“I see. So he’s got the car?”
“I’m pretty sure I said that.”
“Suppose you did. Being as the payments are due, we need either the money or the car. You can pay me today.”
“No, I can’t. I haven’t got the money.”
“When’s your husband coming back?”
“Can’t say. Don’t know. But if he comes back, he likes a Monday. Rarely comes back on a Tuesday, but the rest of the days are a toss-up.”
“Where’s he work?”
“Traveling salesman.”
“Selling what?”
“Encyclopedias.”
“Come on.”
“Seriously. Listen…what’s your name?”
“Edwards.”
“What Edwards?”
“Ed Edwards.”
“Damn. Is your middle name Ed too?”
“Thing is, Mrs. Craig—”
“Nancy.”
“The bill is overdue and we have to either get our money or repossess it. I’m sorry, that’s just how it works. You buy something, you have to pay for it.”
“Let me put it like this. What I said before about money, not having any, nothing has changed since I mentioned that unless a rich uncle died somewhere and left me something. Maybe later I’ll get a telegram. As for the car, you can take it for all I care, but the thing is I don’t have it. You find my husband, Frank, you take it from him. Which, by the way, might require some strenuous effort. He’s what you might call rambunctious.”
“All right, then,” I said. “I guess I’ll go.”
“Drink your drink.”
I took another sip of it, felt my liver try to hide behind a lung, and put the glass down. “That’ll do me,” I said.
I got up and made a production of pushing my chair under the table and picking up the contract. I shook it a little. “You signed a contract.”
“Nope. Frank did.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Lose the sports coat. Dress up next time. Maybe we’ll go dancing. Frank’s home, we can drive somewhere in the Cadillac. But I get the feeling you’re more of a Dairy Queen guy and you like to drink at home with a TV dinner.”
“Sometimes I have my beer and TV dinner with someone,” I said.
“So you have a dog?”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Craig. Until next time, when I take the car.”
“Frank’s home, you might want to bring a tire iron.”
I thought about the blackjack in my coat pocket. I figured that would be enough.
(3)
I had Melinda slide over and I slipped in behind the wheel. It had grown solid dark by that time.
“Well?” Melinda said.
“She says she doesn’t know where the car is. That her husband has it, and he hasn’t been around in a couple months, sells encyclopedias on the road.”
“You believe that?”
“Nope. Well, he might not be around and he might sell encyclopedias, but I got this hunch the car is out there in the garage.”
“So I still get the ten dollars?”
“You do. Use it to buy some pants, a dress, maybe.”
“You could give that woman a ten, have her buy some pants.”
“Well, once again, she’s not my sister.”
“She doesn’t look like someone could be anyone’s sister.”
I dropped Melinda off with a ten in her hand, went home, put a TV dinner in the oven, and got a beer out of the refrigerator. I sat at the kitchen table and drank the beer and watched the stove like I was waiting on the Resurrection.
When the dinner was done, I put it on the little table in front of the couch, turned on the TV, got myself another beer and a fork, came back, and flopped my ass down.
Nancy had figured me pretty close. Beer and a TV dinner, but no dog.
I ate the dinner, watched a little TV, mostly cowboys shooting people off horses, and then I turned it off and read awhile. I had three days of newspapers backed up.
When I finished reading them, I realized I could have just as well not read them. There wasn’t anything in them that stuck to me. Right then, maybe nothing would stick to me.
I kept thinking about Nancy and her long legs and that tight blouse and that belly button, and I kept thinking too she seemed excessively world-weary for someone that young. But I was young and felt that way myself. The Korean War will do that to a fella. I wondered what Nancy’s husband was like. I didn’t get the feeling she missed him being gone. I wondered if maybe he was actually around. He might have been in the back room, for all I knew, had let her talk to me and soften me up.
I got the contract and looked it over. She was closer to my age than I expected. Her maiden name was Woodward, and she was from a little town called Gladewater. She had a ninth-grade education and a Baptist raising, as she had written that in where it asked for her religion. She didn’t seem like a devoted churchgoer to me.
Her husband’s name was Frank. He was thirty-six. In the religion slot, he wrote None. Well, me and him had that in common. For occupation, he wrote in sales. Also a connection.
Maybe Nancy hadn’t lied. Maybe he was on the road, and when he got back, he would make a nice juicy payment and fill in the ones he missed.
And maybe not.
I got my coat with the blackjack in the pocket, put it on, and drove back out to the Craig place. I didn’t park in front of the gate this time. I parked down from the pet cemetery, off the little road that was bordered by trees. I kind of liked that idea. I once had a dog and he was buried in an abandoned yard, and now and again I still thought about him. I thought about a lot of things, none of them particularly important.
I could see the lights from the drive-in, and I could see a bit of the screen from where I stood. There was a monster movie on. I loved a good monster movie, but tonight I wouldn’t be seeing one.
I walked over to the cemetery, slipped through the split-rail fence that went around it, mostly as decoration, and started walking toward the buildings behind the house. Nancy said she had an old heap parked there, but I wanted to make sure it didn’t have a ritzy companion by the name of Cadillac.
