Running With Monkeys: Hell on Wheels

by Diane Munier

  They were in the stinking entryway when it happened. This was a ramshackle entrance; couldn’t hold more than four. The two who’d been behind Cabhan were behind them, and three more were outside the door, right there. They were sandwiched between these guys.

  “What’s this shit?” Jules said, and Audie and Bobby were talking, but he couldn’t listen; he had these guys in his face.

  “Move,” he told the one closest, that mug of his bruised and meaty. When he didn’t move, Jules punched him square in the nose. Blood spurted, and there went his jacket and the white shirt. He hit that beef roast in the face again just for that.

  “Easy,” one of Beef Roast’s buddies were saying as they stepped back a little. Then Jules was shoved from behind cause all hell was breaking loose in this box.

  Jules ended up swinging his fists on the sidewalk in front of this place. It was a free-for-all then, everyone swinging. Jules punched and kicked and tackled. After a few minutes a couple of those guys were rolling on the ground; one was out completely.

  Jules helped Bobby up from the sidewalk. His lip was cut, his nose bloody.

  Cabhan stood in the doorway, a couple of his boys behind him. A couple others had come around the building from the back and were looking over the damage. Cabhan had called off his goons, but only two were standing. Audie leaned against the building, his chest heaving. He was sucking on a knuckle. “Hey, Uncle Cabhan,” he said between licks, “you wanna tell me why we shouldn’t rip your arms off?”

  Cabhan threw back his head and laughed. When he was done, he said to Jules, “You were right. You passed!”

  He was laughing like a loon.

  “I’m goin’ home,” Jules said to Audie.

  “Wait. I’m comin’.”

  Bobby fell in with them.

  “Boys!” Cabhan called. “Take the Buick.”

  The moog threw Audie the keys, and they hit his leg and fell to the ground.

  Audie bent and picked them up, bounced them in his hand a little. “Yeah…sure. Thanks.”

  Jules didn’t want in that coffin on wheels. But Audie and Bobby were getting in, and he was so damn tired, this bastard deserved his blood on the seats.

  He went around the car, shooting a last look at all those grinning assholes as they scraped their guys off the pavement. He was beat.

  Chapter 10

  “He didn’t used to…” Audie started to say as he drove through the deserted city streets.

  “Don’t talk,” Jules said from the backseat.

  “I didn’t…” Audie said.

  “I said to shut up, buddy-boy. You think I want to hear from you right now?” Jules sat up some.

  Bobby turned around. “Calm down, Julie. Nobody knew.”

  Jules got a good look at him. “Shit,” he cried, and they stared at each other. Then Jules broke out laughing. “Those fookers had knuckles.”

  Then he looked at Audie with something more than his rage. Audi had a split on the back of his head that was still bleeding, and from the side he could see a big bruise forming on his cheek, and his hands on the wheel were hamburger.

  “What the…my own uncle!” Audie yelled like he’d just realized he was mad. He hammered the steering wheel. He drove faster.

  Bobby had braced himself on the seat and the door.

  Jules couldn’t stop laughing.

  Audie was grinning when he looked in the backseat. “It ain’t funny, you damn chimpanzee.”

  Jules’s head was thrown back, he was laughing so hard. “I beat the shit out of that potato eater. He stuck his face right there.” He held his hand in front of his face. He’d broken that moog’s nose and knocked him out, and he couldn’t stop laughing. “Hell with the Irish!” Jules yelled. Then he howled and slammed his back into the seat a couple of times. It hurt too, cause he’d been hit in the back.

  They talked over each other then, who did what. Then they bitched about their ruined suits.

  “We can’t see the girls like this,” Bobby said when they’d crowed a little.

  “I’m walking a tightrope with Francis,” Audie said. “That woman has been ridden over…and she’s bitter!” he said.

  Jules leaned forward. He knew this. “Isbe wouldn’t say.”

  “Dorie either. Some kind of woman-pact,” Bobby said, his speech funny from his fat lips.

  “Dorie? Got a little love talkin’ goin’ on?” Audie asked.

  “We’ll be out on the swing,” Jules mimicked Dorie. “You all go on…we’ll just be on the swing,” he said again, then, “Saaaa…wangin’!”

