by Warren Esby
He did end up dropping me off just about dawn at the service station, and it was open and had a tow truck sitting there. The thirty-something looked me over as I told him my story and asked if he could get my Corolla and fix it. Get it yes, fix it no, was the answer. But he was fixin’ to go home and take the tow truck with him. He was on the night shift and his replacement was due to show up soon. When the replacement came in, he could get my car, but it would cost me because he would be off duty then. How much could I afford?
“Not much. I’m a student and don’t have much money.” When he saw my car he would understand.
He looked at me for a while as he thought. I looked pretty grungy. “Aw shit, I’ll help you. My wife’s on the day shift and won’t be home when I get there anyway, and I ain’t got nothin’ much to do this morning.” Just then an older man drove in and got out. The thirty-something said to him, “Jeb, this guy’s car broke down about thirty miles up the road and I’m goin’ to get it. Take over.”
I said, “Thanks,” and we got into the tow truck and headed east on the interstate. It was one of those tow trucks that had a big flatbed that tilted down and a winch on it to pull the car up onto it. After the tilt bed was raised back up, the car would sit on top of the flat bed.
“Where you from?” he asked.
“Boston.”
“Aw shit. If I’d a known that I would’ve said no,” he said and I didn’t think he was kidding.
“Where are you goin’?”
“San Diego.”
“Shit, from the snooty liberal east to California where all the beach bums live. Good thing you don’t look snooty, otherwise I wouldn’t a done it, but this is gonna cost you.”
“Thanks,” I said politely.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Alex.”
“Shit, you even have a girl’s name. And you’re from a real wimpy state. One of the most liberal I hear. Strict gun laws and all.”
“That’s all true, but I’m going west and leaving that behind,” I said trying to mollify him.
“San Diego isn’t part of the west. It’s La La land and you know it. And they’ve got strict gun laws, too.”
Then to try and see if I was as wimpy as he suspected and if I he could frighten me, he took a gun out of the storage area in the door and put it in his lap.
“Ever see one of these?”
Now to the untrained eye, it looked like an old western Colt six shooter with rubber grips. And I imagined he was both trying to scare me and see my reaction to a loaded weapon in the truck with us. I took a careful look and said,
“That looks like a Ruger Blackhawk with a 4 ¾ inch barrel. Must be a .357 magnum and it looks like you put some Hogue Monogrips on it.”
Well he just looked at me with his mouth open for almost a minute and finally said, “Well, well, well. Now I know you’re just funnin’ me. You ain’t from Boston.”
“I really am,” I said. And I could tell by the look on his face that he was starting to warm up to me and that he had probably been only half serious about acting like I was a wimp, but I wasn’t sure.
“So you’ve read somethin’ about guns, huh. Did you ever shoot one?”
“Yes.”
“Ever shoot a .357 magnum?”
“No,” I admitted. Ivor only liked .45s and .44 magnums and had taken me to an outdoor gun club he belonged to and had let me fire most of his guns, so I had shot calibers stronger than target .22s, but I didn’t tell him that. He seemed satisfied and said,
“I’m Ralph, by the way, but my friends call me Raffy.”
“What do you want me to call you?” I asked to see how much his attitude towards me had thawed.
“I’m tryin’ to decide. But I really hate being called Ralph,” he responded so I still didn’t know.
We got to the Corolla and it was still locked, but the inside didn’t look the same. For one thing, my suitcase and duffle bag were empty and the contents strewn all over the back seat. The back seat itself had been pulled up. There were no marks of forced entry on the doors and the car was still locked. It had obviously been a professional job. I opened the trunk and my sleeping bag had been slashed and the lining ripped out.
“Boy, you sure are a slob,” said Raffy.
“I didn’t do that. Someone did it after I left it here.”
“Uh huh.”
I could tell he didn’t believe me. “Why would I rip apart a perfectly good sleeping bag?”
“Why was your car still locked up?”
“Someone’s trying to be funny. I bet you could open this car without a key.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Yeah, I have a little tool that you can slip in between the glass and the door and pop it open if it’s one of the older models,” he begrudgingly admitted. “Let’s get that thing loaded,” he continued. Then he proceeded to quickly and expertly load the Corolla on the tow truck and we headed back to Flagstaff.
“There are lots of mean people around these days,” he said, “and they always pick on people like you who don’t have too much, don’t they?”
I didn’t answer.
“You know, I usually charge one price for easterners and another for locals, but I’m thinking I may cut you a break. You don’t look too prosperous to me being a student and all. But I hate givin’ someone from Boston a break.” He was quiet for a few minutes and then he said, “So you can really shoot a gun? You weren’t just bull shittin’ me.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you what. Let’s go do a little shootin’ on the way back into town. I was comin’ out this way this mornin’ anyway to do a little shootin’ since the old lady ain’t home and this’ll save me a trip. Can’t get your car fixed for a while anyway since it’s too early for the fella I’m gonna take you to who’ll fix your car. I just reloaded a bunch of new ammo for the Ruger and I wanted to try it out anyway. I’m bored after sittin’ in that damn office all night. We’ll see how good you are. If you can really shoot, I may give you a break. I may give you the local rate.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t have anything to lose.
