The Motel Life

by Willy Vlautin

  When we left the diner, we stood out on the sidewalk and watched the dog eat the side of bacon I’d gotten him.

  ‘You really heading to Wyoming?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the kid said.

  ‘You a runaway?’

  ‘Sorta,’ he said.

  ‘You know anybody in Wyoming?’

  ‘My grandma. She has the horse.’

  ‘How much dough you got?’

  ‘Seven dollars,’ the kid said.

  ‘I’ll buy you a bus ticket. Where in Wyoming exactly?’

  ‘Laramie,’ the kid said and looked at me again.

  ‘I’ll get you a ticket there,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have to do that, mister.’

  ‘My brother would kill me if he knew you were out there in that sleeping bag and I didn’t help,’ I said. ‘You got to get yourself a better bag.’

  ‘I intend to.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘If you give me your name and address I’ll send you the money when I get there. I swear I will.’

  ‘Worry about that later,’ I said and went back inside the diner and asked the cash register lady the directions to the Greyhound.

  When I got back outside the kid was playing with the dog, chasing it around in circles. I told him that I had the directions and we began walking down the street towards it.

  The dog and him followed behind, still playing, chasing each other around. The dog was barking and the kid was laughing.

  Every once in a while I’d hear the kid whisper to the dog. ‘You’re a good goddamn dog,’ he’d say and bend down and pet it.

  ‘You’re a really good goddamn dog.’

  32

  I LEFT THE KID sitting in a plastic seat at the bus station with a ticket to Laramie, Wyoming, and three pre-made sandwiches from a food cart they had. He was already starting in on one as we said goodbye.

  The walk back to the motel was short, and I stopped and bought a twelve-pack of beer on the way. Jerry Lee was still asleep when I got to the room, the blankets and sleeping bag still covering him, the heater still on.

  The dog moved next to him, so I opened a beer and turned on the TV. I decided then to call Tommy Locowane to see if he’d heard anything about Jerry Lee and me.

  I went to the motel office, placed a deposit on the phone, then came back to the room and called the gun shop.

  ‘I ain’t seen him,’ his Uncle Gary said. ‘He’s got me worried as hell. I called the cops, I put a missing persons out on him, but nothing’s shown up. This is the fifth day. You ain’t seen him?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘When was the last time?’

  ‘I saw him at the fight, we were all watching the fight at the Cal Neva,’ I said.

  ‘That was when? Friday?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He hasn’t been home since then, since that night. He never came home that night.’

  ‘He was at the Fitz the last time I saw him,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know what to think. My wife’s in bed sick, she’s so worried. You haven’t seen anything, heard anything?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t care what he’s done, Frank, if you know you got to tell me. You owe me that much.’

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ I said.

  ‘Was he with anyone different, a woman?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It was just me and Al Casey for the most part.’

  ‘I got a hold of Al, but he hasn’t seen him either.’

  ‘I’ll let you know if I hear anything,’ I said.

  ‘I’d appreciate it,’ his uncle said and hung up the phone.

  33

  IT WAS DUSK when Jerry Lee woke, his voice raw. He was sweating with a fever. He apologized for the night before, said he was depressed, that he got crazy, but that he was all right now, just felt a little sick. I didn’t really yell at him for it. I didn’t really know how to handle it, so like I do, I said nothing.

  I just changed the subject and told him about calling Tommy and about the kid from Wyoming, then I went out to the Star and bought him an order of soup with extra bread.

  We watched an old movie called Rebecca while we ate. Jerry Lee got through half of the soup, which I thought was a good sign.

  The movie was all right, but Jerry Lee was asleep by the end when the main part happened, when the house burned, and Rebecca was finally killed off. Her name getting burned off that pillow. I don’t remember what time after that, but Annie came by the room, and she and I laid on the bed and talked quietly and drank the beers I kept on ice in the cooler.

  We spoke as easy as we had before, and finally we shut off the TV and took off our clothes down to our underwear and got in the bed. In the darkness she told me the real story about her trip to Elko, and how one afternoon in the back room of her mom’s friend’s house she tried to kill herself. She had stolen a bottle of painkillers from her mother’s purse and took all twenty-five. Her mother’s friend found her, went in the back room and saw her laying on the floor. She saw the bottle and the empty beer cans around her. The woman picked her up and drove her to the hospital.

  She went to counseling and moved out on her own and tried once again with razor blades, and in the darkness I felt the scars on her wrists. I held her while she told me, and afterwards she began kissing me. She took off her underwear and took off mine and then laid on top of me. In the darkness we were like that, her tears were mixing with our spit as we kissed and I held on to her as hard as I could. I held on to her like, if I let go, she and me, we’d disappear.

  The next morning, when I woke, she was gone and Jerry Lee was already watching the TV. He looked worse.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked him and sat up in bed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I might have a fever or something. I feel sick to my stomach.’

  ‘Probably got to eat.’

  ‘Nothing sounds too good right now,’ Jerry Lee said.

  I got up and dressed. I looked out the window and it was a dark, gray day with snow just beginning to fall.

  ‘Maybe we should take you to the hospital.’

