Read God's Pocket - Pete Dexter for Free Online

arrangement
sitting on the counter, broke the stem and pinned it to the outside
of his jacket. Her old hands shook, and it took a long time. "Ever
since all the terrible business with Mr. Bruno," she said,
"Arthur don't know what's going on no more."
    He walked outside and got into the back seat of the
Cadillac, behind the man he didn't know. Bird was saying, "I
think sometimes I got a prick for a brain and a brain for a prick. I
mean, I could of got into a nice, comfortable little bar twenty-four
years ago, had it paid off by now. I could of got into the movin'
business with my brother Tommy. I tell him, 'I wisht I was in a
business where the worst thing can happen is a hemia.' Sometimes I
think I might still do that .... "
    He was asking the man something, the man wasn't
hearing it. "My brother Tommy," Bird said, "he looks
at me like I'm crazy. He says, 'Lookit all the money you're makin'.
Lookit all the pussy.' He don't know. I tell him, 'Sure, there's
pussy in the meat business, but anybody goes into a business for the
fuckin' don't enjoy it. It's like you lost your taste buds but you
still get hungry. How is that worth it?' "
    Bird looked into the rearview mirror. Mickey hoped it
wasn't for an answer. "My aunt give you that flower? What'd she
tell you?"
    "She said you had to have faith in the electric
company," he said.
    The man next to Bird looked at his watch. "C'mon,
let's go," he said. Bird started the Cadillac and drove north on
Twenty-fourth Street.
    Bird was smiling. "That old woman is somethin',
ain't she, Mick?"
    "A very nice woman," he said.
    "She don't look like it," Bird said, "but
she knows what she's runnin' there. Did you know that flower shop's
makin' money? She don't have to do nothin' but sit on her ass like
everybody else, watch All My Children all fuckin' day, but she keeps it She's in there right now, worryin'
what the electric's doin' to her flowers."
    "What happened to it?" Mickey said.
    Bird shrugged. "They don't know," he said.
"I noticed it always happens right after the democrats get their
welfare checks, though." Bird always called them democrats.
"They get the juice runnin', Jesus knows what they can think of
to fuck things up. They come down in civil rights buses from North
Philly to do it .... " Bird took a right on Race Street and took
it all the way to the Ben Franklin Bridge. The right-hand lane was
closed down because they were painting that side of the bridge.
    Bird said, "I heard they never stop paintin'
this fucker. You heard of that, Sally?” The man next to him didn't
answer. "They start at one end, and the air in Camden is so bad,
and it takes so fuckin' long to get to the other end, that by then
it's all peelin' and they got to go back and start all over again."
    Mickey saw that Bird was scared to death of the man
in the front seat. "The meat business is like that," Bird
said. "I mean, lookit. Here we go, drivin' to Jersey to take a
truck, right? Some place in Kansas, a young calf is just learnin' the
ropes. You know—eat, shit; eat, shit . . ."
    The man in the front seat gave him a look, which Bird
took for interest. "The guy drivin' the truck knows what we're
going to do. In fact, right now he's wonderin' where the fuck we are.
Am I right or wrong?
    "The guy shippin' the load knows we're going to
take it. He sends us a set of keys. The guy s'posed to be waitin' for
the load knows somebody's going to take it. He's got a receipt for
State Farm says he paid eight thousand more than he's got in it."
    He stopped beside the tollbooth and threw in three
quarters.
    "Now what happens," he said, "if we
don't show up? We got all this business dependin' on us to take the
truck, and there's cows comin' up right now in Kansas, and without us
there's no place to put them. Without us, nobody's got nothin' to
do."
    Bird took Admiral Wilson Boulevard to 70, then 70 to
the Turnpike. He said, "Sometimes, you wish you didn't have so
many people dependin' on you," and then he shut up.