At the next exit, he pulled off the highway and went down the road for a few miles and then took a dirt road and bounced a ways down it with the Corolla bouncing and swaying on top of the truck. He stopped and we got out. I noticed that there were a whole bunch of cactuses about twenty five yards from where we stopped. They were pretty big. He pointed to them and said,
“Think you can hit one of those babies?”
“Sure,” I said confidently. Twenty five yards was the distance I was used to competing at with small targets. A large cactus would be no problem.
He smiled and said, “Not the cactus, the little white flower that’s sittin’ and peekin’ its head out the top.”
I looked again. These were flowering Saguaros as I remembered from one of my biology classes. See I did have some knowledge about something other than rats that I had learned in school.
“Yep,” I said, almost as confidently since the flowers were about the same size as the black center of the standard NRA pistol target.
He pulled out the gun, held it out in front of him with a two hand hold and pulled the trigger. I didn’t have ear protection and that blast left my ears ringing. I could barely hear him as he said,
“This load’s pretty good. Not too hot, not too cold. I call it my mama bear load.” Then he lined it up on another cactus, pulled the trigger and another flower went flying into pieces. He then turned to me and handed me the gun. He had taken out the two closest targets, but there were two more in that bunch that had flowers and were only a short distance further out. “Here y’are Alex. Your turn.”
I took the gun, lined up the sights on one of the flowers, cocked back the hammer, took in a breath and let it out a little like Ivor had taught me and pulled the trigger. The little flower went flying. Without looking at Raffy, I quickly shifted over to the second and furthest flower and sent it flying as well.
>
“Nice load,” I said handing him back his gun and complimenting him at the same time.
“Well, well, well. What have we here? Maybe you ain’t as wimpy as you look. You seem to be able to handle a .357 all right. Ever shoot a .44 mag?”
“Yep.”
“Well, well, well,” he said again. Then smiled and said, “It’s easy to shoot at flowers, now. But have you ever killed somethin’ that’s alive? That’s a different story, ain’t it?”
I nodded.
“Ok,” he said. “I like this load, but there’s no need to burn up any more. These cost me about a quarter apiece to make, so let’s shoot some cheaper stuff and see how you do.”
I followed him back to the truck, got in, and he drove back to the main road and then even further out into the country to another dirt road. We went down that road about a mile and came to a sign and two posts with a metal gate across the road. A big sign said, Property of the United States Government. Wildlife Preserve. Keep Out. Authorized Personnel Only.
“We’re here,” Raffy said, and he drove off the road, around the barrier and back onto the road on the other side. We were in the desert and the land on either side of the road was just as flat and dry as the road itself and was almost indistinguishable from it. To have that barrier there was just a waste of taxpayer money. So what else is new?
Raffy drove another half mile and we topped out on a ridge. Below us, stretching out for a mile at least was an enormous prairie dog town, and you could see those little critters jumping up, sitting there and then going back down into their burrows. Raffy said,
“I like this place. It’s real isolated and no one ever comes out here so we’ll have the place to ourselves.”
We got down and he reached under the seat of his truck and took out a Marlin Model 60 .22 rifle with a scope on it. He walked over to the edge of the ridge carrying the towel the rifle had been wrapped up in along with the rifle itself and waved me over. He took the towel and laid it on a rock that was chest high and said, “This baby has fourteen rounds, seven for each of us. Whoever gets the most kills, the other buys breakfast.” He then rested the front of the rifle on the towel, sighted through the scope and let off the trigger and sent one of those prairie dogs flying like it was a cactus flower. He handed me the rifle and I sighted down the scope. The prairie dog has a white belly when he’s standing up and makes an easy target. When we ran out of bullets, we had each got five.
On the way back into town he turned to me and said, “Well I guess you ain’t no wimp after all. You’re gonna be the first easterner that gets the local rate, but you’re gonna pay for breakfast to make up for the cost of the ammo you shot up.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You know I’m real funny about certain people. It seems everyone comin’ through who has license plates from east of the Mississippi is just plain rude, unless they have southern plates on their cars. I can relate to most of those people too. But the others treat me as if I’m not worth talking to and practically ignore me if they can. But you can’t always tell. For example, last night, just before you got in, this guy that looked like a real easterner came in to gas up. He was a big guy with a round face and a big head of curly black hair. Drivin’ a black Buick Regal. He come in and asked for the restroom key. Didn’t even say please. I was about to say the rest room is broke like I do to easterners, and then I noticed the car had Colorado license plates on it so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. If he had another plate like, say, one from Illinois, I wouldn’t have. He would have had to shit in the desert before I’d a given him the key. But you’re okay even if you are an easterner. You can call me Raffy.” It was the ultimate compliment.
