Between Wrecks

by George Singleton

  Mike leaned across the table. He said in a voice that I once heard a desperado use in one of those Mexican-American War movies, “Hold on, amigo. There’s no way. I’m thinking that you and me ought to’ve found us a flight attendant inside the airport to get us a couple airsick bags before I do what I’m about to do.”

  The waitress came up wearing one of those Christmas hats with the fuzzy ball on the end, hanging down to her shoulder. She said, “What’ll you fellows have? Would you like to look at a menu?” She had a glint sparkling around in her mouth from a tongue ring.

  Mike said, “Oh, this is just too perfect.” He said, “I’m so glad that you’re our waitress. Y’all got eggnog on sale seeing as it’s no longer Christmas? If you got it on sale, I’ll have eggnog. If not, brandy. In a snifter. What we’re about to do is a cause for celebration.”

  I said, “No menu. I’ll have a draft and a shot of bourbon. Whatever draft you got that’s not light or the color of root beer, I’ll take. And a shot of bourbon.”

  She nodded and said “Okay,” and kept standing there for some reason until Mike said, “Now would be a good time to go get it.”

  He leaned over and said, “I want to make it clear that what I have here came exactly as I’m going to present it. It came in this box.”

  He pulled out an old wooden pine box. The seams were dovetailed, and it looked like it maybe was made to hold a junior scientist’s microscope. I said, “My bamboo fly rod bests a wooden box.”

  “I want to go on record as saying that I didn’t have anything to do with this. Something highly violent and illegal took place somewhere along the line not too long ago, and I had nothing to do with it. This ain’t like the time when I brought in that engraved Zippo from Vietnam and said I found it when really it was my Uncle Billy’s.”

  The waitress brought our drinks. She said they wouldn’t have eggnog for another 350 days or thereabouts, but she had the brandy. Mike swirled his glass like I’m sure he saw somewhere. I tried to remember the Zippo. I said, “If you cheated on a Find of the Day, then I call foul. You owe me two days of drinks no matter what.”

  He nodded. He smiled. Mike used to sell mobile homes before he got a job at the agency. He told me once that he had a nervous breakdown and a possible conversation with God one evening during tornado season, and he never went back in to the trailer lot. Mike said, “After this, we might have no urge to ever play again.” He looked around to make sure no one could see him. He opened the box slowly, lifting its lid my way.

  At first I thought it was only another of his Uncle Billy’s keepsakes from the war. I thought this only because he’d admitted to the Zippo. Then I thought it was a big piece of beef jerky, or maybe a smallish over-fried piece of calf’s liver. I said, “What the hell.”

  It kind of let off an odor. I leaned back in my booth.

  Mike took a fork from the table and turned it over in the box. He said, “Human tongue.” He clicked tines to a tongue-bob not that much different than our waitress’s. “The driver’d flipped up the backseat and shoved it down there next to the flat tire tools.”

  I said, “Goddamn,” in kind of a whisper. I took another look at the thing to make sure it wasn’t some kind of special, “thick ’n’ wide” beef jerky. I said, “You can’t just keep this thing. Did you tell anyone? Did you tell Lou, Kurt, Curt, Kent, Jim, Bill, Len, Dan, Abe, Zeke, Bob, Wes, Ted, Ned, Pete, Frank, Glenn, Gene, or Slick? You have to tell someone. You have to go above and beyond the office and tell the authorities.”

  Mike stared at me hard in a way I’d only seen him do once before—when he found a blowgun and two poison darts. He said, “This is going to be my ticket out of here. This is so big, I’m going to buy your drinks, even though I obviously won Best Find of the Day.”

  Our waitress appeared and Mike closed the lid. He said to her, “You ever see any of those City Confidential, or America’s Most Wanted, or True Crime TV shows? I’m going to be on one of them pretty soon.”

  She said, “You are, huh?” She stuck out her tongue. I tried to imagine it living outside of her body, in a box.

  I said, “Could we get another round?” even though we weren’t ready. I wanted to veer the conversation somewhere else.

  “You going to be on those TV shows because of something you did?” the waitress asked.

  “Well, you never know, do you? Maybe it was for something I found, though. Something I discovered,” Mike said. He pulled that do-rag scarf down lower on his forehead.

