"I shoot rabbits. That's what the big boys do for big excitement?"
"One more thing. I saw Lenny's car the other day."
"You're lying."
"No I'm not."
"Really?" And now he sits up, even turns to look at me. "Where?"
"Crusing the school."
"Who was driving."
"I'm not sure."
"You're really a klutz. You can't even see good."
"I'm not sure, but I'll tell you who I think it was. I think it was Charles."
CHAPTER 10: Sonnett Again
"Hey, Bobby. Welcome back." It's Thomas Powers walking toward me through a crowd of high school kids. "You coming to football practice after school?" I don't know why he is asking that. The whole school knows I'm off the football team.
"I don't play anymore." I am in the towers building at school. Kids are fogging around and staring at me. I just want them to leave me alone. The clatter of all these footsteps down this wooden hall is enough to drive me nuts.
"What? You quitting football?"
"Come on, Thomas. Clyde kicked me off the team."
"Oh, yeah. I remember him doing that, but it couldn't have been permanent. Now that you're back in school, he'll let you play. Won't he?"
"I don't know. I'll have to check." Thomas has me thinking there may be some hope. I have an appointment to see Clyde right now, and I'm really sweating it.
"Hey, I hear your old man worked you till you begged for mercy."
"Who was telling you that?"
"My daddy saw your old man in town late yesterday."
"Hi, Bobby." It's Becky Wynsum, a little freshman I've had my eye on. She's the cutest thing I have ever seen.
Then Melvin comes up to me. "Good luck in there with Sonnett. Tell him what he wants to hear. Sweet-talk him, he loves it." Melvin's tooth will always be chipped. At least my face has healed, maybe just a little black under my left eye. I hear his mother got him back in school last week. He only missed two days. But he didn't play football so Clyde couldn't take that away from him.
"I hear Charles Kunze is back," he says coming up close.
"It's a fact. I saw him last week. I didn't know you knew him."
"Don't. But my brother, Johnny, does. He told me Charles was in town. Johnny thinks something's going on, or Charles wouldn't be here."
Then somebody spins me around.
"Hey, Bobby." It's Leroy. Just the guy I want to see. "Loan me some lunch money," he says. Wayne, his new redheaded buddy, the undertaker's son, is with him. I hate that sonofabitch. "I'm flat broke," Leroy says. "Used the last of my lunch money for gas to come see you yesterday."
"Is that right? Well, I'm real glad you're hurting, Leroy, cause I hear you asked Bev for a date."
"Who would tell you a lie like that?"
I put my hand on his chest, shove him back a step. "She did, that's who."
"Bobby Hammer." I recognize that sour voice. It is old man Sonnett. "In my office. Right now."
So I am sitting in his old wood chair again while he stares at this folder full of papers he has on me. They don't put any of the good things I do in there, nothing about all the times I stayed out of trouble, all the fights I've walked away from. Just the bad stuff. Finally he decides he wants to talk.
"Were you going to fight Leroy Korenski right out there in front of my office?"
"What?"
"You and Leroy. Were you going to have it out right in front of my office?"
"Leroy is my best friend."
"I know that. And Melvin was your second best. Looks like you've just worked your way to the top of your stack."
"So that's it. What are you taking away from me this time? You kicking me out of school for good? You finally got me. Is that it? Or are you taking me out of physics?"
"No. I'm not suspending you permanently. I'm not suspending you at all. And I have talked to Mr. Wood. He stood by you, Bobby. And that surprises me. He really thinks you can make it in that class. So maybe you have an aptitude for something. I just can't believe it's physics. But I'm willing to let that one ride a while. And I was considering changing my mind about this football thing too. Some people think football does you some good. I had a tendency to want to believe them. But not after what I just witnessed out front."
I know Melvin is right, but I just can't sweet-talk this sonofabitch. The best I can do for now is to keep my mouth shut.
