Can you help me hook these up? he asked, handing her his hearing aids. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back facing her, and she slipped the sound processors behind his ears and connected them to the clear wires, then clipped the coils into his hair. “Thank you,” he said.
“I’m serious,” she told him. “After Chuck Vogel, Robert Earl might be the very worst person I know.”
He kissed her on the forehead, got his keys, wallet, and phone, and left. He drove into town and stopped at McDonald’s for a Number 2 with a Coke. He ate it on the way to Robert Earl’s shed. When he got there, he didn’t see Robert Earl’s truck, which surprised him a little, but that’s probably why he mentioned the key.
He went around back and saw an empty wedge-shaped ham can. There was a key under it, but it didn’t go to the back door, so Eric went back around front and tried it on the padlock. It worked. Inside there were all kinds of pool chemicals on pallets. There was a piece of yellow paper taped to eight or nine big plastic buckets of P2P. It said, #1 MON. Since today was Monday, Eric felt sure that was his load. He sized it up and quickly realized it wasn’t all going to fit in the back of his Civic.
He got out his phone and texted Robert Earl: Didn’t think there’d be this much.
In a few seconds, Robert Earl replied with zipper-mouthed face emoji, immediately followed by: You’ll need a truck. I told you that.
Eric closed the shed and drove home, swearing to himself and drinking his flat Coke. When he got to the trailer, his dad was out front tending to his flowers. The hail had taken most of them out, and he was trying to tie them to thin sticks. Finches flew back and forth past his head. His dad always had a thing for birds, like some cartoon princess. They would land on his fingers and take seeds out of his lips. It was cool and weird, mostly weird. When he got out, his dad turned around immediately, and motioned for him to come over.
“She left.”
“Jaymee?”
“Correct. Is she eighteen?”
“Almost. Don’t matter. Sixteen is the cutoff.”
“You looked into it?”
Eric nodded.
“I’m sorry I got into your notebook yesterday. I washed everything and put your room back together. You probably noticed. Your mother—” Francis stopped himself. “I see that I wasn’t treating you like an adult.”
Eric looked at his father and could see that he was remorseful. His shoulders were soft, and he ducked his eyes. “I appreciate that. Doesn’t look like the hail got your truck,” he said.
“Did in my flowers, though.”
Eric nodded and took a couple of breaths. “I got a favor to ask.”
“Okay.”
“You can say no, but I hope you don’t.”
“Sure.”
“Can I borrow your truck for the day? I’ll bring it back with a full tank.”
Eric could tell his dad wanted to say no. The look moved across his face fast, like a cloud across the sun.
“It’s for work,” Eric said. “I swear. It’s a real job. The one I told you about for Robert Earl’s business.”
Francis looked past Eric and saw his wife standing at the top of the stairs. Her arms were folded. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, so he wouldn’t appear to be looking at her.
“You know I just paid it off,” Francis said.
“Francis Leslie Bugg,” she warned.
“The keys are on my dresser,” he said.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Eric said as he ran up the steps and through the front door.
While Eric was driving back to the shed, Robert Earl texted him:
Meet me at the 66. We’ll go over your instructions.
Eric loaded the buckets of P2P in the back of his dad’s truck and put a strap around them so they wouldn’t tip over and spill. He noticed other pallets with more P2P with other numbers and dates written on them. There were a couple of cases of Dr Pepper and a big tub of Red Vines next to an office door in back. Everything in the shed was organized, which blew Eric’s mind a little. It gave him a bit of confidence that maybe Robert Earl wasn’t going to screw any of this up.
He locked up and put the key back under the can and drove to the 66. Robert Earl’s truck was parked along the south side of the building. Robert Earl was inside, sitting at a table by the window wearing those stupid women’s sunglasses.
“Locked and loaded,” Eric said as he slipped into the booth.
“This 66 is good because it has a place to sit,” Robert Earl said.
