Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan Page A

herself a snack. A plate with crumbs on it, cookies maybe, the last of a pan of brownies, and a glass that had had milk in it.
    Why didn’t she tell him she wanted a snack? Why didn’t she come out to the bedroom and wake him up? He would have been glad to fix her something to eat, to bring her milk and cookies down to the room where she was sleeping, for that matter. All he wanted was for his wife to be happy.
    Dexter was crying now, and adjusting the pistol in his pants. Why wouldn’t Sally Anne just allow him to make her happy? He wanted to take care of his wife, to baby her, to make Jell-O for her when she was sick, and tapioca pudding, and to feed it to her with a spoon, and then to sleep next to her. They could work something out, couldn’t they, if they just loved each other?
    S OLON G REGG didn’t know what kind of reception to expect at home. Not so good, probably. Probably nobody at home was going to be overjoyed to see him, he might as well admit the truth about that, right up front.
    He had left in a hurry six months ago and hadn’t been in touch since. Still, he sometimes let himself hope that things would be different. Why didn’t he wish for a million dollars, while he was at it?
    Solon thought about the Prodigal Son, that sleazy, lazyass rich boy in the Bible. It pissed Solon off to think about him. Maybe that’s the way some rich sissy’s daddy acts when you spend all his money and run his good name in the ground, chasing off from home in a big car without no insurance on it and living in a pig sty in some unfriendly city in a foreign land.
    Shit. Goddamn. Must be nice, that’s all Solon had to say about it, must be durn nice. “Daddy, look, I done spent every cent you give me and been rolling queers in New Orleans and living in a stinking room in the District where the former tenant was still laying dead in the bed in the room with me, blue as a fuckin Andalusian rooster, when I paid my cash deposit to the landlord and helped him pull the dead sumbitch out in the hall by his feet. I been fucking fatted calves and wearing they clothes and spending they money on food and drink a swine wouldn’t never eat, ever since I seen you last.”
    Oh, I’d just love to see that, Solon thought. Yeah, that’s the story that would assure me of a proper welcome home, now wouldn’t it. I can just hear myself telling my daddy that story when I was a boy. I wonder what kind of reception I would of got if I had come back home with a story like that. I never would have got that ridiculous story out of my mouth. I never would have made it up the front steps, with a story like that on my lips.
    The truth was, if Solon had been the original Prodigal Son, Solon’s daddy never would have noticed that he was gone, let alone that he had come back home. Solon’s daddy would have been too busy trying to get his hands up underneath Juanita’s shirt to feel her breasts in the kitchen while she was crying her guts out and trying to fix something for the old pervert’s dinner. And Solon’s younger brother, who stayed home and sacrificed his whole life trying to keep their daddy from fucking Juanita, would have shot Solon in the heart with a deer rifle for running off in the first place. It’s a lucky thing the Prodigal Son didn’t have a younger brother like Solon’s, he would have got his ass blowed off. The Prodigal Son got lucky twice, if you wanted Solon Gregg’s own personal opinion.
    Solon thought about that old song, “If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake.” Solon liked that song, he really did, it was hopeful, it was upbeat and gay, you know, but in a way it made him think about his daddy pinching his sister’s nipples in the kitchen. It kind of made him want to throw up. “Howdja-doo, howdja-doo, howdja-doo!” Snooky Lanson and Giselle McKenzie, singing like a couple of songbirds, just warbling they