by Pete Hautman
The donut guy coming at him with a gun. Unbelievable. He could have been killed! And he’d lost his gun. How could he lose the gun? One moment he’d had it, then a glimpse of the old man, then wham, something had hit him in the head, and suddenly he was running faster than he’d ever run before.
Curiosity overcame fear. Dean reached back and delicately probed his skull. It was swollen and tender, but not bleeding. The knowledge that his brain was still inside his skull helped him regain his feet. He had to get out of there. He had to get to Tigger’s car. That was the most important thing.
It took him twenty minutes to cross the fairgrounds. He pushed through the turnstile in time to see Tigger’s rusted Cadillac pulling out of the parking lot onto Como Avenue. Dean ran into the street, shouting at them to wait. He could see Pork’s face through the tinted glass, looking right at him. The car turned away and accelerated, leaving behind an oily blue cloud. A blast from the horn of a Ford station wagon sent Dean hopping back to the curb. He couldn’t believe it. Pork had been looking right at him. They left him there on purpose. A wave of dizziness, then of nausea, forced him to sit down on the curb. He closed his eyes, squeezed them until he saw flashes of light, remembering with a thud that he’d left his leather jacket in Tigger’s back seat, its pockets solid with cash.
If someone had asked Axel how he was feeling, he would have said that he was feeling very, very old. And very sore. He would have said that his mind was hurting from too many fresh memories, and that his right arm was throbbing painfully, and that his finger was bleeding where he had caught it under the hammer. He would have said that it is the things you have to remember that kill you. Like it was the things that Tommy remembered that killed him. Memories, and his friend Axel Speeter, who had busted him out of the hospital so he could keep his appointment with death.
If someone had asked Axel how he was feeling, he might have said something like that. Or he might have simply said that he felt lousy.
But nobody was asking.
He could hear the honking and short siren blasts of an ambulance working its way through the crowd. It pulled up onto the pounded grass mall, and two paramedics rushed toward Tommy and the bald giant. After a brief examination the paramedics relaxed, their movements becoming slower and more deliberate.
None of the police officers—there were five of them now—asked him how he was feeling. One of them, yellow- haired, still with a trace of his grandfather’s Swedish in his voice, asked Axel if he had seen what happened. “Not a thing,” Axel said. “When I got here, it was all over.” The officer took his name and address anyway, then turned to Sophie.
Axel wrapped a few scoops of ice in a towel and held it against his elbow.
Sophie said she had been under the counter, changing the Coke canister. She hadn’t seen a thing, either. Carmen, sitting on the grass behind the stand, hugging her knees to her chest, claimed she had been busy making a Bueno Burrito. The police officer wrote their full names and addresses on his clipboard. He had better luck with Kirsten Lund, who was anxious to share her experience. She related the events in detail, pointing to places on the mall, acting out the way Tommy had waved his gun, describing with her hands the way he had sailed through the air, her face was flushed and bright. Axel had never seen her so animated, her Nordic reserve forgotten in the thrill of violent events.
Making careful notes, the yellow-haired cop asked her to go over several points again. Axel listened carefully as Kirsten related the events of twenty minutes earlier.
So Tommy had been the shooter, just like he had thought, and it was the big man who had broken Tommy’s neck. And Bald Monkey was mixed up in it somehow. Tommy chasing the monkey with his six-gun, that made sense. Tommy would do something like that, probably thinking he was going to make a citizen’s arrest. Or maybe he was just going to shoot the kid. Either way, it hadn’t worked.
The ambulance backed off the mall out onto Carnes Avenue and moved slowly through the crowd. The cop was asking Kirsten to tell him again, was the man from the Tiny Tot stand firing the gun before the big man tried to stop him? Or was he just waving it about in a threatening manner? What the hell difference does it make, Axel wondered, with both of them dead? Kirsten went over her story again, adding some detail about the wild look on Mr. Fabian’s face. She described how Axel had run to help Mr. Fabian and how the big man had fallen almost on top of them. The cop frowned at Axel, who smiled grimly and nodded, relieved that Kirsten had not noticed or had at the least failed to mention that there were two guns and that one of them was at this moment distending the lining of Axel’s right-hand pants pocket.
