Lean on Pete

by Willy Vlautin

  After that I started talking to three men who were sitting in an alley drinking beer. They were older and one guy was missing all his front teeth, and another one had tattoos all over his hands and every time he spoke he stuttered. The other man didn’t say anything at all. He just sat there and mumbled and wore glasses with the thickest lenses I’d ever seen. The two guys talked about a friend of theirs who got hit by a car and then they talked about some other guy who stole their backpack. Then the guy with the thick glasses puked. He didn’t move, he just sat there and threw up on himself. The other two guys got up and took their things and left and so I did, too.

  Chapter 3

  My dad didn’t come home that night either and there was no food left and I’d spent all the money he had given me. The next morning I walked down to a Safeway grocery store and stole two cans of soup and a loaf of bread. I put the cans in my coat pocket and carried the bread and left. The second I was outside I started running. I didn’t look back or stop until I was nearly a mile away. I was nervous alright but I’d done the same thing quite a bit when I lived in Spokane and I’d never been caught. I walked the rest of the way home and when I got there I ate one of the cans and five pieces of bread. After that I sat in the bathtub and tried to read a spy novel my dad had left in the bathroom.

  He came back the next night. I was in bed when I heard his truck pull up. I shut the light off in my room. I could hear him unlock the front door and walk through the living room. After a while he opened the door to my bedroom and looked in. I closed my eyes and kept them shut even when he called my name. He stood there for a time, then turned off the TV and closed the door and I fell asleep right after that.

  I woke up early the next morning and got dressed to go running. When I walked out into the main room I could see him in the kitchen sitting in his underwear drinking coffee.

  “How have you been?” he asked in a voice that was tired and raw.

  “Alright,” I said.

  “I was on call all weekend but it was slow so Lynn and I drove out to Pendleton to pick up some furniture her uncle gave her. I stopped by once but you weren’t here. You get my note?”

  “I got it.”

  “I’ll get the phone hooked up next week.”

  “Maybe we could get cell phones?” I asked him.

  “Cell phones?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you get people calling all the time and everybody knows where you are. A regular phone is bad enough, with cell phones you end up talking on them while you’re on the can, while you’re in the movie theater.”

  “When was the last time you went to a movie?” I said and grinned.

  “You know what I mean, smart ass. I’ll get a regular phone, but I ain’t getting us cell phones. Alright?”

  I nodded.

  He hadn’t shaved and his hair looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. He took a cigarette from a pack on the table and lit it.

  “You going running?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How far today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve been thinking, we should go to the coast this summer. I hear you can go swimming in the ocean. It’s cold, but a hotshot athlete like you could take it.”

  I sat down at the table and put on my shoes.

  “What did you do here?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Did you have enough money?”

  “I did alright.”

  “I was gonna make breakfast but there’s nothing here, is there?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll go shopping when you get back.”

  “Alright,” I said and he nodded and I got up.

  I ran to the mini-mart and turned left and ran past a row of warehouses, then past the Freightliner plant and I came to a small two-lane road and I stayed on it until I began to hurt, then I turned around.

  When I got back he was asleep on his bed. It took me a while to get him up but after a while he did and drove us to Jubitz truck stop and we had breakfast in the diner. I ate mine and part of his and then he ordered me a cheeseburger.

  Afterwards we walked around the truck stop. It was like a little city. There was a movie theater, a church, a post office, even a medical office, and it was all enclosed like a big mall. We stayed there for a long time and he tried on a pair of boots in a Western store, then we went back out to the truck.

  “It’s always good to go grocery shopping on a full stomach,” he said and started the engine and took us out on to the main road. He lit a cigarette and rolled down the window.

  “But you never buy as much when you’re not hungry,” I said.

  “That’s the point,” he said.

  “It’s not a very good idea,” I said.

  “How do you like Portland?” he said after a while.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen much of it.”

  “Meet any girls?”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone my age in any of the houses around us. I haven’t met anybody at all.”

  A man passed us in an old station wagon. His car was smoking. He had his head out of the window and was trying to drive like that.

  My dad laughed.

  “Do you think the car’s gonna blow up?”

  “No,” he said and paused. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe.”

  We watched the car. Black smoke streamed from under the hood, then it seemed like it was coming from inside the car too. The man got in the right lane and turned down a side street but he didn’t pull over, he kept driving.

  My dad turned on the radio and began going through the stations.

  “Do you like it here?” I asked him.

  “The work’s alright,” he said, “but I’m a low man and I’ll have to work swing and graveyard for a while. It’s better than Spokane, though. That’s for sure.” He took a cigarette from a pack lying on the seat. “There’s a Safeway around here, isn’t there?”

  “I can’t go in there,” I said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I stole a couple cans of soup and a loaf of bread from there.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “You didn’t steal any beer or maybe a bottle of wine?”

