by Noreen Ayres
Jolene said, “What ex-ex-girlfriend? What’s an ex-ex?”
“One I made a mistake twice on, okay?” he said, and turned his attention back to Monty, whose Western shirt stretched tightly across his shoulders as he reached for a black satchel over the workbench.
Monty said, “If I had a girlfriend who carried a Tec-nine, I’d dump her too. What’s wrong with it you don’t want to keep it?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it. I just don’t like nines no more. I want a Glock forty.” He took a sip from a beer he got somewhere, ignoring the Pepsi Jolene set down for him on the workbench. He still had his fingerless riding gloves on.
Jolene looked at me, raised an eyebrow. Said, “Switchie, what the hell you all talking about?”
He ignored her and started telling Monty about how he was supercharging the Harley he left at home.
“It won’t be streetable no more,” Monty said.
“Bullshit,” Switchie said.
“It’ll seize in the bore, that ratio. You gotta get forged pistons then, with thicker crowns.”
“Hell,” Switchie said, laughing. “I already exploded the super and the manifold clean off the bike. I fuckin’ grenaded that sumbitch out of my garage. Scared the livin’ shit outta me. It’s set up soft right now, but I’ve still got some AV fuel. Give her some righteous octane boost, and then watch out, guy, I’ll be racin’ and chasin’. You’ll be a gnat on a boar’s ass in my rearview mirror.” He shadow-boxed the side of Monty’s shoulder.
AV fuel. Joe’s portable sniffer had detected aviation fuel in the Caddy, hadn’t he said?
Jolene switched on a radio she found on the second workbench. It crackled alive with Eric Clapton singing from the Slowhand album. Monty said, “I didn’t think that stinker worked. It’s got paint dust in it.”
Then his eyes met mine because, I guessed, I’d told him before that I dug Clapton. And at the part where Eric’s saying you look wonderful tonight, Monty smiled at me through his dark beard, and swaggered his upper body a little. I turned and went into the house. He hollered after me, “Hurry up, Miz Brandon. The quicker you piss, the faster we ride.”
18
I did pretty well on the back of Monty’s sled, all the way up Highway 15 into Norco, Riverside County. As I hid behind his leather jacket and tried not to get a faceful of bug buckshot, he split lanes a few times, white-lining it, as he called it, and the cars on either side seemed to suck toward us like mindless crusher balls. I hung on to Monty’s waist a little harder, hoping he couldn’t tell the difference. In the side mirrors, Switchie’s and Jolene’s distorted figures plowed on in our wake like a two-headed hovering horsefly.
We passed a sign pointing to Coal Canyon. It made me think of Carbon Canyon and the burned-out Cadillac and why I was with these newfound friends to begin with. While I was at Monty’s house or even at the Python, I’d seen no hint of firearms or anything else to make someone believe Monty was anything other than a slightly colorful businessman. But he had done a year at Terminal Island after one in the county jail for assault and drug possession, and I couldn’t forget that. The sentence must have made him real pissed, because in the hierarchy of crimes a weapons charge is a notch below vandalism and a hitch above prostitution, and fewer than 3 percent of TI’s population does time for violating Penal Code 12021. And when I thought of this man and then of Joe, of Doug Forster and Ray Vega and even poor old nerdy Les Fedders, the vision of them and the side they were on brought fleeting moments of nostalgia, as if they and that world were so far away as to be lost forever.
On the incline going over the hills ahead, a clutch of bikes found an open space on the freeway, and the bikers began trading places as if doing formations at halftime. Even at that distance, chrome flashed in the sun. Monty called back, “How you like that?” proud of his compadres.
“Great,” I yelled.
Once off the freeway, we passed through the city of Norco. Sixty miles east of Newport Beach, the area had the feel of the fifties or maybe earlier. Roadside saddle vendors displayed hides over ropes strung between pickup trucks and poles. A life-sized plastic cow on a red roof marked a meat market.
