Read Hyenas for Free Online Page B

said.
    “What he needs to get up,” Leonard said, “is a fucking winch truck.”
    Smoke Stack finally got upright, rushed me with his head down, bellowing like a bull. I hooked my arm under his neck as he came and went back on my hips and kicked him in the nuts again and lifted him over me so that he hit hard on his back on the floor. I could hear the breath go out of him, loud as an elephant fart.
    I flipped back so that I landed straddling him, slammed my forearm into his nose and chin. Once. Twice. Three times.
    He quit struggling. I got up and looked down at him. His face was bloody. He rolled over on his stomach and started crawling away, like a roach that had had its rear end stepped on. Then he collapsed, quit crawling. He was unconscious.
    Donny was looking at me with his mouth open so wide you could have turned a semi truck around in there.
    Donny said, “Did you kill him?”
    “Just his pride,” I said. “And maybe one of the two brain cells he had. That leaves him one so he knows how not to shit himself. Now, come on.”
    Donny looked at Smoke Stack, then at me. “I don’t know.”
    “We had a deal. You can come, or Leonard here will pistol whip the goddamn shit out of you and we’ll take you anyway. You can go without knots and bruises, or we can fix you up. You get to choose. And you get to choose right now.”
    Donny nodded.
    “We’ll be taking all your guns,” Leonard said. “We’re gonna make Donny crawl under the porch and bring them out. He’s going to do that without pulling one, so that way we don’t have to shoot him. You can check for your pistols at the bottom of assorted lakes, creeks and rivers. And if you follow us, I will personally shoot holes in your head and when they find you, your guns will be shoved up your asses.”

    WHEN WE WERE in the car, Donny seated in back, said, “But he was so much bigger.”
    “David and Goliath,” I said. “Ever read that passage in the Bible?”
    “No. What’s it mean?”
    “It means David got lucky,” I said.
    “Only Hap wasn’t lucky,” Leonard said. “He was skilled. Smoke Stack, he’s got big arms and a big mouth, but he was gonna get you killed, kid. We done you a favor, and you don’t even know it.”
    “I don’t believe that,” Donny said, but his voice didn’t hold a lot of conviction.
    “Yeah, well, you can be stupid, or you can be lucky, and right now, you’re goddamn lucky,” Leonard said.
    “I didn’t think anyone could do that to Smoke Stack,” Donny said.
    “Your problem, kid,” Leonard said, “is you haven’t been doing a whole lot of thinkin’, just reactin’, and you hadn’t been around long enough to know life ain’t like the movies. I get the whole lost-your-parents thing. Been there. But that don’t have to turn you stupid. That’s a choice, like wearing green stretch pants. You don’t have to do it.”
    “My brother shouldn’t have done this,” he said. “He shouldn’t have asked you guys to do this.”
    “Woulda, shoulda, coulda,” I said. “We’re trying to save you from yourself. But, we got a time limit, boy. You fuck it up later, then we done what we could. You can go back to being stupid and probably shot to death in a car out in the woods. But, for right now, we got other plans.”
    “What plans?” Donny said.
    “Pancakes,” Leonard said.

    WE WENT TO my place and made pancakes. It was late by the time we did, and Brett came in. She was carrying a newspaper. She saw Donny sitting at the kitchen table with a large glass of milk and a plate of pancakes covered in syrup. He was eating heartily. Leonard sat across from him with a Dr Pepper. Leonard thought Dr Pepper went with most anything. Brett nodded at Leonard and Donny, said to me, “So, you found a child in the yard and took him in to raise.”
    “Found him under a rock,” I said. “Can we keep him? We’ll build him a pen out back.”
    She smiled at me. “We’ll think it over. You got any more pancake