Rules of the Road

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “How many Ramada Inns you been in, Frankie?” the second man asks the first. “How many Ramada Inns are there? A thousand? A million?”

  “Shut up,” says the tall man. He puts the briefcase down on the table and collapses into a bucket chair.

  “You want me to get some ice?” asks the second man, his back to the camera.

  Frankie rubs his face and leans his head back until he is looking at the ceiling.

  “Get some ice, Leo,” says the big man called Frankie. “Then get the bottle out of the trunk, Leo. You forgot the bottle again, Leo. How many Ramada Inns are you going to forget the bottle in, Leo? Ask yourself that question on your way out the door.”

  Sound of a door opening and closing. Frankie stands up and walks into the bathroom. Sound of water running. Sound of a door closing. Sound of a toilet flushing. Sound of door opening. Frankie reappears, sits down in the bucket chair again. Head back. Eyes closed.

  Leo seated on bed, reading a newspaper. Frankie in the bucket chair, one hand on a drink, the other arm thrown across his eyes in a gesture of fatigue.

  Sound of someone knocking at the door. Leo gets up. Two men appear.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” says the first man. Frankie in bucket chair gets heavily to his feet, rounds table, grasps hand of first man, then the other.

  “Sit down. Have a drink,” he says with authority. “Leo. Bring me a couple glasses.” Leo disappears into the bathroom, reappears with glasses.

  “Sheriff, how are you doing?” asks Frankie.

  “I think I want a drink,” says the smaller man. He is gray-haired, and coiffed in the blow-dry manner. Nattily dressed.

  The other man is younger, taller, and defers to the small man.

  Frankie pours two drinks. Ice cubes make splashing noises when they’re dropped into the glasses. The three men lift glasses and toast.

  “To, ah, prosperity,” says Frankie.

  “I’ll second that,” says the gray-haired man.

  “We’ve got a few questions,” says the gray-haired man.

  “I’ve got all the answers you need right here,” says Frankie, patting the briefcase at the side of his chair.

  There is a silence. The three men sip their drinks.

  “Is it like you said?” asks the gray-haired man.

  “Exactly like I said,” says Frankie.

  “Then that answers our question,” says the gray-haired man.

  Frankie picks up the briefcase and pushes it across the table to the gray-haired man. He opens it. Cash can be seen inside the briefcase. He turns to the younger man and nods. Closes the briefcase. The two men stand. Frankie rises to his feet. The three shake hands wordlessly.

  “Show our friends to the door, Leo,” says Frankie.

  Sound of door opening, they disappear off camera, sound of door closing.

  “Get the rest of the stuff out of the trunk, Leo,” says Frankie.

  The door opens and closes again, and the screen goes blank.

  The poodles sat on the floor, staring at the pale gray screen.

  “Hey, dude. What is this show? Some kind of new series?”

  Johnny Gee punched eject. The VCR spat forth the videotape.

  “Yeah. It’s some outtakes a friend gave me,” said Johnny Gee. “From a miniseries. It’ll be on around Christmas.” He looked around for Sam.

  “We’ve got to go. Thanks a lot, man. Watch for it. It’s called ‘Two On A String.’ You’ll love it.”

  “Hey. Anytime, dude,” said the proprietor.

  Sam headed out the door. Johnny Gee followed.

  “That was some kinda surveillance tape. They’re all surveillance tapes,” Sam said.

  “Who are the guys on the tape? Do you have any idea?”

  “Those first two guys? Leo and Frankie? I’ve never heard of ’em. Never seen ’em. The gray-haired guy who took the dough is the sheriff from up in Franklin County. Guy called O’Brien. Had a run-in with him a few years back.”

  “Who’s the other guy?”

  “How should I know? Some two-bit politician on the make, looks to me. Slick-lookin’ bastard, wasn’t he?”

