by Lamb, Wally
God bless America!
I cut it off to heal the nations! . . .
My stitched-up hand was starting to hurt again. My neck now, too. The doctor over in the emergency room had tried to order me one of those collar things, but I’d refused. I’d said yes to the pain pills, though—three of them in a little brown envelope and a prescription for a dozen more. I considered popping another one now but decided against it. If that claims adjuster was going to give me a hassle, I didn’t want to sit there smiling at him like Goofy.
My truck, man. My livelihood. . . .
I looked over at Omar in time to catch his eyes jump away from the sight of me. Banged up, bandaged up, slumped in the chair: I must have looked about as pathetic as my truck. “Where do you want this thing towed to?” the state cop had asked me out at the accident. “Constantine Motors,” I’d said—a knee-jerk response.
A wave of nausea passed through my gut. My hands started trembling, my legs. Last thing I needed right about then was to lose it in front of Omar. I cleared my throat, stood up. “Tell . . . uh . . . tell Leo I went to the can,” I said.
Omar looked over like he hadn’t been aware of my existence. “Huh? Yeah, sure thing.” I got up and headed for the men’s room.
I locked the door, looked at my face in the mirror. Night of the Living Dead looked back. Another wave of queasiness came and went; I broke out in a clammy sweat. I rested my head against the wall and listed all the things I was supposed to be able to fix: my truck, my brother’s placement, the Roods’ house.
We made a baby, Dominick. You and me. . . .
I saw, again, the way Joy had looked when she got to the emergency room that morning: no makeup, her hair all crazy. “Hold me,” she’d said. Broke down right in front of everyone. Cried against me. In almost two years together, it was maybe the second or third time I’d seen Joy cry. Those tears meant there was something between us, right? That she felt something, whether she’d been screwing someone else or not. Right?
When the shaking subsided, I got up and doused my face with cold water, purposely avoiding the mirror. I walked back out into that gleaming showroom.
That’s when I noticed the patriotic balloons bobbing from the business manager’s platform desk: bouquets of them. Looked like a goddamned altar, that desk. In the name of the father, and the son, and the dollar bill. Leo was strolling toward me from the opposite direction with our two coffees. He was wearing that fancy Armani suit of his and one of those God Bless America! caps like Omar’s. Every employee at the freaking dealership was wearing one of those caps, even Uncle Costas and the secretaries. They had a major theme going on, courtesy of Kuwait.
“Here you go, Birdsey,” Leo said, handing me the coffee. “What time did that guy say he’d be here?”
“Ten-thirty.” I squinted up at the wall clock for the umpteenth time. Ten fifty-five.
Leo sat down, put his feet up on the desk, his hands behind his head. “And your brother’s thing is when?”
“Four this afternoon.”
“What do you think? You gonna be able to spring him?”
I shrugged. Needed to change the subject. “What’s with the doofy-looking hats?”
He reached up and took off his cap, tossing it onto the filing cabinet next to his desk. “It’s the old man’s idea. He ordered a gross for giveaways. We’re having a Desert Shield rally this Saturday. Tent, hot dog roast, zero-percent down.”
I rolled my eyes. “You got hat head,” I said.
“What?”
“Hat head.” I pointed at the ridge the cheap hat had made in his forty-dollar haircut. That’s what he told me once that he pays his “stylist”: forty bucks a throw.
He took a little mirror out of his desk and tried tousling away the damage. That was Leo’s biggest problem: hat head. “Hey, if Big Gene thought it’d move cars off the lot, he’d dig up Patton and stick him in the window.” He leaned forward, whispering. “With the economy this sucky and the Boat talking about more layoffs, nobody’s buying nothing. September was our worst month since the gas crisis.”
I’ll cry for ’em later on, I thought. Checked the clock again. 11:03. Where was that insurance fuck?
I watched Leo’s eyes follow his coworker Lorna across the sales floor. “Hey, you know what I found out yesterday?” he whispered. “About the she-bitch over there?” He drew a pen out of his desk set, plunged it in and out, in and out of the holder. “She and Omar. One of the mechanics caught ’em doin’ the big nasty after hours in the back of a Caravan. The old man’d go ballistic if he found out. You know how he hates that black-on-white stuff.”