Eric looked around. “Um. Yeah. Is this some kind of spy code I don’t remember?” he asked.
“It’s not spy code. It’s called small talk, dill weed.” Robert Earl slid an envelope across the table and took a bite of his breakfast burrito. “Don’t open it here.” Robert Earl looked out the window and said, “Just put it in your pocket. There’s a paper inside with three addresses on it. Under each address there are two numbers. One is the number of buckets they get. The other is how much money they owe me. They should give you a plain envelope full of cash.”
“Should I count it while I’m there?” Eric asked.
“This isn’t Kenny Rogers. Yes. Count it,” Robert Earl snapped. “If the money looks good, roll on.”
“What if the money doesn’t look right?” Eric asked.
“Shoot ’em.”
Eric’s eyes got wide.
Robert Earl laughed a little. “I’m kidding. Don’t do anything. They’re tweakers, man. They’re already two seconds away from flipping out anyway. I just want them to know that you know that they shorted me.”
“Whatever, man. I don’t want to get shot.”
“Why would they shoot you? You’re the golden goose, bro. They kill you, they aren’t cooking meth anymore.”
Eric looked around at the other customers in the 66. He crinkled up his face and said, “I don’t want to sound lame, but maybe we could try some spy code. Seems like anyone listening could figure out what we’re up to.”
Robert Earl rolled his eyes. “These addresses are all over the place. It’s going to take you a while to get it done. Text me when you’re finished.”
“What should I say?”
“You mean spy code?” Robert Earl said.
Eric nodded. “Shut up.”
“What’s something you’d never say to me normally?” Robert Earl said, thinking. “How about you say, ‘Go Sooners.’”
“No.”
“You’d never say it.”
“You’re right. I never would.”
“Go Sooners. That’s perfect.” Robert Earl folded the last of his burrito into the foil and put it into his jacket pocket.
“You got that pig with you?” Eric asked.
“Of course I do. He’s in the truck.”
“That pig has you wrapped around its finger.”
Robert Earl slid out of the booth and stood. “You’re just jealous. Go Sooners,” he said, and then he left the building.
Eric put the first address on the list into his phone. It said it was forty-six minutes away. He plugged his phone into the truck’s radio using a port his father didn’t know existed and started his Tool playlist. At regular intervals, the phone told him which way to turn. There was a freedom in these commands. Choosing things was exhausting, and he hated worrying about how a decision would turn out. The playlist picked the next song. The list told him where to deliver the chemicals. The map told him where to turn. He felt like he could just ride above it all like crowd surfing in a concert. It’s all in the moment. You go where you’re going to go. It just happens and you take what comes.
Jaymee was a planner. She liked to have a whole alphabet of plans, with every scenario worked out in advance. These plans were like complicated math problems that took pages and pages to work through.
The two of them together were a cliché of opposites. Eric didn’t think Jaymee was crazy to plan. He understood at some subconscious level that his flow was often underwritten by Jaymee’s designs.
Eric hoped but was never certain if Jaymee reciprocated, knowing in some deep way that their tensions created balance.
What Eric knew for sure was the rightness of being with her. Their connection was deep and immediate. She could sign, and she was smoking hot, but there was always more. Her birth defect seemed like a way of keeping idiots from thinking she was an option. It didn’t keep them away, kids at school were cruel. They called her “Wedge” because of the shape of her face. Once Eric heard a Spanish teacher at the high school call her that. He didn’t hear it exactly, but he could read his lips a little, one of the benefits of having bad ears. Eric saw this and then saw the teacher point to Jaymee. At this point the teacher could have said anything else, but Eric was already halfway across the lunchroom.
The teacher didn’t know what hit him, Eric ducked one shoulder and reached in between the man’s legs. In one move, Eric hauled him onto his shoulders and spun.
“You don’t call her that,” he shouted over and over, then he heaved the teacher onto a lunch table.