  “But … whose surveillance tapes are they? And what the hell were they doing in this car?” asked Sam. He looked over at Johnny Gee, and saw him in a new way. He wasn’t shucking and jiving now. Sam found himself believing him for the first time all night.

  “Don’t know. First we got to have a look at the rest of these tapes. We find out who’s the producer of this little miniseries, we’ll know who they belong to. Or who they used to belong to.”

  THEY PULLED OUT of the minimall, took a quick left, drove down a side street, and picked up the main road on the other side of town. The Caddy clipped along at a respectful sixty miles per hour. No sense in attracting unwanted attention.

  Sam’s fingers were numb, attached to the wheel like claws. He had a slight twitch at the corners of his mouth. Nothing he had learned in his years in the army had prepared him for this.

  He was lost, cut off from familiar roadways both physical and moral. What was he doing? Why did those men back there try to kill him? What were those videotapes all about?

  What in hell was going on?

  This much he knew:

  The whole thing was about the videotapes. Maybe the thing to do was get the tapes to the police, explain to them what had happened back at the diner and when those men shot at him and tried to force him off the road, how he’d found the tapes in the trunk under the spare tire … explain the whole damn mess and be done with it and get on down to Fort Campbell and the comfortable, familiar surroundings of the United States Army. Yeah, that’s what he’d do.

  Sam relaxed and studied the road up ahead. It was a smooth blacktop with dirt shoulders. One long, loping curve eased into another, skirting the edges of gently rounded hills. They were still deep in farm country. He turned the wheel, leaning the big car into another right hand curve. Suddenly, the front end broke loose. The wheel jerked wildly in his hands. He took his foot off the gas, slowing the car to thirty-five miles an hour, then thirty. At twenty-five, the Caddy came back under control.

  “The front end is gone,” he said. “We must have cracked a control arm. We drive much more than ten, fifteen miles, we’re going to lose a wheel, and put this thing in the trees.”

  “How far you think we could make at this speed? It ain’t shakin’ like it was.”

  “We’re taking a chance just driving this thing,” said Sam. “I don’t know how long it’ll hold together.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I know a guy. He can’t be more than twenty miles from here. Dave Spicer. He owns a gas station. He’s got exactly what we need.”

  “Yeah, and we might be able to take a look at the rest of these tapes while we’re at his place. We got to figure out where we stand with this shit. Know what I mean?”

  “Sort of.” Sam grew wary. “Spicer’s a friend, but … I’m not sure I want him involved. We’re the ones in trouble. If we show him the tapes, we’ll be pulling him in on top of us. He doesn’t need this.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t need it neither, but we got it. I just thought if he’s got a VCR, we could use it, that’s all.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Hey, man, don’t get so uptight about it. Whatever you say, goes, okay? Look. You and me are different, see? We just got to deal with that. You’re what? Major in the army? That right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Major. That sounds real official.” A smile crossed the face of Johnny Gee. “You mind if I call you Major, Major?”

  “It’s okay by me. That’s what I am.”

  “I never met an officer before. I like that.”

  “There are worse things to be, I guess.”

  “You got that right. Do you know where you’re goin’? I mean, where this guy Spicer’s station is?”

  “We just keep on the road. There’s
a turn we make up ahead. I’ll show you.”

  “Which way?”

  “Left.”

  “Which way are we headin’?”

  “West.”

  “Hey, you pay attention, don’t you, Major?”

  “You bet I do.”

  “I thought you were gonna say, ‘That’s what they pay me for.’ That woulda worked.”

  “If we don’t get out of this mess pretty quickly, I’m never going to get paid another dime as a major or anything else.”

  The big car wound its way around another bend, a cold wind whistling at the windows. Sam let it drift up above thirty miles per hour, and the front end started to shimmy again. He slowed it down.

  “You don’t like to drive this big s.o.b. slow, huh?” asked Johnny Gee.

  “Not this slow.”

  “You ever think how much a car’s like a woman, man?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. They both got hard outsides and soft insides, and every other day you got to spend money on ’em. And both of ’em is considered used after you’ve had ’em one day.”

