by John Prindle
The Caddy slowed down. I stopped running and stared at the windshield. It was still too far away to see a driver or passenger. I ducked a little off of the highway. The Cadillac revved up and charged at me, and I ran into the cornfield, pushing my way through the high stalks, imagining the ringing gun shots that would soon be ripping through the green around me. I zig-zagged, hoping to make myself a hard target. My head pounded with the beats of my frightened heart, and the corn stalks bit and scraped at me, and their rustling sounded like laughter.
“Hey Champ, get back here!” a voice called out.
I turned around. “Eddie?” I yelled, my face in a sea of green stalks and droopy leaves.
“No. It's Mother Teresa!” he said.
I pushed my way back through the corn, giddy, almost tripping over my own feet.
“Sounds like a scarecrow come to life,” I heard Eddie say, like he was talking to someone else.
I had a grin on my face like a kid at an ice cream shop. We laughed and hugged and patted each other on the back; and I told him I thought for sure he was dead, and where had he been for Christ's sake, and why in the hell hadn't he called me?
He pulled out that little scrap of paper I'd given him, with the address to the farmhouse.
“I'm trying to find this dump. Can you give me directions?” He had a thumb under one of his suspenders, and he tugged on it, just like he always did.
“Where the hell have you been?” I said.
“I fell off the wagon.” Eddie scrunched his lips, and lowered his eyes.
I looked past him, at the idling Cadillac. Creeping Jody was in the passenger seat, smoking a cigarette. “Hey Ronnie,” she said, lowering her sunglasses.
I walked over and gave Jody a peck on the cheek.
“She took care of me, you know. After,” Eddie said.
“Sorry about Irene,” I said.
Eddie raised a hand and shut his eyes. “Let's don't go there.”
“You killed Jack Lomand?” I said.
“That creep ain't so tough. Lomand comes out of the kitchen, gun pointed at me. Nothing I can do. I'm tryin' to get over the fact that I just found my wife. Dead. Done and gone. I ask Jack to let me have one drink before he finishes the job. 'Haven't had a drink in years,' I tell him, 'and I don't wanna die without a final taste of the stuff.' Well, like it does with almost everyone, a grown man who don't drink kind of piques his interest.
“'A teetotaler,' he says, kind of mocking me. 'What are you, a Mormon?' he says. 'So whose booze you gonna take a swig of, Pops? I don't got any.'
“'My wife's,' I tell him.
“'Ohhh… so she's the man of the family, huh?' he says. 'Was the man of the family, I mean.' And then he laughs. I could've tore his throat right out with my bare hands. But one thing I learned about life is that you gotta wait. Be patient. No use letting your emotions take over. It's all timing, see? When I was younger, I used to hang out at this jazz club. One night a really good band come through.”
“Who?” I said.
“No one famous.”
“Oh,” I said, hoping it was Dave Brubeck or Herbie Hancock.
“Drummer sits at our table for a while after their set. That zip Tommy Coca asks him how he keeps the beat. Drummer leans over and says to Tommy, 'you wanna hit that snare as late as you possibly can—but not a second later.' Words of wisdom. So I say to myself, stay calm, hit at the right time, kill Jack Lomand. Irene? She's probably making a quilt in the evening sky, putting the clouds into nice patterns. There ain't no time to be sad. Get too sad, and you're a goner.”
An old baby-blue Ford truck drove by, slowed down, passed the stopped Caddy, and the driver cocked his head to have a good look at us.
“Take a picture, buddy,” Eddie said as the truck rumbled off. Then he went on:
“So he walks me out to the kitchen, gun on my back. I pull out Irene's bottle of scotch. I ask him if he's having one too. 'Sure,' he says. Well, Irene always leaves an icepick out on top of the counter, back near the breadbox. I told her a hundred times to put it away, but this time I'm praying she's been her usual lazy self. And there it is. 'I'm sorry about this,' Jack says. 'So am I,' I say, and I swing around and bury that icepick right in his head. He crawled out to the living room and died. I had a drink or two. Or three. Then I smashed them Kinkade plates on the floor.”
