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Hinkle looked like he’d had a long, hard night. The smell of old whiskey tingled, sharp and sweet, in my nostrils. He was only half dressed, wearing a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of dirty old pants. Jim had called my plan to waylay Hinkle a fool’s errand, but now it was my only option. Hinkle smelled like he hadn’t washed himself since the day before at least. Forcing myself to ignore the outrageous tufts of hair sprouting from his shoulders, I reached inside my pocket to touch the small key and cash money I had put there the night before.
“Hello,” I said. “I was just about to come looking for you.”
“How lucky, then, that I found you.” Hinkle smiled. “You got some money for me? Ike left us. Did you know that?” Hinkle stared at the ground, dropping his shoulders in a pathetic gesture of defeat, to invite my sympathy perhaps. “I never would have taken him for a traitor. Of course, I never thought Jim would be chipping away at me like this—not when I took a chance on an ex-con like him.” Hinkle raised his eyes to look at me. “I mean, I’m assuming Jim told you he did hard time, what with you and him being so close and all.”
Ignoring this latest attempt to turn me against Jim, I made a show of digging into my pocket and then glancing over first one shoulder and then the other before giving Hinkle the money I had in my hand. “It’s a hundred and thirty-eight dollars,” I whispered with a nod to punctuate the seriousness of my statement.
Hinkle snatched the money from my hand. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said, pocketing the cash. “When I told you to find the missing money, I didn’t mean for you to bring me a week’s worth of your pay.”
“When’s the last time you paid anybody?” I scoffed. Like Jim had predicted, my plan was not going well, but with no other choice or new idea, I pressed on. “Anyway, you didn’t let me finish, okay?” I drew a long breath before continuing. “So, you said to look around the trailer, and I searched it from top to bottom. That hundred and thirty-eight dollars is all the money I found under Jim’s side of the mattress. But see? I also found this key too.” I removed a small key, the one that fit into the fireproof lockbox where I kept my papers. “It’s a key to a safe-deposit box, like they have in a bank. I’ve been thinking, and now I see that what Jim does is he saves up some money under the mattress. Then he goes and tucks it away in this safe deposit box at the bank.” I was talking too much. I knew that. “The only problem is there’s no way to know what bank it goes to. See? They don’t mark them. If I watch Jim, I can figure it out and find the money.” I dangled the key between my thumb and forefinger right in front of Hinkle’s face.
Hinkle lowered his gaze to the ground, his face unreadable, and rocked back and forth on his heels. His stance, the inscrutability of his expression, tightened the uneasy tension knot in my belly.
Hinkle took the key from my hand and interlaced his fingers with mine, maybe not as bothered by touching me as I had thought or maybe liking the discomfort it caused me too much to care. “That’s a fine, fine story, Sarah. And well, it looks like you really been trying to keep up your end of the bargain. But I asked for five thousand dollars, so you see how this fucking one hundred thirty-eight and this useless key don’t do me much good.”
I started to reach for the key then dropped my hand. “I’m going to need the key back and the money, too, I guess, so Jim doesn’t get suspicious.”
“Ah, well,” Hinkle said in a happy, genial voice. “We wouldn’t want Jim to be suspicious. Even so, after everything I’ve had to put up with, I believe I’ll keep this money, since I’ve a mind to treat myself to some luxuries like a nice steak dinner and a backrub from a naked Asian lady. I’ll keep the key too. Because why not? And you, my dear, my dearest dear...” Hinkle took my hand and deposited tens of little kisses all over it. “I hope you can understand me when I tell you to get me my goddamn money, get me every goddamn cent of it, or else I’ll call the police and report you as a fugitive from the law.”
I pulled my hand from Hinkle’s grip. “You’d bring the fuzz around here and be a rat fink like that? Reporting me won’t get you your money.”
“Now, now, I see you’ve got enough to lose that you’ll figure it out. You’re in a tough spot, sweetheart. No doubt about that, and you know I really do want to see you get through this.” Hinkle smiled, and I nearly gagged looking at the black lines of something old and rotting between his remaining teeth.
“Well, good.” My tone was clear and conversational, like talking about a picnic and trying to decide which sandwiches were best—ham or bologna. “I need a little more time. We only just talked about this last night, after all.”
