Lean on Pete

by Willy Vlautin

  “Where’s my TV?” His eyes were red, he was upset.

  “Your TV?” I asked.

  “I remember you. You’re the little fucker that ran down my battery and ate all my food and skipped out.”

  “You said I could have the chips,” I said.

  “I let you stay in my place and now my TV and radio are missing.”

  “I didn’t take them,” I said.

  “Where do you live?”

  “I don’t live anywhere.”

  “He probably pawned them,” the other man said and coughed.

  Silver grabbed me by the shirt and led me to a side street and then down to an empty parking lot. There was no one around. He made me empty my pockets. He took the fifteen dollars and the pocket knife I had in them.

  “Where do you live?” the tattooed man said.

  “I don’t live anywhere. I’ve been sleeping behind a stack of pallets where I work.”

  “You have a job?” the tattooed man said.

  “I mow lawns.”

  “Where do you keep your money?”

  “I don’t have any more money.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Silver said. “If you got a job, you got more money than this.”

  “He probably has it hidden somewhere,” the tattooed man said.

  “Let’s go to where you’re sleeping,” Silver said.

  “But I don’t keep anything there,” I said.

  “Then take your shirt off,” Silver yelled and grabbed me by my hair.

  I took it off.

  “Take off your shoes and pants,” the tattooed man said.

  I began to unlace my shoes and then I tried to get away but he kept pulling hard on my hair and then the tattooed man hit me in the stomach. Silver put his other hand around my neck.

  The tattooed man took off my shoes and then my pants. He looked through the pants, then he felt in my shoes and found the money.

  “I knew he’d have money,” he said and grinned. “I just knew it.”

  “It’s all I have,” I said and started crying.

  Chapter 28

  Silver threw me down on the ground, then the tattooed man kicked me in the guts and they left. I just lay there. When I got up it was minutes later and I found my clothes and shoes and dressed. I made my way to Colfax Avenue but I didn’t see them anywhere. I began to panic. I was tired of being broke and I was tired of sleeping outside. I walked up and down long stretches of the avenue looking for them but they were nowhere. I didn’t know what to do so I began looking in bars and restaurants and stores.

  Maybe two hours passed and I looked in a place called the Monroe Tavern and saw them sitting in a corner drinking. I went back outside, walked across the street, sat down on the curb, and waited.

  They didn’t come out for hours. When they did you could tell they were drunk because the man with the tattooed neck kept dropping a cigarette he was trying to light. They talked for a couple minutes, then separated, and I followed Silver.

  He walked slowly down Colfax, then took a turn and walked down an alley and I saw his truck and camper parked there. He got to it, stood outside and took a leak, then unlocked the door, and went inside.

  I waited to make sure he was going to stay in there, then I walked to Walgreens. I took five packages of thumb tacks and a roll of masking tape and ran out the door. No one followed me but I kept running for a couple blocks, then I went behind a restaurant and looked through their dumpster and found a cardboard box. I ripped it down so there was a piece that would cover my chest and stomach, then I took off my shirt and taped it on my body the best I could. I stretched out a line of tape and stuck the end to my knee and began sticking thumb tacks all the way through it so the tape would hold them but nearly all the tack was facing out. I did four rows of this, then I taped those to the cardboard on my chest. In the end I had almost a hundred tacks facing out on my chest and stomach.

  I put my shirt back on and began walking down the alley looking for an unlocked car. I found an old Toyota pickup that had a busted-out window and I opened the door and looked behind the seat and found a tire iron.

  I walked back to the camper. I wasn’t even that nervous or scared, I was just mad and tired. I beat on the door and called out Silver’s name but there was no answer. I walked around to the side and knocked on the camper’s aluminum walls, then finally I just swung the tire iron into one of the windows and broke it.

  It wasn’t much after that that Silver opened the door. He was drunk and naked.

  “What the fuck?” he yelled.

  I swung the tire iron at him but missed.

  He jumped down from the camper and grabbed me and hit me in the face but it didn’t hurt that bad. Then he grabbed me by the hair and hit me in the stomach but when he did he also hit the tacks. He yelled out and looked at his hand and when he did I hit him in the knee with the tire iron and he fell to the ground. Then I swung it as hard as I could and hit him on the side of the head and he collapsed. His naked body lay on the pavement, and there was blood coming out of his head and he was slobbering, trying to move his lips to speak.

  I went into the camper and found the flashlight sitting on the table and I shined it around until I found his pants and his wallet. There was only a hundred and nine dollars left. I took it and jumped down to the street. I shined the light on Silver. He was still lying there. His hair was dark with blood but he was still breathing when I threw the flashlight back in the camper and left.

  Chapter 29

  I walked a half a mile before I put the tire iron in a trash can. I took off my shirt and pulled the tacks and the cardboard off me. I hid in some bushes alongside a bank and waited for morning. I didn’t sleep at all. At sunrise I started walking again. I ate breakfast at a diner that was open and ordered two turkey sandwiches to go and left. I walked to the Greyhound bus station and bought a one way ticket to Rock Springs, Wyoming for sixty-eight dollars.