  “I guess I’ve never made that particular comparison, myself.” Sam glanced at Johnny Gee. He was grinning to himself in the dark. What would this guy come up with next?

  “You got a wife, man?”

  “I used to. It was a while ago.” Sam studied the road for a moment.

  “Tell me something. What are you getting at?”

  “Nothin’. I’m not gettin’ at nothin’. Just passin’ the time, Major.”

  The car’s front end started to shimmy again. Sam took his foot off the gas and brought it back under control. “What the hell got you asking about my ex-wife, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Cars. Yeah. That was it.”

  “What about you? Have you got a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t have girlfriends, I have habits,” said Johnny Gee.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I gamble, I shoot pool for money, I drink, I smoke, I bet on horse races. Habits don’t argue with you. Habits don’t fight with you. You don’t have to wait for habits to get in the mood. All habits do is cost you, and they usually cost a hell of a lot less than women.”

  “That’s the rankest piece of self-serving nonsense I’ve ever heard. You ought to write that down so you’ll remember it.”

  Sam pulled the car up to two aging gas pumps.

  “Looks like it’s been closed for years,” said Johnny Gee. “How long since you been here?”

  “It’s been a while, I guess. Not since I use to race the dirt tracks around here. Ten years. Maybe more.”

  Sam hit the horn a short blast. A face appeared in a window. The door to the darkened station opened. A thin man wearing a gray fedora stepped out. His shoes had pointed toes, and they shone in the headlights of the car. He looked so much like Johnny Gee, he could have been his brother.

  “Hey. Is Dave Spicer here?” Sam called out the car window.

  “Who wants to know?” asked the slight figure in a hoarse voice. His eyes were hidden beneath the brim of the fedora, and the tip of a cigar glowed in the darkness at the corner of his mouth.

  “Sam Butterfield. We used to race together.”

  “He ain’t here yet. Come back in an hour.” The slight figure retreated into the darkened gas station, which went back to looking as if it were closed for business.

  “What was that all about, man? He didn’t look like any pump jockey I’ve ever seen.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. He must be a friend of Spicer’s.”

  “I don’t like this, man. Maybe we ought to go someplace else.”

  “Calm yourself, Johnny. Trust me.”

  Sam put the car in gear and drove through the small town, which looked to be in the same shape the gas station was in: darkened, shuttered storefronts, no streetlights, littered gutters, sidewalks cracked and overgrown with weeds. Even the town’s lone traffic light was turned off.

  “This place has seen better days,” Sam said, as he slowed to a stop at an intersection. The stop sign listed at a forty-five degree angle, and was half obscured by a fallen tree limb.

  “You’ve been away too long, man. Farming ain’t what it used to be in these parts,” said Johnny Gee. “I used to collect around these parts a year ago. No more. Ain’t nobody around here got five dollars to bet on a football game this weekend … any other weekend for that matter.”

  Sam pulled into a dirt lot next to a crumbling building on the edge of town. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never find it. No sign. No neon, not even a beer logo in a window. In fact, no windows. The bar was a flat-roofed cinderblock bunker set back from the road about fifty feet. The only hint that the place was open for business was the presence of a couple of pickups and a late sixties Camaro with a jacked-up rear end and fat tires.

  Inside, a row of naugahyde booths lined one wall. A juke box was playing Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home A-drinkin’ With Lovin’ On Your Mind,” a piece of advice being actively ignored by the half-dozen men standing at the bar and gathered around the lone pool table in the center of the room.

  The bartender was a man in his fifties who looked as if he were missing one tooth for every year he’d been pouring drinks. He smiled, exposing a wide expanse of gum. He’d been pouring for quite a while.

  “What’ll ya have?” he asked.

  Johnny Gee leaned close to Sam’s ear.

  “You got any money?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Lend me a quick five,” said Johnny Gee, his eyes sparkling. He looked like a man who had been on the road a long time and had finally walked in his own front door and was home.

