Tailed

by Brian M. Wiprud

  At the same time, the great void out my window was quashing my hopes and dreams about Middle America: where were the malls? I’d seen so many to the north. I admit that I have the New Yorker’s typical disdain of the mall-centricity that is the backbone of most of America’s culture, but my hypocrisy was seeping out. I longed for one now. For the mega-store, the megamart, the mega everything that is the contemporary mall. My companions all had their luggage with them. Not steamer trunks or anything, just overnight-type bags, but mine was back in my hotel room in Omaha. As Angie slept, she was slumping lower and lower in my arms, and I was afraid if she reached my armpit, she might wake up thinking we were under an anthrax attack. I was due for a change of clothes and a shower. I felt pretty grungy. I couldn’t see the collar of my white oxford shirt, but didn’t want to, and I dared not remove my running shoes without proper ventilation. A shopping list was going through my head: socks, cheap long sleeve shirts, cheap chinos, underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, deodorant, foot powder…

  “Timmy? I need to stop at the next mall.”

  “Whut?”

  I think I awoke the hulking driver from a white-line trance. He blinked sleepily.

  “And it probably wouldn’t be bad to change drivers. I need to stop at a mall to buy some clothes, and if there’s any way I could catch a shower somehow…Where does one go for a shower out here?”

  “Truck plaza. There’s one coming up.”

  “Shower at a truck stop?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “In the gas station bathroom sink?”

  “Real truck plazas have showers, rooms, all that. There’s one up ahead.”

  We veered off at the next exit, and sure enough we spiraled in on a sprawling truck plaza as big as some small towns. It boasted of showers, bunks, and home-cooked meals. I always wondered who was fooled by the notion that anyplace that wasn’t home could deliver to you a home-cooked meal.

  We squeaked to a stop amid several dozen big rigs.

  “Dyepteyah…Garv, vere to be?” Otto stuck his head between me and Timmy, rubbing his eyes.

  “Stopping for gas and a shower…” I caught a whiff of him. “You and I will both take a shower, da?”

  “Ah very nice! With weemin?”

  “No, Otto, with truckers.”

  “I dunno, Garv.” He scanned the big rigs and shook his head. “Not lookink. Maybe veemin truck drivers?”

  “Where are we?” Angie uncurled from my arms as I opened the door. Wilco spilled out and wasted no time in lifting a leg on the nearest truck tire.

  “A truck plaza. Otto and I are going to take a shower.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Not together. I desperately need to bathe and so does he—in his own shower, far from mine if it can be arranged.”

  “At a truck stop?”

  “So it seems. For the long-haul truckers.”

  I could hear the others in back moving about, then heard the back door open, saw the light spill forward.

  “Good idea.” Angie rubbed her nose sleepily. “You have PU pits.”

  I stepped out of the panel truck and for the first time saw it from the outside. On the side was a cartoon of a grinning elf, with the words: PIXIE CLEAN! DRY-CLEANING. COLD STORAGE. There was a phone number with an Omaha exchange.

  Norman was just striding around from the back of the van.

  “Where’d you get this van, anyway, Norm?”

  He yawned, his irises sparking with streaks of gold. “Fellow Tupelca lent it to us.”

  “With dry-cleaning boxes still in back?”

  “Those are empty, for cold storage. If you’re going to take that shower, let’s get a move on. I want to stay ahead of the game, reach New Mexico before anybody else, and get this over with. My wife is wondering where the heck I am.”

  Otto and I cruised the aisles of the truck plaza store. In truth, I could probably have bought my clothes there, except I would have ended up looking like one of your more avid racing fans. In New York, there’s none of this Nascar fever. By contrast, Middle America seems awash in posters, endorsements, and hats for all kinds of race car heroes. At least I think they were. Some of them looked like country singers, of whom I am also utterly ignorant. This stuff just doesn’t exist east of the Hudson, and it made me feel pretty out of my element. Which I was.

  I grabbed two Dale Earnhardt Jr. shaving kits, some Rusty Wallace shampoos, two Jeremy Mayfield deodorants, and two Kasey Kahne toothpaste kits. After I bought this stuff, and a couple coffees with a picture of someone named Jamie McMurray on the cups, a soap opera magazine for Otto, and an America Today newspaper, I handed half of my haul to Otto and led the way back to the shower rooms.