We turned down a street named Dodd and passed single-story frame houses painted the colors of desert dirt. Goats stood stiff-legged and dogs big as ponies moped inside chain-link fences with the gates left open. Women chatted with each other atop their horses in their own front yards. At the corner, Monty pulled over and told Switchie and Jolene to go on without us, we’d catch up.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“You hungry?”
“A little.”
“We’ll take care of that.”
He turned the bike around and headed back to Sixth Street and soon we were outside a hamburger joint, hanging our helmets on the handlebars. I went in to use the rest room and when I came out Monty had a sack of food and two cans of soda from the station next door.
“What’d you do, die in there?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. I needed to stop vibrating.” What I’d also needed to do was phone Joe, hear his voice. There was a phone in an alcove by the rest room, and when I saw Monty striding off to the station, I stole the moment. I told Joe where I was and that everything was all right. He offered his usual cautionary words. His voice sounded disembodied to me, and I wondered if it was the connection, my hearing, or my mood.
Monty drove a mile or so to the edge of town, where a battalion of grassy dunes had already yellowed in the presummer sun. The Harley’s sound dissipated in the clear air to a pleasant rumble as we rode at low speed to catch the scenery. I was getting used to the feel of Monty’s back, knew where the valleys in his latissimum dorsum were where I could park my breasts.
Along came a buggy and horse, two people in front and two in back sitting straight as country parsons. Monty, out of deference, turned off at the first red dirt road and headed east again. The road ended in front of a black-barked tree split from lightning or a core fire set by kids.
We got off the bike and walked up a rise beyond the split tree. I was toting the sacks with the food and drink.
Monty looked first back at the town and then northeast to a dust-yellow smear in the distance. “San Bernardino out that way,” he said.
“I can tell by the smog.”
“Ain’t it a shame?” Extending an arm farther east, he said, “Out there’s my farm.”
“You have a farm?”
“Right-o. You didn’t think that about the old Black Man, now did you?”
“I wouldn’t have put it together, no.”
He smiled.
“You like animals?”
“I have a guinea pig, as of about a week ago.”
“That a hamster or what?”
“It’s about half the size of a rabbit. Round face, no tail. Not like a rat. Real cute.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, and took the sacks from me. Hooking a finger in my beltless loop, he tugged me along to a weather-pitted sandstone outcropping near a tall rock the color of char.
Feeling a little stupid and edgy, I said, “Not exactly the best place for a picnic.”
Monty sat down in a nest of grass and shattered leaves. “Sorry I don’t have a blanket.” But then he motioned to a flat rock I hadn’t seen, and I sat down next to him.
“I used to come up here as a kid,” he said. “My initials are carved top of that rock.”
I looked, squinting into the glare. “I thought you grew up in Downey.”
“You can’t see ’em from here. That was before we moved to Downey.”
“So you grew up and bought a farm out here. What came first, the Python or the farm?”
He unwrapped a burger to rearrange onions, then handed me the other one. “The bar came first. So did a lot of other things.”
“What kind of farm is it?”
“Take a deep breath. You can smell it from here,” he said.
“Smell what?” I asked.
With a mouthful, he said, “Pig
s.”
“No way.”
“Hogs. Swine. Durocs, actually. Those’re the ones with ears cover their eyes. I like ’em because they don’t dig out and run away like the pointy-eared ones. And one big Hampshire I’ve got. That’s the kind with a stripe around its neck like he’s going to a luau. Only he don’t know he’s the main course.”
“You own a pig farm?”
“See, I told you you’re quick.”
“Am I going to see them?”
He shook his head no. “I don’t allow strangers in when the sperm is up.”
“Oh, excuse me,” I said.
“Pigs get funny. It might disturb the breedin’. They have to have five good undisturbed days.”
“Or you may get piggus interruptus.”
A question loomed in his eyes.
“Nothing,” I said.
He looked at me some more, chewing.
“You can make good money with this?” I asked.
“Figure it out. Bring a boar in to breed a gilt. Three months, three weeks, three days, bingo, you got twelve little piggy banks. You can go baby-to-butcher in six months, and twenty days of feed only costs eight bucks.”
