Joy Ride to Glory
I was assigned to the kitchen, dipping grub for the guards, not the cons like the radio said I was. I had been in the laundry, but my fingers and toes all swelled up and I got a ringing in the ears from the liquid soap, so they switched me to the kitchen. My name is Red Conley. If you don’t quite recollect who Red Conley is, go down to the public library and look him up in the Los Angeles newspapers. You’ll find out a funny thing about him. According to them write-ups, Red Conley is dead.
It had been raining all morning, and around eleven the meat truck drives up. They let it right in the yard, and Cookie yells for me and Bugs Calenso to unload it. Bugs, he’s got three concurrents and two consecutives running against him, and some of it’s violation of parole, so they don’t bother to figure it up any more. Along about 2042, with good behavior and friends on the outside, he’s eligible. Me, I’m in for rolling six tires down the hill from Mullins’s Garage, which seemed to be a good idea at the time, but I was doing a one-to-five before we even got the papers off them. Still, I had served a year, and was up for parole, and it looked O.K., and if I’d let it ride I’d have been out in a month.
So me and Bugs, we split it up with me handling the meat, account I’m younger, and him handling the hooks, account he knows how. I’d pull out a quarter of beef, then brace under it, then come up. Then I’d tote it to the cold storage room, and Bugs would catch it with the hook that swiveled to the overhead trolley. Then he’d throw the switch and I’d shove the stuff in place, the forequarters on one rail, the hindquarters on another. There was four steers on the truck, two of them for someplace down the line, two of them for the prison. That meant eight quarters of meat, and I guess I took ten minutes, because beef is not feathers, and I needed a rest in between. But then it was all moved, and Bugs give a yelp for the driver, who was not outside, where he generally waited, but inside, account of the rain. So he yelped back, from inside the corridors someplace, and then we hollered some more and said what was he doing, stalling around so he could get a free meal off the taxpayers of the state of California, and why don’t he take away his truck? So Cookie joins in, and quite a few joins in, and some very good gags was made, and it was against the rules but it felt good to holler.
So Bugs was grinning at me, standing there in the door, but then all of a sudden he wasn’t grinning any more and he was looking at me hard. Then overhead I hear the planes. You understand how this was? The kitchen door is out back, and there’s a guard on that part of the wall. But he’s a spotter, see? He’s a spotter for the army, and just to make sure, he spots everything, and there he is now, with his rifle over one arm and his head thrown back, to see what’s coming. Three fast ones break out of a cloud, the split-tail jobs with two motors, but Bugs, he don’t wait. He motions to me and we take two steps. Then he checks front and I check rear. Then he vaults in the truck and I follow him. Then we lay down, in between quarters of beef.
We were hardly flat when the driver came out, still yelling gags at the guys in the kitchen. He climbs in, starts, rolls a little way, and stops, and we hear him say something to the guards at the gate. Then he gets going again, and starts down the hill on the motor, so it begins to backfire. He goes so fast I have to lock my throat to keep the wind from being shook out of me, ha-ha-ha-ha like that. Bugs, he seems to be having the same kind of trouble, but we both hang on and choke it back, whatever the driver might hear. He’s a little fat guy, and he sings the “Prisoner’s Song” pretty lousy, but he slows down for the boulevard stop at the bottom of the hill. That was when Bugs grabs my neck for a handhold and stands up. He stands right over me, so I can see his face, where it’s all twisted with this maniac look, and his hands, where they were hooked to come in on the driver’s neck.
Then I woke up for the first time to the spot I was in. Here, with one month to go only, I had got myself in the same truck with this killer, and made myself just as guilty of whatever was done as he was. I yelled at the driver then, as loud as I could scream. He hit the brake and turned around, but he was too late. That jerk threw Bugs right on top of him, and them hooks came together so his tongue popped out of his mouth. I grabbed at Bugs and begged him to quit, but then I woke up to what was going on outside. The truck was still rolling, and if something wasn’t done in about two seconds it was going over in the ditch. I reached over and grabbed the wheel, then I slid over the seat on my belly till I was on the right-hand side beside the driver, so with my left foot I could shove down the brake.
All during that time the driver was being pulled over backwards, so he arched up till his knees touched the wheel. Then something cracked, and I felt sick to my stomach. Then it wasn’t the driver back of the wheel, it was Bugs. He was panting like some kind of an animal, but he threw it in gear and we started off. Pretty soon he says: “Get back there, go through his pockets, and find his cigarettes.”
“Get back there yourself.”
“Oh, just a passenger, hey?”
“Just a fall guy, maybe.”
“O.K., fall guy, suppose you keep an eye out behind, see if they’re following us. Because if they’re not, maybe we still got a little time, before it’s a general alarm.”
“Haven’t you got a mirror?”
“Oh, just a passenger after all, hey?”
“What you kill that guy for?”
“What you think I killed him for? So he cooperates, and he’s doing it. Like he is now, he don’t give no trouble.”
“We could have tied him up, or dropped him off, or knocked him out. We could have handled him somehow, so they wouldn’t have this on us.”
“You done all you could.”
“You bet I did.”
“I hope he appreciates it.”
“Shut up and drive.”
“Says who?”
I hauled off and let him have it, right in the mouth. His foot came off the gas, and we slowed, and I stamped on the brake, and we stopped. I let him have it again, so the blood spurted out of his lip. Then I grabbed him, jerked him out from behind the wheel, and drove my fist in till my arm was numb and his face looked like something the butcher would pitch in the bucket. Then I kicked him into my seat, took the wheel myself, and went on. It didn’t do any good. We were in the same old truck, with the rain pouring down in front, a dead man in behind, and headed nowhere. But it made me feel better.
On the dashboard was a button at the top of what looked like a grill, and I give it a twist. Plenty of drivers have shortwave, so they can pick up the police calls, and I figured I could find out what was being done about us. But ’stead of a grill it was a panel, and it opened up on a compartment full of cigarettes, chewing gum, maps, apples, and what looked to me like a flashlight. I took the cigarettes and lit up, and had me a deep inhale, and all the time he was looking at me, and I was wondering whether to give him one, just because he couldn’t help being like he was, and anyway I’d done all I wanted to do to him, and maybe more than I really wanted to do. I began sliding one out of the pack, when he moved. When I looked up I knew that flashlight wasn’t a flashlight at all, it was a automatic. Because I was looking straight into it.
“Rat, you listening what I say?”
“I hear every word, Bugs.”
“Drive.”
“I’m driving.”
“Drive like I tell you to drive.”
“Just say it, Bugs.”
He told me, and we began a zigzag course, part on the main highways, part on the crossroads, but as near as I could tell we were zigzagging for Los Angeles, and getting there. Then we had to stop for a freight that was crossing. Ahead of us was a green sedan, and for a while Bugs sat there looking at it and bearing down on some chocolate bars he found in with the apple. Then he sits up and says: “Bump him! Bump him!”