We ordered, and about the time our meal arrived, Paco came in. He had on faded khakis and a blue baseball cap today. The cap hid some of the ugliness of his head. No one stared; they all worked at not doing that, and you could tell.
He saw us, smiled, and the smile was nice; the only part of him that wasn't ruined.
He came over and Leonard made room and Paco sat down beside him. We went through the casual greeting bullshit you go through, and the waitress shrugged off the stool and came over with her cigarette in her mouth and asked around it for Paco's order, then went away.
"She didn't even bother with a menu," Leonard said.
"I always get the same thing," Paco said. "Pancakes. Her asking me is simply a ritual."
Surprise. The food was great. I was wiping up the last of my eggs with a piece of toast when Paco smiled at me and said, "Place looks like a toilet, but what comes out of the kitchen could pass for ambrosia. They got someone back there knows what cooking is all about."
When Paco's order came and he finished eating, I said, "How do you live, you and the guys? Trudy the only one working?"
"I don't get too many indoor jobs with this face," Paco said. "Nobody in a store wants to look at me all day. I do some jobs here and there. Move across country doing different things, farm and yard work mostly. Sometimes things that aren't legal or aren't quite legal. Right now, you could say I'm between jobs.
"Trudy works at the Dairy Palace east of town. She doles out hamburgers. I'll tell you now. Don't eat there. The food's for shit.
"Howard's got a job at a gas station. Pumps gas, changes tires, fixes flats, runs the wrecker service. He's getting in good with the owner so he can get use of the wrecker. Told the guy that way his wife—Trudy's going as his wife—won't have to pick him up. He thinks they're gonna let him have the wrecker soon and we can use it to pull the boat out some afternoon."
"If there is a boat," Leonard said.
"I don't let myself think any other way," Paco said. "There's a boat."
"You got Trudy's kind of dedication," I said.
"I don't know she's so dedicated," Paco said. "She wants to be, but I don't know she is. I don't know her like Howard knows her, or maybe you know her, but I know her type. I've heard her talk about you two, and I've heard Howard talk, and I see how burned out you are, Hap, and I got to draw some conclusions. I think she's a quitter. She likes to get all the sticks and tinder for the fire, likes to light it, but doesn't want to be there when it starts to smoke too much and get too hot. By then, she's out of there, gathering new sticks, starting new fires, then she's away from that one before it gets going good. Leaves someone else to mind the blaze, lets them take the heat and smoke and get all burned up. She's got a knack for picking guys who'll martyr for her, ones who think she's gonna come back and burn up with them."
"I been trying to tell this clown that for years," Leonard said. "I know a goddamn succubus when I see one."
"What about you, Paco?" I asked. "What's your story? You just dedicated to their cause, or what?"
"Me, I'm not dedicated at all. Except to myself. I'm just looking to score as big as I can."
"I hear that," Leonard said. "But what are you doing with these bozos?"
"I'm a bozo too. Or have been. I'm just not dedicated anymore. I'm like a big truck with momentum and no brakes, the gearshift knob off in my hand, going downhill on a narrow grade. I want to stop but can't. I got to ride things out. Either go over the side or make it to the bottom of the grade and coast out smooth and easy, hope I don't wreck."
"Chub?" I asked.
"He was born with money. He hung around with ill-contents. It gave him a club. He's still eighteen or twenty in his head. Never really gets up against the hub, just likes to think he does. Always been a weekend rebel, but he's gone and got married to getting this money. He wants to use it to fight some injustice. Anyway, folks back home in Houston disowned him, but not before they gave him a bundle they thought he'd use on becoming a doctor. Over the years, he's spent most of it on good causes, got some in the bank here to live on. He's got degrees aplenty. Knows medicine, even though he never became a doctor. Wouldn't go the final business because he thought that was becoming part of the establishment. He's got idealism like nerds got religion or Star Trek."
"I still don't have you figured in all this," I said.
"Maybe when I see that money I won't do what they think. But I don't see any cause to rock the boat until we got the boat. We work together, we might can bring that money up. They think I got other plans, they might fade on me. It's not like I can go to the police and complain I been welched on. Besides, if I could, I wouldn't. I got some problems there already."
"Suppose you're going to tell us about it?" Leonard said.
"We're gonna break the law together, so why not?" Paco got out a cigarette and lighter and lit up. He looked around. The fat blond waitress was gone from the counter—somewhere in the back, most likely. The fella behind the cash register was leaning on it, looking out that grimy glass. We were the only customers left in the place.
Paco said, "I got a record. It's the sixties' fault. Well, my fault and the sixties with it, but it's no fun blaming yourself even if you think you're guilty. So I'm gonna say it's the sixties' fault and you can know better if you want.
"But when it was '68 I graduated and went off to the University of Texas, and things were heated up good, what with the war and all. Back then I had a face. I wasn't a Greek god or nothing, but I wasn't so bad. Now I scare crows at a hundred yards. But the face was all right, and I guess I was all right too. Full of lies about life and all, like we all were then. But I started figuring out some things. Came to the conclusion what we been told about things, about life, is just talk. You act a certain way to gain a certain thing, and that's all there is to it. I know that now, but then, I was full of love and peace and end the war, civil rights and women's rights. Thought I could make everyone look at these things and see that's the way it ought to be, that it would hit them like a thunderbolt from Zeus.
"I got a feeling you know what I'm saying, Hap. I know a disfranchised sixties guy when I see one."
"You pegged him right," Leonard said.
"Silence in the gallery," I said.
"So, anyway, I'm off to college, and I'm Mr. Big Shot. I'm gonna do some things. I know how the world works and I'm gonna rip off the lid and let everyone look inside and see the gears, and once they do, it's all gonna go smooth. We'll put a little oil in there, but once the machinery of a thing is understood, there goes the mystery. Everyone can live together and love one another, no sweat.
"But when I finally got the lid off, looked down there, I saw the machinery was a lot more complex than I originally thought. You couldn't glance at it and see how it worked. I had to go down in the machine and study it, become a mechanic. Change some things around so it was simple. I figured I could do that. Figured when I came up out of the machine, it would be smooth and well oiled and would run the way it was supposed to. Without prejudice and wars and sexism. People would be kind to animals, loan their tools, and locks would come off doors."
I nodded. "Peace, brother."
"You got it. So I decided to team up with these other mechanics. People who had the right ideas, you know, wanted to get down in that machinery with me, do some work. This machinery analogy was theirs, and they started calling themselves the Mechanics. You don't hear much about them some reason or another, but they were active as ants."
"I heard of them," I said. "Started out getting people to register to vote. Pushing the ideas of a democracy, then they splintered. The ones that continued to call themselves the Mechanics were kind of like the radical branch that split off from the Students for a Democratic Society and called themselves the Weathermen."