“Shoot, you don’t have to think. You just sit there and have you a good time. We’re going to Florida.”
The Toyota shot around a yellow truck and picked up speed past rows of Victorian houses built close together, painted in shades of green and brown. They looked orderly and neat, like old women waiting for relatives on visiting day.
At the Friendly station, they stopped for gas and he bought a six-pack of Old Jack beer at the carryout. They drove north, then, along streets of grimy stores, small and set far apart with dust-gray windows and trash spilled along the sidewalk. The stores were replaced by narrow fields, still brown, stippled with weed stalks and bordered by trees blurred with new green. Beyond the trees, small hills humped up, dark with cedar, dappled by the dull rose and white of flowering trees.
“It’s just so beautiful,” Sue Ann said.
“Here we are,” he said.
He slewed the Toyota onto a gravel apron, jerked to a stop before a building the shape and color of a dirty sugar cube. Above the open door slanted a hand-painted sign:
In the doorway under the sign leaned a fat man without much hair, his circular face tarnished red-brown by years of sun. He watched Jerry work the air conditioner off the backseat.
“You jus’ come in here right now,” the fat man said.
Jerry plunged past him, banged the air conditioner onto a scarred wooden counter. The little room was hot, smelling disagreeably of rubber and cardboard. Orange boxes of auto parts packed the wall shelves. The floor was patched with flattened coffee cans, blue and red against silver-gray wood.
Jerry said, “Wanna sell me this air conditioner.”
The fat man worked his belly behind the counter. “It works, does it?”
“You give it a feel. Probably still cold.”
Thick brown hands deftly unfastened the grill. “She looks nice and clean.”
A door opened in back and a big old man, gone to bone and loose gray skin, limped into the room. The effort of moving thickened his breath. He inched over to a wooden chair by the counter, lowered himself into it joint by joint, said in a remote voice, “She’s getting cold out there, Dandy.”
Jerry said, “How much you fixing to give me for this beauty? Worth three hundred dollars, easy.”
“Oh, now, then,” Dandy said. He grinned at his fat hands. “It’s early for air conditioners.”
The old man grunted, spit at a blue can, looked at the air conditioner with sour suspicion.
Jerry said, “I got to get rid of it. They broke my lease.”
Fat fingers snapped the grill into place. “What do you think, Mr. Stafford?”
The old man sniffed, grunted, painfully extended his legs. “Expect she’s stole.”
“Like hell,” Jerry said, jerking his head. “What’s with you?”
“Couldn’t be nothin’ like that,” Dandy said. “I know this young fellow. He’s been in here before.”
“You know it,” Jerry said. Back stiff, hands jammed into his pockets, he stood without moving, watching them, grinning very slightly.
“Tell you what,” Dandy said. “You maybe got the bill of sale, I could give you, like, say fifty dollars.”
Stafford said in his sick old voice. “We don’t need no stole stuff.”
“Why don’t you shut up your mouth?” Jerry said to him.
Dandy said, very quickly, “No need to holler, son.”
“You want this or not?”
“Fifty dollar the best I can do.”
“No way, man. Hell with that.” White light leaped into his eyes. “I wouldn’t carry this thing across the street for fifty dollars.”
“We don’t hold none with thieving,” Stafford said, loudly triumphant.
“It’s worth one hundred dollars, easy,” Jerry said.
Dandy shook his head. “Not to me.”
Stafford yelped, “Get that stole thing out of here right now.”
Jerry made a small, bitter sound. He put his chin down on his chest, and a tremor, beginning at his hips, shook upward through his chest, shoulders, neck. His eyes became not quite human.
In a soft voice, he said, “Who asking you?” Then, very loudly, “Who asking you?” The sides of his mouth grew wet. “And so damn what?” He jerked the air conditioner up from the counter. Held it poised. Wheeled left and flung the machine into the old man’s lap. Stafford shrieked as the chair legs snapped off. He slapped against the counter screaming and pitched heavily onto the floor, hands clawing his legs. “They’s broke.”
Jerry flipped the hunting knife from his jacket pocket and slashed backhand at Dandy. The fat man banged himself back against the shelves. Orange boxes slipped thumping into the aisle.
Jerry leaned across the counter, his eyes intent, yellow-tan teeth showing under his mustache. He whipped the knife around, splitting Dandy’s tan shirt. As he slashed, he made a thick, grunting sound. Dandy squealed frantically as a thin, red line ran across the top of his shoulder.
Jerry got over the counter, fell into the aisle. His body felt hot and slow. Hunched over, he moved toward Dandy, knife blade out in front of him, a bright splinter.
Dandy said in a voice full of wonder, “Oh, this is a terrible thing.” His eyes were round. As Jerry moved toward him, he jerked a rack of cans thunderously into the aisle.
Jerry stumbled over a can, fell, hitting one knee. Taking small, quick steps, Dandy shuffled back from the knife. He got to the rear door. His eyes, round in a round pale face, stared past the edge of the door as it whacked shut.
“You better watch,” Jerry yelled. Jerking around, still holding the knife out before him, he darted back along the littered aisle, snatched the cash box from under the counter.
The box, chained to the shelf, snapped out of his hands. Change sprayed into the aisle among boxes and cans and broken glass. He clawed up a five, a one, another one. Dimes glinted among orange boxes. He found a quarter, a ten, two nickels. Urgency choked him.
He swung over the counter in one hard twist. The old man lay contorted against the counter, eyes rolled up, mouth open exposing his dull yellow tongue. He breathed like a compressor. The air conditioner canted across one leg.
Two steps to the door and out. Seven steps long across the crunching gravel, fury in his legs, rage lifting his shoulders. He felt laughter like hot fat boiling in his chest and throat.
He slid behind the wheel. Sue Ann gaped at him, excited, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”
“No damn thing.”
The Toyota leaped away spewing gravel. “They tried to cheat me.”
As the car skidded onto the highway, Dandy appeared at the side of the building. His arms were extended and from hands clenched before his face projected the dark snout of a revolver. Then a screen of bushes lashed past, hiding him.
“Cheated me, by God.” His boot rammed the accelerator.
Gray-shaded clouds skated sedately across a pale sky. Beneath the clouds spread calm fields, furred with new light green. From Stafford’s dirty sugar-cube the road was a lean gray strip stretched north past a small housing development, a small store. Beyond the fields rose a sudden hill studded with the brick buildings of A & M College, sober, dull red blocks following the hill’s contours like bird nests along a cliff. Hill and buildings looked neatly peaceful as a European travel poster.
The Toyota hammered north, eighty miles an hour. Wheels jittered on the road. Fields reeled past. The pedestrian overpass swelled toward them, was over them, shrank behind. The car leaped, floated above a small rise, light as blowing leaves.
“Oh, my God, Jerry, what is it?”
Down the road by the lumber yard, a fat yellow truck wallowed onto the highway.