Eccentric Circles

by Larry Duberstein

  “More power,” goes the Boss.

  “You dumb shit, there you go again. It’s no better than a burp when you talk.”

  I can’t say why, because I had always looked up to Boss, him being six years my older brother and all, and I never gave him such lip as this. Never thought such thoughts, to be truthful, but even if I had I would sooner bite my tongue, as the Boss had generally cuffed me around pretty good and I had come to recognize a twinge of fear when he got that look on him. The serpent look. So I don’t know why but this time I felt so different, felt in fact like pitching a sharp rock at his dull-assed face. And he must have known it too because he did not rise to the bait one inch. Which was unlike him. He said nothing in reply to me, though he made himself belch and then grinned stupidly.

  “You’re one hell of a waste of time,” I said, getting up. “I’m going out to check on Ma.”

  I pitched a ten-dollar bill onto the table to cover costs and had turned to leave when the dumb fuck suddenly began to laugh hysterically. I tried to glare him but he smiled me down.

  “Just reminded me,” he said, snickering away. “The other night, at the package store, when you were waiting in the car? Well this little China man comes in cackling like a hen, all excited, and he flips a ten down on the counter, just like you did? Cuts in front of me, lays down his money, and says, Shits ten dolla shits ten dolla.”

  “What?”

  “Right. What. The salesman looks at him, hasn’t got a clue, so the China guy does it some more, like a goddam parrot with just these words to his name. Shits ten dolla, shits ten dolla. Me and the salesman just shrug at each other, you know. Does this guy need to use the head and think it costs ten bucks? Then it hits us, both at the same second. The little dude wants to buy a case of Schlitz, that’s the special of the week. Schlitz ten dollars, is what he’s been saying. And sure enough, that’s it, that’s what he wants. Gets his brew and goes off gay as a bird.”

  I was forced to ease off him by all this storytelling but left him there smoking and grinning so I could get outside to Ma. The Boss didn’t care about Ma anymore, I guess, this was just another chore she laid on him, where to me of course it was sad as hell, there was this pain in my chest if I even looked at her. I’d been checking on her often, even knowing she’d be no better no worse. I did want to see her without Boss in the car so I could talk to her without being labeled a retard, but he came right behind my heels and put us back in gear, to the Points West.

  We kept going all night as it turned out, stopping at the side of the road for a catnap and then not stopping again till we hit a breakfast someplace southwest of Chicago. I had never seen the country before and I wasn’t seeing it now. We had crossed nearly half of it, and turnpike and darkness was all it was for me. What I mainly craved was sleep, while he kept summarizing all the dollars we saved by not sleeping. He was into the trip on a theory level now, seeing how cheap we could travel crosscountry. Announced he would be putting out a new bestseller, America on Ten Dollars a Day or what-have-you. He was in high spirits, Boss was, for a dullard who hadn’t slept in two days, and I bought the breakfast to show we had no hard feelings, though maybe we had.

  “It’ll help with your book.”

  “How’s that?”

  “America on ten dollars a day. The secret is take along your brother and he pays twenty dollars a day. Get it?”

  “Got it.”

  The hard feelings I had were not his fault, I realized, and that’s why I kept them to myself. It was this: in the back of my mind I always figured Boss and I would someday have a business together. That was why I wished he would shape himself up and talk serious about things and that was why I was playing out the idea of quitting the turnpike. I wanted to be partners in a business and I always expected he would be the one with the idea for it, the inspiration. I had all this time been waiting to hear from him on the subject and somehow it was just dawning on me I would never hear a word, it was the farthest from his mind, such as it was. That’s what got me mad—Boss didn’t care what he did and he didn’t care about me.

  When we were parked back there to catch a few winks (which he managed and I never came close) I watched him, took a really good look at him. My brother, my hero, yet the son of a gun was one ungainly slob. Head thrown back in a snore, mouth hung open, and his damn teeth in the change tray on the dash, in among the dimes and quarters. Let him rot, I was thinking, he is not my hero one inch. He was, though, and it made me want to fling his damn teeth into a Great Lake.

