Here Comes the Night (19 page)

Tony was too tired to push the stolen Kawasaki another inch.
At first he had tried to ride it lightly, but that was impossible. The back
tire was already riding on the rim. Pushing a dead bike was worse than lifting
weights, so Tony knew he couldn’t do that. Finally, he’d gotten off but left
the engine running to help maneuver it.

His back had gotten hurt, too, when the bitch shot out the
tire. Now every step he took caused pain to shoot up his spine. He was afraid
he couldn’t go much farther. But he still refused to drop the Kawasaki by the
side of the road and start hitchhiking. That would mean giving up forever the
possibility of getting the old perverts.

What was impossible for him to realize, given the amount of
drugs he’d ingested, was that the unrelenting night, no sleep, and then the
adrenalin-charged chase with the Walkers had left him spent, completely done
in. Anything unusual could send his mind to other worlds.

Then, as he rounded what he was afraid would be his last
uphill curve, a mechanic’s garage appeared, an undulating haze misting around
it. He squinted to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating and could just make out
the sign in front:
Pop & Billy’s Garage.
Tony could smell the
engine oil wafting toward the road. And there was a pile of used tires for sale
right in front. A break, at last.

The green fields and gravel sky looked overly
color-saturated to Tony’s hollow, oily eyes. Even the up close controls on the
Ninja moved in and out of focus as he strained the last thirty feet to the
driveway.

Then Tony saw an even bigger miracle. He couldn’t believe
his eyes. The guy walking out to greet him was Chuckles. Tony knew the walk
right away, the surprisingly effortless amble for such a big guy. And the long
hair, maybe not as red as it used to be, always oily though, that hadn’t
changed. Some new tats showing beneath the pushed up sleeves of his sweatshirt.

Chuckles, actually Charles Leroy Buchanan, was the man who
had saved Tony’s ass after he had been stitched back together by a team of
doctors in the city. Tony always figured Chuckles was a happy guy because he
knew he was too enormous for the other prisoners to mess with. Easy for him to
always be joking, given the power of the man’s presence. The other prisoners
always gave him space.

Chuckles had a lot more than being huge going for him. He’d
found Jesus while he was inside. For real. The man openly carried a Bible and
the last time Tony saw him before he got released, Chuckles was in line waiting
for the chapel doors to open for a service.

It did puzzle Tony how Chuckles could be out so soon. He
thought he had another four years. Sixteen years ago, Chuckles had put his
slutty wife’s lover in a wheelchair, from which the man would never stand or
walk again.

After he found Jesus, Chuckles had never forgiven himself
for that brutality and now constantly prayed for his victim, which Tony didn’t
get, since the creep was exactly where Chuckles wanted him. Crippled and no way
to fuck his wife. Chuckles asked for forgiveness for himself as well, but he
told Tony that his own forgiveness wasn’t as important as praying for the gimp
on a daily basis.

The reformed inmate despised the horrendous rapes that Tony
had endured. Chuckles would talk to him out in the yard. “Man, you are never
going to make your time if you don’t wise up. You ain’t big enough or mean
enough for that lip of yours.”

Tony had shrugged him off as a Jesus nut, but after a couple
of close calls with punks trying to push a shiv in his guts, Tony had sidled up
to Chuckles’ wisdom.

Tony even went with him to Chapel, although he didn’t
believe in that shit at all. But after a year, Chuckles was the only one that
Tony let in, not just emotionally, but literally. They became lovers,
cellmates, although Tony never told a soul on the outside about it. He wasn’t
an idiot. “Normies” didn’t get the prison sex thing. But he had loved Chuckles,
enough that it hurt bad when Tony had to say goodbye.

Tony was floating as he got closer to the garage. Wiping his
hands on a grease rag, Chuckles took a few more steps into the driveway. “Looks
like you ran into some trouble there,” he said.

“I’ll say,” Tony grinned. “Good to see you.”

“I bet it is,” Chuckles said, eyeing the Ninja’s back tire.
Then he hollered back toward the garage. “Pop, we got a tire fit this?” He
grinned at Tony as they waited, motioned to the tire pile. “Pop’s only one
knows what all’s in there.”

“Didn’t know you had a pop,” Tony said.

Chuckles laughed out loud. At least it sounded a lot like
his laugh. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“You’ve changed,” Tony said, wondering just how much was
Chuckles acting different on the outside, and how much was Tony remembering him
different.

“Huh?” Chuckles said, then immediately turned to watch his
dad limp out from the garage. The old man didn’t have Chuckles’ girth, but he
was broad set, low center of gravity, be a bitch to knock him over. Shoulder
length white hair, beard down to his chest on him. Tony didn’t get how people
could let themselves go like that.

Pop squinted to size up the shredded wheel. “That’s a
seventeen-one-ten. Should have one in there. That kid from California left one.
‘Member him?” He walked to the pile and started to lift a tire out of the way.

“I’ll do that, Pop,” Chuckles said. “Just point to it.”