Axel put his hand on the gun, discovering a prideful place inside himself. He’d disarmed the little shit, just like that. And given him one hell of a headache to boot. Bald Monkey must have a thick skull to take a hit like that and then go running off. He’d think twice before messing with Axel Speeter again. Axel inhaled deeply, taking in the smells of the restaurant—the hot oil, the tangy aroma of fresh salsa, the heady mix of scents from Sophie, Kirsten, and Carmen. He could even smell himself, the old boomer, reeking a little after defending his fliers. Axel shifted the ice pack to a new spot on his elbow and smiled, seeing himself as this grizzled old kangaroo. Then it hit him again, low and hard. Tommy Fabian was dead. He closed his eyes, shutting out the color and heat of the fair, letting the cold truth settle deep in his gut.
Chapter 31
James Dean sat on the curb outside the fairground fence, waiting for the numbness to pass. He needed an idea, an impulse, a reason to move. It could have been anything at all. A pang of hunger, an itch that needed scratching, a question demanding an answer. He kept seeing Pork’s face in the car window. The donut guy pointing the silver gun. Sweety’s broad, black-jacketed back. Tigger nailing him with the dodgem car, pinning him against the rail, not letting him move, laughing. He could not move now. How could he stand up? He had nothing left, no place to go.
A horse stopped in front of him, nearly crushing his foot. He looked up and saw a helmeted cop sitting on the beast, leaning over, asking him if he was okay.
Dean said he was fine. He said he was waiting for somebody to pick him up.
The cop gave him the look, waited for him to stand up, then clopped off down the fence line, his horse leaving behind a pile of steaming manure. Dean tried to remember a line from Donne, something he had read weeks before. Something like if you cut off part of your body, you save what is left, but it’s better to cut off part of a dead man.
Something like that. He wished he had the book, but he had left it back in Carmen’s room. He started walking along the curb, placing one foot after the other.
Everything seemed complicated and uninteresting; he needed one clear idea, something to get him going. Or maybe what he needed was some more crank. He thought about some other things he wanted, listed them in his mind.
His book. At the motel.
Carmen? Did he want Carmen? He wasn’t exactly aching for her, but it was nice to have company.
His money. Shit. What was he thinking of, leaving his jacket in Tigger’s car? Stupid, stupid. He had forgotten to be smart. He didn’t even know their real names—he sure as hell wasn’t going to find a Tigger or a Pork in the phone book.
He stopped walking. Would Tigger and Pork be dumb enough to return to that basement after ripping him off? It didn’t seem possible. On the other hand, he had nothing to lose by going there and waiting for them. He dug in his pockets, coming out with two twenties, a five, and a few ones. Whatever else, he would need some money, and soon.
A block ahead of him, an ambulance pulled out of the fairgrounds, lights dead, and drove up Como Avenue. First thing he had to do, he had to get out of there. Maybe just get on one of the buses and figure out where he was going later. He had just turned back toward the bus stand when he saw the old man, Axel, not fifty feet in front of him, crossing the street toward the parking lot, moving slow, looking like he was about two hundred years old. Dean froze
. The old man didn’t see him. Dean felt his face grow warm with anger and dread. He watched until Axel faded into the parking lot. As soon as the old man was out of sight, the heat in Dean’s face flowed right down into his balls.
It felt good. Suddenly he felt his perspective shift, as if he had stepped around a dark corner and found himself in full sunlight. He had been thinking that everything was fucked up, but what if it wasn’t? If you looked at it another way, he was the luckiest guy in the world to come through all that with just a bump on the head. He could have been shot, like Sweety, or had his neck broke like Tiny Tot. As it was, he still had his moves to make, and nobody to stop him. The old man had given him his best shot. Next time, next time he’d be ready, he’d be the man in charge.
It was all about attitude. You had to be smart, and you had to have the right attitude. You couldn’t afford to feel sorry for yourself. It was the same thing as doing time. You had to be cool and smart, and you couldn’t afford to get all emotional.