Get a life, Leo, I thought. I tried swiveling my neck from side to side; it hurt more when I turned to the right than the left. It was stupid of me not to have gotten that collar.
“So, Birds,” Leo said. “You got any idea how long that hearing thing’s going to take this afternoon? I got an appointment at five thirty. If it starts at four, I should be back here by five thirty, shouldn’t I?”
My leg pumped up and down. My fingers drummed on his desk. I told him Ray could take me. “I’ll take you,” he said. “I don’t mind taking you. I just gotta—”
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take,” I snapped. “I’ve never been to one of these things before. Okay? It’ll just be simpler if Ray drives me.”
“Hey, don’t bite my head off. Wasn’t me who fell asleep at the wheel.”
In the next breath, he started yapping about his stupid movie—telling me how he was waiting for them to FedEx him the script and then the next step was blah blah blah.
I checked the clock again. Did some calculating. If that insurance idiot showed up in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, I could probably still salvage an hour or so over at the Roods’. Pull those shutters off, minimum, so I could take them back to my place and prep them. It’d be awkward with my hand bandaged up like this, but I could do it. . . . Except how was I going to get the damn things home with no truck? Shit.
“But don’t worry, Dominick,” Leo was saying. “The old man and I’ll take good care of you. Put you in a Dodge or an Isuzu five-speed, no problemo. That Isuzu’s a good little truck, actually. You wanna have a look-see while you’re waiting?”
I said I doubted they’d total the pickup. We both looked out at it and Leo shook his head. “That truck is gone, my man,” he said. “That vehicle is DOA.”
11:12. My hand was starting to hurt like it meant it. If I moved my head to the right, pain shot up my neck. Okay, here’s what I’d do, I thought: I’d take another one of those painkillers right after I was through with the insurance guy, go over to Roods’ and pull the shutters—see if Ray could borrow Eddie Banas’s truck. Then I’d go home and get a couple hours’ sleep. Set the alarm—give myself an hour to clean up and go over my notes. If my hand hurt this bad by afternoon, I’d just have to tough it out until after the hearing. Be great, otherwise: me standing before that Security Board, zoned out on narcotics.
I asked Leo if I could use his phone again. “Dial nine first,” he said.
“Mutual of America. How may I direct your call?”
It was the same woman I’d talked to the other three times. She was getting a little less polite with each call. “Look, lady,” I told her. “I spent half the night in the hospital, I got about a thousand things I’ve got to take care of today, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my whole day waiting for your representative to show.” She told me there wasn’t really anything else she could do, but that she sympathized with me. “Yeah, well, your sympathy isn’t doing me a goddamn bit of good, is it?” I snapped back. Banged the phone down louder than I’d meant to. Every God Bless America! cap at the dealership turned its bill in my direction.
“Hey, Birdsey, chill out a little,” Leo said. “No shit, you’re stressing me out, man.”
I got up. Walked to the other end of the showroom and back. Sat back down. “What time does the old man usually get here?” I said.
> “Gene? What is it—Wednesday? Any time now.”
“Great,” I said. “Just what I need: seeing Daddy Dearest.”
“Yeah, the guy’s got a hell of a nerve showing up at his own place of business, don’t he?” He threw up his hands. “I’m kidding, Birdsey. I’m kidding.”
A waxed white Firebird pulled into the dealership and coasted down to the body shop. A young guy in shades got out, walked around my truck, squatted in front of it. Strictly business, now that he’d finally managed to arrive.
“I’ll be out in a couple of minutes,” Leo said. “I just want to try my producer again. See if he can tell me when they’re sending me my script.”
The investigator aimed his camera at my wreck. It whined, shit out a Polaroid. “You the claims guy?” I said.
“That’s right.” When he turned around, I recognized him: one of those weight lifters at the health club. He practically lived down there. “Shawn Tudesco. Mutual of America.” He held out a square, manicured hand for me to shake—withdrew it when he saw my bandaged hand. Down at Hardbodies, this asshole strutted around like a little bantam rooster.
