The Old Man's Back in Town Read Online Free PDF Page A

your—”
    “Holiday spirit?” I finished for him, feeling like I was rehearsing for a play I knew from memory. Something was supposed to come next about Brunhilda, Buffalo’s fat bulldog, who lay splayed on her belly next to his bar stool snoring, but I changed it up. “I lost it when Joel left town.”
    The bastard broke my heart and months later it still sat like a cold, cracked piece of granite in my chest.
    I dragged a bucket of sudsy, ammonia-smelling water around to the front of the bar, pulling the stools out on each side of Buffalo, only to realize there wasn’t anything to mop up, except peanut shells. Hadn’t something been spilled here? Weird.
    “I’m closing the bar early tonight,” I told Buffalo. “You want to come back to my place and hang out for a while? Watch a movie? I think the Western channel is having a Clint Eastwood marathon.”
    Buffalo wiped the beer foam moustache from his upper lip. “Sure, if you don’t mind me bringing Brunhilda. I hate to leave her alone on Christmas Eve.”
    “Are you afraid she’ll actually wake up this year for Christmas?” His dog stirred only long enough to snarfle down food, I swore.
    He grinned and reached down to scratch Brunhilda’s head between her fake reindeer antlers. “She’ll perk up. Santa brought her a special bone.”
    Brunhilda’s ears twitched at the word bone , but that was the only sign of life.
    “I’m not interfering with any plans with your girlfriend, am I?” I asked.
    “Didn’t you hear? We split up. She’s knocking boots with my neighbor now.”
    “Oh.” How had I missed that in this one-horse town? I really needed to get my head out of the sand and get back to living. “Sorry.”
    “Don’t be.” He waved me off. “He has pigs. Her constant squealing doesn’t faze him.”
    That made me smile. “Do you think you’ll ever find a nice woman, settle down, raise a couple of baby buffalos? You’re not getting any younger, you know.” Buffalo had two years on my thirty-six.
    “Nope. I’ve told you my thoughts about monogamy and matrimony too many times to count.”
    “What happened with your parents isn’t genetic, you know. Marriages don’t have to involve flying cast iron skillets and burning pickups. Look at my parents. They were married for almost forty years.” And then Momma got sick and all of our lives went to hell in a handcart.
    Buffalo slurped his beer. “Yeah, well you’re not setting the best example for happily ever after. First, you shacked up with a three-timin’ rodeo clown, then you married a killer, and then you hooked up with Joel Andersen, of all guys. You’re like the pin-up girl for Fucked-Up Life magazine.”
    He had a point, but I didn’t need him needling me with it. “Kiss my pin-up ass.” I picked up the wet rag and whipped it at him.
    He dodged it, chuckling.
    “So marriage isn’t for me,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a go of it.”
    “Monty, dear, you may not know a thing about picking the right guy, but you sure throw one hell of a Christmas party.”
    He was changing the subject, as he so often did when I tried to bring up his future love life for anything other than his damned dog.
    “I think this party was our best since Momma ran the bar,” I said, going along with him. Tonight’s drunken merriment replayed in my head as I kicked the mop bucket to the corner, including slurred caroling, random sloppy kisses, and a marriage proposal from a lonely widowed rancher who had a huge spread east of town. Too bad he was a leftover from the Paleozoic era.
    I reached up to remove some tinsel hanging from the ceiling fan and the telephone hanging on the wall behind the bar rang. I jogged over to grab it then hesitated with my hand on the receiver. I’d gotten a rash of creepy calls lately, filled with heavy breathing and this skin-crawling, undecipherable whispering.
    When I’d told Buffalo about the calls, he’d pushed me to tell the sheriff, but