The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man by W. Bruce Cameron Read Free Book Online

and I bent down to scratch his head. Jake was maybe eight years old, a dog of unidentifiable and suspect DNA. His soulful eyes and floppy ears made it appear there was a basset hound on one of the lower limbs of his family tree, but from there he was fifty pounds of anyone’s guess. I’d found him in the back of a repo—not the backseat, but the trunk. We’re supposed to return all personal property from a repossession but I’d decided on the spot that Jake’s people had lost their right of ownership.
    â€œHey, Jake, you got any goose hunter in you?” I asked.
    Jake used to ride with me on repos, but he was middle-aged when I found him and lately had decided he’d rather nap. I didn’t blame him—the second I found someone to feed me and give me treats I was going to retire, too.
    â€œJake, busy day today?”
    Jake gave me a “you have no idea” look, rolling his big brown eyes at me.
    â€œYou need to go out?”
    Jake has a dog door but more and more often was too lazy to use it unless I firmly suggested he do so. I gently tugged on his collar and he groaned to his feet, slipping outside in front of me and then giving me disgusted looks over how wet it was. He lifted his leg quickly and then briskly went back to the door, pointedly sniffing at it so I’d take the hint. We went back in and he hustled to his blanket and collapsed as if he’d spent the day mining coal.
    I sang him the “good boy” song—basically me just singing “good boy” over and over, “good boy good boy g-oooo-d b-ooo-y.” Big finish. Jake didn’t applaud.
    A bottle of Patrón tequila slapped into my hand with easy familiarity from its perch on the counter, and I sat down in a chair, watching the woodstove flames licking at the wood. The increasing light soon was illuminating the beer bottles on the coffee table. I stared at the reflection, taking very tiny sips from the Patrón every few minutes. The college boys who somehow found the Black Bear in the summer always poured the stuff in shot glasses and messed around with salt and lime, but my dad had taught me the way to drink tequila was from a snifter, neat, doing little more than wetting your tongue and allowing the fumes to fill your nasal cavities before you swallowed.
    Over time, I’d sort of given up on the snifter.
    Taking stock of my life: I was broke; I lived alone; I’d had two fights in the past couple of hours; won one, lost one (to a bird)—though both of them left me much worse off than my opponents—and I had a phone number in my pocket I somehow doubted I had the courage to ever call.
    â€œWhat a dump,” the bear’s voice pronounced.
    I sat stock still, turning my head to the right only after I mentally followed myself into the house, recalling locking the door before I threw on the piece of wood. No one had slipped in behind me; Jake and I were by ourselves in my home. Bob the Black Bear was, as far as I knew, still down at the bar.
    Who said that? I asked within my head.
    Nobody answered.

 
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    4
    Repo Madness
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    When I opened my eyes the next morning it took me about ten minutes to do an inventory of my injuries. My ear hurt from the kick in the head, my ribs throbbed, my arms were bruised, and my shins ached from where Doris had pecked them. I staggered into the living room like a hundred-year-old man. “What a dump,” I muttered to myself. Jake sighed in agreement.
    After being so severely beaten by man and fowl I would have expected to sleep easily, but I’d spent most of the night brooding over what it meant that I could hear a voice in my head. I wasn’t sure schizophrenia was the right term for it, didn’t know if there was a pill you could take or if it required surgery—I was just pretty sure that whatever was going on, it wasn’t covered by my health insurance because I didn’t have health insurance. And was