He had fries hidden down in the food sack, and handed me a pinch of them.
“Well, it’s a different way to get rich, I guess.”
“Tell the truth, I’m not that much into the carcass trade. Right now the market’s down for pork anyways, so I’m happy doin’ what I’m doin’.”
“Which is . . .”
“Reproduction,” he said, smiling. “Sump’n ol’ Monty’s good at. Least he has fun tryin’. Hey, you know a pig’s dingus is like a corkscrew?”
“That’s a piece of information I somehow didn’t have. I’m just awful glad to know that, Monty.”
“You’re welcome.” He scooted over partly in sun now, looking down the rise from which we’d come, and I turned to listen to this man with the movie-star eyes and the Mafia voice as he started in a sing-song rhythm: “Once upon a time, this whole country from here to the San Gabriels used to be farms. Pig farms, dairy farms, farm farms. In spring there’d be big patches of California poppies so bright flutterin’ in the breeze it looked like a river of gold. Now all we got is creepin’ concrete. Over in Cucamonga they got an aerospace plant, ugliest damn thing you ever saw. Engineers runnin’ around in white shirts make you blind, takin’ up the line at Burger King. I’m glad the aerospace industry went bust.”
“Engineers have to eat too, I believe.”
“Not in my town. I’m lookin’ for a buyer for the Python. Then Miz Brandon will be out of a job. What you gonna do with your life?”
“I’ll get by.”
“Used to I’d drive my beat-up car out here at night and park my ass behind this rock, and I’d just sit here lookin’ at the stars. Every once in a while I’d see a shootin’ star, you know? Like way out there, over the hills,” he said. His eyes held wistfulness in them like creek water just waking up. “I’d see a shootin’ star, and I’d think, Now there.”
“You come out here with a girl?”
“Sometimes.” He rubbed the back of my head with his left hand. Broken shadows from an overhead oak danced across his face, and his lashes slept on his cheeks while he talked, dreamlike. “My lady when I find her’s gonna wear a new jewel in her navel every day. She’ll have eyes like tiger agate. When she speaks it’s going to be like a little bitty mouse pissin’ in a cottonball.”
I laughed and said, rising, “Show me some pigs, you animal. A cloven-footed beast with his face in the mud, and this better be good, Bubba, for me putting up with you and all your talk.”
“Puercos,” he said as he rose, “the Spanish word. And pigs don’t like mud because it’s mud. They like it to keep cool, because they don’t have any sweat glands. They get a bad name.”
“I like a man stands up for his pigs.”
“You bet your ass,” he said.
Ahead on the road, a horse loped by, ridden by a man in a fleece-lined denim jacket, sitting tall as a sheriff. A misplaced cloud found the sun as I stood waiting roadside by a squirrel hole for Monty to put the cans in his saddlebags, good citizen that he was. Then we mounted up, the leather making those taut, creaking sounds. He started the engine and rapped the exhaust so it blew debris up by the squirrel hole and clapped decibels across the air like an audience ready to riot. With a rough start, we went wagging down the road. I had to clutch hard behind me on the seat.
We were approaching a green light behind a big Ford when a maroon-colored sedan crossed at a good clip in front of us.
“She just blew the light,” Monty said.
And as the big blue Ford in front of us swept left and accelerated, I caught the license plate frame that said FEEL SAFE TONIGHT, SLEEP WITH A COP and wondered if that were a wish or a prediction.
19
They wanted me to bite the wienie, but I wouldn’t. The hot dog hung between two uprights of a crossbar, and then a driver would wobble through the posts at a pace that would let the woman braced on his shoulders have a try for it.
We were near a field that looked like a baseball lot, sparse grass, red dirt, people milling at the edges. A scattering of California sycamores provided patches of shade. We had driven on a side road to get here. There were a few buildings in the distance, and Monty said they were part of a farm belonging to a friend of his.
