The Stories of Richard Bausch

by Richard Bausch

  “Hey,” Mcrae said.

  “What.”

  “It’s me.”

  The old man put the tube back into his mouth and looked away.

  “Pops,” Mcrae said. He didn’t feel anything.

  The tube came out. “Don’t look at me, boy. You got yourself into it. Getting into trouble, stealing and running around. You got yourself into it.”

  “I don’t mind it, Pops. It’s three meals and a place to sleep.”

  “Yeah,” the old man said, and then seemed to gargle something. He spit into the little metal dish again.

  “I got thirty days of leave, Pops.”

  “Eh?”

  “I don’t have to go back for a month.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Around,” Mcrae said.

  The truth was that he hated the air force, and he was thinking of taking the Charger and driving to Canada or someplace like that, and hiding out the rest of his life—the air force felt like punishment, it was punishment, and he had already been in trouble for his quick temper and his attitude. That afternoon, he’d left his father to whatever would happen, got into the Charger, and started north. But he hadn’t made it. He’d lost heart a few miles south of New York City, and he turned around and came back. The old man had been moved to a room in the alcoholic ward, but Mcrae didn’t go to see him. He stayed in the house, watching television and drinking beer, and when old high school buddies came by he went around with them a little. Mostly he stayed home, though, and at the end of his leave he locked the place and drove back to Chanute, in Illinois, where he was stationed. He wasn’t there two months before the staff sergeant caught him drinking beer in the dayroom of one of the training barracks, and asked for his name. Mcrae walked over to him, said, “My name is trouble,” and at the word trouble, struck the other man in the face. He’d had a lot of the beer, and he had been sitting there in the dark, drinking the last of it, going over everything in his mind, and the staff sergeant, a baby-faced man with a spare tire of flesh around his waist and an attitude about the stripes on his sleeves, had just walked into it. Mcrae didn’t even know him. Yet he stood over the sergeant where he had fallen, and then started kicking him. It took two other men to get him off the poor man, who wound up in the hospital with a broken jaw (the first punch had done it), a few cracked ribs, and multiple lacerations and bruises. The courtmartial was swift. The sentence was four years at hard labor, along with the dishonorable discharge. He’d had less than a month to go on the sentence when he got the news about his father. He felt no surprise, nor, really, any grief; yet there was a little thrill of something like fear: he was in his cell, and for an instant some part of him actually wanted to remain diere, inside walls, where things were certain, and there weren’t any decisions to make. A week later, he learned of the money from the insurance, which would have been more than the five thousand except that his father had been a few months behind on the rent, and on other payments. Mcrae settled what he had to of those things, and kept the rest. He had started to feel like a happy man, out of Leavenworth and the air force, and now he was on his way to Nevada, or someplace like that—and he had picked up a girl.

  He drove on until dusk, stopping only for gas, and the girl slept right through. Just past the line into New Mexico, he pulled off the interstate and went north for a mile or so, looking for some place other than a chain restaurant to eat. She sat up straight, pushed the hair back away from her face. “Where are we?”

  “New Mexico,” he said. “I’m looking for a place to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Well,” he said, “you might be able to go all day without anything to eat, but I got a three-meal-a-day habit to support.”

  She brought the paper bag up from the floor and held it in her lap.

  “You got food in there?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re very pretty—child-like, sort of—when you sleep.”

  “I didn’t snore?”

  “You were quiet as a mouse.”

  “And you think I’m pretty.”

  “I guess you know a thing like that. I hope I didn’t offend you.”

  “I don’t like dirty remarks,” she said. “But I don’t guess you meant to be dirty.”

  “Dirty.”

  “Sometimes people can say a thing like that and mean it very dirty, but I could tell you didn’t.”

  He pulled in at a roadside diner and turned off the ignition. “Well?” he said.

  She sat there with the bag on her lap. “I don’t think I’ll go in with you.” “You can have a cold drink or something,” he said. “You go in. I’ll wait out here.”

  “Come on in there with me and have a cold drink,” Mcrae said. “I’ll buy it for you. I’ll buy you dinner if you want.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said.

  He got out and started for the entrance, and before he reached it he heard her door open and close, and turned to watch her come toward him, thin and waif-like in the shawl, which hid her arms and hands.

  The diner was empty. There was a long, low bar, with soda fountains on the other side of it, and glass cases in which pies and cakes were set. There were booths along one wall. Everything seemed in order, except that no one was around. Mcrae and the girl stood in the doorway for a moment and waited, and finally she stepped in and took a seat in the first booth. “I guess we’re supposed to seat ourselves,” she said.

  “This is weird,” said Mcrae.

  “Hey,” she said, rising, “there’s a jukebox.” She strode over to it and leaned on it, crossing one leg behind the other at the ankle, her hair falling down to hide her face.

  “Hello?” Mcrae said. “Anybody here?”

  “Got any change?” asked the girl.