“Sure thing, sure thing, my dear. I can understand that perfectly. I’ll tell you what.” Hinkle glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ll give you an hour. And then I’ll make my call.”
Without another word, I walked away, no other thought, no other plan, no other possibility, except making it back to the trailer and getting away as fast as I could. My soft, overworked heart chuffed like a dying thing, an engine fueled only with terror and regret.
I could hear Gigi talking to Jim as I approached. “Well, then, where the hell is she now?” she asked. Jim must have told her what was happening. When I opened the door, she grabbed my arm to help pull me into the trailer. “Jesus, Lola, thank God. Jim and I thought something happened to you.”
“Something did happen to me!” I shouted. “Hinkle says he’s going to call the police on me if I don’t get him the money he wants in an hour.” I looked at the clock over the kitchen sink, but I couldn’t figure out how much time had elapsed since Hinkle had delivered his pronouncement.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Lola!” Jim exploded. “I told you I wanted you packed and ready to go half an hour ago, and now look what happened.”
I grabbed both of Jim’s arms to shake him. “React later and help me now.”
“All right, all right, get your hands off me and let me think.”
“There’s no time to think!” I hollered. “I’ve been trying to figure my way out of my problems ever since I left home, and look where it’s got me.”
“Lola, listen to me, okay. Settle down.” Jim reached over to hug me but then thought better of it.
I pinched my nose, panicked and overwhelmed at the sensation of time slipping through my fingers. “You know what? Everything I ever said before about being able to get away with murder in broad daylight and being able to outsmart anyone, I take it all back.”
Gigi’s hair was pulled back in a long ponytail. She slid out the rubber band holding it in place and shook her hair free. “Look,” she said. “I personally think Hinkle is bullshitting you about calling the police, but maybe he’d do it out of pure spite. Anyway, there’s no time to get a car for you now, Lola, and if you pulled out of here in Jim’s truck, Hinkle would sure as shit notice. Things are only going to get worse here, especially if Hinkle thinks you ducked out on him. I’ll go with you, Lola, so we can drive day and night. So pack up whatever you think you need for a few weeks, and I’m going to run to my trailer and get my stuff.” Gigi pressed the side of her face against mine, her lips so close to my ear that I could feel the words as well as hear them. “We’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes. Then we’ll drive on down to Gulfy.”
Gigi pulled back from me. “Jim, I guess I’m just going to trust you to get my trailer there for me.” She finger combed her hair away from her face and twisted it back into the rubber band, her ponytail swinging high on the top of her head. “Let’s go.”
Gigi disappeared out the door. She looked both ways and then ran at wonderful full speed across the row and into her trailer.
“Come on, Lola,” Jim said as he started filling a plastic jug from the tap.
I threw a pile of clothes onto the bed and made a bundle from the top sheet, determined not to get distracted by the desolate familiarity of my actions, at how identical they seemed to what I had done four years ago when I left home. I stuffed a grocery bag full of food.
Jim handed me the full gallon jug of water. “Here, take this. Because I don’t want you and Gigi stopping for anything. No food, no water, no nothing. You pee in a jar if you have to. Whatever you do, just keep driving, but don’t go too fast. Stay right at the speed limit so you don’t attract any attention.” Jim opened up the kitchen drawer where he kept small hand tools, like screwdrivers and pliers. He used a flat head to pop out a false bottom. “Here’s a thousand dollars,” he said, counting out ten one-hundred-dollar bills and stuffing them into an old envelope. “That should hold you tight and help you out if you need to grease any palms.”
“Okay.” I paused, even though part of me still felt as if I was moving, wanting to be going out the door. Meaty, my gruesome pickled punk, was sitting on the counter, floating, looking so lost and alone that, despite the heft of his jar and the craziness of the impulse, I wanted to carry him off with me. Jim pushed me toward the door, and Meaty stayed behind.
Outside, we stood next to each other, looking at the path to Gigi’s door. “Looks like the coast is clear. Now, go. I’ll head over to Hinkle’s trailer to tie him up for as long as I can so he won’t even notice the car drive away.”