  Otto handed back the Jeremy Mayfield deodorant. “For Otto, is not important.”

  “Oh, very, very important…”

  He made a proud and dismissive grin. “Otto smell like man, not goluboy.”

  “It’s not perfume, Otto. It stops you from smelling at all.”

  “But what is?” A dismissive pout screwed onto his goateed face. “Smell is good. Veemin, they like man smell like man. It make bazooms heavy and the peach ripe, eh?”

  “Bazooms? Ripe peaches? Where do you pick up this stuff?” I gave his impish beard a reprimanding tug. “Man not like man to smell like man. It makes my nose heavy when you smell ripe. C’mon, nincompoop.”

  “Why say to Otto ninnypoop? Not nice…bazooms and peaches very nice.”

  We paid a fee to an attendant, were handed a key for a locker and some white towels with a single blue stripe down the center. Clothes stored in lockers and towels around our waists, we went down the line of partitioned shower stalls looking for two empty ones.

  I’m happy, even a little bit proud, to say I don’t spend a lot of time in locker rooms and public showers. But when I find myself in those environs, I’m always a little taken aback by how hairy most men are. Sure, I have my share of body hair, but compared to most, I’m the dunes next to the rain forest. Locker rooms are always a potent reminder that men are primates in the most primal, fur-bearing sense. It was like walking into a Dian Fossey research facility, shaggy truckers trundling to and from their lockers like simians in their day to day.

  There’s something about a shower that makes me contemplative, and as I lathered up, I began to wonder where Nicholas was. Had he gone back to New York? Probably not. He didn’t know whether I had been abducted by ne’er-do-wells and was probably doggedly trying to figure out what happened to me. At least I hoped he cared enough to do so. Then again, he had his future bride to think about back home, who was probably anxious to have him back. I wondered idly if Nicholas had come out to Omaha because he had cold feet. Were my troubles a convenient reason to postpone the nuptials? And was what Fowler said true, that Nicholas was his son? If I ever made it to that wedding maybe I’d find out. And Vargas: would he have gone back home to the pie stand and Amber the nymphomaniac by now? The FBI would definitely still be on the case. Did they have any idea who had abducted me? Would they be waiting in New Mexico? Should I be wearing a disguise?

  Even as I succumbed to musing as I bathed, Otto succumbed to his lyrical impulses and launched into song. At first I thought it was one of his soaring Soviet anthems, but suddenly recognized it by the tune as a popular trucking song. As usual, he made a complete hash of the English lyrics:

  East hound is down, boarded up, and stuck in!

  Wagon donut they say can’t be gone

  We get along, way to go, and quarter of nine is better

  I am easy hound, just wash up panda fun

  Keep full heart, hound, never metal

  Sun never shines in flakes

  Letting hands on deck, a causeway fun to make

  The buoys are first of Atlantic

  And fear of the sharks banana

  We fling them back does not matter the flakes

  The other higher primates in the room took notice, and one in a cowboy hat and his birthday suit approached Ot
to’s stall. He had a prodigious belly and looked unhappy.

  “Garv, eetz fat cowboy!” Otto pointed gleefully, and the trucker looked even less happy than before.

  “Uh, don’t mind him…” I began.

  Bloodshot eyes beheld me from under the brim of the well-loved cowboy hat.

  “This little feller makes a lot of noise. He makin’ some kinda joke?”

  Another trucker stepped next to him, a soggy Sasquatch buttoning his shirt, but no less friendly than the nekked cowboy.

  I hurriedly rinsed the soap from my body, talking almost as quickly. “Honest, guys, he’s just a crazy Russian, doesn’t know the language. He’s harmless. A child, really. Not quite right in the head. Tortured by the KGB. So, you know, if you could just cut him some slack…”

  “Russian?” Nekked Cowboy rumbled.

  “Garv, Otto to get cowboy hat, yes? Like our friend.”

  “See? He’s like a child.”

  The two truckers looked from one to the other, then slowly turned back to their lockers.

  That’s when Otto broke back into a new song:

  “Like a rimjob cowboy…”

  “Otto, shut the hell up!” I grabbed my towel. “Please?”