“I thought you loved those plates.”
“I hate them goddamn plates,” Eddie said. His eyes teared up.
“Sorry about Irene,” I said.
Eddie looked at my sweats. “You training for a marathon?”
“It clears my head.”
“Well don't clear it too much, Champ. There might not be anything left.”
I smiled. “Man, am I ever glad to see you Eddie. I thought you were dead.”
“God don't wanna deal with me,” Eddie said.
“Who would?” Jody said.
“Am I talking to you?” Eddie said. Then he lowered his voice. “She saved my life, Champ. Got me back on the wagon. That first taste of the stuff—a thousand tiny sparks go off in my brain. Jekyll and Hyde. I went through a few weeks on the stuff again, and whoah buddy, I'm too old for it. Way too old for it.”
“I'm glad you're all right,” I said.
“You got a cigar shop in this town?”
“Right next to the Haberdashery, across the street from the Fair Trade Boutique.”
“Prick,” Eddie said. “I'm down to my last two. The ones Frank give me.”
“We got gas stations,” I said.
“How is Frank?”
“Dead.”
“Amen,” Eddie said. “You can tell me all about it, over coffee. You do got coffee in this town, don't you?”
“Diner. Decent coffee. Good grub.”
Eddie looked back at Jody. She nodded.
“It's yours?” I said, running my hand along a fin of the Cadillac.
“Going away present. From Art Love.”
“He gave it to you?”
“He went away, and I took it.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Don't say it like that, Champ: that fat bastard had it coming.”
We drove. I gave Jody directions. I felt like a kid in the backseat with my folks, and they were driving me to the high school dance. Eddie and Jody laughed and bickered, and she poked fun at him, and he poked back at her. It was a fine day. The fields were green. Distant woodland isles, mysterious black and lonely, went on unfettered amid the bland agricultural stretches. The sky was a cool gray-blue, and the Caddy rolled along the highway: thuh-thunk, thuh-thunk, thuh-thunk.
I told Eddie how I was staying with an old friend who was back in town because her Mom passed away.
“How good a friend?” Eddie's reflection said, staring at me in the flipped down visor mirror.
“Good,” I said.
“Real good?”
“Pretty good.”
“Good,” Eddie said.
“She's blind,” I said, for no reason.
“Even better,” Eddie said.
“That's terrible,” Jody said, smacking Eddie's arm.
“No, no. Relax. It ain't good that she's blind—I mean, that's a tough break. But it's good for Ronnie she's blind.”
“Why?” Jody said.
“She won't get scared of his ugly mug,” Eddie said, and laughed.
“Ronnie's a good-looking man,” Jody said. “Better looking than you, Gramps.”
“Oh yeah?” Eddie said. Then he acted like he was offended, even though he was grinning the whole time. “So maybe you'd rather be with him than with me, huh?”
“Of course I would,” Jody said.
Eddie looked at me again in his mirror, and he was all eyes and wild gray eyebrows. “See, I told you she was a smart broad.”
We walked into Nick's Diner. The sign read Seat Yourself, so Eddie picked a table in the corner with a red and white checkered cloth, and the waitress came over—the same one I'd seen the other morning—and poure
d us coffee into thick white mugs. Then she said she'd give us a minute to look over the menu, and she disappeared. Eddie dumped some sugar in his coffee and stirred it around with a spoon. He took a sip.
“Not bad,” he said. He took another. “Not bad at all. Now, tell me all about Frank, and tell me the whole story. The whole goddamn story.”
So I told him the whole goddamn story, and Eddie asked me to repeat the parts he really liked: especially the part where Bullfrog cracked Frank Conese upside the head with the brass owl. We ordered meals and we ate them. We laughed. Jody bumped her coffee mug with her elbow, and it almost tumbled over, but I reached out and caught it just in time.
Eddie told me his plan, and Jody put a hand on his forearm, and they looked like kids asking permission to get married.
“We're picking up right where we left off,” Eddie said.
“I'm not a home-wrecker,” Jody said to me with tight lips.
“He never said that,” Eddie said.