The rear bumper of Gigi’s station wagon was visible from behind her trailer. Moving with as much care and speed as possible, I set my sights on that and only on that, on getting closer to my means of escape. The things in my arms grew heavier with each step. I should have had Jim carry them to save me time. “I’m going to make it, though,” I whispered to myself. My mouth felt dry and my tongue thick. As soon as we were in the car, I would drink great big glugs of water straight from the jug.
When there was only the smallest bit left to go to reach Gigi’s trailer, when I was almost close enough to stretch out my arm to knock, the door swung open by itself, and there stood Hinkle, still not wearing a shirt and baring his mismatched teeth at me. “Well, I guess we’ve got company, Gigi.” The counterfeit cheerfulness of his words was chilling and horrible.
Gigi stood behind him, clasping her hands in front of her, a worried expression on her face. She mouthed something to me that I couldn’t understand.
“Why don’t you come on in and set down that heavy bundle you’re carrying?” Hinkle asked. Then I knew what Gigi had been saying. “I’m sorry.” Sorry, I guess, for not being able to help me like she wanted. Sorry, too, for coming so close to an escape and then missing the mark.
Without another word, Hinkle began pulling things from my arms and putting them in the trailer behind him. No matter how I reached after the sheet bundle of clothes, my sack of food, and the envelope of money, I couldn’t prevent him from taking these things from me.
“Gigi and I were just having a very interesting conversation. Wouldn’t you say that’s right, Gigi?” Hinkle asked over his shoulder. She gave him a weak smile in return. When he turned back to me, she shook her head again, trying to tell me, I guess, not to let myself get trapped in the trailer with him, like she was, but there was no way, of course, no way at all that I would leave her alone with him.
I smiled. “I guess I could come in and chat for a bit.”
I grabbed one side of the doorframe with both hands to pull myself into the trailer sideways. Hinkle cupped one hand under my elbow and put the other on my shoulder to help balance me.
“Umm... it’s actually better if you let me just do it by myself.”
“All right, then,” he said and sat down on the narrow banquette along the trailer’s back wall to sort through my things. “Well, that’s clothes,” he said, patting the sheet sack. “And this here. This looks like some food, and... and... What’s this?” Hinkle shuffled his fingers around in the paper bag.
“I’ll thank you to leave my things alone,” I said, trying to latch on to his arm.
Hinkle pulled himself free from my grip. He opened the money envelope he had in his hands. “Well, will you look at this?” he said, rifling through the bills fast with his thumb and forefinger. “There’s a thousand dollars here.” He stuffed the wad of cash down the front of his pants. “You know, I have to say I’m surprised—surprised and pleased, too, because here I thought you had all your things packed up so you could skip town with Gigi, when instead you were waddling on over here to bring me some more money. This is much, much better than that pitiful hundred and thirty-eight dollars you gave me before. And see that”—Hinkle took an exaggerated look at his watch—“you still got you a whole twenty—no, eighteen—minutes left on that hour I gave you.”
There was no way to wrestle the money back from him. “So I guess you’re happy now. You got your money. I came over to help Gigi get ready for her new act. It’s about a hundred times—no, a hundred and thirty-eight—times better than the sword swallowing. It’ll make us a lot of money.”
“Is that so? Well, then maybe I’ll stick around to get a preview. And just so you know, my dear, one thousand dollars isn’t the same as five. If I were you, I’d make better use of my time.”
“Enough already.” I slammed my fist into the wall next to Hinkle’s head. “That’s all the goddamn money Jim would give me. Okay? I can get more. Just not right this second and not in eighteen minutes either.” I shook my head at Hinkle. “You can’t pretend to me like a thousand dollars is nothing or that you’d rather have the police swarming around here when I bet I can get you the rest before we blow out of this town.”
“Hey, hey,” Gigi said. “Both of you sit down. I don’t know about anybody else, but my nerves are shot with all this talk and running around. You got yourself a good amount of money there, Hinkle. Let’s have a drink and relax a little bit.” Gigi rummaged under the kitchen sink and brought out a liquor bottle half-full with a clear liquid. “I got this tequila here from Mexican Bobby. He says it’s the best shit south of the border, and I guess he ought to know.” She carried the bottle and three jelly glass jars over to the coffee table. “Come on, sit, sit.”
Hinkle and I eyed each other, unsure enough of how to end our confrontation, our standoff, that we simply did what Gigi said. I sat down in the wooden chair across from Hinkle while Gigi squeezed in next to him on the banquette, the space almost too small to hold the three of us.
