Vanilla Ride

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “I can tell you this,” the Mummy said. “We’re tired of hanging out in this shit hole. We want to go home, be warm, not have to hang around with Hirem. You hear me?”

  “If you’ll reinforce your words with sign language,” Leonard said, “we might get a clear message.”

  The Mummy shot Leonard the finger.

  “There,” Leonard said. “I understand that. See, I get you now.”

  “Make it quick,” the Mummy said and walked back toward the cabin.

  In the van, driving away, I said, “From one cockroach to another, I don’t think the Mummy likes you very much.”

  “I think it’s because I beat his ass.”

  “Think?” I said.

  “Uh-huh. You know, odd how the Mummy and his buddy think we ought to believe them just because they’re from the government.”

  “It’s like religion,” I said. “You accept it on faith.”

  “Well, that’s stupid.”

  “I said it was like religion, didn’t I?”

  “Oh yeah, so you did. What you think about that Conners guy?”

  “I think he doesn’t get out of this business unscathed,” I said.

  Leonard nodded. “I was thinking pretty much the same thing, and I’ve put him on the list.”

  “Okay, but put a couple of stars by his name,” I said.

  31

  Hadn’t gone far before we stopped and switched the license plates, hid the ones we had used under the floorboards again, then drove back to McDonald’s. When we came in, the table where Jim Bob and Tonto were sitting was piled high with food bags and drink cups.

  “So,” Jim Bob said, “you’re back and hopefully without bullet holes or the clap.”

  “Yep,” I said.

  We ordered some food for ourselves, then slid into the booth and told them what we had been told.

  Tonto said, “That’s pretty thin, that the kid went fishing some spot where he went when he was little. That’s damn thin.”

  “He took fishing rods,” I said.

  “That makes it absolute,” Tonto said. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place? You know, he could be jackin’ with the old man, ’cause he thought Dad would come after him because of the girl, and of course the money, and maybe he’s just wanting the old man to show him how much he cares.”

  “He’s nineteen,” I said, “and I don’t think he’s that smart. Anyone who would steal that much money from a bunch of cutthroats and know they’re cutthroats can’t be all that bright.”

  “Naive, anyway,” Leonard said.

  “My goodness,” Jim Bob said. “Was that a positive comment on a member of the human race? What in the world have you been drinking, Leonard?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Leonard said. “That was oddly optimistic. I’m giving up Dr Pep … I’m giving up Diet Coke as of this moment.”

  “You don’t drink Diet Coke,” I said.

  “See how it’s working?” Leonard said.

  I said, “Thing is, it’s what we got, and the way I figure it, Hirem knows his son, or at least thinks he does. Most sons in one way or another want to please their fathers, or at least capture some good moment in time they had with them.”

  “Speaking from experience?” Jim Bob said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I am.”

  “I don’t have those feelings,” Tonto said. “If I went somewhere and was waiting on my father to find me, waiting on him to care or even miss me, I’d have been waiting one long goddamn time.”

  “You’re the one said that might be what he’s doing,” Jim Bob said. “So maybe you know more about this kind of thing than you think.”

  “Maybe,” Tonto said. “Guess I’m not all that big on parents of any stripe.”

  “It’s not always that way,” Jim Bob said. “There are even parents who like their kids. Mine liked me, in spite of myself.”

  “Way I look at it, between the pussy and the asshole is no-man’ s-land,” Tonto said. “You either come out a baby or a turd, and I think I came out of the wrong hole. Nobody much cared I was around.”

  “Who lives in No Man’s Land?” Leonard said.

  “I’m uncertain,” Tonto said. “It wasn’t a very good example.”

  “All right,” I said, “all turds aside, here it is again. It’s what we got, and that’s why we check it out. They’re there, we bring them home if we have to tie them up and toss them in the back of the van. Or at least the boy, and more importantly, the money. I think they get the money back, lots of feelings are gonna be less hurt.”

