The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do by Daniel Woodrell Page A

tout who had the extra grace of kinship. There was a kind of backroom pleasure in it, and he could see how a man could be captivated by the process of success.
    “That’s as blunt as it’s going to get, too,” Francois said. “And all this has put me in mind of our rather motley family constellation. To wit: how’s Tip?”
    “Nasty as always.”
    “That’s reassuring. People keep mentioning him to me, you know. I wish he’d change his name.”
    Shade laughed.
    “I have an idée fixe that he feels ditto about us.”
    “Hunh, I guess it can’t be helped.”
    “Not much.”
    The brothers then got down, down to business. Shade soon found himself adrift, floating on a mirage of family interests, brotherly love, and sheer admiration of drive. He ended up agreeing to follow the burglary hope for one full day, so long as nothing solid developed along other avenues.
    When they parted Francois said, “Think of the long run.”
    “I try to,” Shade said. “I really do. But I can’t quite feature it.”

10
    L ESTER M OELLER , an unambitious ham-and-egger of a thief, with an eye for the backdoor possibilities but with such a spineless style of loose-change larceny that he seemed able only to lift enough to break even, shook his shaggy-haired head and raised his arms in a gesture of innocence.
    “Really,” he said in his sissy tone, looking first at Shade, then How Blanchette, “I mean, I ain’t hardly been out of the house, let alone Pan Fry.”
    “Of course. Why would anyone want to leave this here castle?” asked Blanchette, his sweeping hand wave drawing attention to the hamburger wrappers on the floor, the shaky table nailed to the wall, and the windows that were gray-taped into their frames.
    “All right,” Lester said with an agreeing bob of his head. “I gotta leave to pee, sure. I’m not the sort who’ll use the sink. And to pooh. The john here, it don’t flush.”
    “Maybe you should get you one that does,” Shade suggested. “Next time you go out, I mean.”
    Lester shook his head. He was young but he had come to know himself.
    “I wouldn’t have the exper-tise,” he said. “That ain’t shopliftin’, you know. You gotta know how to go about it. I can unplug electric sockets, but I don’t know shit about plumbing.”
    “That’s a shame,” Shade said.
    “Anyway, how would you stiff-leg a toilet down the street? A fella has to think about things like that, you know.”
    Years earlier, when Shade had still been slinging leather for a living, he’d come out of Brouilliard’s Gym into the dirt alley parking lot in back and caught young Lester trying to liberate the contents of the glove compartment of his Nova. Shade, having never found much pleasure in battering obvious inferiors, refrained from striking Lester. He put an elbow around the bird-bone neck of the eighteen-year-old, then used his free hand to unbuckle his trousers. Then he shoved him down and pantsed him. As the fledgling thief scrambled in the sunlight for the cover of a nearby fire hydrant, Shade said, “I’ll leave them in the mystery section of the library for you.” When he drove away, Lester was kneeling behind the hydrant in a fitting pose.
    “You have some serious defects as a thief, Lester.”
    “Well,” Lester replied with a shrug of his thin, soft shoulders, “I’m not too good at anything.”
    Blanchette laughed.
    “Your rap sheet’ll back you up on that.”
    “At least I try,” Lester said sullenly. “I could be on welfare, prob’ly.”
    Shade stood and unbuttoned another button of his shirt. His clothes felt like fresh paint, and sweat was beading on his forehead. He looked at Blanchette, who was amazingly still in his slenderizing trench coat. Was vanity more powerful than heat? he wondered.
    “Well, shit, Lester,” Shade said. “You’re not tellin’ me anything I want to hear. What’s the point of us bein’ friends if you can’t tell me what I want to hear?”
    “Come on, don’t tease