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“Just keep your mouth shut!” Marc said, panicking a little at the idea that Dozer might have said something he shouldn’t have. He was easily led, easily confused, and dumber than a stump. If he let himself get tricked into saying something…
“I told you, I ain’t said nothing!” Dozer said. He was gettingwound up now. His big ears were turning red. “You think I’m stupid? You think I’m just gonna up and say, ‘Oh, you mean that guy we killed?’?”
“Jesus! Don’t even say that out loud!” Marc snapped, looking around as if there might be people out there in the wilderness eavesdropping.
“Why not?” Dozer challenged him. “It’s true. We killed a man!”
“It was an accident!”
“Was it?”
Marc felt suddenly cold. Dozer, for once, seemed sober as a judge, despite the smell of whiskey on his breath.
“You were there,” Marc said. “You saw what happened. He came at me! And that was onyou!”
Dozer nodded. “Oh, right. That was my fault. Everything is always my fault. It’s never your fault, Saint Marc, is it? Nothing is ever your fault. You always got Dozer to pass it off onto, don’t you?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Marc could feel himself hyperventilating. He was losing control of the situation, losing control of Dozer. That couldn’t happen.
“You’re the one just had to talk to him that night,” Marc said. “You’re the one had to say how sorry you were.”
“Because I am,” Dozer said. “I’ve spent ten years sick over what I did to him.”
“It was an accident!”
Dozer wagged his head. “You probably even believe that now. You just went on like nothing ever happened, ’cause it didn’t happen to you.”
Of course he’d gone on with his life, Marc thought. That had been the whole point, hadn’t it? Knock Robbie out of the way so he could get his chance. Of course he hadn’t squandered it. He hadn’t had any control over the extent of Robbie’s injury. It wasn’t his fault Robbie had gotten hooked on painkillers. None of that had been in his hands.
There was no point in talking about it now. They couldn’t change what had happened even if they had wanted to.
He took a deep breath and gathered his wits.
“Look,” he said, holding his hands up as if in surrender. “Let’s just get this car gone. We’ll sort the rest out later.”
He turned away and went to pull the tarp off Robbie Fontenot’s piece-of-shit Toyota.
“No,” Dozer said.
Marc spun around. “What? What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no. You’re the one went to college, and you don’t know what no means? Oh.” He caught himself. “I suppose you don’t, since no one’s ever said no to you, golden boy.”
“What is your problem today?” Marc asked.
“You. You’re my problem,” Dozer said. “And I’m here to end it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m done,” he said. “I’m done being your henchman. I’m done being your stooge, Marc. I’m done trying to drown it all out with booze. You never even cared what that did to me, did you? You got what you wanted, and you got the hell out of here. What did I get? Stuck in a bottle, going nowhere.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Marc asked. “I couldn’t take you to Tulane with me! Was I supposed to take your SATs for you? Was I supposed to stop you drinking? What did you expect from me?”
Dozer stared at him with sadness and disgust. “Nothing. I served your purpose. That’s all that mattered to you.”
The thing was, Dozer wasn’t wrong, Marc knew. He had used Dozer over and over because it was easy, because Dozer let him, because it did indeed serve his purpose to do it. He was such a piece of shit.