  “How’s it wangin’ while you’re bangin’, brother?” Audie asked Bobby, and that one punched Audie’s arm, and he groaned and held it, crying out, “What are you doin’, you damn baboon?”

  “That’s ‘fooker’ to you,” Bobby said, looking back at Jules, and they both laughed cause Bobby brought the Irish.

  “Fook the Irish!” Jules yelled.

  Aww, shit. He had that too, Irish. That was her—his mother. He was Europe’s mutt just like most he knew.

  He felt better. Good even. That fight—he’d needed it. He hadn’t even realized. The fight at the track—he’d been too drunk. Now he sat up so he could talk to the monkeys. “You want to work for this jackass? He’s out of his mind. We knew him in the war; we’d of taken care of him…and burned his laundry.”

  They were quiet for a minute until Audie said, “Mom married Spanky when I was…six. He’s been like a dad to me, better than the bastard I never knew.”

  “That makes you the bastard,” Bobby said slow, and Audie ignored him.

  “I never really saw Cabhan because he went to Leavenworth for armed robbery when I was in grade school.”

  They knew this. They knew about one another’s lives, especially Audie and Bobby cause they’d grown up together, but Jules had pretty well heard it all.

  “What about Francis?” Jules asked.

  “Oh shit. Well, she’s a widow. And get this, he died from a wound to his foot. One week before he shipped out. Infection got him.”

  Jules flew back, and they were laughing. “Let me guess…small-caliber wound?”

  “You got it, baby,” Audie said.

  “Does she know?” Bobby asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably not,” Audie said, lighting a smoke. Jules and Bobby hit him up, and they all lit up then.

  Francis wouldn’t know it, but half the guys in the hospital were there for self-inflicted wounds, always in the hand or the foot and always with a small-caliber weapon. The army was probably going to court-marshal the guy. Jules wondered if he’d hung himself. You never knew.

  Well, shit, that was something else to think about.

  But his favorite new thought, hands down, was all Isbe. She’d left a feeling in him…an excitement. She’d be in bed right now. He pictured her sleeping. He’d give anything to see it.

  “I was thinking we could take them fishing,” Audie said.

  “Yeah,” Bobby said. “We could cook on the beach.”

  “Or they could cook. Looks like they do. They got it real nice. Francis had pans and all that woman stuff.”

  “Carpet sweeper too, Audie?” Jules teased him. When Finn talked about what a woman “had,” it was never her pots and pans.

  “I’m trying to talk to you monkeys. You can’t have a serious conversation.”

  “I didn’t say shit,” Bobby defended himself. “Dorie cooks.”

  Audie hooted. “Dorie,” he teased, and Bobby shook his head and flicked ash out the window.

  Jules wanted to do that, get Isbe out on the lake, fish with her, have all that time together, no escape. Damn, it was nice to have her to think about. It was real good.

  “We need to wait…a day or so,” Audie said. “Let the swelling go down.” He opened and closed his hand. “Then we could go—if it don’t rain. If it does…we can do something else.”

  Jules kept quiet, his thoughts taking him, her face when he said good-bye. He wanted to know h
er. Man, what a sap he was. He had to cover his mouth, gingerly, but still he had to…cause his smile was private. He wasn’t into group outings. He’d go with it some, but his goal was to get her alone. But even when they’d all been together, they’d paired off, and he didn’t have wheels…yet…and he lived in a latrine…and his one and only suit was good for the ragman.

  “What kind of shit is your cracked relative wanting us to do?” he said to Audie.

  “I thought it was…security, maybe. That’s what I thought this meet was about.”

  Jules nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

  They dumped him off, and he went up the stairs. A wino was passed out lying across the bottom of the doors. He tried to rouse the guy, shake him while he said, “Buddy.” But he didn’t move. Finally, he moved him just enough so he could get the door open and squeeze inside. In the lobby, it always stunk like a damp cellar. The fat guy in the sweater was sitting behind the desk reading a newspaper. The radio was on low.

