All That I Have by Castle Freeman Page A

drove down to the store at the Four Corners. It was beginning to get dark. I parked in front of the store, went in, got the sugar, paid for it, came back out front, and climbed into the car to start home. Sean was sitting in the back. He was down kind of low, so I didn’t know he was there till he spoke up.
    “Evening, Sheriff,” said Sean.
    “Jesus.”
    “Take it easy, Sheriff.”
    “I might have shot you,” I said.
    “You ain’t got no gun, though,” said Sean.
    “You don’t know that.”
    “Everybody knows that. Drive around for a few minutes, okay, Sheriff?”
    “Where to?”
    “I don’t give a fuck. Just drive. Go ahead.”
    I started the car, and we left the store and went right, away from the Four Corners and up the hill.
    “Sheriff, I told you to keep them fucking spics off me,” said Sean. “I wrote you a note about that. Didn’t I? Didn’t I say that?”
    “You know I’ve got nothing to do to keep them off or put them on,” I said. “If you want to get done with them, you’ll help me.”
    “Bullshit,” said Sean. “They came after my girl. They didn’t have the balls to come after me, not after what I did to the one fucker. So they came after her. Well, fuck them. They can kiss my ass.”
    “You ain’t listening to me,” I said. “Do you know why they’re looking for you?”
    “I don’t give a fuck,” said Sean. “Let them find me. Bring them the fuck on.”
    Talking to Sean was like talking to a barking dog, except that any dog that’s smart enough to bark is smarter than Sean.
    “Okay,” I said. “Were you there at her trailer when they came?”
    “Fuck, no,” said Sean. “I had been, you would have had a couple of dead spics.”
    “You keep on saying spics. Who do you think these people are, here?”
    “What?”
    “Who do you think’s after you? Who broke into Crystal’s, there?”
    “The Mafia,” said Sean. “Fucking Mafia. Ain’t they?”
    “No, they ain’t. They’re from overseas. They’re Russians.”
    “Russians? Fucking Commies?”
    “No. They ain’t Commies anymore. They switched teams, a while back, it looks like.”
    “Fuckers.”
    “They’re just like us now,” I said. “They want what’s theirs. You’ve got what’s theirs.”
    “Fuck I do,” said Sean.
    I pulled off the road into a turnout and switched off the motor. We were right at the top of Paradise Hill, and you could see out over the country to the south and west, toward Gilead, the hills like waves on the ocean, one after another, spread out in the evening as the sun set and houselights began to come on in the valleys between the hills, here and there, some lights close, some miles off.
    “Okay,” I said to Sean. “You wanted to talk. Talk, then. Tell me what you took out of their place. Tell me where it is. Then I can help you. Maybe I can.”
    “I tell you fucking nothing,” said Sean. “I know what happens, I do.”
    “Nothing happens,” I said. “Not for that. Not now. You’ve got the upper hand here, remember? You came to me. We get done, I’ll drop you wherever you say, and off you go.”
    “How do I know that?”
    “Because I said it.”
    Sean was quiet for a minute. He was probably trying to think if he knew how to say something without saying “fuck.” It took him a while, but he finally made it. He said, “It wasn’t just me.”
    “Who else?”
    “Her,” said Sean. “Crystal.”
    “You and Crystal broke in there together?”
    “That’s what I’m telling you, ain’t it?” said Sean. “It was her idea.”
    “What did you take away?” I asked him.
    “Now, I ain’t saying I didn’t do nothing,” Sean went on. “That it was Crystal that did it all, not me. Fuck no. I did it. I busted down their door. I’d seen the place, working there, I’d seen all that shit they have in there? How far out in the brush it was? Burglar alarm didn’t mean shit way out there. I knew how to open their gate. I told Crystal, and she said, Well, let’s go