Fast Lane

by Dave Zeltserman

“I see.” And for the first time a thin smile cracked his face. “You do not trust Mexican doctors?”

  “That’s not it. I—”

  “Never mind,” he said, softly. “Let me check that wound.”

  He took the bandages off my forehead. “We can leave these scratches uncovered. They’re not infected but scars are going to be left.” His smile stretched out an inch. “You should have had a doctor stitch them for you.”

  I was beginning to feel a little antsy. I knew I had to go back to Colorado. Running wasn’t going to work, not if it made me so sick with worry I was going to develop colitis.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Anyway, thanks for everything, Doc. How much do I owe you?”

  He shrugged. “You won’t accept my advice, why should I accept your money? There’s no charge.”

  He turned his back. I started feeling a little hot around the collar and I wanted to get out before the heat spread. “Sure, if that’s the way you feel about it. Well, thanks.”

  As I was heading out the door, he spoke. “If the pain doesn’t go away you should see a doctor. Left untreated, you could die.”

  No, I thought. Not me, but others were going to.

  * * * * *

  I went straight to the airport. I had my passport and money on me, and the clothing and other stuff I’d brought along weren’t worth going back to the hotel for.

  At the airport, I had a long talk with a ticket agent and finally got myself booked on a flight to Dallas that was leaving within the hour. I was able to board the plane as soon as I got to the gate. After taking my seat, a quiet calm took over me.

  Fleeing to Mexico was a challenge to the natural order of things. I had sent everything out of skew—it was like I’d been trying to fly a kite in a storm, and it had left me feeling pulled and twisted from every direction. Now that I’d decided to let go, an inner peace warmed me.

  All the worry and ailments I’d suffered were the result of trying to resist the unchangeable. Accepting fate removed the burden from me. I was meant to go back to Denver and take care of things. I understood it and embraced it.

  After landing in Dallas, I took the first available flight to Denver, and by morning I was home. A pile of newspapers had collected outside my front door, but I was too tired to deal with them. I headed straight to bed. I think I was asleep before my eyes closed.

  * * * * *

  The phone woke me. I shielded my eyes from the light and let the phone ring, too tired to reach for it. My answering machine clicked on, but whoever it was must’ve been shy because he hung up. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the light, and I squinted and read my watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning. Twenty-four hours since I had collapsed on the bed.

  I laid around for a few minutes, just sort of daydreaming, and then glanced at my watch and saw it was noon. I got up, and headed down to the kitchen. After putting some coffee on, I stepped outside and brought in the newspapers from the front step.

  When the coffee finished brewing I poured a cup and sipped it slowly, surprised at how good it felt in my stomach. I guess all I needed was a good twenty-four-hour sleep. During my plane trip, I’d figured how everything was going to work out. How everything was meant to work out.

  Glancing through the newspapers I found an article about Craig Singer. He had committed suicide by slashing his wrists. The article hinted about marital problems and despondency over injuries sustained in a fall. I remembered how I’d thought he had way too much blood in his lips. I started laughing as I thought how bleeding to death had solved that problem.

  When I was through laughing I found the Sunday issue with my feature. The story had the title, ‘Johnny Lane—The First Case’.

  It was about the Walter Murphy shooting—the original write-up I did for the Examiner. They’d included pictures of both Walter Murphy and Rose, and seeing them made me panic. I guess I was afraid if Mary were to see it she’d spot the resemblance between herself and Rose and put two and two together. I took a long look at Rose’s picture and calmed myself down. It was actually a pretty bad shot of her, making her look heavier and shorter than she was in real life. Not only that, but her face was out of focus. Mary wasn’t likely to make a connection from that picture.

  I smiled over the scare I’d put myself through. I had a week before my deadline and that was more than enough time for what I had to do.

  The phone rang. I answered it and got back only faint static. “Hello?” I tried again. I was about to hang up when an old man’s voice crackled over the line.

  “Clem Smalley?”

  “Sorry, wrong number.” But I didn’t hang up. I held onto the phone for dear life, listening to my heart do a bongo solo through the silence.

  “Sure ain’t no wrong number,” the old man said. “You’re Clem Smalley. Same one from Carson City, Nevada. You be at Charlie’s Silver Dollar Bar in two hours.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It better be possible. For your sake, Clem.”

  “Where’s Charlie’s?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me. Just make sure you be there.”

  “Look,” I said. “Who are you?”

  “Don’t worry none about that. I know who you are and that’s all that matters.” The old man coughed, and from the sound of it, spat up some phlegm. “I know all about you.”

  “Wait a min—”

  The phone went dead.

  * * * * *

  You’re probably wondering how I knew it was an old man calling me. Well, that’s a reasonable question since it can be pretty hard to judge a person’s age over the phone, but ever since I saw him at the Oklahoma City train station I’d been half expecting him to call. Since I was expecting it, I had no problem recognizing his voice.

