by Matthew Iden
He was happy to see that stopped her cold. She knew what the bike meant to him. “To who? Where? There ain’t nobody around here going to give you more than a few hundred for it.”
Lee unwrapped the chicken and licked his thumb. “Sturgis.”
Raylene’s face was blank. “Sturgis? Virginia?”
“Nope. South Dakota.”
Her mouth dropped open, then she fell back on the couch, shrieking with laughter. “South Dakota? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I found out the Harley ain’t just old, she’s a collector’s item.”
She looked at him, incredulous. “You’re serious, ain’t you? Sturgis? South Dakota?”
He nodded and took a bite out of a drumstick, looking at her. Raylene shook her head. “I can’t believe you. What’s wrong with putting an ad in the paper? In Roanoke or, hell, Richmond if you really want to go crazy.”
He told her then about the Rally, about the half million bikers, making it sound like everyone there would sell their mother to get his Harley. He almost believed it himself by the time he was done.
“So I’m not going with you, I take it? Just Randy?”
Lee nodded. Swallowing, he said, “Randy knows some about bikes and he can spell me on the drive there and back.”
She stood and sashayed past him. “If that’s what you want, Lee. Sounds like a fool idea to me. You better come back with some money. You come back empty-handed, we’re through.” She went into the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the shower.
Lee went back outside with the bucket of chicken and sat on the stairs. He wasn’t sure what was going on—everybody had it out for him today, although he should’ve known better than to think he’d catch a break from Raylene. That wasn’t her style. She took what she wanted, when she wanted it. Sometimes that sucked, like today. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad.
A year ago, before they’d really known each other, Lee had gotten a call in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. It was Raylene. Her yellow Mustang had conked out on her about eight miles outside of town. He remembered her from high school and from seeing her around—as did any boy or man in the county from twelve to two hundred—but hadn’t talked to her except to nod politely once in a while when they’d met in Brumley. He felt giddy that she’d even known his number, though she admitted later she’d just seen his sign on the way out of town. She hadn’t wanted to tell her parents, her friends were no help, and her brother lived in Roanoke, so she called Lee Baylor’s Car Maintenance and Repair.
He dropped what he was doing and jumped in the tow truck. He arrived, greasy and sweating from another job, and stopped dead in his tracks. Raylene was bent over the driver’s-side window, trying to reach her purse on the passenger’s side, too lazy to walk around and get it. Her fanny, tight in jogging shorts, was pointed straight in the air like a landmark, while one leg was off the ground and bent at the knee as she stretched for her bag. She finally reached it, shoved herself away from the car, then saw Lee standing there, his mouth open like in the cartoons.
“Is that a wrench in your pocket or you just happy to see me?” she said, grinning and popping gum, sassy and in control. Barely able to speak, Lee had set to fixing her car. He smashed his thumb twice as Raylene insisted on looking under the hood with him, standing so close their hips touched and hugging her arms so tight that all Lee could see was cleavage running on forever. She’d flooded the Mustang and he couldn’t fix it right there, so he stuttered an apology and told her he’d have to take it in to his shop.
She sat in the front seat with him all the way back to the garage, putting one foot on the dash, telling him about herself. The wind blew through her hair and she twirled it around an index finger. Lee was so distracted she had to point out he was driving on the wrong side of the road. Every once in a while, she’d sneak a look at him and grin. By the time they got back to the station, they couldn’t even wait for him to unhook the Mustang off the truck, so they hopped in the back of the car Lee was working on and went at it, the old GTO rocking back and forth like a ship in a storm.
It had stayed like that for the first few months. They’d decided to move in together, but the only thing they could afford was the trailer and that had set them back twenty thousand dollars. No—it had set him back twenty thousand, since he was the one who’d signed for the loan, offering his equity in the garage as collateral. Raylene hadn’t brought much to the table except her looks and occasional temper. Then, things went to pot slowly but surely, and it was always about money.
