The Crack in the Lens Read Online Free

he’s got half a fudgin’ fox stuck up his fudgin’ nose.”
    The two men looked at each other, carrying on their conversation without words.
    I tried to hold the same kind of talk with my brother, clearing my throat and throwing my eyebrows up high. What in the world do you think you’re doing? I was trying to say. Getting into pissing matches with pimps was nowhere on the docket.
    “Gloomy Gus” ignored me.
    “There ain’t a pocket picked or a throat slit in this town you two don’t have a hand in one way or another,” he said. “So you can’t stand there and tell me you don’t know who done Adeline in.”
    “We sure as fudge can and we sure as fudge did ,” Ragsdale sneered. “Five fudgin’ years ago. Or were you too fudgin’ drunk to fudgin’ hear us?”
    My brother’s face went even redder—which was truly something, as there isn’t anything redder than crimson.
    “Anyway,” Bock said tonelessly, “we don’t fudgin’ talk about such fudgin’ things here. So unless you wanna buy some fudgin’ wallpaper, you’d better get your fudgin’ ass out the fudgin’ door.”
    “You wanna talk wallpaper?” Old Red took a step toward Ragsdale and Bock—neither of whom backed up an inch. “Well, then, howzabout I paper these here walls with your greasy guts unless you—”
    “What’s going on here?”
    The voice told me lawman before I even turned around. It had that blunt, heavy, hammer-hitting-anvil sound to it. You could hear the impatience, the sourness, the assumption that someone needed his ass kicked, and hard.
    I turned and there he was, a badge on his chest and a frown on his face. Aside from the Colt Lightning on his hip, though, the rest of him hardly seemed lawman material. He wore spectacles, for one thing, and the eyes behind them lacked the flinty-hard coldness sheriffs, marshals, and constables work so hard to cultivate. And there was a softness to the rest of him, too. Not just that he was plump—though he did spill out over his gun belt a bit—but while he was older than my brother and myself, somewhere on the north side of thirty, there was a boyishness to him, a green streak even his don’t-give-me-shit squint couldn’t quite hide.
    “My God—if it ain’t Milford Bales!” Old Red said, and the malice poured out of him like beer from an upturned bottle. He almost even smiled , which would have been the eighth wonder of the world, sure to attract awestruck gawkers from far and wide had it lasted longer than a split second.
    This Bales was a friend, it appeared. An ally. A decent man in a position to help us—or so I assumed until the man’s scowl deepened, and all the softness I’d seen in him hardened to steel.
    “Gustav Amlingmeyer,” he said slowly, every syllable dripping with disgust. “What the fudge are you doing here?”

3

The Speech
    Or, The Long Arm of the Law Reaches Out to Give Us a Slap
    The little salesclerk, Coggins, peeked out from behind the fellow with the badge—the man my brother had called Milford Bales.
    “That’s him, Marshal,” Coggins said, lifting a trembling finger to point at Old Red. “He’s the one.”
    Gustav was still agape, obviously shocked by the spite with which the scowling lawman had greeted him. Which left it to me to mount his defense.
    “He’s the one what ?” I said. “The one been makin’ conversation? Askin’ a few questions? Well, alright, then—he is the one. What’s wrong with that? There some law against talkin’ in this town?”
    “No,” Bales said. He’d stopped outside the store, just beyond the door, as if the threshold was some line he couldn’t cross. “But there is a law against causing a disturbance in a legitimate place of business.”
    That snapped Old Red out of his stupor.
    “Legitimate place of business? Feh!”
    “See, Marshal?” Bock waved a languorous hand at my brother. “There you go.”
    “We are fudgin’ respectable, law-abidin’ fudgin’ taxpayers tryin’ to fudgin’