Ricky, that was good. Flora's mom makes some powerful tamales poblanos.
They stood together and Flora came over and hugged Lianne and winked at Ricky.
Good to see you again, Ricky.
Hey, see you later, Flora. Thanks.
Anytime.
Under cover of the night, Lianne and Ricky walked the two miles to her house in a neighborhood not too far from the school. She went inside and Ricky waited by the garage door, watching a cat standing near a bougainvillea along the side of the house. The moon was a quarter crescent smudged almost at the horizon and dimmed by the spreading night lights of Orlando in the distance. Lianne came down with a backpack and the keys to her 1997 Ford Escort with its four bald tires and wobbly gearshift. She had her license since last May, and in the summer she and Ricky had driven up and down the coast looking for surfing breaks. They'd dreamed of driving to California and hitting the Malibu beach and surfing until they couldn't think any more. Back then it had been an escape vehicle; and although they were escaping now, it didn't feel the same as the dreams of California.
You drive, said Ricky. I'll take over in a couple of hours.
Ricky, I've got twenty dollars. What about gas?
We'll figure it out. Just get going. I'm going to lie down in the back seat and sleep. Head north, but avoid 95.
Gainesville?
Sounds good.
Don't think we'll make it.
We'll make it.
I left a note for Daddy.
That's good. He'll understand.
Yes, he will.
Lianne's father was a firefighter for the town of Deltona, a good-natured, heavy-set guy with a drinking problem. Her mother had left them when she was just five and was somewhere out West if she was still alive. Lianne hadn't heard from her in a couple of years. Ricky thought of the different ways people had of leaving, as if coming back was ever an option. By the time you came back, nothing was the same.
As she drove out of town, onto route 91 and then 75, which went through Ocala and the central Florida swamps, Ricky slept fitfully in the back seat. When he awoke, it was somewhere just outside of Cordele, Georgia. The night just beyond the front windshield and the gas station lights had a thicker, less expressive nature. Lianne was inside paying with the twenty, and the two gas pumps were unmanned. Ricky got out of the car and went looking for the restroom, clutching the Wal-Mart bag.
Are you going to tell me what's in that bag, Ricky?
Just that it's for my mother.
All right. Put it here in the backpack. You drive. We're good for another 200 miles. After that, I don't know what we're going to do.
We'll figure it out.
Ricky got behind the wheel and started the car. Lianne played with the radio, scanning for something.
You listening for your mother?
I keep thinking I'll hear her voice. She always wanted to be on the radio. She loved Waylon Jennings and Willy Nelson and Wyatt Beaudry.
Anybody with a W.
I'm serious. She's out there somewhere.
And what'll you do when you find her?
Tell her I forgive her.
That's easy.
That's right. Don't need to over think it, Ricky.
You're right. That's what my Dad always says. It's like surfing. Just watch the pattern and catch the waves.
He pointed the car forward and the road carried them into the blackest part of the night. By the side of the road, old farmhouses slept and fog rose from the bottomland fields, ploughed dry of corn.
Twelve—The Bruze Brothers
A few driving hours later, Ricky felt his eyes closing for good. He exited the highway and pulled over just beyond an overpass in the parking lot of a farm store. They were somewhere outside of McDonough. Lianne was already sleeping in the backseat. Ricky rolled down the window, breathed in the air of the darkness, and fell into a fitful sleep. When he opened his eyes, the horizon was lightening. He tried starting the car, but it was dead. He popped the hood and examined the cables and checked the oil. There was nothing obvious. He sat back in the front seat and tried the lights. There was no juice. Something was dead. He informed Lianne that the car was kaput.
Let's go, Lianne. We'll walk into town and get some breakfast.
Okay, she said cheerily. Let's get all our stuff out. We'll lock it up and come back for it when we get some help.
Yeah. Somebody might help us figure out what's wrong with it. And then we can write an IOU or something for it.
Yeah, or maybe we can go to the mall and try to get somebody to have sex with me.
You're crazy.
Why not? It's easy money.
Yeah, right.
You have any better ideas?
Shoplifting.
Oh, that's more ethical.
Hell, yeah. Than sleeping with strangers?
They walked into the town past a furniture store and a NAPA Auto Parts. It wasn't cold, but Lianne rubbed her bare arms. Ricky knew how she felt, naked, unprotected. He shifted the backpack on his shoulder and checked the windows for things to steal and tapped on the plate glass of the furniture store, which sent a cat scurrying around the corner from under a parked car. The town was coming to life. Several pickup trucks went by them in the opposite direction, and an empty school bus was going around a corner slowly. There was a Food Depot and Papa Johns Pizza and a Prudential Georgia realty office in a small shopping center. Behind the real estate office, in a dark brick building the Motorhead Bar and Grill advertised itself with a blue-and-yellow neon sign in a slit of a window next to the door.
Ricky stopped and looked around at the shopping center. The sun was coming up behind it. His squint had the look of mad inspiration, but he was just desperately hungry. The door of the bar opened and a man leaned out his head and spit on the sidewalk. When he saw Ricky staring at him, his bloodshot eyes opened wider.
What you looking at, little brother?