Jaymee watched from a table where she ate with a friend. She met Eric’s eyes across the crowded space. She turned her face to the three-quarter photogenic position. That was stupid, she signed, smiling. Then she looked around to see if anyone was watching. Nobody was. My hero, she signed, and blew him a kiss.
Eric was suspended, and they were preparing to expel him from school. The teacher wanted to press charges. Jaymee sent a letter of complaint to the school district saying the teacher in question commonly spoke about her in a derogatory manner, calling her “Wedge” and worse. She sent a yearbook picture, which showed her straight on, and described how she struggled to succeed and felt that with faculty joining in the ridicule she would not have an equal advantage and opportunity to excel. She wrote that the only student, faculty, or staff member of the school who had ever come to her aid was Eric Bugg. Though his approach was unsophisticated, it was much better than the nothing she’d received over the past three and a half years.
Wow, what a girlfriend, Eric thought. When she told him she wanted to leave Anadarko for good, and that she wanted him to come with her, he was all in.
The phone told him to exit and continue right. He drove past a convenience store and a man wearing a black Punisher hoodie and gray plaid shorts, pushing a baby stroller full of empty aluminum cans. He drove a mile or two farther into the country, and the phone said, “The destination is on your right.”
The ramshackle house had a yard full of weeds and uncut grass going to straw. There was a BEWARE OF DOG sign on the chain-link front fence but no dog as far as Eric could tell. He unfolded the paper. This address was getting four buckets of P2P, and he was supposed to collect fifteen-hundred dollars. It seemed like a lot, but Eric figured not going to jail for buying this stuff directly is probably worth more than he could calculate. Eric folded the paper back up and hauled out the buckets one by one and set them on the curb.
“Hey,” a voice called from a window in the house. “Not right here, dumbass.” He looked at the window and saw the glint of two round lenses pressed up against the screen. “What’s on your head?”
Eric patted the top of his head. “What are you talking about?”
“On your ears,” the voice said. “You a cop?”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Then what’s on your head?”
“I’m deaf.”
“If you’re so deaf. How can you hear me?”
“The implants help me hear.”
“Implants, huh? Implanted into what?”
“Um, how ’bout we just do this thing?”
“Implanted into what?” the voice insisted.
“Into my cochleas.”
“Cochleas? Is that your brain?”
“It’s my ears, man. Look. I’ve got two more deliveries to make today.”
“You’re saying you’ve got wires going into your head?”
“Robert Earl said you’d have an envelope for me.”
“I wouldn’t let nobody put wires in my head. It all goes up into a watch-tower satellite.”
“What does?”
“All your ideas, man. Everything. Cops know what you’re going to do before you do.”
“All right, I’m going to load up this stuff and take off. You can call Robert Earl and work it out.” Eric hoisted one of the buckets back to the side of the truck.
“Hang on, hang on, hang on,” the voice said. “Cash is in the mailbox. Put that back down.”
Eric put the bucket back down on the curb and went to the mailbox.
“Open it,” the voice said.
“How do I know you don’t have a bomb in there?” Eric asked.
“Why would I blow up my own mailbox?”
“Because. I don’t know,” Eric said, then opened the mailbox. There was a white envelope in there and the wrapper from a grape Tootsie Pop. Eric opened the envelope and counted the money.
“It’s all there,” the voice said.
“This ain’t Kenny Rogers,” Eric repeated. It could have been fifteen one-hundred-dollar bills, but of course it wasn’t. It was a few hundreds, mostly twenties, some tens, and the rest ones, minus five bucks. Eric looked at the window, made a face, and put the money back in the envelope.
“This is five bucks short,” Eric said.
“No, it’s not.” The voice said.
“Okay. I’ll tell Robert Earl.”
“Dammit,” he said. “Come here.”
Eric looked around and figured why not. He went to the gate. “What about the dog?”
“Ain’t no dog,” the voice said.
