CHAPTER 3

 

We were clear the other side of Anderson on 69 before Bud even mentions anything about where we’re going. We’re about ten minutes from the 465 bypass around Indianapolis when he said, “South, huh?”

I grinned and squeezed the can of Miller’s Genuine Draft he’d handed me, between my legs so’s I could pop the top. We had all the windows down, front and back, and were cruising at seventy, every so often rolling them up when we went past a pig farm until we got drunk enough we didn’t care. That stretch of 69 you could do sixty-five, legal, and they always gave you an extra five. “That okay?”

We were listening to the Ink Spots, the only tape I had. I was driving Bud nuts listening to the cut of “If I Didn’t Care” over and over.

“Fuck an A,” he said, popping his own, beer mist spraying all over, goobering up the window. “Next time though we get Stroh’s. Can we listen to the rest of that tape? You got anything else? That fucking song’s fucking depressing, Jake. We’re going south, let’s get us some country tunes. Willie Nelson.”

“Stroh’s isn’t beer, Bud. It’s wino piss. They hire derelicts from Milwaukee at the brewery t’pee in the vats, then they sell it to farmers like you that don’t know good beer. Nobody drinks beer can drink that crap. They find out you like Stroh’s at a good bar, they start serving you Shirley Temples, water back.”

This was like old times.

We drank all the way down, listening to the ‘Spots and a Waylon Jennings tape Bud picked up at a truckstop outside of Evansville just before we crossed the bridge.

This trip was my idea and I didn’t have a clue where we were going. Warm was all I cared about.

Together we ante upped the pot and we had four hundred and twelve bucks and some silver between us. Three-fifty of that was mine counting what I’d got from the QuickStop. I didn’t tell Bud about that. No sense in worrying him for no reason. I hadn’t bothered to go back to my apartment to get my clothes and things but I wasn’t totally a moron either. I’d stopped by the bank on the way to Bud’s place and closed out my bank account.

“If I’d known the bitch’d cleaned me out I wouldn’t have called her and told her I was leaving,” he said, soon as he climbed in the car. “I got sixty bucks total, homeboy. If I’d known she went through my pants last night I woulda went over to the hospital, made some excuse and jacked her up for some. I fucked up, calling her first.”

It didn’t matter. We figured to go as long as our money lasted and find something wherever that was, a job or something, or if we happened on a place we liked before we were broke we’d do the same there. Neither of us gave it much thought. We were both thieves, at least that’s what we’d both done time for although each of us had done a few other things too. Armed robbery, strong-arm robbery, dope, things like that, the usual, guys like us. Though that wasn’t the only thing Bud got popped for. He got busted for rape with the other stuff but that’s another story.

I had my Mossberg 12 gauge and a .22 rifle in the trunk and Bud had brought a Police Special .38 with the numbers filed off which I made him hide in the wheel well in the trunk ‘case we got stopped. Under the spare which was flat. I put my .45 there, too. It wasn’t that we were planning on doing a job, it was just that we both knew how to and if worse came to worse, well, it wasn’t the end of the line like it would be for some folks.

That night we kept an eye out for a cheap motel close to a bar and found one just across the line into Tennessee, I don’t remember the name of the town, some little podunk where the bar and motel up on the highway seemed to be the town. Gobbler’s Knob or something was probably the name of it, most of them one-horse towns was called something like that. Finger Fucker’s Ferry, Joe-Bob’s Dell. Weird names, you wondered where they came from, what the history was.

We checked into a double and it was a bit pricey seeing as how it looked like a pack of former slave quarters or something, bunch of little shacks all painted white at one time, peeling and gone to hell by now and practically falling down but as I say, we were flush and said what the fuck. Twenty-eight bucks and three for the key, get it back when you turned the key in. First thing we checked was the air conditioning and it worked fine though it was loud. Sounded like it was about to blow a gasket but the air was frosty and kicked out in buckets. The sheets were clean too. There was a few roaches but not the big ones you see in Florida. These were hardly nothing, little bitty things. There was a Bible and a phone book that was smaller than my rap sheet.

