‘Sorry to hear about your brother,’ he said and shook his head. ‘I went by yesterday and sat with him.’
‘I’m going by this afternoon,’ I said.
‘Why do you think he did it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said.
‘Must’ve hurt,’ Tommy said.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘The last time he was in the hospital was for his leg too. It was almost a month he was in then, wasn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘You know, seeing him in there like that, I couldn’t help but think about that night we all hopped that train. That was one of the worst nights I’ve ever had.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that as well,’ I said.
‘It’s hard not to,’ Tommy said.
The phone rang then and he answered it. It was his uncle, and as they spoke my mind wandered back to that night by the railroad tracks.
Jerry Lee, Tommy, and I were at our old house, the one my mom left for us. We were drinking in the kitchen. I was fifteen. We decided we’d catch a freight train to San Francisco. I don’t know why exactly, just one of those things we used to sit around and think about. An adventure. We all dressed in our warmest clothes, and I had a pack and filled it with beer, some beef jerky, and a couple blankets. We walked down Fourth Street and then cut over to the tracks and sat in the darkness, drank beers and waited.
But hours passed and nothing happened, no train at all. I remember Jerry Lee had fallen asleep against a concrete piling, and Tommy and I were still drinking when a train finally came heading west. I can’t remember what time it was, but it was late, probably near dawn. I shook Jerry Lee awake as the train arrived, and we all got up and stood ready to catch it as it slowed through town sounding its horn in the quiet darkness. There were a few lumber cars and on them there were pockets where you could hide, so we decided we’d try for one of them. We picked a car and ran alongside chasing the metal ladder at the end of it. Tommy got on first, then me, but by this time the train had picked up speed again, and Jerry Lee, who was last, fell as he tried to get on. His leg, just below his knee, went under the train.
We both jumped off, not real sure of what was going on. He wasn’t even screaming, and all we knew for sure was that he didn’t make it. The train was moving pretty quickly by then and when I jumped off I fell and landed wrong on my arm. When I stood up I could see something pushing out my coat. I slowly took my parka off and you could see the bone pressing out against my flannel shirt. Tommy came running to me saying that Jerry Lee had gotten his leg cut off.
We went over and Tommy took off his belt and used it as a tourniquet, and then he wrapped a blanket around the stump and ran for help.
By the time the ambulance came only ten minutes had gone by. It was that fast, or at least it seemed like it. I remember while we waited I sat next to Jerry Lee. He was in shock and wasn’t saying anything, just sorta staring at the sky. I wasn’t sure what to do, I just held his hand and looked at him and told him he would be okay.
They found his leg and we brought it with us in the ambulance. They did things to him, put oxygen on him, started an IV, put some sorta thing over where his leg was. The leg itself they put in a bag. I couldn’t see it, though, I wasn’t sure where they kept it. I just sat there while the ambulance drove us the short distance to the hospital, and it wasn’t until they had brought him in, and he had disappeared to the emergency room, that I finally showed someone my arm.
It took a long time until they came to get me. Finally they took me to a room and numbed my arm and set the bone, sewed it up and put on a cast.
Jerry Lee was in the hospital for four weeks. We didn’t have any insurance. Our mother had been gone only six months, and the money she had left, we used on the hospital bill. It was a terrible time: Jerry Lee lost his leg, and we were in constant fear that they’d send us off to a foster home. My mom’s father from Montana was called and eventually came down to Reno. He met with the Children Services, as he was supposed to be our legal guardian. He stayed in town almost three weeks. He seemed like an okay guy, but both Jerry Lee and I weren’t sure about him and were nervous about living with him in Montana. But he and I moved us out of our old place and got rid of all our things, like the beds and the furniture, the dishes and the TV. We kept only what was small and a necessary. My grandfather got a room at the Virginian and I moved in there with him.