CHAPTER 11: Lenny's Pistol
We're in Charles' jeep now, going away from town on Robertson with nothing protecting us but the windshield. I've never been out in a jeep before, and it seems noisy and a little scary. I notice the dark a lot more with the half-moon in front of us heading for the horizon off to the right. Even the palm trees on both sides of the road seem darker than usual until they light up as we pass and then go dark again behind us. I've never gone out in the country at night to have fun, and with the faint lights of houses are far in the distance, seems a little lonely. Charles reaches back under a tarp and comes up with two Olys, motions for me to get the church key out of the glove box. The jeep whines so loud, it's hard to talk, but Charles hollers over it anyway.
"What are you planning to do when you get out of school?"
"Papa says I better dirt farm with him."
"I didn't ask what your papa wants. I know what he wants. What do you want?"
Now I'm in another fix. I don't know what to say to Charles. I know I should have a good plan for after graduation, but I don't. All I have are these dreams that don't mean anything to anybody but me.
"I'm not real sure," I say.
"Speak up. I can't hear you."
"All I know is, I want to get out of here."
He shakes his head like that's a big problem and starts to say something, but there's just too much noise. He's off on a dirt road now and the headlights bounce around on the ground, then up in the air like searchlights. He slows the jeep to a crawl, rolls down an old dry river bed, and when we come up the other side, he motions for me to get the .22s out of the back. He lays his across his lap and turns the spotlight on, moves it around until it falls on a small farmhouse in the distance.
I feel strange about that .22 of mine. I haven't had it out for a while. I don't care much for hunting anymore. I don't believe I've shot it since Lenny died.
He starts talking again. "I don't understand why you would want to leave, Bobby. But I guess you don't know the potential of this place. You should stick around. I have a plan. It would work better with two than one. We might even recruit some others, if we can find the right kind of kids. This whole San Joaquin Valley's a gold mine. You can't believe the living you can make here without working."
We cut across country, bouncing around so bad I'm thinking I can't stay in my seat long. "I don't know, Charles. I kind of like working."
I see cottontails and maybe a jackrabbit or two scatter as we pull up to an old farmhouse. "Deserted," he says as he fires a shot into one of the windows, sending glass tinkling. I hope like hell he's right. The big dirt yard around it is really just part of the field. Through the dark I make out two cotton trailers, a big John Deere tractor and an outhouse.
"You sure it's okay for us to be here?" I ask.
He turns off the headlights and I punch holes in a couple more Oly's, then we start shooting cottontails.
"I'll shine the spotlight," he tells me, "and we'll see who can shoot the rabbit in the light first. Ready?" He balances his .22 on the top of the windshield, shooting with his right arm and working the light with his left. When the light hits the rabbits, some run, some stand still. The rabbits' eyes reflect like red coals from a campfire. Charles shoots a steady stream of bullets, knocking the heads off rabbits, and I'm just doing a lot of aiming, so I lower my .22 and watch. He stops and looks over at me, then laughs like hell.
"How long you been doing this?" I ask.
"All my life."
"You going to eat all those rabbits?"
"Nooo. You can't eat t
hese rabbits. They have diseases."
He shines the light for me now, and I'm taking my time and get a couple, some take two or three shots. I get a jackrabbit with a gut shot and it sits quiet like on its hind legs with its big ears standing tall, glows white in the spotlight, its guts hanging out. Then I hear a woman scream.
"Where's that coming from?" I ask. Scares me.
"The rabbit," he says. "Shoot again."
"I mean the woman screaming."
"That's not a woman, Bobby. That's the rabbit you wounded. Kill it," he tells me.
I get really scared, start to run, then think better of it. Don't know what to do.
"Well, go ahead, Bobby," he says. "You going to take all night?"
I've never heard a rabbit scream like. Sounds pitiful. I look into the dark surrounding us. I just feel like somewhere out there a woman is hurt real bad. I try to finish off the rabbit, but I miss.
He brings his rifle to his shoulder. I see his .22 jerk a little when it fires, but I look the other way, off into the dark. I still hear the thud. "You're cruel," he says, like I've done something wrong. "You've got to be more humane." He stands around a little, like I've spoiled the hunting for him.
"Hunting is all right," I say, "but I don't like this much killing."