  “I been thinking about that,” Tonto said, sipping a soft drink through a straw, then pausing as if he were seeing something far away. “What say we find the money and split it and go home?”

  “That wouldn’t help mine and Leonard’s situation any.”

  “No,” Tonto said, “it wouldn’t. But it would help our billfolds big-time. Split four ways, that’s not so bad. And there’s also this: the boy and the girl, they could end up dead. They end up that way and no one knows me and Jim Bob was in with you, we can just say, hey, the bad guys, they got there first and all the money was gone. They must have got it back.”

  “That still wouldn’t help us,” I said, “and I wouldn’t do that. You don’t know me, Tonto, but I wouldn’t do that. Neither would Leonard.”

  “Absolutely not,” Leonard said.

  “I know that,” Tonto said. “Hell, I know that, but it’s something I could do, and I had to try it out, see how it fit.”

  “It doesn’t fit,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t do that either,” Jim Bob said. “Maybe we aren’t exactly on the same team after all, and we are not self-righteous cocksuckers together.”

  “That was changed to sonsabitches,” Leonard said. “Remember, we established that.”

  “In fact we did,” Jim Bob said.

  “I’m not as pure as you guys,” Tonto said. “I’m here because I owe Marvin Hanson a favor.”

  “Doing it that way wouldn’t be much of a favor,” I said.

  “No,” Tonto said, “it wouldn’t. Forget I brought it up.”

  32

  Doing something like we were doing can make a man paranoid. I thought I saw the same car two or three times that day, and wondered if it had followed us out of LaBorde, wondered if it had followed us to the McDonald’s, and then followed Leonard and me on out to the cabin in the woods and back again. I thought about that a lot, then decided I was starting to see things. The car was an old brown Ford, and I had seen a lot of them that day, and when I finally started noticing the drivers, I realized they were all different, and the Fords were all over the place, and that was a popular color that year for that make and model.

  When I told the boys about it, Tonto said, “I been followed by the best, and I always knew they were there. I been watchin’ too, and I’ve seen some brown Fords. I’ve also seen some green Chevys and all manner of cars, but I haven’t seen anyone I thought was following us.”

  “You ever been wrong about being followed?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Tonto said.

  “Could there be a first time?”

  “Unlikely,” he said.

  “I ain’t someone easily followed either,” Jim Bob said, “but then again, I haven’t been paying any attention.”

  “Then you can be easily followed,” I said.

  “Not when I don’t want to be. Being followed wasn’t something I expected or was looking out for. I was too busy daydreaming about what I’m gonna be when I grow up, and I was countin’ on your guys. If we’re being followed, then you sonofabitches have let me down.”

  “Whatever it is you’re gonna be when you grow up,” Leonard said, “I hope it pays better than this.”

  “Me too,” Jim Bob said.

  When we neared Lake O’ the Pines, I convinced the others we ought to pull in somewhere for the night and get some rest and make sure we weren’t being followed, make sure it was just my paranoia, and that tomorr
ow we could check out the cabins by the lake.

  Just outside Lake O’ the Pines the woods grew thicker and we could see dark water between the trees and on the water were spots that looked like blue oil slicks and the sun made parts of it shine like a mirror. In the woods were lots of vines and moss, and they were twisted up thick as Brer Rabbit’s briar patch, and in some spots the water had run out of the woods and onto the road and we had to splash our tires through it. We found some old-fashioned cabins not far from a dark patch of deep woods and a big worn-out peeling sign with a fat preacher on it holding a Bible and pointing his finger in the air. The sign said: JESUS IS COMING. I thought he ought to hurry some, because it had already been over two thousand years.

  The place we came to is called a motel these days, but once upon a time they were called tourist courts, and the original ones, of which this was a survivor, were small and simple and close together. This one was a row of brown-red buildings that were starting to strip paint and shed shingles.