When Jerry Lee was finally getting better my grandfather decided that he couldn’t have us up in Montana after all, that he didn’t have enough room, that he was too old, that he didn’t have enough money. He was a retired mill worker. His back was wrecked and he lived on social security. I remember he stood in the hospital room and gave us $200 and his phone number, saying that he’d try to get us up there as soon as he could, if he could at all. He left the day that Jerry Lee was released.
When the time came we had a wheelchair and I pushed him out of the hospital down Fourth Street in the early sunlight. We didn’t know where to go, and finally just got a room at the Rancho Motel. I paid in advance for two weeks, and that left us with less than thirty dollars between us.
I remember then making two trips. The first was to get our things I’d left with the Locowanes, and the second was to the store, where I bought two loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a glass jar of jam, and a TV guide. When I got back Jerry Lee was laying on the bed watching the television. He said while I was gone he’d heard people yelling in the room next to us and had gotten scared, and the only thing that made sense to him was ordering a pizza. A large with pepperoni, mushrooms, and olives. When the pizza man came, I gave him the money, and tipped him with our second to last dollar.
‘Well, Frank,’ Tommy’s uncle said, bringing me back to where I was. ‘Frank, I wondered if you’d like to make a few bucks today?’
I nodded and told him of course I did.
It was an errand, he said, to pick up five guns from a broker in Carson City. He gave me the keys to his car and directions, and so I filled up my coffee and headed out the door.
15
THE JOB I HAD when my mother passed away had been washing cars under the table at Hurley’s Used Auto Hamlet. This was before the accident, before we needed more money. I did it after school, and on Saturdays and Sundays. My bosses were the old man, Earl Hurley, and his grandson Barry, a guy who always wore light blue suits and drank Budweiser. He was married to a real great looking girl named Helen, who wore sunglasses all the time. You couldn’t help but stare at her. I remember I’d bring Jerry Lee by sometimes when I knew she’d be there just so he could see her. She and Barry were always together; they were in love with each other and most evenings when I was there she’d stop by on her way home from work and pick up a different car.
She drove a different one every day of the week, or at least every day she felt like it, I guess. On Saturdays she would bring us food. Sometimes Chinese, or Mexican, or sub sandwiches. A couple times in the summer she’d set up the grill there at the lot, and we’d have a barbecue. She’d wear an apron and her hair would be pulled back and she always wore shorts and a tight T-shirt.
But it was Earl, the old man and head boss, who I really got to know. He was the one that I always went to talk to. He’s the one that’s probably the greatest man I know.
Right after my mother died, maybe a couple weeks later, I was washing this car, it was a Saturday, middle of the day. I even remember the car, an American Motors Company 1985 Eagle. A copper/gold four door. I had rinsed it down and was beginning to wash it when I stopped, and just stood there, frozen almost, and began crying. I was doing that quite a bit back then. It was hard to explain, but sometimes, out of nowhere, I’d just stop and daze off and I’d cry or I’d start hyperventilating and I wouldn’t be able to stop.
I guess that time, the time I’m talking about, Earl had been watching me ’cause he came out of the office and walked over to me.
‘It’s all right, son,’ he said in a soft voice as he nea
red me. He was smoking a cigarette. He had sunglasses on, the kind that lighten in darkness and darken in light, and he wore a brown suit with white dress shoes.
‘You all right?’
‘What?’ I barely got out.
‘I said, are you all right?’ He was smiling. ‘You in there?’
I just looked at him. I was unable to speak. The tears were still running down my face.
‘First thing is, drop the sponge and fuck this car,’ he said. ‘Probably no use even washing it. We’ll probably never sell this son of a bitch anyway. AMCs are worthless. For a time they were all right, but the later models, Jesus, they just went to hell. You hungry? It’s about that time, let’s go get a bite to eat.’
I dropped the sponge I had in a bucket. I wiped the tears from my eyes with my shirt. Barry was sitting in the front office watching TV when Earl told him we were going for some food.