  Of course I didn’t, I let be his plate, for you see we were all business in this one respect, get it done, and so we horsed all day into that cold snowylooking turnpike air. We were worn and saying little, just drove and drove, clear across the state of Iowa into the state of Nebraska, these being a few of the Points West they had promised us back in Buff City. So there was just this strange matter of moving damn fast while sitting perfectly still, except for the one highlight of the day, North Platte.

  Nebraska is mostly flat and empty and the Boss says in the warm months it smells like shit (meaning of course the fertilizer) and North Platte is not too different apart from its historic significance as the spot where our Uncle Edgar, Ma’s kid brother and her favorite, was kissed by a truck. Ma always used to say Edgar might have been kissed on the sly by some cousin truck years earlier because he had this crooked face, almost like a pervert in the old family pictures. Neither of us saw North Platte coming, didn’t even register we would be going through it, yet it clicked right away when the first sign appeared, for this was one of the colorful stories often told.

  Edgar was a motorcycle man, kept a whole fleet apparently of the old Indian bikes, if you ever saw one, and this all happened back in the Thirties. At that time some of the big Pierce-Arrow hauling rigs had carbon lamps on the side, not out front where the electric headlights would be, and so naturally these lamps sit far apart, one on each side of the rig. At night, or in the twilight, it might look as though two bikers were coming down the road side by side, instead of a truck at all. Now Edgar was a notorious lover of fun, and drink I guess, and as the story goes he saw those lights coming at him and being naturally half off the wall at all times took a notion to really sail down that strip and cleave right between the two bikes. That is how the story goes.

  They did pull him out of the radiator, though, that much is sure. And I imagine he might have had quite a moment there when he was set to sail on through with a whoop and then suddenly saw the hood ornament and all that steel behind it. Lord. That’s North Platte. And Ma used to ride with him sometimes.

  It isn’t funny and it is, but we were laughing until I thought of Ma in the back seat. Maybe we were so frozen cold and punchy that anything could get us started. We were going for Cheyenne, Wyoming by night and we would make it too, the way Boss turned up his nose at each and every sleepy hollow we passed. This one too big and that one too small, too close to the highway—too gaudy even was one of them! I guess he was trying to slice it down to five dollars. Finally there came a perfect one, halfway back up a smooth little hill, nice cabins, and free morning coffee advertised. The billboard, though, said they had Military Government Rates, which got the Boss rolling once again.

  “Jer, we ain’t in the Military Government.”

  This time I was prepared to be firm. Forty straight hours out of Cohoes by here. “There ain’t no Military Government in this country, it’s just a sign. It doesn’t say they don’t have normal rates too.”

  “I know it, one arm and one leg.”

  “I’ll treat,” I said per usual, and he relented to try. We took it and what a grand idea to do so, because this place was warm and the beds there were big and soft even for a civilian like ourselves. I brought Ma in from the cold and just fell out for twelve hours solid of wall-to-wall sleeping and sweet dreaming. Must have done a hundred or so little dreams that night, all of them fine. Dreamed of Uncle Edgar on his old Indian except in the dream he didn’t hit. He was about to
, but right before the smash his bike sailed up and flew overtop the rig. And kept on flying over the road and the trees toward the sunset, which had a big sign on it saying Golden Gate and Points West.

  Sleep was a grand idea that changed everything for the better. I woke up happy, Ma’s condition notwithstanding, and the day was bright, and it seemed all a man could need just to shower and shave and drink his morning coffee. The Boss was a grade sharper himself, even insisted on splitting the cost right down the middle. You see, now we had it made. Downhill side, as the Boss put it, meaning here we are in goddam Wyoming on a clear golden morn and at the very least we are going to make it to the coast.

  Two things I can recommend without reserve in the state of Wyoming. One is the scenery. What an all-out beautiful place they have got themselves, ranches and rolling hills, big shade trees, miles of handmade fence with horses, and then the mountains too. My second recommend is in a spot called Raving Gorge or something along those lines, it’s the Raving Gorge Donut Hole I believe, where for one dollar we got thirteen of the finest treats I ever tasted. I did three honeydipped right there in the Rising Gorge lot and three chocolate frosted the next forty miles, still not even to Utah yet.

