Cooksin

by Rick Alan Rice

  Johnny pushed Frank away and then fired a few jabs himself, but Frank walked through them, letting them bounce off his forearms and shoulders. Size-wise it was a complete mismatch. Frank was nearly two hundred forty pounds on a six foot two inch frame, while Hayes was only five feet ten and one hundred sixty-five pounds. Johnny didn't have the power to hurt Frank with a shot, even if he were so inclined.

  Frank nailed Johnny with an uppercut, thrown from way outside, and this time it landed harder, knocking Johnny's chin up. Then Frank hit him in the side with a body shot that felt like a mule kick. Johnny doubled over on his side, and he heard one of the cowboys suck air on his behalf, as if it hurt just to watch. He tried to push Frank away and he fired a feeble right that sailed past Frank's ear without doing damage. Then Frank dug two more hard shots to the body and Johnny fell back onto the ropes. "Be tough, Johnny," one of the cowboys said, but it sounded dispirited. Frank drove back into the boy, nailing him again with body shots that bent him one way and the next. Johnny looked once again at Jarvis Lang, begging for a way out, and then at Loren Minnie, who apparently was letting this go unofficiated. There was no clock that was going to save him. He was in for as long as Frank wanted.

  Frank threw a looping uppercut that caught Johnny in the solar plexus and several of the cowboys seemed to look away as the kid absorbed the blow. His face purpled and he gasped for air. Frank said something to him – "Hang in there!" – and he smashed a couple more hard, driving hooks into his rib cage. Johnny seemed to shrink against the ropes, knotting up into a ball position. He started to slide straight down, as if he might be finished, but then Frank used a forearm against his chin to straighten him back up while he hit him in the mid-section with another jarring uppercut. Frank seemed oblivious to anything but his own form and the feeling of his fist pounding into live flesh. He drilled Johnny with shots to the ribs, the chest, the tops of his arms and his shoulders. A couple of the Lazy S boys had seen enough and walked on outside the barn. Johnny looked again at Jarvis, begging for him to do something. Out of frustration he lashed back at Frank a few times, but it was useless. His strength was gone and he was over-matched.

  Frank fired more body shots: once, twice, three times. The old leather gloves gave off a sound like a baseball slamming into a catcher's mitt each time one struck flesh. Frank's shots pounded out a sickening rhythm: one, two, three. It was impossible not to know what was happening – that ribs were cracking under that torture and that bleeding was taking place beneath the skin. Pow! Pow! Pow! Frank's body shots continued and still Johnny Hayes was pinned there against the ropes, taking it like a man.

  "I think he's had enough, Frank," Wes Witherspoon finally said.

  "He's right, Frank. You proved your point," said Loren Minnie, sheepish about making eye contact with Johnny Hayes, who still lay back deep into the ropes, unwilling, or unable, to go down.

  Frank finally backed off. "You had enough, son?" he asked Johnny, and the kid nodded yes, that he had. Then he sank to his knees and Jarvis and another of the cowboys attended to him, getting his gloves off and toweling the blood and sweat from his head.

  "Didn't I tell you?" Frank said, still drunk and having worked off none of his bluster. "All these young studs – I kick all their asses!"

  "Yeah, Frank, you told us," said Witherspoon. He looked at Jarvis. "I guess you'll make sure everything's okay around here?" he asked, and Jarvis nodded that he would. There was a cowboy to bandage and a rancher to pour into bed. It was just like herding doggies. "Good night then, fellas." And Wes Witherspoon and his bunch went on home.

  CHAPTER 15 – Rotarian

  "I remember Franklin Roosevelt being criticized during his presidential campaigns for promising more than he knew he was going to be able to deliver – that he knew all along that the nation lacked the funds to pay for all the programs he said he wanted. Some people said that talk like that showed flaws in his character – that he was a 'liar' who would say anything to get himself elected.

