Chump Change

by G. M. Ford

  “Where to?”

  “All roads seem to lead to Clarkston, Washington.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “God’s country,” I said.

  Took me the better part of the afternoon to put things together. By the time I’d packed a few clothes, a couple of sleeping bags and stashed some serious weaponry back where the spare tire used to be, daylight had packed his lunchbox and was heading for home. Rachel had gotten the message I’d left on her answering machine and called me back.

  “Any idea how long you’ll be gone?” she asked.

  “Not long,” I hedged.

  “You be careful.”

  “Always.”

  “Did Keith get off okay?”

  “I’m taking him with me.”

  “Why?” she asked. “You hate working with other people.”

  “Just seemed like the right thing to do.”

  She thought it over. “Maybe if you guys get some answers, he’ll feel like he’s back in control of his life.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “Even if it is an illusion.”

  “It’s a good illusion,” she said.

  The rest of it was just bye-bye, miss you too, kissy-face kind of stuff.

  He was already in my car, waiting, when I turned on the house security system and locked the front door.

  After years of squeezing myself into cars that were never intended for a guy my size, I’d moved up to a full-sized Chevy Blazer with all the bells and whistles. First one I bought got shot to pieces down in Tacoma.

  Although my insurance company had been less than amused by the sixty-eight bullet holes, they’d been considerably more chagrined about the two direct hits it took from a rocket launcher. They’d ponied up for the price of a replacement, and dropped me like a bad habit. These days, I’m in the Preferred Risk Pool.

  I buckled up and started the car. I asked the GPS how far it was from here to Clarkston. The cheerful female voice said: “Three hundred and eighteen miles.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I mumbled.

  I watched the sun crack an eyelid over Clarkston, Washington. The digital thermometer in the Blazer’s dash read forty-one degrees Fahrenheit. We’d rolled into town just after two A.M. and followed the GPS up into the hills overlooking town. I found an empty cul-de-sac awaiting tract homes and shut the car down for the night.

  Over in the passenger seat, the kid was beginning to stir. The heater was blowing cold air, so I turned it off and started the engine. Took a full five minutes on high for the fan to chase the frost from the windshield.

  The Lewiston Valley rolled out before us like a frozen quilt. I’d looked up Clarkston on the Internet, before we left Seattle last night. Strange kinda place. Sits in one state, but really belongs to another. Clarkston was really just a suburb of Lewiston, Idaho. Lewiston, which bills itself as Idaho’s Only Port, provided all of what would generally be considered Clarkston’s “city services.” Clarkston, however, maintained both a vestige of independence and a slice of Washington state’s considerably more lucrative tax pie, by maintaining its own independent school district and a substation of the Asotin County Sheriff’s Department.

  The kid buzzed the power seat up into the sitting position and stared out through the windshield. He ran a hand over his face and said, “At least you can see why people stopped here.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “What rivers are those?” he asked.

  “The Snake and the Clearwater,” I told him.

  “That’s why there’s people living here,” he announced.

  “I suspect that’s true,” I said.

  “That’s what always bothered me about Harriman.”

  “What’s Harriman?”

  “The town I come from in Nebraska.” He yawned and then gestured over the wide valley with his hand. “Here . . . you can see what the attraction was, but Harriman . . . you know, I could never figure out why anybody stopped there in the first place. It’s nothing but a big, wide-open space. The North Platte’s forty miles off. I mean . . . why there? . . . why not ten miles up the road? Or twenty.” He shook his head. “All I could ever think of was that somebody must have busted an axle, or needed to give birth, or just run out of the gumption they needed to keep pushing west, cause other than that, there’s no good reason to stop in Harriman at all.”

  “Let’s go find some breakfast,” I said. “I’m starving.”

  Grabbing the shift lever was as far as we got.

  I heard the whoop-whoop of the siren in the second before I caught sight of the police cruiser sliding to a stop about three inches from our back bumper. I turned to the kid. “Put your hands on the dash and leave them there,” I said.