"Look. We're thinning them out. Okay? There's too many. When they're this thick they don't have enough to eat. Some starve to death. We're doing them a favor."
I don't have anything to say about that, but I know there's some truth to it.
"We're going to have to toughen you up about hurting things," he says. "Some night we'll have to get you some nigger pussy." Then he grabs a flashlight and a sawed-off shotgun out of the jeep, says, "Come on, let's do this Lenny's way. See what we can find inside that house."
He has to break the window with the butt of the shotgun to get to the lock on the door, and I look off in the darkness around us again for signs of somebody coming up. He still has to shove with his shoulder and the door rattles and shimmies a little when it pops open. Place looks a lot bigger inside than I thought. Only three rooms though, the living room we're in, the kitchen off to the left, and a dark bedroom that I can't see into. Stacked over in the far corner is a sofa, two easy chairs and a wrought-iron coffee table. On the floor to the right is a pile of junk, some of it kitchen trash, some of it cans of nails, and standing against the wall, two rolls of barbed wire. I spot a baby bed and that starts me to wondering about who used to live here. Probably a family. Maybe a young couple with a new baby. Looks like they struggled but couldn't make a go of it. I wonder if they stayed together, or if they had to split up?
I see something shiny on the floor and bend to pick up what looks like a toy train when I hear a blast that sounds like dynamite going off right by my ear. I get a flash like someone has caught us in here and has just shot Charles or maybe me, but I don't feel any bullet holes. I straighten up so fast Charles has to laugh at me.
"Take it easy, Bobby. Shooting windows is fun. Here. Try it yourself." And he's offering me the sawed-off shotgun.
I shake my head no and take a couple of steps back toward the door with the rich smell of gunpowder hanging in the air. That shotgun blast is still ricocheting around inside me. My hands are shaking. "I don't think we should be doing this, Charles."
"Look, Bobby, and listen close because I'm not going to say this again." And he puts his hand on my shoulder. "In this world, everybody has to take care of themselves. You do what you want. You can't judge what's right for somebody else. If they don't like what you do, let them stop you. You get to wondering what's right for everybody, you'll end up doing nothing. You get constipated, Bobby. Don't let that happen to you. You take care of yourself. Let others take care of themselves. They can do it better than you."
Charles shines the light over all this mess like he's looking for something, then picks up a claw hammer, shoves the handle down in his right front pocket. I back off a little more, and he walks toward the bedroom. I dig up some courage and follow him. It's been cleaned out except for an old bed with coil springs, and Charles shines that flashlight on a brown blood spot in the middle of the mattress. I turn to go back into the living room when another blast goes off followed by the sound of tinkling glass. Then another. He just took out both bedroom windows. Then he goes to the kitchen, lets out with a long whistle.
"This is it, Bobby."
I can hardly hear him because my ears are ringing so loud. There's no table in the kitchen but sitting in its place is a small water pump and a coil of two-inch rubber hose. About the time I get beside him, he shoots from the hip, takes out all three kitchen windows one at a time. This little house is so full of gun smoke, it's hard to breathe. He hands me the flashlight and the shotgun, then picks up the water pump all by himself.
"This is it," he says again.
"What do you mean?"
"The gold mine I was talking about. Go make room in the back of the jeep."
He covers the water pump with the tarp and decides it's time to kill some more rabbits. We get in the jeep again, and he takes off across country, trying to run 'em down. Even though he's trying to pick flat ground, some of it's still plenty rough. Cottontails run ahead of us in the lights for a ways till we get close, then go sideways, and Charles, he tries to go sideways too, and he's sliding hookers and peeling out, and we're raising a dust storm that hangs invisible in the dark until the headlights hit it. Then he reaches under the seat, pulls out an automatic pistol wrapped in a rag, like he takes good care of it, hands it to me.
First I think I'm not going to take it from him. I don't like pistols. But then I think, Why not? What happens next, I don't rightly know. The jeep front wheel must have hit a hole. One second I'm reaching for that pistol and the next I'm flying through the air, then scooting along the ground on my back, then on my side, then head over heals rolling over bushes and down into a dry ditch where I come to a stop, spitting dirt.
