***

Clyde was a prick. So was that wife of his. His old man too, think of it. A whole family full of pricks. That was why Poocher wasn’t making any effort to hide the glare he had scoping down over his beer at the prick at the end of the bar. Drunk sniper. Nah, he wasn’t drunk. Nowhere near. It was just the only thing that seemed to cool him off anymore. He was just getting cooled.

“You don’t like him,” Scoot said, starting another beer.

“Hell no.”

“Clyde’s not so bad. Taryn’s fucking hot.”

“Naw, naw. Now he’s got that hole in his throat, talkin’ through a damn speaker box, you’re obligated to hang with him, or you look like an asshole. But I don’t wanna hang with him. Not before cancer, not after cancer. I tried, too. Turning into a robot didn’t humble him a second.”

Clyde was laughing his ass off with Courtney French, who was showing off like he was a damn saint for talking to the guy. Courtney French. Who in the hell named their kid that on purpose? Might as well have named him Dick Holster, far as Poocher saw it.

“He’s making everybody look like an asshole who’s not hanging out with Clyde. You look like a real dick right now.”

“I do?” Scoot surveyed the room, concerned.

“Yeah man, big time.”

Clyde tapped Courtney French on the arm, gestured at Poocher. The opponent turned to Poocher and Scoot’s table with his big newscaster smile strapped on.

“Why can’t he keep that where it belongs on the TV?” Poocher said, giving Courtney French a tight return nod. “It’s my track.”

Scoot gave the newsman a friendly wave to turn him away. “I know, man, yeah. That’s how come you’re gonna win.”

Across the room Poocher saw her. Blonde hair framed her round face. Cute. Button nose. Cardinal red lips. Push-up bra hoisting those tits out well over the little belly he’d like to see move around. Poocher finished his beer, and Scoot slid him another.

“Ain’t that the girl, lady, that, uh… Shit, what’s she do?”

Scoot squinted, made her out. “Her husband’s in the war.”

“What’s she doing at Sugar’s before noon?”

“What’s Courtney French doing here? Ain’t he got a show tonight?”

“He’s a goddamn drunk, Scoot.”

Most of the beer went down in a gulp and Poocher stood up. Rock solid. Real cool.

“Where you going, Pooch?”

“Gonna put on some J.D. Souther and see what she likes.”

“Her husband’s in the war.”

***

He could have had her. He knew that. They hadn’t talked, but he could see it in her eyes. Sometimes that was the best, he knew, for women. That unspoken communication. That was real romance for them. He’d made some eyes at her, but thinking about Maggie here cooking up all this food for the thing she wanted to do for the old woman made him feel all jagged inside. After another couple beers he and Scoot left around noon, but Poocher made Scoot wait in his truck for a minute down the road, watching the door. Ten minutes after they left, the blonde left too. Not a minute later. He wondered if he’d catch her at karaoke some night.

Deep in his La-Z-Boy, he opened up a Gatorade. Blue flavor. It was important to rehydrate. He’d had about a gallon of water too, but Gatorade had all that stuff in it. He and the guys used to pass a big jug of it around after track meets.

If he leaned far enough back in the chair he could see the old woman lying flat on the mattress, a rat’s nest of tubes coming from her nose and throat to that machine that kept her breathing on, twenty-four hours a day.

Worse was the one snaking out between her legs to the bag of yellow fluid. The other one had been taken away by the nurse that came for a few hours each day. She hadn’t swallowed food in eight days and stopped needing it. According to the nurse, the sucking and clicking would stop tomorrow.

Her mouth was slack and open, flashing the store bought teeth that looked better than Poocher’s. Her eyes never closed.

Something stupid was on TV, and he was going to watch it before bed and not turn to the news where Courtney French was sitting there in a suit and telling people about the world like he knew something. He didn’t. Poocher knew the truth. Those screens he read knew something. Courtney French didn’t know shit. He flipped to the news.

“…as the outbreak spreads. One thing has become clear. The natives. Are growing. Restless. Back to you. Todd.”

He hated the way Courtney French talked. All those little clipped pauses between everything. Leaving you hanging. Making you work for his words. Poocher hauled back and flung the Gatorade at the screen. It missed by a few feet and splattered blue flavor all over the wood paneling.

Then Maggie was in the room, grabbing the remote and flicking off the TV.

“What’d you throw now?”

“Goddammit nothin’!” Poocher yelled, louder than he’d meant to.

“BS, Pooch, I heard it. Is that Gatorade on the wall?”

He put his hands behind his head in his relaxing pose. Trying to show he was calm.

“Courtney French came on.”

She plopped down on the sofa next to him. Thighs touching.

“He didn’t ‘come on’,” she said. She used air quotes because she knew how much it pissed him off. Poocher growled. “You gotta quit doing that to yourself. Looking him up at night, listening to his stupid voice and the way he talks. Like. This.”

He laughed. They hated all the same things in the same ways and it was very important to Poocher.

“You’re gonna beat him. You know that. And if you don’t…”

“What you mean, ‘If I don’t’?”

“You’re gonna come on home and I’m gonna love you just like I did.”

“What do you mean if I don’t?”

She ruffled his hair like a dog, like the way she knew he liked. He pulled away.

“You don’t think I can do it. You don’t think I can make it to state again.”

“State? It’s the Beer Mile, Poocher.” She tried to hide the grit in her voice but it didn’t work. “It ain’t high school.” A little softer. “There’s no state anymore.”

Poocher tensed, the muscles in his arm coiling up like a snake, his fists the fangs.

“Christ’s sake, Poocher. I’m telling you what you need to hear. Not what you want to hear. That’s my job.”

A long time ago he might have understood, and they would have come together in a sweet silence, but instead it was that horrible sucking and clicking and sucking and clicking from the old woman flashing her store bought teeth and Poocher not looking back at her, just staring at the TV all twisted up. They hadn’t had a moment of silence since his brother gave her to them three years before.

“You get me another Gatorade?” he asked.

She patted him on the head. When she got back she had her little bag with her. Poocher grunted. Not the little bag. She had some stupid name for it. Her “sparkle kit” or some other dumbass thing.

He clicked on the TV, flipped through channels. Shining faces smiling and waving, winning things and loving each other, trapped in a little box forever.

She pulled out the hand-sized machine she used to sand old skin off her heels. The thing took to whirring like a circular saw, drowning out the old woman, as two questionable guys toured a ranch house together. He opened the Gatorade she brought. Gulped as if it would muffle the noise.

“You have to do that now?” he asked.

“Guess not,” she said, and put it back in the bag, half of her foot left unfinished.

When she took out the electric leg razor he slammed the Gatorade down and left the room.