by J. R. Helton
After a month the 18-wheeler came into Cassoday one evening, and Alton got on his machine. The driver told me his name was George. He was short and pudgy and balding, with blond eyelashes. He smiled when he talked and had a tic in his right eye. He and I sat in the cab and talked while Alton loaded the ties. We drank a few beers and smoked a joint. He told me he was a Vietnam vet, a portrait artist, and an alcoholic.
“I know I’m an alcoholic,” he said. “I’ve been to AA. That’s the first step, admitting you’re one. I just can’t get past that, though. I did two tours, volunteered for the second one, and got shot in the stomach by someone I never saw. As soon as I got back to San Francisco, I got arrested for riding inside of a drier in a laundromat two nights in a row. My wife an’ I live in Texas now. We got a trailer out in Giddings, but I’m building my own house. I keep getting DUIs, but Alton’s been good to me. I need this job.”
That night George and Alton and I took the flatbed into Strong City and went to the liquor store. I bought a bottle of whiskey and we drove back to Cottonwood Falls. No one was on the small cobblestone streets. We saw bright lights on the edge of town and drove toward them. It was a high-school football game, and hundreds of people and cars from miles around surrounded the isolated stadium. We parked the truck and sat on a cold bench outside the bleachers and watched the lights and crowd and listened to the noise. We passed around the whiskey, and Alton began to ask George questions about Vietnam and the things he’d seen there, and George gave him some answers.
Alton grew quiet as he told him of the realities of the Vietnam War, which were a little different from his Chuck Norris movies. “I was afraid, man,” George said. “Everybody was scared shitless all the fucking time. You never knew what was gonna kill you, or who, or where the VC even was. Some jackass who came in and did the laundry in the morning at the base would shoot you in the head that night or blow your balls off with a booby trap in the jungle in the afternoon. I mean, shit, I used to fill up my pack with as many grenades as I could carry before we went out on patrol. And I just threw them at everything in sight, any sound I heard. I didn’t give a fuck what it was. I wanted the napalm to burn that whole country down so I could at least see who was trying to kill me. Either that or you were bored out of your mind, sitting there with crotch rot eating cans of C rations, waiting for another round of bullshit. . . .”
I got off the bench and let them talk, lying down on the cold concrete, drinking the whiskey. I stared up at the black sky and yawned, watching my breath move away and disappear.
* * *
The next day there was a storm at work. A huge cold front was barreling in and the rain was beating down on us and we were slipping and falling in the mud and the ditches were filling with water, but Alton insisted we keep on working. I finally went up to him on his loader and told him we should go in.
“Let’s just get a few more ties,” he said. “Come on—”
Just then lightning struck a lone tree right next to us and the flatbed and the metal rails. There was an incredibly loud noise, and I saw the white bolt hit the tree and move in a spiral down its trunk, leaving it smoking and charred. Alton jumped so much he almost fell out of the tractor down onto me. “I guess we better go in,” he said.
Juan, Augustine, Alton, and I climbed inside the truck. The seven other men hopped on the flatbed and crowded against the cab, but there was no escape from the rain. They were all soaking wet and freezing, but they were laughing and shouting and smiling. It was our first day off in weeks. Before we started the truck, lightning struck again extremely close, and everyone jumped. Augustine began to yell at Alton in Spanish.
“All right, I’m goin’, I’m goin’!” Alton said. He started the truck, shifted gears noisily, and we drove back to the motel.
* * *
I called Susan that night at a pay phone down the street, standing out there in the rain. I wanted to hear her voice. She sounded happy and said she hadn’t been doing much.
“Pat’s here.”
“Yeah? What’s she doing?”
“She’s taking a nap right now. She came in to get an abortion this afternoon.”
“God, what is that, four?”
“Five.”
“Can’t she get a diaphragm or something?’
“I guess she’s very fertile.”
“I guess.”
“We’re going to a party later.”