He finished eating and looked across the trailer court, lanky arms straight out with his elbows resting on his knees. Bring back some money or else, huh? He stayed that way for a minute, thinking, then stood, waved again to Mrs. Reynolds, and got back in the truck. He started the engine and pulled back onto the road.
Lee wondered if it felt like this with everyone—circumstances coming together, unstoppable, like a car wreck in slow motion. He’d felt some measure of control again when he’d sold his grandfather’s place and bought the garage. Until that point, he’d felt like bad news was just handed to him and it was his lot to take it. Here, son: your daddy’s dead, your mama has cancer, rest of your kin hardly has enough money for the funerals. Do the best you can. Good luck. You’ll need it. And now, once again, things were slipping away from him. What was it like to have control, to be born with it? He’d love to know.
The parking lot at Drake’s was close to full and he had to circle twice to find a spot. He went inside, squinting against the smoke. Old-time rock, heavy on the bass, was blaring on the jukebox. Randy was leaning against the bar, a beer and bourbon in front of him, chatting with a young girl that couldn’t have been eighteen, let alone twenty-one. He raised his head as Lee walked across the bar.
“Excuse me, honey,” he said to the girl, then straightened as Lee stopped in front of him. “I’ll be right back. What’s up, partner?”
Lee raised his chin to the bartender and pointed to Randy’s beer and bourbon, then turned to Randy and said, “I’m in.”
Chapter Six
It took them longer than Lee thought it would to get their crap together and leave. He had to tell the man with the Bronco that parts for his truck were scarce and it would take a week, minimum, for them to come in. He took the man’s verbal abuse as penance for the outright lie. They just keep piling up, he thought.
Now that he’d made up his mind to go through with it, he felt strange. Excited and scared at the same time, like the feeling you got on a roller coaster or when you kissed a girl for the first time. He didn’t think of himself as a criminal, since they hadn’t done anything yet. The only thing he felt odd about was lying to Raylene—the odd part being that he didn’t feel bad about it. He probably should’ve, but when he stopped and really examined how he felt…he didn’t feel much at all. If anything, it felt good to be taking control, or trying to. He liked the idea of proving something to Raylene, making her think about taking back some of those words. Maybe he’d bring all the cash in a bag, show it to her all at once, spread out on their coffee table in hundred-dollar bills.
It was a fun thought, but that’s all it was. If he showed it to her like that, it would be gone before you could say Jack Sprat, and not to pay off the trailer, either. He’d have to be content showing her the title to the trailer, maybe roll it into a tube and stuff it in a kitchen drawer. She’d find it and say, “What’s this?” And he’d act innocent like he’d never seen it before. He smiled just thinking of the look on her face.
Randy was rolling tires into the garage when Lee stopped him, thinking of something. “How are they going to pay us? Will it all be in cash?”
Randy grunted as he lifted the tire and bounced it onto a stack just inside the door. “Well, they don’t write a check from the First National Bank of Crooks, Lee. The guys I know might want to pay us in dope or smack, claim it’s worth this much or that much. But that’s no good. You don’t know if it’s hot, if they stepped on it, if
it’s even worth that much. And then how do you get rid of it yourself? Unless you know of a way?”
Lee looked surprised. “Hell, no.”
“Didn’t think so. Nah, we’ll have to tell them cash only. We might take a hit on it, since that’s a lot of dough to ask for at once. But better that than get busted by the DEA trying to push fifty pounds of weed in Norfolk or some such thing.”
“Who do you have in mind? Like, who’re we selling the bikes to?”
Randy looked at him sideways. “Some good old boys I met at Green Rock. They got a chop shop outside of Richmond, just off Route 1. Either them or this bike nut I know of down in Raleigh. I’d rather not use him if I can help it. He’s the one most likely’ll want to pay us in dope. Though, come to think of it, he’d pay more, too.”
“No,” Lee said, shaking his head. “No drugs.”
Randy shrugged. “Your call, bud.”