“You’re late,” I said.
“Right again,” he shot back. Which was all I was getting in the way of an apology.
He propped the Polaroid in a tuck of the pickup’s mangled bumper, aimed, took another. A third. A fourth. He had one of those slicked-back Pat Riley hairstyles, a tiny red earring in one ear. Couple of times, I’d seen him leaning against the counter down there, chatting it up with Joy. Spandex Man—God’s gift to women. Took steroids, was my guess.
“What’s this?” he asked me.
I followed his fingers along my smeared windshield. “That? . . . It’s egg.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Egg?”
“Kids last night. Celebrating Halloween a day early.”
“Yeah?” He just stood there. I was the first to look away.
He stretched on a pair of plastic gloves and pulled some glass crumbs from the windshield. There was a brown smear where my hand had busted through the glass, some dried drips on the hood that he bent close to look at. What was he doing? Doubling as an FBI agent or something?
Leo came out of the showroom and crossed the lot toward us, whistling. Holding his patriotic cap instead of wearing it.
“Where’d the accident happen, anyway?” the insurance guy asked.
“Route 22. Out by where the Indians are building the casino.”
Leo approached, placed his hand on the small of my back. “Numb Nuts here was driving down to play some blackjack with Tonto and the boys. Didn’t realize they haven’t broken ground yet.” He held out his hand for the investigator to shake. “Leo Blood.”
“Shawn Tudesco. Mutual of America.”
Leo nodded. “You work out at Hardbodies, right?” Leo said. “Weight lifter, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “You go there?”
“Me and him both. We play racquetball,” Leo said. “His girlfriend works there.”
“That right?” he said. “Who? Patti?”
Patti: little pot belly pushing against her leotard, Geraldine Ferraro hairdo. Joy told me once she hoped Patti got the rest of the way through menopause without driving everyone off the deep end. “Joy,” I said.
“Joy? Really?” He looked at me for the first time—inspected me up and down like I was a dented vehicle. “I know Joy,” he said.
“Everyone knows Joy,” Leo chimed in. “She’s world famous.”
The investigator nodded at Leo, then back at me. Smiled. I took both their grins, took the pain that shot up my right arm from the fist I was making. What did “world famous” mean? How was I supposed to take that little remark?
Mutual of America squatted down and passed his fingers over one of the truck’s front tires. “Rubber’s good,” he said. “Road slippery last night?”
I shrugged. He could read the police report if he was so goddamn curious. Behind the inspector, Leo grabbed an imaginary steering wheel and pantomimed me sleeping. Asshole. Dick-for-brains. . . . World famous as in how? She circulates? She’s a slut? What made Leo the big expert on my girlfriend?
The investigator leaned against the truck and rocked it. It made a metal-against-metal screech. “Buddy of mine grew up out there by the Indian reservation?” he said. “Just sold his parents’ farm to the tribe for a million and a half.” He shook his head. “They must have cash flow up the wazoo from the way they’re buying up land. Getting it from some billionaire Korean investor is what I heard.”
“Malaysian,” I said.
“What?”
“Malaysian investor. It was in the paper.”
“Well, they’re getting big bucks from somewhere,” Leo chimed in. “One of the chiefs or whatever came into the showroom the other day, him and his two assistants. Mr. VIP. Couldn’t talk to anyone but the GM. Ended up paying cash on the barrelhead for this top-of-the-line New Yorker. That damn car was so loaded with extras, it did everything except wipe the guy’s ass for him.”
The inspector walked over to his Firebird, took out a clipboard and some forms. “It’s just like what’s happening down in Manhattan,” he said. “The way the Japs are buying up the whole damn city, Radio City Music Hall included.”
“Hey, speaking of New York,” Leo said, “I was just down there this week. Had to go to a meeting with my producer.”
Mr. Insurance didn’t take the bait. “If that casino goes over,” he said, “I hear they’re putting in a resort, a golf course, the whole nine yards. And every square inch of it tax-free. That’s what burns my butt.”
“I’m an actor,” Leo said.
The investigator got down on the ground, poked around underneath. “You and me pay taxes, right?” he said. “No one’s giving us a free ride.” He’d stuck a bumper sticker onto that briefcase of his: Power lifters give good thrust.
