by Pete Hautman
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“The hell away from here.” Axel got his good leg braced, squeezed his lips tight together, and stood up. “C’mon. We’ve got to go over to the fairgrounds. I want to get the rest of the stuff out of the cooler, get the restaurant closed up for the year.”
Gripping his yardstick cane, Axel stood up and hobbled out the back door. Goddamn Sam O’Gara. You think you know a guy. The first few steps were tough, but once he got into the rhythm, walking wasn’t all that bad. He jerked open the passenger door and climbed clumsily into the cab of his old pickup. His foot caught on something, a plastic bag on the floor. He grabbed the bag, tried to move it out of the way, then stopped. He felt through the black plastic. Rolls, like tight little burritos. He could feel them. He wanted to rip the bag open, to plunge his arms into it, but Sophie opened the driver’s side door and hopped in.
“What’s going on with you two?” she asked.
Axel sat up straight. “Nothing,” he said.
Sophie dropped her eyes to the bag. “What’s that?”
“Just some stuff Sam was keeping for me.” He rolled down the window and looked back at the house. Sam stood in the doorway, smoking a cigarette. One of the hounds poked its head out between his bowed legs.
Axel shouted, “You son-of-a-bitch! You just left it here? Where anybody coulda come and grabbed it?”
Sam just grinned.
Sophie said, “I swear to God, Axel, I don’t know who’d want to steal this old pickup.”
The aging Ford started right up, to Axel’s surprise. She didn’t have to pump the gas and grind away with the starter like before—just turned the key and they were in business. He liked the way the engine sounded. Sam must’ve worked some kind of magic. And once they got onto the road, it even seemed to roll better. The shimmy had disappeared. Or maybe it was the plastic bag between his feet, maybe that was what made the ride so smooth.
Axel said, “You know that bank on Snelling? You mind stopping off there for a few minutes? I want to make a deposit.”
Sophie looked at him in surprise. “You? Since when do you use a bank?”
“Things change,” he said. He wouldn’t put it all in. Maybe just a few thousand dollars; give himself time to get used to the idea.
“You want to know something?” Sophie asked.
“What?”
“Carmen was right. You’re weird.”
“You’re weird too,” Axel said.
Sophie shrugged. “Carmen would agree with you.”
They rode down University Avenue without speaking, turned north on Snelling, Axel enjoying the comfortable silence. She was driving real nice for once, smooth and slow. As they turned into the fairgrounds, Axel was thinking that he wouldn’t even get that new truck fixed, because he’d heard that once a vehicle got in an accident, it would never ride quite right again, and anyways, he’d never really gotten friendly with it. Never trusted the damn thing. He was thinking he’d sell it, or maybe give it to Sam, since, after all, the old one seemed to be working just fine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Becky Bohan, Marilyn Bos, Charlie Buckman-Ellis, Andy Hinderlie, Mary Logue, Tom Rucker, George Sorenson and Deborah Woodworth—I thank you for all your help and support, and for saying nice things when I read those first tentative chapters more than six years ago. I thank Mike Hildebrand for his linguistic support, and I thank Bill Stesin, “still one of my ten best friends,” for telling the tales that made this book possible.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Pete Hautman
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