Oh, nothing.
Well, then keep it moving.
Ricky stepped towards the door where the man was backing inside.
You don't know where we can get something to eat, do you?
The man came out on the sidewalk and took a better look at the two of them. He had on a leather jacket that covered the jeans that were hanging loose around his midriff. His face was bearded and his head was shaved.
Try the Chinese restaurant. They open early. What's wrong? Run out of food at home?
Something like that.
Something like that, huhn? You got any money? You been hitchin'?
Our car broke down.
Oh. Where was that?
Just a few miles back.
Oh.
The man tried walking toward them on the sidewalk, weaving unsteadily. He almost tripped on the cracks where the grass grew through. It seemed obvious he was under the influence of many poisons. Lianne leaned against Ricky as he walked by them and turned around, studied them quizzically, and walked back to the door of the bar, his breath almost singeing them.
Well, in that case you're going to need a little hand, aren’t you, little brother?
We just want some food.
I'll rustle you up a dose a Wheaties. Come on in, he grunted.
Lianne looked at Ricky with a numb expression. He thought of the way a reptile’s prey is hypnotized so that it is almost anaesthetized and feels no pain as it is swallowed whole. That was how Lianne looked. He felt his adrenalin level rising. They followed the man inside the bar. He motioned in a grand gesture for them to sit at a table and disappeared into the back room behind the bar.
As he looked around, Ricky could see figures slumped at the tables against the wall, several on the floor, and several more asleep on the bar top, curled up in their boots and greasy jeans. The only light came through the window next to the door and a chink from the back room, where the sounds of cooking gave him a reason for optimism.
Lianne, don't sweat it. It's going to be all right.
Wha
t is this place, Ricky?
I don't know. Look at all these people. There must be twenty people in here asleep all over the place.
On the walls were license plates from all over the continent, including Alaska and Hawaii and several Mexican states. There was even one from Guatemala. The man leaned out the open door and whistled softly.
I could use some help over here with the munchies.
Lianne and Ricky rose slowly and walked around the bar. The floor was littered with half-empty beer bottles, shards of broken glass and bullet casings.
A hell of a night. Yes it was. Beautiful.
The man was standing before the range, cracking eggs and moving the scrambled, greasy mess around with a large spatula.
Get some plates down from the shelf for me and grab yourselves a couple.
Lianne reached up behind them and took down a stack of paper plates and separated one for Ricky and one for herself. Then she started setting them out beside the range.
That's great. There you go, he said, serving the eggs into their plates.
How much do we owe you? said Ricky.
Oh, no worries, little brother. Just go ahead. Stuff your face. Courtesy of the Bruze Brothers. He turned around and Ricky could see the insignia on the back of his jacket in red Gothic lettering.
Plenty of coffee, too. Cups are where the plates were.
Ricky filled up a paper cup of black coffee and gave the crusted dispenser of powdered dairy creamer a shake. Lianne had found a place against the wall where she sat with plate on knees, forking the egg into her mouth. Ricky sat next to her. The egg tasted great, with pieces of carbonated fried residue from the range all scraped together with the steaming hot scramble. He sipped at the coffee and felt gratitude filling his veins and floating up to his head. The other denizens of the bar began to awake and mutter among themselves. The ones asleep on the bar were the last to get up, but plates of scrambled egg appeared beside them, and a crew of men and several women grabbed plates and were eating at the tables and on the bar stools. The cook, who seemed to be the head of the ragged bunch, came out and grabbed one of the last plates and sat at the end of the bar, closest to Ricky and Lianne, who, finished with their food, were resting quietly against the wall and observing the scene.
Little brother, we’re going to have to introduce you to the members. Now's as good a time as any. What's your handle?
You can call me Ricky.
And I'm Lianne.
Ricky and Lianne. Got a nice ring. I'm Grill. And this is Fuzz Tone. My old lady. Seeing as you might need some help getting your car back on the road you are welcome to pitch in and help us clean up today. How's that?
That's a deal.
Fuzz Tone was a forty something woman with a flattened nose that might have been broken and grayish skin that had not seen a day in the sun for many years. She smiled at them, showing just a glint of humor in her eyes that came through the hard layers of caution. She took charge of the clean up operation, showing Ricky where the industrial size bucket and mop were in a closet behind the range and directing Lianne around the back of the building where the dumpster took all the broken glass, paper plates, abandoned clothes, knives, bullet casings, sandwich bags of assorted drug paraphernalia, and other debris left in the bar the night before. The men and women of the motorcycle gang helped out by getting off the floor and pushing the tables back into alignment and offering half-mocking encouragement to the cleanup crew. Grill disappeared into a back room and poked his head out once in a while with a cell phone up to his ear.
Heard you got some car trouble, said one man to Ricky. He was short, with a scowling, ugly face.
Yeah, a little.
You doing a great job, son.
Thanks.
Ricky leaned on the mop.
Name is Walter Jollison. You can call me Po Boy.
Ricky.
Po Boy did not extend a hand. He looked intently at Ricky, with both eyes open wide, expressionless, unblinking.
You missed a couple spots back there, though. He pointed at the corner.
Thanks.