I hesitated briefly. “Tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Whose party?”
“Well, you remember Dwayne?”
“Of course.”
“I ran into him the other day—”
“Ran into him?”
“At the Kash n’ Karry in Clarksville. Anyway, he’s got these two guys, the Jacobs brothers, who were students in his film class, and they’ve actually got some money and a script together with my uncle Martin—”
“Martin’s involved with this?”
“He cowrote the screenplay and has a producer credit.”
“I heard ‘we’ moved to Travis Heights.”
“It’s a cute, cheap little house, Jake, just off Alta Vista. I really think you’d like it, babe, if you’d just come home.”
“So Dwayne’s making a real movie?”
“Oh no, not at all. It’s his old film students from UT, these young guys, the Jacobs brothers. Terry Jacobs is the writer, and Aaron Jacobs is the director. They made this small independent film in Austin last year, and it got their foot in the door. They have this script, this highbrow Western they wanna do, and Martin’s helping them turn it into a miniseries.”
“TV?”
“Yeah, but good TV, big TV. ABC bought it.”
“ABC.”
“It’s real money, Jake.”
“I bet it is.”
“Look, Martin asked me if I wanted to work on it, and I said yeah.”
“He get you a part in it?”
“Well, no, not acting.”
“What happened to that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Dwayne’s got a little part in it as an extra, can you believe that?”
“Playing what?”
“A drunk cowboy in a whorehouse. He even has a line.”
“He’s on his way. So what’re you gonna do?”
“Martin said he could get me a job in the production department, as a production secretary or maybe as an assistant to the UPM—”
“The what?”
“The unit production manager, the UPM, who’s also doubling as the line producer on this miniseries.”
“Listen to you.”
“Yes, listen to me. I’m doing this. And you can come with me.” She paused. “I talked to Martin about getting you a job on it, too.”
“Susan, you didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to. Seriously, I talked to him and he introduced me to the production designer who introduced me to the head scenic for the whole series—”
“What’s that?”
“He’s basically the painter of all the sets, or he’s in charge of all of the set painters and artists who do all of the faux finishes, fake backgrounds and stuff. They’re gonna build an entire old Western town out in New Mexico, near Sante Fe. He told me they have a big budget—”
“The head scenic?”
“Yeah, and get this—”
“What?”
“He says he needs a set painter, but it needs to be, this is a direct quote, ‘a smart person who can both paint and draw.’ I mean, come on, Jake, how perfect could that be for you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your pay would be nine hundred dollars a week.”
“You’re shitting me. Nine hundred a week?”
“Right, and you’ll get per diem, room and board. It’s twice what I’m making in the production office.”
“For how long?”
“For the whole movie, the whole miniseries, like four months.”
“Damn.
Nine hundred a week—”
“Should I tell him yes?”
“Let me think about it.”
“You better think quick. Preproduction starts in just a few weeks. The whole crew is going to Sante Fe.”
“Are you going too?”
“I’ll be in Austin working for the production coordinator, who’s working for this British line producer, Ian Watt, so you’ll have to go first. But I’ll be right behind you. I’ll come in right before shooting starts, and we can be together again. Okay?”
“Yeah, maybe. . . . ”
We were silent for a while. I could hear the wet sound of a car passing on the street behind me.
“Well?”
“Well. . . . Have fun at your party.”
“Are you mad?”
“No.”
Silence again.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know.”
“I miss you.”
“Yeah, I miss you, too. I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Okay.”
I hung up the phone, stood there for a second, and then walked down the empty street back to the motel. I walked into my room and found Alton watching TV and reading a Conan comic book. He looked up, a smile on his face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I grabbed a beer out of an ice chest on the floor and opened it and sat at the table.
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t worry about it, Alton. Just watch your stupid show.”
His smile disappeared. “This ain’t a stupid show, all right? It’s Magnum, P.I., the best detective show on TV.”
“Sorry, my mistake.”