This was one of those rent-it-by-the-hour dumps, couples coming and going all hours and mostly drunk or high whole time we were there and I figure we copped the only double in the bunch, musta used it for the big orgies. Big ol’ hillbilly Cadillacs parked all over; ‘57 two-door Chevys with California rakes painted either black or red. Only two colors they could use and still be in the hillbilly race driver club probably. Once in a while a ‘56 Ford would pull in, most likely the maverick hillbilly. Seemed like every time we turned around that night somebody was spraying our door with gravel trying to impress their little girlfriends but hell, we all done that shit even up north.

Well, we have found the action place we said to each other and jumped in and took turns showering and loading up with the aftershave, turned out in our best threads, me in my truckstop rodeo shirt and then heading over across the highway for the bar which was knee-deep in big-titted gals and guys with beards and cowboy hats I bet we were the only guys without chin hair. Must have been a local thing and it sure made us stand out. Which was good and bad. Good ‘cause the women noticed we was fresh meat and bad ‘cause the local bad asses noticed we was fresh meat, too.

The joint was called the Blue Pony—where they got that from god only knows—only it was full of blue neon lights and signs. No ponies though, flamingos that looked more like blue turkeys, cartoon characters and dogs or something I guess were supposed to be dogs. And every beer sign in the world, most of them red. They shoulda called it “Neon City” ‘stead of the pony thing. Who knows what goes through a cracker’s head?

We didn’t have to wait long. Just got our first beers and cracked wise at the waitress, this peroxide burnout couldn’t been much more than sixteen when these two Hill Williams—that’s what Bud liked to call them—sidled up and sat down at our table uninvited, a big, mean-looking doofus with a scar alongside his chin looked like wasn’t put there with no Gillette Blue Blade, and his sidekick, a little wormy kind of character, with a Snidely Whiplash pencil ‘stash and a goatee with a vitamin deficiency, kept him from growing the complete, filled-out article.

“You boys are new in town,” said the moose. I swear to God, that’s what he said, and it was all either of us could do to keep from busting out laughing. I peeped at Bud and he at me and I knew he was having the same trouble I was keeping the snickers down, or asking the guy if maybe he hadn’t seen too many John Wayne movies. Before anything else happened, Bud stuck his hand over the big guy’s mitt that was on the table, and the guy’s hand just disappeared. Just fucking disappeared. I told you, Bud was a big guy. Six-six and about that wide.

Then it got interesting.

Bud leaned over and put his face right up into the guy’s mug, up under his Stetson and said real soft, “I just want to tell you straight off Large Rufus or whatever they call you hereabouts. Once I got my leg broke when some clumsy ox like you fell on it after I stroked him. Now I ain’t too crazy about that happening again, I’ve got to tell you. The way I see it, that could happen again so I made my mind up a long time ago, I wasn’t going to be laid up in some bed six weeks with a cast on, scratchin’ dead skin with a coat hanger. No, sir, I ain’t gonna let that happen again or even the remote chance of it.”

I was watching Bud’s hand turn white as he began to squeeze the other guy’s and at first the guy tried to get his hand loose, kind of casual-like, like he wasn’t really trying at all, only had an itch he needed to scratch but Bud had him in a killer grip. I swear I heard a bone pop but I can’t verify that. I do know sweat was jumping out on the guy’s forehead and it wasn’t a grin he had on his kisser. And this was a big guy himself only he wasn’t quite as big as Bud. This was a brown bear facing up to a grizzly. Why he didn’t just reach over and thump Bud I don’t know. Well, yes I do. I think the guy was smart underneath ‘spite of his peckerwood looks.

Bud was going on in this low voice only us four could hear, and his eyes are like little black shiny marbles and he had this guy’s attention.