  He gave her a quarter, and then sat at the bar. The door at the far end swung in, and a big, red-faced man entered, wearing a white cook’s apron over a sweat-stained baby-blue shirt, whose sleeves he had rolled up past the meaty curve of his elbows. “Yeah?” he said.

  “You open?” Mcrae asked.

  “That jukebox don’t work, honey,” the man said.

  “You open?” Mcrae said, as the girl came and sat down beside him.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Place is kind of empty.”

  “What do you want to eat?”

  “You got a menu?”

  “You want a menu?”

  “Sure,” Mcrae said, “why not?”

  “Truth is,” the big man said, “I’m selling this place. I don’t have menus anymore. I make hamburgers and breakfast stuff. Some french fries and cold drinks. A hot dog maybe. I’m not keeping track.”

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” the girl said.

  “Yeah,” said the big man, “why don’t you do that.”

  “Look,” said Mcrae, “what’s the story here?”

  The other man shrugged. “You came in at the end of the run, you know what I mean? I’m going out of business. Sit down and I’ll make you a hamburger on the house.”

  Mcrae looked at the girl.

  “Okay,” she said, in a tone which made it clear that she would’ve been happier to leave.

  The big man put his hands on the bar and leaned toward her. “Miss, if I were you I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” “I don’t like hamburger,” she said.

  “You want a hot dog?” the man said. “I got a hot dog for you. Guaranteed to please.”

  “I’ll have some french fries,” she said.

  The big man turned to the grill and opened the metal drawer under it. He was very wide at the hips, and his legs were like trunks. “I get out of the army after twenty years,” he said, “and I got a little money put aside. The wife and I decide we want to get into the restaurant business. The government’s going to be paying me a nice pension and we got the savings, so we sink it all in this goddamn diner. Six and a half miles from the interstate. You get the picture? The guy’s selling us this diner at a great pric
e, you know? A terrific price. For a song, I’m in the restaurant business. The wife will cook the food, and I’ll wait tables, you know, until we start to make a little extra, and then we’ll hire somebody—a high school kid or somebody like that. We might even open another restaurant if the going gets good enough. But of course, this is New Mexico. This is six and a half miles from the interstate. There’s nothing here anymore because there’s nothing up the road. You know what’s up the road? Nothing.” He had put the hamburger on, and a basket of frozen french fries. “Now the wife decides she’s had enough of life on the border, and off she goes to Seattle to sit in the rain with her mother and here I am trying to sell a place nobody else is dumb enough to buy. You know what I mean?”

  “That’s rough,” Mcrae said.

  “You’re the second customer I’ve had all week, bub.”

  The girl said, “I guess that cash register’s empty then, huh.”

  “It ain’t full, honey.”

  She got up and wandered across the room. For a while she stood gazing out the windows over the booths, her hands invisible under the woolen shawl. When she came back to sit next to Mcrae again, the hamburger and french fries were ready.

  “On the house,” the big man said.

  And the girl brought a gun out of the shawl—a pistol that looked like a toy. “Suppose you open up that register, Mr. Poormouth,” she said.

  The big man looked at her, then at Mcrae, who had taken a large bite of his hamburger, and had it bulging in his cheeks.

  “This thing is loaded, and I’ll use it.”

  “Well for Christ’s sake,” the big man said.

  Mcrae started to get off the stool. “Hold on a minute,” he said to them both, his words garbled by the mouthful of food, and then everything started happening all at once. The girl aimed the pistol. There was a popping sound—a single, small pop, not much louder than the sound of a cap gun— and the big man took a step back, against the counter, into the dishes and pans there. He stared at the girl, wide-eyed, for what seemed a long time, then went down, pulling dishes with him in a tremendous shattering.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mcrae said, swallowing, standing back from her, raising his hands.

  She put the pistol back in her jeans under the shawl, and then went around the counter and opened the cash register. “Damn,” she said.

  Mcrae said, low, “Jesus Christ.”

  And now she looked at him; it was as if she had forgotten he was there. “What’re you standing there with your hands up like that?”

  “God,” he said, “oh, God.”

  “Stop it,” she said. “Put your hands down.”

  He did so.

  “Cash register’s empty.” She sat down on one of the stools and gazed over at the body of the man where it had fallen. “Damn.”

  “Look,” Mcrae said, “take my car. You—you can have my car.”

  She seemed puzzled. “I don’t want your car. What do I want your car for?”

  “You—” he said. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t focus clearly, or think. He looked at the man, who lay very still, and then he began to cry.

  “Will you stop it?” she said, coming off the stool, reaching under the shawl and bringing out the pistol again.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Good Jesus.”

  She pointed the pistol at his forehead. “Bang,” she said. “What’s my name?”

  “Your—name?”

  “My name.”

  “Belle—” he managed.

  “Come on,” she said. “The whole thing—you remember.”

  “Belle-Belle Starr.”

  “Right.” She let the gun hand drop to her side, into one of the folds of the shawl. “I like that so much better than Annie Oakley.”

  “Please,” Mcrae said.

