A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews Read Free Book Online Page B

yet.”
    Tuff had survived four fights. He had long lightning-bolt scars, much darker than his brindle color, running back across his shoulders and back. One ear was split deeply and both ears had been chewed nubby. His broad forehead was a mass of grayish, welty scar tissue and his left eye, the one he was blind in, had no color demarcation in its solid milky surface. Tuffy was training for his fifth fight. They’d all been against the best stock in the South, and Big Joe had decided if he won to retire him to stud and a place of privilege in the kennel.
    “Lummy and them git them bleacher seats fixed up at the pit?”
    “I walked out there when I got up this morning,” said Big Joe. “Weren’t up then.”
    “I’ll speak to George.”
    “Leave’m alone,” said Big Joe. “I told him to do it. He said he’d do it. They’ll be there when we need’m.”
    “I hope so.”
    “George and Lummy’s puttin up them seats before you was born.”
    “You told me.”
    “Give me that whiskey bottle. You know why I git hateful, don’t you?”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    “If you had to listen to that goddam TeeVee going day in and day out, you’d be hateful too.” Big Joe lifted the whiskey bottle to the light. It was a little more than half empty. “You didn’t bring but one of these?”
    “You drink too much. A man your age ought not drink like you do.”
    “A man my age ain’t got a hell of a lot else to do.”
    “You got the dogs.”
    “Yeah, I got the dogs. And besides the dogs I got quiz shows and game shows and murder shows and funny shows and shit shows eighteen hours a day coming through ever wall in the house. I wish to God I could go the rest of the way deaf before she runs me the rest of the way crazy with the Muntz.”
    Joe Lon belched, and felt better than he’d felt in days. He stood up and tested his legs. “Well,” he said, “it’s cheaper’n a hospital.”
    “Yeah,” said Big Joe, “it’s that. But after you said that, it ain’t nothing else to say.” He was no longer passing the bottle. Now that it was half gone, he had put the cap back on it and put it under his chair. “I sometime think about seeing one more time if I cain’t git the state to take her.”
    Joe Lon didn’t like to even let himself think about his sister, but he didn’t want her in a goddam state insane asylum either. “You’d feel funny going to a fight and ever-body knowing Big Joe Mackey’s given his only daughter up to the fucking state.”
    The old man waved his big hand and did not look at his son. “I ain’t done it yet, have I? And God knows I been tried. I been tried severely and I ain’t been found wanting.” 
    “Well, don’t feel too goddam good about it, it ain’t over yet. You still got time to ruin everthing.” His mood had shifted to something sour and mean, and he had felt it shift, like a load on a truck might shift, suddenly and with great force. He had always been given to such shifts in mood and temper but they had become more and more frequent and seemingly without cause the last year or so.
    Big Joe said: “You started to church, you’d stop so much of that heavy cussing. And particular you’d stop using that word to cuss with. It ain’t a fittin word for a man to use.”
    “I guess,” said Joe Lon. His daddy was a deacon in The Church of Jesus Christ With Signs Following and was forever trying to get Joe Lon to start going. “I got to git on home. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “If you don’t, be sure and send the nigger over with something to drink.”
    “All right.”
    “You git them shitters?”
    “I ain’t seen’m,” said Joe Lon, “but I been told they over by the grounds.”
    “Good, good. Make all that shit a lot easier to handle.”
    Joe Lon went through the door into the hall. He had had no intention of going in to see his sister, but once in the hall he turned to look in the direction of her room, where the thin light showed under the door. He felt a