Dead Nolte Read Online Free PDF

it, which she swore up and down, used to
be hers. Nolte thought the thing looked more like two turkey gizzards; pickled
in rancid piss than a willy-johnson, but he had humored her. If it was a real
pecker, it probably belonged to the last john who tried to leave without
paying. Nolte had been born at night, but it wasn’t last night, nonetheless, he
wanted to meet her witch.
    Common sense viciously attacked his high hopes. Along with
neck hair, Nolte relied heavily on common sense but was reluctant to let go of
a dream without thorough scrutiny. Common sense told him, if someone had found
a way to raise the dead, he would have heard about it on television, on the
nightly news. The most astounding breakthrough in modern science wouldn’t have
come to him, by way of a fifty-dollar prostitute who advertises her former
masculinity with a dick in a jar display. No one could reverse the aging
process, if someone could, Oprah would have had them on her show and Dr. Phil
would have been sent packing.
    Common sense was winning. It wasn’t until she showed him the
room with the boy and the old man, did Nolte become convinced that at least some
of what she was saying might be true.
    ***
    A n obese white man sat in a tattered
Lazy-boy in the center of the room. A fat banker type, who probably ate Doritos
and worked foreclosures, was Nolte’s immediate assessment. A reading lamp arched
over the back of the chair, its wrinkled shade directed light through a small
cloud of mosquitos and gnats, illuminating what, on closer examination, looked
to be a very sick man. He was sweating profusely on account he was fat and it
was Louisiana in the summer, but he appeared to be panting out a heart attack.
    Fat men and N’awlins’ summers have long been sworn enemies,
but it had been Nolte’s observation that the two were as inseparable as farts
and black beans. Admittedly stereotypical and a full-blooded racist, Nolte was
willing to bet one couldn’t fling a bowl of jambalaya in July in the French
Quarter, without hitting a fat banker with a shrimp. It was even odds on
whether the fat man’s suit would be white, or powder blue.
    This banker was naked, whether or not he was, for sure, in
foreclosures was indeterminable without further inquiry, as the fat man’s suit
was nowhere to be seen.   Nolte’s
attention was more focused on the two black women who were tending to the fat
man. One knelt between his legs with a basin of water, humming softly as she
washed the man’s dome of a belly, the other combed clumps of gray hair from his
scalp. Nolte wished he had known this was on the menu, he liked a bit of brown
sugar now and then.
    “Go look, motherfucker, see if I ain’t telling you the
truth.” The hooker crossed her arms in front of her defiantly. “The only time I
lied to you, was when I told you your dick was big.”
    Nolte entered the room and walked over to the chair. The
kneeling woman leaned to one side so he could better see what was going on. The
fat man appeared to be fighting for air, his big gut heaving with each
spittle-spraying gasp he took. Protruding from the man’s belly fat was the
lower half of a black infant. The rest of the child, from just below the arms
and up, was somehow embedded in the man.
    The woman dipped her washcloth in the basin and gently
washed the baby’s bottom; its tiny legs scraped at folds of flesh, as it tried
to gain a foothold in the banker’s sweat slick stomach. Where the man and baby
were connected, the skin was seamless and smooth. The only separation appeared
to be where the different skin colors mingled and blended sharply. Nolte had
seen some crazy, fucked up shit in his life, but this just topped the list.
    Nolte looked from the helpless baby to the man’s greasy
face; the fat fuck looked up at him.
    “I think it’s working.” The fat banker stammered and formed
a half-hearted smile.
    “What do you think is working?” Nolte asked. “You have a
fucking nigger kid sticking out