Chapter 5 #3
Floy shrugged. “I will never in my life ever understand how a woman’s thought process works.
Anyway, after they pulled me out from under the cot in my cell—and for the record, I have no memory of crawling there due to side-effect hallucinations from the first pain meds they gave me—the chief took me back to the hospital to be examined, then took me home.
That’s when I remembered the security camera I’d installed in the basement after Elvis’s second escape.
I pulled it up on my laptop. And there it was: Mayrene opening the basement window and the door on Elvis’s tank to let him out. ”
Both brothers echoed. “The hell you say!”
Floy nodded. “It was her. All three times. Her and her mama had a plan. If they made Elvis a big enough threat to the community, it would force me to get rid of him.” Floy sighed, and glanced out the window, picturing Elvis as he’d last seen him, lying in the rain.
“ “I gave Elvis to a guy I knew who had a big fancy public snake exhibit. And yesterday, I got rid of my wife and mother-in-law, too.”
Beau shook his head. “I am in shock. Never in my life have I heard of such a mean, twisted stunt. Dude, I am so sorry.”
Floy shrugged. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I dodged a big bullet. I sent the video to Chief Arnold, and I will be surprised if he doesn’t file charges against them for wanton endangerment. It’s a felony,” he added, and then grinned.
Razor’s eyes widened. “That’s prison time.”
Floy almost smiled. “I know. I was fine before I knew Mayrene, and once my body heals from the fallout of her betrayal, I’ll be fine again. At least I can fart in the comfort of my own house without somebody whipping out a can of Burberry and Cinnamon air freshener.”
A burst of laughter ended the story.
Razor lifted his second beer. “A toast to the brotherhood of broken dreams,” he said, as they all took a drink.
A short while later, Floy stood in the doorway, watching them leave. He noticed the mail on the table as he closed the door and took it to the kitchen table to go through later. Right now, he needed to get her name and her car off his insurance policy.
It was nearing sundown when he remembered he had yet to put the new spring on the back screen door—the one that had caused the bloody cut down his forehead and the two black eyes. That screen door.
It had been on his to-do list for weeks, and when he finally began, the irony of how easy it was to replace became another shoulda, woulda, coulda moment that would have saved him at least one head injury.
Once he had it attached, he stood on the porch, opening the door and turning it loose again, listening to the solid whap as it swung shut on its own. Satisfied, he put up his tools and went back inside.
He was repairing what had been broken in the only way he knew how—with the innate skill he’d been born with of knowing how things worked and how to put them back together when they came undone. His life had been shattered, but he was reassembling the pieces of what mattered.
The ensuing week brought a thunderstorm that rolled through the mountains and down into Blackjack, followed by a fresh birth of grass needing to be mowed and an unusual anomaly of earthworms coming up for air that brought birds in elegant waves into Floy’s backyard, as they availed themselves of the unexpected feast. Nature was readjusting itself, and so was he.
The man who ran the I Probly Got It three miles west of Blackjack, who was also known as the local junk dealer, arrived the following Monday.
He put the agreed sum of money for Mayrene’s wrecked car into Floy’s hands, then winched it up onto a flatbed trailer, tied it down, and drove away, leaving the patch of weeds that had grown up around it for Floy to mow.
As soon as the man had left, Floy put on a clean shirt, washed up, and headed into town. He drove to the pharmacy and went straight to the aisle where razors and razor blades were displayed, and he began searching for electric razors. He was over sharp objects anywhere near his body.
He picked out one with several guard sizes that looked simple enough to use and bought it, then he stopped by the doctor’s office.
The only remnants left of his two black eyes were faint yellowing circles above his cheekbones.
Pain was mostly nonexistent, relieving him of the need to squint, but he hadn’t forgiven.
The cool stare from his pale green eyes was all the evidence people needed to see it.
He went from the pharmacy to the doctor’s office, signed in, then took a seat and waited to be called back, ignoring the half-full waiting room and the stares.
One old man got up and moved to the empty chair beside him. “Good to see you again, son. Life can sure shovel a load of shit when we least expect it,” he said.
Floy knew the old man. His name was Rance Webster. He’d reroofed his house two years back and didn’t have it in him to be rude. “Yes, sir. That it can,” Floy said.
“This town and your woman did you dirty. I’m real sorry that happened,” he added.
Floy swallowed past the sudden knot in his throat but stayed silent.
“I got the cancer,” Rance said softly. “Doc’s kinda pissed off at me because I don’t want the chemo or the pills, which is almost an insult to me, because there’s no amount of medicine on earth that can fix me. All it will do is make me sick, weaker than I am now, and make my hair all fall out.”
Floy was quietly studying Rance’s face, witnessing the bitter truth of a man facing the end of his life and doing it on his own terms.
“I’m really sorry to hear this, Mr. Webster,” Floy said softly.
Rance smiled, then reached over and patted Floy’s knee. “Don’t be, son. I had a good life with a good woman. I’m kinda looking forward to seeing her again.”
At that point, the nurse called Floy’s name. He laid his hand over the old man’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you for the kind words. Sorry for the journey ahead of you.”
Rance Webster winked.
Floy stood up and followed the nurse. Ten minutes later, he exited the office minus the stitches and walked out of the waiting room with his head up. The old man was gone. Likely in an exam room somewhere within the inner halls of the building.
Give ‘em hell, Rance, he thought, and left the hospital. He got in his truck, then tested the spot where the stitches had been. Another memento of fading chaos.
He started the truck, and as he backed up and drove away, he thought of Rance facing death on his own and decided he needed to quit dwelling on what was gone and focus on what was left.
When he got home, he changed into old clothes, fueled up the rototiller sitting at the far end of Mayrene’s forgotten garden, and started it up.
The ground was damp and loose from the last rain.
The rotating blades dug into the black earth as he put it into gear and gripped the handlebars.
He held on tight as the little plow pulled him forward, ripping up dirt along with the tangle of plants and weeds being uprooted by the tiller blades.
It was another cog falling into place—resetting what had been.
Later that night, he got the new electric razor out of the packaging and attached the first guard. It took him a couple of minutes to get everything ready. The razor was rechargeable, so there was no dangling electric cord—just a sleek silver and black razor buzzing in his hand.
The first guard he used removed half of the growth, still leaving whiskers he didn’t want.
When he finished with the first sweep, he switched guards and started over, this time shaving the whiskers down to a dark shadow.
He trimmed up the edges and cleaned up sideburns he didn’t want, then stepped back to view his new look in the bathroom mirror.
It surprised him. The shadow beard revealed the face of a man who’d survived his own personal hell—the face of an intense, foreboding man with snake-green eyes.
The transformation was like he’d gone from a man who’d once owned a snake to a man who’d become one.
It was, he admitted quietly, a flight of fancy, but he decided to own it.