“Here you go,” she said, filling Hinkle’s glass halfway and then her own. She paused when she reached my glass, the bottle hovering over the rim. “I know you ain’t much of a drinker like the rest of us, but I’m going to go on and give you some anyway.” Gigi poured me some of the tequila and placed the open bottle on the floor next to her.
“No, thanks,” I said, pushing the glass to the side. “It’s bad for the baby.”
“Geez, Lola,” Gigi said in a voice too soft for Hinkle to hear. Her shock at my mentioning the pregnancy in front of Hinkle made me fear that I was playing the wrong card with him, but no other idea had occurred to me.
“How’s that now?” Hinkle asked, a look of confused suspicion on his face.
“You heard me,” I said, keeping my voice steady and leaning in closer to him. “And if you think Jim wouldn’t kill you outright for getting me sent to jail while I’ve got his baby in me, then you’ve got another think coming.”
For the first time in any interaction or conversation with Hinkle, I had managed to catch him off guard and unnerve him. Unclean and scruffy though he appeared that day, he still possessed the same cunning elasticity that allowed him to bounce back from every situation.
His eyes traveled from the top of my head down to the broad, splayed tennis shoes that I never tied, before settling on the middle region of my body. “Is that so?” he asked, his face realigned, his composure regained. “It’s mighty hard to tell, I’d say, just from looking at you.”
The three of us glanced from one to the other, no one saying anything, frozen in an unescapable moment until Gigi broke the spell.
“Come on, you two. Let’s have our drink now. I’ve got some soda pop in the fridge for you, Lola. It’s good that you’re so careful like that. My mother used to say that women who drink too much end up with retarded babies.” Gigi raised her own glass. Then all at once her face crumpled, and a ragged, wailing sigh escaped from her. “Oh Jesus,” she said, “I’m sorry. Sorry to both of you. It’s just that having Lola here, pregnant, and talking about my own mother, it gets me to thinking that I’ll never have a little baby of my own.” Gigi began to rock back and forth. Her sobs had a bit of the overly sharp edge of the theatrical, that stubborn piece that was hard to conceal. Gigi was a decent-enough actress, but it was safe to say not a great one. Her crying seemed to discomfit Hinkle, however.
“And the worst part,” Gigi continued, “the worst part is this morning, right after I woke up from this dream about my mother, I got my period all over the place. You know how that is, right, Lola?”
Hinkle’s face had changed color, his usual ruddiness washed white with the palest tinge of green.
“Yeah, it can be a real mess, all right,” I agreed.
“I’ll be right back,” Gigi said. She stumbled into the bathroom with her full glass.
Hinkle shifted in his seat, crossing one ankle over his thigh and then letting it drop to the floor. “Maybe you should go and help her,” he said.
“Right,” I said, struggling to my feet. “Hey, Geeg.” I slid open the bathroom door, my body blocking Hinkle’s view of Gigi. “You all right in here?”
Gigi had her glass of tequila resting on the small glass shelf over the sink. She used her thumbnails to pull apart the gel coating of a pill capsule then emptied the contents into the glass. She winked at me and smiled. “I’m okay,” she said in a pitiful tear-strained voice. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be back out.”
“She’ll be okay,” I said, sitting back down. “Sometimes, the bleeding can be too much—what with the clots and all.”
Hinkle gagged in a quiet way, making me worry that I had gone too far, pushed too hard.
“No need for such detail, now, is there? You know, in my day...”
Gigi walked out of the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper in one hand and her full glass of tequila in the other. “I’m sorry about all that, Hinkle. I know it’s probably nothing you wanted to hear.” She balanced the toilet paper on the back of the banquette directly behind his head and settled down next to him. She shifted her lower body left and right. “Oh geez,” she said. “Oops. Oh, I’m sorry, Hinkle, but would you mind handing me that roll of toilet paper behind you?”
Hinkle turned around, and quickly, so quickly it seemed almost like sleight of hand, Gigi switched her glass of tequila with his.
