Chapter 6 #2
Cutter didn’t resist. He didn’t know why, whether it had to do with the choice being between Eugene and Verne, memory of that hard knee in his groin, curiosity about what Eugene had in mind, or something else.
But he went along, albeit uneasily. Eugene was more commanding than Verne any day.
He was also stronger, quicker, and more wily.
Making a break for it would be hard. Not that Cutter planned to do that, at least not right off.
It might be worth sticking around if there was promise of a hot meal in it.
“Where you takin’ me?” he asked.
“You’ll see.”
“I want to know.”
“If you wanted to know where you were goin’, you should’a gone with Verne.”
Manacled to Eugene by a single strong hand, Cutter didn’t have much choice but to march alongside him, through the rain and the mud, back to the scene of the crime.
They didn’t talk. Cutter wasn’t good at conversation in the best of circumstances. When they reached the car, Eugene opened the passenger’s door and nudged him in.
He balked then. “I got mud all over me.”
“So do I.”
“Your car’s new and clean.”
“So? I don’t plan on stayin’ out in this rain forever, and I’m sure as hell not goin’ to walk for miles in it. You may be young and insensitive, but I’m gettin’ cold. Now get in.”
He gave Cutter another push, a firmer one this time. Cutter got into the car.
Slamming the door, Eugene rounded the car and climbed in behind the wheel. He shot Cutter a glance. “You missed your chance. The keys were here in the car. You could’a taken off when I was goin’ around.”
But Cutter was cold and tired. It never occurred to him to take off. Not that he was about to tell Eugene that. “I don’t know how to drive.”
“No? So how do you get around?”
“Motorcycle.” He snorted. “Got no gas for it now, thanks to you.”
“You want gas, you can earn the money to buy it.”
Cutter snorted again but didn’t say another word.
He thought it was fine and dandy for Eugene St. George to talk about earning money.
He lived an easy life, had everything he needed, and if there was something he wanted, all he had to do was open the company till and help himself.
No one would call him a thief. No one would come running after him, threatening to lock him up.
Some people had it made in life, that was all there was to it, and Cutter wasn’t one of them.
He couldn’t earn decent money because he wasn’t trained for a damn thing.
The only jobs he could get were ones any idiot could hold. They always bored him so he quit.
Eugene was heading out of town, not in the direction of the big brick home or the gem pits but in the opposite direction, the one that was familiar to Cutter. “Where are we goin’?”
“Your place.” He peered through the windshield. “Is this the turn?”
Instantly Cutter was wary. Folks from town came to his place only when something was wrong, like when his daddy ran the old truck into a tree or when his mama died. “Why are we goin’ to my place?”
“So you can change your clothes. Is this the turn?”
The reason was fair enough. “Yeah.”
As soon as Eugene made the turn, the Lincoln began to bounce on the rutted road, and the deeper into the woods they went, the worse the bouncing became.
Momentary relief came with the occasional spin of a wheel, but the tires were new, regaining their traction every time.
So the jolting went on. “Jesus,” Eugene breathed at one point, “and you do this on a cycle?”
“I got a hard butt.”
“Must have a hard head. Why in the devil don’t you live in town like everyone else?”
“’Cause this place is mine. It’s all I got.”
“It’s isolated.”
“I like it like that.”
“You ought to be with people.”
“I don’t like people.”
Eugene snickered. “You picked the wrong planet, boy.”
“I didn’t pick a goddamned thing,” Cutter blurted. “It was picked for me. I didn’t have no say at all. Even this house”—which was coming into sight, looking pathetically ramshackle in the rain—“was forced on me, but it’s the only one I got.”
The car came to a stop. Yanking at the door handle, Cutter was quickly out and tramping through the sludge toward his front door.
With a single push it was open. He went through without looking back and kicked it shut with a heel, just like he always did.
In the next instant, Eugene threw it open again.
“Don’t you have any manners?” he growled.
Cutter hadn’t expected him to come in. He didn’t need help changing his clothes. “What do you want in here?”
“I want to look around.” He was scanning the room with a disapproving look on his face. “You live here?”
“Something wrong with that?” Cutter asked. He didn’t love the place either, but it was the only home he had.
“Sure is. It’s a mess,” Eugene decided. From a battered table covered with dirty cardboard containers and plastic plates, he moved past an upholstered chair whose shabbiness was barely hidden beneath a pile of worn clothes. “It’s filthy, and it smells. Don’t you have any pride?”