As they worked, Tony realized his throat felt like
sandpaper. “Hey, you got a soda machine?”

“Yeah, in the office,” Chuckles said, pointing to it.

“Great.” Tony ambled inside, watching Chuckles as he went,
thinking he had smaller arms than the last time he saw him.

Inside, Tony found enough change to buy a plastic bottle of
something orange, the only choice that wasn’t “empty” in the vending machine.
He watched through the office window to make sure both the men were busy before
moving to the desk.

Man, it was sloppy. Greasy receipts and bills, take-out bags
that gave off a smell like rotten chili dogs. And a coffee-stained newspaper.
Tony picked it up to see if there was a picture of him. He smiled. That dumb
hump Buck Dearmore was plastered on the front page. He couldn’t read the
article, of course, except for “Wanted,” a word he’d put to memory early in his
life.

At the top of an official looking pad he searched for
Chuckles’ name. He’d seen it written and knew what it looked like. The garage
sign said “Billy” or something like that, and printed at the top of a pad was a
name that didn’t have a Charles or Chuckles in it anywhere.

Tony decided Chuckles must have changed his name. He had to
hand it to him. Tony had not heard about the breakout, but apparently Chuckles
had somehow escaped and was holed up here. Now Tony wondered if the Jesus thing
had been a ruse all along.

Chuckles had said something strange to him just before Tony
was released. He had said, real quiet like, “Kid, when you need me, I’m gonna
be there. I’ll be there for you. Understand? Just think on me.” Then Chuckles
had hugged him hard and gotten back in line for Chapel. It had choked Tony up
so much that a brusque goodbye was all he could manage.

The old man’s voice startled Tony. “Just about gotcha fixed
up, boy,” he said, sitting down and clearing off some of the pig sty on the
desk.

“That’s great. I’m in kind of a hurry.”

“Who ya chasin’?”

It took Tony a second to realize the old man was kidding with
him. “If I catch her, she’ll be hot to trot, I’ll tell you that,” Tony grinned.

His back now screaming with pain, Tony reached into his
pocket and was stunned to find it empty. Both his stash bottle and his money,
nearly ninety bucks, gone. Fuck. He must have somehow lost them when he went
down with the bike. Goddamn cows probably eating them right now.

The old man finished adding up his bill with a pencil.
“It’ll be thirty dollars. You’re lucky I had one with a rim. That one of yours
was a goner.”

Tony weighed what to do. He could pull his .38 and put one
through the old man’s head, but he hated to do that since he was related to
Chuckles.

Then he realized, of course. “Listen, I think I lost my
money back there during the wreck. I’ll ride back and find it, then come back
here and settle up.”

The old man turned in his chair and looked hard at him. When
he spoke, Tony could see his bad teeth, the years of coffee stains. “Boy, do I
look like I just fell off the watermelon truck?”

Tony shrugged and grinned. “No.”

“Then what the hell makes you think I’m gonna believe that
shit?”

Tony nodded, finally realizing the old man hadn’t properly
met him yet. “I get it. It’s okay. Just talk to Chuckles. He’ll vouch for me.”

The old man rose and got close enough that Tony could smell
his breath. “Who the fuck is Chuckles?”

For the first time in hours, Angie was feeling no pain. Her
body was riding above the seat of the BMW, the car flying so fast that the
cloudless, charcoal sky formed an endless tunnel around her. The radio blared
southern rockabilly.

“
I was born to love you. And you were born to tear my
soul apart.”
She screamed along with it.

This was how she had released when the pretenses of keeping
up in the entitled-class-world got to her. When no matter how she pumped
herself up, she still felt ugly, insufficient, a see-through imposter. Always
just a swoop away from being outed.

The first time she’d raced off like this was after she had
embarrassed herself at a dinner she and Gordon gave for some ritzy types. It
was at that point in the marriage when they still got along well, when she
served pretty much as Social Chairman.

The table had been filled with Gordon’s good-old-boy
business associates, whose skills at feigning sincerity and amusement were world
class. They would ruthlessly screw each other over during business hours, but
at night it was always
I’m the funniest, tightest pal you got
. And the
women. All pinched faces, silk blouses and ugly broaches. She wanted to tell
them, “Hey, bitches, it’s the new millenium.”

It had happened without warning, following the usual hokey
laughter at someone else’s expense. There had been talk of a greasy city
councilman, “whose daughter’s back should never see the light of day.” Some old
Johnny Carson joke. On cue came the raucous laughter.

Bored and drifting off, Angie had been thinking about how
quickly she might be able to start the dessert and coffee when one of the wives
broadsided her with, “So where’s your family from, Mrs. Wesner?” It had been a
seemingly neutral question, yet Angie’s hands started to tremble. Her throat
constricted, and tears, too quick to check, slid out from behind her eyes.

After an awkward moment, the table hushed, everyone stiff
and embarrassed. Angie could not utter a word for fear she’d burst out bawling.