  I watched as a truck-sized county mountie took his good ol boy time getting out of the patrol car. He had that general unhurried indolence that cops seem to get after a while on the job. If money changes everything, so does carrying a gun on your hip every day. Kinda skews your view of the world.

  I took my own advice and kept both hands on the wheel as he hitched up his belt and sauntered up to the side window. The blue light coming through his windshield told me he had the dash cam running. I buzzed the window down.

  “Morning, officer,” I said.

  He had a wide, pockmarked face covered with the sort of oily skin that never really clears up after adolescence. His gold American flag nameplate said he was Asotin County Sheriff’s Deputy Rockland Moon. The deputy was chewing gum. His right hand rested casually on the butt of a holstered automatic.

  “What you fellas doing up here?” he asked.

  “Waiting for morning,” I said.

  “Comes in regular,” he commented.

  Before I could come up with a snappy rejoinder, he said, “License, registration, and proof of insurance, please.”

  I opened the little pocket in my sun visor and found my registration and proof of insurance. I made it a point to move slowly as I twisted myself up onto my side and pulled out my wallet. Sliding my Washington driver’s license out from under my Costco card, I handed the paperwork out the window to the cop. He gave me five full seconds of his most baleful stare.

  “Be right back,” he said, finally.

  I watched in the mirror as he got back into his patrol car and began to run my paperwork through the system. These days it takes about two minutes. He let us sit there for ten, then lumbered up to the window again. “Car belongs to you,” he announced.

  “You don’t say?”

  At which point, the deputy joined the legion of misguided souls who don’t find me funny. Humor’s relative, I guess.

  He bent at the waist and poked his big head in the window.

  “You boys mind if I have a look through the car?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I mind.”

  I could hear the kid squirm in the seat.

  Deputy Sheriff Moon nodded like that was what he’d figured.

  “Got something to hide?”

  “Just exercising my constitutional rights,” I said.

  Now he was amused. “Your constitutional rights, huh?”

  “You know . . . things like probable cause. Those sorts of silly things. Kind of things keep the ACLU so busy.”

  I was betting the farm that a couple of ACLU lawyers showing up on his doorstep was somewhere in the vicinity of this guy’s worst nightmare. He confirmed my assumption by going all smarmy on me.

  “Well . . . I don’t know, Mr.”—he looked down into his hand and grinned—“Waterman . . . you know, you find a couple of guys sitting in a car way the hell out here . . . middle of the night . . . you gotta wonder. You know what I mean?” He stopped just short of winking at me.

  “Oh . . . you mean the blow jobs,” I said cheerfully and waving a diffident hand. “We finished those hours ago.”

  First thing he did was pull his big head back out of the window. Took him five full seconds to decide I’d been kidding.

  “You think that’s funny, do you?” he
demanded.

  “Not when done properly,” I assured him.

  Now he was certain . . . he didn’t like me at all.

  “Lemme see your ID,” he rumbled at Keith.

  The kid started to reach. I put a restraining hand on his arm.

  “He’s not driving,” I said quickly. “He doesn’t have to show you anything.”

  Keith cleared his throat and began a serious investigation of the headliner.

  The result was predictable. Deputy Dog here desperately wanted to go all Mississippi 1963 on me. The old splay me out over the hood of the Blazer and call me “boy” kind of thing. I was betting there was a bullwhip somewhere in this moron’s morbid little power fantasy.

  Fortunately for both of us, he was smarter than he looked. The world wasn’t like that anymore, and Deputy Rockland Moon was smart enough to know it. He was probably just tech-savvy enough to know that gaps in the dash cam footage were damned hard to explain, no matter how far out in the friggin woods you lived. Besides, for all he knew, those damn Asotin County techies were saving it all up there in The Cloud someplace. Whatever the hell that was.