It wasn’t a bright night, but the lights from the drive-in made it so I could be seen if someone was looking. I glanced toward the house, but there was only one light in a window. A back room.
I took out my little penlight and used it to flash around the cemetery. There were a few headstones, but there were mostly metal markers that had the shape of an animal at the top, dog or cat, though there was one that was either a parakeet or a parrot.
I paused at a marker that said BENNY, HE WAS A GOOD HORSE. Under that, someone had scratched in But he should have watched for cars.
I made my way through the fence on the other side and over to the bigger building, a kind of metal barn, one I thought would serve as a garage, and checked to see if the wide doors in the front were locked. They weren’t.
I pushed one of them back and went inside, pulled the door closed behind me. There was a jalopy there, all right, but there was also a nice little Cadillac, the one that had come from our lot. There was a little motorboat in front of the cars, a lawn mower. Tools hanging on the walls.
I opened the Caddy door, and the interior light came on. I looked to see if she kept the keys in the ignition. She didn’t. I checked behind the sun visor. Nope.
I would have to hot-wire it. I was pretty good at that. While I was under the dash, maybe I could roll back the odometer, just to have it done for the next owner, who in this case would actually get a good deal. I liked the car myself. I thought I’d look good driving it around. I got it back to the lot, I’d call and wake up Melinda, have her pick me up, bring me back to pick up my car.
I was about to slide in and go to work with my pocketknife on the wires under the dash when I heard the barn door open. I pulled my head out of the car and saw Nancy outlined in the open doorway.
She had on a short black dress and was wearing high heels and holdi
ng what looked like a cannon in her hand.
(4)
It wasn’t actually a cannon, but it was a twelve-gauge. I recognized it. I had inherited one from my dad that was just like it. Except, of course, mine was home and in the hall closet. I hadn’t thought I’d need it. The blackjack was about as handy right then as an extra thumb. I put my hands up without being asked.
“You here to check the air in the tires?”
“I was afraid, long as you’ve had it, tires might need some inflation, and we at Smiling Dave’s are here to serve.”
“Always more better deals and service with a smile.”
“You nailed it.”
“Obviously, I lied to you.”
“Obviously. I see the car here, I got to wonder how your husband sells encyclopedias. He ride a stick horse and carry all those books on his back?”
“He works in tandem with a friend. The friend owns the car they’re using this time out. And he only carries samples, not the whole set of encyclopedias, smart-ass.”
“Since I’m here, why don’t you let me drive the car around the block as a courtesy?”
“You’re trying awfully hard to be funny.”
“The gun makes me nervous. I get goofy when I’m scared.”
“You get scared a lot?”
“I don’t get guns pointed at me a lot, but my guess is that’ll always do that. Scare me, I mean. May I put my hands down?”
“Go ahead, just don’t put them in your pockets, case you got a gun on you.”
“I didn’t figure I’d have to shoot the car. I thought it would go peacefully. You always get dressed up to hunt down repo men?”
She lowered the shotgun. “I was going out to the fucking Piggly Wiggly.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“You’re right. I was going to a honky-tonk. But I’m flexible. Want to come up to the house for a nightcap, and maybe we could roll around on the bed and screw?”
“Do we have to have the nightcap?”
(5)
We skipped the nightcap. We went up to the house and she put the shotgun away and took off her dress and, I guess because she thought it might excite me, left on the high heels.
I didn’t end up needing the blackjack, though once or twice it was something I considered, just to tire her out a little. What she didn’t know was, screw her or not, I was going to take the Cadillac.
We lay there in bed, my arm around her shoulders, her hand under the covers, cupping my balls. There was a fan in the bedroom window, and it was pretty cool for a change.
“That really your sister in the car earlier, not a girlfriend?”
“Yep.”
“You Puerto Rican?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“You, and what I could see of her, look a little that way. It’s okay with me, I’m just asking.”
“No. Not Puerto Rican. You Irish?”
“Maybe. I think a little.”
“Shit. I don’t fuck Irish.”
She squeezed my balls enough to make me flinch. “I got you by the balls, buster. You better play nice.”
“I withdraw the question and deny it. Personally, I sing ‘Danny Boy’ every morning before work and have some shamrocks flattened inside some books.”
“What kind of books? Comic books?”
“All kinds of books. So, the husband. Does he have a shotgun too?”
“I don’t think so, but he might have something.”
“He’s not going to come in here and take photos of you holding my nuts and blackmail me to keep the Cadillac, is he?”
“The lights are out, silly. And my hand is under the covers. He’s going to come out of the closet later, when I turn the lights on and give you a blow job.”
“I got to warn you, I don’t care if photos get around of that. Women, even men, they get just a glance of what I got, no one will ever satisfy them again.”
“That right?”
“You bet.”
“You’re not that good, mister.”
“Oh. I don’t get an A plus?”
“I’ll give you an A minus. You at least know I have a clit and can find it without directions.”
“It’s not that well hidden.”