“Huh,” Lee said, thoughtful. Guess you just met those kinds of folks in jail. Well, maybe not only there. When he had worked on cars as a kid, you could sell Donnie Snyder tires, hubcaps, anything from a car as long as it wasn’t too damaged. Tell him you found it by the side of the road and he’d pay cash for it, no questions asked or answered. Wasn’t much of a jump going from that to selling whole bikes out the side door.
He went to the back of the garage and looked at his checkbook. No sense in having the mortgage foreclosed on him while he was in Sturgis trying to steal the money to pay it off. He did a quick tally. After he mailed the check he’d have about five hundred bucks. Four hundred eighty-two dollars and fifty-three cents, to be exact. He called to Randy, “You got any money for the trip?”
“About a hundred,” Randy yelled back.
Lordy, Lee thought, they’d be sleeping in the truck at least one night, eating Happy Meals the whole way there and back again.
“How long you think this’ll take?” he yelled again.
“Dunno. A week?”
Lee broke out an old map he’d found in a tool chest, the route numbers and state names nearly obliterated by oil smudges. Getting to Sturgis was straightforward enough. Head north until Indy or Chicago, cut west until you ran into the place. How far was that, though—twelve hundred, maybe fifteen hundred miles?
He got dizzy thinking about it and he realized it wasn’t just the idea of committing a crime that had him feeling so funny. He’d barely set foot outside of Virginia his whole life. He’d been to Kentucky and Tennessee for the simple reason that you could spit over both state lines from downtown Brumley. On this trip, though, they’d be barreling past places you only heard about on the news. They were only, oh, a million times bigger than anyplace he’d ever been. That many people smashed into one place made his head swim. Not to mention the half million at Sturgis. It was going to be like nothing he’d ever seen. His dad had taken him to a Virginia Tech game when he was five or six years old where the stadium probably held fifty or sixty thousand people, but the noise had made him cry and nearly wet himself. The roaring sound of that many folks reminded him of a jet plane overhead or the volume of the TV turned to the max, but even louder. So many people, packed in so tight. And Sturgis would have ten times that many people.
Lee laughed to himself. He’d have to get over that. Some criminal mastermind he made, scared that a crowd might start clapping.
A car horn honked out front. For a second, his heart stopped, thinking for one ridiculous second that the police had arrived, come to arrest him already. He stepped out cautiously from the back and saw that it wasn’t the cops, just an old man with Coke-bottle glasses and a straw hat. An ancient pickup truck with rounded fenders sat in front of the pumps. One door was open and the old man stood half in, half out of the truck, honking the horn and looking towards the garage.
Lee leaned back against the Bronco, watching Randy stroll over to the man, a cigarette in his hands. Something in Randy’s swagger told Lee he planned to have some fun. The old man looked like he was asking a question, jabbing his finger at the pumps. Lee could almost hear him asking, “There ain’t no gas in that one? Or that one, either? Well, why do you have pumps, then? Is this a gas station or not?” Randy just leaned against one of them and lifted his chin towards the No Gas sign.
The man got agitated, his hands fluttering like birds, probably in time to his cussing out Randy. The old codger was really getting into it when, with hardly a move, Randy’s hand shot out and slapped the old man across the forehead.
Lee swore and straightened up, quick. The old man’s mouth dropped open in shock and anger. He was about to say something when Randy hit him again, another open hand, a sissy slap they would’ve called it in school. The man was so surprised, he could only shove back at Randy, his glasses askew and halfway off his face. Randy raised his hand like he was going to hit him again but the man jumped back in the truck in a panic and took off in a cloud of dust, jumping the curb and running a red light at the intersection.
Randy walked back to Lee, laughing so hard that tears streamed down his face. “You see how fast that old man took off? I never seen nothing so funny as when his glasses came off his face. That’s the best laugh I’ve had in a month.”
Lee, not knowing what to say, just watched Randy head to the back of the garage, still chuckling and shaking his head.