* * *
Because of all the rain the night before, Alton announced that we wouldn’t have to work the next day. The ground was too muddy for the machines. We slept and drank and watched TV all day and then walked down to the one bar in town after dinner. They had several pool tables and some 3.2 beer. All of the men had followed us and Alton offered to buy the workers as much beer as they wanted and everyone seemed happy. The owner of the bar was a tall, white-haired man in a cowboy hat. Alton said he didn’t like him: “He’s too nice to the wetbacks. He’s giving them a big head.”
We played pool and drank. Augustine challenged Alton to a game of pool and beat him easily. The owner, the old cowboy, was getting drunk, and he invited us into the back room and we followed, swaying and bloated from 3.2 beer. It was a large white room with a high ceiling. In the middle of the floor there was a mechanical bull. Along one wall were several fold-out chairs. A one-armed man with a beard and cap sat in a chair holding a control box. The cowboy yelled to him, “Virgil! These boys wanna ride the bull.”
Virgil looked excited. “They do?”
“Hell, yeah.”
The cowboy put his arm around a drunk Augustine. “Come on, son, you can do it.”
Augustine smiled and shook his head forcefully and said no, and everyone laughed.
The cowboy tried to persuade Juan and the others to ride, but they all shook their heads and laughed and said no. “Aw come on, boys,” he said. “Even Virgil can ride it.”
Hector and Tomas, the two strongest workers, came into the room then, and Hector, without hesitation, walked over to the mechanical bull and hopped up on it.
“Ahh, we got a vaquero here,” the cowboy said. “Let ’er rip, Virgil, and keep it on low.”
Virgil started the machine up, and Hector was thrown around but stayed on. Everyone cheered, and Hector stepped off triumphantly.
“I gotta do this now, I guess,” Alton said and he climbed up on the fake bull, his long legs almost touching the ground. Virgil started up the machine at the same speed, and Alton immediately fell off. Virgil stopped the bull, Alton got back on, and this time he made it. When it stopped he said, “Move it up a notch.”
“Here we go,” Virgil said. “Hang on.”
He managed to stay on but was very pale when the machine stopped. “I’m gettin’ dizzy,” he said. “Turn it up another notch.”
“You got it,” Virgil said.
Alton came close to falling off and he twisted his arm but he stayed on. When it was over he got off the machine in pain. “I think I broke my hand,” he said.
Hector walked up, hopped on the mechanical bull, yelled “Go!” and rode with ease, as though he’d ridden real bulls for years. When eight seconds were up, he motioned for Virgil to turn up the machine all the way and gave Alton a challenging look.
The old cowboy and Augustine were holding each other up and cheering Hector on. “Cuidado, Hectorito!” the cowboy yelled.
The room grew quiet then, and Hector braced himself, raised one arm in the air, and gave a somber nod. He almost made it, but one of the last turns threw him straight off the bull and into the wall. He scraped his cheek badly, leaving a streak of blood on the white plaster. The cowboy closed it down. “Let’s go play pool,” he said. “You boys’re gonna get hurt in here.”
We followed him back into the poolroom. An ugly obese young girl was now sitting at the bar, and Hector and Tomas started talking to her. The other men went to the tables, and Alton and I stumbled back to our room at the motel. We were woken up around three in the morning.
“What’s that noise?” Alton asked. “I hear yellin’ goin’ on.”
Somebody started banging on the door. Alton got out of bed and opened it. It was the owner, Mr. Sealy. He had his cap in his hands. I stood up, and the room was spinning. I walked to the front door and tried not to throw up.
“I didn’t want to call the sheriff,” he said. “I really didn’t. But they wouldn’t keep quiet.”
Alton was still trying to wake up. “What?”
“I couldn’t get ahold of you. You wouldn’t answer the door.”
