The Kind One (22 page)

   FORTUNATELY I GOT Dick to help me out. We wrapped Tommy up in a tablecloth first then rolled him up in a rug from Stan’s office. The rug was so if anybody happened to see us in the Peacock parking lot cramming the body in the rumble seat of Dick’s car they wouldn’t think anything about it. Just two guys with a rug. We brought along a couple of shovels too. Just two guys with a rug and a couple of shovels.

Dick had a Ford coupe painted a hideous orange. We went west on Sunset till we got to Sepulveda where we turned north. Then we crossed over the Sepulveda Pass and went down into the San Fernando Valley. It was beautiful there. Kind of like the Garden of Eden. Orange and walnut and avocado orchards, and wide green well-watered fields, and white farm houses set back from the road surrounded by shade trees. Three pretty teenage girls on horseback gave us sunny smiles and waved at us as we passed. If only, I thought, they knew what was riding in the rumble seat.

“’Member Ginger Rogers?” said Dick wistfully. “When we seen her on that horse?”

“Yeah.”

That’s all either of us said for a long time. We listened to the car radio. Dick smoked. Every now and then he coughed. Finally he went in his pocket and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper, which he handed to me.

“What’s this?” I said.

“Something I found in my mailbox.”

I unfolded it, and read aloud: “‘My friend, you
can
have it all…more money than you’ve ever dreamed of, and the time and freedom to enjoy it! For a small initial fee, you can become a licensed dealer of J. R. Brinkley’s Goat Gland Extract. This amazing new scientific discovery is GUARANTEED to restore sexual vigor within 24 hours, or the purchase price is cheerfully refunded in full!’”

“See, the deal is,” said Dick, “you don’t do none of the selling yourself. You get a bunch of other guys to do the legwork, and you get a cut of everything they make. While
them
poor slobs are walking around in the hot sun lugging around suitcases full of this crap and getting doors slammed in their pusses,
you’re
drinking a beer in a bar someplace and sticking your hand up the skirt of some broad.” He gave a cackling, triumphant laugh, as if he were already living such a delightful life.

I looked over the handbill. “I dunno, Dick. You think anybody’s really gonna buy something like this?”

“You kidding me? Everybody ain’t young and horny like you are, Danny. There’s plenty of guys out there that can’t get it up no more, and they got old ladies driving ’em nuts ever night, just begging for it.”

“I have a friend named George. He says he can’t get it up.”

“See? What did I tell you?”

“He’s glad about it though. He says women are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Well, most guys, you give ’em the choice, they’d rather be able to get it up. Just so’s they can jack off, if nothing else. So what do you say? You wanna go in partners with me in this?”

“Maybe. But how would Bud figure in?”

“I dunno. We could cut him in too, I guess.” Although at first I heard: We could cut him in two.

“Lookit,” said Dick, “I just want outa this racket. I don’t wanna end up wrapped in a fucking rug like Tommy.”

We got on a highway that led us out of the valley. The green fields and orchards gave way to brown, dried-up hills, and off to our left the sun seemed to get bigger and bigger as it drifted down. I didn’t ask Dick where we were going. I just slumped down in the seat and let the hot dry air gush in through the window and dry the sweat off my face as fast as it formed and I tried not to think about Tommy hollering for his ma. The road rose and then the land began to flatten out, and I saw a few cactuses and knew we were in the desert.

We saw only a few other cars, and one truck filled up with stoves; “STEVE’S STOVES” was painted on the side, and it was traveling so fast you had to assume there was a desperate stove shortage somewhere. After about half an hour, Dick slowed down and turned off the highway onto a rutty dirt road.

We bumped and lurched along toward the setting sun. A wind had kicked up, and dust was blowing across the road, and then a swirl of white and brown feathers. Then I saw a dead chicken. Then I saw a live one, stumbling along the side of the road like it was drunk. It had blood on its feathers. Then we passed a chicken coop and a sagging tarpaper shack, with more chickens wandering around and pecking at the dust.

“Why would anybody,” said Dick, “wanna live way out here and raise fucking chickens?”

The road got increasingly rough, then suddenly ended, as if the roadbuilders had come to their senses and realized the road was a bad idea. We got out of the car. We looked around. You couldn’t see the highway from here. Off in the distance jumbles of bare mountains rose up. I felt like Dick and I didn’t belong here. Like the desert didn’t have the slightest use for us.

