Pursuit Of The Cygnus Thief

Chapter 11- Dirty Dope Adda

Chapter 11

“Dirty Dope Adda.” by Roseyone

        I found him exactly where I’d sent him, the stranger who had declared himself John Woodstock at the tavern was bent over the water fountain near the side entrance of the public library. Overhead and affixed to the shabby brick building was a yellow and black fallout shelter sign, the arrows below it indicated a cement stairway to the left that in turn lead to the library basement. Across the street, with their questing eyes pinched against the four o’clock sun, a dozen or so women, some with young children, stood in front of McKees’ Hardware and stared at the stranger’s backside as he drank.

       I saw Mrs. Parrish step to the forefront of the small crowd, with her dark features compressed in alarm she frantically shook a white gloved hand in my direction. Her frightened pantomime would have been the same if I’d unwittingly come upon a rabid dog in the street and needed to quietly extricate myself from the danger it posed before it saw me. I ignored her and continued on to stranger.

       His gaze darted up at me as he drank. In the daylight, I could see that his bloodshot scelera surrounded hazel irises and were shaded by thick long camel-like eyelashes.

“What’s with all the eyeballs? Somebody giving something away for free at the library or something?” John Woodstock said after he’d straightened up. He threw a glance over one shoulder at his audience, looked at me and awaited an explanation.

“You’re like the rain to them.” I replied. John’s sudden smile was big, bright, toothy and warm. He abruptly rounded on the crowd. Across the street a few of the women looked away, others might have blushed, some were visibly offended. Mrs. Parrish gave a negative nod, pulled one of her gloves tighter, walked away and left me to whatever self-inflicted fate I had wrought. I knew with certainty there would be talk, there was always talk in Assumption, and I had a heap of it headed my way in any case.

         “Are there any places to stay around here besides that dump?” John spoke through his smile as he lifted a hand and waved it at the small crowd in a subtle way that instantly loaned him a regal bearing. His audience seemed to fall from a spell, some women checked for their children or looked through a purse, fingered the brim of a hat or smoothed an errant wisp of hair over their ears. I didn’t need to hear the hackneyed excuses they uttered to justify themselves; it was the insufferable desert heat, the unblinking May sunshine, or that child there that had caused them to stare so openly at so novel a person in their midst. There were suddenly more important things to do and the crowd loosened to a degree but as the stranger’s attention bore down on them openly, some eyes shifted to and lingered unlovingly on me. I wanted to toss the crowd a crude gesture and maybe I thought, I would do it when things inevitably became unnavigable.

“Abel’s Tavern is it but there are a couple of motels along the freeway in both directions.” I replied. John Woodstock shrugged, his smile faded as if he already knew what I would say next.

“If I were you-”I began.

“-Call me John,” he said.

“-John.” I repeated and paused because it felt weird to use his first name. He was young but he was no teenager. “-I’d get out of here before sundown.”

“I would but I can’t. You see…” He threw up both hands a little and turned up his palms. “…no wheels kid.”

       Below his sharp nose John’s badly chafed lips turned into a convex arc, the inner section of his brows soared up his forehead while the outer sections of his brows lowered, then he abandoned the rather animated expression.

“Where do people live in this town? I’ll rent a room,” he scratched his chin then his temple then shoved both hands into his pants pockets and looked at me.