Nebraska: Stories

by Ron Hansen

  Max used a toothpick on all of his teeth. Al put two sticks of chewing gum into his mouth. He crumpled up the wrappers.

  “You know how it works,” Max said. “You get the call and she says do this, do that. What do you say? She got the wrong number? You do what you have to do. Nothing personal about it.” He looked at Al's face in the mirror behind the counter. “What am I telling you this for? You know all the rules.” Max got off his stool. “You said you wanted to visit the men's room.”

  They walked to the back of the place, Max following behind. He stood on a chair to switch on a small radio and turn it up loud. Then he went into the gray lavatory where Al was washing his hands and face. He looked at Max in the spotted mirror. Max was pushing down the fingers of his gloves. He asked, “What'd you do, anyway?”

  Al shrugged. “I started taking it easy.” He dried his hands with his handkerchief. “I burned myself out as a kid. I lost my vitality.”

  Max opened his coat. “Do you want to sit down?”

  The man sat down under the sink.

  Max crouched close, reaching into his shoulder holster. “Waiting's the worst of it. You don't have to do that now.” He felt for the heartbeat under Al's shirt, and Al watched him press the Smith and Wesson's muzzle there. Max fired once and the body jerked dead. The arms and legs started jiggling. They were still doing that when Max walked out and closed the men's room door.

  He's short, for one thing, so the cuffs on his jeans are rolled up big and he folds a manila paper up four times to put in the heels of his boots. He chews gum instead of brushing his teeth like he should, and pulls his belt so tight that there're tucks and pleats everywhere. He washes his hair with hard yellow soap, then it's rose oil or Vitalis, and he combs it sometimes three or four times before he gets it right. He keeps aspirin in his locker. He says he falls asleep each night with a washrag on his forehead. He punched a tattoo in himself with a ballpoint pen, but it's only a blue star on his wrist and mostly his watch covers it. You can go through school and see his name everywhere: Rex on a wall painted over in beige, Rex on the men's room door, Rex on a desk seat bottom when it's up, Rex Adams stomped out in the snow. He eats oranges at lunch—even the peel!—and gets D's in all his subjects, including music and phys ed. If he comes to sock hops, he just stands there like a squirrel, or like he's waiting for lady's choice. He's always giving me the eye. Especially when I wear dresses. He doesn't have a father or listen to records or play sports. He was the first one in school with a motorcycle, which is chrome and black and waxed and which he saved up for with money from the parking lot. His favorite pastime is collecting magazine pictures, but there's only one taped over his bed; it's from the fifties, from Life, about a gangster washed up out of Lake Michigan and swelled up yeasty in his clothes. He says the thing he remembers most is the way the blood seeped into the creases of Art's pants and dripped to the floor like out of a tap when it's not tight. He's got a gun. He's the only Rex in school. He's not cute at all. His shirts all smell like potatoes.

  The Swede? That's an old story.

  Max had dressed at the hotel window. Leaves rattled in the alley. He crossed his neck with a silk muffler and buttoned a black overcoat tightly across his chest and put on gloves and a derby hat. He met the other man on the street. They both held their hats as they walked.

  “I see you got it,” Max said.

  The man, whose name was Al, said nothing but kept one hand in his pocket.

  “Good,” Max said.

  This was many years ago. This was 1926.

  They sat at the counter of Henry's lunchroom facing the mirror. A streetlight came on outside the window. There was a counterman and a black cook and a kid in a cracked leather jacket and cap at the far end of the bar. He had been talking with the counterman when they came in.

  Max read the menu and ordered pork tenderloin, but they weren't serving that until six. They were serving sandwiches. He ordered chicken croquettes but that was dinner too.

  “I'll take ham and eggs,” Al said.

  “Give me bacon and eggs,” said Max.

  They ate with their gloves on, then Al got down from his stool and took the cook and the boy back to the kitchen and tied them up with towels. Max stared in the mirror that ran along the back of the counter. Al used a catsup bottle to prop open the slit that dishes passed through into the kitchen.

  “Listen, bright boy,” Al said to the kid. “Stand a little further along the bar.”

