Other, less-earthshaking blessings were heaped upon us by a temporarily merciful providence. For one thing, Wheat’s Volks didn’t overheat on the drive to Paradise Lake, where the Nizer lake place was, despite a day so hot we almost longed for the air-conditioned jail. Almost. And for another thing, we were able to find Paradise Lake, which is one of the least developed and most hard to get to of the many lakes in that area, though I think it’s unfair of Wheat to call it “Paradise Swamp,” and I’m sure he was just kidding when he pointed over to the wet, weedy vacant lot next to the Nizer cottage and said he saw an alligator crawl out of there.
The cottage itself, though, was pretty nice, by Wheaty’s standards or anybody else’s. It was an A-frame with two bedrooms, one up and one down, and lots of burnished wood paneling, with early American furniture and a somewhat incongruously modern kitchenette, with a microwave oven we cooked TV dinners in. We did all the repairs and painting the first day. We spent Thursday and Friday chasing girls at the beaches at nearby Twin Lakes and Lake Geneva.
Late Friday afternoon, Wheaty and I were sitting in the high-ceilinged living room of the Nizer cottage, drinking Olympia beer (which is Clint Eastwood’s favorite brand, by the way, all us two-fisted types drink Oly, you know), discussing where we would go that evening in pursuit of pretty girls, when somebody knocked at the side sliding glass doors.
“Wonder if that’s the girls from last night?” Wheat mused aloud.
“Maybe,” I said, and went to answer it.
I drew back the drape that covered the glass door and it was Elam and Hopp standing out there on the sun-dappled porch.
“Hey!” I said smiling, genuinely glad to see them. I was glad to see them because jail was already fuzzing up in my mind, an experience viewed through the soft-focus camera of memory, turning those thirty days into an interesting, youthful experience that would make for some funny anecdotes in the years to come. Also, I was glad because I was on my third Oly.
I slid the door open and they came in.
Wheat jumped out of his soft chair. “Elam! Hopp!” It sounded like he was speaking a foreign language. “Come on in, you guys! It’s good to see ya!”
Hopp said, “Where’s our money?”
I said, “Uuuuh?”
Wheat said, “Whaaa?”
Elam said, “Hopp! Ease off, man.” He turned to us, and smiled. And for the first time since that day I met him in the jail, his smile seemed sinister to me, again. “Listen, boys,” he said. “You got to excuse Hopp here. We got a little hot driving up in this heat. Those lousy back roads! Ha! Bitch to find this place.”
They did look hot. Hopp was wearing faded blue working pants and a gray muscle-man shirt that had sweat circles under the arms the size of pie pans. Elam was wearing a yellow sports jacket, a dark blue silk shirt, white pants and a bulge under the left arm.
Hopp held up a fist that looked like he was holding up a rock.
He said, “Where’s our money?”
I said, “Whaaa?”
Wheat said, “Uuuuh?”
Elam said, “Hopp’s just hot, don’t mind him. But he’s right. We did come after our money. And it does look like you’re kinda hidin’ out from us. Not that we think you kids would even think of runnin’ out on your old pals. Ha! Who’d think that?”
“Why would we want to run out on you?” I asked. I didn’t know whether to be scared or confused. I settled on both.
Wheat said, “You guys came all the way up here to collect a crummy fifteen bucks?”
“Fifteen bucks?” Hopp snarled. “Fifteen bucks my butt! Who you trying to kid?”
“Awright, awright,” Wheat said, staying remarkably cool.
“Fifteen a piece, I mean. Thirty crummy bucks, I mean. So what’s the big hairy deal?”
“The big hairy deal,” Elam said, “is the fifteen hundred bucks each you owe us, pals. The three thousand bucks you owe us.”
Wheaty dropped his can of beer.
So did I.
Where was Clint Eastwood when we needed him?
Chapter 15
Wheaty laughed. Or maybe he whimpered. “You guys,” he said. “Cut it out, you guys. You got some crazy sense of humor, you guys. Stop kidding around.”
Elam said, “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but Hopp, he don’t kid around a whole bunch.”
“Why, uh, why don’t we all sit down,” I said, motioning to the two semi-circular couches that faced each other in the middle of the room. “I’ll, uh, get us some beers.” I picked up the cans Wheat and I had dropped and headed for the kitchenette area.
Wheat followed me. He said, “What is going on? What’s going on?”
I was opening the refrigerator. “Are they sitting?”
“What?”
“Glance back there. Are they sitting?”
“Yeah. Yeah, they’re sitting. What is this all about, Kitch? Three thousand bucks, Kitch. What kind of joke is that?”
Wheat’s hands weren’t moving around yet, but panic was clearly setting in.
I handed him two Olys and said, “Don’t get upset.”
“Who is upset? I don’t see anybody upset. Do you see anybody upset? I wish my mom was here.”
“Wheat. Cool. Stay cool.”
“You’re shaking, Kitch. You’re telling me stay cool, and you’re shaking. How can I have confidence in somebody who’s telling me stay cool and is shaking?”
“Will you just settle down? And when we go back in there, don’t say anything. I’ll do all the talking.”
“You’ll do all the talking. Just tell me one thing, Kitch... do you know what’s comin’ off here or not?”
“I think I do.”
“Really? No kidding, really? What?”
“I think we do owe them three thousand dollars.”
Wheat dropped the beer cans I’d handed him. These two were still unopened, fortunately, so it didn’t make a mess. He sat down at the kitchen table. His mouth was open. His eyes were as glazed as the stale doughnut over on the counter where he was staring.
Well, that was better than waving his hands around a hundred miles an hour. I guess.
“Hey!” Elam’s voice boomed, from out in the living room area.
Wheat jumped a little.
Me too.
Elam continued: “What the hell’s taking so long? Get your butts in here!”
I led Wheat by the elbow, and juggled four beers and managed to get Wheat sat on the couch, across from Elam and Hopp, and got the beers distributed all around. Elam and Hopp popped the tops on the beer cans and Wheat and I jumped a little, again. I opened the top on my own can and handled it better. Wheat left his can unopened. He was just sitting and staring, like out in the kitchen. Elam’s sinister smile had faded, replaced by a frown that made me nostalgic for the smile. Hopp’s eyes were narrowed in his face, like a couple bad cuts that hadn’t healed.
I sat next to Wheat.
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” I said, with a smile even I did not believe.
I paused for Elam to say, “How’s that?” But he didn’t.
I pressed on. “It’s uh, really quite amusing when you think about it.” I laughed a little.
Hopp said, “Get on with it,” after which his lips pressed back flat together, making his mouth look like a gash in his face, going well with the festering sores that were his eyes.
Lord, was I scared.
But I had a speech to make, and I made it.
“When we set the stakes for our pitch game, at the jail,” I said, “we just said ‘ten/twenty,’ and everybody said fine, remember? But Wheat and I are penny ante players, and we assumed you meant ten cents a bump and twenty cents a game. We didn’t stop to think that you guys are higher-stakes players than we are, that you play in games where the table is literally littered with ten- and twenty-dollar bills. We didn’t stop to think that maybe you meant ten dollars a bump and twenty dollars a game.”