Sweet Nothing

by RICHARD LANGE

  “Wait here,” he says.

  “Hold on, now,” I say.

  “It’s in my car,” he says. “You motherfuckers may walk around with guns on you, but I don’t.”

  He hurries off toward a beat-up Nissan parked in a loading zone.

  “It’s cool,” Youngblood says. “Relax.”

  Paul opens the door of the car and gets in. He starts the engine, revs it, then drives away. I stand there with my mouth open, wondering if I misunderstood him, that he meant he was going somewhere else to get the gun and then bring it back. But that isn’t what he said. Thirty years on the street, and I haven’t learned a goddamn thing. I hit Youngblood so hard, his eyes roll up in his head. Then I kick him when he falls, leave him whining like a whipped puppy.

  I DON’T SLEEP that night or the next, and at work I can’t sit still, waiting for what’s coming. Two days pass, three, four. At the hotel, I see Leon hanging around the lobby and partying in J Bone’s room. We don’t say anything to each other as I pass by, I don’t even look at him, but our souls scrape like ships’ hulls, and I shudder from stem to stern.

  When Friday rolls around and still nothing has happened, I start to think I’m wrong. Maybe what I said to Leon was enough to back him off. Maybe he was never serious about robbing the store. My load feels a little lighter. For the first time in a week I can twist my head without the bones in my neck popping.

  To celebrate, I take myself to Denny’s for dinner. Chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. A big Mexican family is there celebrating something. Mom and Dad and Grandma and a bunch of kids, everyone all dressed up. I’m forty-two years old, not young anymore, but I’d still like to have something like that someday. Cancer took my daughter when she was ten, and my son’s stuck in prison. If I ever make it to Mexico, maybe I’ll get a second chance, and this time, this time, it’ll mean something.

  THEY SHOW UP at 2:15 on Saturday. We’ve just reopened after lunch, and I haven’t even settled into my chair yet when the three of them crowd into the doorway. Dallas is in front, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low over his face. He’s the one who pushes the buzzer, the one Leon’s got doing the dirty work.

  “Don’t let ’em in!” I shout to Mr. M.

  The old man toddles in from the back room, confused.

  “What?”

  “Don’t touch the buzzer.”

  Dallas rings again, then raps on the glass with his knuckles. I’ve been afraid for my life before—in prison, on the street, in rooms crowded with men not much more than animals—but it’s not something you get used to. My legs shake like they have every other time I’ve been sure death is near, and my heart tries to tear itself loose and run away. I crouch, get up, then crouch again, a chicken with its head cut off.

  J Bone tugs a ski mask down over his face and pushes Dallas out of the way. He charges the door, slamming into it shoulder-first, which makes a hell of a noise, but that’s about it. He backs up, tries again, then lifts his foot and drives his heel into the thick, bulletproof glass a couple of times. The door doesn’t budge.

  “I’m calling the police!” the old man shouts at him. “I’ve already pressed the alarm.”

  Leon yells at Bone, and Bone yells at Leon, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Leon also has his mask on now. He draws a gun from his pocket, and I scramble for cover behind a display case as he fires two rounds into the lock. He doesn’t understand the mechanics, the bolts that shoot into steel and concrete above and below when you turn the key.

  People on the street are stopping to see what’s going on. Dallas runs off, followed by Bone. Leon grabs the door handle and yanks on it, then gives up too. He peels off his mask and starts to walk one way before turning quickly and jogging in the other.

  I get up and go to the door to make sure they’re gone for real. I should be relieved, but I’m not. I’m already worried about what’s going to happen next.

  “Those black bastards,” Mr. M says. “Those fucking black bastards.”

  ONCE THEY FIND out about my record, the police get it in their heads that we were all in it together and it’s just that I lost my nerve at the last minute.

  How did you know not to let them in? they ask me twenty different times in twenty different ways.

  “I saw the gun,” I say, simple as that.

  Mr. M ends up going to the hospital with chest pains, and his son shows up to square everything away. He keeps thanking me for protecting his father.

  “You may have saved his life,” he says, and I wish I could say that’s whose life I was thinking about.

  The police don’t finish investigating until after six. I hang around the store until then because I’m not ready to go back to the hotel. When the cops finally pack up, I walk home slowly, expecting Leon to come out of nowhere at any minute like a lightning bolt. There’ll be a gun in his hand, or a knife. He knows how it goes: if you’re worried about a snitch, take him out before he talks.

