Whitey and Squaw came out with me to the bikes. Johnny Bee stayed put in his chair like Wild Bill Hickcock, with one significant difference: he kept his back to the wall.
I could not walk a straight line. Twice, at least, I misstepped and almost tripped over Whitey's spurs. I had three Fuzzy Navels and a double Sailor Jack under my belt, not to mention the tap beer, and they were all doing the see-saw thing with my equilibrium. This didn't bother Whitey or Squaw, who weren't the steadiest bipeds on the planet themselves.
We bumped fists and I mounted the rat. I knew from experience that once I was on the road I would feel as sober as a Puritan. I can't account for it, but there it is. So with memorized directions to Top's house on East Kearney Street I burbled my way down 2nd.
Squaw had described Top to me, but then said, "You won't know what to expect until you get there." I liked how she talked. Her eyes would grow big and bright whenever she spoke, and if she strung more than a half dozen sentences together her eyes would be virtually popping out of her head. Whitey talked as if he were trying to keep from laughing. Reticent Johnny had a deep voice, like rocks hitting the bottom of a dry well. He had a deadpan expression and when he smiled, which wasn't often, you knew something was especially bothering him. He was tall and slender, but with a slight potbelly. His mustache grew into his sideburns, a dirty grayish brown, with a dark triangle of whiskers under his bottom lip that pointed to the cleft in his small rounded chin. To some men he was intimidating in appearance, to others he was mildly ridiculous.
I thought about the three of them until I came to the first signal light, then I concentrated on finding East Kearney Street. It was your average middle-class neighborhood of single story houses. Top's had an elm in the front yard near the curb that leaned out over the street. There was a plain wooden slat fence along the side of the yard. I parked in the driveway next to an impressive BMW motorcycle. A minivan was parked on the other side of it.
I sat on the rat for a minute or two debating whether I wanted to go through with this or not. So far I had just gone with the flow, and I was intrigued by the game. I decided, what the hell, it was an interesting way to get a windfall and it would not impede my footloose ways. The Roadents, as well as the Undertakers, were not to run in a pack but to be lone wolves, spreading themselves out across the country with the idea that a challenge would take you to places you hadn't been before. Every so often there would be a rally, a get-together, wherever Top decided to hole up for a while. But otherwise it was every man for himself.
I rang the doorbell. A woman of middle age who looked like she had been put through the wringer a few times opened the door; a short-haired blonde, stout, no make-up, dressed like a safari guide. A little girl with two fingers in her mouth stood behind her, peeking around a leg of her mother and pointing a potato chip at me.
"You must be Hangman," the woman said. She gave me a hard thin smile and stepped to the side. "Come in. Kelva, get out of the way for the man."
This turned out to be Top's niece and her kid; the Pittsburg sister's daughter and granddaughter. The woman's name was Heather. She had left an abusive husband and was looking to get a fresh start. She had the living room smelling like cream of wheat, a little too warm and stuffy for my liking. Toys were strewn over the floor and on the furniture. But I wasn't there long.
Heather escorted me down a hall to a den that had been added on to the house, reached by going through Top's immaculate bedroom. She blocked the den's doorway and said to a cloud of incense, "You were right, he showed up." And a low grainy voice answered: "You ought not to be surprised by now."
As she turned to leave she said to me, "I'll be back in a jiff with some refreshments."
I nodded and stepped into the den, trying not to sway too much. Squaw had prepared me for the incense and the general look of an Oriental temple, but she had not caught the essence of Top's appearance; admittedly hard to put into words effectively.
He sat crossed-legged in the lotus position on a low and cushioned table at the back of the room, in the light of two lampstands to either side of the table. His skinny hairy body was naked except for a black loincloth and a red shawl over his shoulders. He wore a turban. His beard was white and fanned out. He had very little in the way of eyebrows, but large, deep eyes in dark hollows crowding close to his thin pointy nose.
"Hello," he said genially, "very glad to meet you." Then, in an altogether different voice: "I am the Lord of the Roads."
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