  Then he said, “You move a little to the left, Max.”

  For a while Max talked about the Swede. He said they were killing him for a friend.

  At six-fifteen a streetcar motorman came in, but he went on up the street. Somebody else came in, and the counterman made him a ham and egg sandwich and wrapped it up in oiled paper.

  “He can cook and everything,” Max said. “You'd make some girl a nice wife.”

  Max watched the clock. At seven-ten, when the Swede still hadn't shown, Max got off his stool. Al came out from the kitchen hiding the shotgun under his coat.

  “So long, bright boy,” Al said to the counterman. “You got a lot of luck.”

  “That's the truth,” Max said. “You ought to play the races.”

  They went out the door and crossed the street.

  “That was sloppy,” Al said.

  “What about where he lives?”

  “I don't know this town from apples.”

  They sat down on the stoop of a white frame house. Inside, a man and woman were leaning toward a crystal radio. There were doilies on their chairs, and the man slapped his knee when he laughed. Part of a newspaper blew past Max's shoes. He snatched it and opened it up. Al nudged him when the kid in the leather jacket came out of Henry's. They followed the kid up beside the car tracks, turned at the arc light down a side street, and stood in the yard across from Hirsch's rooming house. The kid pushed the bell and a woman let him in.

  “The Swede'll come out looking for us,” Al said.

  “No he won't,” Max said. “He'll just sit there and stew.”

  Al stared across at the second-story window.

  After a while the downstairs door opened again and the woman said good night. The kid walked up the dark street to the corner under the arc lights, and then along the car tracks to Henry's lunchroom.

  The two men crossed over to the rooming-house yard. Al stepped over a low fence and went around the back. Max walked up the two steps and opened the door. He stood in the hallway and listened and then he climbed a flight of stairs. He softly walked back to the end of a corridor. Al came up the rear stairs from the kitchen. He unbuttoned his coat and cradled the shot-gun.

  Max knocked on the door but there wasn't an answer.

  He turned the handle and pushed the door with his toe. They walked in and closed the door behind them. The Swede was lying on a bed with all his clothes on, just staring at the wall. He used to be a prizefighter and was too long for the bed. He turned to look at them and Al fired.

  Rex got the call on a Thursday. His mom was just home from work at the grocery store and he was in his T-shirt and jeans eating a TV dinner and reading a newspaper spread over the ottoman and not paying me any attention. His mom called him to the phone, said it was some man. Ron, it must've been. He put his finger in his ear and turned with the phone, but he still had to ask the guy to repeat this and that. Rex went ahead and jotted everything down on the calendar from church, then tore off the month and folded it up to fit in his leather-braid wallet. Then he sat down on the couch and belched, he's so uncouth. He looked at his TV dinner with the crumb custard still in the dish. Then he got up to run the sink faucet over it and stuff the tray down in the trash. His mom was cooking at the electric range when he was in there. She moved the teakettle onto another coil and dried her hands on her apron and turned around, kind of smiling. He swung his hand back like he was going to slap her, and she screamed and hid under her arms. When he didn't hit her and just grinned instead, she walked right out of the
kitchen, heavy on her heels. She was careful around him the majority of the time. You couldn't help but notice.

  So Max was an old man now, with a trimmed white beard and brown eyes and size eleven shoes and trouble sleeping nights. He combed his thin hair forward to hide his bald spot. His face was baked red from the sun, his shirts were open at the collar, and he could no longer drink wine. When he last met the man in the black suit, they talked about quail hunting and heavyweight boxing and fishing for marlin off the Keys. Then the man passed a paper to Max, which he signed with a strong cross to the X and a period at the end of his name. They sent a check twice a year. As he stood up he said, “Let me defend the title against all the good young new ones.”

  He woke early to stand at his easel and paint still lifes, like Cezanne's. They gave him a lot of trouble. The colors were never right. He stacked them in a closet when they were dry. At noon he left the room and walked the city streets or shopped for his evening meal. Or he would sit in the park with a stale loaf of bread and tear up pieces for the pigeons. At night he sat in the stuffed purple chair and listened to German music. Or he wore his reading glasses and slowly turned the pages of art books about Degas or Braque or Picasso.

