The Driver

by Hart Hanson

  “Wait. What’s a civet?” Ripple asked.

  Lucky pointed to the cats.

  “Those are cats,” Ripple said. “This is America. We don’t have civets. We have cats.”

  “What makes you So Certain these are not raccoons or rats?”

  “Split lip, bushy tail, whiskers, definitely cats! And this is an X, not a cross.”

  “I hate to pile on, Lucky,” I said, indicating the skateboarder, “but this isn’t a little girl either.”

  “She has pink hair!” Lucky said. “Girls may also ride skateboards, you know. As Ripple said, this is America.”

  I decided we should decamp to one of the vans, out in the yard where we couldn’t be bugged but could still get Wi-Fi.

  “It’s not a little girl because it’s Bismarck Avila,” I said, taking up where we left off.

  I told them about the video footage Avila had shown me of him winning the vertical ramp world championships with a broken back and bright pink hair.

  “Wait. What are we even supposed to do with this drawing?” Ripple asked. “Say it’s original art from Bismarck Avila and sell it on eBay?”

  “It’s a map,” I said.

  “What kind of map?”

  “A treasure map. Avila’s telling us where to find the barrels.”

  “Ah, X marks the spot, yes, of course,” Lucky said.

  The map was mostly drawn in black ink, but there were a few red lines in the schematic.

  The pink hair had been done with a highlighter.

  “Wait. If it’s a map, it doesn’t make any sense,” Ripple said, opening his Jesus fanny pack and popping a candy into his mouth.

  “You eat too many of those marijuana bonbons,” Lucky said. “It’s a miracle anything makes sense to you.”

  “This map is intended to make sense to one person in the world,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  “Does it make sense to you?”

  For a map to be a map, it has to have a context. A landmark, for example, or labels. Like any code, a map requires a key; otherwise, it’s just lines. The doodle was Avila, as a kid, on a skateboard, little squiggly lines putting him in motion.

  I indicated the bottom right corner of the page. The only word written on Avila’s map:

  ROBBED!

  All in caps, red ink, and with Avila’s ubiquitous exclamation mark.

  “There’s the key,” I said.

  “Wait. What’s that supposed to tell us?”

  “Avila’s reminding me that he got robbed when he was a kid by surfers in Lake Elsinore,” I said.

  “There’s no place to surf in Lake Elsinore!”

  A line extended from ROBBED! northward to a carefully drawn circle, obviously traced around a nickel.

  “If that’s Lake Elsinore, then this circle is Grand Boulevard in Corona,” I said. “Which makes this line the 15.”

  “Wait, the lines are streets?”

  Another line clipped the northern edge of the circle and extended almost all the way to the left side of the pages where Avila and the cats lived.

  “The Western Reaches,” Lucky said.

  The main right-to-left line that started in Corona would be the 91. I followed that line westward with my finger: a short line angled up, then a short line angled down, then another short line angled down, and then another short line crossed the east-west line, and then, approximately halfway across the map, a jagged black line extended across the entire piece of paper from the bottom right to the top left.

  Ripple pulled up a map of Corona on his computer. He placed Corona on the right side of his screen and pulled out until the Pacific Ocean was on the left side. We all tried to find roads, streets, or highways that corresponded with the overlay of lines on Avila’s map.

  “Anybody got anything?” I asked. Because to my eye, nothing lined up.

  “Wait!” Ripple said. “Maybe Lucky’s right and this is a civet and we should be looking at a map of Kabul.”

  But Lucky, trained in code breaking, among everything else, had a different take.

  “This map is drawn without Care or Exactitude.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I am saying that it is symbolic in nature, not representational.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Lucky’s saying that Avila’s a civilian. Which is true. He doesn’t measure distances and time the way soldiers do. Avila measures distance by how far it feels to him and time by how bored he is.”

  “That makes for one shitty-ass map,” Ripple said.

  “Hugely Shitty-Ass,” Lucky said. “So let us assume that these lines are major thoroughfares but drawn to a totally subjective scale by a Drunken, Frightened man.”

