CHARACTERS
Hap Collins
Hap is in his 40s, his hair is graying at the temples and balding on on the crown. He is getting fat and his face has taken on a hound dog sadness. He is in the process of going through the things left over after the tornado wiped out his place. His truck was destroyed also so he has bought a junky Chevy Nova for $300.00 and has been driving it for three months. There is a revolver in the glove box but he has no license for it. He is a great shot with rifle or handgun. He likes to listen to Percy Sledge sing. He loves Brett and drinks diet Coke. He is employed at the Black Lace Club as the night bouncer.
Brett Sawyer
Brett is also in her 40s and likes Percy Sledge. She drives a blue Plymouth Fury that can go 70 without the assisstance of a tow truck. After her divorce and before she met Hap, she had lived with a guy who lived in a shed just to help him out some. She likes orange soda.
Blazing red headed midget who was sold to the circus as a child by his parents. He was later bought back by his brother and began a life of crime in drugs killing and prostitution. He has a passion for steak ranchero. He once nailed a little girls hand to a boat paddle.
Herman Ames
Red's brother and former member of a biker gang called the Bandito Supremes, which is not a Taco Bell meal, turned preacher turned prairie dog sucker and seller. He killed his parents and then killed many other folks. His calling card was to cut off the head of a victim's penis and put it in their front pocket. He lived near Seminole OK.
Brett's daughter who was working as a hooker but angered her boss and is shipped out to be abused by the biker gang.
Big Jim Clemente
Gun seller that Hap and Leonard visit before they embark on the rescue mission.He lives 50 miles from LaBorde near the Louisiana border. Has three unkempt, unschooled children. He sells theboys a rifle like the Rifleman used on the old TV series. He also has a chinaberry tree in his yard which is no big thing but I haven't seen one in years and we had them all over our yard when I was a kid so some childhood memoriesm came back.
One of Haskell's kids who really enjoys probing her nose.
Wilbur
Red's partner.
Big Jim bodyguards. Moose gets his foot shot off by Leonard.
Friend of Herman's in Echo, Texas, near the Mexican border, who helps the boys on their mission.
Uncle Brin
Irvin
The pilot who flies them into Mexico.
Bandito Supremes
Survivalist, Nazi, biker gang in Mexico who operate The Farm.
Billy Joe James
Hap's boss at the Black Lace Club
Bob
Leonard's adopted son, the armadillo.
Lilly Filigree
Hootie Hoot madam
Darlene
One of the Hootie Hoot hookers.
Old taxi driver
In Hootie Hoot, he gives Hap the directions to the whorehouse and tells about one of his regular passengers, Old Lady McCullers, who farts all the time.
NOTABLE AND FUN FACTS
September is love bug season. These are the little bugs who seem to be everywhere in east Texas in late summer.
Hootie Hoot is 25 miles outside of Oklahoma City.
Leonard tries to teach Hap how to put toilet paper on the roll by using sexual references so Hap might understand.
Route to Oklahoma was Highway 59 to 259, get on I-20 at Kilgore, go west to Dallas and get I-35 to Oklahoma. Later they go to Amarillo andtake Highway 87 to Lubbock.
Hap watches two flys around a tobacco spit bottle. One got in but can't get back out, the other watches a while but gets fed up with the ignorance of his partner and leaves.
PLOT
Story opens with Brett getting word from Red that her daughter, Tillie, is in trouble. Hap and Leonard agree to go rescue Tillie from the whorehouse in Hootie Hoot. By the time they get there, Tillie has been shipped off the The Farm, a terrible place in Mexico where Tillie is basically held captive for sex. After lots of action and killing, She is rescued from The Farm but continues to be a hooker and Brett is having little to do with Hap.
QUOTES
Licking sauce off old Big Mac wrappers for sustenance.
Trouble sticks to them like pork to a pig's ass.
Mobile homes-those plyboard and aluminum tornado magnets.
The twister had knocked my goods ass over teakettle.
Hell, or maybe worse, New York City.
He's in a home somewere trying to decide if blue socks go with a paper hat and a fart.
I hate it when you're right.
One of those breakfasts that has so much cholesterol in it the damn thing comes with a vein pump.
Humid as a monkey's armpit.
As if they had both just gotten over a lobotomy operation.
About as clean and cuddly as a steaming pile of diseased dog shit.
There was a sound like God letting a big one.
A guy big enough to fill a bus and stick his ass through the door.
I'd seen more sincerity in the grin of a presidential candidate.
Looked as casual as warthogs in jockstraps and snowshoes.
Looking at me as if they just sighted the Virgin Mary in see-through panties and high heels.
I kicked him in the balls, trying to make a field goal somewhere in central Texas.
Hit the bastard so hard that guy's relatives must have jumped in their chairs.
There's nothing like a shotgun with barrels big as subway tunnels to make you take time to consider.
Hesitated almost as long as it takes to skin the wrapper off a stick of gum.
Hot as hell on a griddle.
Faster than a calculator clicks.
If his brain was a battery it wouldn't give enough energy to fire up a pen light.
Tires were so thin on tread you could almost see the air inside.
Had a wart on his cheek about the size of a doorknob and a hairdo that looked to be about three fourths Wesson oil.
Not strong enough to jerk my dick, but strong enough to hold it and think about the motion.
My injuries only hurt when I walked, breathed, or batted my eyelashes.
He looked as happy as an erect dick.
From Leonard
If you ain't willin to screw up you ain't never gonna get any of the good out of life.
I don't like to travel that far unless I got plane tickets and a steward in my lap.
You got more bleeding heart in you than the whole Democratic congress.
Well, Hap, looks like you've shit in the porridge again.
We'll be puttin what's left of you in your hat and still have room for your clothes and a pound of shit.
I might just show you a side of pain that you haven't visited before.
Haps like the guy goes out in the yard and steps in a pile of horse shit and where someone else would say, goddam, I've stepped in horse shit, Hap looks for the pony.
I doubt they could track sperm on their legs.
A kind word to a crocodile will get you a smile.
I got nothing but laundry waiting at home.
Keep your hand out of your jacket or you'll wake up with it in your ass.
We go down there and open up a can of blazing whup ass with a lava chaser.
Avon, and we mean business.
He wasn't someone I saw as a future poker buddy.
From Brett
Shit pile in a hat.
Talk or your brain'll see moonlight.
Your head's same size as anyone else's, it's the brain in it that's questionable.
Isn't worth the powder it would take to blow his ass up.
Shut up or you'll draw flies.
My spirits are so far down they got to look up to see my socks.
Leonard should have been in the diplomatic corps.
From Herman
No matter how big they grow, balls and eyes stay soft and a tire tool has no friends.
From Red
It wasquite a rumble tumble.
She's been abused so long, she thinks it's foreplay.
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