  "I believe when a man runs for President he owes it to the people to let them know who he is – and a man is, at least in part, known by the size and nature of his vision. People want to feel that life, under his Presidency, could be better. Feeling and, believing in that gives them hope, and hope goes a long way in this country. If the American people feel like they are working to achieve something worthwhile, they're productive. Hope provides the fuel for that feeling, and it gives them strength. All they want to do is feel good about the return on their investment, and they don't demand the moon. They don't even really expect all that men like Mr. Roosevelt – and Mr. Truman, for that matter – can dream about them having. They only want to believe that as a nation we are striving to be something we can be proud of, and that if the chips fall our way, each of us can prosper to a degree that is just and equitable – that, all things being equal, we can all 'win'."

  Finished speaking, Frank Walker looked out across the room of Rotarian faces, many of which looked back with sullen expression.

  "Thank you, Frank," said Rotary President Herb Leeber, approaching the lectern. "Let's all give Frank here a round of applause for a fine presentation," he said, and there followed a smattering of polite clapping. "It's an honor for us to have such a fine gentleman – a fine American, for that matter – here as a regular member of our group."

  Frank smiled graciously at Leeber, acknowledging the compliment, and then walked down off the speaker's platform and to a table, where his now cold luncheon plate awaited his attention. There also was old Buryl Thomason, Weld County's richest man and local icon of Republican Party politics, and he seemed to be waiting for Frank to walk within range so he could level him for his liberal diatribe.

  "You just don't quit, do you Frank?" Buryl started in. "Let's get the government involved in everything, bring some tax dollars in here. Last year all you could talk about was how Longmont needed a municipal airport. The year before that it was a new hospital, and the year before that it was the..."

  Frank cut him off. "It was the war the year before that. During that time we weren't doing anything to address needs here in Longmont."

  Thomason looked disgusted. "The thing is, it's always something. There's always some reason, in your mind, that the people of Longmont or Weld County ought to be floating a bond for this thing, or that. If you hadn't a fought so hard against the Kaiser all those years back, I'd've swore that you were for stripping everybody of private property and turning it all over to the government."

  "You know better'n that, Buryl," Frank said. "I don't like paying taxes any more than the next man, but there are certain things that need to be done to move this country ahead – and to make a place like Longmont worth living in."

  "The government is doing too God-damned much right now for 'the people,'" said Thomason. "I think it's gettin' to where people've forgotten how to do anything for themselves. It's always government this and government that. Come help me, big government. Give me something."

  Frank bristled. "We never build anything in this country that is for the people the people whose taxes run the government – until a depression comes along. Then we build lakes and parks, improve properties, fix streets... It's never until things get bad in this country – until it looks like we'd better give something back to the people or they'll finally lose faith in this whole thing – that we finally do something right."

  Thomason looked sour, wincing against Frank's contradictions. "Who built those roads, Frank? The roads your people drive around on, that get them to their work and to their schools, and to their churches? It was government money, and it's done all the time – not just when our backs are against the wall." Frank took on a dead-faced stare, looking at Thomason as if listening to him was somehow dulling to his wits. Thomason continued – "Of course, you'll argue that government employment has been the thing that's safeguarded this country through depressed times. And you think that's fine.

  You're all for giveaways."

  "You just can't s
tand the thought that we ought to be responsible for the citizens of this country," Frank said.

  "We’re not socialists, Frank," said Thomason in a huff, causing those seated around to cringe a little. "That damned Roosevelt let this country cater to the weakness in itself. He built up a whole bureaucracy to cater to it, and it's gonna take decades to set it back right."

  "What is 'right,' Buryl?" Frank asked.

  "Playing to our strengths," said Thomason. "Rewarding values that will make a nation stronger – hard work, initiative, getting what you earn."

  Frank shook his head, re-animating. "That would be great if everyone was starting from the same point, but you know they aren't."

