‘Don’t say that.’
‘You remember Wilson Dunlap?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘Wilson was the guy growing pot plants in his basement. I can’t remember how many he had exactly, but he had a lot. He had the lights, a humidity machine, and that special nature music always playing. He was a hell of a nice guy. We used to sit around his basement, just him and me, smoke weed and talk to his plants. It was more like a science project. Biology or something. I really liked that part of it,’ cause it didn’t seem like he was doing something against the law. I mean, we were growing things, from just seeds. That’s crazy, isn’t it? But the plants, something happened to them and they wouldn’t get any bigger. A lot of them started turning brown, wilting. He got so depressed about it I thought he’d kill himself. Seriously. He was strange that way. Then he began asking people what they thought was wrong. He got drunk one night and told a guy that he’d met in the bar about it. The guy said it had to do with lighting, that he’d had the same problem himself. So Wilson takes the guy to his house. The guy was an undercover cop, and Wilson got three years in Carson City.
‘I couldn’t believe it. His girlfriend said he would probably get out in one and a half, but still that’s almost two years. He didn’t hurt anybody. He just sat around with his plants and worked at a video store. I remember I saw his girlfriend one night, I forget where we were, but she asked me if I would go visit him. I didn’t want to, hell I really didn’t, but I took a day off and she drove me out there. I almost didn’t go in. I started thinking crazy thoughts. Maybe they’d end up throwing me in there. I don’t know, maybe somehow they’d find something out about me. Anyway, I sat in the lot debating it, and finally I said to myself, “If I was in there I sure hope he’d be there visiting me.” And then I went in through the gates and did it.
‘Now he’d only been in there a month or two. And when I saw him, he started crying. Not just tears, but sobbing. Like a child. He told me he didn’t know if he could take it. He told me he wished he was dead. Each night, he said, he prayed that he wouldn’t wake in the morning.
‘I talked to him for a while, but I didn’t know what to say. That was the only time I went. I guess I ain’t much of a friend, but I couldn’t take it after that. I just couldn’t. When he got out I went to see him at his mom’s place, but he was different. I don’t know how he changed, but he did. Maybe he was just colder, more reserved. It’s hard to explain. I don’t know if I could take it.’
‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ I said after a time. ‘Maybe we just get rid of the car somehow and head back to Reno. Maybe no one will know anything. It wasn’t your fault some stupid kid couldn’t ride a bike.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Just seems like more than that somehow.’ He began crying.
I turned on the inside light and looked around at him. He was sitting there with his hat down to his eyes and a pocket knife in his hand, pressing into the palm of his other hand. Blood was there leaking all over his hand and dripping down on the floorboards.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said and turned back around and shut off the light.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
I began getting jittery.
‘You’re gonna have to stop crying. We got to figure out what we’re gonna do about it.’
I took two beers out of the grocery sack, opened one for myself, and gave him one.
‘I fell deep this time, didn’t I, Frank?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘But we’ll figure it out. We have to. I mean, first off, what do you do with a car like this? I mean, it’s got numbers. Maybe someone is looking for the car, who knows? If someone saw you hit that kid, if that taxi did, then they’ll know it was you, and it’ll look bad that we left town.’
‘Jesus, Frank, I don’t know why we left.’
‘We shouldn’t have,’ I said.
‘You know, they tattooed a Hitler sign on Wilson Dunlap. His girlfriend was half Jewish. He didn’t hate anyone. He said he had to. They made him. A bunch of guys in prison did.’ Cause you have to side with someone, you know? Jesus, I don’t want Hitler tattooed on me.’
I looked out the window. There was a restaurant across the street. From the car I could just make out that there were people inside.
‘Let’s go get something to eat at that diner.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jerry Lee said, ‘I don’t feel like being around anyone. You go. I don’t think I can eat anyway. I’m gonna just sit here.’
So I finished my beer, put on my hat, zipped up my coat, and got out of the car.
With the snow coming down, the street lights lit up the main road like it was almost day, it was so bright out. As I walked across the street I saw an old man and woman playing cards in the camper of their truck. They were parked outside the diner. Then I heard somebody honk, and I knew without looking who it was. I turned and saw Jerry Lee slowly driving the Dodge out of town. I stood there and watched until the tail lights just flickered into nothing.
9
AFTER STANDING THERE for a while, looking down the road, I went to where we were parked to see if he had left my things. There were food wrappers, a nearly empty Jim Beam bottle laying on the ground, but also my sleeping bag and a six-pack of beer.
I put my things in the covered doorway of the auto body shop and went across the street and into the restaurant.
There was a wood stove burning in the center of the room, and there were deer heads on the wall, and a stuffed rattlesnake curled with its head raised and its fangs out resting on top of the cigarette machine.
I sat at the counter and kept looking out the window expecting to see Jerry Lee, but each time I looked back there was nothing, just the falling snow and the street lights in the distance.
The waitress poured me coffee and gave me a menu. She was smiling and talking to the other people at the counter. She wore an old metal brace on her right leg, which made her limp. I could see the cook: he was an older man, overweight, smoking cigarettes in the back. After she gave me coffee I looked in my wallet and saw I had only sixty-seven dollars left.