  “Well what’d you find? One time me and my boyfriend were walking through the woods and we came across a whole village of little snail-back trailers being used for meth labs. It smelled like cat pee from a long ways off, until we saw the trailers.”

  I slid in my booth back up to the wall. “I’ve changed my mind. I need double bourbons, no beer.”

  “Anyone can find a meth lab these days,” Mike said. “You might find this interesting, what with your tongue and all.” He reached for the box.

  I said, “No, no, no. You don’t need to open that thing up and show her.”

  “What is it?” she asked, drawling out the words with little squeals in between. “Show me. Come on, show me.”

  I took the box off the tabletop and placed it next to me on the bench seat. I said, “Maybe later.”

  “Okay. I’mo remind you that you promised,” she said, swishing away.

  “You can’t go show this to anyone,” I said to Mike, “outside of maybe Bud or Buck or Sid in management.”

  “I got it all figured out,” he said. “That’s how my mind works. Listen. What happened was, one them really religious cult people—like the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or the Amish, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or maybe the Baptists—one them really religious cults where they don’t let women wear make-up or dance or become preachers? Well, this tongue came out of a woman who rebelled against standard operating procedure, you know. She went into a town somehow, and got her tongue pierced. I’d be willing to bet that there’s a box somewhere in another rental car with a hank of tattooed flesh inside. Anyway, she went and got all rebellious, and came home, and stuck her tongue out at her husband or father—or maybe her husband was her father—and the next thing you know he’s got a big old butcher knife out.”

  Mike couldn’t keep his hands still. I picked up the box and slid it across the table. He tapped on its lid. I said, “Why would the guy rent a car? Some of those religious cults have laws against renting cars. He wasn’t Amish, that’s for sure.”

  Mike said, “When I first saw the thing, I thought it was a gigantic belly button cord. You ever seen a kid’s belly button cord?”

  I didn’t answer him. I wanted to call up DeLaura and get her to ask her new husband what he might do in a situation like this, his knowing about leadership and all. A few minutes later I said, “I wonder what happened to our waitress.”

  Maybe chain restaurant managers have to undergo training that involves being able to predict and assume who’s a likely terrorist, I don’t know. They must go to yearly workshops down in some place like Myrtle Beach, then pass on their knowledge to waitstaff, bartenders, cooks, and dishwashers. I’ve never earned any kind of five-year pin at Hooter’s or Longhorn Steakhouse, so I wouldn’t know. I had had enough to drink with an extracted tongue in a box across from me to understand only that the manager of this particular Mulligan’s had undergone a good leadership training program that taught managers to identify regular customers and find ways to keep them happy. Our waitress finally came back all smiles and said, “Sam says that your money’s no good in here. Sam’s our manager. He says that y’all have been such good customers, that the rest of the night’s on us. He even said if y’all want to drink till closing, Mulligan’s will pay for the cab. Sam says your money’s no good in here. It’s our new policy for regulars.”

  Looking back, I should’ve understood that something was awry. The waitress—her nametag had read Elizabeth at the beginning o
f the evening, but changed to Liz somewhere along the line—wouldn’t make eye contact with us. She looked at the box, then looked away at one of those triangular stand-up tubes that advertised Mulligan’s Favorites: Fairway Fries, Hole-in-One Jala-peño Poppers, five Bogey Burgers, three Birdie Chicken Strips, and the Putter Platter.

  I didn’t have time to think, Sam and Liz are one-syllable names.

  Mike said, “I knew that it was my lucky day before I even went to work. I knew it! I love it when you have a feeling and it ends up being true. This might have to be the last night of us doing what we do, Chuck. You need to know to stop when it won’t get any better. I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of virgins showed up in our lives about right now.”

  Hell, I ordered a brandy just like Mike had started off with. I said, “I’ll have a brandy. Does this go for food, too?” I turned the advertisement. “If we can have food, too, then I would like a couple hot dogs in the rough.”

  “Make that four,” Mike said. “Four hot dogs in the rough.”

  Liz said, “I’ll get that order right in. We’re a little backed up, but I’ll tell the chef to get them as fast as possible.”

  She took off away from our table as if she’d been stung by bees. Mike said, “‘In the rough’ means it comes with cole slaw. I wish I’d’ve thought that up. Me and you ought to think up possible food names for these theme restaurants we always go to. Like when we think up car names, you know.”

