The Right Kind of Stupid Read online

  Both men drank silently, regarding the woman in question. "We're leering," Cody said.

  "We're gazing in appreciation," Jason countered. "So what's wrong with this one?" he demanded, after a moment.

  "Nothing. She's pretty. Go for it." Cody said.

  "Why don't you go for it?"

  "Finders keepers. "

  "Come on, go talk to her." Jason turned and motioned a hand. "It'll cheer you up."

  "Feebly hitting on a woman at my grampa's funeral, and let's face it, probably getting rejected, will definitely not cheer me up. Plus, she ain't my type."

  "Why? 'Cause she's black?"

  "Hey man. That's not fair."

  "I'm just saying..."

  "Listen Doctor King, just 'cause you've been super into black chicks for like two weeks now doesn't give you the right to call me a racist for not wanting to hit on the nearest black woman."

  "It ain't a phase man. I think I'm a lifer."

  "You brought her up Jason. You go. Give her that life-is-short-let-me-get-in-your- drawers line."

  "Just say it. What the hell is wrong with her?"

  Cody once again regarded the female in question. He swallowed and sighed into the dregs of his whiskey.

  "She's wearing a baby doll blouse."

  Jason threw his hands up in frustration. Chips of ice flew out of his glass onto the church lawn.

  "See, I knew it! There's a perfectly beautiful girl, and you go and find something wrong!" Jason shook his head as he tipped his glass back, emptying it of the remaining contents. "I've been working on you for ten damn years, and I have nothing to show for my labor."

  "It's just dishonest. Those blouses draw attention to the boobage but then they billow out from there to hide the stomach. She could be pregnant for all we know."

  "It's a funeral!" Jason said through a mouthful of crunched ice.

  "So I keep telling you!" Cody shot back. "I shit you not, Jason. There is only one reason to wear a blouse like that. She is either pregnant or she has a beer gut. And 'round these parts, it's usually both." Cody was pointing a finger at Jason. "Mark my words."

  "This isn't a Steely Dan concert." Jason shook his head. "These fancy gals don't drink beer while pregnant. They do yoga and abuse prescription mood elevators."

  "Ok fine, next you're gonna tell me our beloved, 300 lb Tommy Ray Gustafson started wearing a shirt in the pool because he's worried about sunburns."

  "You're just too damn picky. It ain't your only problem with girls, but it's a big one."

  Cody shook his head and turned away from Jason. Something on the ground caught his eye. An odd green clump lay on the otherwise immaculate church lawn. He stepped away from Jason just as TR was walking up with fresh drinks. Cody took five strides and bent down to pick up what he now saw was a wad of cash – a hundred dollar bill, a twenty and two singles.

  This would keep the boys in beer for a week.

  Cody looked around. The mourners were happily chatting in little groups of three and four. Women with large, painted nails were affectionately patting the arms of friends who had made them laugh. Balding men were talking about stocks, cigars, vacation homes and the best places to house a mistress.

  Cody looked to the bar and then traced a line in his mind through the spot where he was standing and into the crowd. A rotund grey man in a rotund grey suit was lumbering away, trying to squeeze his obese frame through the chatting groups without spilling the drinks he was holding. Cody followed his mark through the crowd like a dinghy trailing an ice breaking ship. He caught up quickly and tapped the man on the shoulder. The short, plump man turned around in three little steps.

  "Sir, I think this fell out of your pocket back there."

  The man's brow glistened with sweat and his eyes bounced from Cody's face to the money and back up again.

  "Oh. Oh my," he said breathlessly. "I'm a bucket of thumbs today."

  Cody made to hand it to him, but both men could see the fat man's hands were occupied with holding beverages.

  "Maybe just bung it in my pocket there."

  The man turned up a hip and Cody shoved the cash in his trouser pocket.

  "Mighty fine of you, son."

  Cody nodded and turned to leave.

  "Hey, you're Leroy's boy."

  Cody paused. His shoulders sagged a bit. He turned back.

  "Yeah, you're Leroy's boy. But you got Bruce's look. Haven't seen you since you were a midget. Dang if you ain't his spitting image."

  "I get that a lot."