He recalled another line from the book. Mostly, reading John Donne had been a show-off thing, a way to prove to Mickey that he wasn’t the illiterate she took him for, a way to fuck with Carmen’s head, a way to impress Tigger and Sweety and Pork. But there were a few times when he’d sat by himself and tried to make sense of the words. It was nothing like reading a newspaper or magazine. Everything was spelled weird. He could pick his way through a few pages, but the type would quickly fuzz into a gray, meaningless mass.
But then some stuff would jump out at him. This one thing was coming back to him. Shit, he wished he hadn’t left the book in Carmen’s room. But he remembered the one line, word for word: This Soule, now free from prison, and passion, hath yet a little indignation….
Carmen remembered a thing she used to do. When she was a little girl and she and Sophie were living in the projects up north of University, she had learned to turn the world into a cartoon. Sometimes she could force it, other times it would just happen on its own. Colors would brighten and flatten, and people would form black outlines and move in little jerks, like Yogi Bear. In the cartoon world, she would get her own black outline, and she could make her arms and legs stretch or shrink or get heavy or change color or disappear. Usually she would do this at night in her bed, closing her eyes and watching it happen, but sometimes she could make it happen outside in the daylight. Carmen had not turned the world into a cartoon or even thought about it for many years until now, watching Sweety get shot and Tommy Fabian flying through the air and Axel bending over him and Dean standing there and then running and the cops asking her questions, and all of a sudden the outlines came back and the colors were cranked way up. Carmen looked at her hand and made her fingers stretch.
“What are you doing?” Sophie asked.
The cartoon version of Sophie was pretty, Carmen thought. Prettier than the regular Sophie. She looked a lot like Wilma Flintstone. No wrinkles. “I’m looking at my hand,” she said.
“I can see that. We’ve got a business to run, don’t forget. People don’t stop eating just because somebody gets killed.”
Carmen looked toward the front of the stand. “We don’t have any customers,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. Clean something. Never mind. Take your break. Be back here in a half hour, okay? Kirsten and I will handle things. You get out of here—you’re dangerous. You and your friend.”
Carmen said, “Friend?”
“Your friend with the gun. Just because I didn’t tell the police, don’t think I didn’t see him.”
“You mean Dean? It was Tommy shot the gun.”
“Your friend had a gun too. I saw it in his hand. Now get out of here, take a break.”
Carmen shrugged and left the stand. Who knew what Dean was doing? Him and his cranked-up hairless friends. She was glad she and Dean hadn’t found the money in Axel’s room. That was crazy, the idea of going to Mexico with Dean. A sense of release rolled up her body; she did a little dance step, causing a few people to veer aside, giving her room. An image appeared in her mind of a Mexican village on the sea, a thick packet of U.S. dollars in her purse, an icy pitcher of margaritas, and a man. Not James Dean, but a new man, with hair. Curly hair on his head and on his chest, and buried in it a nice gold necklace. Tropical sun beating down on them, a nice breeze coming in over the surf. ..
Without warning, the image faded and she became suddenly aware of herself as alone, without substantial funds, standing in the midst of a hundred thousand corn-dog- eating yokels. She was nobody, nothing, going nowhere. The realization nearly caused her knees to buckle. She felt it in her stomach, and in a band of pressure against the nape of her neck. She stumbled toward an empty bench a few yards away. Carmen knew what was happening. She was crashing, coming down off the meth. She’d come down off Dexedrine before, and coke, but never crank. This was different, more intense. She sat on the bench and squeezed her eyes shut and forced her thoughts away from herself, back to the image of a wad of money. Thinking about money was good. That was the trick to crashing—you had to keep grabbing onto the good thoughts. If you let the bad thoughts in, it would get bad. She summoned up the image of Axel’s coffee cans.
Cans and cans and cans. She felt her chest swell, her breasts rise. The thought of the money stroked her body like a plunge into warm water. She could see herself walking along the ocean toward her Mexican beach house. She could see a shelf in her bedroom lined with a row of Folgers cans, cans full of green corn cash tamales.