“I just want to make this point my friend. My buddy and me are just here for a little drink or two and maybe if we get lucky we find some friendly girls. We’re passin’ through, be gone in the morning. We ain’t after your girls so if you want to point out which’s yours, well, we’ll lay offa them maybe. But if it’s some trouble you want then it’s trouble you got, only this ain’t gonna be no brawl like you been in before.” He leaned in even closer, his nose not an inch from the other man’s and he said, “You need to know I’m a dumber hillbilly than you are, friend. I don’t know when to quit. I’m truly afraid that once I start in on you I won’t stop till you’re a dead motherfucker. In fact, I can practically guarantee I won’t quit then. That would be a shame Clyde, ‘cause I can see you still got a lotta transmissions left to get to and repair in your lifetime and there’s gonna be a lot of sad motherfuckers with sick trannies at your funeral not gonna think too well of this. I got to tell you, be fair about it, this ain’t gonna be your normal fair fight Country. I like the eyes, is what I like and while you’re punching around in that silly way like I bet you’re used to on account of you seen too many Clint Eastwood flicks, me, I like to get in close, use my digitals and go for the eyes. I get ‘em, I eat ‘em. Like grapes. But first I do this just so’s I know which hand to watch for.”

He put the mojo to it, squeezing the guy’s hand and this time there was no mistake—something broke, a finger or a thumb. We all heard it crunch. The big guy had sand, some, anyway, as he didn’t yell or nothing but, Lord, the sweat was coming off him in sheets, making him blink as fast as he could and his color was white as a Ku Kluxer’s dress robe. The other guy, I couldn’t tell, but I bet myself he was putting a puddle under his chair or about to.

Bud took his hand away then, but first he patted the other man’s crippled-up paw laying there like some mangled pup got caught in the combine. There was a little white thing sticking out, mighta been a bone, where the skin had broke, and some blood, just a trickle. He patted it gently and the man winced and drew it away, holding it in his other hand like it was some wounded bird he’d found along the road. He sat there a minute staring at Bud—in fact, he hadn’t taken his eyes from Bud’s—and then he looked away, down, and got up, turned, and walked to the front door and out, holding his hand the whole time. The other clown sat there a minute as if confused, had found himself in the wrong place by accident maybe and then he stood himself up and went out the front door a little faster than his sidekick had.

“You’re an amazement,” I said to him, a grin breaking across my face and I started to say something else on the same subject when he held up a finger.

“Hold up, homeboy,” he said. “We’re not out of the woods yet. Get the shit-eatin’ grin off your face.”

I realized what he was saying. Hell, I should have known better from my time in the joint. Never front a guy, make him lose face in public. In this case, even though Jim-Bob and Little Ernie had departed, us laughing about the little confrontation would be like laughing at all the others, that’s family, places like that, and there were too many for us, bad as we might be. Well, bad as Bud might be although I wasn’t exactly no slouch at bustin’ heads either. It came right down to it I seen he was right and I wiped the smile off my kisser.

He read the hand right. The locals left us alone and the tension settled down and we had us a few beers, checking out the talent. There was some uglos but there was some good ones too, some that smiled back, gave us a look.

Along about the third or fourth round he finally got around to it.

“It’s your girlfriend. isn’t it? Why we’re doing this, why we’re sitting here in cotton country instead of over at the North Star on State?”

I admitted it was. “Yeah. I got it pretty bad, Bud.”

“Must be. You’re still on parole, aren’t you?”

He knew I was.

“And you didn’t even call in to quit your job, did you, homeboy? I know you didn’t get permission from your P.O. t’do this. Fuck, man,” Bud said, shaking his head admiringly. “You’re a gen-u-wine twenty-four carat fuckup. You’re gonna be back there with Dusty and who’s gonna save your ass this time? Was it that Donna, that redhead I seen you with at the Three Rivers Festival? Big tits she’s proud of?”

I cleared my throat, took a swig of beer, tried to look at him but couldn’t quite make it.

“Yeah. I even tried to take the pipe, man. Some shit, huh?” I was embarrassed as soon as I said that. I don’t know why I did, except we were like brothers and I figured if anyone could understand, Bud could.

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“No.” I thought again about the last few days. “I got me this room at Motel 6, you know the one out on Coliseum Boulevard, out towards Harvester. By Azars. The one has the titty bar behind it. Three days. Sat around in my skivvies with the TV off and the shades down. Didn’t know if it was day or night most of the time. Didn’t do nothin’ but sit there and eat Jack Daniels and chocolate doughnuts. Did a bottle a day. Fuck, I don’t do a bottle a week.”