The bar emptied out through the day until it was just Grill and Fuzz Tone left inside with Ricky and Lianne sitting outside around the corner of the building where the motorcycles had been parked under the shade of a couple of scrubby magnolia trees. Cars pulled into the main parking lot, broken-down vehicles driven by corpulent families with similarly decrepit, corpselike faces, shopping at the Food Depot.
They're not bad people, Ricky.
Who?
The Brothers.
Maybe, but we need to get out of here as soon as possible.
Did you give Grill the keys?
Yeah. He said his friend would have a look at it.
Grill came out around the side and informed Ricky that he had located the car out by the highway and his friends were towing it to the warehouse.
We'll go over in a little while. Looks like it might be an alternator and a fuel pump and maybe the transmission, too. We'll get you back on the road, but you are going to be owin' us big time, little brother.
Well, we'll do what we can to pay it back.
I like your attitude.
After a few hours of sitting, relieved by walks around the perimeter of the parking lot and observing the passing cars on Racetrack Road, including some slow moving state police cruisers, they saw Grill standing by the front door. The sign was off now in the middle of the day, but a couple of customers had parked their motorcycles by the front door. Grill waved to them to come over.
Whatever you do, don't agree right away, Ricky. Let's talk before we decide anything.
Right.
They stood and walked over to the door. The sun was heating up the pavement to the point that heat waves were rising off the road.
Let’s take a walk over to the complex, said Grill, flashing a good-natured smile that featured some gold studs in the front teeth.
What's there at the complex? asked Ricky.
The whole ball of wax.
Grill held a red plastic cup he sipped from as they walked, cutting behind the food depot and past the Metro Metal Works body shop to a low-slung unmarked warehouse, a concrete-block, tin-roofed building, diagonally across from the body shop. Around the back were several motorcycles of the type favored by the Bruze Brothers, Harley road hogs, and Lianne's car with the front hood popped open. Two guys in jeans and work boots leaned against the building with their hands in their pockets.
Here it is, little brother. How's it hangin', brothers?
The two said nothing, just spat alternately in opposite directions.
Now, I'm willing to cut you a deal. Y'all can stay here and work cleaning up the bar and Chitter here and brother Bloodclot are more than willin' to help you get this shag wagon back on the track.
How long?
Long as it takes.
Ricky and Lianne moved into the office of the warehouse. They didn't have a lot, just the backpack with the tablet and their change of clothes. There was a microwave in the room, along with dusty file cabinets. In the warehouse itself were unsorted and unopened boxes, car stereos and computer paraphernalia and hundreds of video game players. They cooked hot dogs in the microwave for dinner and heated up hot chocolate packets mixed with water from the sink in the bathroom. Above the sink was a roll of paper shop towels they used as plates. It beat eating off the greasy surface of the table. They slept in two sleeping bags Grill gave them, and in the mornings they walked over to the bar to clean up after the previous nights' parties and to partake of Grill's generous breakfasts for the survivors. Fuzz Tone took them shopping at the Food Depot and bought the hotdogs and hot chocolate and boxes of Twinkies. The women in the biker gang who showed up for the parties took a liking to Lianne and wanted to protect her from the attentions of the biker men. So they took Grill aside and insisted that Lianne and Ricky be allowed to retire to the warehouse before the onset of late night merriment.
One night Fuzz Tone informed the
m there would be a meeting at the warehouse later and they should stay shut in the office. The car was still not functional. Ricky had stopped asking about it because Chitter and Bloodclot didn't seem to welcome his curiosity. They worked intermittently, whenever they showed up, which was usually for about an hour or two in the afternoons. One thing they had done that day was take the Florida plates off and replace them with Georgia ones.
Why the new plates? asked Ricky
Grill's idea, said Bloodclot.
He's the brains of the operation, said Chitter, laughing half-heartedly.
Ricky asked them what they did for work and they both laughed, showing off the blackened, crooked teeth of their mouths. They didn't answer. Ricky was getting tired of being treated like a non-entity.
I'd like to bust these guys in the mouth. What gives them the right to treat us like such shit?
We don't have a penny and no back up. That's what.
As soon as we can pull out of here with some of those video games in there, we’ll have some money. We’ll sell 'em when we get to a pawnshop.
You crazy? They'll chase us down and kill us. I'm not kidding.
I don't care.
Ricky. Chill out. Have another hot dog. A week or two of cleaning that bar and we'll have the car paid for and gas money to get us to Canada.
They watched Chitter and Bloodclot start their motorcycles and ride out onto the street. They always took the car key with them. Ricky took the backpack and went and sat in the car. He thought of his father in Canada and could almost hear his voice admonishing him for getting himself into such a tight spot. There didn't seem to be anything they could do. Depending on the benevolence of Grill and his gang of outlaw bikers seemed like a majorly foolish thing to have done. The sun was going down and the sky back towards the highway was lit from the horizon in a band of crimson and purple. Lianne came and sat next to him in the car. She rubbed his shoulder.
You're making me sad, Ricky. Nothing to be sad about, fly. Somewhere out there, there's a chill world waiting for us. We gotta be patient. We'll get there.
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