CHAPTER 10

 

I got rid of Spot the next night.

How? Simple. I pulled a burglary, took him with me. Left him there.

I was tired of being broke.

It was just some gin joint I’d seen, the other side of town. Piece of cake getting in. Taped this little window on the back door, smashed it with a brick, reached in and unlocked the door. Found the money in about twenty seconds in the dirty towel hamper. I took the money, exactly two hundred bucks, must have been the change money for the next day. Bartenders all over the country hide their money in the same places. If it ain’t in the dirty laundry look in the trash can. There was a case of Jack Daniels in the back room I grabbed and toted out to the car. Spot was in the back seat, whimpering like he thought I’d left him for good again. He came right with me, didn’t even have to whistle or anything. Followed me right back into the bar and once we were inside, I took a dirty bar rag, waved it under his nose and then threw it across the room. “Fetch, numb-nuts,” I said and he went after it. I was still laughing ten minutes later when I unlocked my motel room and went in.

I kept laughing at the thought that he was an accessory and the way cops were they might even send him to trial. I started imagining some wacky scenes.

Spot would stand trial and then they’d send him to some boot camp joint out in the parish where they had Vietnamese prisoners. There was Vietnamese all over Lake Charles. There was a guy taught out at the college, McNeese State, wrote some book about them, won that big writing award, the Pulitzer Prize. He come in the Angus and one of the waitresses pointed him out, told me all about him. Bud’s dog, though, I pictured in my mind, some gook, working in the kitchen, would see this mutt and his eyes would glaze all over and before you knew it Spot would be in the sweet ‘n sour pork.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving mutt, I thought, snickering aloud to myself in the motel room.

The next day I phoned Bud at Kimmie’s. He was there, answered the phone himself.

“Hey,” he said, first thing. “I ran into your parole officer. There’s a guy would like to have your address.”

He hadn’t told him anything, of course.

We talked about nothing for a while and he brought up my parole officer again. Delbert Brooks. He was an okay guy for a P.O., got on your case a lot less than most of the others. There was one, James Finn, who liked to brace his parolees each time they came in, shake them down. Fucking queer, we all decided, just liked to cop a feel off his guys. I was glad I had Brooks and not Finn. I don’t know what I’d do if I had Finn and he shook me down, felt my ass like I’ve seen him doing. Bust him, probably, smack him. Maybe not. It wouldn’t be worth it, have him violate you, send you back. Wait for him in some alley would be better. Stick him when he wasn’t looking.

“Brooks says I see you, let you know if you were to come back in the next week or so he wouldn’t violate you.”

“I’d have to go to a halfway house,” Bud said, but Brooks wouldn’t send me back to Pendleton.

“You believe him?” I asked.

“Yeah. I do, Jake. Brooks is all right. Straight-up guy.”

Bud was right. I’d never heard anything but that Brooks was all right. If he said he wouldn’t violate me he wouldn’t violate me. But did I want to go back to Indiana? Part of me wanted to because of Donna and part of me didn’t want to. Because of Donna.

“I’ll think about it,” is what I told him.

“Should I tell Brooks you said that?”

“I thought you told him you didn’t know where I was,” I said. We talked some more and then he reminded me I had called collect and Kimmie would have a fit when she saw the bill.

“Keep in touch, bro.”

“Sure,” I said. “Don’t tell Brooks you know where I am.”

***

That night after work I asked Sugar if she wanted to come over for a while but she said no, her husband was on one of his righteous kicks where he was laying off the sauce. She said he’d be home watching TV and if she didn’t show up on time he’d come looking for her. You don’t want him to find us, she said. He’s a cop and if he found me with some guy he’d kill us both and it’d be legal. This was the first I knew her husband was a cop and I wasn’t crazy about hearing that. He’ll kill you for sure, she said, going on and you could tell she enjoyed saying this kind of stuff, liked to watch my reaction...and he’ll come up with a story that you were trying to rape me. I guess you’d go along with the story, I said. I guess, she said, smiling this smile you could tell was patronizing, like I was too dumb to believe. Your sidewalk don’t go all the way to the curb, does it? she said. That a Yankee thing? and somebody, another waitress walking by heard her and laughed. Suzie was the other waitress. Everybody called her Susie Q but that wasn’t her middle initial or the first letter of her last name. I seen her time card and it said Susan P. Brovard. Susie Q was just her nickname.

She came back out of the dining room and into the kitchen where Sugar and I were still standing there talking.

