Running With Monkeys: Hell on Wheels

by Diane Munier

  Now Bobby and Dorie were with them at the table. The Little Bit proved resilient. She was talking Bobby’s arm off, and her hair curled around her face because it was humid in here still. But Bobby kept laughing, and he had her on his lap. “You’re a thinker, aren’t you?” Isbe said.

  He laughed. “What makes you say dat?”

  She pursed her lips and looked at him for a moment. “You’re quiet. Like a thousand things are spinning around in there.”

  No, just six. “Come ’ere.” He pulled her close and kissed her cheek. She didn’t give him her lips. She was shy now that she’d been sick. Maybe sober.

  After he kissed her, she sighed, and it made him grin.

  Francis and Audie were on the dance floor. Didn’t matter the song or the pace; they’d been doing the same entangled slow moves for nearly an hour, even when there was a crack between songs.

  And Isbe was quiet in her chair, and Jules had that pulled up close. Her head was on his shoulder, and he had one arm around her and with the other hand, he smoked or brought the bottle to his lips. He drank beer now, just a beer because he didn’t want to be so far ahead. He didn’t need it anyway; he was quiet inside. They had that meeting at fourteen hundred hours with Audie’s uncle. He was eager to make some bread, but wondering what it would cost him to do it.

  There was some guy on the guitar, and man, he could play. He was singing about a bobby sox baby with a head full of nothing. Jules leaned into Isbe and asked her if she understood what he was singing, and she hit him on the leg. “You think that’s me?”

  He shrugged, and she pretended to be put out with him, and they laughed a little.

  They’d been going crazy most the night, dancing like fools, messing around, but now…he was enjoying this, being with her, like this. He felt protective of her. When she’d got sick, he’d known how to take care of her…he’d wanted to, just like he told her.

  The salt-and-pepper crowd had thinned some, but it was filling up again. Some guys came in, loud, three of them, fresh out of it, you could tell, just like he’d been—well, last night at the track. They had been drinking, trolling for broads. They were loud and kicking up shit and looking to hit something.

  He tightened his arm around Isbe. He was a lover right now, this minute. He’d dumped that popcorn earlier in the show, and that was all the heroics he wanted for one night. His hands were still sore from the racetrack free-for-all. And he didn’t want to go into that meeting with fresh bruises, like a punk. He didn’t know why he was thinking all this, anyway.

  So he played with Isbe’s ponytail, twirled it round and round, threaded his fingers through it, and started to twirl it again. He wanted to tease her some cause she’d been shy since she’d lost her supper. But she hadn’t eaten much of it to begin with. She’d fed him more than herself, and he was still stuffed.

  He wondered if she remembered the part about love, because she’d repeated it so earnestly. Now that might have her shy. It was funny…it was sweet…it was wrong to say that…it intrigued him—and it worried him too—that she could feel that strongly. Sure, she’d been drunk and sick…but that was the Quad Fifty, the big gun, and she’d aimed it right at him and fired.

  “You look like an angel,” he said. She needed it, and he needed to say it. He wasn’t like this with dames, but she was different, and it made him a sap.

  She was getting all dewy-eyed. It scared him a little, and he scrambled to find safe footing. “So, what’s it like working the switchboard? You been doin’ that long?”

  “Forever,” she said, her head back on his shoulder. “How about you? You found work yet?”

  He took a sip. What to say? “Work finds me. It always has,” he said. “Where you live?”

  “South side. Duplex I grew up in. Dorie rooms with me, Francis lives on the other side.”

  She owned property? Damn. And she looked all of sixteen. “You inherit it or something?”

  She shrugged. “It belongs to my dad. He has a flat closer…to work. Once Mom died…he had a girlfriend…it’s complicated.”

  “Go on,” he said. He wanted to know.

  “She was his girlfriend…before Mom died and…I didn’t want her around. So…he married her a week after we buried Mom and they moved across town.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Sixteen. I finished school and went to work for the phone company and met Dorie. She didn’t want to live with her parents anymore, and she moved in with me. Then later, when the tenants moved…I knew Francis by then, and she was looking for a place…so she moved in.” Isbe took another sip of her soda and toyed nervously with the glass. “That’s my story…my blues, I guess. Wouldn’t make much of a song unless it was about being bored. What about you?”