We took the shovels out of the car, then I followed Dick out into the desert. We cast long thin shadows as we walked past cactuses and scrubby bushes and strange little twisted trees.

“You been here before, I guess,” I said.

He shrugged.

“Who’s out here?”

“Well—Flumentino’s around someplace.”

“Emperatriz too?”

“I told you. She went back to Mexico, I think.”

“I heard different.”

He was silent; then he smiled a little.

“That Emperatriz was one cute dame. Did I tell you? She had a name for me.
El Flaco.
The Skinny One. ‘Why you ain’t got no girlfriend,
el Flaco
?’ she’d say. ‘You are such a handsome man!’”

A couple of hundred feet from the car, Dick looked around and said: “Guess this place is as good as any.”

The ground was hard and dry. We’d already shed our coats in the car, and now we rolled up our shirt sleeves. The sweat was pouring off us, and I was unbearably thirsty. The wind blew over us, and dust stung our eyes. This was the second burial job I’d done with Dick. I remembered holding Doc’s hand. The way he’d looked up at me so trustingly as I led him out into the garden.

“Poor Doc,” I said.

“Quit talking about him. I mean it. You’re always bringing him up. Just knock it off.”

“Sorry.”

“I guess that’s deep enough,” said Dick after a while.

It didn’t look very deep, but I didn’t argue with him. We went back to the car, and opened up the rumble seat. While he’d been getting murdered, Tommy had emptied his bladder and bowels. Add to that an hour or two in a hot car, and the smell was like a punch in the face.

Dick cursed as we took Tommy out. He wasn’t a big guy, but we struggled to carry him. He seemed all slack and looseygoosey inside the tube of the rug and I was afraid he’d slither out one end or the other.

“They’re a lot easier to carry when they’re stiff,” said Dick, red-faced and gasping. “He ain’t been dead long enough to get stiff yet.”

We plopped him down in the hole and quickly began to cover him up. When we finished, we leaned on our shovels and surveyed our handiwork.

“Adios, you rotten bastard,” said Dick.

“Was he right?”

“About what?”

“About that bouncer’s name. Was it Cairo Mary?”

Dick smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, he was right about that.”

Suddenly a gust of wind blew his hat off. It rolled and tumbled along the ground as Dick chased after it. It finally came to rest near the base of one of the weird-looking trees. Dick bent over to get it, but then he yelled: “HOLY SHIT!” and came running back my way.

“Dick, what’s the matter?”

“Snake! One of them
rattle
snakes!”

“Where?”

“Right there! By the tree!”

I looked toward where he was pointing, but didn’t see anything. I was willing to take his word for it though.

“Come on, let’s get outa here.”

“I can’t leave without my hat! It cost me eight bucks!”

Dick pulled his gun out and began blazing away in the direction of the tree. The bullets kicked up the dirt. I still couldn’t see the snake. Now the hat somersaulted as one of the bullets hit it.

“Dick, you just shot your hat! It’s no good anymore! Now let’s get outa here!”

Dick was staring toward the tree, his eyes wide and wild and his lower lip trembling.

“You seen it, didn’t you, Danny? You seen the snake?”

“Yeah, I saw it. Now let’s go.”

We walked quickly back to the car with a mounting sense of panic, as if we were being chased by the snake, or maybe the wrathful ghosts of Emperatriz and Flumentino. We threw our shovels in the coupe and jumped in and Dick got it turned around and headed back toward the highway. Then we gave each other relieved we-made-it looks.

“Fuck,” said Dick.

“Yeah.”

Pretty soon we saw feathers blowing across the road again.

“I’m thirsty as hell,” I said. “You think maybe the chicken farmers would give us some water?”

“Good idea, kid. I’m pretty dry myself.”

We stopped the car in front of the shack and the chicken coop. There were chickens everywhere, some alive, some dead, some somewhere in between. The smell was awful, and the air was full of flies. Now we saw a little kid sitting in the doorway of the shack with a rifle across his knees.

The dust had turned the sun red, and the horizon had cut it in half, and we walked warily through the bloody light toward the kid, who never took his eyes off us.

“What you fellers want?” he said.

He looked about nine or ten. All he was wearing was a filthy pair of shorts. At first I’d thought he must be a Mexican he was so brown, but now I saw the brown was a mixture of suntan and dirt.

