The Motel Life

by Willy Vlautin

  In Elko I got us a room in a small motel called the Traveler’s Inn. It was downtown, fifties style, with an old blue sign, and they took dogs and had HBO. I paid the clerk for two beds then went into the room, turned the heater on full, and brought Jerry Lee in and put him in the bed closest to the toilet. The dog got up on the bed next to Jerry Lee and I turned on the TV and went through the channels until Jerry Lee found something he wanted to watch.

  ‘I’m going to go out for something to eat,’ I told him. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I ain’t hungry,’ Jerry Lee said. ‘Sorta thirsty, though. You get me some water, maybe some Popsicles. That trip sorta took it out of me. Maybe if we could hole up here for a couple days, then I’ll be good.’

  ‘We got some dough, we could stay here a while.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jerry Lee said. ‘I sure like the dog. Makes me want to kill the fuckhead that stuck him out there on that chain.’

  ‘At least we got him now.’

  ‘The three amigos.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘You get me some candy too. Something to suck on. Don’t care what. Maybe Life Savers.’

  ‘I will,’ I said and zipped up my coat, put on my ski cap and left.

  I walked for a long time around the streets of Elko. It’s a small western Nevada town that was at one time a cowboy town. Now it’s mostly just run by mining. It has a main street with shops and bars and restaurants. It has a couple casinos and is set off the highway and surrounded by sagebrush and hills. It was an all right place, it seemed.

  I found a grocery store and bought a TV guide and a package of Popsicles, a gallon of water, and some candy. Lemon drops, Life Savers, and a variety pack of miniature candy bars. I found a row of Basque restaurants and went inside one named the Star and ordered two soups and one full steak dinner to go.

  When I got back to the room, Jerry Lee was sitting up watching a movie, The Searchers.

  ‘This is a good one,’ he told me. ‘It’s about a girl that gets stolen by the Indians, maybe in Texas, I’m not sure, but John Wayne, he and a couple other guys spend years trying to find her, to get her back. It’s his niece, I think, I can’t remember.’

  ‘How long has it been on?’ I asked him.

  ‘You missed only the first half-hour.’

  ‘I got you some Basque soup.’

  ‘I ain’t hungry.’

  ‘You got to eat.’

  ‘Did you bring any bread?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I only eat soup when there’s bread with it.’

  ‘I know,’ I said and handed him the Styrofoam container of soup. I gave him all the bread in the sack and a small plastic spoon.

  We ate in silence and watched the movie.

  It was near the end when he fell asleep. I left the show on and turned off the lights and got into my bed.

  I don’t know what time it was, but it was early, maybe three or four in the morning, when Jerry Lee woke me saying that he had to use the toilet and wasn’t sure he could get up on his own. I got up, helped him there, and shut the door behind him. I turned on the TV and flipped through the stations until he was ready and then went back in and helped him to bed.

  After that we lay in the darkness, both of us awake and unable to sleep.

  ‘All right, Frank, it’s story time. I can’t sleep no more.’

  ‘What kind you want to hear?’

  ‘Something funny. Set here, in Elko. I don’t care if it has women in it. I’m not feeling that way, a naked girl don’t mean that much to me tonight. Make it like The Searchers.’

  ‘You know in Star Trek Voyager, the space-time continuum?’

  ‘I’ve heard it,’ Jerry Lee said, ‘but I don’t know what it means.’

  ‘See, what happened is we were in Elko, lived here, grew up here. Who knows why or how, but we were. Sent back in goddamn time, that’s what happened. You had all your appendages, as they say, and we were more than healthy. I myself could have been on the cover of Fitness. We were coming to town to spend the weekend like we would on occasion. We had some dough, and we were well liked by everyone. See, we owned a big old ranch, a huge spread, maybe five hundred acres, north of here. We had a river and hundreds of cattle. We were really damn successful. So we ride in one day on our horses, we only ride ex-champion racehorses, and the dog, he’s with us too running alongside. So like I said, we’re heading in, but on the way we come across this campfire and a group of men. They’re on our land. We knew everyone in the county, but these guys we didn’t know.

