Dave Zeltserman - Fast Lane

Right before it happened, he turned and saw who it was behind the wheel. I could see his face frozen into a ridiculous mask of self-pity. He tried flinging his crippled body away from the car but he didn’t have a chance.

I jammed the gas pedal to the floor and slammed into him, just about tearing his body in half. I backed up and did it again, and then I got out of the car and ran. I kept on running until the pounding in my head died down.

My original plan was to go home and wait for the police to give me the bad news. I would then play like the devastated son, beating my chest in sorrow and wailing worse than any old alley cat. But I couldn’t do it. My nerves were shot. Instead I stole a car and headed out of Carson City as fast as I could. I drove for two days, sobbing like a goddamn baby. At times I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t see where I was going. I’d thought once I’d done it, the sickness that had been choking me inside for so many years would leave.

But it didn’t.

I was at Charlie’s Silver Dollar Bar in two hours and so was he, but it was a good twenty minutes before he saw me. I wanted a chance to study him and get an understanding of what I was up against.

Charlie’s was the type of dive where drunks and rummies shuffle off to as soon as they wake in the morning. A dank musty-smelling hole where half the customers wore urine-caked pants and had more fleas than your average junkyard dog. The old man seemed right at home.

He was sitting hunched over his table, his throat blown up like a bullfrog’s, his small black eyes bugging out, nervously jerking towards the door. He needed a drink bad, which was giving him the shakes. Whenever the shakes would take him over, he’d wet his lips and start to order something, and then clamp his mouth shut. I guess he thought it’d be better to hold out and try to keep his wits about him. That was a mistake. When you’re as bad off as him you need the alcohol to clear your head.

I’d had enough of looking at him. I approached his table and when he saw me he jerked a little in his chair, and then his thick lips cracked into a smile.

“So,” he said, nodding, “you know me too.”

I knew him alright. Bert Debbles, one of my poppa’s drinking buddies. I knew him when I saw him in Oklahoma City. Of course, if I’d recognized him right away I wouldn’t have offered him my hand, or introduced myself, or told him where I could be found. Instead, I would have walked right out of the train station.

Thinking about him had troubled me that night. During the train ride back to Denver I was worried sick about whether he had recognized me, and then I realized it didn’t matter. It could be taken care of. I sat down across from him and didn’t say a word.

“Clem Smalley,” he croaked. “I knew you as soon as I saw you. You don’t fool me none with this Mister Johnny Lane crap.”

“So you know me.” I shrugged. “What of it?”

“Don’t you wise-ass me!” he yelled, spittle clinging to his chin. “I know who you are and I know what you did!”

“Yeah, go on. Tell me about it, pops.”

“You killed your daddy!”

“What?” I laughed. “You’re senile, old man. Your brain’s gone soft from booze.”

“If it ain’t the truth,” he said, a crafty look playing on his face, “why’d you come here for?”

“Just curious.”

He shook his head. “We all knew you did it, running off the way you did the night your daddy was kilt. What you take us for, a bunch of idjits? Anyways, police back home have a warrant for your arrest. They still have it, too. I checked.” He nodded. “They still looking for you. If I told them where to find you they’d come and get you, don’t you think they wouldn’t! Not after what you done. Run your poor daddy down like a dog in the street!”

“He was worse than any dog!” I growled, shaking my head to keep the redness out. “He got what he deserved!”

“No man deserves to be kilt like that, treated worse than any animal.”

“No? What does a man like him deserve? A man who forces himself on his own daughters, who beats his wife until her heart can’t take anymore. A man who treats his only son like he was a-”

I didn’t finish the sentence. How could I? How could I put it in words?

He stared at me with eyes that were dry and lifeless. “No one saying your daddy was an angel. He had his faults but he shouldn’t been kilt like that.” A contemptuous look deepened his frown. “Anyway, he told me what a no-good little bastard you were. He saw what you really were and that’s how he treated you.”

He shouldn’t have said that, oh brother he shouldn’t have. I smiled-there wasn’t a chance in hell I could’ve kept it off my face.

“What you smiling at, you danged fool? You an idjit also?”

Yeah, old man, I was keeping score. Go ahead, keep it up, it was too late for you anyways.

“No, pops, just amused. What do you want?”

“What I want is to see you hung for what you did to your daddy!” He lowered his eyes. “But I guess that wouldn’t do no good. You the only boy he got, and he was a big enough man to have forgiven you. But you got to pay for it, boy. You gonna pay me for it. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“What if I told you to go to hell?”

“You can tell me that if you want. You can tell me anything as long as you give me the money.”

“Go to hell,” I said. “You’re lucky if I don’t kick you out this door.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me none if you tried,” he said. “Not with all your daddy told me about you being a worthless idjit without the brains to walk and spit at the same time. You try and do a damn fool thing like that and I go back home and tell the police where to find you. Don’t think I won’t!”

“Yeah?” I said. “And you think the police are going to care two bits about it? They probably figured he got what he deserved. They’d probably give me a goddamn medal. Hell, I did the whole state of Nevada a favor.”

I was pretty sure they wouldn’t bother trying to extradite me. I was a minor at the time, and anyway, he was a rotten son of a bitch, and they were probably tickled to see it happen. Hell, how could they care about something like that? Something that happened twenty-five years ago to a man like him?

Still though, it is always on the back of my mind. I think it’s the reason I try to avoid flying, the fear the plane might be forced to land in Nevada and someone recognizing me. And the police are called, and . . . .

Debbles was mulling things over. “Well, even if they don’t, I’d make sure everyone here found out all about it, you can bet on that! Let’s see what happens when people know what you did!”

I knew what would happen. Kissing my business goodbye would be only the start of it. Eddie Braggs would take a long hard look at me, and maybe he’d end up seeing me in a different light. And if that were to happen . . . .

“That’s right.” He gave me a sly look. “You wouldn’t like that none.”

“I can’t give you fifty thousand dollars,” I said. “I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

“You got it. Don’t you forget which one of us is the idjit. You got your own business, and you’re a celebrity, remember?”

I pushed my chair back. “I don’t have that type of money. Sorry, pops. You might as well take your best shot.”

“Sit down!” he ordered. “Quit being stupid!” A helpless look came over his face as he studied me. Finally, his lips quit moving. “Give me thirty thousand dollars then.”

“Uh-huh,” I said sadly. “You’re trying to squeeze blood from the wrong stone.”

“I mean it, damn it! By God, I’ll tell them!”