  Brilliant.

  The lines jutting up and down from the 91 could be labeled 71 and 57 to the north and 241, 55, and 57 to the south.

  “Wait,” Ripple said. “That makes this dark red line going from the bottom right to the top left Interstate 5.”

  The 605 was a short line transecting our main line, as was the 710. Our main line terminated at another inked line, which we decided was the 110 because that was where the 91 terminated. Intersecting the 110 was another line, which extended back to the east but did not reach the dominant red line we’d decided was the 5. Ripple grunted in appreciation when it turned out that the actual, real-life 105, which crossed the 110, did not extend all the way to the 5.

  “I feel confident we have Broken the Code,” Lucky said.

  Lucky indicated another heavily inked red line extending on a slight angle right to left from the bottom of the page to the top.

  “This is the 405.”

  Which meant that the X surrounded by cats was nestled just south of the 105 and just east of the 405.

  “A Literal Crossroads,” Lucky said.

  As life is wont to do, it circles back to the beginning of things; origins and endings happen in the same place, like echoes or jumping. Bismarck Avila had aimed himself like a teenage missile away from where he’d grown up, but if we’d cracked the Avila code, then the barrels were just across the 105 from his old stomping grounds in Lennox.

  “Wait. What do we do now?”

  “Treasure hunt,” I said.

  Lucky and I chose to take the same Transit I’d used to transport Willeniec’s body in case we found the barrels on our first try. Meanwhile, Ripple was complaining because he was not invited.

  “My nuts don’t hurt at all,” Ripple protested.

  I explained that Oasis was still a business, albeit a failing one, and needed someone manning the phone, but still the only thing that kept Ripple from coming along was jamming a broomstick through his wheelchair spokes and making a run for it.

  It turned out that all he missed by staying in the office was traffic and frustration. Lucky and I drove for more than an hour and covered a measly ten miles.

  We drove on the 405.

  We drove on the 105.

  We drove on all the various exit and entrance ramps in the area to and from every direction possible. There weren’t even any of those barrels that Caltrans fills with water and places in various escape lanes and dead ends as a buffer for runaway vehicles.

  We approached on surface streets from Avila’s hometown, Lennox, thinking maybe we’d see something more clearly from his point of view.

  “No cats,” Lucky said. “No barrels.”

  We circled around all the surrounding streets in Hawthorne. We stood on 116th Street and stared up at the 405 above us; then we pretended to have engine trouble on the 405 and stared down at where the X marked the spot. We pulled into the parking lot of the New Life Community Church and stared at the treasure map and Ripple’s printouts, and we stood eating Jack in the Box, watching a bunch of middle-aged Hispanic men play kickball on a vacant
lot just off where the Imperial Highway (note: it is neither imperial nor a highway) intersects with Inglewood Avenue, telling each other that this was the precise location of the X.

  No barrels.

  No cats.

  “I got it wrong,” I said.

  We piled into the Transit to head back to Oasis Limo, where Ripple informed us that our failure was pure karma. If we’d taken him, he’d have spotted the barrels or the cats because he was young and we were not and, by the way, the phone had not rung once.

  I recommended that we grab a late lunch at Callahan’s. But before we could even order, Lucky got a call from Connie (knife in my heart). Lucky nodded, asked a few questions, and then hung up.

  “That was Connie,” Lucky said.

  “We suspected around the time you said, ‘Hello, Connie,’ that it might be Connie,” Ripple said.

  “She has obtained permission for us to visit Tinkertoy,” Lucky said. He went on to say that Tinkertoy was no longer being held at Harbor-UCLA hospital in Torrance because Connie had worked magic to have Tinkertoy transferred to the West LA Veterans Administration hospital.

  Ripple groaned. He’d done time there at Prosthetic Services being fitted and enduring painful rehab.