The lady who had asked tried to salvage the moment. “I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean…”

Gordon had looked over sympathetically at Angie, but was
unsure himself what to say. It was as though something unpredictably real and
awkward
had happened during their manufactured evening, and no one knew
their part.

Finally, somehow, Angie had found the strength to stand and
managed to whisper, “Sorry,” before rushing from the table. She didn’t remember
the rest of the evening, just that horrible feeling of the caged bird, stared
at with pity by everyone.

Even later, when Gordon tried to console her, she had pushed
him away. “Let me handle it my own way,” she had finally insisted.

And that way was to get in her Beamer and push it to the
limits of its endurance. To drive it so fast she couldn’t think. In truth,
couldn’t react if anything went wrong. It was emotional hydroplaning for her.
You left the ground with your stomach whirling and didn’t care if you made it
back down or not.

A sign flew by on the side of the highway:
Red Rock
Canyon.
She’d partied there as a high schooler. Her friends had all laughed
that it was Oklahoma’s answer to that big canyon in Utah where
Thelma and
Louise
had bought it driving off a cliff in their convertible, while a
sympathetic cop watched helplessly.

It would be simple to drive off the Interstate right now,
race to the edge of the rocky red cliffs and blast off into the canyon at a
hundred miles per hour. No one would ever know what had driven her to it.
Except now, she realized her romantic, deadly ending would be a cheap, pitiful
out. Anybody half decent would at least save Buck by leaving a confession
behind. With that thought, Angie lifted her foot off the pedal.

The sports car rolled to a stop. Angie pulled over to the
shoulder and turned off the motor. The quiet murmured in her ears. In the end,
nothing could ever justify what she and Buck had done. It had started as the
glimmer of an idea one night while she and Buck made love in the moonlight with
the top on the BMW down. Rocking on top of him in a blue silver glow…

But now it was all spilt milk.

Dell was visibly shaken by the encounter with Tony. So was
Vivian, but hers had taken the form of a charged silence. She just sat there in
the passenger seat, dress still open, holding and staring at the .38 from time
to time.

Five miles down the road, they had pulled themselves
together somewhat and found a place to pull off. Dell checked the damage. They
were both livid when they counted half a dozen serious dents or bullet holes in
the gleaming coach’s exterior. And Dell found at least three in the Porsche
itself.

“If I had that little fucker here, I’d kill him myself,”
Dell fumed.

After pulling her clothes back on, Vivian’s response was
surprisingly limp. “Now, honey.”

Dell raised his voice. “This will cost thousands of
dollars.”

“We’ve got more insurance than we know what to do with,” she
said, still flippant.

“Oh, so you think it’s smart to report this?” He looked at
her as though she didn’t have good sense.

“Dell, any little smart ass punk could have done this. In
fact, did do this. Who’s going to be the wiser?” She stroked his arm. “You’re
so sweet, but you worry too much.”

“The legal implications…” he said, trailing off.

“…are not enough to worry about. It’ll be a minor
inconvenience. We’ll be in a motel somewhere waiting for a week or so getting
the work done.” She stepped back inside the Safari. “I don’t know about you,
but I need a drink.”

Dell took a last sad look at the damaged motor home and
sighed before going inside. He fired up the generator and turned on the vent
for some fresh air.

A few minutes later, as they drank dirty martinis, he
noticed Vivian actually looked refreshed. “You don’t seem any the worse for the
experience.”

“It was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done,” Vivian
said, her eyes wet and vibrant. She told him how incredible her quick orgasm at
his first touch had been, then asked him if he knew criminals who had that kind
of reaction to violence.

“I’ve heard of it, yeah,” Dell admitted, not sure he wanted
to embark on this subject.

“I mean, it was a kind of heat that…I’ve never been turned
on quite like that. I wanted to straddle you right there while you were
driving.”

Dell wanted to be happy for her, but it actually sounded a
little weird. His concern was the encounter last night and how it had gone
beyond the kind of rules they always followed. As he had reminded her on a
number of occasions before they picked up strangers, it only took one thing to
go wrong, something he could not cajole or bully their way out of, and they
could be the ones getting cuffs slapped on them.

Picking up the wrong people, or his personal fear, somebody
with AIDS, could ruin them. He thought he would recognize someone like that,
with their wasted, milky eyes, but you could never be sure. And, of course,
Vivian left all those difficult judgments up to him. She just wanted the fun
part.

Last night had been a huge fuckup, as evidenced by this
shithead who came after and found them on the road. Now he, and he alone—Vivian
would be no help—would have to decide whether to report the little rat bastard
or leave it to fate. For all they knew, the motherfucker was alright and right
behind them in another vehicle. Just the thought gave him a chill.

“Sweetie,” he said, watching her start on her second drink,
“I think we better get moving.”

“I was going to surprise you with a little b.j. before we
left,” she said, giving him that sassy look she could still pull off.

“Best we get into the city first,” Dell grinned back at her.
“It’s only thirty more miles.”

“Okay,” she teased, “but I don’t know if I can wait.”