  I make it back safely, though. Leon’s not waiting out front or in the lobby or on the stairs. The door to J Bone’s room is open, but no music is playing, and nobody’s laughing. I glance in, time sticking a bit, and see that the room is empty except for a bunch of greasy burger bags and half-finished forties with cigarettes sunk in them.

  I lock my door when I get inside my room, open the window, turn on the fan. My legs stop working, and I collapse on the bed, exhausted. I dig out a bottle of Ten High that I keep for when the demons come dancing and swear that if I make it through tonight, I’ll treat every hour I have left as a gift.

  I TALK TO the Chinaman at the desk the next morning, and he tells me J Bone checked out yesterday, ran off in a hurry. Youngblood is listening in, pretending to watch the lobby TV. We haven’t spoken since I lost my temper.

  “What do you know about it?” I call to him, not sure if he’ll answer.

  “Cost you five dollars to find out,” he says.

  I hand over the money, and he jumps up off the couch, eager to share. He says Leon and Bone had words yesterday afternoon, talking about the police being after them, and “You stupid,” “No, you stupid.” Next thing they went upstairs, came down with their shit, and split.

  “Where do you think they went?” Youngblood asks me.

  “Fuck if I know,” I say. “Ask your friend Paul.”

  “He ain’t my friend,” Youngblood says. “I put the word out on him. I’m gonna get you your money back.”

  I’m so happy to have Leon gone that I don’t even care about the money. I ask Youngblood if he wants to go for breakfast, my treat. He’s a good kid. A couple of hours from now, after he takes his first shot, he’ll be useless, but right this minute, I can see the little boy he once was in his crooked smile.

  He talks about LeBron James—LeBron this, LeBron that—as we walk to McDonald’s. We go back and forth from shady patches still cool as night to blocks that even this early are being scorched by the sun. Nobody’s getting crazy yet, and it doesn’t smell too bad except in the alleys. Almost like morning anywhere. I keep looking over my shoulder, but I can feel myself relaxing already. A couple more days, and I’ll be back to normal.

  MR. M’S SON told me before I left the store that it’d be closed for at least a week but not to worry because they’d pay me like I was still working. The next Thursday he calls and asks me to come down. The old man is still in the hospital, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be getting out anytime soon, so the son has decided to shut the store up for good. He hands me an envelope with $2,500 inside, calls it severance.

  “Thank you again for taking care of my father,” he says.

  “Tell him I said hello and get well soon,” I reply.

  The next minute I’m out on the street, unemployed for the first time in years. I have to laugh. I barely gave Leon the time of day, didn’t fall for his mess, didn’t jump when he said to, and he still managed to fuck up the good thing I had going. That’s the way it is. Every time you manage to stack a few bricks, a wave’s bo
und to come along and knock them down.

  THEY RUN GIRLS out of vans over on Towne. You pay a little more than you would for a street whore, but they’re generally younger and cleaner, and doing it in the van is better than doing it behind a dumpster or in an Andy Gump. I shower and shave before I head out, get a hundred bucks from my stash behind the light switch and stick it in my sock.

  Mama-san is carrying more groceries up the stairs, both kids hanging on her, as I’m going down.

  “No cooking,” I say. “No cooking.”

  She doesn’t reply, but the kids look scared. I didn’t mean for that to happen.

  The freaks come out at night, and the farther east you go, the worse it gets. Sidewalk shitters living in cardboard boxes, ghosts who eat out of garbage cans, a blind man showing his dick on the corner. I keep my gaze forward, my hands balled into fists. Walking hard, we used to call it.

  Three vans are parked at the curb tonight. I make a first pass to scope out the setup. The pimps stand together, a trio of cocky little vatos with gold chains and shiny shirts. My second time by, they start in hissing through their teeth and whispering, “Big tits, tight pussy.”

  “You looking for a party?” one of them asks me.

  “What if I am?” I say.

  The pimp walks me to his van and slides open the side door. I smell weed and something coconut. A chubby Mexican girl wearing a red bra and panties is lying on a mattress back there. She’s pretty enough, for a whore, but I’d still like to check out what’s in the other vans. I don’t want to raise a ruckus though.

  “How much,” I say to nobody in particular.