  The VA encompasses more than 380 acres of prime real estate adjacent to the upscale neighborhood of Brentwood. Aside from the main hospital, the VA was an almighty jumble of old buildings, bungalows, sheds, temporary structures more than fifty years old, and new office buildings—many of which are leased out to hotel laundries, movie studios, a rich private school’s athletic complex, car rental companies, storage for a charter bus company, an oil-drilling company, and other properties that the VA shares with like-minded community organizations.

  I figured we’d be forced to meet with Tinkertoy in a depressing puke-green interview room at the main psych unit, but Lucky said that her doctors were allowing us to meet outside in the fresh air, in a place Tinkertoy had chosen herself: the Parrot Sanctuary.

  The Parrot Sanctuary is adjacent to Jackie Robinson Stadium, the best ballpark in Los Angeles. Old-school. Surrounded by eucalyptus. Free parking.

  I was worried that Ripple might find the dirt track leading from the parking lot to the Parrot Sanctuary hard sledding in his wheelchair, but he said he felt fine and told me to please stop pushing him when I thought he wouldn’t notice.

  We heard the Parrot Sanctuary long before we saw it. By the time we approached the five-foot wrought-iron fence around the sanctuary, we’d given up trying to talk. We stopped at a sign proclaiming SERENITY PARK—VETERANS STILL CARING FOR LIFE in patriotic red, white, and blue lettering, flanked by plywood cutouts of two colorful parrots, and wondered what to do next.

  I peeked through the gate.

  Tinkertoy sat bolt upright near some potted plants at a French café–style table with a faded tile top, the screened-in parrot cages rising behind her. She wore an Army sweat suit with black civilian flip-flops, a huge blue-and-gold bird perched on her forearm, biting her hair, then tucking its head into the hollow of her neck beneath her ear.

  Just like that, all the birds stopped squawking at the same time.

  “Allah be praised,” Lucky said.

  “Tinkertoy,” I called, giving her plenty of warning from thirty feet away.

  Tinkertoy looked up.

  I’d been apprehensive that when we came face-to-face, Tinkertoy might be so heavily drugged and traumatized that I wouldn’t be able to see the spark of herself in her dark eyes. But even though Tinkertoy didn’t smile or wave when she saw us, everything was fine—because there she was.

  I could not have been more surprised when both Lucky and Ripple got wet eyes as they approached and the three of them huddled together, heads bumping, hugging, saying nothing, while the parrot screeched in jealousy, setting off the whole flock again.

  A dozen feet away stood an orderly. Not a big, scary guy, like you might expect to keep Tinkertoy in line if she went berserk; a small Filipino, all in white, with a big smile, who nodded at me, obviously enjoying the reunion.

  The parrot nipped Lucky’s ear and they separated. I walked over to Tinkertoy. She hugged me and whispered in my ear, “I didn’t. Say anything. Nothing.”

  The Filipino orderly, who identified himself as Walter, dug up another two chairs, and the four of us sat together at the wobbly café table like we were waiting to be served coffee and pastries.

  “One of those parrots is missing a wing,” Ripple said, pointing at some birds sitting on what looked to be obstacle-course netting from boot camp, “and that one is missing a foot.”

  Tinkertoy mostly wanted to hear what she’d missed but succumbed to Lucky’s incessant questions. Yes, she’d been sedated, but, thanks to Connie, she hadn’t been pumped full of any of the buffalo-stomping, drool-making psychotropics.

  “Connie. Says. I’ll get out. If. I. Move,” Tinkertoy said.

  “Wait, like, to another city?” Ripple asked.

  “I’m guessing they want you out of your crazy-lady hidey-hole at the back of the garage,” I said.

  Tinkertoy nodded.

  “We’ll find you a better place,” I said.

  Tinkertoy argued that she loved her cubby. That it suited her. That she felt safe back there. Lucky suggested that Tinkertoy take his half of the duplex and he would move in with Ripple. Ripple’s protests and fury and invective were accepted by everyone as de rigueur and nonbinding.

  “That bird sure does love you,” I said.

  “His name. Is. Bacardi,” Tinkertoy said. She pointed to others. Joey. Molly. Dandelion.

  “Wait. Five of these birds got yellow heads,” Ripple said, “but it’s the mangy gray bird who gets named Dandelion?”

