Читать книгу Klick's Shorts - Milam Smith - Страница 3

The house I was being paid to watch appeared to be a fifty-year-old house that had been added onto several times in its much abused life. Half brick, half frame. Half the brick didn’t match, and half the frame siding was more faded than the other. A room had been tacked on at the south end, then another room built into that at the back. There was an awning over the splintered, concrete patio in the backyard.

The backyard was unfenced and exposed to the scraggly cottonwood trees between it and the lake beyond. Benbrook Lake was a Corps of Engineer’s Lake carved around the Trinity River, that snaked further up into Fort Worth about ten, fifteen miles downstream.

I knew what the backyard looked like because I’d crept around back there when I’d gotten to the house a half hour earlier. At five in the morning the Cottonwoods were scarecrows that protected the house from possums and raccoons and skunks. Native Texas varmints all. The black grill on the patio looked like a WWII bomb standing on its end. It had been warm.

The houses in the neighborhood were far enough apart so no dogs awoke and barked as I sneaked around like the good private eye that I am.

I’d checked out the lay of the house because I was being paid to serve papers on a gentleman that was shacked up in the house with my client’s wife. The bedroom he was in, with the wife, was in the back. Two other bedrooms in the front and back contained the three children of the Cause, as they say in the legalese that lawyers use to confuse normal folk like you and I. The children all had the angelic looks that can be found on any sleeping child’s face in the night.

I had kids of my own. When they were very young I’d stand over them and watch them sleep, in awe at the quick beautiful smiles that occasionally flashed across their gentle faces. Gave me peace. Perhaps a shrink would say I was searching for my own lost youth. Probably just declare me a nut and commit me.

After checking the house I’d gone back to my 1968 Dodge Charger and sat quietly. The Charger had been orange at one time, but I’d had it painted white because of all the young idiots fifteen years coming up and asking me if my car was the car used in Dukes of Hazaard, a television show popular at the time. The Dukes’ Charger had been a ‘69 model. I got tired of telling people that so I changed the color.

I jotted down in my log book what I’d observed. Important because my client had shown me the Court Orders stating “no male overnight visitors while in possession of the children.”

The man, one Barney J. Rubble (seriously) had to be at work in Arlington at seven. The client had paid enough, several hundred hard-earned dollars that he assured he couldn’t spare but had scratched up somehow, so that I could be there early enough to observe the routine and verify the children were home.

At five fifty-eight the small bathroom window in the front, between the bedroom and the living room, flared with light. It was on for about fifteen minutes, then extinguished.

I resisted the urge to go around back and see if the love was still intense enough in their relationship for the woman to be up and cooking Barney breakfast. It was after six and the morning sun was already igniting the clouds on the horizon. The house was just off a highway, and traffic would start flowing soon. At six-thirty Barney cracked open the front door.

Mr. Rubble was six feet in his cowboy boots. More layers of fat coated on him than a man his size should be carrying. He had a fat florid face and glasses with binocular lenses. Even from thirty yards away I could see he wasn’t too bright. Those thick glasses magnified the vacant look in his black eyes. The slightly gaping mouth didn’t help.

My client’s wife was in the door. Dressed in an ugly pink housecoat that did nothing to hide her own puffy body, she leaned over and gave him an emotionless kiss that was supposed to be passionate.

Watching, I had to role down my window and spit. “Yecch,” I said to myself. I understood perfectly then my client’s comment “hey, I don’t miss her, believe me, I just want my kids out of that kind of confusing environment.”

I waited ‘til the door closed before getting out of the Charger. I took long steps and caught poor Barney just as he was putting his key into his ugly, crayon-blue Chevy Suburban.

“Hey, Mr. Barney Rubble,” I said from behind him. Guess he was about as deaf as he was blind.

Rubble just about pee-ed his pants. He lurched around and dropped his lunchbox, which was as big as a small ice chest.

I held out the lawsuit, turned to the Citation page. “I’m Clyde Klick.” Pen in hand, I said, “Sign here, sir. You’ve been served.”

He gathered himself quickly. He had the look of a bully in his eyes. I was just a bit shorter than him. And in the loose, black Micky Mouse T-shirt I was wearing it was perhaps hard to see how broad my shoulders were. People always guessed my weight incorrectly. I made it a point every year to go to the GUESS YOUR AGE - WEIGHT booth at the Fort Worth Stock Show, just to win my free stuffed animal.

“Bugger off, Eh,” Barney said, using a stiff arm for emphasis.

He was strong. I knew he worked for the steelyard in Arlington, so there was a little solid meat beneath the blubber. If I’d been unprepared his shove might have moved me. As it was, he found himself moved backed into the side of his ‘Burban.

The magnified eyelids behind the glasses fluttered at me like a dying moth hitting a blue swamp light. I smiled.

I said, “‘Bugger off, Eh’? That how they talk in Canuckle-head land, where you’re from?” My client had said the man was a Canadian, relocated down here a year or so ago.

He turned and tried to unlock his door. You can’t use violence, of course, when serving papers. My shrink would surely frown on me too, if I resorted to the manly arts. Not to mention the police.

But hey, the man had pushed me. I took out the pistol in the back pocket of my pants, held it to his head, and cocked the trigger.

Barney froze. “Jesus Christ, Man!”

“Yeah, I’d say it’s a good time to be thinking of him,” I said. “Turn around here, Eh?”

Barney turned. I’d put the pistol away already. “Sign here.” He took the pen and signed it. “Here, this copy too, for my client.” He signed it. I took back the pen. Every penny saved….

“Now, you go and have a nice day, sir.” I walked away backwards ‘til I was at the road. Back in the car I sat and watched, wrote down in my log what had happened. Then observed some more.

Barney flipped through the pages, reading. His mouth opened and dropped like a fish slowly drowning. Finally he looked around, saw me, hurried to the house. The door was locked and he had to knock to get back inside because his keys were dangling, forgotten in the ‘Burban’s door. My client’s wife didn’t look too happy being roused back out of bed.

They stood and talked, then looked over at me. I smiled and waved, then awoke the 426 Hemi under my Charger’s hood. Its meaty rumble disturbed the morning calm even further.

The lady came stomping across the yard, spouting words at me that would make one of my old Drill Sergeants take notes. Her lips were tight, and a slight bit of foam was spraying as she yelled.

I eased out the clutch and lurched away from there. About a hundred yards down the road I pulled over and jotted more notes into the log. In the mirror I could see my client’s wife still in the road, pointing at me, stomping one foot.

It took the smile off my face. That was one disturbed human being.

At times in my life I’ve wondered about my own sanity. I’d finally figured out I’d just made bad decisions, had been immature, had gotten out of things about what I’d put in. I was normal. Even the thought of ‘that’ made me uncomfortable because I’d always thought I was ‘different’ than everyone else.

Watching the lady in the mirror I had a profound sense of thankfulness. I could see what ‘nuts’ really was, and I wasn’t it.

When I got back to my office downtown, which is where I also live, I called my kids at their mom’s and told all three of them how much I loved them. Something they’d probably only heard from me a few times in their lives.

Then I leaned back in my chair, and tried to nap away the weight of the world’s troubles off my shoulders.