In September, I became a veteran who qualified for an overseas ribbon, because of work on ships that later on went somewhere. Now I could join the Legion post back home, which was maybe the payoff. They had the best pool table in the county.
“Gents,” I said to the boys at the motor pool, “it’s been a distinct by-God pleasure enjoying your company, and don’t never come to Montana, ‘cause she’s a heartbreaker.” The Chrysler and me lit out like a kyoodle of pups.
It would have been easier to run to Salt Lake, then climb the map to Havre, but notions pushed. I slid east to Las Cruces, then popped north to Boulder with the idea of tracing Jesse. The Chrysler hummed and chewed up road. When I got to Boulder, the notion turned hopeless. There were too many people. I didn’t even know where to start asking.
It’s no big job to fool yourself. Above Boulder, it came to me how I’d been pointing for Sheridan all along, and not even Sheridan. I pointed toward a girl who smiled at me four years ago.
I found her working at a hardware, and she wasn’t wearing any rings. I blushed around a little bit, then got out of there to catch my breath. I thought of how Jesse took whatever time was needed when he bought the Linc. It looked like this would take a while.
My pockets were crowded with mustering-out pay and money for unused leave. I camped in a ten-dollar motel. It took three days to get acquainted, then we went to a show and supper afterward. Her name was Linda. Her father was a Mormon. That meant a year of courting, but it’s not all that far from north Montana to Sheridan.
I had to get home and get employed, which would make the Mormon happy. On Saturday afternoon Linda and I went back to the same old movie, but this time we held hands. Before going home, she kissed me once, real gentle. That made up for those hard times in San Diego. It let me know I was back with my own people.
I drove downtown all fired up with visions. It was way too early for bed, and I cared nothing for a beer. A run-down café sat on the outskirts. I figured pie and coffee.
The Dog had signed in. His writing showed faint, like the wall had been scrubbed. Newer stuff scrabbled over it.
Road Dog
The café sort of slumbered. Several old men lined the counter. Four young gearheads sat at a table and talked fuel injection. The old men yawned and put up with it. Faded pictures of old racing cars hung along the walls. The young guys sat beneath a picture of the Bluebird. That car held the land speed record of 301.29 m.p.h. This was a racer’s café, and had been for a long, long time.
The waitress was graying and motherly. She tsked and tished over the old men as much as she did the young ones. Her eyes held that long-distance prairie look, a look knowing wind and fire and hard times, stuff that either breaks people or leaves them wise. Matt Simons might get that look in another twenty years. I tried to imagine Linda when she became the waitress’s age, and it wasn’t bad imagining.
Pictures of quarter-mile cars hung back of the counter, and pictures of street machines hung on each side of the door. Fifties hot rods scorched beside worked-up stockers. Some mighty rowdy iron crowded that wall. One picture showed a Golden Hawk. I walked over, and in one corner was the name “Still”—written in The Road Dog’s hand. It shouldn’t have been scary.
I went back to the counter shaking. A nice-looking old gent nursed coffee. His hands wore knuckles busted by a thousand slipped wrenches. Grease was worked in deep around his eyes, the way it gets after years and years when no soap made will touch it. You could tell he’d been a steady man. His eyes were clear as a kid.
“Mister,” I said, “and beg pardon for bothering you. Do you know anything about that Studebaker?” I pointed to the wall.
“You ain’t bothering me,” he said, “but I’ll tell you when you do.” He tapped the side of his head like trying to ease a gear in place, then he started talking engine specs on the Stude.
“I mean the man who owns it.”
The old man probably liked my haircut, which was short. He liked it that I was raised right. Young guys don’t always pay old men much mind.
“You still ain’t bothering me.” He turned to the waitress. “Sue,” he said, “has Johnny Still been in?”
She turned from cleaning the pie case, and she looked toward the young guys like she feared for them. You could tell she was no big fan of engines. “It’s been the better part of a year, maybe more.” She looked down the line of old men. “I was fretting about him just the other day….” She let it hang. Nobody said anything. “He comes and goes so quiet, you might miss him.”
“I don’t miss him a hell of a lot,” one of the young guys said. The guy looked like a duck, and had a voice like a sparrow. His fingernails were too clean. That proved something.
“Because Johnny blew you out,” another young guy said. “Johnny always blew you out.”
“Because he’s crazy,” the first guy said. “There’s noisy crazy and quiet crazy. The guy is a spook.”
“He’s going through something,” the waitress said, and said it kind.
“Johnny’s taken a lot of loss. He’s the type who grieves.” She looked at me like she expected an explanation.
“I’m friends with his brother,” I told her. “Maybe Johnny and his brother don’t get along.”
The old man looked at me rather strange. “You go back quite a ways,”
he told me. “Jesse’s been dead a good long time.”
I thought I’d pass out. My hands started shaking, and my legs felt too weak to stand. Beyond the window of the café, red light came from a neon sign, and inside the café everybody sat quiet, waiting to see if I was crazy, too. I sort of picked at my pie. One of the young guys moved real uneasy. He loafed toward the door, maybe figuring he’d need a shotgun. The other three young ones looked confused.
“No offense,” I said to the old man, “but Jesse Still is alive. Up on the high line. We run together.”
“Jesse Still drove a damn old Hudson Terraplane into the South Platte River in spring of ’52, maybe ’53.” The old man said it real quiet. “He popped a tire when not real sober.”
“Which is why Johnny doesn’t drink,” the waitress said. “At least, I expect that’s the reason.”
“And now you are bothering me.” The old man looked to the waitress, and she was as full of questions as he was.
Nobody ever felt more hopeless or scared. These folks had no reason to tell this kind of yarn. “Jesse is sort of roughhouse.” My voice was only whispering. It wouldn’t make enough sound. “Jesse made his reputation helling around.”
“You’ve got that part right,” the old man told me, “and, youngster, I don’t give a tinker’s damn if you believe me or not, but Jesse Still is dead.”
I saw what it had to be, but seeing isn’t always believing. “Thank you, mister,” I whispered to the old man, “and thank you, ma’am,” to the waitress. Then I hauled out of there leaving them with something to discuss.
A terrible fear rolled with me, because of Jesse’s last postcard. He said he might not be home, and now that could mean more than it said. The Chrysler bettered its reputation, and we just flew. From the Montana line to Shelby is eight hours on a clear day. You can wail it in seven, or maybe six and a half if a deer doesn’t tangle with your front end. I was afraid, and confused, and getting mad. Me and Linda were just to the point of hoping for an understanding, and now I was going to get killed running over a porcupine or into a heifer. The Chrysler blazed like a hound on a hot scent. At eighty the pedal kept wanting to dig deep and really howl.