Rules of the Road

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Is that the land Mr. Jones farms for you?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Isn’t that his worry?”

  “Sam, Herman Jones may get three-fifths of the crop on that land, and us two-fifths, but the risks and the problems are shared equally. And I’ve been so mad about that bridge …”

  “What’s the problem with those people in Hamilton County, anyway?”

  “I’ll tell you what the problem is, or who the problem is. It’s that Harlan Greene. He still runs the county like his own personal feudal empire, and he wants to be paid off every time somebody walks across one of his damn county bridges, much less wants one of them repaired. Your father, for one, never paid a cent in Hamilton County, and I’m not about to either.”

  “That’s one of the things I could never understand about Dad, Ma.”

  “What’s that, Sam?”

  “I know he worked against guys like Greene all those years, but I just never could understand how he stayed involved in politics for so long. I mean, the kind of unbelievable crudballs you have to associate yourself with… .”

  “Yes, Sam, but your father knew lots of good men, too. The fact that a man like Harlan Greene is still around makes you kind of forget the men like your father’s friends who opposed him.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Ma. I remember that year he was running for county supervisor, and I had to take him messages out on the tractor. He was plowing that field up and down, back and forth, and I had to sit by the phone taking calls from that buddy of his … who was he?”

  “Oop Gibson. He ran every one of your father’s campaigns.”

  “How could I have forgotten Oop Gibson? So Oop calls me, and I jump in the truck and run out to the field and tell Dad the message, and he tells me what I should say to Oop, and I run back and call Oop… . Christ, it went on forever. I remember one day, I must have driven out to that section we had near Enfield thirty times.”

  Mrs. Butterfield smiled and propped a pillow up against the wall and leaned against it.

  “Yes. Oop was a real character, all right. Your father wouldn’t make a move without him. Remember he had that store down in Norris City, with the big potbellied stove in the middle of the floor, and your dad would take you down there on Saturdays and he and Oop would sit around telling stories and you would play pinball all day? You used to love that.”

  “Yeah, I did love pinball. But politics, Ma, I hated with a passion. I don’t know if I ever told you, but that was one of the big reasons I wanted to be an army officer, to get as far away from politics as I possibly could and still remain a citizen of the United States.”

  “You told me, Sam. I understood then, and I still understand now. You may have gotten yourself clear of politics, but it still takes some serious arm twisting and vote counting down here in Southern Illinois if you even want the garbage picked up.”

  “So what happened between you and Betsy?”

  “Well, I called the governor’s outreach office over in Mt. Vernon, and who came on the phone but Betsy! When I told her who it was, she couldn’t believe it, and I must say, neither could I!”

  “What’d you say?”

  “We talked for a while, you know. She wanted to know where you were, and when I told her Germany, she laughed. She said she always knew you’d get yourself off somewhere no one could get you on the phone. Then I told her we’d been trying to get that damn bridge in Hamilton County repaired for six months, and she told me she’d look into it. The next day, she called to say a state crew would get out there at the end of the week, and a few days after that, the bridge was repaired. I don’t know who she talked to, but that was the fastest I’d ever seen a bureaucracy move in all my years on this earth.”

  “Well, that’s great, Ma. But look. I’ve got to leave tomorrow, and I guess most of all I just don’t feel like, ah, making up some reason to call her. It just feels too awkward, that’s all.”

  “Are you still taking the bus, Sam?”

  “I don’t have much choice. My car won’t be in from Germany for another three months.”

  “You could take my car and return it after yours gets here. I’d still have the truck.”

  “That’s all right, Ma. The truck is a wreck. I wouldn’t trust it to get you around for three weeks. The bus is okay. It’s only a four-hour trip. Besides, I don’t think I’ve been on a Greyhound since I was in college. It’ll be fun.”

  “Okay, dear. If you need any more laundry done today, you just let me know. I’m going to get supper ready.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute, Ma. And … thanks.”

