The Devil's Bag Man Read Online Free

sloughed his bounty to the ground with a small grunt, dropped his hands to his hips as the dust kicked up around them.
    â€œI’ll get us a couple beers,” he said and disappeared into the trailer.
    He reemerged with two generic supermarket cans, tossed one at Nichols, and shrugged on the flannel from the closet.
    â€œOughta be a lawn chair over there,” he said, pointing. Nichols unfolded it, metal grinding against the grit worked into the joints, and made himself semicomfortable.
    Galvan popped the tab and knocked back half the beer in two swallows. Nichols waited for him to take a seat on the stairs, but he stayed put, legs spread shoulders’ width apart, staring into the desert and the darkness like he didn’t want to miss what happened next out there.
    Nichols felt strange sitting, so he stood too.
    It didn’t help much.
    â€œYour phone’s been off,” he said after a while. Galvan didn’t respond, so Nichols pressed.
    â€œIs everything . . . okay?”
    Galvan finally looked over. “You fuckin’ kidding me? Yeah. Sure, Bob. Everything’s just hunky-dory.”
    â€œWell, do you wanna talk ab—”
    Galvan turned, heaved open the screen door. It slammed against the trailer’s exterior and stayed that way.
    Nice going, Nichols . You’re off to a great start .
    An instant later Galvan was back, a second round of brews in his hand. Nichols was only two sips into the first. It was the shittiest beer he’d ever tasted. He turned the can in his hand, looking for the ingredient list, wondered if weasel piss was on it.
    Galvan threw his empty can at the sky. Try as he might, Nichols couldn’t hear it land. Imagined it attaining escape velocity, rocketing into the next solar system.
    â€œI moved in with Ruth,” he heard himself say. “We’re gonna try and make a go of it.”
    â€œCongratulations.”
    Nichols grimaced. “We’ll see what happens. They say when you’ve been through a traumatic experience with someone, it either bonds you, or tears you apart, so . . .” He flashed on his marriage to Kat, the prolonged struggle to conceive. It had certainly seemed traumatic then, but the goddamn bar on trauma had come up a ways since.
    The velvet blackness had engulfed them now, the moon late to rise.
    â€œThat’s good,” Galvan said at long last. “For Sherry too. Having a man in the house.”
    â€œShe misses you,” Nichols said quickly. “Last thing I wanna do here’s step on your toes.”
    â€œAnd I miss her.” Galvan said it without inflection or conviction. “But I can’t do it right now. I mean, look at me, Nichols. I can barely . . .”
    He sighed and tipped the new can to his mouth. Nichols waited. There was only so much beer in there.
    Galvan crushed this one before he pitched it. Not much of an environmentalist, thought Nichols. Though the farmers would certainly applaud his dedication to wildlife control.
    â€œYou know why I live like this, Nichols?”
    â€œBecause you’re broke.”
    â€œBecause I’m broken.”
    He finally sat down.
    â€œI don’t trust myself around people, man. That shit took too much out of me.”
    That shit . That night . What happened . Nichols wished he could cut through all the euphemisms, get to what was real: You ate that goddamn heart and grew an arm and threw Seth thirty feet as if he were a fucking Beanie Baby . You wrestle mountain lions . You’re a goddamn superhero, and you’re paying the price—I don’t know what that price is, but I know there’s no such thing as a free lunch .
    â€œIt took a lot out of us all, Jess. Including your daughter. I’m just gonna come right out and say it, man—you’re breaking her heart. She’s in a bad way, and she needs you. Whatever you’ve got to give, even if it’s not a lot.”
    Galvan furrowed his brow, stared