  The pimp says forty for head, a hundred for half and half. I get him down to eighty. I crawl inside the van, and he closes the door behind me. There’s cardboard taped to the windshield and the other windows. The only light is what seeps in around the edges. I’m sweating already, big drops of it racing down my chest inside my shirt.

  “How you doing tonight?” I say to the girl.

  “Okay,” she says.

  She uses her hand to get me hard, then slips the rubber on with her mouth. I make her stop after just a few seconds and have her lie back on the mattress. I come as soon as I stick it in. It’s been a long time.

  “Can I rest here a minute?” I say.

  The girl shrugs and cleans herself with a baby wipe. She has nice hair, long and black, and big brown eyes. I ask her where she’s from. She says Mexico.

  “I’m moving down there someday,” I say.

  My mouth gets away from me. I tell her I was in Germany once, when I was in the army, and that I came back and had two kids. I tell her about leaving them just like my mom and dad left me, and how you say you’re never gonna do certain things, but then you do. I tell her that’s why God’s turned away from us and Jesus is a joke. When I run out of words, I’m crying some.

  “It’s okay,” the girl says. “It’s okay.”

  Her pimp bangs on the side of the van and opens the door. Time’s up.

  I’VE SEEN ENOUGH that I could write my own bible. For example, here’s the parable of the brother who hung on and the one who fell: Two months later I’m walking home from my new job guarding a Mexican dollar store on Los Angeles. A bum steps out in front of me, shoves his dirty hand in my face, and asks for a buck. I don’t like when they’re pushy, and I’m about to tell him to step off, but then I realize it’s Leon.

  He’s still wearing his suit, only now it’s filthy rags. His eyes are dull and dead-looking, his lips burned black from the pipe. All his charm is gone, all his kiss-my-ass cockiness. Nobody is following this boy anymore but the reaper.

  “Leon?” I say. I’m not scared of him. One punch now would turn him back to dust.

  “Who you?” he asks, warily.

  “You don’t remember?”

  He opens his eyes wide, then squints. A quiet laugh rattles his bones.

  “Old McGruff,” he says. “Gimme a dollar, Crime Dog.”

  I give him two.

  “Be good to yourself,” I say as I walk away.

  “You’re a lucky man,” he calls after me.

  No, I’m not, but I am careful. Got a couple bricks stacked, a couple bucks put away, and one eye watching for the next wave. Forever and ever, amen.

  After All

  THEIR SECOND DAY OF walking, Benny said to the Bear, When we gettin’ there? and the Bear said, Shit, this is nothin’. I once went a week for half a case a cream corn. Yeah, Benny said, but I told my ma only a few days, not a week. The Bear snorted. You get back with full pockets and yer ma won’t be cryin’ sad, he said, she’ll be cryin’ happy. Benny put that picture in his head and ignored the blister plaguing his toe. Good shoes were coming, and good food. He and the Bear wore masks against the dust and hoods against the sun, and they walked.

  THEY WERE CHASING the Bear’s dream. Back before everything, his great-great-grandpa lived in a town that was swallowed up by a government lake. The old man couldn’t bring himself to leave, so when the water began to rise, he sat in the cellar of his house with a coffee can full of Krugerrands and waited to drown. What’s a Krugerrand? Benny wanted to know. A gold coin, the Bear said, and a hundred a them’s a treasure. The Bear’s dream was that the lake had dried up. I saw it clear, he said, and it gave me great joy, that old-time town risin’ forgotten out of the water. He didn’t ask the peddlers who passed by the lake or the soldiers on patrol what they’d seen for fear they’d wonder at his interest, and he only told Benny about it after swearing him in as his fifty-fifty partner. Benny could barely sleep that night, thinking of it. I mean, who besides the Bear used words like dream and joy and treasure? Nobody, that’s who.

  THEY FOLLOWED THE road but kept off the pavement. Nothing up there but trouble. The path they took through the brush had been stomped into existence by the feet of countless other cautious travelers, some of whom had carved their names into the trees: Beano and Wiseass and Clint. Go Home Fool! someone had written, and Fuck All. Benny didn’t know letters, so the Bear read the words out as they passed them. The map they were using was in the Bear’s memory, in case of desperadoes. Yer my boy if they ask, he said. And we heard rumor of payin’ work in Kernville.