  Leonard and I rented a room from a guy that seemed surprised to see us, or most anyone for that matter. He was a bald little guy seated on a tall stool behind a counter, and there was a little brown and white dog sitting on the floor by the stool. The bald guy looked us in the eye and the dog looked up at us, its mouth wadded up, as if it was angry or missing teeth.

  Tonto and Jim Bob rented a room too, all of it paid for with Marvin’s money. He had given us a thousand dollars, and anything over that Leonard and I had vowed to pay, which meant we were trying to keep it cheap and keep it real.

  The tourist court was cheap and the rooms were small. There were two narrow beds with worn bedcovers and a desk with a mirror and two chairs and a little TV on a wall mount. It didn’t have a remote so you had to change channels by hand and all it got was three stations and some static. There was dust on the windowsills and the tub in the bathroom had a creaky-looking shower; there was a rim around the drain in the tub that was either rust or dried blood from when the last depressed occupant had slashed their wrists. Home Sweet Home.

  The room Tonto and Jim Bob got was next door to us and it was the same as ours, except they had a microwave that didn’t work and the inside of it housed the remains of an exploded burrito. We visited with them briefly and left.

  In our room I peeled back the dusty curtains and looked out the window to see if I saw a brown Ford, but I didn’t see one. I watched the old cracked highway from the window for a while. A lot of cars went by. Some were Fords, but none of them were brown.

  “Hap,” Leonard called from the bathroom, “will you come hold my dick while I pee?”

  “Go to hell, Leonard.”

  “Will you wipe my ass? I’m tired.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I’m gonna shower. Will you come wash my back?”

  “Die,” I said.

  I kept looking out the window all the while the shower was running, and I kept getting the same non-results. I gave it up and sat on the bed and got the paperback Western novel out of my bag and put one of my guns next to me and read for a while. When Leonard finished his shower, I took one. There was no soap and no shampoo and the water was almost hot.

  We dressed and joined up with our pals next door, and with directions from the bald guy behind the tourist court counter, we drove a few miles to a small town and a little cafe that was doing brisk business. The waitress was slightly overweight but cute. She walked like she had just had horseshoes removed. She gave us a booth with a table that was still sticky from having just been wiped. We sat with our hands in our laps while it dried, waiting on the menus she forgot to give us.

  When the menus came we studied them and got coffee first. I said, “Way I figure it, instead of a whole pack of us going to look at the cabins where Hirem said his son was, me and Leonard will go, and call you when we need you.”

  “You need us,” Tonto said, “you won’t have time to call.”

  “If you’re right,” I said, “and no one’s following us, we’ll be fine because we’re not up against anything but two kids and some fishing rods and about three hundred thousand dollars, minus pay for some gas and a meal or two.”

  “I could be wrong, though,” Tonto said. “Been having a feeling things aren’t right.”

  “What’s it based on?” Jim Bob said.

  “My gut,” Tonto said.

  “I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” Jim Bob said. “I believe you feel that way, it’s because you’ve noticed something, something that hasn’t registered consciously but it’s there. Something has struck you. Seen something, thought someone didn’t look right. It may have been on some deeper level, but you know something because there’s something to know—or you’re just fucking paranoid.”

  “That’s a lot of somethings,” Tonto said.

  “Doing this kind of work can make you paranoid,” I said.

  “I believe in premonitions,” Tonto said, “and I believe in my gut. My gut’s telling me this isn’t going to be a cakewalk, and that it’s going to turn ugly, and that we’re already into it and we don’t know it yet.”

  “My brown Ford,” I said.

  “Haven’t seen any brown Ford,” Tonto said. “I tell you simple, it’s my gut telling me things.”

  “Right now,” Leonard said, “my gut is telling me I’m going to order some fried chicken and some mashed potatoes with gravy, and maybe afterward, a slice of some kind of pie. And then, if I’m feeling really rowdy, I might wipe my hands on my pants.”

  “You are such a tough guy,” I said.