“Thanks,” she said, ripping off a sheet to blot her forehead and blow her nose. “Again, sorry about all this. Well, let’s drink, then.” Gigi raised her drink to Hinkle. Hinkle did the same, his hand shaking just enough to be noticeable. “Mexican Bobby said that Mexicans all yell ‘al seco’ to each other, which means you have to drink your glass dry, or else everybody will think you’re a big pussy.” Gigi smiled. “Al seco.”
Hinkle downed the entire contents of his glass in a single gulp while Gigi and I watched. She set her full glass down on the table.
Hinkle wiped his hand over his mustache and then repeated the motion, pulling harder on his whiskers the second time. “It’s got a funny taste—almost like it’s bitter or something.”
He started to cough. Gripping the edge of the banquette, he leaned forward then seemed to get stuck in that position, frozen in place, a leering demon drained of its power. None of us moved. Nothing stirred, not even a breath of air through the window.
“What did you bitches put in my drink?” Hinkle asked.
“Ah, it’s nothing to worry about,” Gigi whispered, snaking her hand through Hinkle’s arm. “Me and Lola just thought you should relax a little bit. You look sort of tired. You need to rest on my bed. You been working awfully hard lately.”
With Gigi half lifting him on one side, Hinkle managed to stagger to his feet, bracing his hand on the wall. She shuffled alongside him to steady his balance while I positioned myself behind them. Gigi eased Hinkle onto her unmade bed, and then, standing in front of him, she pushed on his shoulders, a firm gesture that nonetheless held a disturbing degree of gentleness. Hinkle flopped backward with his arms spread out to the sides, eyes closed at last.
Gigi reached over to hold my hand. “You think he’s out?” she whispered. “I emptied a whole bunch of goofballs into his glass.”
“Let’s give it a little while to make sure.” It seemed impossible to believe that Gigi and I might still be able to make our escape when only moments before, our situation had been so dire.
Back in the other room, Gigi finished off her glass of tequila. “You know, you and Jim both think you’re so darn smart, but how’d you like that trick from old Gigi?”
Something about her stance, the way she held her glass, or maybe just the outrageousness of the situation, struck me as funny, making me laugh until tears came to my eyes. “I think that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. You really outdid yourself this time.”
Gigi smiled. “Nothing throws a man off his guard like talking about your period.”
I glanced back into Gigi’s bedroom. “I’ll get the money so we can get going, and then we can let Jim deal with him.” I had to put my hands down Hinkle’s pants. He had stuffed the money right into his underwear, the pig, so that I accidentally touched his penis, digging around in there to make sure I got all the bills. “Gross.” I reached into his front pocket, too, to get back my one hundred thirty-eight dollars and the lockbox key. “No steak dinner for you tonight and no massage and hand job either.” I laughed, letting myself take a moment to savor the elation of having bested a son of a bitch like Hinkle who thought he held all the cards and could stomp all over people like Gigi and me. “Serves you right.” I poked him in the chest, and he didn’t move. His body was perfectly still. No inhalation, no exhalation, no nothing. “Gigi!”
“Oh my God, what’s wrong? Is he waking up?” She reached behind the divider for the bat she kept there. “Club him back down.”
I pulled the bat from her hands by the fat end and shook the handle in her face. “No! We don’t need a bat. He’s not breathing.”
“Oh, holy shit,” Gigi said, sinking to her knees on the floor. “What should we do?”
“Maybe this isn’t as bad as it looks,” I said.
Gigi stood up and leaned over Hinkle and slapped him across the face. “Wake up, Hinkle. Come on, and wake up.”
I had to grab her hand so she wouldn’t hit him again. “Do you think we should do CPR or mouth-to-mouth or something like that?”
We both stood there over Hinkle, watching his lifeless form, but neither of us made a move to put our lips to his. “Oh, Lola, this is bad. This is so bad.”
“I know. I know. I know that.”
The trailer door slammed open. Gigi and I screamed and grabbed each other at the sudden sound.
“There you are,” Jim said. “Hinkle wasn’t in his trailer or anywhere else around, and then I saw the station wagon still here, and I was worried, so... Why are you two standing there like that?”
“Oh, Jim,” I said. “We got a big problem here. I think Hinkle’s dead.”
“What do you mean, ‘dead’?” Jim strode over. He slapped the side of Hinkle’s face, just like Gigi had done. “Wake up, Hinkle.” He knelt down and gripped the edge of the bed. “Shit, shit, shit, shit. How did this happen?”
