Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues by Steven Womack Page A

wolfed down the rest of the food, drank my diet soda, then carried my plate back up to the counter.
    “Almost got me that time,” I said.
    “What you talkeen about?” she demanded. Mrs. Lee was as genuinely fussy and ill-dispositioned as they came.
    “It was delicious,” I said, reaching across the counter and patting her hand. “See you later.”
    The sweltering air outside seemed normal now. I pulled my tie down another notch and opened the door to the Ford. The pits were gone now; the parking lot was safe for humanity. I settled in carefully on the hot vinyl car seat, and aftera few deep-throated rumbles that made the Escort sound like an Alfa, I pulled back out into traffic.
    I headed up Gallatin Road toward Inglewood. This part of town has more junk stores, salvage warehouses, cheap liquor stores, and pawn shops per capita than any other place I’ve ever seen. Off to my right, Riverside Drive ran parallel a mile or so away, changed names, then curved left and intersected Gallatin Road just ahead of me. I stopped short of the light, turned left onto some side street I never could remember the name of, and meandered back into a really seedy part of town.
    Maybe it’s not all
that
seedy; it’s just that I’ve never gotten accustomed to being surrounded by junkyards, body shops, illegal dumpsites, and motorcycle gang headquarters. Down the road, on the left, next to a concrete block building that housed Billy and Sam’s Expert Auto Maintenance on one side and the Death Ranger’s clubhouse on the other side, sat a faded, old mobile home in the middle of a desolate, closed junkyard. An eight-foot-tall chain link fence surrounded the lot, which was littered with the rusting hulks of generations’ worth of automotive dreams and overgrown with weeds and brush.
    I pulled up in front of the gate and parked. I walked up, shook the gate to make a little noise, and waited for Shadow to emerge from wherever she’d been hiding out from the sun. Shadow, an aging black female German Shepherd trotted around from behind the trailer, ears at attention, a slight tilt to the left that came from age and the genetic hip displacement that seems to plague shepherds so badly.
    She was slow, laid back, but I knew that was because I was on this side of the fence. If I crossed to the other side without either permission or recognition, she’d tear my throat out.
    “Shadow,” I said, holding a hand, palm out, against the gate. “Hey, babe, what’s happening?”
    She stopped about six feet away, sniffing, focusing. Then she approached slowly and ran her huge, wet, black nose up the chain link fencing to my hand. She sniffed a couple moretimes, then the tail started bouncing around like a clock unwinding. She whimpered a little, then backed away so I could open the gate. I lifted the chain off the hook, pressed the gate open a foot or two, and stepped inside the lot. Shadow was on my shoulders in a second, licking my face and nuzzling me. I reached inside my pocket, pulled out the napkin and unwrapped the chicken.
    I took a step back; she was on the ground, jaws dripping.
    “Speak. Speak to me, Shadow.” She brought up a gnarling growl that erupted into a bark.
    “Good girl!” I squeezed the chicken into a ball, flipped it into the air. It was gone before it hit the top of the curve.
    “Where’s daddy, Shadow?” I said. Why do dogs and babies make people talk so damn goofy? “Where’s daddy, baby?”
    The sun was really baking now, the bare ground cracked beneath my feet. I looked over toward the trailer, and even with the rust stains and dull, weathered paint, the reflection hurt my eyes. I walked toward the pale green hulk with Shadow flopping happily along at my side. At one end of the trailer, an overworked window unit struggled to pull the humidity out of the air. I knocked once and opened the door.
    Lonnie stood inside, back to me, bent over slightly, staring at something on the table. He whipped his head around, shushed