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  33

  On the way back to the tourist courts, Tonto stopped and got a six-pack of beer and Jim Bob bought some Jack Daniel’s. Leonard bought a bottle of malt liquor, to keep up stereotypes, he said, and I bought a six-pack of Diet Coke and a peanut pattie, also to keep up stereotypes. I almost got an RC to go with it. That would have been even more perfect. Maybe a couple of MoonPies too.

  In Tonto and Jim Bob’s room, we all drank our poison and talked. After three beers, Tonto began to talk. It just sort of flowed out of him like sweet maple sap in the springtime.

  “You know, I grew up in Louisiana, not really all that far from here,” he said.

  “No shit?” Jim Bob said.

  “No shit,” Tonto said. “My dad, he worked offshore on an oil rig, and one time there was a big storm. They say it was so big the waves climbed up high enough to look like the walls of the world. That’s what the survivors said. See, they were supposed to have a helicopter fly them out, ’cause they got word of the storm, but the helicopter got delayed, and then when it finally got out to the rig, the storm was swirling up the sea and swallowing up that big rig like it was made of pipe cleaners and a whore’s best wishes. My dad, he went down with all that steel. They never found his body, so I guess it’s still down there, or is all ate up from the fishes and such. I think about him nonetheless, and here’s the thing. I didn’t even like him.

  “When he wasn’t beating me he was calling me stupid, and this went along with what they called me at school, and that’s where they started calling me Tonto, on account of I look like I’m an Indian.”

  “You’re not?” Leonard said.

  “Nope. Greek. Full-blood. But they called me that so much I started going by it. Got so it didn’t hurt if it was my name. See what I’m saying? You can’t call me a thing and make it bad if that’s the name I got. So, in time, that’s what everyone knew me by, and soon enough my real name was forgotten. I even almost forgot. My dad was dead, that left me with my stepmom and some nuns at school, and I want to tell you now, I got the Lord beat into me and he’s in my skin and in my blood and down in my bones. I love the Lord and I disobey him every day. My stepmother, she was lonely like, and I was a pretty big boy, and pretty soon she’s greasing my weasel, and my little brother finds out, and then it gets around to the nuns at school, because my brother, Jimmy, he’s jealous, ’cause my stepmom, Trish, she’s a
looker, and he’s wanting to get him some of that too. She was that kind of woman, went around the house half naked. She was askin’ for it, and I gave her what she was askin’, and at the time it seemed like pretty good stuff. Now, all these years later, I feel dirty about the whole thing, but you see, it was like I was fucking what my father fucked, and I was showing him, even if the old bastard was turning round and round at the bottom of the sea. Showing him I could take his piece of tail and be as good or better than him. That fucking asshole beat me with a big leather belt that he kept hung on a nail by the door. He hit us, me and my little brother, with it so much that when it was laid across the nail it hung flat. It was damn near worn out from slapping ass.

  “When I got into Trish I told myself I was a man from then on and wasn’t nobody going to use a belt on me. No one was going to lay a hand on me. And then one morning I got up and she was gone and I never saw her again. I took to doing push-ups, by the hours. I got so I could do hundreds, and I got stronger and I grew bigger, able to bend a tire iron over my thigh. You don’t believe that, I can show you.”

  “I’ll take you at your word,” Jim Bob said.

  “Not me,” Leonard said. “I want to see it.”

  “Later,” Tonto said, and took a deep drink of beer and crushed the can. “One day my brother, Jimmy, he run off because the nuns were rapping his knuckles and a whole bunch of people at school were calling him names, and like I said, it was known at school about me and Trish, and I was getting called stuff too. Guess Jimmy couldn’t take it no more. I never did see Jimmy again, at least I don’t know for a fact if I did, though one time in the Houston airport I saw a fellow I thought was Jimmy. He was with a woman and a baby. I studied him for a long time, and he looked over at me a time or two, and I got this feeling he knew me and that it was Jimmy. But I just walked on by and never knew for sure, and didn’t want to. Not really. I had gotten used to him being gone and not having a brother. I liked it that way.