I asked her if they had a bus that went through. She coughed and said there was a bus, Greyhound, but that it wouldn’t be coming through town until tomorrow afternoon.
‘That is if it can make it,’ she said. ‘This snow doesn’t look like it’ll let up. Maybe, but maybe not. You never can tell. I don’t trust forecasts anymore. They plow, but you’ll just have to see.’
‘Where do I pick it up?’
‘Right here when it comes. We open at seven. The bus, if it shows, will be here anywhere from two on.’
‘You know how much it is?’
‘It’s twenty-two dollars fifty to Boise, anywhere else I don’t know. You can call them from the payphone in the back. It’s next to the bathroom.’
I got up and went to the phone and looked up the number for Greyhound and called them. The fare to Reno was sixty-one dollars seventy-five. That only left me with around seven dollars.
I ordered toast and milk to help my stomach, and listened to the radio they had playing until the restaurant closed two hours later.
When I left I began walking around the small town, but there wasn’t much to see and my feet began to freeze, so I picked up my things and looked for somewhere to sleep.
I found a small grocery store that was closed down. There was a For Sale sign in the window. It had once been a filling station and had a huge overhang, and I stopped underneath that, got in my sleeping bag, and waited for morning.
The snow stopped during the night. I got up once to take a leak and I checked the road and it didn’t look too bad. I went back to sleep and when I woke the next time, there were no clouds and the sun was coming up. I got out of my sleeping bag, got dressed, and began walking around to warm up.
The same lady who closed the restaurant drove up in an old white Ford pick-up. She opened the restaurant, and let me in.
‘You been walk
ing around all night?’
‘Kind of. I had a sleeping bag.’
‘It’s a good thing you didn’t freeze,’ she said. ‘You know how to start a fire?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Well, you get the wood stove burning, bring in some wood from the back, and I’ll cook you breakfast.’
I thanked her and followed her in.
I got the fire going okay and when I stacked enough wood she cooked me a ham and cheese omelet, hash browns, and toast. The food tasted better than any I could remember. The morning customers began arriving, and I sat at the end of the counter and ate by myself. When I was done I drank hot chocolate and waited. Every time the waitress would pass by I thanked her and pretty soon she made a joke of it that I did. I got her address and told myself I’d pay her back when I had the dough. Maybe I’d get her some sort of gift or at least send her a postcard.
Once in a while I’d look out the window for the Dodge and Jerry Lee, but each time I saw a car go by, or a customer arrive, my heart fell as it was never him.
My mind started to drift and I began thinking about Annie James, which I hated, but they just kind of fell on me, my memories of her did. She was the only girlfriend I’d ever had, and the only girl besides a prostitute I’d been with. For a while she and her mom lived three doors down from me and Jerry Lee at the Sutro Motel on Fourth Street.
Her mother was an on-and-off-again prostitute who had been fired from most of the local brothels for drinking, drugs, things like that. She’d stay up for days at a time as she liked speed. Annie told me stories about her. There were a lot of fucked-up ones, she told me, but I’d also seen it with my own eyes.
Annie James and I met in the parking lot of that motel, and once we got to know each other she would stay some nights with me and Jerry Lee in our room. I was eighteen then. She was seventeen. She went to high school and tried hard at it. When Jerry Lee and I’d be watching TV in the evening, she’d just sit there on the bed reading or doing her homework. She was like that, worked hard. She didn’t have a temper either, she wasn’t mean like her mom. Her mom had an edge most of the time where you never knew what would happen or what she’d say. Sometimes she’d be nice, polite, and then an hour later, maybe less, you’d hear her yelling from three doors away like a crazed maniac.
Annie James is blonde, skinny, with dark blue eyes. When I knew her, she kept her hair back in a ponytail. She was funny too, said funny things, and she had a good smile.
The memory that came to me while I was sitting there in that diner was of a night when she was still in high school and she was spending the night at our room at the Mizpah.
She came over late and me and Jerry Lee were in bed watching TV. She didn’t say much and just sat on the bed and soon after I fell asleep. The next time I woke it was the middle of the night and she was laying on her back listening to a small radio I kept by my bed.
‘Did I wake you?’ she asked.
‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘No,’ she said and I got up and went to turn on the small lamp I had on my dresser.
‘Please don’t turn on the light,’ she said.
‘It’s all right, Jerry Lee can sleep through anything.’
In the dim light I could see her in her underwear and bra. Her left arm was turned palm up with a pillow under it and I could see three marks running horizontally across the inside of her arm.
‘What happened?’ I said.
‘I burned myself with my curling iron.’
I moved closer to her and looked at them. They were dark red with patches of white from blistering.
‘You don’t curl your hair,’ I told her.
‘Sometimes I do,’ she said.
‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to stay there. You can stay with me. She’s crazy.’
‘I want to leave,’ she said. ‘But you don’t mean it, do you?’
‘You can stay here for good if you want.’
‘I might have to,’ she said finally and tried to keep herself from crying. ‘Are you sure it would be okay?’
‘I am,’ I said.
‘You think Jerry Lee would mind?’