  Then we sat there like idiots, I suppose trying to think up golf-themed foods that the Mulligan’s people hadn’t already figured out. I finally said, “Nine-Iron Nachos,” but couldn’t think of nine ingredients that made sense. I thought of six, but Six-Iron Nachos didn’t have a ring to it.

  Mike said, “I bet they don’t have Chi Chi’s chili named after Chi Chi Rodgriquez because there’s already a chain called Chi Chi’s and I bet there’s a copyright.”

  We waited another fifteen minutes for Liz to come back with our drinks or our hot dogs. I leaned toward Mike and said, “Did you look around the car any more? Did you slip that box in your Rubbermaid can and wait to look at it, or did you open it up right away?”

  Mike said, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I opened it up right away and knew what it was, seeing as my uncle fought in Vietnam, and I used to have a girlfriend way back when from either Syria or Lebanon or Saudi Arabia, depending on how things were going between us and them. So I looked at it, then closed it up, then looked all around—I’m talking about even beneath the emergency brake handle—thinking I’d come up with at least a finger with a ring on it. Nothing more, though.”

  I looked at my wristwatch—a pretty nice old-fashioned Timex that needed winding about every thirty-six hours. I’d gotten it out of a Ford Taurus. It had a metal, accordion-style band that pulled on my arm hairs but—indirectly, I’m convinced—got me to quit smoking. Because of the Timex’s powers, I never chose to wear a woman’s Bulova I found in a Subaru on the day after Valentine’s Day, or a Citizen Eco-Drive I found in a Geo on Arbor Day. I saved them, understand. One day I might try to sell everything off and put the money in a CD, for retirement, you know.

  At nine o’clock the bar looked desolate. As a matter of fact, no one sat within eyeshot of Mike and me. Outside of some bad 1980s songs overhead, and a man giving sand wedge tips on six TV screens—that’s something Mike’s found once, a bent set of golf clubs—there was no longer any crowd noise, but I’d not been paying attention or taking on-the-minute notes per usual seeing as a booth isn’t the best place to scope out what’s going on inside a bar that caters to golfers, women attracted to golfers, female golfers, and women attracted to female golfers. And drunks who work menial jobs somehow proud to receive five- or ten-year pins.

  That’s right, I said it: “On-the-minute notes per usual.” It’s what’s expected of a good car rental agency employee, according to management. It’s what’ll get you noticed, promoted to a leadership capacity, and inevitably trained to fight the war on terror.

  Mike said, “Goddamn. Maybe she turned lez somewhere between taking our orders and going to the bar. She was checking us out, my man. That’s the way it is with women around here. You tell them you’re about to be famous on TV, and they won’t leave you alone. Show up every night by seven o’clock with a day’s pay and something found in a rental car worth keeping, women won’t even make eye contact. At least that’s how my first two wives operated.”

  I’d never brought up to Mike that he had what they call “a misogyny tendency.” I learned all about it in a signed first-edition book by a woman named Camille. Unfortunately, the book entered my life about a month after my wife left me for the professor. If only I’d read the thing, memorized some nice sensitive passages, and recited them during lovemaking, then maybe I wouldn’t be hanging out with Mike and not even be concerned with whatever my Timex says.

  Mike stood up from the booth and took about three steps toward the empty bar. He said real loud, “Hey! Hey! We’re ready!”

  Let me tell you about the training and precision of the North Carolina Law Enforcement Department, the FBI, special Homeland Security agents, and even some of Charlotte’s everyday police officers. Maybe not all of them were there, but it seemed like it. I couldn’t say for certain, seeing as they stormed in from all directions wearing riot gear. It looked like the Grambling or Southern University marching bands spilling inside Mulligan’s is what I’m saying—that kind of precision.

  Two men had Mike pinned against the bar in such a way that his head, beneath the countertop, made him look like an Allen wrench. Don’t ask me why I started laughing at his situation for about one second until I got pulled out of the booth and flattened on the floor.

  A lot of men said, “Freeze,” and “Don’t move,” and “Don’t you fucking think about blowing this place up, raghead,” among some other things. They had it down. Let me tell you, our taxpayer money is going to a good and worthwhile cause. Personally, I would’ve thought that if they indeed suspected a bomb in that tongue box, they’d’ve sent in a robot. Maybe these guys were just braver than most bomb experts. Or more expendable, either one.