“Well, people can get some ideas,” Jody said, looking down at her coffee; both hands around the mug. “I liked Irene.”
Eddie pulled one of her hands away from the mug and held it tight, and the two of them looked at each other.
“I liked Irene,” Jody said again.
“And she liked you,” Eddie said. He looked at me again. “When you get to be my age, Champ, you realize there ain't no time to waste. I could sit around for years, crying over Irene, looking at myself in the mirror saying woe is me, woe is me. But that ain't what she would've wanted. And if I would've croaked and she would've lived, I sure as hell wouldn't want her to crawl in a hole and die too. When you're my age, Champ, any day might be your last.”
“What country?” I said.
“Argentina,” Jody said.
“No, no, no,” Eddie said.
“I like Argentina,” Jody said, lowering her glasses and staring at me. “I like the way it sounds.”
“It sounds like a place for Nazi war criminals,” Eddie said.
“He's pushing for Nicaragua.”
“They make good cigars,” Eddie said.
“And coffee,” I said.
“Argentina,” Jody said, her eyes seeing lush forests and warm blue seas.
“Odds are, we'll go to Costa Rica,” Eddie said. “I know a guy who knows a guy. He's big on Costa Rica. Can't say enough about it.”
“They got cigars?” I said.
“Sure—but not like the ones in Nicaragua.”
We finished our meals. Eddie ordered three slices of rhubarb pie without even asking me and Jody what we wanted, or if we wanted dessert at all.
“What if I wanted apple pie?” I said, when the waitress walked off.
“Rhubarb's the best,” Eddie said. “You got that whole sweet and tangy thing going on.”
“You can't just order for people,” Jody said.
“The hell I can't,” Eddie said. “I'm paying.”
“It's on me,” I said.
“What part of I'm paying don't you understand? You so much as reach for your wallet, and I'll cut off a finger.”
The waitress brought the pie, and we ate it, and it was good.
“See,” Eddie said, dropping his fork onto his empty plate and sliding it away. “I knew this place would have a good rhubarb pie. That shit grows in the country, and country girls know how to treat it. You give a city girl a bunch of rhubarb and she'll think it's weird looking celery.”
Eddie picked up the check. I made a joke of reaching for my wallet, and Eddie grabbed his butter knife and told me to back off. Then he put on his reading glasses and studied the bill, like it was some important historical document.
Eddie walked up to the cash register and paid the bill. He said something to the waitress, and she laughed. He said something else, and she reached up and played with a lock of her hair. I could imagine the things he was saying to her.
He walked back to the table and laid down a crisp fifty-dollar bill. Then he placed his coffee mug on top of it, like a paperweight.
“Big tipper,” Jody said, crossing her arms.
“Good waitress,” Eddie said.
“Oh, I bet she is,” Jody said.
Eddie said they were tired of driving, and could they find a halfway decent room in this town to spend the night. So I rode with them out to the L&M Motel. I helped them carry in their bags, and Jody flopped down on the bed and spread out like she was about to make a snow angel. Then Eddie gave me a lift back to Blind Shannon's house.
We stopped off at a sad little gas station. A kid wearing a paper hat stood behind the counter.
“That hat part of your uniform?” Eddie said.
The kid said yes.
“Your boss: he makes you wear that hat?”
The kid nodded.
“What a dick,” Eddie said.
The kid laughed. He had those tired eyes that you get from drinking too much, staying up all night, or having a chronic illness. I felt bad for the kid. His Adam's apple was way too pointy, his neck was too thin, and it looked like no one had given his face the news that it was a little too old for so much acne. They say that women have it rough—and they do, no doubt—but it's no picnic being a man. Women expect a lot from you. You have to be soft, but not too soft. You have to be tough, but not a total jerk. You have to know when to bring flowers, and when to walk away. And you can't, under any circumstances, look or act like this poor sap here, working at the local yokel filling station.
“What cigars you got?” Eddie said.
The kid pointed awkwardly at the rows of Swisher Sweets and Garcia Vegas.
“Anything else?” Eddie said.