When we arrived, Switchie and Jolene were just a little way from the improvised goalposts with the wienie hanging from it. Jolene had a rapturous look on her face as she watched the women go for it. When the meat dragged mustard all over a woman’s face, the crowd would cheer, Jolene one of the loudest. She and Switchie were about to take their place in line, but they were putting pressure on us first. I told Monty to go find another girl who wanted to make a fool of herself. So he did—a blonde with no boobs but an ass Switchie said gave him a chubby when he saw her at the last roundup in Malibu. Jolene punched him.
I went and stood under a tree. A lanky guy in sunglasses stepped away, as if he didn’t want to be seen with me, and then I saw that he was taking pictures.
Jolene and Switchie were lined up for their second try, only about nine contestants so far, when a red bike grumbled onto the game field from the side. The driver was a man with white hair strangled into a ponytail. A sunburned woman stood on the rear footpads and seemed stapled hard onto his shoulders. Her dark gray hair streamed down her back to her halter strap. She was big, not fat; no waist, and the muscles in her legs beneath her white shorts were raw pink spears. Her mouth, when she let out a whoop, would cover a headlight. The guys standing next to me said, “Man, there’s one that’ll suck ’em down,” and “Shit, Quillard’s got it clean.”
A twig fell on my head from the oak tree I was standing under. When I flicked it away, I missed Jolene and Switchie’s try but knew she failed when her frustrated shriek carried clear across the lot and the crowd clapped anyway. The guy with the mustard bucket dipped the wienie again for the next duo.
Then came the lady with the mouth and the powerful sunburn. I could read the letters on the driver’s shirt this time: Will Work for Beer. As he wove his way forward, I looked at the pair and liked them both for the spirit under the gray hair, and wondered why the guy looked familiar. He was a small man, or was it only compared to her, the woman with the fine big mouth and the guts to ride a Harley when she’s fifty?
They passed slowly under the hot dog, the woman rising higher, head back and openmouthed, the crowd cheering her on. In a smooth ride with nary a wobble, she took the wienie off with a perfect bite, and the crowd yelled and oogahed on bulb horns. A man sitting on top of one of the food tables held up a sign that read SHOW US YOUR TITS. Obligingly, she lifted her halter, the white skin contrasting brightly to the sunburned flesh above, and left the garment there as they rode off.
Monty and his blonde were across the lot, Monty taking off his light blue Western shirt and hanging it in his belt loop. Underneath was his bl
ack Ghostriders T-shirt. He looked across the lot at me.
Jolene came over, handcuffs swinging. “You should try the Wienie Bite. It is so cool,” she said, still a yellow film around her mouth.
“I guess I’m just not a player.”
“You better shape up. Monty’s going to dump you.”
“Think so?”
“Look at her over there. She’s on him.”
“Does he make a habit of it?”
“What? Dumping somebody? Oh yeah.”
“Did you know any of his girlfriends?”
“The last one.”
“Who was that?”
“A girl named Miranda. I don’t know most of them. I just hear names. He keeps kind of private.”
I felt my skin flush, took a breath to calm myself, and asked, “What was his problem with the last girlfriend?”
“It’s not like I ask him. She was around one week, gone the next. I figured it was because she was kind of stuck-up, you know what I mean? She’d fly right by us, never say hi, kiss my ass, or nothin’. Crap,” she said, scanning the crowd. “I can’t see Switchie, can you? He makes me mad sometimes.”
“He ever come on to you?” I asked her, casually as I could, and I wasn’t sure why.
“Monty? He’s way too old for me.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She grinned, chewed on a stick, and said, “If he did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You’d be jealous, find a way to get me canned.”
A tall man with a bullhorn came out to give the rules for the next game. Jolene, said, “You coming?” When I said no, she shrugged and went off toward the playing field.
I looked over the herd of Harleys. It was then that I placed the man in the white ponytail and the Will Work for Beer T-shirt; remembered how his mane would look if fluffed at the shoulders instead of tied off, this man people kept calling Quillard. It was the guy Joe and I had seen after the investigation at Blue Jay Campground where the victim wore wire for a necklace. Up there off Ortega Highway, ten miles from the scene. General Lee and his concealed weapon in his crossover holster. What the heck was going on?