  “Bossman,” I said, “you gonna want all six of yours?” I forgot the baker’s dozen and thought I’d used up my own.

  “I don’t want any of them.”

  “Are you kidding? These are choice morsels. Besides which, it’s breakfast.” I was talking him toward the doughnuts while simultaneously hoping him past them.

  “I don’t eat that crap,” said Boss. “Just let me have a little more of the coffee in a minute.”

  “You got it,” I said, and went on to the lemon dream and the raspberry cream, then rested a bit before taking on the first of the apple crunch. Boss was in a good mood, he just really did not care for doughnuts. These ones were special, though, and kept me nibbling away till there was only powdered left in the box. I don’t care for powdered but had just tasted one and not minded it when we heard the siren go and saw a mountie on our necks. This was the town of Murdo, which state I can’t recall. The rest I do recall.

  Mountie pulled us over at the ramp and then sat in his cruiser a few minutes picking nose. When he finally came up and pushed his bully puss on us, Boss handed him the papers and asked what was the problem. Cause it sure wasn’t us.

  “Got you coming down that hill half a mile back, got you at ninety miles per hour.”

  “You are reaching there, officer,” said the Boss, in his friendly voice. “This vehicle can do nothing close to the ninety mile figure you stated.”

  The funny thing about my brother is nothing much ever did scare him. Being scared is about as foreign to him as being smart is. He’s just a dull thud all around. Which comes handy in a situation where there are mounties and one of you is scared, properly.

  “Got it on the gun,” said the law. “You boys will have to follow me to town.”

  “Town, hell,” said the Boss. “Where’s the ticket? Hadn’t you better write up your phony ticket?”

  “Son, you are looking at a speeding charge here but if you keep giving me face I’m going to have to add to those charges heavily.”

  I managed to get us rolling, into the town of Murdo, which was of the one-horse western variety, a little dust-bunny blown down off the interstate. Our man swung us through the filling station there to speak a word with the chief of grease, who then accompanied us across the main drag to a square brick box labelled Town of Murdo on the lintel. It was one room inside—a desk and two benches, some dusty files, a moonfaced clock up on the wall like school days, plus a potbelly stove the mountie stoked up with a clutch of kindling.

  “Mr. Farley here is our Justice of the Peace,” he said, and Mr. Farley came forth minus his wrench now, bald and smiling, and gave us a nice greasy handshake. “Mr. Farley, these boys were up to ninety miles per hour on the Jackson Hill.”

  “Bull shit, Mr. Farley,” said the Boss. “You take my Chevy over to your garage there and tune it up good and tight. Get it all hummy, smooth as a goose, and then go out and hit seventy-five in it if you can.”

  “Now Mr. Farley is not here in a mechanic or testdriving capacity, son. He’s J.P. in this town, fully empowered to accept your waiver of trial.”

  “Let’s have trial,” said the Boss.

  “Fair enough, fair enough. The only problem is our circuit judge won’t be by for another two weeks. Thursday the seventeenth will find him here in Murdo. And I would have to hold you until that date.”

  “I get it,” said Boss. He looked explosive to me.

  “What happens,” I said, “if we waive trial?” I caught my reward in an evil eye from the Boss that could shatter plexiglas.

  “Nothing much. You plead to it, we fine you, and you go.”

  “How much?”

  “The fine? Well, let me look that up—here, it’d be one hundred dollars as a first offense, which this is. So one hundred dollars.”

  “We don’t have it,” I said, though we did have it. We needed all we had, of course, and had the bulk of it well stashed. “Suppose we waive trial and send you the cash when we get where we’re going?”

  “No, that doesn’t work out. How much do you have?”

  “Maybe twenty-five.”

  “Not too close.”

  “I can write you a check.”

