Джо Горес: Cases

“Just a few more minutes, honeybun.” To Dunc, he said, “So where you heading for?”

“Anywhere.”

“Coming from?”

“Nowhere.” Surely a Georgia chain gang was nowhere.

Mae said in a snide voice, “Must be grand, get to smart off to people nice enough to give you a ride.”

“Wasn’t trying to be smart, ma’am,” said Dunc quickly. He didn’t want to get stranded under a cactus somewhere. “I just graduated from college last month and I’m taking the summer to bum around and see the country.”

“ ‘Ma’am’? How goddamn old does he think I am?”

“I was just being—”

“Arnie, find me one of those cactus things to go behind.”

Arnie sighed and took his foot off the gas. The Cadillac began to lose altitude.

“Where’d you go to school?” he asked Dunc.

“Notre Dame.”

“Arnie!”

“I’m doing it, honeybun, I’m doing it.”

The car stopped on the shoulder. They were maybe fifty miles beyond the intersection where 281 came down from Wichita Falls and Oklahoma City. The blonde opened her door to flounce away through the dry sand with an exaggerated twitching of fanny. She disappeared behind some mesquite bushes. Dunc and Arnie got out to stretch their legs.

“Great football school. But you lost a couple last year.”

“We had a killer schedule,” said Dunc defensively. “We played just about the top ten teams in the country. And we beat USC — that always makes it a good year. Heap and Lattner—”

But Arnie chuckled. “Wait until next year, huh?” It caught Dunc up short: the man was right. Notre Dame was behind him. “Me, I set up syndicates that finance wildcat oil wells. You put in so much money, you get so many shares. We hit a gusher, everybody’s rich. We bring in a dry hole, everybody loses. It’s a real crapshoot.”

Except for you, thought Dunc. Big new Caddy, Mae in her tight sunsuit. He asked, “You score very often?”

“Now, you quit talking about honeybun, hear?” chortled Arnie. He got serious again. “I’ve brought in my share. And it’s a good life. Meet lots of good old boys. Sometimes I’ll outrun a highway patrol car without evening knowing it, they set up roadblocks to stop me. We usually have a good laugh all around when they’re givin’ me the ticket. Meet lots of good little ladies, too” — another wink, a guffaw — “like Mae there.”

His laughter, unlike his voice, fit his body. Anecdotes like that about the highway patrol roadblocks would make prospective investors see Arnie as a real wildcatter.

Mae was coming back across the desert, buttoning up her sunsuit. “Dump him off here, Arnie,” she said.

“Now, Mae.” The big man caught Dunc’s eye and winked yet again. “Man said he wasn’t being a smart aleck—”

“He was watching me while I went.” She had taken off her sunglasses, was holding them in her hand. Dunc expected her to start smiling, but her slightly bulging eyes were bleak and accusing. “Watching me through the bushes.”

“I was right here with Arnie the whole time, honest.”

“Were not,” she said. “You were watching. I saw you. Tryna see my pussy when I stood up.”

Arnie sighed in exasperation.

“Mae, there isn’t any call for you to be that way.”

“You don’t leave this bastard right here, Arnie, I’m gonna get my own motel room tonight on your money.” She added in malicious triumph, “An’ you won’t get nothin’. ”

“Aw shit! ” said Arnie, and kicked Dunc in the gut, hard, moving real well for a big fleshy man out of shape.

Dunc went down, gagging, managed to roll groggily away from the kick Mae aimed at his face. He kept rolling, trying to wheeze big gulps of air into his lungs, swirled to his feet in as close to a fighting stance as his inexperience allowed, fists cocked to give fucking Arnie something to think about.

Fucking Arnie had already thought of something: he was three yards off with a small flat automatic, maybe a .32, pointed at Dunc’s chest. Dunc went still except for trying to breathe.

“Just so we don’t get into somethin’ stupid out here,” said Arnie. “Nothin’ personal, boy — but you come between me and my lovin’, it’s the same as gettin’ ’twixt a gator and the water. Can’t stand for that. I gotta have my little Mae gal here.”

“Oh, Arnie,” said Mae in a breathless little-girl voice. “You’re so romantic!”

They went back to the Cadillac, Mae wiggling her rounded behind in an exaggerated manner because she knew Dunc would be watching, Arnie covering all her rear-guard action with one big paw and walking a little stiffly from his hard-on. They went to their respective doors, Arnie pausing to toss Dunc’s duffel bag out onto the shoulder of the road in a puff of dust.

Dunc, still a little bent over and breathing funny, watched the big car fishtail back onto the highway. As the big man honked in derisive goodbye, Mae threw a triumphant look over her shoulder before dipping her head down toward Arnie’s lap.

Dunc walked around in tight circles for a few minutes, cursing them both to hell and trying to get his breath back. He was sure going to have a sore gut tomorrow. But he got his spiral notebook out of his duffel bag and sat down on the canvas case to write out his adventure.

“I bet they put on their little vaudeville act for every male hitchhiker they pick up,” he wrote. “What do they mean, Arnie and Mae? Do they ever wonder what relative value they have to anyone else? To the universe?”

He stopped writing to stare out across the desert. Heat waves suggested a cool blue lake shimmering a couple of miles off. He could almost see palm trees at an oasis with water bubbling out of the sand; hunger, heat, and thirst created Bedouin tents and patient camels and belly dancers in swirling silks with shimmy coins tinkling against their rolling, oil-slick hips.

Reality was Joshua trees — the legions of the old General — long arms uplifting, writing his exploits on the sky.

Dunc wrote: “Well, what the hell relative value do I have to anyone else? There’s Arnie with Mae’s head in his lap, here’s me writing about it in my notebook.”

Them what can, does. Them what can’t, teaches. Or writes.

With that, he finally started to laugh at himself.

The sun had westered two more hours, and Dunc was thinking about maybe hiking over to check out that oasis, when a ’49 flathead-eight Merc that had seen better days squealed to a stop after it had already passed him by. He grabbed up his duffel bag to run a little lopsidedly up the road, hoping the guy wouldn’t pull away just as he got there. They did that a lot.

He opened the door and peered in. The driver was a good-looking solidly built man in his early thirties, with clear eyes, wide, even teeth, curly hair, and a small neat mustache.

“Didn’t see you ’til I was almost past. Hop in.”

Dunc did. The car accelerated. It smoked and smelled and sounded as if the pistons were changing holes every other stroke.

“You’re not from around here,” stated the driver.

“Minnesota.”

“Knew you wasn’t from around here.”

Dunc settled back against the stained fabric. All four windows were wide open but it was hot in the car, his throat was parched and his lips were dry.

“There’s a jug of water on the floor of the backseat.”

Dunc found it, drank, waited, drank again. Nothing had ever tasted better than that tepid water. The driver said he’d been in Oklahoma City, waxing cars by hand for fifteen bucks apiece.

“Did two hearses last December, got sixty-seven bucks. Money for Christmas. But too much money isn’t good for a man.” He gestured at a neat travel bag on the backseat. “Two suits and a squirt bottle of suit cleaner, that’s all I need.”