“Want to take a look inside? See what we’re carrying?”
“No, that’s something else I’d rather ignore.”
6
BASS BUSTERS!!
BUBBA’S WORM RANCH NEXT LEFT
NIGHT WAS A COLD black suction at the windows. Their destination was a ruined city. There was exhilaration in the raw, hot smell of gasoline and the whine of the Fiat’s six cylinders at maximum stress, in the glow of dashboard lights like prowling jungle eyes. A gospel station faded in and out, jammed by a news broadcast two clicks to the right: “I’m gonna walk that milky white way some of these days….” Tildy let the unrolling wilderness contain her. So long as the wheels turned, misgivings were irrelevant.
They passed a pint of Bacardi back and forth, mixing Cuba Libres as best they could: swig of rum, a wedge of lime, a nip from the canned cola balanced on the dash, all swirled in the mouth like dental rinse, then swallowed. Their lips burned and their blood rumbled. Christo, raconteur, riffed on and on.
“There are a million ways to end up in the bughouse. Nobody’s exempt. The president of IBM might drop in if it seemed like a good idea for him to disappear temporarily. ‘Exhaustion,’ they call it. Yeah, it’s the closest thing you’ll ever see to a classless society in there. Everyone gets fucked just the same. They don’t care who you are. There was a kid I knew lost his larynx to cancer, had one of those vibrator gizmos he’d touch to his throat when he wanted to talk. One summer he started going around to radio stations and do, you know, anything, he’d sweep out the studio, it didn’t have to be the weather or the traffic report. But he really wanted to get into radio. Unusual, but who could possibly be threatened by it? He’s buzzing away at the station manager of one of those all-news operations, making his pitch, when the guy makes one phone call and, wham, that’s it. They stamp his papers and throw him in with the rest of the nuts. I collect stories like that. Old gent I met up with this last time. He wasn’t just the quiet type, he was the prototype. Lived in a small town all his life, never married, had nothing to do when he retired so he wandered the streets all day shaking hands with whoever. ‘Afternoon, good to see you.’ It got to be an obsession. He’d dash between cars to get to the other side of the street for a clasp. But some people didn’t like the way it looked or something, so they had county welfare put him away. Sound as a drum when he got there, but he’d done two years by the time I checked in and was afraid to tie his own shoelaces. Oh, they get you, one way or another … Shit, you can take my own case. Or one of them.”
He scissored two fingers, took the cigarette she lit for him, his features glazed orange with the first long drags.
“But let me give you the background first. I was running with this Indian girl in Denver a few years ago. Oglala Sioux. Sixteen years old, and like I always say, you’re only as young as the woman you’re sleeping with. Silver had long black hair, green eyes, the sweetest disposition. God, was she lovable. We had a real tight game going, went something like this: I’d rent a late-model car for one week, slap fresh plates on it, make out a phony registration form. Silver would put an ad in the paper offering the car at an insanely low price. A mark would be there in no time and he’d find Silver all upset and crying because the landlord was going to put her out on the street unless she got her rent up that day. The mark’s getting a steal anyway, a couple minutes with those big, wet eyes and he’s happy to help out by paying cash. That night, before he’s had a chance to re-register it, I go over to his house with my duplicate keys, drive the bastard away and we start all over again. Not real sophisticated, but we had it tight, doing three or four sales in a good week. We were building up a stake, planning to spend a year in Mexico in a house overlooking the beach. But then I came home one afternoon and it was all gone, Silver, the money. Gone. All she left me was a can opener and the furniture we’d picked off the street. And you know where I’d been all day? Out looking for one perfect thing to give her on her birthday that would make her just light up. It was bitter, all right. I had a soft spot for her, understand? So anyway, I’m sleeping in the park on frozen ground, living on cupcakes and trying to figure my next move. My body can’t take that program for long; next thing I know, I’m puking all over my shoes in front of the Brown Palace Hotel, cruiser pulls up and I get popped for vagrancy. On top of all my other grief, this was the fatal dose. I wigged out at the stationhouse, screaming my head off. ‘I got important friends’ll make you regret this.’ They didn’t need my aggravation, right? So they packed me off to the state bin and, bingo, case closed. It’s the perfect indeterminate sentence.”
Tildy touched the rim of his nearest ear. “What was it you bought her for her birthday?”
“Parrot feathers. A ten-pound bag of parrot feathers. Now, do you mind if I make my point? … Okay. Clear Creek Hospital, a real warehouse. They had a little of everything in there, like Noah’s Ark, and no time to play around. They started breaking you down right from the git-go. Inside of five minutes they’d stripped me down, put me in this flimsy cotton item split up the back, thrown me in a dark lockup. I can’t remember how long it was before I got any food. I was reeling, see, and not yet wised up, I wasn’t hip to the provocateur element, this on-arrival jolt they hit you with. Shout in your face one minute, pat your head the next, ask you trick questions and call you a liar when you don’t give the right answer. There’s a lot of browbeating, real humiliating crap. I’m good and whiplashed after a few days of it and they got me doing a little free labor, scrubbing the linoleum floor with a brush. And all of a sudden I could see what they were making me into. But I couldn’t see far enough because what I did then was right on schedule. I lost it, completely lost it. Suds all over the place and I’m ripping up sheets, just raving. And that’s when they’ve got you, see? It’s all over and those house odds were just too strong: ‘Now you see how dangerous and uncontrollable you are. In fact, you may be even sicker than we thought. We will have to drug you and put you in restraints before you hurt someone.’ It can be months before they throttle back on the medication and give you a standing eight count.”
Tildy shivered, nibbled on lime rind. “I see what you mean,” she said. “You’ve got to watch out for that provocateur element.”
Was it possible? Yes. It was possible to say she was having a good time.
OBEY LIMITS
YOUR SPEED MONITORED BY AIRCRAFT
In search of fuel, Christo switched to a secondary road. The gauge had been pinned on E for several miles.
“Rechette will have put out the word on these cards. They should have made the hot sheet by now.” One by one Christo removed the celluloid wafers from his wallet and scaled them out the window. “You got to know when to ditch these things. I found that out. But we may latch on to some free gas yet.”
Without lights, Christo nosed up an asphalt drive, parked by the adjoining garage and cut the motor. He waited a few minutes, alert for any sound or gleam of light from inside, then stepped out and tried the garage door; it was locked. He went over all four sides of the building, feeling with his hands, hunting for signs of alarm wiring in the thin radiance of a cigarette lighter. Satisfied he ran no risk of setting off bells, he took a set of picks from his jacket, sprang the simple pin lock on his first try and eased the door up carefully on its tracks.
A pair of Cadillac hearses were parked inside, two state-of-the-art beauties fresh from Detroit that model year with hand-rubbed gray finishes, understated chrome trimmings and, in the rear, gauzy white curtains behind smoked glass.