The Final Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, “and Jesus, they all live in Texas.” Then she sighed deeply. “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” she said. “I’m gonna have a vodka. Can I get you something?”
    “Maybe a beer,” I said. It seemed that I could still feel my guts burning from the four ounces of Canadian whiskey Enos Walker had made me drink the day before. But the beach atmosphere in the room called for something liquid.
    “So which one of the bastards are you looking for?” she asked over her straight vodka after she had lodged me on a raw cotton couch and handed me a Shiner and a frosted glass.
    “The one that owned a joint up in Gatlin County.”
    “Oh, Dwayne, the only one that doesn’t live in Texas. He’s dead,” she said, which I didn’t know. She walked over to lean on the mantel of the gas fireplace. “Dwayne had a great ass. So I kept his name and his ashes right here to remind me to stay away from honky-tonk cowboys.” She patted a ceramic pot on the mantel, then knuckled a tear from the corner of her eye. “That boy sure could dance,” she said fondly.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Duval,” I said. “How long were you married?”
    “As long as I had a hundred thousand dollars a year to shovel up his nose and keep his tight little buns out of jail,” she answered, and finished her vodka, surely not the first of the afternoon, then poured another without freshening the ice. Then she began to rummage through the drawers of the small wet bar in the corner of the living room. “You got a cigarette?” she said as she leaned on the bar.
    “Sure,” I said, then walked over to lean on the bar across from her. Not a bad place for an aimless interrogation.
    “Goddammit,” she said once we were smoking. She reached back into the top drawer, where she found a small mirror, a single-edged razor blade, and a short silver straw. “Every time I think about that son of a bitch, it makes me want to smoke and snort cocaine like some East Austin street whore,” she said. “I know I had some blow in here somewhere…” But she wasn’t talking to me anymore. After a few minutes of clattering about, she stood up to dump more vodka in her glass and looked at me as if I had just appeared, saying, “You wouldn’t have any, would you?” Then she said, “Oh, shit, you’re not a cop or something, are you?”
    “I think I fit into the ‘or something’ category. But I’ve got a taste.” I had retrieved Long’s personal bindle from the convenience store rest room that morning, and broken it down into smaller bindles, managing to do just a couple of tiny lines of the uncut coke. Cocaine, like alcohol, was a fucking snake, and I’d had troubles with both. And not that long ago, either. I poured a tidy sparkling pile on the mirror and chopped two short but shapely lines.
    “You first,” she said suspiciously when I offered her the straw. She looked ten years older, the fine bones almost visible through the clear skin.
    I did my line, then offered her the straw again. She leaned over the mirror, sighed so hard she almost blew the coke away, then went through the line like one of those vacuum cleaners Eldora had accused me of peddling.
    Sissy Duval licked her finger, wiped up the residue, and rubbed it on her gums. “Oh fuck,” she murmured, “where’d you get this shit?” Then her senses came back to her with the rush. “Sorry,” she said softly, “none of my business. Jesus, I don’t even remember your name. And why the hell are you looking for that sweet-cheeked dead bastard?”
    “Just call me Milo,” I said. “Actually, I’m looking for an old friend of his, Enos Walker.”
    “Jesus, don’t be looking for Enos,” she said, grabbing her arms as if cold. “He’s not looking for me, is he? He’s a bad one… and it seems to me that Enos is in prison up in Oklahoma.”
    “Not anymore.”
    “What the hell you want with him?”
    “He was involved in a shooting yesterday, and my life would be a lot simpler if I