‘Get me something too,’ Barry said.
‘What do you want?’ Earl said.
‘I don’t know, where you guys going?’
‘We’re gonna go eat the puss out of a dead hog’s ass,’ Earl said in his gruff voice and lit another cigarette.
‘Get me mine without ketchup,’ Barry said and laughed.
‘Will do’ was all old man Hurley said as we left.
He drove us in a 1994 Cadillac two-door Seville to a place called the Halfway Club on Fourth Street. An Italian place run by an old lady, a woman who’d run it for years and years. Maybe forty years. I can’t remember exactly if it’s that long, but it’s close.
Earl ordered me a Coke and himself a Long Island Ice Tea.
‘I’m sorry as hell about your mother,’ he said while we were looking at the menu. He was smoking a cigarette, and you could almost see the lenses on his glasses change in the dimly lit room. ‘When I lost my wife, I about lost my fucking mind, and, shit, you’re only, what, sixteen?’
‘I just turned fifteen,’ I said.
‘I hired you when you were fourteen?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
He laughed and shook his head.
‘Did I ask you your age?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Did you tell me you were sixteen?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was too nervous to mention age at all.’
‘What the hell was I thinking?’ he said and shook his head again. ‘Anyway, that’s beside the point. How’s your living situation, is it okay? I want you to be honest, son.’
‘My brother and me are living at our old house.’
‘You rent or own?’
‘Rent,’ I said.
‘That’s a setback. Your brother, he’s what, eighteen?’
‘Seventeen,’ I said.
‘You got no other family?’
‘Not really, I don’t think so. We had a grandfather but he turned out to be a real son of a bitch,’ I said.
‘You got any money?’
‘My mom’s retirement fund. We have that and we both work. It’s enough, I think.’
‘What you guys eat?’
‘Frozen dinners, we eat at Jim Boys a lot. Burger King, places like that.’
‘You got to eat better than that. At least hit the buffets. Get a salad, some fruit and vegetables once in a while. Get some vitamins.’ He stopped, took a drink, then went into his billfold and took from it a twenty-dollar bill. ‘This here’s for a big bottle of vitamins. Get some sorta multi, make your brother take them too. If I find you pissed the twenty away on anything else, I’ll castrate you. Understand?’
‘Understand,’ I said and took the money. I folded it and put it in my pants pocket.
‘What do you two do at night?’
‘Watch TV mostly.’
‘What kind?’
‘Sitcoms, I guess. Whatever’s on.’
‘You got to quit that,’ he said. ‘TV’s for fucking morons.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘I’m serious.’
‘I’ll try to lay off some.’
‘Good,’ Earl said. ‘How’s school? You still playing baseball?’
‘Yeah, I’m playing all right. I’m starting on second. They moved me up to varsity. Jerry Lee, my brother, just dropped out. Sometimes I think I might too. Doesn’t seem like there’s much there except sports, and I really don’t like them that much anymore.’
‘Don’t drop out,’ Earl said and took a long drink off the Long Island, nearly finishing it. ‘You won’t miss anything if you don’t quit. All you’ll do is wash more cars or get some other stupid fucking job. You’ll never see any girls around, none your age, and they won’t touch you ’cause you’re not in school and you have no money. Girls love baseball players. You keep playing and you’ll be set. What’s your brother do?’
‘Works for Connelly Concrete.’
‘See what I mean. That’s gotta be a horrible fucking job.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘His back will be gone by the time he’s forty.’
I nodded my head.
‘It’s convict labor, son. You two ain’t convicts, so don’t start acting like it,’ he said and took the napkin off the table and wiped his brow. ‘Your brother still drawing?’
‘That’s all he does. Sketches things, makes comics, things like that.’
‘I liked that naked girl he drew standing in front of the lot. I had it framed and keep it at the house. How’d he get into that?’
‘I don’t know exactly. He started it more when our mom got sick. He’d just sit in front of the TV and draw. I think he’s taken some classes.’