“So, how—”

I grinned, or tried to. “All I can say is I can’t shave with my Norelco now. Fucking cord’s busted. You got a razor I could borrow maybe?” I rubbed my neck. It was still sore. Then, I did laugh. “I paid a lot of money for that damn thing. You’d think the cord’d be stronger! Think the warranty’s good on something like that?”

I looked at him and took a deep breath.

“I was gonna do it again, do it till I got it right, only I laid there awhile on the floor thinking that now I was gonna have to go out and buy something stronger, a rope, and I started to wonder what places were still open had rope for sale on a Sunday and then I wondered that if I was to find such a place would they take a check ‘cause I only had a couple of bucks in cash left and then I remembered I would have to go back to my apartment ‘cause that’s where my checkbook was—I could see it in my mind, sitting on the dresser and then I thought—what the hell am I doing? If it is this much trouble then the hell with it! I would much rather spend my time doing something more fun that took less effort. So I did. I got up and turned on the TV. I didn’t think about leaving town then—that’s the honest to God truth. I did that this morning, driving over to Harvey’s, but I might have started to think about it last night while I was lying there thinking about what a fuckup I was at killing myself, who knows? Anyway, here I am and here we are and what do you think of that? No, don’t answer that. I just want to get drunk and see if we can get laid. I already forgot about what’s-her-name.

“Donna.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” We both laughed.

“Pussy’s pussy.”

Yeah, there was that—Bud was right, but then again he was wrong. I’d always thought that too—pussy was pussy—all cats look alike in the dark—all that shit—and mostly that’s true, I guess, but Donna...well, Donna was...well, different. I can’t think of a better word.

It was all kinds of things, me and Donna. The way she fucked. She screwed you like you and her were the last two motherfuckers on earth and if she coulda got to pick who she was gonna get to play Adam and Eve with it wouldn’ta been nobody else but you. That kind of shit.

She all the time was making you think. This is a good one. This is pure Donna. One time we’re vegging out in bed, Sunday morning, the papers spread all over the bed and us, and out of nowhere she says, “You ever notice that all the people who park in handicapped spaces drive Cadillacs?” I mean, who thinks of that kind of shit? Not me.

“Yeah,” I said, coming back. “Being handicapped must pay good.”

Then she said something else, added to what we started and we had this whole conversation going—funny-ass shit. Half an hour we go on. Talking with her was like talking to another guy, a brother or something. She never needed any of that bullshit fake-ass crap most girls seem to crave, have to always be telling them their eyes were like diamonds, shit like that. We lay there, rapping like a couple of buds and it was even better because you sure can’t roll your buddy over and take one. Not me, anyway. It was like having a pard only ten times better because you had the sex too and the sex was only the best I ever had. But that was Donna. She had this other side too, not so good.

“Why’d you break up with her?”

Because of my dad, I thought, but I didn’t tell Bud that. I didn’t want to bring up the funeral, even think about it. I didn’t tell him about her stabbing Patsy either or about the baby she aborted.

“I don’t know. Lots of reasons.”

That was it. We didn’t talk any more about it. I didn’t want to now that it was out and Bud didn’t bring it up again. About an hour later we hooked up with some honeys, couple of dishwater blondes, and walked ‘em back over to the motel along with a bottle and some ice we got from the bartender and had us some fun with the girls, only Bud caught the clap from his as we found out four days later when he took a very loud piss. My equipment worked just fine, thank you, and that made me feel a whole lot better about the future. The whole time we was doing the end-to-end buffet I only thought about Donna once or twice.

Funny. What I did think about was my dad. That was all the time happening—out of nowhere, for no reason, I’d be thinking about my father and wishing he was there, see me in action. See what a cocksman his number-one boy was. That was just nuts, the way that always happened, thinking about my pappy, me a grown man and all. I wonder if other guys think about their fathers when they’re pulling a job, a robbery, or going down on some gal. Right. I’m the idiot has the father ghost always popping up at the dumbest times. I wonder what the shrink back at Pendleton would think of that.

Don’t even say it.