The kid held up a three-pack of cigars with artwork showing Pilgrim-looking guys in black-buckled hats.
“Dutch Masters?” Eddie said, like it was the name of some jungle disease that makes your fingers drop off.
“My Duh-Dad likes 'em,” the kid stuttered.
“Of course he does,” Eddie said. “Gimme two of the Garcia Vegas.”
“Six suh-seventy-five,” the kid said.
Eddie put a ten on the counter. “Keep the change.”
“Kuh-can't accept tips,” the kid said.
“You got a girlfriend?” Eddie said, unwrapping the cellophane from one of the cigar packs.
The kid blushed. He looked away, smiled, looked back at us.
“You like girls?” Eddie said.
“Yuh-yuh-yes,” the kid said.
Eddie took out his silver money clip, opened it up, and peeled off a hundred dollar bill. He threw the bill on the counter. “You take that to the nearest whorehouse. Ask your old man. I bet he knows where it is.”
“Kuh-can't accept tips.”
“It ain't a tip,” Eddie said. “It's a charitable donation. I'm gonna tell my tax lady all about it.”
We drove along the back roads. We talked about the way things used to be, and the way things were now. Eddie talked about Irene; about that book on quilting that featured a full color photograph of her prize-winning quilt. I listened. Sometimes the best thing you can do is keep your own mouth shut. Then he talked about Tall Terry: how he was one of the best guys he ever had on his crew, and how he could collect without ever breaking a nose.
“Just the sight of him. That was enough to get a guy to pay.”
“Shame he died so young,” I said.
“Big tall guys—they're always dying young,” Eddie said. “What they gain in space, they lose in time.”
I told Eddie how that was a pretty damn good insight.
Then we talked about Thin Y No, and how he died a rotten lonely way from the booze; and Eddie got serious and gripped the steering wheel, and said how that could have been him, right now, over these last few weeks, if it weren't for Jody.
“I miss Barney,” Eddie said. “I loved that pug.”
“Me too.”
“I done some bad things. Some of 'em, I regret. But Griffin Shaw?—that no good hillbilly dog killer? Eye for an eye. That'
s what my old man always said.”
“You know how you always say that kids and animals should be exempt?”
“I do?” Eddie said. “Is that what I say?”
“One time, when I was maybe nineteen or so, I found a flyer on the ground. One of those Jehovah's Witness deals, but geared toward kids. Had a little bird on a blank sky. I opened it up, and guess what it says on the inside? It says how the bird is special, but not as special as you… how God loves you more than the little bird. What a crock, I thought. God—or whatever you want to call it—loves his birds as much as his people.”
“So that means a guy who kills an innocent dog; he's no good, right?”
“That's what it means,” I said.
Eddie looked satisfied. He loosened his grip on the wheel and pointed at a ragged line of far off geese, writing themselves from one side of the sky to the other.
KILLED BY THE KICK OF A HORSE
The next morning I met Eddie and Jody again at Nick's Diner. I invited Shannon, but I was glad when she turned me down. She said she'd best stay home and help her sister. I asked Eddie if the room was all right at the L&M, and how did he sleep; and he said with his eyes closed.
We sat and talked for so long they could have charged us rent. Eddie ordered another piece of rhubarb pie, and Jody made fun of him, asking was he still a growing boy?
“Like I'm gonna find rhubarb pie in Costa Rica,” Eddie said.
“They'll have other things,” Jody said.
“Like Hepatitis A,” Eddie said.
“What are your plans?” Jody said to me.
“Driving south.”
“When you stopping?” Eddie said.
“I'll know when I get there.”
“Watch your back,” Eddie said.
“I got immunity.”
“Oh yeah? From who?”
“Carlino,” I said.
“Ha,” Eddie said.
Eddie took a big bite of pie. Chewed it. Held a finger up to let me know he needed a second to get it down. He took a swig of coffee.
“Uh-uh. It ain't gonna happen, Champ. Someday somebody's gonna want to have a little talk with you. You know too much. You done too much business.” Eddie pointed his fork at me and lowered his eyebrows. “Watch your back.”