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She's gone nuts. What did that fever do to her?
A tar-fingered hand passed through the knots of greasy hair. Valentine saw some things he guessed were lice fall out. "Get out of here, both of you. I've had my fill."
She passed her right hand down her breast, to her crotch. "We'll be up in the shack if you change your mind. Till tomorrow morning. I'm a limited-time offer. C'mon, Black, let's get out of here."
They walked back up the noisy planks.
"What was that all about?" Valentine asked.
"Don't tell me you're jealous? Oh shit, I think some of that smell got in your hair."
"And you were talking about sex with him?"
"Val, I let that pig Hamm drip all over me in bed. This guy's just dirty on the outside. That Grog's sweet. There's no way he can be that bad or she wouldn't be that way. He'll come round. He just needs to think about it."
"Just when I think I know you."
"Ah, but you didn't hear my conditions. I would have insisted that he take a bath, first. I'm not interested in hosting a flea circus in my crotch all the way to Ohio. I only just got rid of the Memphis brood."
* * * *
They negotiated a room with Greta ("It'll be cool enough to sleep about three in the morning.") and then went out to bring in Ahn-Kha.
Which turned out to be a mistake.
"We'll feed and water him, but he can't stay inside," Greta insisted. "Grogs are strictly outdoor animals."
Valentine, watching flies buzzing in one window and out another, thought the distinction between inside and outside largely moot. Especially with goat droppings under one table.
"Sorry, Ahn-Kha. They're big on rules here."
"Your poet Kundera said 'Only animals were not expelled from Paradise,' my David. I am not an animal, save in the same biological sense as that woman."
"And this isn't paradise, old horse," Valentine finished. "I'll sit outside with you."
Duvalier joined them on the porch with the goats, drinking ice water from a pitcher that had to be refilled every half hour.
Valentine watched the Goat Shack's dubious clientele trickle in as the sun set. He heard the ferry wheels creaking twice. Greta disappeared, replaced at the bar by a gap-toothed relative who shared her peppery hair color.
Duvalier produced a deck of cards scavenged from the casino where they'd interrogated Rooster with an eggplant. The idle evening on the porch passed pleasantly enough. Muscles sore from weary days on the road stiffened.
Perhaps a dozen patrons now passed time and swatted flies in the bar. Precious little commerce seemed to be going on; most of the groups of tables were swapping drinks for tobacco, or old newspapers for a pocketful of nuts. Many of the men smoked. Peanuts and jokes cracked back and forth across the tables.
Valentine watched a man in deerskin boots swap a pipe for an unfinished bottle. A sheathed knife dangled from a leather thong around his neck, and his belt held no fewer than three pistols. Considering the clientele and the quantity of weaponry, the Goat Shack was surprisingly peaceful. Or perhaps it was due to the clientele and the quantity of weaponry. . . .
Valentine felt guilty lazing on the porch. He should be doing something. Arguing about the nature of promises with Hoffman Price, wandering through the barroom asking for stories about Kentucky-instead he was looking for another heart so he could lay down a flush and take the pot of sixteen wooden matches.
Two men wandered up from the riverbank, one bearing a dead turkey on a string. They wore timber camouflage, a pattern that reminded Valentine of the tall, dark, vertical corpses of buildings that he'd seen in the center of Chicago. The one with the turkey turned inside with a word about seeing to a scalding pot. The other, a pair of wraparound sunglasses hiding his eyes, watched their game. Or perhaps them.
"What manner of Grog is that?" he asked.
"We call ourselves the Golden Ones," Ahn-Kha said.
The bird hunter took a step back, then collected himself. "The who?"
"Golden Ones."
"Golden Ones?"