  Nekked Cowboy was back. “Whaddid he say?”

  “I apologize, really, he doesn’t know what he’s saying, he gets all his lyrics wrong. You should hear him sing Meatloaf. He-he-he. Otto—come on, let’s be going.”

  “Sing Meatloaf?”

  “Yeah, you know, ‘By the Dashboard Light’…”

  Cowboy just knit his brow at Otto as the latter smiled up at him and made his way to the lockers. There was a moment there when I thought Nekked Cowboy would grab Otto and bounce him around like a tire. But he let him pass.

  “Otto, no more singing!” I hissed.

  “But why, Garv? Otto to sing all time when tub to soap.”

  “Just get dressed, quickly.” I looked back apologetically at Nekked Cowboy.

  A long string of quiet, but no less frantic, prayers streamed through my brain as I stabbed my foot into my trouser leg.

  Nekked Cowboy tapped Otto on the shoulder.

  “You some kind of comedian?”

  Sasquatch appeared beside him. “C’mon, Carl, the guy’s nuts. His partner here said he was sorry.”

  “He called me a ‘rimjob cowboy,’ Roy. You heard it. An’ after I warned him.”

  My guess was that Carl had been on the road way past his bedtime, strung out on bennies or Vivarin, and was preternaturally irascible as a result.

  My fingers began to misalign the buttons on my shirt.

  “Honest, fellahs, he doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s a simpleton.”

  “I don’t care if he’s a Baptist!” Nekked Cowboy started to flush, and I knew then that the confrontation meter was tipping into the red. “Nobody comes in here and makes fun of Calgary Carl Jones.”

  Another trucker stepped forward, this one fully dressed in jeans, plaid shirt, vest, and the gentle bearded countenance of Mitch Miller. “C’mon, Carl. Get some shut-eye. Don’t mess with that runt, not worth your time.”

  Otto was humming to himself, and finally turned from his locker to behold the menace standing behind him. “Ah, my friend!”

  “Otto…” I implored. “Please, Otto…”

  “You see, Garv?” Otto took an index finger and began bouncing it off Cowboy’s belly button. “Very nice fat man.”

  Calgary Carl lurched forward at Otto, who seemed suddenly to vanish. Carl crashed headfirst into the open locker, and Otto was suddenly behind him giving him a shove.

  “Byk bychara!” Otto whispered in surprise—labeling his attacker a redneck. “Garv, cowboy not nice!”

  As Carl lumbered to his feet, several of the other truckers gathered around.

  “Whoa! Hey, guys, let’s simmer down, just some miscommunication here…” Garth, the sensitivity trainer.

  I didn’t hold it against the truckers assembled. One of their own was, by all appearances, under duress and possibly attack. A couple of them came forward to restrain Carl. The others closed in on Otto and me.

  “What’s goin’ on here?” A tall, angular trucker with a long white scar down his face came forward.

  “These two were razzin’ Carl,” one of the crowd accused.

  Scarface turned to me. “Who are you two?”

  “Just passing through. He’s Russian, doesn’t speak English well, insulted Carl by accident…” I tried to explain.

  “He called Carl ‘fat,’ right to his face…” Sasquatch pointed.

  “An’ he sang ‘Eastbound and Down’ as somethin’ about sailors fuckin’ dogs,” someone else said. Interesting interpretation.

  Otto looked dismayed. “Yes, Otto say to cowboy ‘Very nice fat man.’”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” I insisted, my eyes scanning the direction of the exit. “To him, ‘fat’ isn’t bad. He’s translating it in his head from Russian as something like ‘jolly,’ or ‘happy.’”

  Scarface eyed me shrewdly, and I continued.

  “You think a runt like Otto would intentionally come in here and start a fight with you guys?”

  Otto didn’t understand a lot of what was being said, but enough. He stepped up to Scarface, grabbing him by the forearms in what he felt was a friendly gesture. Otto never picked up on the notion that Americans aren’t quite as touchy-feely as his comrades back on the Ural steppes. It was plain to see that Scarface didn’t like being touched by a stranger.