Lee was quiet as they got ready to leave, uncomfortable and wanting to say something about the episode with the old man. He wasn’t sure what to say, exactly, or what answer he was prepared to get from Randy. Confused and feeling guilty, he let it slide and simply busied himself loading the things they thought they’d need for the trip—tools, extra tarps to cover the bikes, chains and bungees, the old map. Randy brought the same duffel bag he’d carried with him to Brumley and placed it carefully behind the front seat. Lee started the tow truck and hitched the bike trailer to the back. Fifteen minutes later, he’d locked the garage and they were in the truck, headed to Lee’s trailer park to load his bike.
They were quiet on the way out, aware of each other’s presence, but not really in the mood to talk. Lee was feeling odd about the whole business, still disturbed by Randy’s handling of the old man. What would happen if Randy didn’t like the way he was going about stealing the bikes, taking too long or chickening out at some point? He tried not to think about it too much. He was in and that was it.
Randy watched the town pass, whistling every once in a while and pointing to something that had changed since he was a kid. Lee asked him what he’d been doing the past month, if he’d been around town. Randy laughed.
“Hell, no, bud. No car, and you paying me minimum wage, I’ve just been hitching my way from the garage to the Drake and back again.”
They pulled into the Oasis, the trailer making a racket as they bounced over the hump at the front gate. Most of the trailers were shut tight, their owners at work, but about half had people sitting outside on folding chairs resting on rugs of AstroTurf, watching stone-faced as Lee rattled past. The lucky ones had awnings and a small table where they’d hook up the TV and watch their shows outside until it got too hot, at which point they’d go inside to watch TV in the air-conditioning. Toys and bikes littered several of the front yards and the entire placed smelled like garbage, a ripe smell of old food, rotting newspaper, and soiled diapers.
Lee glanced over at Randy. “Little slice of heaven, ain’t it? Trash pickup isn’t ’til Tuesday.”
Randy looked around. “Better than jail. I guess.”
They got to Lee’s trailer and backed the tow truck to his bike. They slowly loaded the bike onto a small ramp that extended from the back of the trailer. They tied it down with the chains and bungees and rewrapped the tarp around it.
“Better get the title,” Randy said. “If we get stopped on the way back, you can show the cops that one, maybe get us out of a jam.”
Lee nodded, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that. He went to the door of the trailer and was about to put the key in the lock when it opened. Raylene stood in the
doorway in a green tank top tight across her chest, cutoff jeans, and no shoes.
“Well, if it ain’t the big adventurers, about to go on their fabulous trip,” she said, cocking her hip to one side.
Lee didn’t bother to reply, just pushed past her to look for the papers, but heard Randy, a grin in his voice, call to his girl. “Well, Raylene Jenkins. Haven’t seen you since high school. You’re keeping well, I see.”
Raylene called over her shoulder, “Lee, you always let the hired help get saucy with you?”
“No offense, ma’am,” Randy said. “I haven’t been invited for supper, so I haven’t had the pleasure of your company. Had to remind myself of what you looked like back at Brumley High. Most ladies put on some weight just two, three years later, but not you. Well, not too much, at least.”
Raylene refused to rise to the bait. “And how would you know what a woman looks like after high school, Randall Watson, being in jail most of that time?”
Lee appeared at the door holding a plastic envelope, trying to ignore the hard look Randy was giving Raylene. “Got it,” he said and slid past Raylene without looking at her.
Raylene called after Lee as he went around the front of the truck. “Remember what I said, Lee. This better not be some fool’s errand. You come back with some money or don’t come back at all. You hear me?”
Lee turned around and said, “And what, leave you to make the payments on the trailer? I wouldn’t do that to you, honey. We’ll be back in a week or two.” He and Lee got in the truck and pulled away, with the sound of crunching gravel covering Raylene’s yelled curses.
“Sounds like you got your hands full, partner,” Randy said as they left the trailer park.
Lee shook his head, weary. “That wasn’t anything. You should see her when she gets mad.”
Randy laughed and clapped his hands together. “Well, she’s going to be surprised when you come back with a wad of cash in your hip pocket like she’s never seen.”