Eric came through and went to the door. Before he could knock, the door opened. He still couldn’t see anyone inside.
“Hold out your hands.” Eric thought he meant so this guy could check them. “No, make a cup. Make a cup.” Eric did, and the guy dumped a bunch of change into his hands. Eric looked through the open door into the dark interior of the house and saw the man. He was probably only in his twenties but he looked twice that. He was gaunt, pale, unshaven, wearing welding goggles up on his forehead. The smell of the place made him wince. “That’s all we’ve got, man. Clear out.”
Eric carried the change back to the truck and counted it in there. He’d given him another three dollars and seventy-seven cents. He wrote that number on the sheet, put the next address into his phone, and pulled out. He turned around at the next street and drove past the house. At the stop, he checked the rearview mirror and saw the guy he was talking to getting into a yellow Ford pickup, and another guy hauling buckets back to the house.
On his way back to the highway, Eric stopped at the convenience store he passed on the way in. While he was pumping gas, the yellow Ford from before barreled into the parking lot and parked in front. The guy got out and went inside. Eric turned slightly so he could watch him getting cigarettes. When he came back out, Eric turned away as the guy lit a smoke, hung his arm out the window, and drove off. He told himself not to be paranoid. It’s not ridiculous for this guy to drive around his own neck of the woods. He shook it off and went inside to take a pee and get a Rockstar.
When he was back on the road, Eric put in the next address and played some Nine Inch Nails. As he got his instructions, he thought about cars and money and how everything in his life would change when he could drive off with cash in his pocket. Problems took a different shape altogether when you could just leave them in the dust. He tried to talk to Jaymee about that feeling. She thought it was leaving a mess behind. She thought it was a sign of weakness. He told her you’ve got to live to fight another day. Retreat can be an offense. Sometimes the world tries to lure you in. If you don’t retreat, it’s just a trap, like that fish guy from Star Wars said.
Jaymee had always wanted to leave Oklahoma, though. Ever since he’d known her. She wasn’t crappy about it, she just wanted to be somewhere else and never thought she could because of the mess it would leave behind. He’d tell her you don’t have to hold something
together if it wants to fly apart. Even when she told him he was right, he could tell she wasn’t convinced enough to leave her family in the lurch. Now there was nothing holding her back.
The phone had him merge onto a bigger road and keep right.
Sometimes his friends would play a game where they would pick teams, sometimes for a heist, or a superhero league, or sometimes they’d pick who’d be the best team of five to be trapped with inside a farmhouse, fighting off zombies. Every single time his first choice was Jaymee, but he’d never say it out loud. He didn’t want to put her in front of those guys. Eric just knew she could turn any group of schmucks into a functioning team. She could smooth out attitudes. If there was something she didn’t know, she could learn it. If you were wrong, she would find out. If you were right, she’d tell everyone why.
He imagined what her relatives would do if she took off. Pretty much just fall apart, he thought. They were already in shambles as far as families go, so maybe with her gone they’d just disintegrate. With her parents gone, it was two less people to go to smithereens. Lexi was the only one left, and she had nine lives. In the end, everything that happened lately was what Jaymee needed so she could walk away guilt-free.
Eric thought about how pieces move into place sometimes, and you should be watching for it because they’ll move back out of place just as quick. It’s like in basketball, when someone is guarding you and a second later they’re not. You must decide to drive sometimes a half second before you actually can. It’s guts and guessing. Always both, never one.
The phone gave him three quick turns and he was there, parked in front of a house that looked the same as every other house in the neighborhood. Same shape, color, windows, roof. He thought all these meth kitchens would be dumps. Who would mess up a place that was worth something? Maybe these McNugget houses were as disposable as they looked.
Robert Earl’s paper said six buckets went here, and they owed two thousand two hundred and fifty bucks. He didn’t know how much the P2P cost Robert Earl per bucket, but any way you shook it out, this seemed like good money.
It Needs to Look Like We Tried Page 20