  She blew him a kiss from the doorway and went downstairs one step at a time. She was getting old, Sam thought. Too old to be running the farm, even if she did have two hired hands and sharecroppers. The loose, wet feeling of guilt washed over him again, and he turned his attention back to his duffel bag, trying to forget.

  He packed the duffel, and thought about the modified. In his mind, he was still out there on the road somewhere behind the wheel, twin pipes in his ears, oil smoke up his nose, dust in his eyes. He sat upright and rubbed his face, focusing his eyes on the quilt at the foot of the bed, trying to shake the feeling. The quilt had belonged to his grandmother. Looking at the intricate stitching of the patchwork reminded him of her shoulders when she sewed, stooped and leaning forward over her sewing table, busy in the mornings, rocking back and forth knitting in the afternoons. Was that her, sitting at the end of his bed, wise and gray and short-tempered? He blinked his eyes and she was gone.

  He jammed another set of fatigues into the duffel. They were perfect. It was almost a crime to shove them into an already overcrowded duffel bag. The creases in that olive drab cotton, the stiffness of the starch … he knew how much his mother had put into laundering and ironing ten sets of fatigues. It wasn’t fair. They were going to look like hell by the time he got to Fort Campbell. There should be some kind of ribbon for a mother, he thought, for the only female in one’s life who really understood what was at stake, for the only one who never bitched and complained, for the only girl you knew who would be there forever and ever and ever… .

  Johnny Gee nodded a greeting to the fat man behind the cash register, who was chewing on a donut.

  “Hey, Johnny …” The man choked on the words. He swallowed. “Top Jimmy’s lookin’ for ya. He tole me to tell ya… .”

  “I know all about Top Jimmy,” said Johnny Gee with finality, silencing the fat man. Johnny Gee stood with hands on hips surveying the scene. He nodded to The Weasel, the skinny black man with the broom. Two men wearing chincy-brim hats, who were seated on stools against the wall, waved at Johnny. He couldn’t see their faces through the smoke, but he waved back.

  The room was two pool tables wide and ten pool tables long. Lined along one wall, four coal-burning potbellied stoves awaited winter. Three shaded lamps hung low over each table. There were no other lights in the place. The light from the lamps shone on the green felt tables through the green lamp shades, giving the low-ceilinged room a glow similar to that of a swimming pool that had been left un-tended for a summer, its sides glowing with algae.

  Not that Johnny Gee would have described the pool hall that way, for he had never swum a stroke in a pool, nor had he ever lain next to one, taking the sun. Johnny Gee never really noticed the light in the pool hall, the greenish cast it gave the faces of its denizens. To him, pool hall light was appropriate coloration. Didn’t matter what time it was outside. It was always coming up on midnight in the pool hall down on Third Street.

  How many years had he been hanging out in pool halls? First time he shot pool, he must have been eleven, twelve years old. Everybody else in his class was going out for junior-high football way back then, Johnny Gee took a look at his skinny hundred-fifteen-pound frame in the locker room mirror, and put his pegged pants back on. He marched himself down to Third Street, put a nickel on the table, and waited for The Weasel to rack the balls. Other guys could beat their
heads together out there in the hot sun on the field behind the school. Johnny Gee would rather click ivory balls together in the pale green glow of the pool room.

  Johnny Gee’s office was located in the far right corner of the room, on the wall. It was a pay phone, an old black model that still had a black plastic cord. Johnny Gee picked up the phone, dug in his pocket for some change, and started making his calls. First thing he did, he tried to collect a few debts. Fifty here, ten there … it added up. Before you knew it you got a hundred dollars, and then you know where you are? You’re a hundred ahead, that’s where you are. So you made a run at the money they owed you first. Then what you do, you take the payments promised, and you subtract from them all the deadbeats, and all those known to be chronically late … guys who say, like, they’ll pay today, but you know you ain’t gonna see a dime till tomorrow, if then. Then you add up whatever’s left, the money you expect that if everything goes well, if your luck holds, well, you’ll have it in hand by five, maybe six o’clock. That’s the initial take for the day. Something you could just about count on.