  ‘I’m okay, shit, I don’t want to go back there.’

  I sat on the bed and petted the dog and tried to think.

  If I took him to the hospital he’d probably go to jail, then maybe he really would kill himself. I went back and forth about it, over and over.

  ‘You know what we need?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A cassette deck,’ I said and put on my coat. ‘Don’t do anything crazy. I’m gonna walk the dog and go get us some music and some food.’

  An hour later, as I made my way back, it began snowing hard and the wind was howling and screaming. The dog was walking right next to me with his head down. I was carrying a bag of groceries, a bottle of Jim Beam and a small cassette player, and I was already a little drunk. I’d hit three or four places along the way as my nerves were shot. Why did I bring Jerry Lee? Why did I get him out when he should have stayed in the hospital? Did I just bring him out ’cause I was too scared to come alone? Did I bring him out just ’cause of Annie? Just so I could see her? My mind was racing with thoughts like that, and I was beating the hell out of myself.

  34

  ‘FRANK, HEY, FRANK,’ Jerry Lee yelled at me.

  When I woke I was on the floor and it was dusk. I sat up and looked at him.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I know is I got to take a leak and I don’t think I can get up anymore.’

  ‘All right,’ I said and tried to stand up.

  ‘I’m about to piss my pants,’ Jerry Lee said. ‘If I do, I get your bed.’

  ‘I’m hurrying,’ I said and helped him up and took him to the toi let. He was sweating heavily, his T-shirt soaked.

  ‘This is the greatest feeling I’ve ever had,’ he said as he went.

  My head was pounding. I could barely stand I was so hung over.

  ‘This is th
e longest I think I’ve ever pissed.’

  ‘I’m gonna get sick soon,’ I said.

  ‘I’m almost done,’ Jerry Lee said.

  I helped him back to the bed, then went into the bathroom and laid down on the cool tile trying to calm my stomach.

  ‘You all right?’ Jerry Lee asked after a while. He tried to say it loudly but his voice cracked when he did. And just then, in that one sentence, you could tell how sick he was.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I finally said back to him. ‘But you sound worse than me. We’re going to the hospital tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘I think you should just drink beer from now on.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ I said and closed my eyes.

  ‘Looks like you almost drank half of the bottle. You know Willie Nelson says whiskey’s the only thing that almost killed him. More than any other drug, and I’m sure he’s seen and done them all.’

  ‘I’m sure he has,’ I said.

  ‘I wish we had more than just HBO. I’m sick of it already. Maybe we should get a short-wave radio. We could talk to people all over. People in Tasmania or Africa or Iceland.’

  ‘That would be something,’ I said and got up and walked to the bed and laid on it. The dog jumped up next to me and I fell asleep.

  It was the middle of the night when I woke next.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘How you feeling?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m having nightmares,’ he said softly and we fell quiet for a time and then I got up and went to the cooler and took a beer from it and opened it.

  ‘You mind if I have one? It sounds good. Nothing has been sounding good, not even water, but that does, an ice-cold beer.’

  I walked over to him with one, opened it, and handed it to him.

  ‘We’ve drank a lot of beers, ain’t we, Frank?’

  ‘I guess so,’ I said and sat back down on the bed.

  Jerry Lee leaned over to the bedside table and pulled the cassette deck close to him and hit play. Willie Nelson came on softly.

  ‘I sure like him,’ Jerry Lee said.

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  ‘Sometimes he can drive me crazy, but sometimes, like right now, there doesn’t seem like there could be any better music. You mind if I have a drink off the whiskey?’

  ‘It probably ain’t good to,’ I said.

  ‘It can’t be that bad,’ Jerry Lee said.

  I went into the bathroom and found him a plastic cup and poured him a drink.

  ‘You think you could live in Elko?’ Jerry Lee said.

  ‘I think it could be pretty nice. It’s different.’

  ‘What do you think about Annie?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You gonna start seeing her again?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She still likes you,’ Jerry Lee said. ‘You can just tell by looking at her.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You still ain’t ever told me what happened.’

  ‘You probably wouldn’t like her if you knew.’

  ‘I don’t know, she’s always been all right to me.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘You ever told anyone? What happened, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You should tell someone. You never talk about anything. I know you better than anyone and I don’t know hardly anything you’re thinking anymore. It don’t matter if it’s me, I guess, but it ain’t good to hold things in. If you read the Willie Nelson book, you’d know that. He always says that.’

  ‘I could tell you, I guess,’ I said.

  ‘About Annie?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. And then I told him. About that night, the night I went down to the Sutro and saw her like that, with that guy. With her naked down to her bottom underwear, with her bare knees on that old carpet, with her mom naked in the same room.

  When I finished I took a drink off the whiskey and got another beer. I couldn’t even look him in the eyes.

  ‘She’s lived a hard life,’ Jerry Lee said after a long pause. ‘Her mom’s a hooker, for Christsakes.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe she’s all right, maybe she had to do it like she said. It’s hard to think of it any other way. I guess, in the end, we don’t know what kind of things she’s had to put up with. But you remember that time she came with her face all bloody. Her eyes black and blue.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Her mom beat the shit out of her. Or the time her mom took all the money she’d saved to buy a car. Stole it from her. Or when her mom burned her with the curling iron. You’ve seen her legs.’