“I wasn’t expecting guests.”
“What I’m talking about’s got nothing to do with guests.” He glanced into the shadows, of which there were many, and frowned. “Where do you sleep?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Where do you sleep?”
Cutter hitched his head toward the darkest end of the room, where a narrow ladder led to a loft. In the barely discernible light, the loft didn’t look large enough to hold much. Eugene apparently thought the same thing. “You fit?”
“I manage.” He watched Eugene stare at the loft for another minute before dropping his eyes. They fell on the old, grimy-topped potbelly stove that stood out from one wall.
“Is that for heat?”
“When I got wood.”
“And when you don’t?”
“I make do.”
“You freeze.”
“Hey, man, I’m not the only one. Lots of people around here don’t have heat.”
“Not if I can help it,” Eugene muttered. He tugged at a lamp chain. Nothing happened. “And you didn’t pay your bill.”
“I couldn’t pay my bill. Besides, what do I need lights for? When it gets dark, I go to sleep.”
“So how do you read?” To Cutter’s chagrin, Eugene had spotted the books that were sticking out from under the clothes on the chair. “Did you steal them?”
“They’re from the library.”
“Did you steal them?”
“No.”
Eugene lifted one. “Catcher in the Rye. Any good?”
“It’s okay.”
“What’s it about?”
“Some kids.” He prayed Eugene wouldn’t ask more.
He liked the book, felt a kind of affinity for the rebelliousness of Holden Caulfield, but he had a feeling he’d missed a lot of what the author was trying to say.
That was what his teachers had always told him, that he was missing things.
Personally, he didn’t care. He liked to read, but he didn’t want to be forever taking apart every line.
So he missed some hidden meaning. So what?
When Eugene tossed the book back to the chair, he was relieved, but his relief was short-lived. Folding his arms over his chest, Eugene leaned back against the door. “Got anything clean and dry in this mess?”
Cutter knew he could find dry. Clean was another story. Sifting through a pile of clothes on the floor behind the ladder to the loft, he came up with the best of the lot, jeans and a shirt that would have to do. He looked up to find Eugene watching him. “I got some.”
“Put them on.”
“You just gonna stand there and watch?”
“Yup.”
“Look who’s talkin’ about manners.”
“The way I see it,” Eugene said, “if you were in jail, you’d be doing this and more in front of a dozen guys. Now speed it up. I’m not getting any warmer standing around this shitbox.”
Neither was Cutter. Peeling off his sodden jacket, then his shirt, he mopped mud spatters from his face and neck as best he could with the inside of the wet shirt, then put on the dry one.
Without looking at Eugene, he went at his pants.
When he had the dry jeans on, he found a pair of socks.
But the wet work boots had to go back on.
They were the only shoes he had. Grabbing a jacket that he’d snitched the month before from a hook in a soda shop two towns over, he approached Eugene.
“My place isn’t so bad, y’know. Some are worse.”
“Only if the people who live there are feeble-minded or infirm. So what’s your excuse?
That your folks are gone? That you’re just a kid?
That you don’t know what a laundromat is?
That you don’t have time to go? Well, I say bullshit.
You’re a lazy bum without a stitch of pride.
” He pulled open the door and stomped out.
“I’m not lazy!” Cutter called after him. “And I got pride!”
“Get back in the car!” Eugene bellowed.
One part of Cutter was tempted to turn around and race into the woods. Given that he knew them like the back of his hand, he’d escape Eugene for sure. The other part, though, was thinking that Eugene had to be getting hungry.
He got back in the car.
Eugene started it up, and after some tricky maneuvering in the mud he had it turned around and bouncing back over the ruts toward the main road.
Cutter stared out the windshield, wondering where they were going next, darting Eugene the occasional glance in hopes of finding out.
But the man’s face told him nothing, and since Cutter wasn’t about to ask again, he stayed silent. He definitely had pride.
After hitting the main road, Eugene drove straight back through the center of town. He pulled up at the large brick house that stood several blocks beyond the town green. “Get out.”
“You want me to go in there?”
“Why not?”
“I’m a thief. I might just steal your silver.”
Eugene shot him a smug look. “You won’t.” Without another word, he climbed out of the car.