  The bus wasn’t scheduled to depart until the afternoon but I didn’t leave the station. I sat in a chair next to where a security guard stood and kept a lookout for Silver. When the bus came I sat in the front near the driver and once we got out of the station I felt better and by the time we got out of Denver I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

  It was three in the morning when we pulled into Rock Springs and it was cold. There were three other people that got off and then the bus moved on. There was a Denny’s sign in the far distance and I walked towards it.

  Inside I sat at a booth and ordered a chocolate milkshake and fries and when the waitress wasn’t looking I took out my last turkey sandwich and ate it. I bought a paper and sat there and tried to read it to kill time but I started falling asleep so I left.

  I walked around the rest of the night just going up and down the main streets and neighborhoods. I couldn’t recall much of it, but in every house and apartment and car that I passed I looked for my aunt.

  When the sun came up I walked down a street and saw the auto parts store where my aunt had once worked. The front sign had an angry-looking man in a kilt holding a wrench. It was called Scottish Sam’s Auto Parts. I waited outside until they opened, then I asked a woman behind a counter if she knew Margy Thompson and she began laughing.

  “You’re the guy that keeps calling here,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Like I’ve said, there ain’t a Margy that works here, and I’ve worked here the longest except for the boss. But the good news is that he’s started to come back to work. I could ask him.” She was chewing gum and drinking a bottle of diet Coke. She was pregnant.

  “Is he here today?”

  “No,” she said. “He only comes in on Mondays to do the books. So he’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “But he’ll be here by lunch I bet.” Then another customer came and she began helping him.

  I sat outside the building for a long time. I counted my money but I only had nineteen dollars. I b
egan walking around town but I saw two police cars go by and they made me nervous so I found a movie theater and went to the first show at noon and then I jumped from movie to movie until the last one was over sometime past eleven o’clock. When I got out I was starving. I went to a mini-mart, bought a couple cans of SpaghettiOs and hid behind a dumpster at a grocery store, ate, and spent the night there.

  When I got to Scottish Sam’s the next morning the same girl was there behind the register eating a Pop Tart and drinking a diet Coke.

  “You’re back?” she said.

  I nodded. “Is the owner here yet?”

  “He’s in the office.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Sure,” she said and went into the back and came out with a fat old man in a wheelchair. He only had one leg.

  “You’re looking for who?”

  “Margy Thompson?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “She’s my aunt and I’m trying to find her.”

  “Well,” he said, “she used to work in the office here years ago. She did the accounts payable and receivable.”

  “Do you know where she is now?” I asked.

  “I know she left here to go work at the library.”

  “The library?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “Like I said, I haven’t seen her in years. But the library is just up the road, maybe they know.” I asked him for directions, he gave them to me, and I left.

  It was Monday and the library was closed until Tuesday. I had to wait out another night. I sat down on their front steps and worried. I was almost out of money and what if I couldn’t find her? And if I did, what if she had a new family and didn’t want me around? Then I started thinking about Pete and then about Silver and things started spiraling. I made myself get up and start walking. I ate my last can of SpaghettiOs and counted my money. In my pants pocket I found Lonnie Dixon’s phone number and that afternoon I got quarters from a grocery store and called his ranch in Nevada.

  An old woman’s voice answered.

  “Is Lonnie there?” I asked her.

  “No,” the woman said. “He’s in Colorado. His brother just died.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Is he gonna be back?”

  “He said he would be, sooner or later.”

  “He told me you guys might be hiring.”

  “You’ll have to talk to Ralph about that and he ain’t here right now.”

  “Will he be back today?”

  “He’ll be back tonight. The best thing would be to call him tomorrow.”

  “Did Lonnie leave a number?”

  “No,” the woman said.

  “Alright,” I told her, and then I left my name and we hung up.

  I spent the rest of the day in a park, then I went back to the movies and watched all the same ones I had the day before. After that I hid behind the grocery store dumpster, but I couldn’t sleep.

  In the morning I cleaned up in the grocery store bathroom. I was down to three dollars. I bought a couple donuts and sat by the library and waited for it to open. When it did I went to the front desk where a middle-aged woman stood and I asked her if she knew Margy Thompson.

  “Of course I know Margy,” the lady said and smiled.

  “She’s my aunt.”

  “Really?”

  “Does she live here?” I asked.

  “She moved to Laramie maybe three years ago. She got married and last I knew she worked at the university library.”

  “She got married?”

  “She did. I was at her wedding.”

  “Who did she marry?”

  “A guy named Jerry.”

  “Jerry?”

  “He was a chemical salesman when I met him. I don’t know if he still does that. I didn’t really know him.”

  “But she got married?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Piotrowski, I think. It’s a hard one.”

  “Could you spell it out?”

  She wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “I think that’s right,” she said.

  “In Laramie?” I asked.

  “That’s where they moved.”