“I gave you a minus because you didn’t try out doggy-style.”
“Hell, lady. The night is young.”
“Don’t call me a lady.”
(6)
After that corny business, we did some better business, and finally we were in our underwear at the table having that nightcap, this time without the strawberry drink and the water.
From the window, I could see the drive-in and the big lighted sign that ran straight up on a rack. It was covered in golden lights and looked like a giant finger pointing to the heavens. There was something warm and inviting about it. In the day, it was just cold, dead bulbs in a pattern, but at night, those lights lit up spelled out HIGH-TONE DRIVE-IN. It gave me a kind of sweet chill to see those lights. There was a magic about them, and I wanted to be part of that magic.
She slugged back two drinks before I finished the one, and when she tried to pour me another, I put my hand over the top of the glass.
“I don’t know where you buy your whiskey, but that’s some stuff right there, and I think I’ve had enough.”
“Me and Frank sometimes drink a whole bottle at night.”
“But he’s not here to drink it.”
“Rarely is here.”
“Drive-in run without you?”
“I got a manager. I think he skims on me, but at least that gives me a night off now and then. There’re days when I’ve smelled enough popcorn, dealt with enough high-school boys with zits and hard-ons, and had enough of monster movies. I have to have time to myself, so I count the skimming as overtime pay.”
“That’s no way to run a business.”
“You think you could run it better?”
“Better than that.”
“Maybe I had someone around I liked having around, I could do better myself.”
“You do okay with the pet cemetery?”
“I hate that. Me and Frank bought this place, the land, it was from an old lady who had established the cemetery. She was so loony she could hear birds singing in a well. But we bought the place, and most of the people who have pets out there, or think they do, they pay to keep up the cemetery, which amounts to pulling a few weeds and mowing the grass between graves.
“I saw vandals have been at it. Ben the horse has a little epigram carved on its headstone. Little girl whose pet it was wrote that with a nail file. Her daddy turned a corner around some trees, and—surprise—the pet horse had gotten out and was within moments a hood ornament. The girl, I guess maybe she’s six.”
“And has a nail file?”
“Probably high heels and a box of rubbers too. They start trying to be women early these days.”
“You embalm the pets?”
“That’s what the other building is for. Lady we bought it from, she was getting too old to do the business. She showed us how to prepare the animals for their final rest, but it’s tedious. Be honest with you, Ed, what we found out is digging a hole is work. So we mound the dirt up a little, scrape some here or there and make it look like a grave, then we take the beloved off in the woods and throw it in a ditch somewhere. We have a ceremony they want it. Sometimes they don’t. Usually it’s kids come out to visit their pet’s grave—that is, until they get a new pet or hit puberty and lose interest in a dead dog. Way it works, pet owner’s happy, and we get paid and we’re not wearing out our backs.
“Pony was an exception. I think we lost money on that one. It was too big to load up and drop in the woods. We had to hire a wrecker, a goddamn wrecker, to load that horse up and bring it out here, and then we had a crate made because the owner had some money and wanted it that way and came out to check. We actually had to embalm it, rent a backhoe to dig the grave, then hire about twelve people to help us lower it in. Had a big service. All the
little rich girl’s friends came out dressed up like they were going to Easter Sunday, and they had a preacher give a sermon and say some words. Much money as they spent, we still lost money on that one, the wrecker, backhoe, and all. I made a rule right then: No more dead ponies.”
“That’s discouraging. I have a pet elephant, and lately he hasn’t been looking so good.”
“I like you. I like a man tries to be funny, even if he isn’t. I like to know he’s got a sense of humor, even when it isn’t a good one.”
“Let me tell you something else funny. I’m going to need the keys to the Cadillac.”
“You son of a bitch. You come up here and try to steal my car, and then you steal my pussy, and now you want the car keys to just drive it off.”
“Technically, I’m not stealing anything. Car or pussy. You don’t own the car, and the pussy came with a nightcap.”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
“I’m just talking how you’re talking. Look here, I don’t want to sideline you on the Cadillac, but I don’t take it, some professional repo men will be hired, and they’ll take it anyway. I’m actually trying to help you out here.”
“That’s funny, I thought just the opposite.”
“Here’s the thing. You give me the keys, and I’m going to buy the car myself, pay it out in payments. That way we don’t have to make a legal matter out of it. I just take the car. I’m thinking you could have paid if Frank would have let you, so I don’t see you at fault.” I didn’t really think that, but it sounded good. I had a feeling Nancy would steal a nickel if someone offered to give it to her.
“Frank is tight with money. He likes to buy things and pay only so much, then he quits. I’ve had some appliances come in and go out like they were just here for a visit. I was happy to get the swamp cooler paid off. It gets hot this time of year.”
“That’s the deal I can make you,” I said. “I think it’s a good one. I can come pick you up and take you out, and you got the jalopy to drive around town. Bring it by the lot, maybe I can trade it in for something a step up, though considering the step you’re on, all I can guarantee is it’ll be a little better. I bet I can get you one for free.”
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