Ranchero by Rick Gavin Page B

was, laid out on the floor. No cover. No pillow. No nothing.
    “Not opening my eyes until Luther puts on his pants.”
    Luther’s morning ritual seemed to consist entirely of vaporish behavior. When he wasn’t making showy exhibitions of breaking wind, he was burping or preparing for a belch. I made him get dressed, and true to his word, Desmond didn’t meet the day until he had. Then Desmond took the quarter hour he needed to get up off the floor.
    Once upright, Desmond paced to get everything loose and in sync, and he wandered to the door in the course of his travels and peeked out through the door light.
    “Hmm,” Desmond said. “Dale’s down there talking to Pearl.”
    “Just Dale?” I eased over to join Desmond at the door.
    “Looks like it.”
    Pearl was trying to insist a plastic container of leftover casserole on him. She’d press it in Dale’s hand, and Dale would give it back. Dale pointed at the car shed as he spoke, and Pearl shook her head with some vigor before starting in on the casserole again.
    “Put on your suit coat,” I told Luther, and then motioned him over to the door. I pointed at Dale. “Make him think me and Desmond aren’t in Mississippi anymore.”
    In some ways, Duboises are about as can-do as people can possibly get. True enough, they’re usually can-do in a criminal direction, but it seemed worthwhile to try to harness that ingenuity for relative good.
    “Whatever you do, don’t let him come up here.”
    “I hear you, boss,” Luther told me. Then he flung open the door and went clattering down the steps.
    “Good morning, Miss Pearl!”
    Desmond and I watched Luther prance across the driveway.
    “He’s a little light in the tap shoes, wouldn’t you say? I mean,” Desmond added, “for a Dubois.”
    “Can a Dubois be gay and live to enjoy it?”
    Desmond paused to consider the strife and trouble a gay Dubois would meet with. He shook his head and told me firmly, “Naw.”
    We couldn’t hear Dale or Pearl, not enough to make out what they said, but Luther was so loud that everything he told them carried. His was a good story, as spontaneous bullshit goes. Me and Desmond had picked up and gone to Texas, and Luther had come into my lease. He was helping Pearl around the place and making himself useful for rent consideration and for clothes. At that point Luther showed Dale his sateen jacket lining.
    “Isn’t that Desmond’s car out front?” Dale asked Luther with some volume, like maybe he suspected we were listening to him up top.
    I looked around to see where we might go to if we had to. There was a knee wall back near the kitcheonette with a hole cut in it, access to an attic space covered with a plywood door. We could punch through the ceiling of Gil’s garage and conceivably get out through there.
    Desmond followed my gaze and told me, “Uh-uh.”
    “You’ll fit,” I said.
    “Ain’t about fitting. I don’t go in attics. I don’t go in basements. I don’t go in bayous. I don’t go in the woods.”
    “Doesn’t leave much.”
    “I go to work. I go to the Sonic. I go home. If he comes up here, we’ll just put him down again.”
    But the longer Dale stayed, the better Luther got. He’d come into Desmond’s Metro on account of money Desmond owed for medicine (Luther called it) that Luther had supplied him for his mother. Apparently Dale was acquainted with Desmond’s momma’s pain.
    “How did they go, then?” Dale wanted to know.
    “Took the Amtrak out of Greenwood. Had tickets clear down to McComb. Catching a bus from there.”
    “Where in Texas?” Dale asked him.
    Luther shrugged. “Big place,” he said.
    Dale couldn’t seem to quite decide who to be angry with since me and Desmond were Galveston way and no longer handy for it. Then Luther bailed him out by poking Dale’s bandage and asking him, “What’s that?”
    Dale picked Luther up by Gil’s lapels and whispered something in Luther’s ear. It was surely a threat against (knowing