That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx Read Free Book Online Page B

heart went out to Lieutenant Abert, surrounded by military bullies, sissy drawing his only skill. The lieutenant was Bob Dollar’s age when he and his friend and second-in-command, the mathematically inclined Lieutenant William Guy Peck, and a small company were ordered by the idiosyncratic and haughty John Charles Frémont to separate from the larger expedition and form the “South Expedition” to explore the territory of the Comanche, and chart the course of the Canadian River while Frémont himself pushed on to sunny California. Bob found the journal interesting, for Abert had an inquiring eye, a good nature, and he was early in the country.
    The bed was heaped with puffy quilts and featherbeds, so infernally hot that he ended by kicking them all on the floor and directing the fan’s stream of air at the bed. When he woke at dawn the sheets were twisted into frightful points and kinked spirals like aging telephone cords. He showered, pulled on his jeans and T-shirt. He couldn’t get away from the place fast enough. The white van was gone.

4
THE EVIL FAT BOY
    I n every installment of life’s book, Bob Dollar knew, even when he was fourteen, there was a fat boy; someone’s brother or school pal, the son of a deli owner, a youth aiming his life at building a low-rider, a discontent slagged out on some sofa with a can of Yoo-Hoo in hand, the one member of the gang the police catch, the fountain of knowledge at the porno video shop, the champion pizza maker at Benny’s Underground Pie Parlor. He encountered his fat boy in Walgreens while waiting in line for one of his uncle’s pain prescriptions. In front of him stood a suety person of sixteen, his round head bound in a black cloth imprinted with skulls and crossbones, his chin decorated with seventy or eighty pale blond whiskers and an assortment of pimples. He was wearing overalls with enormous legs—each large enough to contain a burly man—standing sidewise in line and addressing a pregnant woman waiting on a plastic chair. His sweatshirt sleeves were so long he had torn little holes at the cuff seams and from these holes his thumbs protruded, the cuffs themselves like fingerless mitts over his warty hands. He was not like other fat boys. He was not jolly, he did not smile appeasingly, his eyes were not naïve and innocent. Bob Dollar knew instinctively that this was an evil fat boy. At once he took an ardent liking to him. He liked the fat boy because he was unlikable.
    The fat boy spoke to the woman on the chair. “They had me in a wrestle hold in Kansas City. It was one of the most dangerous holds. They almost killed me. I don’t know how I escaped, but I’m standing here, ain’t I, waiting in line like anybody else? And that was last year. They couldn’t do it now, because I’d kill them . I’d break their backs. And one of them was my best friend. But he is not my best friend now. He’s my ex–best friend. We did some things together. One time when we were little we borrowed his mother’s crème brûlée torch and melted the gumball machine, and the gumballs all came out on the floor, and they were rolling around and we picked them up and man, they were hot . Worse than hot, they were boiling, they stuck to our hands and burned them. See, I got gumball scars right here.” He held out his palm for inspection, displaying puckered circles.
    “That was my ex–best friend Mark who built a rocket launcher when he was thirteen. He was into wrecking things, me too, and that’s probably why we were best friends. His aunt had all these old vinyl records, weird jazz stuff, and we threw them in the air and then bashed them with baseball bats. Mark had three baseball bats but he never played baseball, just bashed things. If I saw him now I would bash him . But he’s safe, he’s safe because he’s in Kansas City and I’m here. And he plays the guitar but he’s not very good. He doesn’t want to be good. He wants to be loud. And he’s got like these