We won’t have, Link says, if you don’t cut this shit and get into the goddamn car. C’mon.
Victor seems about to relent when Anton says:
Go ahead, bitch. Do it, bitch. Get in the car, bitch.
Victor, with deliberation, takes aim on Maria and Anton. I realize he’s too alert for me to try to deflect the gun. Instead, I remember every Kung Fu movie I’ve ever seen and take a leap, feet first, at his legs, to try to trip him up. I mistime my leap slightly, and fall down in front of him. As my back hits the floor hard, my right foot gets him right in the crotch. The foot hits something hard, sends shooting pains back up my leg. Christ, he’s still got that stupid derringer hidden in his jockstrap! I don’t have much time to consider this, as I hear the rifle go off above me and to my right. Maria’s scream is almost drowned out by Victor’s howls of pain. I twist around on the floor, see her ending a fall, her hand clutching her side. Squirming along the cement floor, I crawl to her. She sees me coming, whispers:
I’m all right. Been shot worse than this. Twice before.
I look down at her hand. There’s only a couple spots of blood on it, but there’s a stain slowly spreading on her blouse.
You sure you’re okay? I say. She surprises me by laughing.
Of course I’m okay, she says. I almost died once. Felt nothing like this.
Get to the car, Lee, Link says.
I’m suddenly aware of inchoate vocal sounds outside the garage, the sounds of panic being countered by commands.
Do what he says, Maria says.
From the other side of her, Anton is nodding in agreement. He puts his arm around her shoulder.
I'll stay with you, I say to her.
C’mon, Link says.
Victor is limping toward the Mustang. Link stands between him and me, keeping guard but with his body showing a definite lean toward the car.
Don’t be stupid, Maria says. You stay here, you’re just going to get your ass tom apart.
The outside noises—less confused now, more organized—provide convincing support to her argument. I stand up, saying to her:
I’ll call you, all right? Make sure you’re okay.
You don’t know the number.
I'll figure it out.
It’s unlisted.
Don’t worry about it. I'll call.
Get the fuck out of here, please! Anton?
Yes? Anton says, just as formally as usual.
Help me over to the wall so they can drive out.
Naturally, darling.
I hear the sound of that naturally, darling all the way to the car. Link nearly shoves me into the driver’s seat, runs to the garage door. He’s got a mean-looking automatic rifle in his hands now, a surprise from his grab-bag arsenal. He beckons to me to drive to the garage door. Which I do. Then he throws open the door, stands to the side and fires a barrage into outside darkness. I think I see people jumping for cover. Link races to the passenger-side door, which I’ve leaned over and pushed open, gets in, and shouts:
Floor it! Fucking floor it!
I slam down on the accelerator, and we speed through the gas station lot toward the exit road. Rows of lights all along the road come on suddenly. Up ahead, there’s a regiment of goons lined across the road, a firing squad all with weapons held to their shoulders and aimed at us. I take a quick swerve around a gas pump, and head instead for the access road. Gunfire behind us, which I concentrate on ignoring. Anton better hire a new bunch of goons, none of these can shoot straight. I hear a couple of thumps along the side of the car, but that’s about as close as they get. From my rear-view I briefly try to see back into the garage, but I can only glimpse one of the immaculate corners, no sign of Maria. The blasts from the artillery echo behind us as we reach the access road. In the mirror I see many of the goons heading down the hill toward the main road. By the time I reach the end of this access road and swing around to head in that direction, they’ll all be lined up across the highway. They could easily get off a lucky shot. I can’t go that way, no choice about it. When I hit the highway, I go the wrong way, head back east, watch the lights of the Ramada Inn become increasingly smaller in my rear-view. I’m so intense on looking back that I nearly rack us up into an oncoming car that swerves into the median ditch. Our route to the next exit is several miles and I rather enjoy dodging around the few cars we meet up with.
As we head down the exit road, looking at all the signs that say Wrong Way Go Back, Victor—who’s been silent the whole ride out—suddenly speaks up:
Shit, now my fucking nose is broken. My fucking nose.
