| OCR Text |
Show Blue Run/29 probably having his escape and all planned to a T, that's Buddy. I should have been on the lookout, but I wasn't, and neither was Dee which surprises me now that I reconsider. He'd likely tromped past me and Joey a dozen times, stuffing the apartment mailboxes with grocery ads and letters soon to be returned to sender with big red question marks magic markered through the fake people residing at fake addresses. No stamps, even. Maybe Buddy'd come close to doing it a few times, laying hands on Joey and stuffing his mouth with a sock, carrying him kicking to whatever jalopy he was driving now and heading off toward the big heart of hell knows where Dust would cover his tracks and I'd never see my boy again and I'd surely die Because I'd think of him passed out with the winos in front of the plasma center and people waking up from pass-out drunks on floors, and Violet lighting cigarettes off the stove burner and Mexican tv. Davey'd shake his dwarf head and mouth off about the infernal heat under that big empty sky, and Buddy be asleep on the humpbacked recliner-his mouth open, flies crawling in and out. My son growing up like that, becoming one of them. It never once occurred to me that he actually loved the boy-it was simply not a consideration. Buddy expected a fight, surely, but he decided to risk it. Maybe he'd started believing his own lies-isn't that how it always goes with liars? He had it all figured, except for Dee. Between us and the door, he waited for me to see him. Buddy Washer just stood there in his blue double-creased mailman trousers and scuffed shoes, that silly pith hat, kind of a smirk on his face, but something else-fear? or hope maybe, the two always got mixed up on his face. He could play from the cuff of either sleeve "Josephine." "Buddy." |