  Thomason did a quick rock back and then came forward in his chair. "I'm amazed at you, Frank. Hell – look at you! You're a self-made man. Didn't you work like a dog to get everything you own? And aren't you a better man for having done it?"

  "I had some advantages," Frank said. "My wife's family had some money, and I'm a guy with a strong survival instinct who happened to survive a trench raid. People heard about it and ever since then they've been willing to work with me."

  "So you're saying we aren't all war heroes with inheritances," said Thomason. "Well, maybe not, but we are – each of us – people with certain talents and abilities that we can use to achieve as we can. We're not all going to do equally well. Some are going to have more..."

  "It's not those with more or less that I'm worried about," Frank said. "It's the twenty, twenty-five percent on the very bottom, who have nothing. They're generationally poor, uneducated, maybe facing racism..."

  "Oh for Christ's sake!" Thomason's face grew red. "That's the rabble who have become permanent members of Roosevelt's club! We'll be stooping as a nation to pick them up the rest of our days. Hell – we'll become as back-bent as Europe!"

  Frank Leeber – and, for that matter, everybody else in the meeting room – overheard Frank and Thomason's animated discussion. It wasn't the first time he had heard Frank Walker carry on about civic responsibility and government policy, and he was certain it wasn't going to be the last. He had given up trying to understand what made Frank tick, oddly positioned as he was between his own personal conservatism and his firebrand democratic ideals. Everything about Frank said that he should be a pro-business, anti-tax Republican, yet there he sat, going jaw-to-jaw with the staunchest Republican in the county, arguing against him as if he was arguing with Beelzebub himself, or his first cousin, which was the way he tended to see the "Wilkie-Dewey crowd." They were all the same to Frank, minions to greed and self-interest, unable to respond to any possible higher calling. It still made Herb Leeber shake his head in wonder, for it seemed that Frank, with all his worldly wealth, should by rights have been one of them.

  As the Pastor from the First Presbyterian Church got up to say the benediction, bringing this day's Rotary meeting to a close, Leeber leaned over Frank Walker's shoulder and whispered something in his ear. He wanted Frank to come to his office for a short meeting – that is, once he was through debating with Buryl Thomason.

  * * * * *

  "Frank, I got something back on this guy Jake Jobbs, and you '11 want to know about it," Leeber said, now seated behind his huge oak desk, surrounded by books on law and maps of property holdings in Weld County.

  "That was fast," Frank said.

  Leeber nodded that he was right. "I put in a call to a friend of mine who works in Denver with the FBI. It turns out he had a file on Jake Jobbs – and you won't believe what fell out when he opened it."

  Frank looked interested. "What've you got, Herb?"

  "Well, it looks like your doubts about this guy might be justified," Leeber said. "It seems that Jobbs is under suspicion in a grand theft case that took place in Kansas several months back. My buddy put me in touch with a Sheriff in Hutchinson who told me that Jake was working for a rancher there when several of the area's most well-to-do people were robbed. They believe a ring of some kind worked all those different places, and they took everything – trucks, tractors, livestock... A dozen places were hit on one night, and they still don't know who was behind it."

  "How does Jobbs fit in to this?" Frank asked.

  "Well, like I say, he was working at one of the places that got robbed," Leeber said. "His name came up when the investigators started looking into the backgrounds of guys who these ranchers had employed as seasonal workers. It turns out this guy Jobbs had hired on as an equipment operator just a couple months before the robberies took place. He was expected to work just for a few months, which he did, and then he moved on. Presumably he then came to Colorado and went to work for you."

  "So they believe Jobbs was involved?"

  "Jobbs had an alibi for that night. A number of people saw him in Hutchinson, where he spent the entire night drinking at a local tavern. The thing is, when the investigators looked at this guy's record they discovered that he was dishonorably discharged from the Army. He spent almost four years in military prison at Fort Riley, Kansas for conspiring to steal from the United States government. Turns out he was a truck driver in the motor corps, who sometimes redirected Army supplies to illegal resellers. He did his time, but they never were able to uncover his whole network of contacts."

