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I
just focused on my breathing and waited for him to
continue.
    “Course he hasn’t been
humping her much lately if the talk around town is halfway right.
It sounds like he nailed every female working in that bank under
the age of sixty. I’m telling you bro, you might have a shot at her
if you play your cards right. Good looking woman like that
shouldn’t have had to put up with that screwing around. You ask me,
that man was a fool for looking at anybody else. Kandy rocks, dude.
She’s still got that cheerleader body and her face is even prettier
than it was back in the day.”
    “What was Russell Chilton
like?” I asked.
    My strategy was working
perfectly. Ray had begun talking in short bursts of four or five
words, punctuated by gasps as he tried to gulp enough oxygen to
feed his legs and his mouth, both of which were feeling the effects
of the deficit.
    “Well, you know, man, it’s
weird. I met him when he first came to town about fifteen, sixteen
year ago, and he was the nicest guy you could imagine. He was
really friendly to everybody and straight as an arrow. I mean you
never heard anything bad about him. But, after Kandy’s pop died and
he moved into the corner office, he decided he could make up for
lost time. Started drinking and hanging out at the bars, which was
something Kandy’s old man wouldn’t let any of the bank officers do
when he was alive. And, that’s when the talk about him fooling
around with the women at the bank started. First it was an affair
with his secretary and then just about any skirt on the payroll.
Melba’s sister Ramona worked down there at the bank for a while.
She said one night they were having some kind of bank party and a
bunch of the women ended up in Russell’s office watching porno
movies with him.”
    “Sounds like Kandy picked
a real winner. Did he ever make a run at Ramona?”
    “No, but she kept hoping
he would. I tell you, Buddy, it’s a damn shame you and Kandy didn’t
end up together. I could be going out for a morning run with the
president of Elmore Bank & Trust right now.”
    “And, trying figure out a
way to get me to jump Melba’s sister.”
    “Hey, Ramona gets jumped
more often than the Rio Grande border. She doesn’t need any help
from me.”
    Ray may have finally
caught on to my competitive strategy, as he fell silent while we
continued on into the center of town, still following Highway 385
as it turned into Commerce Street and led us to the courthouse
square. The streets surrounding the square were empty except for
immediately in front of Lita’s Little Mexico Restaurant, where the
vehicles of Sunday morning diners took every parking
space.
    Most of the businesses
that lined the square during my youth were gone, their buildings
occupied by new enterprises that reflected the change in times. The
old Woolworth’s dime store, as my mother always called it, was now
home to the Daze Gone Bye antique store, which likely offered for
sale hundreds of items originally purchased as new in the same
building. Several smaller buildings around the corner held a nail
salon, payday loan office and a video rental store. The old Derrick
Theater, where I had watched every movie I’d ever seen growing up,
was still there, but boarded up, the tall derrick-shaped facade
stripped of its elaborate neon of yesteryear by rock-throwing
vandals, weather and time.
    We circled the courthouse
square and headed back out of town the way we’d come, stopping in
at a convenience store for bottles of water and walking for a
couple of blocks before picking up the pace again. After we’d been
running for a couple of minutes I tried my strategy
again.
    “Hey,” I said. “What do
you think about that new tax bill they passed this
year?”
    He didn’t answer, and when
I looked over at him his expression told me he was onto
me.
    “Ask… me… later,” he
wheezed.
     
     
    * * * *
     
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    After finishing my run
with Ray, I decided to spend some time