Pitch brought Reggie Royal a hunting magazine, second guessed the decision as he walked into the hospital room, tossed it on the table on wheels anyway.
Reggie smiled his crooked smile, a tooth that was mostly silver filling showing on his top row..
“Pitch, you didn’t have to show up. I think I get out tomorrow.”
“I wanted to get the true story from you ‘fore you got out.”
“I don’t know the fake story, so…”
Pitch watched a blonde nurse walk by in the hallway, turned to Reggie.
“Nikki Purlie told Leena and Deebs that you was coming on the property trying to peeping tom her, maybe worse.”
Reggie let out a long, long sigh.
Pitch saw the mountain of lines on one of the monitors get smaller.
“Be happy to tell you the real version, Pitch, and I can prove it.”
“You know I believe you over Nikki Purlie any day, Reg. Tell me.”
Reggie Royal put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes like he had to watch the memory on his lids.
“Every damn Saturday I walk up to the Crabapple to watch football. Every damn Saturday I pass Josh Purlie, sitting on that rotting little dock on their pond, by himself, fishin’.”
Pitch whistled.
“How old’s that kid now?”
“Not more than six, if that.”
“Erry Saturday?”
“Swear to Christ. I drink up there before football season, you know.”
“I know.”
“So up at the Crabapple erry damn Saturday til dusk, least until them West Coast football games are over , Danny settin’ up there playin’ video poker. Nikki up there drinking with him, one for one, swear to Christ, playin’ pinball. Meanwhile, poor kid sittin’ there at home all by himself all day long dippin’ a line in that damn water. Ain’t no fish in that pond after Danny Purlie drove his snowmobile in it and left it, and probably wasn’t any damn fish in there in the first place.”
“Ain’t no fish in that pond,” Pitch said.
“Yeah,” Reggie said, “So yesterday, I went to Brosch Lake, bought a stringer of perch off Lance Orr...Orrma...the big dude from Patterson Plumbing Supply, and I put it in my own live well, and I was fixin’ to stock Purlie’s dumb ass pond with it. Had to clip a bit of their fence with my Skeletool to slide the live well under there, but it ain’t like they got a dog. Shit, if the kid had a dog to play with, I probably wouldn’t have brought the damn fish in the first place.”
Pitch folded his arms.
“Nikki didn’t say nothin’ about a live well or nothing. Just said she was topless in her own backyard and you came walking up without warning.”
Reggie sniffed hard. Pitch watched the lines on the monitor spike.
“I didn’t even know Nikki was there. She’s always at the Crabapple on Saturday afternoon. Didn’t know she got banned from the Crabapple for bustin’ a glass on the pool table, on Phil’s precious maroon felt. If I knew she was there, I wouldn’t have gone over. I was just tryin’ to give the poor kid some fish to catch. Her kid. And she shot me. They said it missed my femoral artery by a quarter inch. I’d have died right there next to Purlie’s pond. Damn fish probably died in that well right there, sure glad I didn’t.”
Pitch smiled. “I’m glad you didn’t too. Fish didn’t go to waste either.”
Reggie sipped some water out of a Styrofoam cup, pushed aside a cup of applesauce.
“How you know that?”
“Leena went over to check on Nikki. Said she was shook up. Maybe from you seein’ her topless, maybe from her shootin’ you, who knows. But Leena said it was odd. Said she’s been goin’ over to Purlie’s least once a week for five years, ain’t never had nothin’ but Sloppy Joes, maybe some stale cake, and last night Nikki Purlie made her a fresh perch dinner.”
***
Photo by Jowita Jeleńska on Unsplash