  He had a few sad stories, but he wasn’t blue any more than she seemed to be. “A room in a shithole downtown.” It suited him fine, way better than how he’d had it. He had walls and a ceiling, a bed and running water, and the promise of heat come winter, and he was alone. “It’s temporary,” he said.

  He told himself there was nothing to be ashamed of, but this was the first time he’d given her a picture of his life, and he saw it differently then. “He treats you bad…the old man?”

  She looked away from him. “He has a temper. But… he’s guilty…he leaves me alone.”

  He wanted more. He pointed with his bottle toward where Audie clung onto Francis.

  “What’s her story?”

  “Francis? Um…she works…”

  “I know that. She’s got something sad…”

  “Yeah. If she tells Audie, he’ll tell you I guess. If he doesn’t, I will…later.”

  He looked at them again, Audie’s arms around her, and sometimes he thought she was crying, and these songs weren’t that sad.

  Isbe shook her head a little. “I said later. I mean…if there is a later. I mean…oh God…I mean, if we…see each other again.”

  Before he could get his tongue to form a reply, those guys came to the table. Inside, Jules cursed some. He didn’t want them over here.

  The tall one knew Bobby. They’d met overseas. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Bobby was saying, and he reached out his long arm and shook hands with that one. The guy was Jimbo, his friends Lorne and Vic. Like, Bobby, they’d been with one of the bastard outfits that cleaned up the debris once Jules’s and Audie’s battalions had spearheaded through.

  Yeah, Jules didn’t care for this guy, but hell, he had a right to be here same as anyone. So he put up his hand and shook all around. Bobby introduced Dorie and Isbe. Those boys were used to looking for girls. Hell, D-Day Two, Jules and his squad were looking soon as they could. Always looking. And these now, well, Jimbo had his eyes on Isbe. Just a few seconds at a time, but again and again, and Audie was there with Francis, and he introduced her, and that pulled Jimbo’s attention for a minute, but it seemed Isbe was more his type.

  Francis said something to Audie about “powdering her nose,” then walked off. Audie called out for a beer, checked if anyone else wanted a drink, then flipped a chair around and sat, seeming mellowed out from feeling up Francis for so long on the dance floor.

  So these boys got drinks and Bobby and Audie told them to pull up chairs. There went Jules’s quiet spell with Isbe. He’d had enough of guys like these. Damn Audie and Bobby for widening the circle.

  Dorie and Isbe stood to follow Francis, and Isbe put her hand on Jules’s shoulder to say goodbye, and he grabbed it and held it loose but firm so she had to slowly pull away. She laughed, and he looked after her. Trouble was, Jimbo did too.

  “Damn,” Jimbo said, turning back to the table, eyes flashing to Jules, “those your girls?”

  Jules didn’t answer. Moog.

  Audie said, “They ain’t our sisters.”

  That broke the tension the question brought. Everyone laughed. Jimbo rapped on the table and said it looked like a swinging place. “Where’s the dames? Your girls dance?”

  “Have to ask them,” Bo
bby said.

  That Jim-dick looked right at Jules. “I’ll do that.”

  The girls never came back. Jules saw them walk out of the hallway, a damn fine sight, and they went right to the dance floor, and Dorie and Isbe danced together, and Francis stood there listening to the music and got asked right off by some boy who looked about twelve, and she went to dancing with him like older women did with boys, about a foot of space. She’d been that way with Audie at first, too.

  Dick-bo got up, took a big swig of his beer, hiked up his pants, and went straight to the girls. His side-kick with the fire-red hair followed him.

  Dorie was Bobby’s problem; Jules kept his eyes on Isbe and saw the eager face on Dick. He talked some, laughed some, and Isbe nodded and took his hands, and Dorie went with that other one.

