GENGHIS
TORECK’S STUPID. I mean that was obvious from the get-go, but I didn’t realize just how deep it ran. Still, he’d been useful through the months pretty much keeping his nose clean for once, staying out of sight in a two-room motel off I-70 near Topeka. He grumbled the whole while, but I did the things I wanted to do, one last time. Seen a Kansas City A’s game, fields of yellow corn nearly six feet tall, hog races, smelled a summer afternoon full of cotton candy, ate my fill of the best bar-b-que in the world, and went to a good ol’ tent revival where I made a new little friend, a girl who looked a lot like that pintsized Suzy Wu I befriended in Manzanita. But, with appetites satisfied it was time to get back to business.
We dug up my daddy’s stash, money he’d hid from his preachin’ days when, as any good preacher would do, he took tithes from his devotees, a good preacher, a good thief. He’d buried it behind the barn in a metal box. I had to return to retrieve my bequest. It took some doing, with the old barn torn down, the house burnt to the ground and the new owners building a new fancy house on our property. Had to “visit” the place three different times waiting for the chance to dig. I thought about taking that new family out but didn’t need the heat. Did take their pretty little girl, Betty Jean’s Bible, though, just a token from her frilly bedroom. Wishful thinkin’.
Now flush again, it was time to get busy.
I kicked the edge of the cot where he slept. “Pack your bag, time to get a move on.”
“Move on to where?” He yawned and dropped his feet to the floor.
“Back to Oregon.”
It was then I noticed he had a black eye and bruised knuckles, likely from his late-night run down to the truck stop tavern. “You gotta give up that life a crime your leadin’ . . . develop some purpose, some sense of somethin’ bigger than yourself.”
“My life a crime?” he laughed. “Hell, I met you in prison. What ya in for, bein’ a upstandin’ citizen? Pretty sure you did some a them crimes yourself, old man.” He lit a half-smoked cigarette from the ashtray full of butts.
I grabbed the foul-smelling ashtray and dumped it in the garbage.
“I don’t commit crimes,” I said. “I manifest destiny.”
“Destiny,” he laughed. “Shit man, whose? Mine? Yours? Them kids you like?”
“Pack your bag, Toreck. It’s time to move.”
“I’m not too keen on goin’ back to Oregon,” he said. “Not much there for me but the same ole people, same ole scene, same ole trouble.”
“One more visit,” I said, handing him a clean shirt. “Don’t you want to know where that priest hid your family? Don’t ya wanna maybe visit his pretty sister?”
“How much?”
“$2000,” I said. “Here’s your ticket.” I handed him a plane ticket for the Portland airport, different time and airlines than mine. “We’ll meet up in Newport.”
“Why Newport?”
“Kite festival; kids everywhere.”
“You ain’t right, man,” he said. “See you in Newport.”