‘Tell him he’ll get laid a lot more if he stays in school and hangs out with art girls. God knows there’s a lot of them beating around. See if that changes his mind at all.’
‘I will.’
‘What were you thinking out there? I mean, when you were just standing there. I think I clocked you at ten minutes, maybe fifteen. I didn’t see you move once. Just standing there with the hose.’
‘I just started thinking about stuff. I’m not sure why it happens. I don’t know, guess I get scared, and sometimes I sorta black out because of it.’
‘I’d be scared too. If I were you I’d be shitting in my pants. It’s hard being alone.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘I hope so. There’s a good chance you might be,’ he said and looked for the old lady who ran the place. When she came around he ordered another drink and another Coke for me.
‘Seems like you’re a pretty tough kid. Look, here’s a piece of advice. I don’t know if it’s any good or not for you, you’re the only one who’ll know if it is. What you got to do is think about the life you want, think about it in your head. Make it a place where you want to be: a ranch, a beach house, a penthouse on the top of a skyscraper. It doesn’t matter what it is, but a place that you can hide out in. When things get rough, go there. And if you find a place and it quits working, just change it. Change it depending on the situation, depending on your mood. Look at it this way, it’ll be like your good luck charm. Make up a place that’s good, that gives you strength, that no one can take away. Then when everybody’s on your ass, or you can’t stop thinking about your mom, you can go there.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘Does that make sense?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Could it help my brother Jerry Lee?’
‘I don’t know. Tell him to try it. Or tell him about yours. I used to tell Barry stories all the time when his life was rough. Some of them were true, others I just made up, but they seemed to help him out. Gave him a place to escape to, gave him hope. Hope is the key. You can make shit up, there’s no law against that. Make up some place you and your brother can go if you want. It might not work, but it might. Ain’t too hard to try.’
‘Do you have a place you go?’
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I go to it a couple times a day. Being an old man, I can’t sleep worth a shit anymore, sometimes late at night I’ll just lay there, and wonder what t
he fuck I’m going to do. I’m sleeping with nothing but a couple old dogs who steal the covers, I own a half-ass used car lot, and I can’t stop drinking. Sure, I got a place.’
‘The lot’s great,’ I said.
‘Shit, kid, it’s a waste of fucking time,’ he said.
‘You keep getting more cars,’ I said.
‘That’s not the point. I’m not the point,’ he said and smiled. ‘You’re the point.’
‘I’ll get a place,’ I said.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I hope it helps. If you need anything, anything at all, just let me know. I’m not bullshitting about that either. Let me or Barry know. Barry’s a good one, he’s been through the wringer so he might be able to help you out more than me. I’m talking money and advice. If you get in any trouble, shit like that. It’s easy to get in trouble when you first get out on your own. Everyone does. You probably will, so just let me know. And try to stay in school. I’m serious. Life can fuck you hard. You got to be smart about the decisions you make. School’s easy, there’s girls, you can get free lunch there, you can probably get breakfast too, it’s more or less peaceful. Better than working for Connelly Concrete.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said.
‘Good,’ he said and smiled. ‘Now let’s eat. They got great ravioli and great pizza. The service is slow, the old lady keeps getting older, but she can still cook, and we don’t have any place we got to be either. Barry can fend for himself.’
‘All right,’ I said and smiled at him. ‘But we got to remember to get him something to eat.’
‘Good memory, son. After this,’ he said, ‘I’m thinking we’ll either go bowling or maybe go down to the Cal Neva and you can watch me gamble.’
That evening as I lay in bed I stared out the window into the black, starless sky. Jerry Lee was moving around in his bed, I could hear him, and I knew he wasn’t asleep either. It was past midnight when finally I called to him and told him what Earl Hurley had said that day.
‘Makes sense to me,’ Jerry Lee announced when I had finished.
The Motel Life Page 6