I bought a quart of transmission fluid in Dallas and I stopped twice to cash bonds. The girl teller in the bank at Waco stared at me and I thought I must be giving off a dog smell. I got a roll of quarters from her and hefted it in my fist as I drove along.
Just south of Waco I looked about for some sign of the big gas line, the Scott-Eastern Line, but I could never determine where it crossed under the highway. My father and Mr. Dupree had helped build it, first as swabbers and then as boy welders. The Sons of the Pioneers! They had once been fairly close friends but had drifted apart over the years, Mr. Dupree having made a lot more money. My father resented his great success, although he tried not to, always giving Mr. Dupree credit for his energy. The hammer and the cutting torch, he said, were Mr. Dupree’s favorite tools. My father’s touch was much finer, his welding bead smoother and stronger and more pleasing to the eye, or so I am told. Of course he no longer made his living at it but people still called him on occasion when there was a tricky job to be done, such as welding airtight pressure seams on thin metal, or welding aluminum. Thin metal? Give him two beer cans and he’ll weld them together for you!
In South Texas I saw three interesting things. The first was a tiny girl, maybe ten years old, driving a 1965 Cadillac. She wasn’t going very fast, because I passed her, but still she was cruising right along, with her head tilted back and her mouth open and her little hands gripping the wheel.
Then I saw an old man walking up the median strip pulling a wooden cross behind him. It was mounted on something like a golf cart with two spoked wheels. I slowed down to read the hand-lettered sign on his chest.
JACKSONVILLE
FLA OR BUST
I had never been to Jacksonville but I knew it was the home of the Gator Bowl and I had heard it was a boom town, taking in an entire county or some such thing. It seemed an odd destination for a religious pilgrim. Penance maybe for some terrible sin, or some bargain he had worked out with God, or maybe just a crazed hiker. I waved and called out to him, wishing him luck, but he was intent on his marching and had no time for idle greetings. His step was brisk and I was convinced he wouldn’t bust.
The third interesting thing was a convoy of stake-bed trucks all piled high with loose watermelons and cantaloupes. I was amazed. I couldn’t believe that the bottom ones weren’t being crushed under all that weight, exploding and spraying hazardous melon juice onto the highway. One of nature’s tricks with curved surfaces. Topology! I had never made it that far in my mathematics and engineering studies, and I knew now that I never would, just as I knew that I would never be a navy pilot or a Treasury agent. I made a B in Statics but I was failing in Dynamics when I withdrew from the field. The course I liked best was one called Strength of Materials. Everybody else hated it because of all the tables we had to memorize but I loved it, the sheared beam. I had once tried to explain to Dupree how things fell apart from being pulled and compressed and twisted and bent and sheared but he wouldn’t listen. Whenever that kind of thing came up, he would always say—boast, the way those people do—that he had no head for figures and couldn’t do things with his hands, slyly suggesting the presence of finer qualities.
Two
IN LAREDO I GOT a six-dollar motel room that had a lot of posted rules on the door and one rubber pillow on the bed and an oil-burning heater in the wall that had left many a salesman groggy. It was the kind of place I knew well. I always try to get a room in a cheap motel with no restaurant that is near a better motel where I can eat and drink. Norma never liked this practice. She was afraid we would be caught out in the better place and humiliated before some socialites we might have just met. The socialites would spot our room key, with a chunk of wood dangling from it like a carrot, or catch us in some gaffe, and stop talking to us. This Laredo room also had a tin shower stall and one paper bath mat.
I went to a discount store and bought three quarts of transmission fluid and some food for the road and a Styrofoam ice chest and a frozen pie. I didn’t want the pie but I did want the carton it came in. Back in the shadows of my room I replaced the pie with the Colt Cobra and sealed the box with tape. The cylinder of the revolver made a bulge in the carton and I regretted that I had not brought a flat automatic. Then I put the innocent-looking carton at the bottom of the ice chest and covered it with little crescents of ice from the motel dispenser. This was against motel policy, the crescents being intended for solitary drinks in the room instead of bulk use.
