Just Like That Read online

“I got a bunch of clothes, two nice leather jackets, both full-length, and other stuff, records. There’s about an eighth in a bag in one of the pockets of the brown one.”

  “And I can have it all?” he said, waiting for the catch. “You owe rent or something, dontcha? Will the landlord let me in? You still in that place in Ft. Wayne off Lake?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, and I’m paid up for two more weeks, Ray. I’ll call him, tell him to let you in. I’ll even see if he’ll give you the two weeks I already paid. I doubt it though. There’s some deposit money too, but I think he’s gonna want that to fix the door.”

  “Well, say, it’s worth a try,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just use it for two weeks. Have some poker parties.” I could see his mind working, figuring out how to capitalize on his sudden good fortune only I figured it wasn’t poker he had in mind. I wondered if Ruthy Ann was standing there listening and did he think she was that dumb. He was going to drive all the way down from South Bend to Fort Wayne for poker parties? Sure. “Where you going, Jake? You told Mom? What’d she say?”

  “No,” I said to the second question, and “I don’t know, Ray. I can’t say for sure,” to the first.

  “Hey, Jake.”

  “What?”

  “How come you weren’t at Dad’s funeral?”

  “I was.”

  “Fuck you were. I didn’t see you. You wearing your Captain Midnight invisible shield?”

  “Maybe. Fuck you, Ray. I was there. Don’t worry about it. I just didn’t go in the church is all. I paid my respects in private.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  When I hung up, the kid’s mother had gone to the front by the cigarettes and Slim Jims and the kid was opening and slamming shut the cooler door. I guess she’d given up on him. Me, I’da left him. Climbed in my car when he wasn’t looking and went out and took in a movie.

  “Kid,” I said, crooking my finger at him and bending over. “Kid, you get the cranberry juice like your mama told you. I got a gun in here and if you don’t I’m going to shoot you in the leg.” He stood there a minute and I was half out the door when he came screaming up to his mom. I looked back in the car and seen her and she had the little shit up in her arms glaring at me. So were some other people. Fuck’m, is what I thought. I was in a mood.

  I started to pull out then changed my mind. One of those things that were always happening, don’t ask me why. I went back in.

  “Line up by the coolers,” I said, waving my hog. “Fill it,” I said to the clerk, this kid who was a poster for the pimple cure industry, shoving one of the plastic bags on the counter at him.

  While the clerk was putting the money in the bag, I told the little kid’s mother, “Honey, you go back and get you a can of that cranberry juice.” The smart thing would have been to get the hell out of there, but I wasn’t done.

  “Drink it,” I told the kid. He only started bawling. “Drink it or I’m gonna blow out your kneecap, you little shithead.” His mama seen I was serious, slapped the living shit out of her kid, held the can for him while he tried to choke some down, both of them boohooing. It mostly got all over the front of his shirt way he was moving around, looked like blood.

  “You mind your mama, son,” I said, going out the door. “‘Less you want to end up like me.”

  I headed over to Bud’s place. On the way I dumped out the bag on the seat and tried to count it. No more than fifty-sixty bucks it looked like, mostly ones and a few fives. One lousy ten.

  ***

  Me and Bud go back a long way. Back to my first day in the joint. Even farther back than that. On the street when I was robbing and pillaging the straights I’d run into him sometimes. Once, about three in the morning, at the Kozy Korner Koffee Shop, the outlaw hangout in South Bend, a couple of my rap partners and me were hanging out in a back booth cracking on a couple of prosties in the booth next to us, and I saw Bud talking to some babe at the counter, only I didn’t know who he was then. I’d seen him around but didn’t know who he was.

  All of a sudden she cracks him with a closed fist, a big ol’ strawberry popping up where she hit him on the cheek. Well, Bud doesn’t say a word, only grabs her arm and hauls her out the back door, her cussing and trying to kick him. Naturally, we all pile out of the joint to see what he’d do. All he did was smack her once, open hand, and then she goes into her purse, quick, like these greasers will do, and comes out with this little pocket knife which she sticks into his neck clear down to the handle. It’s stuck there like some dart lost its way during a bar game and he reaches up and plucks it out like it’s a mosquito just stung him. And laughs. Blood’s running down his neck tie-dying his white t-shirt and he just laughs.

  The way he laughs freeze-dries her—you could just see that—just nails her to the spot, her face turned as white as first-date panties—even in the dark we could all see that—and she just turns and runs while he stands there grinning. Chilly.

  Tough mother.

  After that I made his acquaintance, talked to him once in a while. We got to be friends.

  He had this old Studebaker Lark he fixed up so he could remove the steering wheel and steer with a control stick between his knees. His brothers helped him engineer the car in the body shop they were partners with their dad in.

  We’d get some unsuspecting dude in the car on the pretext of cruising and slamming down some cans of Drewrys, and after we’d killed a six-pack or two, head out west on Lincolnway out toward the airport where the houses thin out and the cornfields start. When we reached the country, right before the airport, Bud would get the Lark up to about eighty-five which was top end. They shoulda named that car the Cocker Spaniel it was such a pooch. Hell, the real lark, the bird, could outfly it with one wing broke. We always let the new guy sit in the front with Bud and I’d sit in the back. We’d roll down all the windows for effect, have the wind screaming in and Bud would start weaving back and forth crisscrossing the center line. He’d say he was dizzy, felt like passing out. All of a sudden, he’d pluck the wheel loose and hand it to the guy saying, “Oh, man, I’m going out. It’s all black. Here—you drive.” He’d punch the gas pedal down all the way as he slumped forward.

  ***

  I parked the car about a block from Bud’s apartment and smoked four or five cigarettes. Different people strolled by giving me the once-over so I decided to go ahead and pick him up, ready or not. Turns out he’d been waiting for me.

  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 w
ay 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.