool tables and round dining tables to the right. A bored-looking girl was filing her nails and cracking her gum behind the bar, and didn’t spare them a glance.

Three men were playing pool, balls clicking quietly together. Someone let out a dismayed shout, and someone else laughed and snatched up the cash laid on the edge of the table. Harlan glanced at them – and then glanced again. Two were average and inconsequential, but the third…

The third towered over the others, his shoulders – bared by the cut-out sleeves of his shirt – broad and heavy as a door lintel.

Felix Lécuyer.

Harlan ground to a halt, breath catching in his throat. Excitement flooded his system, chased quickly by nerves so acute he almost gagged. He’d expected to see Felix here, but not until after he’d been allowed to prospect. Not until he had his new cut, and was safely a part of things.

Felix didn’t notice him. He slipped the won cash in his pocket, grinning, and lined up his next shot. “Double or nothing?”

“Not on your life,” the loser muttered, and the third man laughed.

The man with the seawater eyes realized Harlan wasn’t following, and turned back. “You coming, chickenshit?”

His voice was loud – too loud – and drew the attention of the bartender…and Felix and his friends. They glanced over curiously, propped on their pool cues. Harlan met Felix’s gaze for one heart-stopping moment, but of course Felix didn’t recognize him. How could he? Harlan had never slipped from his cover of underbrush and introduced himself.

I fucked your mom, he thought, and was able to exhale.

“Yeah,” he told the man leading him, and forced his feet to follow.

~*~

The president – the half-jovial, half-threatening Bob Boudreaux – was nearly as big as Felix, and just as Cajun. He laughed at Harlan, and not in a kind way, but he also said that they were looking to take on some prospects, and that if Harlan was willing to wash bikes and scrub toilets, he could spend the next week proving himself, and then Bob would make a decision one way or the other. He didn’t shake Harlan’s hand, and Harlan was glad of it; Bob struck him as the sort of person who might break your fingers with a hard squeeze for the fun of it.

Felix was no longer playing pool when he walked back through the common room on his way out.

The week that followed was grueling and humiliating. Harlan washed the bikes, and scrubbed the toilets…and mopped the floor, and hand-washed dishes and shot glasses; did dorm laundry, and ran errands, lugging Cokes and water bottles and beers in by the case. While he was using a hand truck to maneuver a keg from the truck – a club truck, a beat-up Chevy he’d been charged with returning in the exact condition in which it was loaned, under pain of physical harm – he hit a crack in the pavement, dumped the keg on his foot, and had to sit down in the shade until he could stem the flow of tears. One of the toilets kept clogging up, and he finally found the kitchen sponge someone must have flushed on purpose to sabotage him.

That day, jeans damp nearly to the knees with more than water, he’d caught a glimpse of his harried face in the mirror and wondered if it was possibly worth it. He hadn’t seen Felix all week, and by Wednesday, he realized the Dogs were purposefully tossing handfuls of dust on their bikes to force him to wash them again.

He asked the man with the seawater eyes – Frenchie – if the guys had it out for him, to which he’d earned a snort, anda sneer. “It’s called hazing, man. What’d you think was gonna happen?”

There was another possible prospect in attendance, but he and Harlan were rarely tasked to work together. His name was Marvin, and he had a narrow, ratty face, and mouse-brown hair, and by Thursday, he’d stopped coming around.

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