  But windows he'd closed were opened. Books he'd left open were closed. And he sat in the back of a bus and saw a runty kid on a black motorcycle changing lanes, spurting and braking in traffic. He wore goggles and big-cuffed jeans. The kid saw him staring and gave him the finger. Max read his newspaper.

  Then Max saw him again at dinner in the lunchroom downstairs. Max ordered the meat loaf special, and the kid walked his machine to the curb. He sat on it, looking at a map. Every now and then he'd wipe his nose on his sleeve.

  The coffee was cold. Max told the waitress and she filled a new cup.

  “And give me a piece of whatever pie you've got.”

  “We've got apple and banana cream.”

  “Whatever's freshest.”

  She brought him banana cream.

  “That your boyfriend out there?”

  “Where?”

  He pointed.

  “Never seen him before.”

  “He seems to be waiting for somebody.”

  “He's reading a map. Maybe he's lost.”

  “Yeah. And maybe he's waiting for somebody.”

  He wiped his face with a napkin and threw it down. Then he pulled up his pants and went outside.

  “Hey!”

  The kid was looking at the letters along the right, then the numbers across the top. He tried to put the two lines together.

  “Hey, bright boy. You looking for me?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want me?”

  He squirmed in his seat. “No.”

  Max slapped the map from his hands. It fluttered, then folded in the wind and was blown against a tire.

  Max grinned and took a step forward, making fists. The kid hopped off the cycle and into the street. Max put his shoe on the gas tank and pushed. The cycle crashed to the pavement. The back wheel spun free.

  The old man was about to tear some wires loose when the kid spit at him. Max straightened slowly and the kid spit again. Max took a few steps back, frowning at the spot on his pant leg, stumbling off-balance, and the kid climbed over the cycle, hacking and working his cheeks. Then he spit again, and it struck Max on the cheek.

  The old man backed against the building and took out his handkerchief. “Get outa here, huh? Just leave.” He slowly sank to the sidewalk and mopped his face. The kid picked up his cycle.

  “That's a dirty, filthy thing to do to anybody,” Max said.

  The kid started his cycle, then smiled and said, “Oh, you're gonna be easy.”

  Rex poked a jar of turpentine and it smashed to smithereens on the floor. Then he went and ran his arm recklessly along the top of a chest of drawers and everything—hairbrush, scissors, aerosol cans—spilled to the floor in a racket. There was also a mug of pencils and brushes on a drawing table and he shook them out like pickup sticks. He ripped the sheets off the bed and wadded them up. And he dumped out all the drawers.

  We came back at dark and saw the roomer in just his undershirt and slacks, wiping the turpentine up with a paper towel. He was big and had a white beard and he used to be good-looking, you could tell. He looked like he might've been a prizefighter or something.

  “There was a guy looking for you,” Rex says.

  Max was gathering the pencils and brushes and tapping them together. He didn't even notice me there.

  “He looked pretty dangerous,” Rex says.

  Max just dropped pieces of glass in a trash can. They clanged on the tin. He struggled to his feet like a workingman with a chunk of pavement in his hands. He looked for just a second at Rex, then he went to the chest of drawers and began picking up clothes.

  The kid sat down at the lunchroom counter and unzipped his cracked leather coat. From the other end of the counter Max watched him. He had been talking to the waitress when the door opened. The waitress gave the kid water and a menu. The kid rubbed his knees with his hands as he read. He said, “I'll have a roast pork tenderloin with applesauce and mashed potatoes.”

  “Is that on the menu?”

  “I've changed my mind,” the kid said. “Give me chicken croquettes with green peas and cream sauce and mashed potatoes.”

  The waitress didn't know what to say.

  The kid smiled, and then he stopped smiling. He flicked the menu away. “Just give me ham and eggs.”

  She wrote on her order pad. “How do you want your eggs?”

  “Scrambled.”