  ‘They stop us, and there stands a guy, a big huge hairy guy with a beard. He looks like Bluebeard the pirate. A cross between him and an inbred hillbilly. He’s got a gun and he’s pointing it at us. Him and maybe five of his men. Anyway, this black guy’s with him, and you and me ain’t ever seen a black guy before, and we start staring at him and then the black guy pulls a dart gun out and shoots us both in the neck with a poisonous dart. We both fall off our horses and we’re out. Not dead, but unconscious. The horses head back to the ranch to hide and the dog runs off into the sagebrush and waits.

  ‘Anyway, they tie us up, blindfold us, then stick us on a cargo train with some other guys who are all passed out as well. They lock us all inside. The train takes us to San Francisco. We’re up by now, but groggy, out of our minds, sick. Maybe five other guys are with us, all in the same situation. Crazy thing is, we know a few of the guys. There’s Joe Riley from Winnemucca, there’s Pete O’Hara from the O’Hara ranch, and then there’s old man Jenkins, the owner of the biggest ranch in Nevada, the Jenkins ranch, the spread right next to ours. See, old man Jenkins, he’s been like our father. Our patron saint is old man Jenkins.

  ‘He’s taking this ride especially hard ’cause like I said he’s old. The worst thing about the situation we were in was, you, me, and Jenkins were to meet for dinner at the Star, then head down to the red-light district. It was our weekly meeting. It was like our church. So we were pissed off, pretty damn upset.

  ‘Well, in San Francisco they put us on a boat, a huge ship bound for Siam. We’d been shanghaied. All of us. They knocked us out again, and by the time we were all up, we were in the middle of the goddamn Pacific Ocean.’

  ‘That’s fucking horrible,’ Jerry Lee said.

  ‘The crew, they’re a bunch of insane lunatics, and the officers ordering us around were even worse. The captain was an alcoholic blood drinker who only liked young boys. He was the son of some admiral and that’s how he got his command, but he spent all his time dressing in women’s clothes, and when he was in uniform he wore it with high heels and make-up, and his fingernails were painted and he had a talking parrot. The rest of the crew were all addicted to morphine and that’s how the captain kept control of them, by restricting their morphine doses. Plus, even though he wore women’s clothes and had a fifteen-year-old boy held prisoner in his quarters, he was a mean homicidal maniac. Lethal with guns, knives, and nun chucks.

  ‘Well, we did all right, you and me. We worked hard, kept our mouths shut and took care of Jenkins. We did his work for him and nursed him back to health. It wasn’t that lucky for O’Hara or Riley. They tried to take over the ship. They killed four of the captain’s men before the captain himself came out wearing nothing but a corset and shot O’Hara and Riley in the head and threw their bodies overboard himself. And you know O’Hara, he weighed about three hundred pounds. The captain was small, not over five feet five inches tall. But he picked up O’Hara and raised him over his head and began screaming bloody murder. He must have held him up like that for a minute or two before tossing him over. Then he stood there with O’Hara’s blood all over him, and started screaming again, wiping the blood all over himself. After that we knew our only option was to wait it out.

  ‘Well, months went on, and Jenkins got better. He’d get up each morning and do push-ups. He began working with us. He began eating better and at night we’d sit out on the top deck, and in the moonlight over the Pacific Ocean he�
��d teach us what he knew. About the cattle business, about his ranch, about his tricks for growing alfalfa. He told us which land we should buy and which we should stay away from. He told us who we could trust in town, and who, no matter what it looked like, would betray us in the end. He taught us how to gamble and how not to gamble. How to drink and not to drink.

  ‘It was like school, and we just sat there and asked question after question and by the time we reached the harbor in Bangkok, he had taught us everything he knew, and we remembered it.