“Just some water,” said Dick. “That okay?”

The kid looked us over. “It’ll cost ya.”

“How much?” I said.

“Two bits. Apiece.”

“That’s fine.” I went in my pocket and pulled out a shiny new half-dollar. I walked over and dropped it in the kid’s grubby palm. He had extraordinary light-green eyes, the color of an empty Coke bottle.

“Water’s over yunder,” he said, nodding toward a rusting pump.

A bucket sat under the spout of the pump, and there was a tin cup next to the bucket. Dick and I looked into the bucket: it was half full of water, with a layer of feathers and dead flies floating on it. We looked at each other, then Dick grabbed the pump handle and began working it.

“I guess this is how you do it,” he said.

At first the pump just made hoarse wheezing noises, but then water began to well up and flow. I filled up the cup and drank it. The water was very cool, with a mineral taste. I had another cup, then pumped for Dick.

Now I saw a floppy-eared brown and white hound lying on its stomach at the side of the shack. It was chomping on a live chicken that it was holding down with it paws. The chicken feebly beat its wings as the wind blew its feathers away.

The kid raised his rifle, pointed it at another chicken, and shot. Except it wasn’t a rifle after all but a BB gun. The BB made a snapping noise as it hit the chicken, which jumped and squawked and flapped and staggered off.

The kid guffawed, and slapped his knee. “Right in the dang butt!”

Dick looked at me. “Want any more water?”

“Nah.”

“Let’s get outa here then.”

The kid cocked his BB gun then shot another chicken.

“Why are you doing that?” I said. “Why are you shooting your chickens?”

The kid leveled his green gaze at me.

“It’s just something to do, mister. You got any better ideas?”

“But you need your chickens, don’t you? To make a living?”

“Ain’t no living to be made. The bottom’s plumb fell out of the fucking chicken market. We ain’t even making enough money to buy chicken feed. They’s all starving to death. Can’t you see that?” The kid eyed us suspiciously. “What you fellers doing out cheer anyways? How come you’re asking all these questions? Y’all ain’t G-men, are ya? Daddy told me to keep a look-out for G-men.”

“Naw, kid, we ain’t G-men,” said Dick. “We’re just passing through. Come on, Danny.”

But then a little girl came walking around the side of the shack. She was maybe six or seven, and was as filthy, and had the same bottle-green eyes, as her brother. She was holding by one arm a pinkish plastic baby doll missing a leg.

“Zeke, I seen a rabbit,” she said. “A bunny rabbit. A-hopping around.”

“Looky here, Ruby, at what I got!” said Zeke. “A fifty-cent piece!”

Ruby looked wonderingly at the bright coin. Green snot was oozing out of her nostrils, and she had a harsh, croupy cough.

“Golly, Zeke. Is that morn a nickel?”

“Damn right it is.”

“Zeke, you better hurry up.”

“Hurry up and what?”

“Shoot the bunny rabbit. ’Fore it goes a-hopping off. Hippity hop.”

“Where’s your daddy?” I said.

“Around,” said Zeke, suspicious again. “What you wanna know fer?”

“I just want to make sure there’s somebody to take care of you guys. Do you have enough to eat?”

“Sure, mister. We eat chickens.”

“And aigs,” said Ruby.

“But we ain’t been eating aigs lately. They don’t lay aigs lessun you feed ’em.”

“I hate chickens,” said Ruby. “They’re mean. I had a pet bug once and the chicken et it.”

Zeke shot another chicken. Through the neck this time. It went down in the dirt in a flurry of feathers and squawks.

“Kid, you’re a hell of a shot,” said Dick. “Let’s go, Danny.”

We turned and walked toward the road. I felt the luminous green eyes of the siblings on our backs. I braced myself for a BB popping me in the butt.

We passed by a handsome red rooster. He was stalking around arrogantly, like he wasn’t aware of the unfolding catastrophe, didn’t know or care all his wives were starving and being shot.

“What you limping fer, mister,” Zeke called out, “you some kinda cripple?”

“Some kinda cripple!” Ruby shouted, then I heard her giggle and cough.

We walked through the dusty red feather-filled light, away from the stench of dead chickens and chicken shit. Got in the car and got to the highway and headed south toward the city, lickety split.

“I don’t think I’ll be eating chicken for a while,” said Dick.