“It’s all my fault,” Gigi said with a sob. “I was over here packing up my stuff, and he barged his way in without even knocking and told me I wasn’t going anywhere. Then Lola showed up, and he took the money you gave her and put it down his pants. We didn’t know what he was going to do, so I tried to fake him out, you know? And it worked because I put some pills into a glass of tequila, and I got him to drink it down.” Gigi clasped her hand over her mouth. “I swear, I only wanted to make him go to sleep so me and Lola could get out of here. And then when Lola went to get back the money, she noticed he wasn’t breathing. Oh my God, we’ve got to get out of here.” Gigi buried her face in Jim’s shoulder.
I tugged her off Jim. “Jesus. Don’t fall apart now.” I took a deep breath. “Running is the worst thing we could do.” Gigi and Jim were both watching me because, I supposed, neither of them was going to have a better solution. “Okay, so we’ve got to get Hinkle back to his trailer somehow and into his own bed. Then we go about our business like nothing happened. Somebody’s bound to go looking for him before we open today. Once the body turns up, people will start leaving, and no one could blame us for going too. We won’t look any more suspicious than anyone else. You see what I’m saying?”
Gigi and Jim looked at each other. “Sounds like a fair plan to me,” Jim said, “but how are we going to get Hinkle’s body back into his trailer without anyone seeing? There’s always someone roaming around.”
The three of us stood in a small circle, staring at the floor and then the ceiling while we tried to think of some solution.
“What about the blade box?” Gigi asked.
“Bingo,” Jim said.
Gigi exhaled. “We do this, you can sure as shit forget about my ever getting in there again.”
***
Half an hour later, I left Gigi’s trailer and walked to Hinkle’s place. Jim and Gigi trailed behind me, Gigi pushing the blade box on its wheeled cart and Jim pulling it from the other end. She was wearing her purple spangled bodysuit and the white slit skirt crusted with rhinestones, claiming it would be easier for her to stay focused if she was wearing her stage clothes. A roughie named Danny was pissing behind the bunkhouse.
“Put it back in your pants, Danny Boy!” Jim yelled.
Danny waved his hand in return. “What are you doing so dressed up at this hour, Gigi?”
“Looking for you,” Gigi said.
Danny laughed and, as Jim had suggested, stuffed himself back into his pants before disappearing around the other side of the cook trailer.
As far as I could tell, no one else noticed Jim and Gigi, or if they did, they didn’t pay them any particular mind. I waved to show them the coast was clear for the last part of the operation. Jim took Hinkle’s trailer key from his pocket, and then he and Gigi lifted the entire contraption inside. Even if someone saw what they were doing, I supposed they had the plausible tale of moving the equipment inside to give Hinkle a preview of what they were rehearsing.
It would be better and certainly simpler, though, if no one noticed anything. I walked around the back, making my way slowly, giving them enough time to do what they needed to do before knocking again to let them know that it was safe to come out. I banged my hand on the window, but they didn’t answer or open the door. The sun was making me dizzy, but I was too frightened to leave my post, worried that something had gone wrong.
At last, the door opened. “Everything’s fine,” Jim said. Then he and Gigi wheeled the blade box up to the sideshow tent, walking too fast for me to catch up, so I went back to our trailer and waited.
Jim came back about fifteen minutes later. “They’ll probably find him soon,” he said. “I want you to have time to get all your things together so you can go ahead with Gigi. She’s home right now, washing down everything, and then I can help hook up Gigi’s trailer.”
“What? Let’s just wait, and we can all go together.” My voice sounded panicked and squeaky, even to my own ears. “We need to stick together.”
Jim shook his head. “Nah. I got to stay to straighten things out with the fuzz and make sure nobody says the wrong thing, and you need to get to Gulfy where you’ll be safe, as soon as you can.” Jim must have read the fear on my face. “I’ll catch up, though,” he said, taking a stack of cash from his top dresser drawer. “Gigi and I decided to search Hinkle’s trailer while we were there. That’s what took us so long. Gigi didn’t want to do it, but I had a feeling Hinkle had some money squirrelled away, even though he was shaking you down. We found bills hidden in all these different little spots. Who knows if we even got it all?” Jim split the pile and gave me half, all different denominations jumbled together, some of them looking crumpled and old, while others were fresh and crisp, newly printed. “Gigi got some too. I’ll use some of the rest to pay off the cops and whatever local dick thinks he needs some money. I’ll spread it around to the workers, too, so they don’t have to end the season empty-handed.”