Sorry about that, Vic, Link says, but you—
I don’t want to hear it, Victor says. Shit. What am I gonna do now? My fucking nose broken, won’t stop bleeding. The goddamned fucking dentist never showed up. My balls ache because junior here had to play hero for his ugly lady—maybe I got a hernia, damn it! With this nose and no teeth, I’m gonna look like a fucking freak. I’m gonna look like you, Link. And—shit, goddamn it, fuck—I left my fucking bag of clothes, all those beautiful threads I stole, back there on Anton’s fucking work table. Shit, goddamn, fuck, shit—
Victor’s voice subsides to its habitual grating mutter and is then drowned out by Link and me laughing.
Part V
— 1 —
Now I don’t even remember becoming an outlaw. I don’t remember ever sitting down and thinking hey, this is what I want to do, my life’s work, my goal discovered, hey, I want to be an outlaw. I probably never did that. Link’s the one who really wants this life. He’s forcing me into his fantasy, is what he’s doing. I’m sick of being forced into things. I don’t remember making any choices of my own since I made the choice to buy the fucking car.
Wish I could rest a while, think. Try to find my way to somewhere. Go to the end of the yellow brick road, take a swig from the Holy Grail, sing in the rain, keep my sunnyside up. I wonder if anybody remembers Janet Gaynor singing “If I Had a Talking Picture of You” in the movie Sunnyside Up. My dad took me to a museum and made me sit through that movie twice.
We’ve had about a hundred days and nights of playing outlaw, mostly robbing small towns. Give Link an arsenal and he thinks he’s Clyde Barrow, Cole Younger, Jesse James, Teddy Roosevelt. He resents my refusal to carry one of his wondrous guns, says I’m a coward.
I am a coward.
I also hate guns.
Anyway, I’ve killed twice without needing a gun to do it. I’m an assassin with monkey wrench and cooking fork—what’d happen if you gave me a gun?
I don’t much like playing getaway-car driver either. Waiting in the car, thinking every hick in work shirt and overalls has spotted you. You, in a rundown car in their rundown town.
The people we rob look mostly like ordinary types eking out small livings, small-timers whose lives are probably ruined by our brief appearance in them. A couple of nights ago we robbed a ramshackle health food store in an almost empty town. The proprietors, man and wife, both of them in their sixties if not older, cowered behind a dusty, unevenly arranged stack of whole grain cereals. Didn’t even look like they’d had a customer in months. The woman had long straight white hair and wore a faded flannel gown. The man’s hair, also long and white, had streaks of brown in it and the hairs of his thin long beard looked like they’d been soldered together years ago.
Link, normally the gentlest of robbers, got angry when he found only a few bucks in the cash drawer. He held his gun straight out, pointed it at the man’s beard.
Where’s the real dough? he hollered.
Real dough, Link? I whispered. You really say that?
The old man said Link held all the cash they had in his fist, and the woman added that we were welcome to take any of the stock, insisting that, for nomads like us, on the run from the law, from life, food was more valuable than money anyway. Then she started describing our obvious vitamin deficiencies. Link cursed and strode out. Before he got into the car, he sent a couple of wild shots into the ai
r.
I took one look back. The man and woman stood at the door, pointed to the sack in my arms that contained the food and vitamins I’d hastily collected on my way out, and nodded knowingly. They waved at me quite cheerfully as we drove away.
Earlier today I felt really fed up. I told Link I was sick of ruining the lives of all the people we rob. He laughed.
These people got money up the ass, he said, cash under the floorboards, treasures in the attic. They got things worked out with bankers, accountants. They can’t lose. Bankruptcy’s sometimes the best thing happens to them all their lives. Ride with the music, Lee.
I remembered the old man and woman in the health food store. I doubted they had any annuities packed away anywhere, unless it was monthly deliveries of Vitamin B supplements.