  Jules didn’t like the look of it. That guy’s hands were big on her, and he looked right at Jules as he twirled her some and her heavy hair came right out of that string, and it was swinging along with her now. Dick touched her back every time she spun around. Jules knew men. And he was pissed off because Dick-bo loved this too much, and he pulled her in, hand on the small of her back so he could hold her against him and feel her chest.

  “Jules,” Bobby yelled, “Lorne asked if you had another Camel.”

  “Why the hell not?” Jules said to Bobby. He tossed the pack at Lorne, but not his lighter. He wasn’t a store.

  Audie was turned around looking at Francis. When he spun to the table to suck on his beer, he had this smile.

  Jules couldn’t spend time thinking about that monkey; his eyes were on Isbe and the hands.

  Someone kicked his chair.

  “Jules,” Audie said, “you’re bird-doggin’.”

  “What’s it to you?” He didn’t like the chair kicking. Sudden moves like that could get a man hurt.

  “It’s just a...” Audie stopped when the other got up—the swarthy one. He went for Francis, and Jules almost shouted with glee. Now they’d see.

  Jules pushed up as well and stalked his way to Isbe. He didn’t ask if he could cut in, but she saw him and let go of Jimbo’s paw and came right to Jules, and he didn’t even look at that one as he took this girl and pulled her right against him and buried his smiling face in her hair.

  Then he felt the tap on his shoulder, and it shouldn’t have been happening at all, and then it was firm.

  “Hey buddy, you can’t even ask?” Dick-bo said.

  Jules looked at him. “She’s my girl,” he said, because he believed in mercy.

  “Good for you, buddy. I don’t want to marry her; I just wanted a dance.”

  Jules moved Isbe more into the center. Bobby was there now, talking to his man, telling him to calm down. The dick put his hands up and walked back to the table. Jules never looked directly at any of it, but he was aware of all of it.

  Isbe had this goofy smile. “You saved me,” she said.

  She was looking at him, and the smile moved into this sultry kind of look, and her eyes fell half-closed, and her lips parted a little, and she stared at his mouth. The crooner up front sang, “Don’t take my love, don’t take it.”

  It was time to let little Isbe know he wanted those lips, so he moved in slow, and he let it be soft and wet, and he licked her a little. He moved his hand all the way up her back, and he took his time, erasing that other punk’s handprints. He pressed her against him, and he moved his lips over hers so there’d be no doubt. Soon as he let her breathe a little, she whispered, “I’m your girl?”

  He laughed. “You done this…been somebody’s girl?”

  “Maybe…not.” She laughed. “What about you…you had a bunch?”

  Oh man. He was smiling, and her eyes were burning into him. She had her head tilted, and she was studying his face. “Look,” she said, “I’m not stupid. You’re…every girl in this place wishes she was me.”

  Now that did get him going. Much as he liked this, he had an idea he needed to run. This babe—she hadn’t been shy about what she felt…love…hero. She hadn’t said the love thing since she got sober, but she hadn’t taken it away either.

  “You’re my girl right now,” he said, hoping she’d buy that, and he gave her his best smile, the one that always got him his way with birds. “I’m…used to living day to day.”

  She was thinking about it. He wanted her now. And he didn’t want anyone else to have her, not while he was looking, not tonight.

  What would that be like for her? Day by day. What girl would buy that?

  “All right,” she said, but she was serious. “But…I want a beer now.”

  “You sure you’re ready?” he asked, because he wanted to keep dancing. He didn’t want her going around Dick, and he liked holding her, and he wasn’t sure she bought his day-to-day thing. He wasn’t sure.

  She led the way to the bar, and he stared at her ass in that skirt—little bird. She was going to pay for her beer, and he got up to her.

  “I got that,” he said. “Two,” he told Redver.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Save it…for tomorrow’s girl.”

  He put the money down, took both bottles and got her a glass. Then he led her out, through the kitchen to the picnic table in back with the awning over it to keep out the rain. If the mosquitos weren’t bad, they could sit out here for a minute and maybe figure something out.

  She had taken loose steps behind him, allowed him to yank her along, but she was dragging.

