Yellow Dog Contract Read Online Free PDF Page B

But he needed more details. He would probably always need more details and that may have been why he had hired Murfin. They were two kindred spirits who could feast on a handful of details.
    Suddenly Vullo frowned and it made him appear dubious and even a bit petulant. He looked as if he had just found out that I had lied to him. He had a lean, hollowed-out face with a bony chin and a nose so sharp and thin that I wondered if he had trouble breathing through it. His cheekbones seemed to be straining to be let out and his mouth was a small, pale, tight line about an inch long. It was a sullen, pinched-in face, wary and bitter, the kind that is sometimes worn either by slum kids or very rich old men.
    â€œYou don’t raise honey,” he said, catching me out in my lie.
    â€œNo,” I said, “you keep bees. We have four hives.”
    â€œWhat kind of honey do they make?”
    â€œClover honey with a little goldenrod mixed in. It’s light colored and mild although the goldenrod adds a bit of tang.”
    â€œDo they sting you?”
    â€œSometimes.”
    â€œI’ve never been stung by a bee. Does it hurt?”
    I shrugged. “You get used to it. You build up an immunity and after a while they don’t bother you. The stings, I mean. The first thing you learn is not to wear blue jeans. Bees hate blue jeans.”
    Now that was a detail he really liked. He liked it so much that he jotted it down on a pad. While he was making his note, he said, “How many goats do you keep?”
    â€œTwo.”
    â€œHow much milk can you get from two goats?”
    â€œAbout four hundred gallons a year,” I said. “A little over a gallon a day.”
    â€œYou don’t drink that much, do you?”
    â€œNo. We make our own cheese and butter. The butter’s good, but the cheese isn’t so hot. It’s supposed to be a Brie, but it’s not turning out quite right, probably because I can’t keep the cellar at a steady fifty-five degrees.”
    â€œAnd the rest of the milk?”
    â€œWe feed it to our cats and dogs. They’re crazy about it.”
    â€œYou milk the goats yourself?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œHow often?”
    â€œTwice a day. Once about eight and again about seven or seven-thirty.”
    â€œChickens? You raise chickens?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œMy wife thinks chickens are dumb. There’s a man down the road who raises them. He trades us dressed hens and eggs for honey and butter and trout, but we make him catch his own. Trout, I mean.”
    â€œHow long have you been living on your farm?”
    â€œFour years. Since 1972.”
    â€œThat was when you dropped out, wasn’t it?”
    â€œI didn’t drop out.”
    â€œRetired.”
    â€œI didn’t retire.”
    â€œWhat would you call it?”
    â€œI don’t have to call it anything.”
    Vullo had been leaning toward me, his elbows on the desk. He was wearing a suit, a cheap grey one that fitted him poorly and might have come from Penney’s or even Robert Hall’s. Its elbows were shiny, or at least shinier than the rest of the suit whose synthetic fibers had a glisten all of their own. Beneath the coat was a white shirt with a collar whose points went this way and that. The collar was plugged by the small knot of a narrow green and yellow tie that had some interesting spots on it. Catsup, I decided, and maybe a little dried cottage cheese.
    Vullo stared at me some more, then ran his fingers through his thick brown hair that he wore the way most men wore their hair in 1959. After that he slumped back in his chair and flung his yellow pencil on the desk. It was a child’s gesture. A peevish child.
    â€œTell me about you and the CIA,” he said.
    I reached inside my jacket pocket, touched the thousand-dollar check, and decided to tell him about my Uncle Slick.
    His name wasn’t really Uncle Slick, of course,