Victor likes being an outlaw. He loves it. He steals clothes whenever he can. Driving away from a job, he throws the duds he doesn’t like out the window. The best dresses he wears to the robberies, says it makes him look less suspicious. Not long ago we encountered a black market dentist and, with some of our loot, bought him a new set of teeth. He is almost pleasant looking, as pleasant looking as he gets anyway. He has also turned our getaways into a kind of bizarre art form. He leaps into the car in moves I suspect he choreographs the night before.
Each time it’s my turn as driver and we speed away from a robbery, my heart nearly conks out. Throbbing pains all across my chest until we’re miles away. Nobody ever pursues us out of these small towns. No pursuit, no roadblocks. Whatever happened to roadblocks? Seems law and order’s broken down all over the nation. Still, I never feel safe until we reach an expressway. Things always seem better on an expressway.
* * * * *
We’ve been keeping the Rocky Mountains on our right for some time now. Link says we better not try to cross them, the car might not survive the trip. I am desperate to get to the coast. I want to see oceans, movie-blue water slipping and sliding over movie-grey rocks. I keep thinking, in a different kind of setting maybe I can work out a different kind of life. Link’d like to get to California, too, and figures we might be able to get there by a southwestern route. Although, he said sarcastically, the desert is probably just as likely to kill the car.
The mountains look misty today, drained of color. I want the color back, I want mountain contours that look less like a two-dimensional backdrop. There’s been an almost continual cloud cover for days. The sun seemed dimmed even when it did break through.
We pass small towns and Link doesn’t even glance at them. I guess he’s moody today, doesn’t want to rush in and rob a few unsuspecting slobs. All right with me.
He handles the Mustang well. Too bad he hates the car so much. Too bad he’s always bitching about needing some real wheels. I’d let him have this car, if only he’d really like it.
Victor’s nasal whine startles me awake. I hadn’t realized I was dozing off.
Take the next rest stop, he says, I got to pee. Sign says two miles to it.
Victor’s insistence on using proper lavatories instead of the side of the road once made Link angry. Now he just shrugs. The rest stop comes up and Link turns the car smoothly onto the access road.
At first sight the colony at this rest stop seems little different from any of a hundred others I’ve seen. There are fewer cars in the parking area, but that’s been the general trend since I started west. Not so many people and vehicles. A bit of the wide open spaces. What I’ve been looking for, right? Wrong. I used to think so, but wrong. For all their well-pressed clothes and cars in better condition, most of these people aren’t appreciably different from the types I used to work with in my infrequent office jobs. They’re trapped behind the wheels of their cars just like the city people are sealed behind rotting desks. They wander aimlessly over roads they’ve seen so much they’ve memorized them. It’s just another way of shuffling paper. You ask them about all this, they just say sure, fella, but at least we get to see trees and mountains instead of just a roomful of other desks. Maybe so, is my usual inspired reply. It’s a good point, maybe, but I wish their eyes had more life in them.
Link parks the car a few feet away from any clump of parked vehicles, so there’s lots of space around the Mustang. It’s his way. Myself, I usually pull up closer to other cars.
Victor is out of the car like a shot. We follow-at a more leisurely pace. The entrance to the restaurant building (once part of some chain called Harmony House) is casually ringed by a group of relaxed and happy-looking people who are distinctively dressed in bright-colored work shirts and clean stiff jeans. Each of them has a leather pouch draped quite fashionably over his or her shoulders. Edges of paper stick out from the pouches.
What kind of gang is this? I ask Link, who shrugs.
You got me. Nice looking bunch, though.
He’s right. They look like somebody’s collected all the Most Likely to Succeeds and Best Personalities from all the local high schools and brought them together for a positive thinking conference.
Victor is stopped by one of the pretty girls, who beams a smile at him that would melt the heart of anybody with a heart, but of course it does nothing for Victor. It certainly would melt my heart if some of the right questions went with it.
Look, he says, I’d just love to talk with you about that, but I got to get in there and use the facilities. First things first, okay?
Well, sure, hon, the pretty lady says. God’d never care to have one of his workers interferin’ with another’s natural flow. You get on in there, hear?