  Having failed to intimidate me, he immediately abandoned Mr. Smarmy in favor of Sergeant Sullen. He unceremoniously flipped my paperwork into my lap, and stood by the car window, with his feet spread wide and his fingers laced together in front of his fly, as if he was holding himself up by the balls.

  I ignored the looming presence of his crotch, and took my sweet-ass time putting everything back where it came from, folding the paperwork perfectly and patting it back into place with great care. When I finally looked his way again, he was giving me the hayseed, Grant Wood version of the evil eye.

  “I’ll remember you,” he said, and then stalked off in slow motion.

  He punished us by futzing with his radio knobs and seat belt for a full minute and a half before finally backing his car out of the way at something akin to the speed of lava. He followed us, half a block behind, all the way down the mountain, through the center of Clarkston, and across the Main Street Bridge into Lewiston, Idaho.

  I checked the mirror at the second Idaho traffic light, and he was gone.

  Ranching and pulp mill work started early. Not that I had any personal experience with such earthy pursuits, but it was six-fifteen in the morning and the Chat ’n’ Chew Cafe was packed to the rafters. Keith and I had to wait ten minutes before a table opened up and another five or so before the waitress showed up with the menus and ice water.

  She was about my age. Good-looking. Sturdy and freckled. One of those country women who looked like she could haul your ashes in the morning and then plow the back forty that same afternoon. She had a thick head of wavy hair that looked like it had once been ginger-colored, which I thought seemed just about right for her freckles and fair complexion. Looked good on her, anyway.

  “You boys know what you want?” she asked.

  “Something big,” I said with a smile.

  “The Big Valley Breakfast,” she said. “Three eggs any way you want em, home fries, three strips of bacon, three sausage links, biscuits and gravy.” She waved her pencil. “Guaranteed to get you through the morning.” She grinned.

  “Sounds great.”

  “Coffee?”

  “A gallon or so of the leaded.”

  She laughed and turned to Keith.

  Keith . . . well, the kid spent the next five minutes wanting to know what was in everything on the menu. How many calories was it? How many grams of fat? Was it gluten free? Locally sourced? If it involved chickens, had they been well treated as pullets? It went on and on. She was remarkably patient with him, considering how busy the joint was. Eventually he settled on three of those little restaurant boxes of Kellogg’s shredded wheat and some no-fat milk. Yeah . . . and of course, hot chocolate.

  I watched as she stuck our order up in the window with about a hundred others and then hurried toward the back of the house.

  “What’s with you and that cop?” Keith asked.

  “He rubbed me the wrong way.”

  “Man . . . I thought we were going to get arrested.”

  “If I’d let him go through the car, he’d have found the firearms I’ve got stashed in the back,” I said. The kid looked so horrified, I headed him off at the pass. “They’re all legal, man. I’ve got permits for every one of them, but that old boy would have kept us down at the cop shop until he checked and double-checked on every one of them, and sitting around some hick police station is definitely not how I plan on spending my day.”

  He seemed surprised. “You think we’re going to need weapons?”

  “I think it’s better to have them and not use them than it is to need them and not have them, if that makes any sense to you.”

  He said it did.

  By the time I’d shoveled the last of the fried potatoes into my overstuffed face, the place had cleared out. Far as I could tell, in this town, if you were still eating breakfast at seven, you automatically qualified for full malingerer status.

  Across the room, the younger waitress removed whatever elastic contrivance was holding her hair back and shook her auburn tresses out. Our waitress had her head in the kitchen door, giving orders in Spanish.

  Wasn’t till we had the place to ourselves that I’d noticed that the whole Chat ’n’ Chew Cafe operation, maybe sixty seats or so, was staffed by only four people. Our waitress and the younger girl, who, now that I looked at her, looked a whole lot like the older woman, and two Mexican guys manning the kitchen.

  The younger woman had corralled her locks again and was doing that ponytail thing they do with a rubber band, when suddenly the front door burst open and banged back against the wall. Nobody came in.

  “Ginny,” a voice called from outside.