‘I’ll ask him but I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘He likes you. We could get your things tomorrow.’
‘Let me think about how to do it without her going nuts,’ she said. ‘I’ll figure it out, okay?’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Does it hurt bad?’
‘I put some burn cream on that I got from the drug store and that helps.’
‘We could go get breakfast if you’re hungry,’ I said.
‘I’d like to but it hurts too much to put on a shirt. I know what you could do, you could tell me a story like the ones you tell Jerry Lee.’
‘What do you want it to be about?’
She was silent for a time then said, ‘Maybe it could be you and me on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. With the sun and we could go swimming all day long and sleep on the beach. But like in James Bond, you know? Like the one where he’s on that island. The one we saw the other night. If you could, you could make us like that.’
‘Goldfinger?’ I said.
‘Maybe. We watched a whole bunch of them, it was a marathon, don’t you remember?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Will you tell me one?’
‘I’ll try,’ I said and turned off the light and lay next to her on the bed.
‘One morning, and it was a cold one too, we went down this deserted road towards town. I was walking you to school. We were eating donuts and I was drinking coffee. You were drinking hot chocolate,’ cause you don’t like coffee. Even soaked in sugar and milk you don’t. So we walk towards downtown to where you could catch the bus, but all of a sudden a car pulls up. A big black Cadillac with tinted windows, and these two big guys come out, and they’re really strong and they grab us. One guy gets you, one guy gets me, and they put us in the car. Luckily we still had our donuts and our drinks because they drove us all the way to San Francisco without stopping. We asked them what was going on, but they wouldn’t speak to us. We were both really scared. But it was warm in the car and we just sat there waiting.
‘Well, they took us into a warehouse on some pier. Then they separated you and me. We were yelling for each other. “Annie,” I yelled. “Annie, I’ll find you,” I said. “Wait for me, Frank,” you said. “Don’t give up hope!” Then they took me to this room and made me change clothes. They gave me an orange jumpsuit and I put it on. They put a chain around my neck that had a small tag with the number fifteen on it. The chain I couldn’t get off, it was that tight, they had permanently locked it on. Then this guy came, like a doctor, and he said, “Fifteen, roll up your sleeves.” And so I did. He took a blood sample, then he took my temperature, checked my heart, all that sorta thing, and then they led me onto this yacht, and that’s when I saw you again. You were dressed in the same orange jumpsuit and your number was sixteen. The boat was huge, but it wasn’t like a ship, like a naval boat or anything, and it wasn’t as big as a cruise ship, it was just a big yacht. A boat for rich people. Well, this other guy, who was Number Four, told us to follow him. So we did, we didn’t know what else to do. We went below deck and then you could hear the ship moving and we left San Francisco. They stuck me in the kitchen. As a cook’s assistant. The fat-ass cook, he was Number Seven. You were stuck in house cleaning, with a lady, an old mean bag, Number Ten. No one said anything. I asked and asked Number Seven about you, and each time I did the chain around my neck would shock me, and let me tell you it hurt like hell. So we’d cook, bake, fry, cut and chop. That’s all I did. For eight hours, maybe twelve hours, that first day. We made some great stuff, though. Soups and casseroles, Chinese food, Mexican, even pies. I made Number Seven make a few peach pies ’cause I know it’s your favorite. We even had a prime rib cooking, and it was twice as good as at the Fitz. That night, after shift, they took me to a room and threw me in. It was dark inside and when I found a light, I turned i
t on, and there you were laying on the bed. It was a nice bed too. A queen size with good sheets and a warm blanket. There was a big window and if you looked out you could see the moon and the stars and the rolling sea. We lay in bed together, and you said, “I hate cleaning, but everything is clean already so we quit early. Number Ten, at first she was a mean old bag, but then we started playing cribbage, and then we ate this great prime rib dinner. They even had peach pie.”
‘So the next day came and the next day went, and it was like that for a long time, for weeks, for months. Then one evening there was a terrible storm out, and Number Seven was worried as hell and told me that we were gonna just make sandwiches, that he was too scared to cook. So I chopped up carrot and celery sticks while he made them. “We’re so damn close to our destination we can’t sink, can we?” he would say as sweat poured down his face. I didn’t know what to think, so I went into the fridge and took out the last peach pie and I set it on a tray, and then I made a thermos of coffee, got a few Cokes, and a couple cold turkey sandwiches and I told him I was gonna head back to the room and wait it out. When I got there, you were sitting at the table looking out at the rough sea. I set the food down, and we ate lunch and watched. Then we got sleepy and took a nap but when we woke, it was to lightning. The loudest lightning you’ve ever heard, and after a while the ship got hit. “Holy shit,” you said and we got dressed and went out to see what was going on. It was crazy, we saw the old man, Number One, he was in a gold wheelchair. He had a metal eye, and his hands were just hooks. “Looks like we’re done,” is all he said and then the speedboat that was hanging on a crane broke free and fell on him. I told you to hold on and I went below, and I filled a bag full of food and water. Hell, I took a whole prime rib and three pies and a ton of other stuff then I came back to where you were, and suddenly you were wearing a bikini.’
The Motel Life Page 3