  Jules went across the cracked tile floor, grit crunching under his shoes. Anyplace else they’d probably call the cops over someone looking like him, but here he was right at home. He went up several flights of the wide stairs and reached his room. It was cool inside, dark, but lit red by the blinking sign on the electrical plant across the street.

  He peeled off his clothes. Oh yeah. He’d left his shorts in Audie’s trunk. Too bad they didn’t leave the Buick there as he wanted. It would be great to think of Cabhan’s face when he found two pairs of skivvies dried over the spare, like a “fuck you.”

  He fell on his squeaky bed ass-out, not a stitch on, and next thing he knew it was morning and someone was pounding on his door.

  “What?” he yelled from the bed. He paid that landlord the six bucks, so what was this about?

  “Jules, open up.”

  It was Audie. Jules rolled out of the bed. He hurt, he was hung over, he had cotton-mouth, he’d bled on his sheets. He went to the door in his birthday suit and ripped it open. “What?”

  Audie wasn’t fazed by the display. “Get dressed.”

  “What? I just got—”

  Audie pushed in and closed the door behind him. “I opened the trunk. On the Buick, this morning, I opened the trunk. Jules—there’s a body in there. You hearing me?”

  Audie backhanded Jules’s shoulder. “There’s a dead guy in the Buick.”

  Chapter 11

  Julius washed at his sink, told Audie to turn the hell around while he pissed. Then he dug for some underwear. Damn, he needed to let that gal wash his clothes again. While he rooted through the rags in his drawer and the crap on the floor, he noticed his hair was heavy enough on top it almost hung in his eyes.

  “Man, you are beat to shit,” Audie said.

  He found a pair of skivvies that were passable. He sniffed them, and besides that sour clothes smell, they’d do. He moved like an old man while he pulled them on.

  Audie’s cheek had merged with a shiner. “You look in the mirror?” Jules asked him.

  He needed to shave. So he got out the things to do that, his silver razor, which he unscrewed, and the spare Gillette blades in the paper-thin wrapper. These were about the only things in his medicine cabinet except for his toothbrush and Ipana, some Colgate deodorant.

  Audie plopped down on the wooden chair set by the open window through which the noisy sounds of traffic moved like Chicago’s heartbeat. “C’mon, Jules.”

  Jules had a time getting that blade off the stack. His hands shook some. He felt Audie staring. “What?” he said.

  “What are you doing, kid? It’s gonna be a hundred degrees today, and we got stinkin’ bar-be-que in the trunk.”

  Jules gingerly soaped through the sore sand-pits on his cheeks with his sore fingers. He thought of Isbe, staring at him that way, that girl. He was beat to shit. It always showed the next day, the rainbow. At one time, he’d had two of those mutton-eaters on him. Hellacious dreams all night. Here, he didn’t even have clean underwear.

  Isbe didn’t need a moog like him, not like he was now. Didn’t mean he couldn’t rise to the occasion. He hadn’t decided if he was willing to try. Or maybe he wouldn’t admit it one way or another yet. Cabhan only thought he was testing him. He was testing himself. Right now. And she was behind it. He knew who he was…in Europe. But how to bring that guy home… that chimpanzee? That’s where the test came in.

  “You get my skivvies out of the trunk?” he said to Audie.

  “Did you hear me, Jules? There’s a pork chop lying on your damn underwear, saucing it like the Fourth of July.”

  He took his time shaving, making all the faces while glancing at Audie in the mirror now and then. That one watched in disbelief.

  While he was rinsing his razor, he said, “Ever notice how trouble never goes away no matter how long it takes you to get to it?”

  “I noticed it gets worse the longer you take.”

  “Maybe. But it’s still there…like a broken leg waitin’ to be set.”

  “You gonna get poetic on me now?”

  Jules took the dirty towel he kept by the sink and patted his cheeks. Then he turned and started to gather his laundry and shove it into his duffel.

  “You gonna clean house now? We got…”

  “‘We got nothin’,” Jules said, finding his everyday pants. He balanced on one foot while he shoved the other into the leg. “Your mick uncle, however…”

  “He won’t take my calls.” Audie moved around on the squeaking chair, wincing a little and working his shoulder.

