Side by Side

26

Peanut Smoot strolled into the brightly lit drugstore and made a beeline for the prescription counter in the rear. The store was one in a chain of fifteen regional stores owned by a pharmacist Peanut did business with. The owner had a problem that involved deviant sexual needs that respectable people didn’t advertise, and Peanut had fixed it up so the man could safely get the urge met. As a result, the owner had been recruited to buy any pharmaceutical drugs Peanut’s people came across as well as the other kinds of drugstore items you might find-like shampoo, tampons, and batteries-in a truck you’d hijacked.

When the owner spotted Peanut through the observation window in his office, he hurried out into the area where three lab-coated pharmacists were filling small bottles from large ones. The man seemed a little nervous, but that was probably because they usually met late at night after the employees had left.

“Mr. Smoot,” he said.

“I need something for back pain, George.”

“What type of pain?” The skin on George’s face seemed stretched tighter than usual, his eyes darting around the store behind Peanut like he was suspicious that something odd was going on out there in the aisles.

“The back pain kind.”

“By that I mean how did you injure your back?”

“I fell off a ladder.”

“I have just the thing,” George said, holding a finger in the air. He darted off into a back storage room. When he returned, he handed Peanut a box of over-the-counter pain medication and, after winking at Peanut, said loudly enough to be heard, “These will work as well as anything nonprescription.”

Peanut handed the druggist a ten-dollar bill and waited for him to go through the cash register motions and make change for it.

“Please come again,” George said with a forced cheerfulness, like he was talking to just anybody who had come in to spend money in a store he earned by marrying the owner’s daughter, who herself looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy with hair that looked like a hat made out of straw painted red.

George had made up the incapacitation liquid Peanut needed to make the Dockery woman stay put. It was a potent blend of chemicals that doctors used for operating and had the effect of making it impossible for someone to move until it wore off.

Back in the truck, Peanut opened the small pasteboard box and took out a bottle that contained, not the blue caplets the box promised, but a couple dozen capsules filled with tiny colored balls.

Peanut swallowed two of the caps and chased them with a carbonated sip of warm soda out of a can he’d had sitting in the holder a good while.

When his unregistered cell rang, he saw that it was a familiar pay phone number. Peanut knew that cellular calls were not private. Ask Pablo Escobar about using a cellular when the government wants to track you by your voice.

“What?”

“There’s a little problem.” It was his son Buck’s voice.

“What?” Peanut felt the hollow burning in his stomach he always got when Buck said he had a problem. Buck’s little problems tended to be larger than he’d admit to.

“Damn twins.”

Peanut took a deep breath and shifted in his seat. “What’d they do?”

“I gave them that little digging job to do, but when I came back they’d gone off. Hadn’t more than just started it.”

“Go find ’em and you get it done.”

“I don’t know where to look.”

“Hellfire, boy, they didn’t go to Mars in a flying saucer. Just go to where you saw them last and track ’em down. Y’all mess this deal up, I’m gone mess you up. You got that?”

“I hear ya. Everything’s fine, except for the twins getting lost. Everything else is a hunnerd percent right like it’s supposed to be.”

“It damn well better be.” Peanut checked his watch. “You don’t find them in a hour, you call me back and I’ll come out and see to it. And you make damn sure the you-know-what stays put. Don’t do nothin’ stupid.”

Peanut closed the phone. It was obvious that Buck had ordered the twins to do what he was too lazy to do, then left them alone with just his instructions to go by. Peanut had told Buck to dig graves so he’d stay occupied. He didn’t know for sure where the Dockerys would be buried, because nobody had told him that yet. Maybe they’d want the bodies found sometimes, or put under a slab, or ground into burger. He should have told Buck not to involve the twins-or leave them alone to do the digging. Some things you could tell the twins to do, some things you couldn’t leave them at. Buck knew that better than anybody. Trouble was, Buck was like some kind of animal that couldn’t think about food until he was nearly starving to death. You couldn’t trust him to plan ahead or stick to any particular job for very long.

The psychologist that Peanut had taken Buck to because the public school made him do it had said he had behavioral issues. Peanut loved the term issues.

Peanut knew all there was to know about his oldest son.

Buck didn’t give a damn about anybody but himself.

He didn’t like people telling him what to do.

He had a hair-trigger temper.

He got a kick out of other people’s pain.

He was a liar.

He imagined things.

He was a bully.

Nothing made him sick to his stomach.

He never felt guilty about anything he did.

He took what he wanted when he wanted it.

He always got his revenge.

All of the “issues” that made Buck a hellcat to teach or to get to follow orders worked in the boy’s favor when it came to enjoying a successful career in his chosen field-the family business.