  ‘Well, we were confined to the ship, we were never able or allowed to get off. Then they began to load the ship with new supplies and cargo, and you and me and Jenkins we didn’t know what to do. Jenkins was a great swimmer but you and me couldn’t swim and none of us wanted to end up like O’Hara or Riley so we just waited for our chance. And then one night the captain brings all these young boys on the ship. He decides to have a party. They roast a pig, they take peyote, they drink gallons upon gallons of rum. It went on for days and slowly you and me slip into the party, kill the crew one by one and throw them overboard. Little did we know a school of sharks were gathering around the boat eating all the bodies we were throwing over, and in the middle of the night the captain comes out of his quarters in a bikini. He orders for the plank to be set out as he wanted to go for a midnight swim. Then he walked out on the plank and did this amazing swan dive, Olympic caliber, into the warm Siam water. Minutes later he was eaten alive by the sharks. After that there was just us, a couple of the crew and the partygoers. The remaining crew and boys were freaked out, but relieved that he was finally gone. They all went ashore, leaving only old man Jenkins, you, and me.

  ‘We checked the supplies and we were full of food and cargo, so we pulled anchor and rose the sails. There was decent wind brewing from the southeast and we headed out of the harbor, and finally into the Pacific Ocean. It was hard going for a time, though. The sea was rough, but old man Jenkins he’d been a captain of a ship before and knew how to get us through it.

  ‘Luckily, yes luckily, we made it to Hawaii, and spent a fine month on the island of Maui recuperating. Our days were with Hawaiian girls swimming in the ocean and barbecuing. Our nights were with Hawaiian girls and parties and dances. The girls, Jesus, they were beautiful and they thought we were the best looking guys they’d ever seen, they thought we were kings. We treated them well and we gave them all the cargo on the ship and told them to watch out for the white man. Old man Jenkins found a load of antibiotics and things like that and we immunized the whole island and gave them all the guns we had. Jenkins would spend long nights with the chief of the island, talking, discussing the future. They set up cannons on the beaches. They formed a militia and learned guerilla warfare.

  ‘When our work was done we got back on the ship and once again headed towards San Francisco and back to the great state of Nevada. But then, Jesus, there was another fucking storm. And what a storm it was. This one was worse than the other, and it took its toll on all of us. Especially old man Jenkins. He got us through it, but the ship was in bad shape as the sails broke off in a hurricane. We drifted aimlessly on the sea for days.

  ‘We ended up off the coast of Mexico. Jenkins was bedridden, worn out, and by this point, I’m afraid to say, dying. He sacrificed himself to save us. We didn’t know what to do, and all the dinghies were gone. We could see the coast but we couldn’t swim.

  ‘Weeks went by and we spent our time drinking beer and laying in the sun. Old man Jenkins got a little better. We made him rum cocktails as he laid out on the deck warming himself. We caught him huge swordfish and tunas.

  ‘Then one afternoon two guys row up in a dinghy. Goddamn if it isn’t a young Earl Hurley, maybe only forty-five, and Jesus Christ, with him is Willie Nelson, and he’s maybe thirty and he’s carrying that old damn guitar of his. Well, we help them aboard and we all have a few drinks and tell them our story and show them around the boat. We tell them about O’Hara and Riley. We tell them about the captain and the party and the sharks, we tell them about Hawaii and to stay away from Maui unless they mention old man Jenkins’s name.

  ‘Well, we dropped the anchor and all got on the dinghy, and Willie and I rowed us to shore. Earl Hurley had a nice house on the beach and we stayed there hoping Jenkins would get better. Earl brought in a couple doctors, but Jenkins was dying, he knew it and we did as well.

  ‘He was too sick to make it back to his ranch so he had us bring in lawyers from the States and he wrote his will, leaving his spread, his ranch in Elko, to you and me. We all sat around him the last couple days. He held meetings with us, final coaching and counseling, preparing us for the life that would be before us. Then on a warm rainy night old man Jenkins passed on, and Jesus, were we sad. Willie Nelson found me in the street with a bottle of whiskey crying in the rain. That’s how he wrote that damn song “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” ’cause my blue eyes were crying in the rain.

  ‘You howled at the moon and the sea and the sky and drank tequila for two weeks straight. You moved in with a Mexican hooker to a shack by the sea. You’d drink with her and she’d cook and take care of you. And each night as the stars and the moon appeared you’d start up howling and crying. Me and Willie and Earl played hearts, drank tequila, and smoked weed for weeks on end. Then Earl got a telegram and had to go back to the car lot, so he flew out in a biplane. He circled three times and nearly hit a palm tree before he finally headed back to the States.