  ‘I know all that,’ I said, staring at the ground.

  ‘Look, if you came home one night and she was getting it on with Al or Tommy, that would be one thing, but she wasn’t like that. She didn’t flirt with no one but you. I saw, hell, I saw her all the time. She sure as hell never flirted with me. You know she might be right, she might of had to do it, for her mom I mean. I’d probably bet money it ran that way. So I’d give her another chance. I think she’s good. She might fuck up, but she’s good underneath, I got a feeling on that.

  ‘We’re fuck ups, Frank, so we’re gonna be with people that are fuck ups. And to me, to me, that makes sense. But that doesn’t make them bad people, does it? If you’ve had bad luck, it doesn’t mean you’ll always have bad luck, does it? Some people that are unlucky, they can get lucky. Not everyone’s cursed, I don’t think. And you need someone. Of any guy in the whole world you do. You’re the loneliest guy I know. Everyone says that. Even Tommy says that.’

  ‘When I saw her,’ I said and finally looked at him, ‘I did feel better. Like I could be better.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s hard, man. You got to take a risk.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said and threw my empty beer into the small basket by the TV.

  ‘I made you something,’ Jerry Lee said and picked up his drawing pad. ‘I drew this for you,’ he said and handed it to me.

  It was of me and him and the dog. We were driving in our new car and Jerry Lee was at the wheel, the dog was in the middle and I was in the passenger seat. On the roof of the car were cans of beer, and above all that was a banner that read ‘The Flannigan Brothers’ and below that ‘The three high rolling hard going travelers.’

  ‘That’s funnier than hell,’ I said and laughed.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said and then paused for a time. ‘But you know what I’ve been thinking about, well, it’s just that … that I ain’t done anything yet. I ain’t done anything great or memorable or done anything that’s helped anyone else.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I haven’t done anything. I’ve never even had a girl tell me she’s loved me. You have, haven’t you? Hasn’t Annie told you that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘All I’ve done is fuck up. At least the last few years, anyway. I’m not complaining, really, and I don’t want you to tell me it ain’t true. It’s the facts the way I see them and that’s what I mean. I’m just trying to be honest. I’ve never really done anything. I didn’t even graduate from high school, and everyone can do that. Only real bums don’t. And I’ve never had a real girlfriend, someone that was just mine. Polly always had another boyfriend. Always. She never once stopped with just me. We never really talked about anything or gave each other presents at Christmas. I never took her out to dinner or went away with her like when you took Annie to San Francisco on the goddamn Amtrak train. I don’t know, now I got you in trouble, and I killed the kid, Wes Denny. It was me, I did that. Whether or not it was my fault doesn’t matter, it happened, and it happened to me.’ Cause I’m here.’ Cause I’m alive in the world that poor kid’s dead.’

  ‘You’re just getting started. Our lives, we got a lot of years.’

  ‘No girl’s gonna fuck a guy with no leg. A guy who’s killed
a kid.’

  I opened another beer and took another long pull off the whiskey.

  ‘This is a depressing conversation.’

  ‘I’m just telling the truth,’ Jerry Lee said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. I went over to the cassette player, flipped the tape and turned up the song ‘Railroad Lady’. We didn’t talk for a long time.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ Jerry asked when the tape ended. You could hear the wind howl around us, shaking the old dilapidated motel.

  ‘Hell, I don’t feel like it,’ I said. ‘I’m drunker than hell, and all I want to do is pass out and not think anymore.’

  ‘Shit, Frank, I ain’t gonna sleep, I never sleep when I’ve had a few. I gave you the drawing, you owe me. Like we used to be. This might be the last time we get to sit like this for a long time. I mean, if I go to the hospital tomorrow this might be it. So tell me one.’

  ‘What do you want to hear?’

  ‘Well, I want to hear one about me, I guess. Something good, where I get married or at least get a girl. Maybe I’m famous or something. You could make me rich, if you want.’

  ‘All right,’ I said and thought for a while. ‘Well, I guess I could start here. It was World War Two, and you and me were pilots, fighter pilots, and we were stationed in England. We were heading over to Germany one morning when we ran into a bunch of German fighter planes and we got into a huge dogfight. “Tiger one, I’m hit,” yelled Pete Harris from Ohio, one of our good buddies. He went into a spin and crashed into the ocean, the English Channel. Martin, Lewis, Johnson, they all got hit and spun in circles and crashed into the freezing sea. We were taking out Jerry, though, one by one we were. Soon it was down to Captain Wilson, me, and you. Then you got hit, you had a Nazi on your tail, and I came zipping up behind you and I blew the bastard up. “Thanks, Tiger five,” you said over the radio. The rest of the Germans ran, headed back over the Channel. Problem was, your plane was out of control. Set northwest with a broken rudder, you couldn’t steer. You were heading towards Iceland, Greenland, and there was nothing you could do about it. Captain Wilson, he was hit, his arm got blown off and he was heading back to base. Me, I followed you for a time.