Axel’s nylon socks. Like a slow-motion punch to the stomach, the thought brought her crashing down again. How could she think about the money when she didn’t know where the money had gone? She tried to think of places he might have hidden it, but she couldn’t think while she was crashing. She squeezed her teeth together until the pain in her jaw shattered her thoughts, focusing her senses on the outside world. A few yards away, a cartoon Indian was selling cartoon fry bread to cartoon fairgoers. The outlines were there, but the colors seemed muted. She watched him until his movements began to recycle.
Carmen lit a cigarette and sat back and closed her eyes. She was getting a new buzz now, not unpleasant, a sort of smooth, rolling vibration. She imagined herself floating over the fairgrounds. She thought about the places the money might be. In Axel’s room. In Axel’s truck. Her imagination stopped there. In his room or in his truck. What did he do with the money every night? He put it in his burlap shoulder bag. They walked to his truck. He dropped her off at her room. In the morning they drove back to the fair. Was the bag empty in the morning? She thought that it was. Her mind drifted back to an imagined Mexico.
When she opened her eyes, the cartoon show had ended. Objects had become dull and three-dimensional. How long had she been sitting there? Had she been sleeping? Carmen wasn’t sure. When she stood up, she knew from the way her legs felt that she’d been there for quite a while.
Everything felt and looked different. The day crowd had begun to thin out. There was a general movement toward the fairground exits, eaters of cheese curds and Pronto Pups and Tiny Tot donuts and sno-cones moving slowly and uncomfortably toward the turnstiles, parents herding flocks of exhausted kids, ignoring their automatic whining about having to leave so soon.
It was still daylight, but the crowd was changing. The after-work crowd had begun to arrive: the teenagers and the beer drinkers, adults in groups of two and four, people coming to see the show at the grandstand or to ride the Ferris wheel in the dark or to stroll up and down the clattering, blinking chaos of the midway, trying to win a four-foot-tall Barney. There were fewer farmers, fewer children, and fewer old folks. The people looked fresher, not yet bagged out from massive infusions of sugar and lard.
Before returning to the taco stand, Carmen went to one of the rest rooms and unfolded the square of paper Pork had given her. She licked the last traces of crystal from Nancy Reagan’s smiling face, then flushed her image down the toilet.
Sophie was loading the fryer
with tortillas when Carmen entered the stand.
“Sorry I took so long,” Carmen said.
Sophie said, “You’re fired.”
Axel fiddled with the truck radio until he stumbled across a classical music station. He was thinking that it would make him feel better to listen to a wordless yet coherent progression of sounds. It wasn’t working; the sounds were too complex and insistent. He turned off the radio and sat in silence, giving in to the flickering memories of Tommy alive, Tommy dead. Trying not to think about the Bald Monkey, struggling to find a tolerable balance between anger and grief. He would feel the tears mounting his lower eyelids, will them to come to wash it all away, then his jaw would clench and anger would squeeze his eyes dry. It was too soon to grieve. He sat and let his mind turn this way and that, like a driver lost in a strange city.
Carmen rapped on the window, startling him. He touched a dry eye with the back of his hand and rolled down the window. “What’s the problem?” he asked, his voice ragged. He cleared his throat.
Carmen was smoking a cigarette, kicking the packed dirt with her pink-and-white Reeboks.
“What’s the problem?” he asked again, forcing concern into his voice.
She flicked her cigarette straight down and ground it out with her toe, crossed her arms, and looked up at Axel. “Can Sophie fire me?”
“Why would she want to do that?”
“You got me. She says I’m fired.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I took a break, and when I got back she says, ‘You’re fired.’”
Axel waited.
“Maybe I was a few minutes late getting back. I don’t know. Can she fire me? I mean, am I working for Sophie or am I working for you?” She had her arms crossed, squeezing her breasts in her Axel’s Taco Shop T-shirt. Her eyes half scared and half angry, she waited for Axel to pronounce his judgment.
Axel said, “Carmen, what do you want me to do? Sophie’s running the stand; I can’t just tell her to hire you back.”