But I filled the chest anyway and on top of the ice I arranged cans of beer and packets of baloney and cheese in a festive display. The pie itself, lemon, I carried about in the room for a while, putting it down here and there. I couldn’t find a good place for it. Finally I took it outside and left it by the Dumpster for a passing rat, who would squeak with delight when he saw those white billows of meringue.
The better motel was across the wide street. I went over and scouted the place out, the magazine rack and the lounge and the restaurant. No salad bar but that was all right. I noted too that a person would have to pass through the steaming nastiness of the kitchen in order to reach the toilet. The people who were running the motel seemed to be from some place like North Dakota instead of Texas, and they all seemed to be worried about something, distracted. I could hear carpentry work going on in the kitchen and occasional shouts.
You can usually count on a pretty good chicken-fried steak in Texas, if not a chicken-fried chicken, but I didn’t like this setup. All afternoon I had been thinking about one of those steaks, with white gravy and a lot of black pepper, and now I was afraid these people from Fargo would bring me a prefabricated vealette pattie instead of fresh meat. I ordered roast beef and I told the waitress I wanted plenty of gristle and would like for the meat to be gray with an iridescent rainbow sheen. She was not in the mood for teasing, being preoccupied with some private distress like the others. She brought me a plate of fish sticks and the smallest portion of coleslaw I’ve ever seen. It was in a paper nut cup. I didn’t say anything because they have a rough job. Those waitresses are on their feet all day and they never get a raise and they never get a vacation until they quit. The menu was complete fiction. She was serving the fish sticks to everybody, and not a uniform count either.
After supper I went into the darkened lounge. It was still “happy hour” and the place was packed with local people. I saw no socialites. I had trouble getting a stool at the bar because when one fell vacant I would wait for a minute or two to let it cool off, to let the body heat dissipate from the plastic cushion, and then someone else would get it. The crowd cleared out when the prices went up and then I had the bar pretty much to myself. I could see a man standing at the far end writing a letter with a pencil. He was laughing at his work, a lone bandit writing cruel taunts to the chief of police.
I ordered a glass of beer and arranged my coins before me on the bar in columns according to value. When the beer came, I dipped a finger in it and wet down each corner of the paper napkin to anchor it, so it would not come up with the mug each time and make me appear ridiculous. I drank from the side of the mug that a left-handed person would use, in the belief that fewer mouths had been on that side. That is also my policy with cups, any vessel with a handle, although you can usually count on cups getting a more thorough washing than bar glasses. A quick slosh here and there and those babies are right back on the shelf!
Across from me there was a dark mirror and above that a mounted deer’s head with a cigarette in his mouth. Back in the table area a woman was playing an electric organ. No one was shouting requests to her. I was the only person in the place who applauded her music—a piece of traveler’s bravado. And after a while I didn’t clap either. I had no character at all. If the other customers had suddenly decided to club the poor woman with bottles, with those square gin bottles, I suppose I would have joined in. Here was something new. We all know about the gentry going to seed but here was something Jefferson had not foreseen: an effete yeoman.
An old man we
aring clown shoes came through the door and began to play a kind of tune on a toy trombone. He hummed into the tiny instrument, as with a comb and tissue paper. The Mexican bartender chased him out. Then another man came in and sat down beside me. I was annoyed, because there were plenty of empty stools. I stiffened and waited for him to start talking. I avoided eye contact. Any minute now, I said to myself, this fellow is going to order an Old Charter and 7-Up and tell me he had gone to boot camp with Tyrone Power. I couldn’t see his face but I watched his hairy paw as it reached across me and grabbed a handful of matchbooks from the courtesy bowl. Greenish fingernails and a heavy silver ring with a black stone.
He punched me on the shoulder and laughed. It was Jack Wilkie. I couldn’t believe it.