  THE BEAR TALKED like he’d forgotten he was Benny’s father, something Benny knew because his ma had told him, then tried to say no, not really, then said so again one night when she was drinking. Having no kin—or at least none he claimed—the Bear lived out in the scrub with the other loners. This was an old rule from right after, meant to protect the women, but it’d never worked—new bastards were born every week. Nobody was much moved to change anything, however, because everything had changed too much already. The first time Benny saw the Bear, both were in line for a free lunch some preacher was serving. The Bear gave Benny a butane lighter for his ma and half a hacksaw blade for himself. They never ever touched on the truth, understanding that it’s sometimes better to let things lie. As far as it went was Benny once mouthing Pop behind the Bear’s back and the Bear carrying Benny to the clinic after the boy broke his leg falling off a slag heap. He had to leave the room when the doc set the bone, the kid’s screams too much for him.

  TOWARD NIGHT THEY quit the trail and stealth-camped wherever they found cover. Dinner was FEMA grub: protein bars and vitamin cookies. They never built fires—you didn’t want to announce yourself—but were warm just the same in their coats and bedrolls. Benny hadn’t slept out before, and the night sounds spooked him. Swallowing his fear, he said he wished they had some music. What do you know about music? the Bear asked. Benny said, One time a show come through, a man on a guitar, another on a pinano—piano, the Bear said—piano, Benny went on, drum, horn, every damn thing. I remember some of the songs. Sing one, the Bear said. Jesse James was a lad that killed many a man. He robbed the Danville train. And the dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard laid poor Jesse in his grave. The Bear clapped softly when Benny finished. Later that night, snapping twigs and rustling brush woke them both. They clut
ched their knives and held their breath. The moon showed a doe and two fawns high-stepping across the clearing they were camped in. Well, I’ll be damned, the Bear whispered. Boo, you old ghosts, boo.

  THE BEAR DID a little of everything to get by. Digging, hammering, hauling. What he mostly was, though, what he called himself, was a picker, one of those some said resourceful others said ghoulish men who ventured into blast zones to scrounge the ruins for trade goods. Pulling his cart behind him, he trekked deep into sectors that’ll still be toxic a hundred years from now and came out with tools, boots, scrap metal—whatever he could get at with his shovel and pry bar. His hauls set him up pretty well—he had a small trailer to bunk in, a bicycle, a nice woodstove—but he paid for every bit of it with lost sleep. Those who ain’t seen what I have can’t imagine, he said, thinking of the family of skeletons he found huddled together under a bedspread, the blasphemous farewell of a priest scrawled on the wall of a church, and the newborns at the hospital shrunk to totems of leather and bone and hair. He was burdened with the final moments of towns full of corpses, bore them like a curse of constant pain. For this reason his most closely guarded possession was a gun he’d unearthed on one of his forays and carried with him everywhere, hidden in the bottom of his ruck, a revolver so hot it set off Geigers if he wasn’t careful. Just one round rested in it, the bullet the Bear called his last meal, his ticket out when the dead babies and radioactive-dust storms finally broke his spirit.

  THEY WATERED UP at a spring the next day, topped off their bottles and drank their fill. A clatter coming from the road flattened them in the dirt, then drew them up the embankment on their bellies to see what was what. A squad of soldiers, regular army, was passing by, twenty or so grunts and a couple wagons drawn by bony horses. A cuffed and hooded figure sat slumped in the bed of one of the wagons, head bobbing with every pothole. I’ma ask for some food, said Benny, who’d grown up begging off soldiers in town. The Bear, with a longer memory and a scar from a rifle butt on his forehead, held him back. Keep yer mind on what yer doin’, he growled. Benny scoffed at his wariness, pulled away, and scrambled out onto the pavement, where the grunts swung their guns his way and yelled for him to stop. Making no mention of the Bear, he told them the Kernville story and came away with a beef-stew MRE and a handful of Patriot hard candies, each wrapper printed with the picture and description of a wanted terrorist. The Bear wasn’t where he’d left him, nor down on the trail either. Benny couldn’t think of what to do but keep walking and hope to catch up to him. He didn’t get a hundred yards before someone charged out of the bushes and took him hard to the ground. You go against me again, and I’ll send you back to Bako, the Bear said. He wouldn’t eat any of the stew and told Benny the candy was for snitches.