  The waitress spoke through the wicket to the cook. The kid put his chin in his hand. He turned his water glass.

  Max stared as he drank from his coffee cup and set the cup down in the saucer. The kid jerked his head.

  “What are you looking at?”

  Max put a quarter next to his cup. “Nothing.”

  Max went to the coat tree. He pulled off a mackinaw jacket and buttoned it on. The kid was swiveled around on his stool. “The hell. You were looking at me.”

  The waitress had gone through the swinging door in the kitchen. Max blew his nose in a handkerchief. He smiled at the kid. “You're not half of what I was.”

  The kid smiled and leaned back on the counter. “But I'm what's around these days.”

  It will happen this way:

  He'll kick at the door and it will fly open, banging against the wall. Max will be at his easel. He'll try to stand. The kid will hold his gun out and fire. Max will slump off his stool. He'll spill his paints. He'll slam to the floor.

  Or Max will open the door and the kid will be to his left. He'll ram the pistol in Max's ear. He'll hold his arm out straight and fire twice.

  Or he'll rap three times on the door. When it opens, he'll push his shotgun under Max's nose. Max will stumble back, then sit slowly on the bed where he'll hold his head in his hands. The kid will close the door softly behind him. Max will say, “What are you waiting for?” and the kid will ask, “Where do you want it?” Max will look up, and the kid's gun will buck and the old man will grab his eyes.

  Or the kid will let the pistol hang down by his thigh. He'll knock on the door. Max will answer. The kid will step inside, shoving the old man. The pistol will grate against Max's belt buckle until he's backed to the striped bedroom wall. The kid will fire three times, burning the brown flannel shirt. Smoke will crawl up over the collar. The old man will slide to the floor, smearing red on the wall behind him.

  Or the door will open a crack. Max will peer out. The kid will shoot, throwing him to the floor. The kid will walk into the room. Max will crawl to a chair, holding his side. He'll sit there in khakis and a blue shirt going black with the blood. He'll say, “I think I'm gonna puke.” The kid will say, “Go ahead.” He'll say, “I gotta go to the bathroom.” He'll pull himself there with the bedposts. Water will run in the sink. He'll come out with a gun. But the kid will fire, and Max's arm will jerk back, his
pistol flying. He'll spin and smack his face against a table in his fall.

  Or Max will jiggle his keys in one hand while the other clamps groceries tight to his buttoned gray sweater. He'll open the door. The kid will be sitting there in the purple chair by the brushes with a shotgun laid over his legs. The old man will lean against the doorjamb. The groceries will fall. The kid will fire both barrels at the old man's face, hurling him back across the hall. Apples will roll off the rug.

  Rex took a wad of rags from a barrel in the garage while I sat against his mom's car brushing my hair. He unwrapped a gun and wiped it off with his shirttail. He sat against his motorcycle seat and turned the chamber round and round, hearing every click. Then he got cold without a coat and covered the gun again and crammed it down his pants. He gave me a weird look. He said, “Ready?”

  Max tried to sleep but couldn't. He got up and put on a robe, then took a double-barrel shotgun from the closet, and two shells from a box in one of the drawers. He sat in a stuffed chair by his brushes, lowered the gun butt to the floor, and leaned forward until his eyebrows touched metal. Then he tripped both triggers.

  Rex was just about to climb the stairs when he heard the shotgun noise. He just stood there sort of blue and disappointed until I took his hand and pulled him away and we walked over to the lunchroom. Ron was there in a booth in the back. He'd had the pork tenderloin. We sat in the booth with him and as usual he told me how pretty I looked. Rex just sulked, he was so disappointed.

  “You should be happy,” Ron said.

  “Do I still get the money?”

  Ron nodded. He was grinning around a cigar. He pushed an envelope across the table.

  Rex just looked at it. “Then I guess I am happy.”

  “You should be.”

  Rex stuffed the envelope inside his coat pocket. Everybody was quiet until I spoke up and said, “I just can't stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he's going to get it. It's too damned awful.”

  Rex looked at me strangely. Ron knocked the ash off his cigar. “Well,” he said, “you better not think about it.”