Read The Terror of Living for Free Online Page B

with old car parts, refrigerators, and stacked tires. The fecal smell of dairy animals-mud and cow droppings always the first thing. Most days he didn't even smell it. Either he'd gotten used to it or the wind was blowing from the north and carrying the scent south toward Tacoma. A light rain had fallen the night before and he could smell the scents coming off the cows, smell them in the grass and on the trees, coating everything.
        He took the back steps quickly, in a hurry to get down onto the lawn, but then turned around, remembering the spring on the screen door and the clapping aluminum sound it would make, from where he stood holding the door, he could hear cars passing on the highway next to the horse track, the bump and gurgle of a small irrigation stream behind the house. Most of their property was wooded, but a good acre of it - around the house, where they had a small pasture set up for the horses-was open, and he could see clearly into the birch and pine that surrounded his house.
        Hunt and Eddie had met twenty years before when Eddie had come into the bar where Hunt was drinking, looking for a junkie named Stone. Hunt ran the numbers on the local horse races, and though he made good picks, his drinking got in the way of his profits and he'd reached the point where he was so broke he felt there were bottomless holes in his pockets. "If you find him," Hunt had said, feeling a little drunk from a string of shot glasses laid out in front of him, "tell him he owes me twenty dollars."
        "He owes me a lot more than that," Eddie said, looking down the bar toward Hunt. "Give you a percentage if you can show me where he lives."
        Hunt knew where Stone lived. But he didn't know Eddie. "How much?"
        "Enough."
        "Isn't that always the answer," Hunt said, sliding off the barstool and giving Eddie a smile.
        "Tell you what," Eddie said. "If you can show me where he lives, you'll make yourself a lot more than twenty."
        It took them ten minutes to drive from the bar to the house where Stone lived. Late summer, the clouds braided up and flat as a rug across the sky above. No wind, and the stillness of the summer heat all around them. Eddie parked the car in an alley around back. "If he tries to come through here," Eddie said, making things sound as simple as possible, "just stop him."
        Hunt gave Eddie a doubting look. "With what?"
        "You want your twenty bucks, right? Figure it out."
        Eddie got out and closed the door with his hip. Hunt still remembered the smell of that back alley. Acrid smell of food, Dumpsters stuffed up with furniture and half-eaten pizza crusts, produce boxes from the nearby store lining the alley, their waxen bottoms colored in vegetal funk.
        A minute passed and then Stone appeared, rounding the Dumpster at a full run with Eddie close behind him. Hunt sat in Eddie's passenger seat, still dazed from the bar-not expecting any of it. Hunt didn't have any clear idea what to do, Stone running straight at him. Hunt opened the door and meant to tackle Stone, but Stone, with his head turned back toward Eddie, wasn't looking and ran straight into the open car door. The clap of Stone's body as it bounced, then hit the ground. Hunt stood there looking down. Eddie drew up, breathing hard. Stone was laid out on the stained cement alleyway, looking up at the two of them. "Fuck, man. Dealers and bookies unite," Stone muttered.
        Eddie kicked Stone twice in the stomach, hard enough that Hunt heard the air burst from the man's lips. With Stone doubled up on the cement, Eddie reached down and took Stone's wallet from him, along with a bag Hunt recognized as heroin. "Here's your twenty," Eddie said, taking a weathered bill from the wallet and giving it to Hunt. "What did we say for a percentage?"
        Hunt looked down at the man crumpled up at their feet. "We didn't," Hunt said.
        Eddie took a wad of bills from his pocket