  "Little darker though. Brown eyes, not blue. Teehee, don't get me wrong. I don't make a point of looking deeply into other fellas' eyes. But Bruce's eyes. You coulda lit the way in the dark with 'em."

  "You knew my Grampa?"

  "Sure did. We used to run around together. I even made a small investment in his first drilling operation."

  "Oh, well, pleased to meet you."

  Cody extended a hand and then retracted it awkwardly when the man nodded again to his drinks.

  "Cooper. Belly Cooper."

  Texans and their subtle nicknames.

  "Cody."

  "Cody. That's right. Well, nice to meet you, son. Sorry about your Granddaddy. I'm frankly shocked I outlived the man."

  Cody returned to his friends near the bar. The conversation seemed to have remained on the topic of his shortcomings.

  "Cody, you are kinda picky," Tommy Ray said and offered a drink to Cody. He was six-foot-two, just shorter than Cody, but weighed 80 lbs more. He was thicker in the shoulders, arms and thighs, not to mention a considerable gut straining at his ill-fitting collared shirt and bolo tie.

  "Well, compared to you I am, TR," Cody said. He took the glass out of TR's hand, perennially scraped and scabby from his work as a diesel mechanic. "You'd have sex with anything on four legs, you big furry redneck. I bet coffee tables make you feel confused."

  TR just scratched at his scruffy beard. "I like to keep my options open."

  Jason smiled pitifully at TR. He turned back to Cody while running a hand through his magazine cover sandy brown hair.

  "I know you may find a wide array of women attractive," Jason said, taking a more diplomatic tone, "but you always find reasons not to talk to them or go out with them."

  "If he didn't, they would," TR said. He laughed quietly into his drink at his own jab.

  "There have got to be thousands of girls in San Antonio who fit your general leaning," Jason continued, strands of his hair falling back down around his ears. "Why don't you date them?"

  "I don't not date. Goddam Jase you make it seem like I want to be alone."

  "I'm beginning to think at some level you might."

  "It's not like any of you guys got girlfriends."

  Ricky snorted off to Cody's left. Cody hadn't seen him walk up.

  "I'm playing the field," TR said. He bent and spat a gob of brown chewing tobacco onto the lawn.

  "More like playing with yourself in a field, with no women around for miles," Cody said.

  "I got a couple croutons in the fondue pot," Jason said. "And maybe I don't bring 'em around, cause y'all are women repellent."

  "So what is your goddam point?" Cody's blood was up again. "You just wanna feel superior? Fine, Jase, you are better with women than me. And I can't spell good. And I don't have a job, and my grampa's dead. Why don't you go tip him out the coffin and give him a couple kicks."

  "Don't be like that. I'm trying to help you."

  "It's clearly working."

  "Here's my point. You remember the year after college, when you ditched that girl from the fair because she came out of the bathroom too fast?"

  "Jason, she pounded three corn dogs just beforehand. There was no time for her to wash her hands! The timing just didn't add up!"

  "What if she just went in there to touch up her makeup to look all pretty for you? But no, your wonky ass-brain decides she is in there bombing a dirty deuce."

  Cody scowled into his drink and shook his head slowly
. "You should have seen the size of those corn dogs," he muttered.

  "So call it picky, call it whatever you want. But even when a girl gets past your diarrhea of the mouth, you find some reason to ruin it. Every time. As regular as a goddam Swiss train."

  Jason pulled out his smart phone whose unlit screen he used as a mirror. He ran another hand through his hair and smiled big, making sure nothing was stuck in his teeth.

  "Now, I think that since this is a somber occasion, I can't be expected to be too witty. I'm gonna go ahead and let the keys do the work for me."

  Jason put his phone away in his back pocket the way Cody had only seen girls do. Then he reached into another pocket to take out the keys to his Lexus. He arranged them so that the big "L" logo dangled out in front of the fingers holding his drink.

  Cody shook his head slowly. "The audacity you have to criticize me..."

  "Hey, mister, we weren't all born rich. Some of us have to work at it, or better yet marry up a few rungs. At least I'm not sitting here moping around. Ah, don't make that face. Hell, I loved him, too, Cody. If not for Bruce giving me a little direction in our college years, I might be off working some crap job right now, or even worse, I might have become a youth pastor!"

