a bit of money. Sixty-eight hundred dollars a year, to be exact.
When he was feeling industrious, Holland would limp around town with a Weedwacker, trimming grass and brush from around stop signs, fire hydrants, and drainage ditches. Once a month or so, he’d run the town’s riding lawn mower around the local park and Little League ball field, which was more than any other mayor had done. None of that took too long in a metropolis of 650 souls.
Skinner asked Holland, “Remember how you said you were gonna do what you can for the town? When you were elected?”
“I was deeply sincere,” Holland said, insincerely.
“I know.”
Skinner dragged a chair around from the breakfast bar, straddled it backwards, facing Holland on the couch, and said, “I was walking by the Catholic church last night.”
“Good,” Holland said. And, “Why don’t you open the door and let a couple more flies in? I’m running out of game, and that big bastard’s hiding.”
“There was some Mexicans coming out of the church,” Skinner continued. “They’re meeting there on Wednesday nights. Praying and shit.”
“I know that,” Holland said. He was distracted as the bull bluebottle hove into view. He lifted the rifle.
Skinner said, “Honest to God, Holland, you shoot that rifle, I’m gonna take this fuckin’ can of beer and I’m gonna sink it in your fuckin’ forehead. Put that rifle down and listen to what I’m saying.”
The fly reversed itself and disappeared, and Holland took the rifle down. “You were walking by the Catholic church . . .”
The church had been all but abandoned by the archdiocese. Not enough Catholics to keep it going and not enough local hippies to buy it as a dance studio or enough prostitutes to buy it as a massage parlor. There was a packing plant forty miles down the Interstate, though, with lots of Mexican workers, and the housing was cheap enough in Wheatfield that it had lately attracted two dozen of the larger Mexican families.
The diocese had given a key to the church to a representative of the Wheatfield Mexicans, who were doing a bit to maintain it and to pay the liability insurance. Every once in a while, a Spanish-speaking priest from Minneapolis would drop by to say a Mass.
Skinner: “I got to thinking . . .”
“Man, that always makes me nervous,” Holland said. “Know what I’m saying?”
“What I thought of was, how to make Wheatfield the busiest town on the prairie. Big money for everybody. For a long time. We could get a cut ourselves, if we could buy out Henry Morganstat. Could we get a mortgage, you think?”
Holland sighed. “I got no idea how a seventeen-year-old high school kid could be so full of shit as you are. A hundred and sixty pounds of shit in a twelve-pound bag. So tell me, then finish your beer and go away and leave me with my fly.”
Skinner told him.
* * *
—
Holland had nothing to say for a long time. He just stared across the space between them. Then he finally said, “Jesus Christ, that could work, J.J. You say it’d cost six hundred dollars? I mean, I got six hundred dollars. I’d have to look some stuff up on the internet. And that thing about buying out Henry . . . I think he’d take twenty grand for the place. I got the GI Bill and my mother would probably loan me enough for the rest—at nine percent, the miserable bitch—but . . . Jesus Christ . . .”
“I’d want a piece of the action,” Skinner said.
“Well, of course. You came up with the idea, I’ll come up with the money. We go fifty-fifty,” Holland said.
“That’s good. I’d hate to get everything in place and then have to blackmail you for my share,” Skinner said.
Holland’s eyes narrowed: “We gotta talk to some guys . . .”
Skinner said, “We can’t talk to any guys. This is you and me . . . If we . . .” He realized that Holland’s eyes were tracking past him and he turned and saw the fly headed back to the kitchen. “Goddamnit, Holland, look at me. We’re talking here about saving the town. Making big money, too.”
Holland said, “We’ll have to tell at least one more person. We need a woman.”
Skinner scratched his nose. “Yeah, I thought of that. There’s Jennie. She can keep her mouth shut.”
“You still nailin’ her?”
“From time to time, yeah, when Larry isn’t around.”
“You know, you’re gonna knock her up sooner or later,” Holland said. “She’s ripe