“Hey, Jake, y’all got nothing else to do you can come with me,” she said. I was surprised. Susie Q had hardly looked at me, all the days I’d been working there. I knew she was friendly with a guy I think was named Bruce something, came in every night and sat at the bar and just stared at her. Every once in a while during her rounds to tables, she’d pass by and they’d talk for a minute, give each other the tongue when the boss wasn’t around. He always waited until she was done and then she left with him t’suck the corn off his cob, I figured.

“What about Bruce?” I asked.

“History,” she said. “Ancient history. Besides, I just asked you to come along. I didn’t say I was gonna fuck you, did I?”

Not in so many words I almost started to say but held my tongue. Where we went after cleanup was done was this black after-hours place called the Green Onion. She had to wait for me while I prepped the bar for the next day but she didn’t seem to mind. Sat at the bar eating cherries as fast as I could replace them.

We went in her car, one of those death-trap Pintos, down to the south end of town.

“This used to be called Niggertown,” she said. “Before integration.”

“What do they call it now?” I asked.

“Niggertown.”

We were the only white people there when we walked in but she said I’d be all right since I was with her. Some guy, about the blackest dude I ever saw and he was dressed all in black too, even down to the Big Apple hat he was wearing over his fro, made him look like a Gumby licorice stick, came over to where we were at the bar and she introduced him as Slick. Slick wasn’t too crazy about white guys, you could tell but he stuck out his hand and I shook it. Then he promptly ignored me, didn’t say another word to me the whole time until him and Susie walked out to the dance floor. That was fine with me. As soon as he and Susie got up to dance, doing some kind of slow strip tease on the dance floor together this girl came up and sat on Susie’s stool.

“I’ll take a gin,” she said to me. “My name’s Saundra.”

She was cute, looked like a young Dionne Warwick with less of a Dick Tracy chin.

“Gin and what?” I said, motioning for the bartender.

“Gin and gin,” she laughed and flipped around on the stool back and forth, her short skirt flaring up so I could see her legs. They were fine, fine legs.

We had a few and talked—flirted, actually—and I was just about comfortable enough to hit on her when someone shoved me in the back, would’ve knocked me off my stool if I hadn’t grabbed the one in front of me, the one Saundra was sitting on.

It wasn’t me this guy was shoving. As quick as I snapped around I saw that. He had been pushed into me by a much bigger guy. All in the space of a second or two, the smaller guy was shoved into me, the noise died down, the big man said something like punk or something to the little guy and the little guy hit him in the chops. Only he didn’t just hit him. None of us, including the guy who’d been hit realized what had happened at first. Not until he put his hand up to his face where he’d been popped and his fingers slid inside his mouth. My eyes went from the fingers disappearing inside his face to the other guy’s hand and as soon as I saw the flash I figured out what had happened. He’d hit him with a straight edge razor.

“Let’s book, white boy. This is not the place for you.”

It was Saundra and she was pulling my sleeve. I just nodded and slipped off the stool only not before I scooped up my change from the bar. We were out in a parking lot before the noise even started up again and shooting down some dirt road before I had time to think.

“Thanks,” I said, soon as my head cleared. “Where we going?”

“Here,” she said and pulled off to the side of the road. We were outside of town somewhere, who knows how the hell far from my motel.

“Bye,” she said.

“Bye?”

“Did I stutter?”

“You kicking me out?”

She grinned.

“No. I’m letting you out.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What—you think I was going to take you home, introduce you to my daddy?”

That wasn’t what I thought she was going to do but this wasn’t either.

She dropped the grin. “I did you a favor. You’da stayed around that bar you’d be dead right about now. I just got you out. That’s it. Period.”

“I thought—”

She gave kind of a snort and looked away, out her window. “You thought I was gonna give you some lovin’. Well, I’m not. I’ve got a boyfriend wouldn’t appreciate that very much. Just get out.”

I opened the door and swung my legs out. “You could at least take me home, couldn’t you? Where the hell are we anyway?”

The corners of her mouth turned up in a smirk. “No, I couldn’t, Yankee boy. I get seen lettin’ you off and somebody I know sees me I might as well move to New York. We’re about a mile from town. Just follow your nose.”

“Your friends are prejudiced?”

She laughed then and let her foot off the clutch and the car started to move forward slowly. I jumped out, half falling.

“Say ‘thank-you’,” she said, pulling away.

I said something else but I don’t think she heard me.