  "You run a mall kiosk," TR said. Then he pointed a meaty finger. "And that Lexus is used."

  "It's pre-owned," Jason corrected. "And maybe a kiosk is no big deal to trust fund types, but to blue collar guys like you and me, TR, all success is relative."

  "For the last time, I don't have a trust fund," Cody said.

  "But now with your gramps passing...I mean," Jason leaned his head in knowingly, "come on."

  Cody heaved a great sigh. "I didn't expect or need nothing from him. And I really thought he had another thirty years."

  Jason and TR looked at him, heads tilted like two confounded Labradors.

  Cody finally told them what had happened at the lawyer's office. As he did so, a breeze picked up and a gentle patter of rain began to fall on the tent.

  After a moment of silence, Ricky whistled long and low. "One mill-yone dollars," he said, stroking his Fu Man Chu.

  "Good grief!" Jason said. "You really told her you thought she was the secretary? That is some vintage Cody Latour."

  "How the hell you gonna make a million bucks?" TR asked.

  "It's like he knew he was sick, but didn't tell me," Cody said. "That's the worst part. And if that didn't hurt enough, he goes and pulls this, this...I don't even know what this is! And...oh God."

  The blood ran out of Cody's face and his alarmed eyes began searching the crowd.

  "What?" TR asked.

  "Monica," Jason said ominously, before Cody could.

  "Oh God," Cody said again. "She's gonna be so royally pissed off she didn't get his cash. Why would he do that?"

  "I think you just answered your own question there, Hoss," Jason said.

  "But why make her my problem?"

  They stood in bemused silence for a time.

  "Well, while you try and answer the unknowable mysteries of life," Jason clapped Cody on the shoulder, "I'm gonna go hit on fancy women."

  "Them gals gonna eat you alive," TR said.

  "Ever heard of 'slumming?" Jason asked. "It's sorta like how I'm your friend, even though your existence is so far beneath me."

  He ventured off.

  Jason was fit, medium height, and good looking as far as Cody could tell. Plus he was always fussing with his hair and clothes. That seemed to work out fine for him in the normal social scene. But Jason was still woefully naïve to Texas high society. He had yet to see the truth that they were a pack of smiling hyenas that would tear the flesh from your bones as soon as look at you.

  After Jason walked off, Cody saw a man approach his dad at the head of the tent. He handed Leroy a drink and said something with a smirk. What a nice little protégé he was. If the hyenas were to have a king, it would be Tagg.

  Fucking Tagg.

  Tagg wasn't finished speaking with Leroy when he spotted Cody standing at the opposite end of the tent. Their eyes met. Tagg's were sharp and predatory. Cody's were dumb, like those of a water buffalo. If he had a tail, he would have flicked it subconsciously. He drank deep, sensing danger was near.

  As if on cue, Tagg excused himself from Leroy's company and approached Cody with a swagger as big as the tent above them. And that shit-eating grin. What Cody wouldn't give to slap it right off his face...with a seven iron.

  "See ya," TR said. And so the first water buffalo spooked from the watering hole. Cody resisted the urge to bolt, himself.

  Ricky remained standing on Cody's left.

  "Incoming," he warned.

  "You know, in Eskimo cultures, they take the useless people out to the edge of the ice floes." Tagg had already started in and he hadn't even finished walking up to Cody yet. "They push 'em out to sea so they stop taking up igloo space and seal meat."

  "What is that supposed to mean?" Cody asked. He was unable to stop his frustration from showing, despite knowing that was only making it more fun for Tagg.

  "Oh, well, with all this death and funerals, you know...just a thought."

  "Not today Tagg. Why don't you go think somewhere else?"

  "And did you know that they don't like to be called Eskimos? Prefer to be called Inuits. But what do a bunch of heathen icicle dicks know anyway?"

  Tagg laughed, got real close and gave two meaty pats to Cody's shoulder. If they were dogs, Tagg would be humping him right now, asserting his alpha male dominance. Cody's present anger and irritation welled up. He wanted to grab Tagg's lapels, throw him to the ground, and slam his quarterback good looks into the turf until he could be confused for a very large earthworm in an expensive suit. Cody reminded himself once again that he needed to learn how to fight.