  Took the older woman about a second and a half to get over to the open door.

  “Get outta here, Boyd,” she said to somebody standing outside. “Swear to God. You violate that restraining order, I’ll call the cops on you. I’ve done it before; I’ll do it again.” She kicked the wall in frustration.

  “Ginny,” the voice called again.

  The younger woman finished putting her hair up and leaned back against the counter. “Go away, Boyd,” she yelled toward the open door. “You ain’t allowed to be here. You know that.”

  “Ain’t allowed to come inside is what it says,” the voice from outside said.

  The older woman closed and locked the door. Turned out the CLOSED sign.

  She looked over at Keith and me. “My daughter’s ex,” she said apologetically. “We got a restraining order out against him, but every time he gets oiled up, he comes round and starts bothering her again.”

  An uncomfortable minute passed. No more yelling from the street. I figured things had settled down, so I forked the last of my scrambled eggs into my mouth. I had em about half-chewed when a commotion broke out back in the kitchen. The bang of a door, raised voices, shouts in Spanish, rising above the clatter of pots and pans, in the second before the kitchen door swung open and what hadda be Boyd stumbled into the dining room.

  He was skinny as a rail and about as attractive. Twenty-five or so, maybe six-two, wearing the uniform of the day: plaid flannel shirt over a T-shirt, jeans, and dirty green John Deere hat sitting crooked on his head. Looked like he’d first needed a haircut about a month ago.

  “You get the hell outta here, Boyd,” the younger woman said.

  The older woman tried to step into his path, but he swept her aside and started across the room toward his ex. “Goddammit, Boyd . . . you . . .” she shouted at his back.

  I’d already dropped my fork and was levering myself out of the seat when Boyd grabbed the young woman by the arm. She grimaced in pain.

  “Oooooow . . . you’re hurting me, Boyd,” she said.

  Wasn’t rocket science. This was one of those situations where you couldn’t just sit there and wait for this little soap opera to play out. Lord knew, after that Clarkston cop this mo
rning, I wasn’t looking for any more drama, but there was no way I could let this continue. I started to move.

  Turned out my help wasn’t needed, though. By the time I slid my big ass out of the booth, Keith was already over there. “Let her go,” he said to the guy. Without waiting for Boyd to comply, Keith judo-chopped the hand from her arm.

  Boyd’s face contorted; he took a step back, massaging his wrist. He looked over at the girl, his face fierce and furrowed. “This your new man? This him?”

  “Get out,” Keith said.

  “Grow up, Boyd,” the girl added, as she rubbed the place on her arm where he’d grabbed her.

  Apparently Boyd was a bit sensitive regarding his level of maturity. Without further ado, he reared back and aimed an ill-intentioned right cross at Keith’s face, a move that was, as it turned out, a remarkably stupid idea. To my complete surprise, Keith slipped the punch, grabbed the arm as it flew by, and jujutsued our boy Boyd facedown on the floor in about a second and a half.

  He had Boyd’s right arm pushed further up between his shoulder blades than it was ever intended to go. Boyd was paralyzed. “Oh . . . oh,” he groaned. “You’re breaking my arm, man.” Every time he squirmed, Keith pushed the arm up another notch. Boyd, dumb as he was, got the message and stayed still.

  Keith kept him that way until the cops arrived about four minutes later and hauled Boyd out the door in handcuffs. You could tell from the cops’ bemused demeanor that arresting Boyd was a regular occurrence.

  Keith dusted off his hands and sat down across from me.

  “Where’d you learn that?” I asked.

  “Air Force MPs,” he said. “They sent us through a self-defense course at the Shore Patrol Academy.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

  He shrugged. “You get a lot of practice handling drunks,” he explained. “It’s mostly all we did.” He went back to communing with his shredded wheat.

  I pushed my plate away from me and ran both hands over my belly.

  Keith looked up from his cereal and grinned. “If you sit real still,” he said, “you can actually hear your arteries closing.”