Well yeah, thank you, ma’am.
She is getting to Victor. I never saw him so polite before.
But you check back with me, hear?
Victor nods. The girl steps to the side allowing Victor through the ring of smiling people. Two handsome young men stand on either side of the girl and watch her dealings closely. They approve with sunny smiles that reveal teeth whose shine would draw the Lost Dutchman into daylight. Not missing a beat as Victor slips past her, she turns to Link and me. She smiles. My heart starts beating rapidly. I think of how embarrassed I'm going to be to fall dead at her feet.
Hello hon, and you too hon, she says to us. My name’s Theresa, you can call me Terry, and I’d like to talk to you about driving the natural unpaved road to God.
The what? I manage to say in spite of her mind-numbing smile. She ignores the question. Apparently she doesn’t want to miss a beat of her prepared speech.
God is sure enough tired of sitting behind the billboard of heaven, watching degraded man drive by in his evil combustion machines, ignoring heaven as if it’s just another pit stop on the race to oblivion. God’d like to zoom out from behind the billboard like the eternal and watchful traffic cop He is, but He can’t, you see. He can’t go pulling each and every one of us off to the side of the road and write a warning or a ticket that we don’t intend to pay off on anyhow. God’s got better things to do, hear? He can’t be traffic cop and judge and warden and chaplain all at the same time.
I thought he could, Link says. I thought that was easily within his powers.
She probably can’t detect the quiet menace in his voice the way I can, but his comments stop her spiel anyway. Her smile disappears for a fraction—oh, only the smallest fraction—of a second.
That’s a good one, hon. First time anybody’s thrown that one at me. Course I'm something of a novice, but I tell you, we don’t often get a sharpie out this way. You’re from the east. I'm right, right?
Yeah, sure. Look, I’d like to go inside, too, wash up.
Let’s talk this out first.
Link begins to pull nervously at his half-beard. His other hand has formed into a fist.
Look, he says, I don’t need this. Especially from a young punk like you, lady.
Terry’s two handsome guardians stiffen up and lean toward her. She waves them off.
Lady? she says demurely. Punk? ’Zat polite? I thought you easterners invented women’s lib. You don’t have to treat me
like a—
Link sighs.
I’m sorry if I insulted you. I’m tired out, on a short fuse. Look, I’m over forty and I don’t need to listen to any young person tell me how to run my life.
You’re over forty, Link? I say. Forty? You don’t look like, I mean, you never said—
Course I never said. Think I want you to know I’m this old geezer traveling around playing games with kids? I’ve always passed younger. It’s this ugly face, could be any age, so fuck off, Lee, all right? I’m tired of you putting your dime in everywhere. Just leave me alone.
Terry is smiling delightedly at us, happy to have caused so much trouble so quickly. She looks like everybody’s favorite yearbook picture. God should create an eternal high school just for types like her. The minute you see her, you want to take her to the prom. You want a white tux jacket and an orchid in a silver box. You want to rub up against her, press yourself through the tulle or organdy layers of her multi-petticoated gown. You want to take her to the beach, mess with her under a blanket. Not that she’d mess with you under a blanket, you just want her to. It would not take long to convince me that she was real and the rest of us were just props in her world. I have to look away from her. It doesn’t help. All the rest of this group is too good-looking. Terry’s not even unique. There’s a petite redhead down the way who may be even more beautiful.
Let’s get down to basics, Terry says. I believe in basics. ’V’ you accepted Jesus as your savior?
May I pass, miss? Link says. I got to—
You passin’ already, cowboy. You passin’ as a Christian, as a human being.
There’re some who’ve even denied me that status, Link says. Now get the fuck out of my way. Ah, excuse me, please get the fuck out of my way.
The whole group begins to close ranks.
Cool down, cowboy, Terry says. You’re on our land.
Your land? This rest stop?
Yep. Not only the rest stop, the whole area around, all of it belongs to God.
Link laughs.
It’s God’s rest stop? he says.
A Set Of Wheels Page 19