Augustine and Juan slowly got out of bed then and mechanically pulled on their clothes. Juan started to fix breakfast. I looked out the door and saw the sheriff’s car. Blue-and-red lights moved back and forth across Mr. Sealy’s face.
“What happened?” Alton asked.
“I heard screaming, and I didn’t know what was going on. I tried to get the door open, but they got it braced or something. They’re making too much noise. I’m sorry, but that’s just too much. I had to call the sheriff. One of them threw a bottle out the back window. You’re gonna have to pay for that window.”
We went outside, and the sheriff got out of his car. He walked up to the room next to ours and said to Alton, “These’re your men, right?”
“Yessir,” Alton said. “I don’t know what the problem is, sheriff.”
“They’re drunk and tearing the place up. That’s the problem. Now they won’t open the door.”
“They’re gonna pay for the damages,” Mr. Sealy said.
Alton reassured him. “It’s okay, we will, Mr. Sealy.”
“We need to get that door open,” the sheriff said.
Mr. Sealy wrung his cap. “My wife and I heard a girl screaming.”
“All right,” Alton said. He knocked on the door lightly. “Tomas? Hector?” There was the sound of furniture being moved, scraped across the floor. Alton looked at me and yelled out, “Tomas! Hector! Cristóbal! Open the goddamn door!”
No answer. Augustine walked up then and indicated to Alton that he would take care of it. Normally reserved, Augustine was still drunk, and he began to kick the door and bang on it while screaming in Spanish at the men inside, and someone, Cristóbal, quickly opened it. Augustine shoved him out of the way roughly, and Cristóbal tripped backward and hit the floor. Alton, the sheriff, Mr. Sealy, and I crowded one after the other into the front room. Mr. Sealy dropped his cap.
“Oh my God,” he said. His big ears turned red. “Oh my God!”
Blood was spattered all over the walls in the little kitchen area.
“What did they do?” Mr. Sealy asked. His eyes were open wide. The sheriff pulled out his gun. Alton and I walked to the sink and saw a couple of bloody rabbit ski
ns.
“It’s just rabbit blood, Mr. Sealy,” Alton said. “They’ve been skinnin’ rabbits here.”
Mr. Sealy picked up his cap, and the sheriff knocked loudly on the closed door that led to the back room.
“Dammit, you’re gonna pay for this!” Mr. Sealy yelled at Alton. “There’s blood all over this place. These walls are ruined. I want a new paint job, and you’re gonna pay for it.”
“Okay,” Alton said calmly. “Don’t worry, Mr. Sealy, I promise I’ll pay for everything.”
A few men had been passed out on the front beds when we barged in. They were sitting up now, still and frozen, staring at the sheriff’s gun. We heard voices behind the door, someone laughing, and Augustine grew angry again and kicked the door and yelled in Spanish. One of the men, Miguel, slowly opened the door, and the sheriff pushed through and we followed him in, filling the small room with people. Miguel was in his underwear and tried to run out past us. Augustine grabbed him and suddenly started beating him, hitting him on the back and in the face. The sheriff put up his gun, and he and I pulled Augustine off Miguel. Alton started yelling at Augustine and said, “Take it easy, goddammit! Leave him alone, Augustine!”
Then I saw the young woman from the bar lying naked on the bed. She was drunk and flabby and pale white. Only her head was small and had some color. It looked like a little pumpkin. She was giggling. Hector and Tomas were both naked, next to her. They were quiet and staring at us. They didn’t appear to be particularly worried, just surprised.
Alton turned to Mr. Sealy and said angrily, “Shit, this is why you called the sheriff?”
“They were making too much noise. There was screaming. I didn’t know what was happening.”
The sheriff was pissed and yanked the fat girl out of the bed. “Get your goddamn clothes on, Katy! Let’s go! Come on, girl.”
The young woman was drunk and laughing. The sheriff helped her get dressed and took her out to the car. Augustine began to berate Hector and Tomas, who had covered themselves with the sheets and were staring at the floor.