  “When was the last time you talked to her?”

  “A year or a year and half ago,” she said and smiled.

  “Okay,” I said and then I left.

  I walked towards the freeway and it took me a while but I made it to the on ramp heading east towards Laramie. I waited most of the day trying to hitchhike but no one ever stopped. Near dusk a man pulled over in a dented old Datsun truck. I ran up to him and asked him if was going to Laramie and he said he was going right past it and that he’d give me a ride.

  His truck was as beat up on the inside as the outside. Everything had duct tape on it and there was no stereo or anything on the dash except the speedometer. The man had long sandy blond hair and wore a stained white T-shirt and cut-offs. He was smoking cigarettes that he rolled himself while he drove. He said his name was Dan.

  The truck could only go fifty miles an hour. We had the windows rolled down so it was hard to hear, but he started talking about cameras and how he’d just bought a bunch of them and thousands of dollars’ worth of film from a guy in North Dakota for five hundred dollars.

  He kept talking but with the wind and the heat I fell asleep. When I woke up he was shaking me. We were parked at a truck stop called Little America. We both went inside and used the toilet, and afterwards I waited by the truck and he came out with two ice-cream cones and handed me one.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He nodded. “They have great toilets here, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “The cans have their own little rooms. You could live in there if you had to. Plus the ice cream. Guess how much it costs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Thirty-five cents.”

  “Really?”

  “And its good,” he said.

  I looked in the back of his truck and it was filled with old coolers. “Why do you have the coolers?”

  “The film I bought is expired. They don’t make the film I like anymore but the guy said he kept it in a huge fridge. That’s why I have all the coolers in the back of the truck. If you keep the film cold it lasts a lot longer.”

  “But what if the ice melts on it?” I asked him.

  “Dry ice,” he said and smiled. “That shit’s the best. You ever used it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You should,” he said.

  We finished the cones, then got back in the truck, but it wouldn’t start. We both got out, pushed it down the parking lot, then he jumped in and compression started it. He let it idle for a bit, then we got on the freeway and he talked about how he could control his dreams. He said he was trying to bring his camera into his dreams so he could take pictures of the things he saw. He said a whole bunch more things like that but I couldn’t really hear him because of the wind. I fell asleep sometime later and when I woke he was shaking me again. We were on the side of the highway.

  “There’s Laramie,” he said and pointed to lights in the distance. We were maybe a mile away from town.

  “You ever been there?” I asked him.

  “No, man. What are you doing there?”

  “I think my aunt lives there.”

  “You don’t know for sure?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You know anyone else in town?”

  “No.”

  “Damn, that’s rough,” he said and put out his hand. We shook. “Good luck.”

  “I hope your film still works, even though it’s expired.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “I like your truck.”

  “It’s called a Little Hustler. It’s a piece of shit but it runs.”

  “Well thanks,” I said and got out. He put the truck in gear and drove off down the side of the freeway trying to
pick up speed. The little truck coughed and sputtered its way down the road until its tail lights just disappeared in the night.

  I don’t know what time it was as I made my way into town. I walked down a main road where there were businesses and shops but everything was closed. Cars and trucks passed me and I saw a police car go by so I got off that road and took side streets until I came to a bridge. Below it was a dried-out irrigation ditch and I jumped down there and hid underneath the overpass. Once in a while I thought I saw police lights but I couldn’t tell for sure and I knew I was just nervous. I stayed in the ditch and waited out the rest of the night.

  Chapter 30

  When it was light out I walked downtown. I found a payphone with a phone book. I took out the piece of paper the librarian had given me and looked in the Ps and saw a listing for M. Piotrowski. It gave an address which I memorized. Then I went to a sporting goods store across the street and asked them where it was.

  They gave me directions and as I followed them I tried not to think about anything, but in my heart I knew she wouldn’t be there. I went through a neighborhood and at the end of the street I came to a rundown mustard-yellow apartment building. I climbed up the stairs and knocked on the door of apartment number seventeen, but no one answered. I sat there for an hour or so, then left. I walked back downtown and counted my money, but I only had two dollars in change. I went to a payphone and called Lonnie’s ranch in Nevada but no one answered. I walked in and out of stores to kill time, then called there again but no one ever picked up.

  It was past six when I went back to the yellow apartment building. I knocked on the door and within thirty seconds a woman answered. She stood there and it took me a while to realize who it was. She was much heavier than when I knew her and she hadn’t aged well. Her hair was gray and cut very short and her face was bloated. There were dark circles under her eyes.

  “You’re so tall,” was the first thing she said when she saw me. “Oh, Charley, it’s you, isn’t it?” Her voice broke when she said it. She opened her arms and hugged me. She invited me inside her apartment. It was small with a couch and a table and plants and paintings on the walls. It was a really nice place. We sat in the kitchen across from each other and tears fell down her face. We sat there staring at each other, and then finally I told her about the Samoan and my dad and Del and Lean on Pete and some of the things I’d seen to get to her.