  “Nothing like that,” I told him.

  “I should have left you more money.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You gonna turn into a bank robber?” he said and looked over to me. He smiled and pushed on my arm.

  “No, I was just hungry I guess.”

  “We’ll get you food. Just lay off the armed robbery, alright?”

  “Alright.”

  “So where do we go?”

  “There’s a Fred Meyer on the way to St. Johns. If you go down to Lombard and take a right.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “There ain’t much to do but walk around.”

  “Then Fred Meyer it is,” he said.

  We spent over a hundred dollars grocery shopping. We bought hamburger, cans of soup, frozen dinners and vegetables, cereal, bread, hot dogs, pork chops, spaghetti, and donuts. We went to the outdoor section and he bought me an air mattress to go underneath the sleeping bag. It was the kind with the motor and all you had to do was plug it in and it would automatically fill up the pad. He also bought a small hibachi barbecue, briquettes, and lighter fluid. I don’t know how he had money then, when he didn’t a couple days before, but he did.

  Back at the house we put the groceries away and he lit the barbecue. We sat outside on the front lawn. When the coals had burned down enough we put hamburger patties on the grill and he drank beer and watched them cook and I put a can of pork and beans on the stove.

  When he left that afternoon he told me he was going to spend the night at Lynn’s but that he’d be home in the morning. He gave me ten dollars and got in his truck and left. But the
next morning he didn’t show up and he didn’t show up that night either. I knew he wouldn’t but it still made me mad, and I still waited up most of the night for him.

  Chapter 4

  I blew the ten he gave me at the movie theater. I watched a comedy about a newscaster, and I bought a hot dog and a Coke and a candy bar. When it was over I snuck into another movie about a ship’s captain who sails around getting into fights and a kid gets his arm blown off. When it was over and I had to leave the theater I got pretty down. I knew then, that night, that Portland would be worse than Spokane. At least I had friends in Spokane.

  I woke up the next day and decided I’d get a job so I could have my own money. I was only fifteen so I lied on all the job applications and applied to the places I could walk to. There were help wanted signs at Joe’s Sporting Goods, Banditos Mexican Restaurant, and Napa Auto Parts. But none of them called me after I filled out the application. I tried for a dishwasher job at Shari’s and for a job pumping gas at a 76 station but neither of them called me either. So I just stayed home and watched TV, waiting for the summer to end and for football tryouts to start in August.

  I ate through that run of groceries and after that whenever he gave me money I was smarter with it. I’d buy a big package of hamburger, a couple cans of spaghetti sauce, and a box of spaghetti and I’d make a big batch of it. I’d eat on the same thing for days.

  I went running past the track one morning when I saw an old man in a gravel parking lot trying to change a tire on an old horse trailer. He was swearing at it. Each time he tried to get a lug nut off he’d start cussing. He had a low rough voice, and every other word he said was fuck or cocksucker or motherfucker or motherfucking cunt. I stopped and watched from a distance.

  He saw me standing there.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he said. He had the lug wrench in his hand.

  “Me?” I yelled over to him.

  “There ain’t no one else here,” he said.

  “I’m just running.”

  “Are you strong?”

  “I’m pretty strong,” I told him.

  “Come over here,” he said.

  I walked to him. He was old, maybe seventy, and dressed in cowboy boots and jeans and a flannel shirt. He hadn’t shaved in a couple days and even then just meeting him I could tell he was shitfaced drunk. He smelled like beer and his eyes were bloodshot and glassy. He had a big gut and was going bald. The hair he did have was mostly gray on the sides and he had it greased back. His right arm was in a cast and he was chewing tobacco.

  “What time is it?”

  “Maybe six thirty,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “I gotta load two horses and get to the Tri-Cities by one, and I got a flat.”

  I looked down at the tire. There were two cans of Fix-a-Flat next to it.

  “Is that far?” I asked.

  “Far enough. Look, my arm ain’t worth two shits. I’ll give you five dollars if you can get the lugs off.”

  “I’ll try,” I told him. I took the wrench and set it on the first nut. I pushed down as hard as I could and it gave. I got four others off but I had to jump on the last one until it broke free. After that he told me he had a jack behind the seat in his truck and asked me to get it. I did and jacked up the axle and pulled off the flat, put on the spare, and tightened down the lug nuts.

  When I was done he took three dollars from his wallet.

  “I thought I had a five,” he said and handed it to me.

  “Del,” he said and put out his left hand and we shook.

  “Charley,” I told him. “What happened to your arm?”

  “I slipped,” he said.

  “Why are you going to the Tri-Cities?”

  “There’s a race.”

  “A horse race?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “Help with what?” he said.

  “With anything?”

  “You’re looking for a job?”

  I nodded.

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” I told him.

  “You know much about horses?”

  “No.”