  ‘Then one morning you appeared with three horses in a desperado’s outfit. You were dressed in black, wearing a large sombrero, carrying a gun with an ammunition belt across your chest. “Let’s ride,” you called to me and Willie. You threw us each our desperado outfit, and we slowly rode our way up north, through parts of California, through the desert of Nevada, and finally back home to the high desert country, to our home, to our ranch. And we called our ranch the Flannigan Jenkins ranch, and you, me, and Willie Nelson would work the cattle and grow the alfalfa, and when winter hit we’d go on the road with Willie Nelson. “On the road again,” you’d always say, and then Willie’d laugh and say, “Hell, that sounds even better than when you said it was a Bloody Mary morning. I gotta write that down too.” Old Willie, he wasn’t famous yet, but he was getting there. And we went all over, east coast, west coast, England, Australia, Greece, and Spain. Then when spring would come we’d be back on the ranch, all three of us. Just working the cattle and growing the alfalfa. The End.’

  ‘That was a goddamn good one,’ Jerry Lee said and sat up. ‘You think our racehorses made it all right?’

  ‘Yeah, the dog took care of them. He’d drag the alfalfa down from the barn to them and guard them. He got in a death match with a pack of wolves and kicked the shit out of them all.’

  ‘Good,’ cause that was my next question, the dog, I mean.’

  ‘No, he was fine. A little banged up, but okay.’

  ‘I’m gonna sleep to that, to that story. Let’s not talk anymore. I don’t want to lose it.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said and we fell quiet.

  29

  THE DOG BEGAN WHINING early the next morning so I got myself dressed and took him out. The streets were empty and it was already windy. It couldn’t have been much over ten degrees, but we walked around until we found a school where I could throw the tennis ball around for him. He ran hard in the cold, his breath coming from him in a fog before disappearing into the morning air.

  He wore out pretty quick, so we began the walk downtown to find a place to eat breakfast. Cars began to appear with more frequency. People going to work, kids probably going to school. I made it to the main street and found a diner. It was crowded inside and I sat at the counter and ordered eggs and ham with a side order of bacon for the dog.

  As I sat there I began to get nervous thinking that any of the people I saw could be her, Annie James. When the waitress passed by I thought her face would be Annie’s. When someone sat across from me I’d look up nervously thinking it might be
her, that she was going to be coming through the door at any time with a new boyfriend, maybe with a family, or even her mom. I was worried about all that. I wanted to see her. Hell, that’s why I’d dragged us all the way there, to Elko. Jerry Lee hadn’t worked it out yet, but there wasn’t any other reason. It was pretty selfish of me, that I knew.

  I ate as much as I could, then got a coffee to go, paid my tab, and left. Outside the dog was curled up in a ball near the newspaper machines. I bent down and petted him and opened the sack and dropped the bacon down on the sidewalk.

  We walked around some more, went past the Commercial and Stockman Casinos, then past the small industrial section and over the dry and faded Humboldt river.

  When I finally made it back to the room Jerry Lee wasn’t in his bed. I went to the bathroom and found him on the floor, crying. He was wearing only his underwear and had urinated on himself.

  ‘I tried to take a leak,’ he told me, ‘but I couldn’t make it to the toilet. I lost all my strength and started getting dizzy, so I thought I’d sit on the floor for a bit, but then I couldn’t get up. But I still had to go. Now I’m a fucking mess.’

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ I said. But he looked like a ghost. The bandage around his leg was stained yellow and I wasn’t sure what to do.

  ‘Just leave me here, I don’t care anymore.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  I went over to him and helped him up and sat him on the toilet and he began crying again.

  ‘I’m a failure,’ he said.

  ‘You’re just hurt, that’s all. You know how to clean your leg?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s all covered in piss. I think we ought to change the bandage.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said again.

  ‘I’ll go to the store and get that white tape … maybe some gauze, hydrogen peroxide. Maybe we could wrap the leg in a plastic bag, and you could get into the shower and clean up. Then I’ll get you back in bed and go to the store and get all the junk we need and we’ll change the bandage.’