  Johnny Gee proceeded with the business at hand, and an hour later he had a figure, which he had worked out on his desk, which was the pool table immediately adjacent to his office, which was the pay phone. Okay, so now you know what you’re worth at, say, six o’clock, so what you do is, you make some bets. But first, you got to read the sports pages and the racing form, which Johnny Gee did on his desk, under the three green lamps illuminating its wide green felt surface. Having digested the day’s sports wisdom, he stood up and made a few more calls, taking the spread on this game, going for a long shot on that horse. Then, having finished the first two orders of business for the day, he turned finally to less pressing business.

  His debts.

  As if he knew that Johnny Gee was now ready to deal with the less pleasant aspects of the day, the fat man with the donut in his mouth materialized in the office.

  “I told you Top Jimmy has been calling you all morning, Johnny,” said the fat man with the donut. “I told Top Jimmy you ain’t been in.”

  “That’s very good,” said Johnny Gee, looking up from the racing form.

  “Top Jimmy says he been tryin’ to call you all week. You know what he said to you last week, Johnny.”

  “No, what’d he say last week,” sneered Johnny Gee.

  “He said if you was late this week, he wouldn’t bother with you no more. He said he’ll sell you to those guys from up-county.”

  “Yeah, well, I only owe him a grand, and I paid the vig on Wednesday.”

  “Top Jimmy said that was last week’s vig,” mumbled the fat man with the donut in his mouth.

  “So? I’ll have this week’s, I don’t know, by nine tonight,” said Johnny Gee. “That oughta keep him happy.”

  “He said you’re still three days late, Johnny. You got to remember better.”

  “What else is new?” asked Johnny Gee with a shrug.

  “What you want me to tell Top Jimmy when he calls again, Johnny?”

  “Tell him I stepped away from my desk,” said Johnny Gee, looking imperious, tugging at his shirt sleeves, positioning them at an appropriate distance between wrist and elbow.

  The thing about Johnny Gee, he just never thought anyone would catch up with him. Since he was a kid, he could read people better than he could read situations. People didn’t change as you studied them and took them in. But situations did. With people, all you had to do was read them and react. Situations demanded the ability to see past the present into the future, a feel for how things would develop. Dealing with situations demanded too much planning. Like with Top Jimmy. What are you going to do with a guy like Top Jimmy? Johnny Gee would have Top Jimmy’s money in hand up to nine o’clock, but he should have had it together three nine o’clocks ago. Sorry ’bout that, Top Jimmy. Catch you later, man.

  It was the same way hustling pool. It was time to pick up some loose change from the kids filtering in from the local high school. Truth was, they were the only ones usually available to be hustled, but that was okay. He’d never really been a good pool hustler because he couldn’t plan out the hustle long enough, play along and lose a few games so he could set up the opponent and take him for a bundle with a close-out game. High-school kids he could deal with. They were as impatient as he was.

  The kid who challenged Johnny Gee to a game was wearing a Motley Crue T-shirt and had his hair in a ponytail. Fifty cents or a buck, Johnny Gee snorted derisively, thinking: Jesus. Heavy metal. What a lack of class.

  Two bucks, the kid shot back. Johnny Gee signaled The Weasel to rack the balls. He was stroking the cue on the break when he noticed the kid reach into his shirt pocket and pull out a small brown vial. The kid poked a tiny spoon into the vial and pulled out some white powder.

  “Want some?” the kid asked, as he snorted the powder deeply. Johnny Gee shook his head no. The kid dug into the vial and snorted another spoonful.

  Johnny Gee broke the balls, sinking two on the break.