  The old man looked around. With his left hand he took a can of Copenhagen from his back pocket. He knocked the can of chew into the side of his leg, opened it with one hand, and set it on the hood of his truck. The fingers on his left hand were covered in dirt and grease and his pinky was bent out like it had been broken off and put back on wrong. He put those fingers in the tobacco, took a big dip from the can, and put it between his front lip and gum. He closed the can, put it back in his pocket, and spit on the ground. Some of the spit fell on his chin and he left it there.

  “Will your folks let you spend the night away?”

  “How far away is it?”

  “Four hours, if we’re lucky.”

  “Where will we be staying?”

  “I’ll be sleeping in the cab. You can sleep wherever you want, or in the back of the truck. I don’t care. You got a sleeping bag?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’ll give you twenty-five dollars if you help me up there and back.”

  “Twenty-five?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon?”

  He nodded.

  I had two dollars and change and the three he just gave me.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What about your parents?”

  “They want me to get a job,” I said.

  “Over there is the backside of the track. There’s a caf just off the road,” he said and pointed towards it. “You see the beer sign?”

  I nodded.

  “You’ll have to talk to the security guard to get in. Just tell him you work for me, Del Montgomery, and he’ll show you where to go. I’ll be there for a half-hour, then I’m gonna load up and leave. If you’re here by then I’ll take you.”

  He turned and walked away. He dragged his left leg a little and it seemed like it was painful for him to walk. He made his way out of the parking lot, then across the street and through an entrance gate where the security guard stood in a small shack. When I saw where he went I ran back to my house. I left a note for my dad, changed my clothes, rolled up my sleeping bag, and tied it with a piece of rope. I put the five dollars in a plastic bag and folded the bag as small as I could and put it in my shoe and left.

  Chapter 5

  Del was sitting by himself at a table in the caf drinking a beer and eating eggs and bacon. The restaurant was like a shack almost, but I liked the way it looked. It was rundown and old, and there were pictures of horses on the wall, and a couple of TVs going and two video games in the corner. The floor dipped and raised and the linoleum on it was worn and covered with duct tape in places.

  I walked over to him and set my sleeping bag on the ground.

  “Have you eaten?” he said through a mouth full of food. There was ketchup on his chin and some had fallen on his shirt.

  “No,” I told him.

  “Can you eat in a hurry?”

  I told him I could and he said there was a woman behind the counter named Mora and to order from her and have her put it on his tab. I went to the counter and a lady came from the kitchen. I asked her if she was Mora and she said she was so I ordered a ham and cheese omelet. She wrote it down and told me I owed her six-fifty.

  “Del said to put it on his tab.”

  “Del said that?” the woman said.

  “He did,” I told her and then I looked out across the room and pointed to him. “He’s right over there by the TV.”

  “I know who he is,” the woman said. “He doesn’t have a tab. I won’t give him a tab.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He didn’t tell you that he doesn’t have a tab?”

  “No,” I said. “He just told me to come up here.”

  “It’s six dollars and fifty cents. Do you still want the breakfast?”

  “I o
nly have five dollars. I just started working for him today.”

  “You only have five dollars?”

  “Yeah.”

  She shook her head and looked over at Del. “Give to it to me, but remember this is the first and last time.”

  I nodded and bent down and took off my shoe and reached in and got the plastic bag.

  “Here,” I said and handed her the money.

  She took it and put it in the till.

  I went back to Del. He was watching a horse race on TV and drinking beer.

  “You order something?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He nodded, then a race started on TV and he began yelling at it. He seemed pretty upset while it was going and more upset after it was over so I didn’t say anything to him about not having a tab or about how the lady made me pay. I should have left right then, but I was flat broke. So I just sat down and waited until my food came up.

  Del’s truck was a white 1975 Ford pickup and it was parked in the dirt lot across from the backside. There was a blanket duct taped to the bench seat and there were rust holes in the floor. You could see the ground below. The windshield was cracked in three places and it only had an AM radio, but other than that the truck was okay. He started it and moved it in front of a trailer and we got out and hooked it up. The trailer wasn’t much either. Just a faded white old rusty stock trailer with two wheels on each side.

  He drove up to the front gate and the old-man guard let us in. We went past a couple buildings and then Del parked and we got out and walked down a long shedrow barn where dozens and dozens of horses stood waiting in stalls. The whole building looked like it was leaning to the right. It was dilapidated. The paint was cracked and faded and there was mud everywhere. The stalls themselves were brick on three sides. The brick was painted white, but covered in dust and mud. The gates that held the horses in were metal and most were bent and rusty. A single naked light bulb hung in the center of each stall. There was hardly any natural light shining through at all. It seemed like a prison, a foreign prison in an old movie. There were maybe fifty horses waiting in that single row and Del said there were twenty to twenty-five more rows that had just as many. He said there were almost a thousand horses there.