  Ripple and Tinkertoy argued about Dandelion for five minutes. It felt wonderful to close my eyes and listen to my people bicker, forget about elusive barrels, murderous cops, broken hearts, betrayed friendships, cop corpses, psycho teens, and broke-back skateboard moguls.

  “When. I get out,” Tinkertoy said. “I want. To come back.”

  “Wait, you mean this parrot place, or your rubber room in the hospital?”

  Walter tutted gently from where he stood, pretending not to listen, twenty feet away.

  “Every single. Day,” Tinkertoy insisted.

  Ripple pointed out that, wait, everyone wanted to go somewhere every single day but they can’t, can they, because they have jobs and who would drive her? Tinkertoy said she used to be in transport. She could drive any vehicle put in front of her.

  “What about an Ohio-class nuclear attack submarine?” Ripple asked. “You pretty confident you could drive that off the lot?”

  Walter caught my eye and tapped his wrist even though he wasn’t wearing a watch. I nodded.

  Trying to delay our departure, Tinkertoy wanted to know what we were going to do next. Lucky told her about the map and she asked to look at it. Ripple and Lucky tag-teamed Tinkertoy with their theories and where we’d gone and how it wasn’t working and how fucked it was that we couldn’t call Avila to tell him his useless map sucked.

  Tinkertoy blinked at the map.

  I said, “Time to go.” Walter nodded his thanks.

  Tinkertoy said, “X isn’t. What. You look for.”

  Ripple started in on how of course X marks the spot—that’s what a treasure map is—all X’s mark the spot.

  “I mean. X isn’t. What you. Look for first.”

  “What do we look for first? Cats?”

  “Skateboarder,” she said. “Who. Takes you to. Cats.”

  Well, that was crazy.

  “I was. In transport,” Tinkertoy reminded us. “I. Know. Bad maps.”

  A breeze blew up through the eucalyptus and I heard Willeniec rasp, She’srightshe’sright.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Sorry. About you. An
d Connie,” Tinkertoy said.

  Jesus, how dire was my romantic situation that Connie and Tinkertoy were discussing it during downtime between psychiatric hearings?

  “If she knew. The truth. She’d forgive. You,” Tinkertoy said.

  “No, Tinkertoy,” I said, lowering my voice in case Walter had bat ears. “There’s only one way we get through this and it doesn’t involve telling an idealistic officer of the court what actually happened.”

  “Tree falls in the forest,” Lucky said.

  “I told Connie. You’re. A good. Man. But she said. I don’t take. Advice. About men. From lesbians. In. The loony bin.”

  I laughed. Tinkertoy patted my arm. I kissed her hand. She (in the nicest possible way) wiped her hand on her shirt.

  There was a honk from outside the gate. It was an unmarked gray van. The backseats were separated from the driver by a heavy mesh screen.

  “Our ride is here, Rose,” Walter said.

  “Leave. All your money. In the donation can,” Tinkertoy ordered as she followed Walter to the van and drove away, Walter waving, Tinkertoy staring ahead through the screen like it wasn’t there, probably wishing she could take the wheel and drive herself, the way she was trained.

  I left what I had in my wallet in the donation can. Fifty bucks toward the welfare of a bunch of squawking birds.

  Lucky put in eight dollars.

  Ripple left thirty-five cents, three stale Twizzlers, and a pot cookie. I snuck the cookie out and tossed it in the garbage, worried somebody would feed it to the caged birds and they’d freak out.

  WE ARE ALL MADE OF DIRT

  Back in the Transit, heading west along Wilshire, leaving the Veterans Administration behind, Lucky and Ripple are doubtful when I tell them that I think Tinkertoy is right.

  “About parrots?”

  “About the map,” I said.

  “Wait, we already checked there,” Ripple said.

  “We already checked there for barrels. Let’s say Tinkertoy is right. Instead of looking for barrels, let’s look for skateboarders.”

  “Skateboarders who will lead us to a place full of civets?” Lucky asked.