  "Well I'll be a son-of-a-bitch," Frank said. "I knew there was something fishy about that son-of-a-bitch. I told you that I suspected someone was taking money from my office desk?"

  "Isn't that why you fired him, because you caught him doing just that?"

  "I caught him in that desk drawer, but he wasn't taking cash – he was taking a check with his name on it," Frank said. "I only suspicion he was responsible for the missing cash."

  "It seems pretty indicting, his knowing where you were keeping money," Leeber said.

  "There's something else, too. The thefts stopped taking place as soon as Jake Jobbs was no longer on the ranch."

  "Well, you've got yourself tangled up with a bad apple here in this Jobbs character," Leeber said. "I don't think there's any doubt about it. The question now is, what are you going to do with the information?"

  Frank got up out of his chair and wandered around Leeber's office, taking unconscious notice of the framed degrees and licenses hanging on the walls. "I don't know, Herb. I can tell you one thing, I won't be able to rest easy until he's no longer around."

  CHAPTER 16 – Driving Instruction

  "Okay – now you know where the clutch is, and you know the brake pedal and the gas pedal. You know how the gear shift is in the pattern of an H, right?"

  "Yeah, I know that," Py said.

  Tory shrugged. "Well what else is there?" she asked, adding – "I don't know what you’re so nervous about. I swear, you are the first nineteen year old I've ever met who didn't want to know how to drive a car."

  Py sat behind the steering wheel, looking "pre-defeated" over the hood of Pete's old truck. "I don't have no reason to know," he said. "I don't have a car – and the way things are goin', I ain't ever likely to."

  "You'll have one someday," Tory assured, none too sympathetic to down talk. "Besides, it'd be helpful right now if you could drive. You could run to town to get things. You could even have a social life! Wouldn't you like to take a girl out sometime?"

  Py looked suspicious. "Well, yeah, I guess I would."

  "So what are you so afraid of?" Tory asked, exasperated. She practically had to drag him away from hard labor to give him this driving lesson, and he had seemed irrational in his obstinateness, offering excuses ranging from "it isn't a good thing for me to know how to drive, I don't have a car" to "it isn't the right day."

  "What if we meet somebody comin' up the road?" Py asked, dead serious. Tory wouldn't accommodate his contention that this might be a problem.

  "We'll steer a little to the right and go around them," she said flatly. "Where will we drive to?" Py asked.

  "What does it matter?" Tory said. "Now, push in on the clutch and put the truck in neutral." Py looked at her, full of misgivings
, but did as directed. "Okay, so you can take your foot off the clutch now. You got the brake set?" Py nodded that it was set. "Okay, turn the key on and use your left foot to push the starter thing there . . ." She pointed down to a round, silver button on the floorboard, to the left of the clutch pedal. "Put your right foot on the accelerator pedal. See the choke thingy there? Pull that out as far as it will go."

  Py looked at her like she was mean to put him through this. He turned the ignition key, pulled the choke, and pushed the start button. After trying and failing a couple times, the engine finally fired. "Push the choke in!" Tory said, and Py punched it in quickly, as if something might explode if it were left out. "You might want to pull the throttle out just a little bit, so it idles nice for you. Push on the foot-feet . . ."

  "The foot-feet?" Py asked, as the engine started to die.

  "The gas!" Tory said, a little too eagerly, and Py stepped on the accelerator, gunning the engine so that Pete, working out in the barn, wondered if they weren't going to throw a rod. "Okay, let her back just a little. There – that's good, now ease in on the throttle just a little." Py did as instructed and the engine winded down to a rattling hum. "Good," Tory said, finally satisfied with the basic calibrations. "Now, release the parking brake, push in on the clutch, put it in first, and just slowly turn around here to the left so we can get out to the road. Go slow now," she warned.