  Without ever taking off a stitch of my work clothes those men gave Mike and me strip searches. They did! I hear that regular strip searches can be painful, but let me tell you about strip searches that include cotton underwear and Dickie’s work pants getting shoved up there, too. Any later colon cancer procedures I might decide to undertake in the future won’t feel like anything, I’m betting.

  Sam the manager and Liz the waitress came out of a back room as we were escorted out the front door of Mulligan’s. Liz pointed and screamed, “That’s them! That’s them right there!” I don’t want to judge her or anything, but she’ll need some faster synapses to get beyond waitress in the fast-paced world of food service.

  Later on, in separate interrogation rooms housed in some kind of mobile step van, then later on at the regular jail, I guess Mike and I convinced everyone that it was only a found tongue in the box. Like I said before, our waitress had more than likely been trained and motivated to pinpoint possible anti-American, terrorist activities. All of Mike’s bragging about “You will see me on the news real soon,” coupled with the old-fashioned dovetailed wooden box alerted her. His wearing a turban probably didn’t help, either. Without us even noticing, she and the manager got everyone out of the bar and restaurant areas—even in the Smoking Allowed section, which is a difficult thing to do without much noise—and contacted the authorities who lined up in their strategic ways.

  I don’t want to say that my ex-coworker’s a prophet but, sure enough, we were on television for about a half-day of CNN reports, every hour. Mike couldn’t take it. He got all paranoid. Seeing as no one can figure out the owner of the tongue, or the renter of the car, Mike figures he’s got a hit planned on him in the same way that Salman Rushdie—I have that first edition, too, but the signature’s a fake; I did it myself—underwent from all those old-timey extremists. Mike went back directly
to selling mobile homes, saying he hoped that only terrorists and FBI agents bought from him, and that they all got involved with a tornado.

  I believe it’s either the FBI or Homeland Security that owns the tongue now. I imagine they’ll hand it over to some other government agency in order to do some DNA testing. Word is, if steroids are detected, Congress might get involved.

  I don’t care. I have other things to think about—namely, the lecture tour some kind of publicist guy set up for me to tell my story. The company’s letting me take a sabbatical—just like if I taught at a regular college. So far I haven’t been contacted by my ex-wife’s new husband’s place. I hope it happens, though. I’d like for her to see how she should’ve hung around the marriage a little longer. I’m flying to some places, driving to others in one of the competition’s rental cars. Everywhere I’m going, I bet, I’ll either get frisked, or questioned about excessive mud and dings.

  BETWEEN WRECKS

  The kid’s mother stole my pallet of river rocks stacked out by the driveway, she said, to complete the thousand arrowheads on order from Cheap Chief Charlie’s roadside attraction down near Myrtle Beach, among other places. The woman introduced herself as Sally Renfrew and claimed that the chalcedony vein below Andrew Jackson Prep—her son Stan’s school—finally “ored out.” Sally Renfrew said that she had run a fake arrowhead business for fifteen years; that she now understood Malthaus’s notion of supply and demand; that it wasn’t easy being a single mother anywhere on the planet but seemed particularly difficult off Scenic Highway 11, some twenty miles from at least an Auto Zone, Staples, public library, grocery store chain, GNC, or hardware store that specialized in durable chisels; that she couldn’t return what flat rocks she’d already slowly stolen (and I never noticed, seeing as I’d allowed the family river rock business to fail while I hopelessly worked on my low-residency master’s degree in Southern culture studies) over the past month; that she was worried miserably that her boy wasn’t going to follow through with college once he graduated from high school in the next year. She rattled on. I thought that maybe she feared I would tie her up, throw her into a secret back room, and torture her for the unspeakable crimes she performed upon a man, namely me, whose pregnant wife took off on him in order to raise their child far from South Carolina. Then I felt so guilty about standing there on my own land on the banks of the Unknown Branch of the Saluda River, blocking Sally Renfrew’s exit strategy, that somewhere during her manic monologue I agreed not only to help her load rocks, but also to be a “big brother” of sorts. She chattered on and on about how Stan recently met his biological father, how the father died in a motorcycle accident, and how the kid had it in his mind that he could skip college and become a stand-up comedian. I looked down at the river. I wondered if my father or grandfather ever had poachers of this sort, and tried to think of how they might handle the situation.