Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) Read Online Free PDF

expected, though I suppose when I got that old, if I did, I’d still talk the same way I do now. Actually, the more I looked at the old lady, the more I thought the language suited her. She looked like a retired hooker.
    “Why, yes, I was just fixing to drop my shorts and bend over the desk and ask Hap here to drive me home.”
    “You aren’t shocking me, honey,” the old woman said.
    “Or you us,” Brett said.
    I was actually thinking I might be a little shocked.
    “That was your game, wasn’t it?” Brett said. “To shock us.”
    “Naw,” said the old woman, finding a client chair and settling into it as if she were a bag with a bowling ball in it. “I’m just a vulgar old shit.” She laid a heavy eye on me, said, “You’re Hap Collins, aren’t you?”
    “I am,” I said. “Do we know each other?”
    “No, but when I was forty I’d like to have. You and me could have burned a hole in a mattress then. Course, you may not have been born. But you might want to lose a few pounds, honey. You’re starting to chub up.”
    “He’s taken,” Brett said. “Pounds and all.”
    The old woman studied Brett. “Aren’t you the Southern belle? I bet you could earn a pretty penny on a Louisiana shrimp boat and never have to toss a net.”
    “Listen, you old bag,” Brett said. “Either say what you want or I’m going to stick that cane up your ass and throw you down the stairs so hard the dye will come out of your hair.”
    The old lady let out with a howl. “You are a pistol, aren’t you?”
    “And all six chambers are loaded,” Brett said.
    “Don’t get your panties twisted up your ass,” said the old lady. “I’m just fucking with you. I want to hire Hap here.”
    “I charge a little more for the position of male escort,” I said. “And just so you know, I don’t do anal.”
    “I might could arrange that—the male escort part,” she said. “And I do do anal and use toys. Or used to. These days I’m so dry I have to grease up to pee.” She said that and laughed. It was a good laugh and sounded young, right up to the end, where she got choked and suddenly sounded like a boiler about to blow.
    When she got her pipes cleaned out, I said, “I don’t know you, so how come you know me?”
    “I saw you and your colored friend out in the yard the other day. And there’s that sweet dog that got kicked. She looks much happier now.”
    I thought: colored friend? Really? Then again, she was old. Hell, she might have been near ninety. A spry ninety, but at least that age. I guessed she was entitled to the old proper style of identification for black people. Then again, the term black was fairly past its shelf life, too. The new word was African American, a variant of Afro-American, a term used in the sixties and seventies. Leonard always said it was obvious he was American and that the closest he’d been to Africa was a geography map. He thought of himself as black. Then again, me and him are about the same age. We like a lot of the same terminology. I just about always say pussy instead of vagina .
    The old lady stirred a hand around in her purse and came up with what I still call an electronic device and everyone else calls a tablet. To me a tablet is writing paper between cardboard covers. I especially liked the old-style Big Chief tablets. I don’t even know if they still make them.
    She ran a bent finger around on the tablet, then turned it toward me. It was a very nice video of Leonard beating the shit out of the dog abuser. The sound was down. That was okay. I remembered everything that was said, and the machine probably hadn’t picked that up anyway.
    And then I understood. Of course I did. She wasn’t just an old lady who had seen what had happened. She was the one who recorded the dog abuse, said she didn’t have Leonard and Marvin recorded—but she did. She had filmed everything from the minute we showed up to the moment everyone left. It was pretty cool to watch, both Leonard and