But there have been aggravations, and not just what happened after the Bandit walked into the Poughkeepsie 7-11. For instance Homer Pierce has been acting more like a real lawyer lately, always greed greed greed, where’s my cut? never any respect for the art of the fall. I get laid up and everybody gets delusions of seriousness. I met with the original three of him in a Burger King in Spectator the day before the Poughkeepsie incident, and it was all I could do to stop myself from punching his goddamn noses in. We sat at a window table and discussed why we were not going to actually litigate anything, even though that was where the “big money” was. Our primary problem was, of course, that none of him had any kind of license to litigate jack, and unlike the field of medicine, they do actually check things like that, especially when you actually take a case to trial.
Why let that stop us? One of him snapped, his mouth full of Whopper. Nothing’s stopped us yet, blah blah blah. Yeah, said another of him, we can beat some of these bastards big.
I suggested that maybe we hadn’t been stopped by anything because we had a proven method. Then I reminded each of him of that one time when I was him in Herkimer, and it’d be just as easy to do that from now on, cut out the middle action. You could see who really needed who in his darting little eyes then. I also told him that the three of him were acting like real lawyers. To which each of him sort of looked at me like yeah, well, what’s your point?
I had in fact forgotten the point, although I began to wonder if it might have something to do with why my goddamn lawyer couldn’t have driven to visit me in the Binghamton’s County Memorial. Then all of a sudden the Arby’s next door was being robbed by a gun-toting guy in a big sombrero, and people were standing around out front like they were thinking about clapping. Then they parted for him like the Red Sea when he darted for his car. That Mexican-Canadian must not ever sleep.
Deep down I’m sure Homer Pierce knew I wasn’t going to leave him dry. There’d be too many ways for everything to fall apart if each fall was a one-man operation, and, hell, what was I going to do, go back to hustling pool? I’d had my fill of that in Niskayuna, and it was the most boring predictable depressing thing in the world. Got so bad playing dumbass Hubris-filled make-pretend sharks I had to start giving people breaks like, okay, if this asshole doesn’t act like he knew he was going to hit this shot that he’s never made before in his whole life, I won’t run the table on him; or okay, if this pretender doesn’t act pissed off after he’s missed a three banker, I won’t take all of his money. Goddamn if most of the time the assholes didn’t keep puffing out their chests and kissing away cash. It’s like the ear-benders were all caught in raccoon traps, you know, where you put a treat inside a can with a hole only big enough for a raccoon to get an unclenched paw in through and when he grabs the treat he’s stuck, not knowing all he’s got to do is let go of the treat and he can get his paw out. Raccoons don’t ever have the wherewithal to let go. Same thing hustling pool suckers in Niskayuna. I had to get out.
I’d always been good at taking a fall, ever since I used to go tumbling down the stairs just to get my father to glance up from his numbers. After a while he got so used to my careening from step to step that he’d just say, “Earl, cut it out,” without even raising his eyes. Sometimes I’d even lie in one place at the bottom of the stairway for ten or fifteen minutes, pretending I was paralyzed with my eyes stuck crossing toward my nose. Nothing, not a peep from him. My mother found me that way once and nearly had a heart attack. “Lester! Lester, speak!” I was a natural making a living doing it. That is until Poughkeepsie.
It was after I met with Homer Pierce at the Burger King that day before Poughkeepsie that I first realized I was still in quite a bit of goddamn back pain from when the damn Honda had rolled me. I was hoping to find Dr. Greg Richardson in Albany to make me feel better, but instead Dr. Richard Greggson was in, who suggested, instead of Valium, maybe a steam bath or a whirlpool might do me a world of good, and he’d also read up on some new balms which could do miracles. He said this with a straight face, even crinkling up his high forehead as if he’d been born to practice medicine all his life. I wondered if I should give him a black eye. Instead, I patiently asked him when Dr. Richardson might be back. He assured me it would not be for some time, his blue eyes dancing behind his fake non-prescription glasses. The IRS was looking for him.
The drive to Poughkeepsie was a long, unpleasant, stiff one. I thought maybe I should start making a little book to tide me over until it would be easier to do proper falls; but if you think hustling’s like setting raccoon traps, you haven’t seen anything compared to taking bets. Then whizzing toward me down two lane Route 46 came a brown Ford Escort that switched back to its side of the road just in time. The driver, of course, was wearing a sombrero. I started questioning what had happened to my work ethic.
In Poughkeepsie I got a room at a trap and went for a six-pack at the 7-11 I was going to fall in the next day. It was around 9:30, and I commented to the young greaser behind the counter that the floors could use a mopping. They do it in the mornings, he said, it wasn’t his business. Right, I said, nothing he could do. Then he asked had I heard the Bandito had hit a Safeway on the other side of town that evening and wasn’t this guy something?
“It’s a little blatant,” I said to him, feeling my jaw jut a little, “isn’t it? All this stealing with a gun?”
The greaser had no idea what I was talking about. “He’s the Bandit, man.” He said this like it answered all arguments, his eyebrows bunching into an earnest sense of purpose. He couldn’t wait to get robbed.
And, sure enough, the next day I did get to see the Bandit, man, live and in person, ruining what would have been a perfectly functional prat. When he burst into the 7-11 waving the .22, my first instinct was to try to do whatever I could to speed the whole thing up because the floor was drying fast, and I still had to discreetly nudge out of view the “Wet Floor” stand-up sign, to secure the full prize. If the warning isn’t clearly displayed, the store insurer basically has to start negotiations mid-twenties.
But the Mexican-Canadian was a bit of a showman, a charmer, taking his time with things, and all of a sudden, realizing the situation, I was feeling like the gatecrasher. He spoke slowly through the black ski mask like he was everybody’s friend, nodding the big sombrero in everybody’s directions as he spoke, peppering his phrases with “okays” and “ays” and an occasional French word.
When he said the words “heads blown off’ to the duchess behind the counter and the five or six of us scattered around the store, it was like he meant taking a quiet nap in the woods. Then all of a sudden everyone was down on the floor except for him and me.
“Please,” he said to me, “you, too.” From about ten feet away he fixed the .22 between my eyes, and I realized that the easiest, least painful way for me to get my casted self down actually would have been for me to do a nice safe fall, but I couldn’t risk getting pumped because some sudden jerky-ass landing on the linoleum startled him. “Please,” he said again, this time with a little less charm, “down.”
I struggled to get down on one knee, focusing on his faceless ski mask, big nails of pain tearing up my back, when it dawned on me he might take my slowness as defiance.
“I’ve been in an accident,” I said to him. “I’m still in pain.”
“Yes,” he said, following his outstretched .22 toward me, “I’m sure you are. Get down.”
I dropped to all fours, felt myself grimace, felt a tendon rip in the casted wrist. Then finally I was doing a dead man’s float on the cool damp linoleum, ammonia clearing a space behind my eyes. My back was spasming as he stepped over me and stood with a foot on each side of my ribs, still pointing the gun, I was sure, at my head.