  She took a few steps away from him and then whirled and aimed the gun. “I think we better get out of here, what do you think?”

  “Take the car,” he said, almost with exasperation; it frightened him to hear it in his own voice.

  “I can’t drive,” she said simply. “Never learned.”

  “Jesus,” he said. It went out of him like a sigh.

  “God,” she said, gesturing with the pistol for him to move to the door, “it’s hard to believe you were ever in prison.”

  The road went on into the dark, beyond the fan of the headlights; he lost track of miles, road signs, other traffic, time; trucks came by and surprised him, and other cars seemed to materialize as they started the lane change that would bring them over in front of him. He watched their taillights grow small in the distance, and all the while the girl sat watching him, her hands somewhere under the shawl. For a long time there was just the sound of the rushing night air at the windows, and then she moved a little, shifted her weight, bringing one leg up on the seat.

  “What were you in prison for, anyway?”

  Her voice startled him, and for a moment he couldn’t think to answer.

  “Come on,” she said, “I’m getting bored with all this quiet. What were you in prison for?”

  “I—beat up a guy.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes, that’s all.” He couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It was just—I just beat up a guy. It wasn’t anything.”

  “I didn’t shoot that man for money, you know.” Mcrae said nothing.

  “I shot him because he made a nasty remark to me about the hot dogs.”

  “I didn’t hear any nasty remark.”

  “He shouldn’t have said it or else he’d still be alive.”

  Mcrae held tight to the wheel.

  “Don’t you wish it was the Wild West?” she said.

  “Wild West,” he said, “yeah.” He could barely speak for the dryness in his mouth and the deep ache of his own breathing.

  “You know,” she said, “I’m not really from Maine.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m from Florida.”

  “Florida,” he managed.

  “Yes, only I don’t have a southern accent, so people think. I’m not from there. Do you hear any trace of a southern accent at all when I talk?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Now you—you’ve got an accent. A definite southern accent.”

  He was silent.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  “What do you want me to say?” he said. “Jesus.”

  “You could ask me things.”

  “Ask you things—”

  “Ask me what my name is.”

  Without hesitating, Mcrae said, “What’s your name?” “You know.”

  “No, really,” he said, trying to play along.

  “It’s Belle Starr.”

  “Belle Starr,” he said.

  “Nobody but,” she said

  “Good,” he said.

  “And I don’t care about money, either,” she said. “That’s not what I’m after.”

  “No,” Mcrae said.

  “What I’m after is adventure.”

  “Right,” said Mcrae.

  “Fast living.”

  “Fast living, right.”

  “A good time.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “I’m going to live a ton before I die.”

  “A ton, yes.”

  “What about you?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Me too.”

  “Want to join up with me?”

  “Join up,” he said. “Right.” He was watching the road.

  She leaned toward him a little. “Do you think I’m lying about my name?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” she said.

  He had begun to feel as though he might start throwing up what he’d had of the hamburger. His stomach was cramping on him, and he was dizzy. He might even be having a heart attack.

  “Your eyes are big as saucers,” she said.

  He tried to narrow them a little. His whole body was shaking no
w.

  “You know how old I am, Mcrae? I’m nineteen.”

  He nodded, glanced at her and then at the road again.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Do you believe people go to heaven when they die?” “Oh, God,” he said.

  “Look, I’m not going to shoot you while you’re driving the car. We’d crash if I did that.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh, Jesus, please—look. I never saw anybody shot before—”

  “Will you stop it?”

  He put one hand to his mouth. He was soaked; he felt the sweat on his upper lip, and then he felt the dampness all through his clothes.

  She said, “I don’t kill everybody I meet, you know.”

  “No,” he said. “Of course not.” The absurdity of this exchange almost brought a laugh up out of him. It was astonishing that such a thing as a laugh could be anywhere in him at such a time, but here it was, rising up in his throat like some loosened part of his anatomy. He held on with his whole mind, and it was a moment before he realized that she was laughing.

  “Actually,” she said, “I haven’t killed all that many people.”

  “How—” he began. Then he had to stop to breathe. “How many?”

  “Take a guess.”

  “I don’t have any idea,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, “you’ll just have to guess. And you’ll notice that I haven’t spent any time in prison.”

  He was quiet.

  “Guess,” she said. Mcrae said, “Ten?”

  “No.”

  He waited.

  “Come on, keep guessing.” “More than ten?”

  “Maybe.”

  “More than ten,” he said.

  “Well, all right. Less than ten.”

  “Less than ten,” he said.

  “Guess,” she said.

  “Nine.”

  “No.”

  “Eight.”

  “No, not eight.”

  “Six?”

  “Not six.”

  “Five?”

  “Five and a half people,” she said. “You almost hit it right on the button.”

  “Five and a half people,” said Mcrae.

  “Right. A kid who was hitchhiking, like me; a guy at a gas station; a dog that must’ve got lost—I count him as the half—another guy at a gas station; a guy that took me to a motel and made an obscene gesture to me; and the guy at the diner. That makes five and a half.”