  “In addition to everything else, you’re broke?” Sam asked incredulously.

  “Shh,” hissed Johnny Gee between his teeth. “Just pony up the five. I know what I’m doin’.”

  Sam dug into his wallet and handed over a five. Johnny Gee slapped the bill on the bar and ordered two beers. The bartender fished two long-necked Buds out of a slide-top cooler and opened them. He removed the five and replaced it with three ones. Johnny Gee took a sip of beer, palmed one of the bills, and sauntered over to the pool table. He placed the bill on the end of the table and raised his beer in a mock toast.

  “May the best man win this game, ’cause I’ve got the winner,” he said with a smile.

  “Has Dave Spicer been in?” Sam asked the bartender.

  “Ain’t seen him.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sam leaned against the bar. He took quick, nervous sips of beer. He was many miles from Fort Campbell and in more trouble than he cared to contemplate. And he was watching a stranger wearing a ludicrous shiny suit prepare to play pool with another stranger in a seedy bar on the edge of some godforsaken little burg. It came over him suddenly, a wave of lonesomeness and homesickness and fright. He felt dizzy and sat down on a bar stool. He looked down at his hand. He was holding the beer bottle so tightly, his knuckles were white. He took a last swig of beer, put the bottle down and looked around. At the end of the bar, there was a narrow hall leading to the restrooms. He could just barely make out a pay phone on the wall at the end of the hall in the darkness.

  “What kinda rules you play by here … call the eight ball, bank the eight ball, what?” asked Johnny Gee. He was chalking a cue stick and taking a practiced look at the fresh rack of balls. He looked as if he had been standing there for twenty years. His opponent broke the rack and sank the five ball, then missed. Johnny Gee moved into position with a grace that surprised Sam. The cue stick seemed a natural extension of his arm, and he stroked the ball softly, like a caress. He sank two, and missed the fifteen. He stepped back from the table and lit a cigarette. His eyes were fixed on the table, unswerving. He kept up a fluid, witty patter, but nothing broke his concentration. Nothing.

  Sam meandered across the room in the direction of the hallway. As he passed the pool table, Johnny Gee caught his eye
.

  “Put a buck on the table, take the next game, man,” he said, chalking his cue stick.

  “No thanks,” said Sam. He kept walking.

  “Where you goin’?” asked Johnny Gee.

  “Bathroom,” Sam replied, turning his head. “You go ahead and play. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Sam reached the pay phone and dropped a quarter. He dialed zero and a phone number. The operator came on the line. “Collect from Sam Butterfield,” he said, turning his back to the room. It was dark at the end of the hall, but he could see that the wall had been used as a makeshift phone book over the years. It was covered with numbers. Over the phone, in large magic marker letters, was written, “Frankie: call your wife.” Next to it: “I did. Last Wednesday.”

  His mother answered: “Yes, of course I’ll accept the charges.”

  “It’s me, Ma.”

  “Where are you, Sam? Are you in Fort Campbell yet?” His mother’s voice came over the line like a soothing, reassuring balm, wiping away the homesickness and fear he had felt just a moment ago.

  “I’m not at Campbell yet,” Sam said. “In fact, I’m not sure where I am.”

  “What do you mean by that, Sam?”

  “Well, I’m in a little town down in Harris County, right near one of the tracks where I used to race. But I don’t know what the name of it is.”

  “How did you get way down there?”

  “I don’t know where to start … at the diner, or when we blew the tire,” said Sam.

  “Start at the beginning and take your time, Sam,” said his mother. And he did. He told her everything, from the fight in the alley to the wreck on the highway to the tapes. When he was finished, he heard her take a deep breath before she spoke.

  “Where did you say you were again?”

  “Jerome,” he said. “I remember the name now. There’s a dirt track not far from here. I ran in couple of races years ago.”

  “What do you think is going to happen, Sam?”