We stopped at a diner a few miles further down the road and had a meal of steak and eggs and hash browns and coffee almost as strong as you get in a Brandeis research laboratory. I was glad to pay. I left a good tip, but Raffy took part of it back before the waitress saw what I left and said to me,
“That’s the problem with you guys from back east. You have to show off even if you don’t have the money, and I can see you don’t have any by the looks of your car. Don’t go spoilin’ this place for me otherwise they’ll expect a bigger tip from me next time.”
While we were waiting for breakfast, Raffy had got on the phone and called Wyatt and Charlie. Wyatt was a mechanic who he thought might be ready to work by then and Charlie ran an auto parts store. When we finished breakfast, Raffy made me buy a couple of six packs of cold beer and drove his truck with my car on it to Wyatt’s. Wyatt ran a small car repair shop out of the garage behind his house, and Charlie showed up about the same time with the alternator that Raffy told him I needed based on the year and model of the Corolla. Raffy introduced me to both. He introduced Wyatt as Wyatt Earp and looked for my reaction. Well it turned out he was the great, great grandson or something of the real Wyatt Earp and he had a card to prove it. The card said J.R. “Wyatt” Earp so the Wyatt was only a nickname to honor his ancestor. I don’t know what the J.R. stood for. Maybe he was related to J.R. Ewing on his mother’s side, but I don’t think so. Flagstaff is a long way from Dallas. Anyway I still have his business card as a memento of that occasion.
Everyone sat around and drank a couple of beers to start the day. Raffy told them to ignore the license plate on the Corolla and then told them what we had done that morning.
“Yep. He almost outshot me.”
They both looked at me like they didn’t believe Raffy. Charlie had to get back to the auto parts store so I paid him for the alternator and he left. Raffy and I both stood around while Wyatt quickly and expertly switched out the alternator. When he finished he went back over to the little refrigerator in the back of his garage and came back with three more beers and we began to drink them as well. He told me what I owed him and I paid him gladly. It was a lot less than I expected.
“Did he really almost outshoot you?” asked Wyatt.
“Yup. He don’t look like it, but he’s okay. Hell, he’s probably packin’ heat and you’d never know it.”
“C’mon. He’s the last person I’d guess would be doin’ that. Everyone says only the criminals have guns in Masssachusetts and he looks too honest.”
“I bet he does,” said Raffy looking at me speculatively.
“Betcha twenty he ain’t.”
Raffy looked at me speculatively again and said, “Hmm,” and then looked at me again and I could see his eyes light up. I could see what he was thinking. He hadn’t told me yet what I owed him so he was thinking he had nothing to lose. He would just add the twenty to the price he would charge me for towing if he lost, and he might just make twenty extra if he was right.
“Bet!” he said and reached over to shake Wyatt’s hand. And then they both looked at me. I didn’t want to do it because I knew I was about to embarrass myself, but money talks and it was that or pay the extra twenty myself, so I took the little Beretta out of my pocket where it had been for the entire trip since I left Boston and held it in the palm of my hand.
“Aw shit. That don’t count,” Wyatt said. “That don’t even look real.”
Raffy took it out of my hand and looked at it. “It’s a Beretta. It’s real even if it doesn’t look like it. Pay up.” And Wyatt gave him one of the twenties I had just given him.
Raffy turned to me with a frown. “You really disappoint me, Alex. You still have a little of that Boston wimp in you even if you ain’t in Boston any more. My advice is to get you a real gun as soon as you get to California and throw this piece of shit into the Pacific Ocean.”
It was good advice, even if I didn’t take it in time. Raffy decided it was time to go home and told me what I owed him. I paid and thought to myself that if I ever broke down again, I hope it would be in Flagstaff. The local rate was very reasonable. He gave me his card and told him to look him up the next time I came through and we would do a little shootin’ but bring the .44 magnum when I came. I gave him my cell phone number, and I took his. He told me h
e never wanted to see me carrying that little Beretta again. I was just too embarrassing to be seen with. I said goodbye and shook his hand. He patted me on the back before he left.
I decided I’d better find somewhere to sleep for a while since I had little sleep the night before and had just drunk three beers. I asked Wyatt if he could recommend a cheap motel so I could sack out for a few hours. He said how about the couch in his living room. I gratefully accepted and was asleep within minutes and didn’t wake up until dinnertime. It turned out that Wyatt’s wife was a nurse and worked one of those shifts that required her to work twelve hours every other day rather than a regular five day forty hours a week shift. She wouldn’t be home until nine that night. I offered to take him out for dinner to make up for the twenty he had lost on me and he accepted. We had a good meal and talked small talk. I asked him how long he and Raffy had been friends. He said since childhood. Their mothers had been friends. I asked him out of curiosity how Raffy had got his nickname. He said when Ralph was little, his parents called him Ralphy, but Ralph could never pronounce it for the longest time. He kept referring to himself as Raffy and it had stuck. So in fact Raffy’s name was just baby talk. And he had complained about my name. I finally said goodbye and hit the road again. I planned to drive all night through the desert and not take a chance on the Corolla overheating or having a radiator hose break because of the desert heat.
