Don Bruns - Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

I couldn’t make out the shadowy outline of the person behind the screened entrance. Whoever it was opened the door and started to exit. “Excuse me, I hate to bother you this early in the morning, but — ”

In the softest of whispers, the person interrupted. “Hey, pard. I was just coming to find you. Let’s get out of here.”

James carefully pulled the door closed and we stepped down to the ground.

H e heated some coffee in the pot on the grill, and we sat on the edge of the truck bed, waiting for the sun to come up. Another hour, hour and a half. It had been another night with no bed, and in this case, no sleep. Em rocked back and forth next to me, and I’m sure she just kept repeating over and over to herself “what the hell did I get myself into?”

“I’m touched you guys were looking for me,” James was slurring his words, and my guess was that it was more from alcohol than lack of sleep.

“You’re touched, period.”

“Hey, Skip.” He was weaving a little and I hoped he didn’t fall off. “Amigo, Tonto, pard, I couldn’t just say ‘I’ve got to check in with my roommate.’ Come on, Dude. I’m a grown man.”

“I hear you.”

“Well, I may not feel like one all the time, like now maybe, but I can make my own choices.” He belched.

“Point taken.”

“James,” Em spoke up. “If Skip had been missing, if he hadn’t shown up in three or four hours under these conditions — under conditions where your lives had been threatened, where someone had taken a gun to the truck and stolen your money — ”

“What? Was your question?” There was no question. He was drunk.

“Would you have gone out looking for him? Wouldn’t you have been upset if he didn’t report in?”

He nodded for a while, and I got up and took the coffee pot off the grill. I poured some into his blue mug and handed it to him. I still don’t know if coffee actually sobers you up or if it just makes for a wide-awake drunk, but it seemed like a good idea. The only one I could think of.

James took a sip of the hot beverage and looked at Em. “Yes. To all of your inquiries.”

“What were you doing in that camper?” Em was back on the James conspiracy kick. I could tell by the tone of her voice. Maybe he was FBI. Maybe he’d been playing a game of charades this weekend.

“I have a perfectly logical explanation.”

We’d been quiet on the walk back to the truck. I was in shock, Em seemed furious, and James was drunk, so no one had much of anything to say.

“Let’s hear the explanation.” I couldn’t wait for this.

“Skip, I had an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I lost a couple bucks in the poker game, and — ”

“How much?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I owe them maybe seven hundred dollars.”

“What?” He was dangerous. “Honestly? Seven hundred?”

“Pardner, wait till you hear the rest of this. It gets better.”

It had to. He was blowing our profit margin. He’d spent all of the stake, and then gone in debt for another seven hundred.

“So we had a couple of beers after the game, Stan and Mug and I. Some of the guys went up to do their security duty, and then it was just me and Stan. And he gets out the hard stuff.”

“The hard stuff?”

“Your old buddy, Jack. Remember, you and Uncle Buzz? Stan brings out a bottle of Jack Daniels and pours me a glass. So we’re sipping Tennessee whiskey and he’s telling me about the business.” James glanced at Em, never picking up on her disdain. “Em, did you know these guys can net two or three hundred thousand dollars a year if they really work at it?”

I shook my head. “No, Em. We’re not thinking about it. It was just idle conversation. Seriously.”

“We’re having a great conversation, just the two of us, and Crayer comes running down to the pizza wagon.”

“Yeah. He was on security tonight.”

“Stan drops his cigar in the ashtray and tells me he’s got to go for a minute. He tells me he’ll meet me up by our truck, so I headed up that way. Pretty soon he comes back. He’s not very happy. I thought maybe it was you guys breaking into the office, but he doesn’t say anything.”

“Had to be what it was.”

“Well, then, he invites me to his trailer. Wants to know more about you and me, pard. Wants to know what makes us tick. If we have any side jobs that we do. Then he wants to know why you asked so many questions. And he keeps digging.”

“And what are you telling him?”

“First of all, I’m figuring out that he drinks too much. Jesus, he polished off half the fifth by himself. And he’s the one starting to get tanked. I didn’t tell him much of anything. He asks if we ever worked for the government. Can you imagine? The government? He wants to know why we decided to work this weekend for Cash. He calls him Cash, like they’re old buddies.”

“And you told him.”

“I did. There was nothing to hide.”

“And what else?”

“Now get this. I start asking him about the full-timers. I’m thinking here, pard. I figure that if he’s getting a little sloppy, I need to take advantage of it. I asked him, just like you told me to, if he knew who shot my tires out.”

“And he said?”

“He was gonna look into it. That’s good, eh?”

I kept my mouth shut.

“He reaches into a small dresser he’s got, and pulls out a semiautomatic pistol. He said it was a Smith and Wesson 39. I don’t know guns, but it looked pretty impressive. He says “this little beauty isn’t a tire popper. It’s a people stopper. When I’m on security detail, when I’m on the road or in some strange town selling pizza, this little guy is my best friend.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I imagine it’s a little scary to be on the road these days.”

“He called his Smith and Wesson a people stopper, Skip. Said it’s his best friend. Said his Smith and Wesson is the only real friend that he’s got. That scared me.”

It scared me too. It didn’t surprise me, just scared me.

“Then, I told him we’d been robbed. And he laughed and said it was probably one of the guys just giving us an initiation. See?”

“James, so far it doesn’t sound like you found out anything.”

“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, pally. So then I asked him about his organizer. I told him I’d seen Thomas LeRoy with one, and Stan pulls his out, proudly, saying it was the same exact one. He and LeRoy would share information and stuff.”

Em sat forward. “What kind of stuff?”

“Well, financial stuff. What vendors had paid up. If there was trouble, like the tires being shot out. And then he told me that he keeps track of all the full-time vendors because sometimes these guys have to meet with Cash, he calls him Cash, and Stan needs to know where all of them are at all times. He’s got to be able to get ahold of them when there’s a problem, or Cashdollar needs to find out if they can show up for a revival meeting or other stuff.”

I’d poured coffee for Em and myself, and I could feel the warm beverage steaming its way through my veins. My head ached and I wished I had some aspirin, but aspirin thins the blood and I figured it was important for my blood to stay thick so the scab on my forehead could form. I don’t think strong coffee affects the blood, and the caffeine actually made me feel much better.

James seemed to be a little more clearheaded. He was rolling with his story. “So, I’m thinking, dude, I say to him, prove it.”

“Prove it?”

“Show me where everyone was, or will be. So he motions me over to this little table where we’ve been sitting and drinking, and he punches in a couple of numbers and there’s a list of everybody. Henry, Mug, Sailor, Crayer, Stan, and Dusty. Then he goes to one year ago, and there is a list of where they are. Henry and Mug are in Iowa at some convention. Sailor is in Key West, and Dusty is working in Michigan.”