27
Tonto’s black van was nicer inside than it looked on the outside and it was very large and souped up under the hood and had big wide tires with tread deep enough to lose a quarter in. I wasn’t one of those guys who could talk about cars or fix them up or identify everything on the road. I had always been practical about cars. I wanted them to start and drive me around, get me where I was going and start up when I left. It was considered a Southern failing not to know this kind of thing, the insides of cars, all their clicks and sparks and little growls. All the men I knew who were car buffs, and that was most, looked at me as if not knowing about cars was the equal to not knowing about sunrise and sunset. So when Tonto told me about his van and what it had under the hood and what it could do, I forgot it faster than I forgot the combination to my old high school locker. But I remember this: Tonto claimed his van could run a Corvette down and bitch-slap it, which seemed a little much to me, but it did hum down the road with a sound like a hive of bees. The scenery tossed past us in a blur and we zipped past cars like they were nailed down. I had to admit it was some machine. In that van I felt like one of the Scooby Doo gang. I was probably Scooby himself. A big dumb dog without a dick.
The van had three rows of really comfortable seats and a place in the back to put some luggage and gear, and under the floor carpets and beneath sliding floorboards were secret compartments where we put our weapons, except for the ones we were carrying, which in my and Leonard’s case was nothing more than a pocketknife (me) and a pack of gum (Leonard) and we both had combs. Mine was green, Leonard’s was black. Tonto still had his good-buddy .45s under his armpits, and Jim Bob had a snub-nosed .38 holstered at the small of his back and a clasp knife clipped inside his front pocket and a nut sack packed tight with testosterone.
Marvin had stayed at my house with a shotgun and a cup of coffee. His job was to watch the home front, keep close to the phone in case we needed something he could provide. We gave him directions to where we were going to meet up with the FBI and Hirem, and from there our plan was to keep him informed as we went, because we didn’t know what our plan really was, not yet. With Marvin at the house, we always had a home base. It was a good idea, I thought, and a way to keep him a part of things since he couldn’t do much else with that bum leg.
The day was clear and cold and the sky had turned a bright polished blue and the sun was a yellow blaze hanging at the ten o’clock position. I was sitting in the passenger seat, Tonto drove, behind me was Jim Bob, and next to him was Leonard. Tonto had a CD cranked up, and we listened to Jerry Lee Lewis’s greatest hits as he tooled us along, nodding his head to the music like a bobblehead doll.
When the CD played out, and before he could put in another, I said to Tonto, “That your real name?”
He didn’t turn to look at me, said, “Nope.”
“Guess you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Nope.”
“Hokeydoke.”
I leaned back in the seat and Jim Bob said, “Hap, I had a woman like the one you got, I’d just go to court and take the jail time. You could get your ass killed, and what for?”
“I could ask you a similar question. You could get your ass killed and your hog farm would go to hell,” I said.
“Sold all the hogs, and they wouldn’t hold a candle to Brett.”
“Okay, we agree on that. Brett is better than hogs, and you could get yourself killed easy as any of us.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that, though I always assume I’m going to come out on top and it’s the other guy who’ll wind up with the stick in his ass. But you know, lately I’m starting to think maybe it could go the other way. It’s a new kind of feeling and I’m not too fond of it. I never feel like I really belong anywhere. I think a lot about a line in a Frank O’Hara poem that goes ‘I’m always tying up and then deciding to depart.’ Story of my life.”
“You read poetry?” Leonard said.
“Just when I’m tired of masturbating,” Jim Bob said. “My reading poetry shock you?”
“That you can read shocks me,” Leonard said.
“So, if you can read and have a way to while away the hours, why are you doing this?” I asked.
“We got a kind of connection,” Jim Bob said. “We’re part of a rare kind of club.”
“That right?”
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “It’s made up of guys who think the world ought to work smooth and people ought to treat each other right, and when they don’t we go out there and try and fix things and every time we do, we change us into them, and yet we keep hoping and we keep trying and maybe one day we’ll realize we’ll never get it right and we’ll just give in. I don’t know. I sound like a tired philosopher.”
“You sound like I feel,” Tonto said.
“I think you’re reading your books backwards,” Leonard said.
“Again, why are you doing it then?” I asked.
“There aren’t many of us left, Hap, and I’m trying to keep you from becoming totally one of us by taking in the slack I don’t want you to handle. It’s not my job and it shouldn’t matter, but Leonard here, he can’t do it alone. You aren’t a delicate flower, my man, but there’s still something of the hopeful in you and I’d hate to see all of that get sucked out. Probably too late for the rest of us.”
“You don’t know me,” Tonto said.
“Oh, yes I do,” Jim Bob said.
Tonto didn’t argue back. Jim Bob said, “Hap, you ought to be a social worker, not a tough guy. You’re tough enough, but your heart isn’t in it. Soiled as you are, underneath the dirt there’s pretty good linen.”
“I keep telling him that,” Leonard said. “That he’s soiled, I mean. I don’t know about the linen part.”
“And you,” Jim Bob said to Leonard. “Shouldn’t you be home too? Ain’t you got you a boyfriend? You’re a little farther gone on the scale, but at least you’ve got some sense of normalcy going on, got a relationship going.”
Leonard sighed. “Actually, it’s on the fence.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Why do you really do it?” I said to Jim Bob. “I think you’re dodging the question.”
“Man, this is like getting in touch with our feelings, isn’t it?” Jim Bob said. “I told you why.”
“It isn’t about me, and you know it,” I said. “I see you only now and then. What about the rest of the time? Why do you damn near get yourself killed on a regular basis? Private gun for hire, that kind of thing. Let’s expand that question beyond you, my good man. What the fuck is wrong with all of us? And it’s got to be more than just wanting to set the world right.”
“Too many cowboy movies,” Leonard said.
“All right,” Jim Bob said. “Here it is. I do it because if I don’t I’ve got nothing but myself, and though I dearly love myself, I’m a little tired of being me right now. Sometimes I feel like I’m laughing in the dark all by my goddamn self, because I am, and what I got to show for it is a paid-off house with no one in it, not even a dog, because I’m gone too much and when I’m gone I can’t see a whole lot of reason to race back. I had a woman like you got, Hap, I’d hold on to her until the crack of goddamn doom. Can you understand that?”
“I wish life was that simple,” I said.
“I’d just like to come home and have John there,” Leonard said. The words sprang from his mouth like an escaped prisoner.
“You’ve talked to him?” Jim Bob said, pushing his hat back on his head.
“I’ve tried.”
“Leonard’s idea of talking,” I said, “is telling people how it is. Not the same thing as a true discussion. The signal of his love for John was that he climbed up in the bed and shit in it.”
“Yuck,” Jim Bob said. “I wouldn’t like that.”
“Yeah, he took it hard,” Leonard said. “I’m just not a talker about some things, you know. Not like you share-your-feelings guys.”