The Clinch Knot Read Online Free

from the end of the counter to the spittoon beneath the register. He spits with a slice and bangs it in. “But I assure you that I do watch. Anybody hurts Jess is gonna answer to me. I promised that to Galen.”
    I pay for the vodka out of Sorgensen’s money. I figure I’m going to need it. I figure, also, that this is the man to ask: “You know anything about skinheads around here?”
    He grins, juicy and brown, over a handful of Jesse’s panties. “You mean them two dickheads with the pink truck that bought twenty-five cases of Heinekens on Tucker’s account the other day?”
    “I probably do.”
    “Tattoos?”
    “Yup.”
    “Knee-boots like a couple of prairie whores?”
    “Yeah. What do you mean, Tucker’s account? Those two little Nazis work for Dane Tucker?”
    Uncle Judith clears the queue with a lazy wedge shot that splats to the floor an inch or two short. He turns away, disinterested in the gimme.
    “The two of them come in here to get about twenty cases of beer. Only one explanation for that. Dane’s at the ranch with a bunch of his Hollywood friends, doing their drug parties or their orgies or whatever. And those punks work for him.”
    “Come on. Hollywood sent skinheads to get beer?”
    Uncle Judith shrugs this off. Old news to him, apparently. But me, I have only recently learned that Dane Tucker owns a two-hundred-thousand-acre spread in the Paradise Valley, a new-age western empire assembled from foreclosed family ranches. I have only begun to process the fact that the star of
Epic Force, Force Factor,
and
Force Down
hoards an entire river, the storied Roam River, a public waterway and a fly fishing gem, inside his fences. But
skinheads?
    Uncle Judith handles Jesse’s panties with gnarly certitude, gets them in a nicely managed bundle. Her father went to prison, I remember, when Jesse was fifteen. Her mother has never been mentioned—except that Tick Judith, she claims once in a while, basically
is
her mother.
    “Word is Tucker has those Nazi punks watching his fence lines,” Uncle Judith tells me, setting those panties down inside a Jack Daniels box he carries up from the back hallway. “When they’re not making beer runs.”
    He does something Arnold Palmer never tried, a fairway shot on the move. For this he employs the gap between his front teeth, drills one low and hard with crisp
zzzt!
and a resonant
ping!
on brass.
    “Lotta beer going out to that place lately. Fancy liquor too.”
    Uncle Judith gets a girly pink tank top spread out in front of him, getting it oriented, nipping it in under his chin to get both hands on the job, and just then a customer—a big, raw night shifter, thirsty-looking—jangles through the door.
    “Hey, old man,” this guy brays, “you finally got that pretty girl’s clothes off her, did ya?”
    Uncle Judith folds that shirt up real nice, starts a new pile. His ears are red as he sets a pint of Jim Beam on the counter. He says, “Four ninety-five.”
    “I hear she’s running with one of them reverse Eskimos.”
    “There be anything else?”
    “Well, gee. Lemme see.” The night shifter fairly drools over Jesse’s panties. “You got anything in a size four?”
    These could be fighting words. Uncle Judith would like to spit in his face, I can tell. But now he becomes the Mahatma Gandhi of snoose. I see how much he loves Jesse. I see incredible restraint. Eyes down, he just swallows, and swallows, and swallows again. As he makes change, I lean across the heap of Jesse’s unfolded clothes and I ask him quietly, “Hey. Do me a favor? Can I leave them a note?”

Howl
     
    Dear Sneed and Jesse: Two skinheads burned your tent. They work for Dane Tucker and drive an old red Ford with an oil drum in the box. They left a no trespassing sign that said turn back now, so if that means anything to you, I’d do it. You never know about people like them. As for me, I’ve moved on, which is my sad answer to what the two of you made me feel. Love,