I fished around in my shirt pocket, felt those three pain capsules. That’s when Big Gene rolled into the dealership in his silver LeBaron. He was scowling his permanent scowl, surveying the Ponderosa. He braked as he was passing us. His power window whirred down. “Hey, Gene,” I said. “How’s it going?”
Looking right through me, he snapped at Leo. “Where’s your hat?”
“Right here, Pop,” Leo said, waving it at him. “I just took it off about two seconds ago. To let my head breathe a little. I swear to God.”
“Well, put it back on again! We’re in the middle of a promotion!”
Hello to you, too, Gene. Nah, I got shaken up a little, but I’m all right. Thanks for asking, you prick. She divorced me remember? . . . Sometimes I didn’t know how Leo stood it—working there, getting reprimanded all the time like a seven-year-old.
Leo suddenly looked older than his age, despite that classy suit, and the role in the movie, and the forty-dollar haircut. “Hey, you can say what you want to about the Indians,” he said, “but it’s going to go from bad to worse if the Navy cancels those Seawolf contracts and EB lays off as many guys as they say they might. I heard they’re going to employ a couple thousand people down at that casino once it gets rolling.”
“The Navy’s not going to cancel those subs,” Mutual of America said. “Not with this Persian Gulf situation. You watch. The Russians’ll back that lunatic over there and Bush’ll have no choice except to escalate. Electric Boat won’t be able to crank out submarines fast enough.” He totaled something on his calculator, wrote something else on his clipboard. “If Saddam keeps screwing around over in Kuwait, Bush’ll kick his ass like he kicked Noriega’s. Bush rules, man. He wasn’t the head of the CIA for nothing.”
“Hey, how old are you, anyway?” I said. Truck or no truck, I couldn’t help it. Leo started jingling the change in his pockets.
Mutual of America looked up from his clipboard. “What?”
“What are you? Twenty-three? Twenty-four?”
“I’m twenty-eight,” he said. “Why?”
“Becaus
e you haven’t seen the shit that guys our age have seen.”
“Like what, for instance?” Don’t smirk at me, asshole.
“Like Vietnam. The last thing this country needs is for Bush to turn Kuwait into Vietnam II.” Leo gave me a zip-the-lip gesture. But I didn’t want to zip my lip. Mr. Weight Lifter. Mr. Hang Around Down at Health Clubs Impressing All the Women. When he laughed, the sun caught his little red earring.
“Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam,” he said. “No offense, but it’s like a broken record. Get over it.”
I saw those camouflage washouts down at Hatch. Unit Six. Those guys whose brains Vietnam had eaten. “We can’t,” I said. “We can’t get over it. That’s the problem.”
Why was I doing this—picking a fight with the guy who was going to either make me or break me, insurance-wise? Why couldn’t I just shut up?
Leo must have seen the mood I was in because he positioned himself between me and Mutual of America and started talking a mile a minute. “You were saying before about the Indians. Heh heh. . . . All’s I know is, if the defense industry goes down the toilet around here, half the state’ll be down at that casino, begging for jobs. Who knows? Maybe the Wequonnocs will end up scalping us and saving our sorry asses at the same time. You know what I mean?” He turned back to me. “Hey, Birdsey, didn’t you say you needed to call Ray? Have him pick you up? Go up there, use my phone. Hit nine first.”
I waited for a second, then started up toward the showroom. Heard fragments of Leo’s conversation: “Poor guy’s been under a lot of pressure . . . sick brother . . . if you can diddle the numbers a little for him.”
Inside, I passed by Omar. Passed Gene’s office. He looked away when I nodded at him. Fuck you, Gene! It was your daughter who wanted out of that marriage. Not me.
I went back into the bathroom and locked it. Waited for the shaking to pass. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. That was the scary part: Dominick, the tough guy, the uncrazy twin. . . . I was falling apart at the seams. I reached in my pocket, fingered those three Tylox. “The Father,” I said. “The Son.” I opened my mouth and popped a pair of them. Decided I’d save the Holy Ghost for later.