“Hey, Frito,” Jim Bob said, “ain’t they got no fucking mirrors in cars where you come from, huh? What the dog-shit is wrong with you, man?”
The Mexican just looked at him. He was wearing a tight-fitting, blue Hawaiian shirt with yellow and red palm trees on it He had on yellow slacks and big, black wing tips with olive explosions on the toes. He was nearly seven feet tall and his chest was like a beer barrel.
“You talk to me?” he asked.
“No, fucking Chili lips, I’m talking to the goddamn Nova. It looks the smarter of you two. Did you see what you done to my car there? Fucked the paint job. Look at that”
Jim Bob turned to point and the big Mexican (a.k.a. Frito and Chili Lips) stepped forward and grabbed the brim of Jim Bob’s hat and pulled it down so hard Jim Bob went to his knees. Then the Mexican kneed Jim Bob in the face sharply.
“We ought to help him,” help hi I said.
“Shit,” Russel said. “Look at the size of that guy.”
The Mexican had Jim Bob by the back of the neck now and the seat of the pants and was using him to punch the door on the Nova.
“Too far,” I said, and got out of the car. On the street side, I stood and yelled over the top of it. “Hey. Quit that.”
The Mexican looked at me like I was crazy, then went back to jamming Jim Bob’s head into the Nova.
I went around the car, not real fast. “Now that’s enough of that,” I said. “Quit.”
The Mexican dropped Jim Bob on the drive and said, “Okay. You do.” Then he said something in Spanish. It was brief and as menacing as his English.
I didn’t run. I stood there.
Had too. My feet were glued to the ground. Seeing him come toward me was akin to watching some natural phenomenon, like an eclipse. He was almost on me. I put up my fists. Not that I thought I’d get to use them much. I just hoped it was short and painless.
Russel opened the door of the Bitch and got out. I didn’t see him, but I heard him. At the same time Jim Bob got up. He had a look on his face that was more embarrassed than peeved.
“Say, you want to try that again, Taco Ass,” Jim Bob said, “only with me looking this time?”
The Mexican turned to look at Jim Bob and Jim Bob said something in Spanish and waved Russel away with a hand. “Just me and him.”
I backed away and to the side. I could see the Mexican’s face that way. He was smiling. It was a nice smile, like the kind sharks must get before they go for the dangling leg of a swimmer.
Then Jim Bob moved. He sort of skipped sideways and his right leg folded up and his foot shot out, and the heel of his boot took the Mexican in the balls, the leg half-folded and the foot shot down and hit the Mexican in the knee.
The Mexican screamed. Jim Bob’s foot whipped up again, and his leg went high and arched back and his heel hit the man behind the temple with a crack like a wooden ruler being snapped.
The man fell down and didn’t get up.
“Shit,” I said. “He isn’t dead is he?”
“Hell no,” Jim Bob said. “I ain’t wanting to hurt the shithead any worse than a beating. He ought to watch where he’s backing.”
Jim Bob found his hat and put it on and winced. “Owww. Man, he was trying to put me through that door… Thanks for wanting to help, Dane. And fuck you, Ben.”
“I sure hated to see you whip that bastard,” Russel said.
Russel went over and rolled the Mexican on his stomach and got a wallet out of his back pocket and opened it and looked for identification. He read what he found and put the wallet back. He said, “There’s a little sap in his back pocket too. Be glad he didn’t take that t take out.”
“I am,” Jim Bob said. “That identification didn’t say he was called Fred Miller, did it?”
“No, smart ass, it didn’t,” Russel said.
Jim Bob walked up to the house and rang the doorbell. Russel shook out a cigarette and stood with it unlit between his lips, watching the door. No one opened it. Jim Bob knocked. Still no one opened it.
Jim Bob came back and went over to look at where the back of the Nova was pressed against the Bitch. “You look at that? My fucking rear door is totaled.”
“Get the license plate number if you want to fuck with insurance,” Russel said.
“After I kicked his ass?” Jim Bob said. “No thanks. I might have to kick it again, and I’m not sure I can. Shit, look at that.”
He walked over to the Mexican and grabbed the man’s pants leg and pulled it up a little bit, revealing a small holster with a small revolver.
“I’m glad he wasn’t in no O.K. Corral mood,” Jim Bob said.
“Let’s go,” Russel said, “neighbors might have seen us.”
Jim Bob went back and looked at his car. “Damn.” Then he glanced at the Nova. The trunk hood was bent up and knocked open. Jim Bob looked inside. “A movie lover,” he said.
I went over and looked. There was a small box of videotapes. They had little stickers on their spines and the names of movies written on them. Some of the movies were Mexican, some were English and American. One of them read Star Wars. Jim Bob reached that one out of the box, held it up.
“I’ll just call the beating I gave that sumbitch and this here my insurance settlement. Ain’t enough, but it’ll do.”
We got in the car and Jim Bob drove us out of there.
30
We had some hamburgers and fries at a McDonald’s and sat in a back booth and considered things. There was a lot to consider.
“Well, as the little ole lady asked,” Jim Bob said, “what the fuck does it all mean? Who was that big Meskin and what was he doing backing out of Freddy’s garage late afternoon with a trunkload of videotapes, and is he evidence that you can still buy driver’s licenses at Sears?”
“Maybe your detecting is off, and that isn’t Fred Miller’s house,” Russel said.
“That’s his house, and you know it,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t fuck up that bad.”
“It doesn’t seem that mysterious to me,” I said. “Freddy has a friend who’s Mexican, and the guy has run of the house and he was over there for whatever reason and he just happened to have his movie collection in the trunk of his car. Maybe he shares the place with Freddy. Could be a way to meet the bills or something.”
“When you get right down to it,” Jim Bob said, “it don’t matter. What matters is that our friend, Ben, here, ought to just call Freddy up and get it over with.”
“I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Russel said.
“You’re not going to feel any more comfortable about it tomorrow,” Jim Bob said.
“Maybe not,” Russel said, “but I’ll know when I’m ready.”
“He’ll know,” Jim Bob said. “You get that, Dane? He'll know. Shit.”
We went on back to Jim Bob’s place, and Russel didn’t talk much. For that matter, neither did Jim Bob, and I wasn’t chatty myself. Jim Bob tuned in a country and Western station and sang along with the songs a little, and damned if he wasn’t pretty good.
At Jim Bob’s house, Russel went to take a bath and Jim Bob got us both a beer and I sat on the couch and Jim Bob took a chair next to the television.
“I don’t know about you, pardner,” Jim Bob said, “but I’m so bored I could sing to my dick.”
I was trying to visualize that, and having some trouble, when Jim Bob said, “Hey, let’s watch that damn movie. Star Wars.”
“It’s good,” I said. “But it looks better on the big screen.”
“Get me a big screen and we’ll play it on that,” Jim Bob said. “But in the meantime, I’m gonna play it on that nineteen-inch RCA there. You don’t mind me watching it do you?”
“No. I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.”
“Good, cause I was gonna watch it anyway.”
Jim Bob had left the video out in the Bitch and he went through the garage and got it. When, he came back he had a dark scowl on his face. “Man, that Nova screwed the Bitch good. I’m gonna call a man I know about getting it fixed tomorrow.”
Jim Bob went over and slipped the cassette into the VCR and turned it and the television on. “I got some popcorn,” he said. “I could fix us some.”