I'm afraid to move. One thing for sure, I have to get the tumbleweeds out of my shirt, but then I find out I don't have much of a shirt on anymore, so I roll off the tumbleweed, and start trying my arms. By the time Charles gets to me, I'm trying to stand.
"What happened to you?" he asks.
"What happened to me? You mean, what happened to the jeep. One second I was in it, the next I wasn't."
"I hit a badger hole. Almost flipped. We were lucky. Both of us could have been killed. Where's the pistol?"
I ignore his ass for a minute and start trying to find out if I have any skin left. My left elbow is in bad shape but still works. Have a hole in my side where a bush almost went through but it's not bleeding much. My back doesn't have an inch of skin on it, one of my back pockets is hanging off my Levis, both knees have holes in them and doesn't matter if you're talking about pants or legs, both shoes are missing for now, and the left side of my face is solid scratches from my nose to my ear which isn't in too good a shape itself, at least that's what Charles is saying. I am surprise that I don't hurt anymore than I do.
*
Okay. Charles found his goddamn pistol. I found pieces of my shirt. Not enough to wear. I can walk sometimes but only for a short distance. The jeep has one front wheel bad out of alignment. I want to go home and Charles has one more thing to do at the John Deere, the thing we came here for, according to him.
"Going to dig a little more gold," he says.
We pull up to the tractor, shine the lights on it. It's all green and looks taller than a house. He grabs a toolbox out of the back and runs up to the John Deere, starts to work on it. I'm still sitting in the jeep, shaking with cold and hurting. At first I didn't hurt much, but now I'm having a hard time hiding it from Charles.
"How do you know the tractor needs fixing?" I ask.
"Not fixing it," he says. "Taking the generator."
Then I know it was a stupid question, but I'm not feeling good and I want to go home real bad. He wants to know if I can siphon gas.
"Sure, but why?" br />
"Simple. We need to get out of here," he says.
I look at the gas gauge. Sure enough, I'm siphoning gas. Turns out, he's prepared for everything. Got a siphon hose? Sure, one right in the back, cut to length.
"Wonder whose tractor this is?" I ask.
"Better have another Oly," he says.
*
He knows a faster way home, by the freeway, so we head toward Highway 99. Charles, he's having a great time. "I haven't had so much fun since the last time I was out with Lenny," he says. "We're taking up where Lenny and I left off. I'll teach you everything Lenny and I taught each other." He looks real close at me, leans back like he's afraid of how I look. Then he laughs big, slaps his leg. "You're going to be all right. I can tell. You're a football player, Bobby. I used to be too. You are one tough sonofabitch."
I'm sitting here with the rags from what is left of my shirt wrapped around me, shaking like it's forty below. Just when we see lights from the cars on the highway, he slows at a farmhouse, and a German shepherd comes running out acting like he's going to tear the tires off the jeep. Charles brings out the pistol, takes two shots. The dog yelps and rolls once, then limps and staggers back toward the house. Charles goes like hell because here comes someone out of the house like he was waiting for us and then there's car lights on the road behind us. Charles has a big smile. Just before we get to the 99, there is a barricade with construction signs, warning signs, dead-end signs. I'm thinking we've had it now, but Charles goes off to the right around them and up a big dirt hill, the old jeep digging in and struggling in the soft earth that's to be a ramp for the new freeway overpass. Down the other side we go, like a roller coaster, through a gap in the Cyclone fence and we're on the 99, headed back to Chowchilla. He holds up the pistol so the headlights from the cars behind reflect off the shiny silver surface and hollers over the sound of the road and the whining motor.
"This pistol belonged to Lenny," he says. "Eureka!" and he fires it twice straight up into the air. "I've got a deal for you, Bobby. We've got to talk some more about you leaving Chowchilla. I don't think you want out of here as bad as you think. You'll have to hear me out on this. California is gold country. The gold rush is still on."
PART II
Everyone Has a Story
CHAPTER 12: The Field Late at Night