Read Gone South for Free Online Page B

“I really, truly, am sorry. I swear I am. I know things are tough out there.”
    “Yes sir, they are. That’s why I have to ask you to give me one more week before you take my truck. Without my truck, I don’t have any way to get to a job if one comes open. Can you please help me out?”
    Blanchard rested his elbows on his desk and laced his fingers together. He wore a big LSU ring on his right hand. His brows knitted, and he gave a long, heavy sigh. “I feel for you, Mr. Lambert. God knows I do. But I just can’t give you an extension.”
    Dan’s heart had started pounding. He knew he was facing disaster of the darkest shade.
    “Look at my position.” Blanchard’s chewing gum was going ninety miles a minute. “My superiors kicked Bud Jarrett out of here because of the bad loans he made. They hired me because I don’t make bad loans, and part of my job is to fix the mess Jarrett left behind. One week or one month: I don’t think it would really matter very much, do you?”
    “I need my truck,” Dan rasped.
    “You need a social worker, not a loan officer. You could get yourself checked into the VA hospital.”
    “I’ve been there. I’m not ready to roll over and die yet.”
    “I’m sorry, but there’s nothin’ I can do for you. It’s bidness, you see? You can bring the keys and the paperwork tomorrow mornin’. I’ll be in the office by ten.” He swiveled around and switched the computer’s screen off, telling Dan that their conversation was over.
    “I won’t do it,” Dan said. “I can’t.”
    “You will, Mr. Lambert, or you’ll find yourself in some serious trouble.”
    “Jesus Christ, man! Don’t you think I’m already in serious trouble? I don’t even have enough money to buy decent groceries! How am I gonna get around without my truck?”
    “We’re finished, I think. I’d like you to leave now.”
    Maybe it was the pain building in Dan’s skull; maybe it was this final, flat command from the man who was squeezing the last of the dignity from his life. Whatever it was, it shoved Dan over the edge.
    He knew he should not. Knew it. But suddenly he was reaching out toward the photographs and the Made in China American flag, and as he gritted his teeth the rage flew from him like a dark bird and he swept everything off the top of Blanchard’s desk in a swelling crash and clatter.
    “Hey! Hey!” Blanchard shouted. “What’re you doin’?”
    “Serious trouble,” Dan said. “You want to see some serious trouble, mister?” He hefted the chair he’d been sitting on and slammed it against the wall. The sign that said The Buck Stops Here fell to the floor, and books jittered on the perfect shelves. Dan picked up the wastebasket, tears of frustration and shame stinging his eyes, and he threw its contents over Blanchard, then flung the wastebasket against the stag’s head. A small voice inside Dan screamed at him to stop, that this was childish and stupid and would earn him nothing, but his body was moving on the power of single-minded fury. If this man was going to take his freedom from him, he would tear the office apart.
    Blanchard had picked up the telephone. “Security!” he yelled: “Quick!”
    Dan grabbed the phone and jerked it away from him, and it too went flying into the shelves. As Dan attacked the fox-hunt pictures, he was aware in a cold, distant place that this was not only about the truck. It was about the cancer in his bones and the growth in his brain, the brutal heart of Death Valley, the jostling for tickets, the dirty silver rain, the major, the village, his failed marriage, the son who had been infected with his father’s poison. It was all those things and more, and Dan tore the pictures off the walls, his face contorted, as Blanchard kept shouting for him to stop. A good soldier, Dan thought as he began pulling the books off the shelves and flinging them wildly around the office. A good soldier good soldier I’ve always been a good —
    Someone grabbed