  Jules laughed while he shook out a shirt. It was blue and short-sleeved. It had some style when it was washed and ironed. “He ain’t gonna talk to you,” Jules said. “He’s made his point.”

  “You want this job?” Audie said.

  Jules shrugged and settled the shirt on his sore shoulders. “Anyone else beating down your door with opportunity?”

  Audie stared at him.

  “How much we make at the munitions factory before the war?”

  “Eighty-eight cents an hour,” Audie said.

  “I was proud of dat,” Jules said.

  Audie shrugged. “You’re dumb as a doorknob; they pay you good.”

  “Now you sound poetic. They ought to quote you on it.”

  “Best money I ever made. Except for what we took off those guys at the track.”

  “Not true. We made good with Bobby’s uncle.”

  “But we’re not union. We got to get a card. That’s what took me to Uncle Cabhan.”

  “That mick fooker gonna get us cards?”

  “He said he would…but maybe we’d do a couple of jobs for him first.”

  “Right. You think he’s on the up?”

  Audie laughed.

  “See there, you got your sense of humor back.”

  Audie’s smile dropped right off. “Nunt-uh. I ain’t laughin’ about this.”

  “Get a look at the stiff?”

  Audie’s head went down. “Yeah. It’s that moog that was leavin’ Cabhan’s table when we got there.”

  Jules shrugged. “So, while we were in there, that poor bastard…”

  “Was getting his…head…”

  “Shit. Unc is a real swell guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jules didn’t know if it was his imagination, but he could smell the death as soon as he got in the Buick.

  They rode two blocks, and Bobby waited on the stoop to his building, drinking a cup of coffee.

  “Oh man, he’s got coffee,” Ed said. He’d shoot a bugger for some of that.

  “Where’s our coffee, you stingy bastard?” Audie said as Bobby got in the backseat holding that cup. Like them, he looked for shit. His hair was growing out too, and it was wavy, the way girls liked it, he said, and he never had problems in that department. That little bird he had now…she seemed to like it, too.

  As a rule, dames thought since Bobby was quiet he had all kinds of shit he wanted to say, but truth was, he didn’t have a thing. When h
e did get serious, though, it could be worth the wait. But Jules wasn’t waiting. He liked Bobby. He was stand-up, he was true. When they worked at the munitions plant, Bobby would take the chunks out of the cans of gunpowder and set them up on the stairs and hit them with a hammer, scare the shit out of everybody.

  Nothing rattled this guy, but he had a temper. When he let it go…it was gunpowder on the stairs.

  Bobby didn’t have to orate to improve Jules’s good feelings toward him.

  “Stinks,” Bobby said before taking a noisy sip.

  “Drive out of the city,” Jules said to Audie.

  “We doing this?” Audie asked. “You know what Cabhan wants. Obligation.”

  “Nah,” Jules said. “That’s what we want. We looked in the hole where Hitler’s body laid. I had a chunk of that motherfucker’s desk. You think this moog is gonna obligate us? What did Leavenworth have that D-Day Two didn’t? Or the Ardennes? The only thing he has we don’t is money. You want a woman like the ones we met yesterday, you got to have something to bring to the table. Nah, brother…he don’t obligate us. We obligate him. We do this…we own him. Hell on wheels.”

  “Hell yeah!” Audie yelled, honking the horn.

  Jules turned to Bobby. He had a big grin that had re-split his lip, and it was bleeding, but he didn’t know it yet.

  “Right, you damn baboon?” Jules said.

  Bobby just stared, but that grin on his beat-up face…it made Jules laugh.

  “Give me that coffee before you bleed in it,” Jules said. Bobby handed it over, his other hand discovering the blood.

  Jules took a big sip, and it went like fire through his veins. At his feet was a saw wrapped in his dirty towel. He’d stolen it from the janitor’s closet before he left his building.

  It wasn’t his first headless body.

  There was that woman…in Belgium.

  He didn’t want to think about her now. That house, the dark, tall furniture. Him and his buddy, they’d pitched their bedrolls on that big carved bed…in that farm house…against the rules…sleeping on the beds… they told them not to do it…meningitis…pitch your roll on the floor.