  “Hey, the dude can shoot,” said the kid, sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  “You better fucking believe,” said Johnny Gee. He sank two more balls. He had dealt the occasional baggie of reefer over the years, but it saddened him that it had come to this. You hustled two-dollar games from punks who stood around and snorted coke right out in the open. He sank another ball and chuckled softly to himself. Just then, the phone rang. He put the cue down and answered it.

  “Yeah?” he said, lighting a cigarette.

  “It’s me, Johnny,” said a man’s deep voice.

  “How you doin’, my man? Where you callin’ from?”

  “Out on Route 49. I’m on my way into town. Listen, you gonna be free in a couple of hours?”

  “Yeah,” said Johnny Gee, turning to the wall so the kid couldn’t hear him. “What you got in mind?”

  “I want you to meet me at the diner in a couple hours, around six. I got something I want you to do.”

  “Like what kinda something?”

  “I want you to watch my back,” said the voice.

  “What for?”

  “I got to do a thing with some guys, you know.”

  “What kinda guys?” asked Johnny Gee, his curiosity piqued.

  “Local, from over to Hamilton County.”

  “What kinda thing?”

  “I owe some guys some money. I got to pay some guys what I owe them.”

  “Shouldn’t be any trouble. What you need me for?”

  “I just want to make sure everything goes right, you know?” said the voice without a note of nervousness. Businesslike. To the point.

  “Okay. Six. See you, my man,” said Johnny Gee.

  Sam Butterfield heard tires on the gravel drive and looked out his bedroom window. It was the hired hand in the pickup. He stepped from the pickup cab, tucked in his shirt, and disappeared into the barn. For a moment there, just a moment, the hired hand had looked like his father, coming home from a day in the fields. God, how his father had loved that land, and how he had hated to see his son planning to leave it.

  “What time do you have to catch the bus, Sam?” his mother asked from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Three o’clock, Ma. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Do you really have to be at Fort Campbell tomorrow, Sam? Can’t you stay a couple more days at home? I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you since you arrived from Germany. Can’t you spare your poor old mother another day?”

  “I’d really like to stay an extra day, Ma, but that’s what they told me. I’ve got to be there first thing Monday morning.”

  “Are you still planning to sell your race car today? You know it’s fine with me if it stays in the shed. It’s been a nice reminder of you around here.”

  Sam tried not to look at his mother’s face as he pushed the front door open and stepped outside. The same thing had happened when he left the last time he visited home. After his brother died, he had bec
ome, in effect, an only child, and he felt guilty all over again, going off and leaving her alone on the farm. He threw his duffel bag into the bed of the pickup and tossed the overnight bag through the window. His mother followed him outside and stood on the porch with her arms crossed.

  “I know it’s a pain,” said Sam, “but I’ve got to get down to Fort Campbell early to take delivery of the shipment of my stuff from Germany. It arrived earlier in the week at Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I’m supposed to meet the train tomorrow afternoon at five.”

  “I’m sure you do, Sam. But what about your car? Don’t you want me to keep it for you for old times’ sake?”

  Sam fixed his mother with the brightest smile he could muster.

  “I’m selling the modified at two o’clock to George Biderman. It’s time I finally passed it along, and George says he really wants it, and he’ll keep racing it. He’ll keep it on the track. That’s where it belongs. Out on the track. Do you think you could follow me over to George’s and give me a lift down to the bus depot?”

  His mother nodded her assent, turned wordlessly, and walked back inside. He thought he caught a glimpse of a tear in her eye, but he wasn’t sure. Jesus. Throwing out the collected debris of childhood just never got any easier. Parents always say they want you to grow up and go to college and leave home and become a success in your own right, but when it comes down to the details, you’re robbing them of everything but their memories, and it hurts, especially the fact that in the process, you become another person instead of a son.

  He walked back into the house and found his mother in the kitchen. She was standing by the sink, looking out across the barnyard. The low sun of autumn cast a soft light on her face, but even in its flattering glow she looked tired. He walked across the kitchen and put his arm around her and hugged her to his chest.