GENGHIS
GARY HICCURS’S SHACK hadn’t been touched in the months I’d been confined. Looked like nobody on this earth missed the guy. The cabin smelled of dried fish and dust. It appeared our Gary didn’t know cleanliness was godliness. It was a pig sty but better than that damned cell.
I started his pick-up truck. It roared to a rumble; looked like it wouldn’t go over ten miles an hour, but that was fine. Besides, I didn’t want to use the black truck I’d pinched in Tillamook except for special trips.
The Nehalem store was five minutes away. We needed supplies, so I headed out while Toreck slept on a cot in the back room. He sleeps a lot, and late; seven, even eight a.m.—me, if I slept, then up at sunrise every day, clockwork, the early worm, all that sort of crap. I figured in a fishing town the store would open early, too, so off I went in that old bald-tire, sputtering contraption, poor excuse for a truck.
This Nehalem was my kind of town; right out of another century. The sidewalks were wooden railroad planks like in some Western. I glanced up and down the sleepy street to see if any podunk sheriff was lurking. There were five weary buildings: store, café, tavern, an out-of-business logging office, and a barber shop with one of those red-white-and-blue barber shop doohickeys hanging by the window. But no sheriff.
Nehalem lacked a proper restaurant. No little old ladies in a local antebellum house serving up breakfast; no full course of biscuits and gravy, fried bacon, eggs, maybe even some sweet corn fritters. My stomach growled as I entered the Two Table Café where the sign above the counter read God Bless America.
Personally, it looked to me like they had room for three tables. There were no customers, nobody serving anything, just a young guy in a flannel shirt hiding behind the counter. “Cook’s out sick,” he said, pointing to the coffee pots and donuts. Now, I had a real hankerin’ for some good old fried taters, slaw, green beans cooked in pork, and fried okra. Oh my good God, hungry, hungry, hungry. Tried hard not to think about honest food the last few months, but now, well, hungry.
Bitterly disappointed I bought a cup of hot, weak coffee and a sugary donut and waited on the dock for the store to open at eight. The fresh air was invigorating after the smoky riots, and that maple donut went a long way in reawakening my taste buds after that godforsaken salt-lick grub in the pen.
After I bought Portland’s Oregonian newspaper (with the headline AUGUST 1ST— CONVICTS STILL ON THE LOOSE!) and some provisions, I noticed a truck with California plates parked next to the Riverside Tavern, and a little girl inside, her head propped against the window, asleep. Who would leave a child in a car this time of day? Or maybe she’d been there all night.
Dropped my bags into my truck and walked across the street to the Tavern parking lot, looked inside the cab window. She was a little red-headed child with freckles, about seven, and alone. Looked up and down the street; not a soul in town. My hunger rekindled.
The truck door was locked. Behind the window she was so close. I touched my fingers to the glass where her tiny head rested on the other side. I could almost feel her. Smell her.
I marched up the stairs and went inside that weathered watering hole. At one end of the bar sat an old wrinkled woman. Looked like a tumor that’d grown out of that bar stool, like she’d been planted there for years. Probably had. She smoked a cigarette and stared straight ahead at the collection of deer heads and antlers on the wall behind the bar. Most of their glossy eyes stared back; one old buck didn’t have eyes, just empty sockets full of dust. The place smelled of stale beer, mold, and dirty ashtrays. At the other end of the bar were two other people: a thin, weasel-looking guy, maybe twenty-eight or -nine, wearing black snakeskin boots that looked to be my size, and a young, bleach-blonde woman who looked ridden real hard and put away wet. Short skirt, tight blouse, red shoes. She whispered in his ear and bit at his neck like a harlot. He put his hands on her breasts like nobody else was in the room.
“Be watchful, friend,” I said approaching them. “Be wary of the seductive words of a promiscuous woman.”
Her head lifted; a mannequin raised to life. She glared at me, anger in those half-lit eyes. Real anger. “Who the hell are you?” she asked.
“The poison of vipers is on those lips. Nothin’ but unfaithfulness ’tween those breasts, boy. That woman’s a desert where men die a thirst. Mother who abandons her child at a pagan’s alter will surely rot in hell.”
“What?” the young man asked through his drunken haze.
His hair was coal black and his skin olive colored; clearly not the red-headed child’s father. But he was wearing a ring that caught my eye. I needed a new ring.
“Mind your own business,” she said, her red lipstick smeared across her filthy mouth.
“Is that abandoned child out there yours?” I asked.
“Tula May?” she said. “She’s fine. She’s sleepin’. Leave us be.”
A fat bartender came out of the back room and asked, “Any trouble here?”
“No trouble,” I said looking to the ground. Didn’t need him seeing my face or calling any police. Turned and went back to my truck. I waited an hour, patient as a cat at a mouse hole, watching the girl, making certain she was safe. When they finally stumbled out around nine-thirty, she’d been awake for twenty minutes, sitting up in the seat, not surprised to be there. She sat quietly and waited for them to come back. A child deserves better parents than that.
Their truck swerved out of Nehalem and all the way into Manzanita. I followed. Then they drove up a hill alongside a mountain behind town and up a dirt drive to a small broken-down cabin. I parked and hid in some bushes. They went inside, forgetting about the child.
Within a few minutes Tula May climbed out of the truck and carried her blanket inside. She was a cute little thing, real cute. Still pure. She deserved better. I knew right then and there I needed to save her soul from that wretch and her wretched ways.
Loud music blared from a radio. I slowly climbed one rickety stair at a time. Inside they laughed and shouted at each other, then laughed some more. I peered in the dirty window. They were half-naked, her still wearing her cheap red shoes, beer bottles everywhere like they’d been partyin’ for weeks. The child was nowhere in sight. I shoved the door open and said, “I warned you, brother.” They looked surprised to see me again so soon. “Never trust a whore who neglects her child.”