***
People asked around the back lot if anyone had seen Hinkle. Within the hour, both Weedy and Billy knocked on our door to ask Jim if he knew where Hinkle was.
“If you don’t see him around, he must be in his trailer,” Jim told them.
He said the same thing to Roscoe, who dropped by not long after Weedy and Billy had left. “The thing is, though,” Roscoe said, “there was no answer when I knocked on his trailer.”
About half an hour later, Roscoe came running back to say that he had finally worked up the nerve to push open the unlocked door to Hinkle’s living trailer. “And that’s when I knew there was something funny, Jim, because Hinkle always locks everything up as tight as a drum,” he explained, his hand shaking as he fumbled with a matchbook to try to light a cigarette. Jim lit Roscoe’s cigarette with his Zippo. “You gotta come and take a look, Jim. Because I seen Hinkle there, covered over in his bed, and he ain’t moving.”
Jim turned away from Roscoe, hiding his face without appearing to, as he pocketed his lighter. From my post on the couch, I stayed silent, intent on seeming like a background player with no particular part in what was happening. “I’ll be back in a bit, Lola,” Jim said as he left with Roscoe.
Word about Hinkle’s death would soon spread like fire, slicing through the people eating breakfast at the cook trailer, fanning out through the ride jockeys camping on the lot, and making its way to everyone asleep or otherwise engaged in their trailers. The grunt workers in the bunkhouse and the concessionaires who rented rooms in town would find out as well, and eventually, the whole of us would likely gather to learn what would happen next.
I made up my mind to wait inside the trailer for as long as I could, and in that time, first Weedy came by to tell me what had happened, and then Daisy and Ora Ann showed up to supply me with the same information. At last, Gigi let herself into the trailer and sat down beside me on the couch. “Just about everybody knows now, I guess,” she said. “There’s a big crowd out in front of Hinkle’s trailer. We should get out there too.”
Jim stood in front of the crowd on the step up into the trailer. “All right,” he said. We all turned to listen to him, drawn by the smooth resonance of his words, his showman’s voice. “Most of you already heard, but I’ll say it anyway. It looks like Hinkle died in his bed. There’s no way of knowing what happened, but Roscoe called for the ambulance. That means the police will probably be here, too, and they might have some questions.”
I wasn’t used to being part of a crowd, an audience member. I noticed Daisy and Ora Ann exchange looks while Mexican Bobby lowered his head and spit a straight line of tobacco juice into the dirt. People seemed to shift around, turning toward each other, bumping shoulders, anxious to say or do something but unsure how to proceed.
“Are we going to get shut down here or what?” Weedy finally asked.
“I think we can safely assume that this is the end of the season for us. After that, I don’t know exactly how things will shake out,” Jim said. “In the meanwhile, though, no one is to come into this trailer.”
“No disrespect for the dead,” Roscoe called out. “But does this mean we’re not going to get paid again?”
“Trust me. Nobody’s gonna leave here empty-handed,” Jim said.
An unexpected, tickly pride rolled around in my chest, making me stand up straighter. It pleased me to see Jim this way, looking out for others when he just as easily could have kept Hinkle’s money for himself.
“And what about Hinkle’s poor mama?” asked Marva. She was wearing a stained apron and still held a wooden spoon in one hand. “Who’s gonna call her and let her know what happened?”
“I can assure you it will get taken care of, Marva,” Jim said.
A sob escaped Gigi. She stuffed her fist into her mouth as if she wanted to push it down her throat. A few people glanced at her. I reached over and tugged the hem of her shirt to remind her to keep it together because Daisy was staring at Gigi.
Gigi coughed. “It’s awful sad to think of someone’s mama hearing news like this.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right about that,” Daisy said, leaning back to give Gigi a hug.
Once Jim closed Hinkle’s trailer door behind him and sat down on the stoop to wait, the crowd became looser, leaving behind its shape and energy. Marva slapped her wooden spoon on her hand and walked away.
“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered to Gigi.
.