He said, “How’s the little car holding up?”
“It’s doing all right.”
“Little car drives out good, does it?”
“What are you doing here, Jack?”
“It’s all in the day’s work.” He was windblown and his knit shirt was sagging and damp with sweat but he was pleased with the effect he had achieved and he kept punching me and laughing.
Mrs. Edge had told him about the Texarkana call and he had immediately divined my plan. He had made up the lost time easily enough in his Chrysler Imperial. Tomorrow morning he would drive to San Miguel and pick up Dupree and take him back to Little Rock. It was as simple as that. He seemed to think San Miguel was right across the border.
“You should have told me where he was, Ray.”
“I was going to tell you as soon as I got my car back. I wanted to get my car without your help.”
“You should have told me about this Mexico thing. We could have worked something out. This is business to me.”
“I know that.”
“What difference does it make as long as you get your car?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
I gave him what information I had and he wrote down “Hotel Mogador” on a paper napkin. He said I might as well ride along with him to San Miguel in the comfort of the big Chrysler. I halfway agreed. It seemed the only thing to do, except maybe forget the whole business and go back to Little Rock like a whipped dog. There was no way I could beat him to San Miguel in the little Buick.
I said, “How are you going to get Dupree out of Mexico? Your warrant won’t be any good down there.”
Jack was scornful. “Warrant. That’s a good one. Warrant’s ass. I don’t need a warrant. All I need is a certified copy of the bond. I’m a party to the action. That’s better than a warrant any day. I can take custody anywhere. The dumbest person in this motel knows that.”
The woman at the organ was singing. She had been singing for some time but this was no background stuff; this song was a showstopper and we had to take notice: “And then they nursed it, rehearsed it, . . . And gave out the news . . .”
The old man with the big shoes came back and this time he was wearing a bellboy’s cap with a strap under his chin. He ran through the place waving a scrap of paper and shouting, “Phone call! Phone call for the Sheriff of Cochise! Emergency phone call! Code ten!” The bartender ducked under the bar flap and popped a rag at him and chased him out again and I could hear the old man’s shoes flopping down the hall.
Jack said, “Who was that old guy?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
“They ought to lock that son of a bitch up.”
“I think it’s Halloween.”
“No, it’s not. A guy like that wouldn’t know what day it was anyway. This place smells like a kennel. Did you eat here?”
“Yes.”
“Can you recommend anything?”
“I can’t recommend what I had.”
“Some hot-tamale crap?”
“I had fish.”
“That’s a mistake. A place like this. Let’s go to some nice steakhouse. I’m hungry.”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“How about the track? Why don’t we take a run out to the dog track and make some quick money? Let them dogs pay for our trip.”
“They don’t have dog races here, Jack.”
“I think they do.”
“They don’t have legal gambling in Texas.”
“I think they have dog races.”
“I don’t think so. Out in the streets maybe. Among themselves.”
“Across the border then. I know they have some kind of racing in Juárez.”
“That’s way up there at El Paso.”
I still didn’t see how Jack could take Dupree out of Mexico without going through some sort of legal formality. He kept telling me he was “the surety” and “a party to the action” and that such a person could go anywhere in the world and do just as he pleased. He said, “I don’t care where they are. I’ve taken these old boys out of Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.”
We sat there and drank for a long time. Jack showed me his handcuffs, which he carried in a leather pouch on his belt. He also had a blackjack, or rather a “Big John” flat sap. He didn’t carry a gun. He said he loved the bail-bond business. His wife thought it was sleazy and she wanted him to give it up and devote all his time to the practice of law, which he found dull.
“I was in the army and nobody wanted to see me,” he said. “Then I was a salesman and nobody wanted to see me. Now they’re glad to see me. Let me tell you something. You’re doing that old boy a real service when you get him out of jail. Sure, everybody has to go to jail sometime, but that don’t mean you have to stay there.”