  “Please, Otto very ashamed to tell cowboy any bad. War in bathtub, eetz not lookink.” Then he looked at Scarface’s elaborate belt buckle, which was about the size of a steak platter. On it was the silhouette of a reclining and buxom stripper, the same symbol emblazoned on truckers’ mudflaps from Portland to Portland, except this one had red rhinestones for nipples. Below it said KEEP ON FUCKIN’.

  Otto is, among other things, a silversmith and engraver, and is never shy about showing admiration for the craft at large. Or admiration for the nude female form. Or in this case, both.

  “Oh, my Got!” Otto enthused, staring at the belt buckle and then pointing. “Eetz big and very nice!”

  Then he reached to touch the overly elaborate belt buckle.

  I can’t say for sure what happened next, except that there was a sudden tumult behind me as I made for the fire exit. I slammed through the door and an alarm sounded, matching the alarm bells going off in my head.

  Believe me, if there were any chance I could have helped Otto physically—and let’s face it, I did my level best to help him verbally—I would have. But that Slavic dumbbell just kept making one gaffe after another. If only he’d just shut up.

  I was racing across the parking lot, jacket and shoes cradled in my arms, dodging cars at the pumps, leaping over fuel hoses, headed for where I last saw the Pixie dry-cleaning van, my bare feet slapping the macadam. In my half-dressed state, I must have looked like a boudoir interloper on the skedaddle. The jingle of the fire bell faded with distance, and I didn’t know if the truckers were after me or not. But zippy, unhalting, and furious flight has been the hallmark of a number of my narrow escapes. My fighting abilities are largely untested. I have the lack of permanent and disfiguring injuries to prove it.

  I scrambled under an eighteen-wheeler or two, crab-like, and came to where the van had been.

  Had been.

  OK, the Tupelca trio obviously hadn’t abandoned me here. They needed my vuka. Angie wouldn’t leave me there. So they must have pulled around to get gas or go to the store. But I hadn’t seen them. Not surprising, as I was pretty focused on a set course for the moon when I launched out of that locker room. But I didn’t dare head back into the fray, and at the moment was safely sheltered from view of the truck stop by a maze of Macs, Peterbilts, and Kenworths. I put my hands on my knees, leaned over, and tried to get my breath back.

  Otto suddenly rounded the corner of a tractor trailer.

  “Poluc
hit’ pizdy!” The sleeve of his jacket was torn, and there was the beginning of a shiner around one eye. “Garv, my friend, I very glad you go quick. Why fat man to be angry? And man with very nice…” He gestured at his belt.

  “Buckle. You OK? They coming?” I scanned the sky, which had been sunny but was now turning dark with clouds.

  “Yes, of course.” He gestured to where the van had been. “But tell to me: where to Angie and Tulips, eh? Not lookink. I thinkink maybe we must pizdyets, yes?”

  “Yes, we should pizdyets,” I panted. Pizdyets was his Russian word for everything from “it’s over” to “let’s go.” What it actually means, well, is not for polite company. Like many of his Slavic mutterings. “You didn’t see the van?”

  “Otto not see.”

  “Come on.” We darted around to the end of a truck and caught a view back toward the gas pumps, where a group of agitated truckers were checking all the nearby hiding places, much to the bewilderment of onlookers. No Pixie van in sight.

  I leaned against the truck, thinking. Couldn’t I have one day’s peace? Is this what it was going to be like all the way to New Mexico? Farmers with pitchforks, Wal-Mart greeters amok with shopping carts, Navajo trinket salesmen with turquoise and silver nunchakus?

  “Otto to say something bad to fat cowboy?”

  “We’ll talk about it later.” I didn’t want to get into it, not then. “Not good to call a man fat, not good to touch strangers with big nasty scars on their face.”

  “I dunno.” Otto stroked his beard. “But we must make to go, s’ebat’sya, yes? Ah, look…”

  He bent down to pick up a twisted piece of wire from the ground, admiring it. There was no piece of junk too small for him to see as possibly useful.

  “Otto, stop picking up trash and concentrate. The van has to be here somewhere!” I yanked my running shoes on and donned my jacket.

  I peered around the corner again in vain hope—and was rewarded. The van was slowly turning the far corner of the truck stop diner. I could see Norman searching for us from the driver’s seat, Angie in the passenger seat. I could also see some truckers headed our way.