Wheat said, “Awk.”
I said, “Easy, Wheat. Easy. Anyway, that’s what happened... Wheat and I thought we were playing penny ante. You guys thought the stakes were, uh, a little higher. But... excuse me... but you guys are at fault, too, I mean, you should’ve known just looking at us that Wheat and me aren’t exactly high rollers. So, uh, everybody’s, you know, at least partially at fault? So, uh, can’t we just call it an honest mistake on all our parts, and uh, shake hands friends and... forget about it?”
Silence.
A year passed. Or maybe it was a minute. Anyway, I was a year older.
Finally Hopp said, “You’re going to pay.”
Which was an ambiguous thing to say. I mean, he could have meant that a couple of ways.
But I didn’t bother asking him to clarify.
Elam said, “That’s a real interesting story... but I just bet if you boys had come out the winners in that game, you’d be wanting to be paid off in dollars, not pennies.”
Hopp nodded. “They planned this all along.”
Elam said, “The pitiful part is, I thought you were a couple of nice kids. I liked you. Ha! I guess you got to be careful about making friends in jail.”
“Please,” I said. “Be reasonable. Look at it from our point of view. We’re not con artists. We’re just a couple of college kids who landed in jail because of a prank.”
“Ha! I thought you were in jail ’cause you took off your clothes and ran through a motel lobby.”
“Yes!” I said, seeing a straw and grasping at it. “And do you know why we took off our clothes and ran through that motel lobby?”
“ ’Cause you’re a couple of anti-Establishment hippies or somethin’, how the hell should we know?”
“Elam. Hopp. We owed this guy seventy-eight dollars from a card game, and couldn’t afford to pay him off, and he said if we streaked through the Holiday Inn lobby, he’d forgive the debt. I mean can’t you see that two guys who can’t afford to pay off a seventy-eight dollar debt, who’ll do something crazy and ridiculous and illegal and even land in jail because they can’t afford to pay off a seventy-eight dollar debt, aren’t too likely to have three thousand dollars lyin’ around to pay off another debt, which they got gambling in jail, where they landed after doing something crazy and ridiculous and illegal because they couldn’t afford to pay off a seventy-eight dollar debt? Hah?”
Hopp spoke to Elam but looked at us. He said, “Give me your gun. I’m gonna kill ’em.”
Wheat fell off the couch.
Chapter 16
Just because Wheat and I were making fools of ourselves, dropping our beers on the floor, falling off the couch, don’t get the idea we were fooling around. It may read like slapstick comedy, but it lived like something else. Maybe you think the expression “scared silly” is just an expression. It isn’t. Wheat and I were fools out of fear.
While I was helping Wheat off the floor and back onto the couch, Elam was telling Hopp to take it easy.
“You take it easy,” Hopp said. “I say they got to pay.” This time it didn’t sound quite so ambiguous.
And then Elam said something very corny. He said, “Dead they aren’t any good to us.”
It was a corny line from a corny movie, and in a corny movie you would never take it seriously.
I took it seriously.
Wheat had that glazed look on his face again, was just sitting there like a big hunk of wood, and I for one was glad. I had enough to contend with just trying to deal with Elam and Hopp, let alone having to manage Wheat’s behavior.
Elam said, “Let me explain something to you boys. Let me explain something about gambling debts. Hopp and me are from Chicago. Grew up in the same neighborhood, and drifted into... business, together. We got lives of our own, of course, Hopp’s got a wife and five kids to support, and I got a lady friend who’s more expensive to take care of than that. It’s expensive period, livin’ in Chicago. Cost of living is somethin’ you wouldn’t be-lieve. But we get by, Hopp and me. Got to work our butts off to do it, though. We’re on the road a lot. Mainly what we do is knock over a bank here and there.”
My heart was a triphammer. I hadn’t been this worked up since I streaked through the DeKalb Holiday Inn. Elam was confirming suspicions I’d gathered spending time with Hopp and him in jail, but hearing him come right out and say, “We knock over a bank here and there,” was very disturbing. And put teeth in Hopp’s threat to kill us. Furthermore, my bladder was killing me.
“When Hopp and me get ourselves in a card game,” Elam was saying, “we take it serious. We play a lot of cards in Chicago, and we mess around with other kinds of gambling, too, only we aren’t just messing around. I like the horses, but Hopp, he leans toward dice. He’s a more physical type than me, I guess. Maybe you noticed. Anyway, when you gamble in Chicago, at least in the circles Hopp and me move in, you get in big trouble if you don’t pay up. In fact, you don’t even think of not paying up. Ha! Not for long, anyway. What you do, if you owe some guy some money, is you borrow some money from some other guy. You don’t go to a bank, ’cause bankers get upset when you ask for a loan to pay off a bookie. Besides, I try and make it a rule never to go inside a bank without a gun in my hand.”
“Why... why are you telling us this?” I asked, not wanting to hear any of it at all.
“Don’t interrupt. Anyway, where was I, oh yeah... that money you borrow when you can’t pay off a gambling debt, that’s called juice money. You know what that is, don’t you? You know what a shylock, a loanshark is, don’t you? Weekly interest going on forever, till you can pay off the principal? Good. Anyway, Hopp and me both owe this guy some money. We were out on the road, trying to pull off a couple deals that would give us some coin to pay off this guy, when we got tossed in the can. While we was in, our bill with this guy is goin’ wild as a pervert in a nudist camp. How could we make payments while we was in jail? So we owe this guy a lot of money. We can’t go home again.”
All of a sudden he was quoting Thomas Wolfe. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“We can’t go back to Chicago and Hopp to his wife and five kids and me to my lady friend till we can pay off this damn shylock.”
“What’s that got to do with Wheat and me?”
“You owe us three thousand. That would’ve been enough to get this guy off our backs a while and let us go home. We been in jail a year, boys. We want to go home.”
“Well, gee,” I said, suddenly feeling guilty, “I’m awful sorry. I mean, we really weren’t trying to put anything over on you... I can understand how disappointed you must feel.”
Hopp started to lurch toward me but Elam threw an arm over Hopp‘s chest and held him back.
Elam said, “I believe you, boys. I believe you when you say you misunderstood what the stakes were in our game. But that don’t change anything for Hopp and me.”
Hopp had settled down a little, after making his lunge and being halted by Elam. He said, “Whose Volkswagen is that outside?”
“My mom’s.” Wheat’s voice was very tiny, incongruously so coming out of his big hulking frame.
“Your mom’s?” Hopp said. “What’s she doing here?”