“Uh-huh?”

“I decided I didn’t know what to do,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Ken said. “Well, now, don’t you go rushin’ into it. Me an’ old Buck here has got plenty on our minds, but we always got time to consult with a friend. Right, Buck?”

“Kee-reck! You’re a thousand per cent right, Ken. Like always.”

“So you just take your time an’ tell us about it, Nick,” Ken said. “I’m always willin’ to lay aside the cares of my great office when a friend’s in trouble.”

I hesitated, wanting to tell him about Myra and her half-wit brother. But all of a sudden, it seemed too personal. I mean, how can you discuss your wife with another fella, even a good friend like Ken was. And what the heck could he do about ‘her’, even if I did tell him?

So I reckoned I’d better leave her out of it, and take up this other big problem I had. I figured it was one problem he could handle just fine. In fact, now that I’d kind of had a chance to get reacquainted with him, and I’d seen how he handled Buck, I knew he was just the man to take care of it.

5

“Well, sir, Ken,” I said. “You know that whorehouse there in Pottsville. Place over on the river bank, just a whoop an’ a holler from town …”

Ken looked up at the ceiling and scratched his head. He allowed that he couldn’t say that he did know about it, but he figured naturally that Pottsville had a whorehouse.

“Can’t very well run a town without one, right, Buck?”

“Right! Why if they wasn’t any whores, the decent ladies wouldn’t be safe on the streets.”

“Kee-reck!” Ken nodded. “Fellas would get all full of piss an’ high spirits and take right off after ‘em.”

“Well, that’s the way I look at it,” I said. “But now I got this trouble. Y’see, there’s these six whores, all nice friendly girls and just as accommodatin’ as you could ask for. I really can’t make no complaint about these girls. But along with them is these two pimps— one pimp for three girls, I guess—and those pimps are giving me trouble, Ken. They been sassin’ me somethin’ awful.”

“Now, you don’t mean that!” Ken said. “You don’t mean t’tell me that these pimps has actually been sassin’ the high sheriff of Potts County!”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “that’s exacly what they’ve been doin’. An’ the bad part about it is, they sometimes done it in front of other people, and a thing like that, Ken, it just don’t do a sheriff no good. The word gets around that you’ve been told off by pimps, and it don’t do you no good a’tall!”

“Do tell!” Ken said. “You spoke the God’s truth there, Nick! But I reckon you don’t just let ‘em get away with it? You taken some action against ‘em?”

“Well,” I said, “I’ve been sassin’ ‘em back. I can’t say that it’s stopped ‘em, but I sure been sassin’ ‘em back, Ken.”