  “That doesn’t work out. Maybe if we look over your vehicle and see what you have, it’s always possible the circumstances can be extenuated a bit to accommodize you.”

  At that the Boss spit one and it nearly landed on the filthy crook’s boot. I thought it a fearful bad idea, yet had to like it all the same. Boss was shaking off the extenuation:

  “We ain’t no monkey men, you know,” was what he said. Which meant exactly nothing to the mountie and the chief of grease, nevertheless constituting a major big deal to my brother. He has always had this thing where he imagines a whole tribe of little spidery guys with round eyes and stubby noses—he got this from someone in the service, I believe—and they supposedly have distant invisible Negro blood in them but are never a hit with the ladies. The Boss is missing second gear no question, maybe reverse as well, but he can get very upset about this matter of the monkey men. Sees them on the street and gets all worked up, sees them getting into politics. He had me worried I was one, back when I was seventeen and small and certainly no hit with the ladies myself. And Boss was certain beyond a reasonable doubt that Pa was one. Pa being a monkey man explained it all to Boss, put all the pieces in place, though I told him Pa couldn’t be one if he had got Ma, if you see what I mean.

  “Whatever you say, pal,” said the law now, declining to rule on the monkey man issue. “But you must pay your fine or else stand trial. That’s the statute.”

  “I thought,” said I, “we were innocent till proven guilty.”

  “You were. I mean you are. But if you sign a confession, you see, then that’s otherwise.”

  Boss spit another one and I felt nervous as a cat in the corner. And then the Justice of Peace began to step into his role a bit—we later figured they had it all scripted out ahead of time—and he come in on our side, more or less.

  “Can’t squeeze blood from a stone, though, Ray,” he said to the mountie, who stood meanlooking and wordless behind those standard-fare wraparound shades with the one-way glare glass. Made him look like a mean windshield, was what.

  “The thing to do, Raymundo, is this: see what they got in stock, see what can be worked out.”

  Back to the extenuation, in other words. The chief had to have his costume too in their little drama so he slipped into some gold-rimmed granny glasses, to highlight his sweet and intellectual side. And he did look kindly to me at the time, in his greasy overalls and quiet voice. In his kindly way he rifled our pockets and then somehow the whole tea party shifted out front to where the Chevy and the cruiser sat parked. There, still softly and also restraining the mountie from touching anything hims
elf, the greaser of the peace ran through the trunk, inside-outed the duffels, surveyed the contents of the glove slot. I wasn’t worried about our cash, which was mostly tucked up inside the busted radio speaker, but then the greaser spotted Ma in the back seat.

  “What’s that?”

  “You leave that alone,” Boss warned him. I was out of it for a second then, just couldn’t think what to do at all, but Boss came through. Came right to life, as needed.

  “Look in there,” said the mountie to his partner in crime.

  “Keep your greasy paws off that.”

  “What the hell is it, boys?” said Mr. Farley, most courteous still, our friend in court.

  “It’s our Ma,” I told him, figuring the truth had to come out and (since it wasn’t anything against the law) telling might get them to show some respect.

  “Oh sure,” said the mountie, “and this here is my sister’s second cousin.” He took out a pack of cheroots to make his little joke.

  “It is her. We’re carrying her west to scatter her ashes, in accord with her final wishes. The box looks fancy but it just comes free from the place that cremates.”

  “You serious?”

  “Yes sir. We’re taking her to San Francisco, to toss her off the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “You can’t do a crazy thing like that.”

  “It’s for sure we can,” said Boss.

  “It’s legal,” went I.

  “It’s crazy,” went the J.P., “but it probably is legal, Ray.”

  “It’s eyewash. How do we know that box isn’t full of money? Or goddamned narcotics for that matter.”

  He reached in for Ma’s container and Boss just touched him. “I wouldn’t. I told you, we ain’t no monkey men.”

  “You said that before. I’m not expecting to find bananas in there if that’s what you’re thinking.” He started again and this time I had a crack at it.

  “Sir, you can understand that we don’t care to see anyone but ourselves holding our mother’s remains. That’s all my brother means to say.”