  "Well thanks for sharing, Tagg."

  "Oh, don't get offended shit stain. I wasn't referring to your grandfather." Tagg's eyes glared and sparkled with delight. Tagg was well built and just over six-feet tall. He was shorter than Cody, but far more imposing. Though his black hair was not long, it flowed with gentle waves. His snow-white teeth shone through that grin of his that made Cody certain that he was the mouse being played with before the cat got bored and ate it.

  "Hey, you know, we got the funeral going here. Why don't you off your sorry self and we can dump you in the hole with Grampy Gramps. Two-for-one special."

  Tagg winked and slammed a shoulder into Cody as he stepped away.

  "Don't let him get to you," Ricky warned. He reached in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. Cody, not usually a smoker, accepted one eagerly. They walked out of the tent, away from the milling crowd, until they neared the large oak trees that bordered the churchyard.

  Chapter Five

  Homeless

  Cody glared unseeing at a tuft of grass and took small puffs so he would not choke. Faint raindrops fell to the ground around the trees under which they stood.

  "Will I ever escape these people, Ricky?" Cody asked, exhaling smoke into the cool air.

  "Hard to escape family."

  "You did."

  "Your grampa escaped me."

  "You mean he kidnapped you."

  Ricky shrugged his skinny shoulders. "I ever complain?"

  "Hey, check this out." Cody pointed to a man who was stumbling or limping around the edges of the reception tent. He had a mangy grey beard, wore army fatigues, but was not wearing shoes. "This guy's looking a little rough. Do you think he's high?"

  "Don't know. Looks homeless for sure."

  It only took thirty seconds before two suited men forcibly escorted the old man away from the tent and out of the churchyard. They moved around a set of bushes and, when out of sight of the tent, hurled the man to the ground. Cody could not hear what was being said, but could clearly see one suited man point a finger angrily at the man on the ground before stalking off.

  "Jesus Christ," Cody said. "He just wanted some food."

  The men were not se
curity, just two assholes that didn't want their church party ruined by the needy.

  "Ima go fix him a plate of food from the buffet." Cody took a step, but Ricky said, "Nah. Nah. I think I might know him. I'll go." Cody let Ricky walk off toward the man. Cody picked up a few acorns and started tossing them at a knot in the next tree over. Sooner than expected, Ricky was back.

  "How is he? Did you know him?"

  "Yeah. I knew him," Ricky said in obvious frustration at the situation. "Don't worry. I took care of him."

  "Can you believe these rich assholes? How hard would it have been to give the guy a plate?"

  "Not hard at all. Don't like 'em any more than you do. Happily set half of 'em on fire."

  "Maybe we should just move out to Grampa's ranch and get away for good. Maybe I'd like the life out there."

  "Maybe after you get your inheritance."

  Cody gave Ricky a sideways glare. "Fat chance of that happening. Maybe we should also wait until TR marries a supermodel. Anyway," Cody said to change subjects, "how's your mama?

  "Box wine oozing out every pore."

  "When you were back home last week...did you see Grampa at the ranch?"

  "No," Ricky said uneasily. "Went by but missed him. He was out and about. Then when I came by later, I found him."

  "I'm sorry you had to see that," Cody said somberly. "But I'm also sorta glad it was you."

  "That's nature. Dust to dust, man."

  "Did you have any clue he was on the way out?"

  Ricky leaned up against an old oak and exhaled smoke before stubbing out his cigarette. "Bruce? Nah man. Rock solid. But we all gotta check out sometime."

  Cody looked up to see TR walking toward them from the tent. The big boy could move fast when he wanted to.

  "What did he say?" TR asked, referring to the interaction with Tagg.

  "Is it ever good?"

  "God, I hate him. Can't we just kill him and be done with it?" TR took a swig from a bottle of bourbon.

  "Why do you think I avoid events like this like the plague?" Cody asked. "Where'd you get that?"

  "Snuck it."

  "You are the least sneaky man on earth. How'd...never mind...just give it."

  Jason found them as they were making their way back to the tent. He waggled his cell phone at them and smiled. "Digits bitches!!" Then when no one replied, "What, no witty retorts? No mockery?"