  “You don’t like me now?” he said before he sat and poured her beer.

  She fell onto the bench beside him. “I like you.”

  He fished for a smoke, realized they were back inside.

  “I can’t tell when you’re joking,” she said. She tilted her head, staring up at the awning that protected them from the rain pelting down on them like a thousand bullets.

  “About what?”

  “You said I was your girl. You’re jealous…then you can’t wait to get rid of me. Day to day? Who says something like that?”

  He shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, and she folded her arms over her chest.

  “Isbe…look at me.” He pushed her hair over her shoulder and smoothed it there. “I like you. What can I do?”

  “Will I ever see you again…after tonight?”

  He was tongue-tied. He wanted her. He didn’t. He couldn’t let her go…or keep her.

  She had the shiny eyes. “You know. How I feel.”

  “Baby…how can you mean that? We just met each other.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you expect me to do…propose?”

  She sat there looking at him, and his hard heart…it moved or something, and same time he grabbed for her she lunged at him, and he went back some and caught them before they went off the bench onto the bricks. Before he could think, she tore her mouth off his and got on the table and pulled on him, and he climbed up with her and got over her and half on top of her, and the beers and the glass went crashing, and it was all-out crazy then, him kissing her and against her, flying past all the bases, her moving and him cradled in between her legs, and one of her legs around him somehow, and he held her to him, his hands going crazy up and down her, to her ass and pulling her into him as he bucked into her, and she ripped her mouth away from his, her face turned to the side, her eyes closed and panting.

  “I can’t breathe,” she said. Then she was back, her hands in his hair, holding his mouth to hers, not that he needed her help to put his tongue as far down her throat as he could, and she was going wild under him, moaning and taking, and he pulled away, this time panting like a fool. “Isbe,” he said, “slow down. Slow down a minute.”

  “Why? You don’t want me?”

  “No…I mean yes. I want you.” He took her hand, raised his hips and let her feel his dick. Then he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.

  “Am I just another one?” she asked, chest heaving, tears in her voic
e now.

  He shook his head a little. His ears were filled with his own hammering heart.

  “I want you,” she said.

  “Girl…you’re coming at me…”

  “I’ll stick by you while you get it straightened out.”

  “Get what straightened out?”

  “Your life,” she said.

  He laughed a little, but she didn’t even smile. She put her hands on his face and rubbed her thumbs against his lips.

  Chapter 7

  After Shiney’s, Part One

  “Hero,” Isbe whispered on the picnic table in back of Shiney’s, under the awning, in the rain, her thumbs on Jules’s lips.

  Audie’s big horn was calling him. His loud footsteps came through the dark kitchen that had closed. “Jules, come on…we’re movin’ this party. Francis has a place.”

  Isbe and Jules laughed now. “A place,” Isbe whispered.

  They’d soon thrown their jackets and shirts in the trunk and were piled in the Buick, headed for Francis’s place. Isbe found some music on the radio. Jules drove again, and everyone, even Audie, was quiet.

  Francis sat in front like before, Audie in the seat behind her. Dorie was between Audie and Bobby. Her legs were in Bobby’s lap, and she looked to be asleep, her head on Audie’s shoulder.

  Isbe was in front next to Jules. When they first got in the Buick, he told her, “Put your arms around me.”

  And she did, and she was pulled against him, and she spent much of the ride just looking at him, and at first he kept smiling at her, but then he got used to it enough that he surrendered and let her look. But every now and then, he’d smile at her and whisper, “Bobby-soxer.”

  She’d laugh. “You’ve got beard patches,” she finally said, low.

  “Audie calls them sand pits,” he told her, and she put her face against his shoulder and did that giggle he loved.

  As soon as he got going enough on this dark two-lane, he put his arm around her and Perry Como crooned out Prisoner of Love, and he’d escaped capture in Europe only to come home to this…to ambush her. He’d been between her legs, and that had been when he’d surrendered—no, before that, maybe in that dark theater—maybe there. And it felt like magic, in this damn car…her arms…the music, like they’d taken off into the air, and if they could keep going…they could get somewhere.