merry christmas from the pawnshop.

Royce Hardeman is about the nastiest sumbitch on God's green earth, with teeth as black as midnight in a coal mine, and crooked as gravestones in a churchyard. The rest of him ain't much better, as he has only passing acquaintance with his bathtub, and a nasty skinrash to boot. He smells like he might have been chainsmoking Camel filterless in a closet for the last thirty years, and he breathes heavy, like a locomotive going uphill. Which is why I am confused about why the cricket wasn't dislodged earlier.

Let me explain.

Yesterday, Royce came in to get his Enfield out of hock, and he was standing hunched over the paperwork, breathing heavy, with a look of savage concentration on his face. And that's when the head of a cricket flew out of his left nostril and fell on his 4473 form. Surely that's not what I saw, I was thinking, when a cricket leg came flying out of the same nostril and landed next to the head. And then another leg, and another.

I managed to avoid vomiting, but it was real questionable there for a second. Real questionable.