  Chapter 22

  I was born Clem Smalley and raised in Carson City, Nevada. My faithful readers are pretty much ignorant of my humble beginnings, because I guess I don’t like bragging about how with so little I was able to accomplish so much through nothing but plain hard work, dedication, and perspiration. Now Poppa had hurt his back way before I was born and was on disability. And Momma worked as hard as a woman could. But they certainly loved their boy. What they couldn’t give me in material goods, they sure made up for in other ways. I remember one day . . . .

  * * * * *

  I was about six and my momma was screaming that he had killed me. I tried to cry out to her that I wasn’t dead. My eyes were open but everything was black. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t yell to her that everything was okay. Momma picked me up in her arms and held me tight. She was crying hard, her tears falling hot on my face. Everything was dizzy, suffocating. Then I didn’t remember anything until I woke up in a hospital bed.

  The next three days were the happiest of my young life. Momma was with me in the hospital most of the time. They gave me ice cream. It was quiet and peaceful, and people were nice to me. I asked Momma if I could stay there forever and not have to go home.

  That made her cry. She told me I’d have to go home when I got better, but she would never let him beat me again. Well, I guess I didn’t really want to stay there. I didn’t like the way the doctors and nurses looked at Momma when she wasn’t noticing, and I didn’t like the things they whispered about her when they thought I was asleep. What happened wasn’t Momma’s fault, and it wasn’t fair of them to say it was.

  When Momma took me home he was waiting for us. When I walked by, he kicked at me, calling me a little girl for not being able to take a spanking.

  Poppa just didn’t have no use for a son. Momma had obliged him with three daughters before me and that was what he wanted. He could find a use for girls and he was hoping Momma would be able to give him one more. I turned out to be a bitter disappointment, Poppa not being a pervert or anything.

  I only remember one of my sisters, and she left us before I was able to talk. I always wondered what happened to them. I’m sure life was as hard for them as it was for me, having to survive on their own at suc
h young ages. Poppa just didn’t leave them any other choice, unless you consider the other way a choice. I often do wonder about them, though.

  Poor Momma. She tried to keep her promise. When he started beating me again, Momma would get in the way, blocking the belt strap with her own frail body. While she protected me, I lay there like a stinking coward, screaming at him to stop, screaming that I would kill him. Later, when he was drunk and oblivious to the world, I’d stand over him with his razor. Sometimes I stood there for hours, trying to work up the courage to cut his throat. But my hands would shake and my knees would turn to water and I couldn’t do it.

  I wish I had been able to, at least for her sake. Momma wasn’t strong enough to take all those beatings and all that meanness, not with working as hard as she had to. When I was thirteen she died and left me alone with no one to protect me.

  In his grief, Poppa started drinking more and it wasn’t long before he had himself a stroke. It left him crippled on his right side, forcing him to use a cane to get around. Since he didn’t have the strength anymore to beat me, he had to focus his meanness in other ways. When I helped him get into the bath or brought him his food he would say pretty nasty things, things a father just shouldn’t say to a son.

  “You planning on deserting me like your whore sisters did, you ungrateful little bastard?”

  And I would be quiet.

  “When your momma was having you, she should have aborted you and flushed you down the toilet. I flush better things than you down the toilet every goddamned day.”

  And I wouldn’t say a word. At least not outwardly. Inside I was screaming every obscenity known to man. But it didn’t help a bit.

  I tried so hard to make him see I was good, that he could be proud of me. I was doing poorly at school, so according to Poppa I had crap for brains. So I worked as hard as I could and started doing better. According to Poppa I was then nothing more than a stinking no-good cheater.

  When I worked six hours after school to help pay for what the welfare checks couldn’t, I was an ungrateful piece of garbage for not being there to wait on him. When I brought home the prettiest girl in school, she was a goddamn whore cunt for being with an ugly worthless bastard like myself. I tell you, some things a man has no right to say to anyone no matter how much he might be hurting. Some things should be made to choke in a man’s throat.

  * * * * *

  After the stroke, the doctors told him he had to quit drinking, but that was like telling a baby not to drool. He gave me holy hell for not bringing booze back to him. But I wouldn’t do it. He knew he wasn’t supposed to drink and if he wanted to, well, he’d just have to get to a bar himself. So he would curse me like all hell, and get out of his bed, and with his crippled body, struggle the two blocks to the Black Horse Pub, moving like a falling apart wind-up toy.

  If I had brought him the alcohol he would never have left his bed. It wasn’t that I enjoyed watching a crippled gimp humiliating himself for a lousy drink. That wasn’t all of it, although I’m sure that’s what he thought. I wanted him out there on the streets.

  I was seventeen when he was killed in a hit and run accident. He had gone out late that night and with the money he took from me I knew he wouldn’t be coming back until closing time. Before then I found a car and hot-wired it. I wanted it to look like a bunch of drunken kids who were too sloshed for my poor poppa’s good, so I brought along a half-dozen bottles of booze. After spilling some of the alcohol around and taking a few drinks myself, I drove the car about a block from the pub and waited. I thought of Momma, and I thought of the sisters he stole from me, and my body started shaking worse than the goddamn motor, worse than the times I’d bent over him with his razor.

  This time, though, I stood my ground and waited.

  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.

  Chapter 23

  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?