I asked Jack if he could help me get a job as an insurance adjuster. I had often thought of becoming an investigator of some kind and I asked him if he could put me on to something, perhaps a small shadowing job. The paper had once given me a trial as a police reporter, although hardly a fair one. Two days! Jack wasn’t interested in this subject and he wouldn’t discuss it with me.
He wanted to talk about his family. He had a jug-eared stepson named Gary who smoked marijuana and made D’s in school and spent his money on trashy phonograph records. The boy also spent a lot of his time and money at an amusement arcade downtown and Jack said he had ugly sores in his right eyebrow from many hours of pressing his eye against the periscope of the submarine game. The thought of this boy and his smart mouth and his teen mustache made Jack angry. But he didn’t hold it against his wife that she had given birth to the unsatisfactory kid and brought him to live in the Wilkie home.
He poked me with a finger and said, “My wife is just as sweet as pie. Get that straight.” And a little later he said, “I’m glad my wife is not a porker.” He told me she had “firm muscles” and he told me about all the birthday presents and Christmas presents he had given her in recent years. He said she had never locked him out of the house.
I didn’t see how Jack Wilkie could have a very nice wife and I was tired of hearing about her. He left to get a cheeseburger and I thought about his remarks. The insinuation seemed to be that Norma was not as sweet as pie. When he got back, I asked him if that was his meaning and he said it wasn’t.
He had spilled food on his knit shirt. I told him that I thought an investigator going on a trip should wear a coat and tie. He didn’t hear me. He was looking at the mounted deer head. He jumped up on the bar and straddled the walkway behind the bar and took the cigarette from the deer’s mouth and flung it down on the duckboards. Then he turned on the bartender. “That’s not right and you know it’s not right,” he said. “That’s not the thing to do. Don’t put another cigarette in that deer’s mouth.”
The Mexican bartender was slicing limes. With his hooded eyes and his little mustache he looked like a hard customer to me. He was fed up with these antics in his bar, I could tell, and I thought he was going to do something. But he just said, “I didn’t put that one in there.”
Jack climbed down and started telling me about all the different people who had attacked him while he was just doing his job. Everybody who attacked him was crazy. He pulled up a trou
ser leg and showed me a pitted place on his calf where a crazy woman in Mississippi had stabbed him with a Phillips screwdriver. Then he raised his knit shirt and showed me a purple scar on his broad white back where he had been shot by a crazy man in Memphis. One of his lungs had filled up with blood and when he came around in the emergency room of Methodist Hospital he heard the doctor ask a nurse if she had the key to the morgue. A close call for Jack! Not everybody was glad to see him!
Nothing more was said about our business. I left him there drunk on the stool. He said he would see me at breakfast.
I returned to my room across the street and went to bed and lay with my head under the rubber pillow to keep out highway noise. I couldn’t sleep. After a time I could hear knocking and bumping and voices outside. Someone seemed to be going from door to door. Maybe trick or treat, or the Lions Club selling brooms. Or the dumbest person in the motel looking for his room. My turn came and I went to the door. It was the old man in the big shoes. He was also wearing a white cotton jacket or smock. With his purple face up close to mine, I saw his bad eye and I had the momentary impression that I was looking at Mr. Proctor. But how could that be? Mr. Proctor was snug in his brown shed in Little Rock, eating canned peanuts and watching some hardhitting documentary on television. The man gave me a card. Scriptural quotations, I thought, or the deaf-and-dumb signs.
“What is this? What are you doing?”
“I’m just fooling around,” he said.
It was my guess that he had been a veteran handyman here on motel row, known all up and down the street as Dad or Pete. Then one day he was falsely accused of something, stealing sheets maybe, and fired summarily with no pension. He was now getting back at people. This was his way of getting back at the motel bosses. But when I asked about this, he said, “No, I’m just fooling around. It’s something to do. My wife is an old shopping-cart lady. That’s Mrs. Meigs I’m speaking of. She picks up bottles all day and I do this all night.”