The Mortal Nuts

by Pete Hautman

  THE MORTAL NUTS

  PETE HAUTMAN

  For Tuck

  Introduction to the ebook of The Mortal Nuts

  The Mortal Nuts was my third published novel, and the first novel I ever wrote.

  For several years during the late 1970s and early 1980s I worked as a pineapple cutter at a Minnesota State Fair food concession. I knew even then that I wanted to write novels, and the fair proved to be a rich source of material. In 1982 I began work on a novel called Roo, set at the fair. I finished a solid (I thought) draft in 1989.

  Every major publisher passed on Roo. They were right to do so. The book was an unholy mess, as unpublished first novels tend to be.

  I continued trying to write. My next novel was somewhat better than Roo, but still not good enough. My third attempt, Drawing Dead, found a home at Simon & Schuster. They also bought Roo, on the condition that I put it through a massive revision.

  I deleted subplots, killed a dozen or so darlings, changed the gender of certain characters, and (most importantly) added a new character named Sam O’Gara, who played a minor role in Drawing Dead.

  The refurbished, reimagined Roo was published in 1996 as The Mortal Nuts. I still prefer Roo as a title, but another Midwestern author, Jane Smiley, had just come out with a book called Moo. Moo is also a very good title.

  “The mortal nuts” is a poker term. In poker, if you have an unbeatable hand, you are said to have “the nuts.” I suspect it’s derivation comes from the expression “I got ’em by the nuts,” as in testicles. When you have the nuts in poker, sometimes your situation is particularly lucrative or otherwise satisfying. The term “the immortal nuts” came to be used to describe such a situation. Since “the nuts” are, by definition, “the nuts,” calling them the “immortal nuts” is like describing something as “very unique.” Over time, “the immortal nuts” has been misheard and shortened to “the mortal nuts,” which is even more nonsensical, but easier to say.

  A related bit of arcana: At any particular event, carnies and other vendors often use the term “I made my nut.” This has nothing to do with poker. It means that their incoming cash has reached the point where it covers the overhead (rent, bribes, cost of goods, etc.), and any future sales will be profit. I was told by an old carny that the term originated back when carnivals traveled by caravan. Each carny owned his or her own wagon. The carnival owner would, upon reaching a venue, confiscate the wheel nuts from all the wagons, to ensure that the carnies would give him his piece of the action without stealing off one night. When the owner got paid, he would return the wheel nuts. The story sounds apocryphal, but I am partial to apocrypha.

  There are four novels in the Joe Crow/Axel Speeter/Sam O’Gara universe: Drawing Dead, Short Money, The Mortal Nuts, and Ring Game. Drawing Dead is available as an ebook. Short Money and Ring Game will be coming soon.

  Pete Hautman

  January 2012

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 1

  “She don’t seem so bad, Ax. Get her tuned up, maybe a new set of shocks.”

  “I got a hundred eighty thousand on it. They start to go at a hundred eighty thousand.” Axel Speeter gripped the wheel hard, trying to suppress the shimmy that had developed thirty thousand miles before. It was a good truck, but getting old, the way things do. He looked at the speedometer. Fifty miles per, about as fast as he dared go, cars passing him on both sides, people in a hurry.

  Sam O’Gara rolled down the passenger window and expelled a wad of Copenhagen. “Hell, Ax, they start to go at a hundred eighty miles. That don’t mean you got to buy yourself a new truck every Monday morning.”

  “I had this one ten years. I don’t want to have to worry about my truck busting down during the fair.”

  “You worry too much, Ax. Plus, you don’t never listen to me.

  Axel Speeter shrugged. He worried just the right amount, he figured, because when it came to the Minnesota State Fair, he couldn’t afford to take chances. And he always listened to Sam. They’d been friends going on fifty years.

  But that didn’t mean he always trusted what he heard. He rested his right hand on the Folgers can on the seat beside him.

  Sam said, “What you got in that can?”

  Axel ignored the question. “Look, I want to buy a new truck,” he said. He drifted into the right lane, pulled off the freeway onto Highway 61. “You going to help me or not?”

  “I say I wouldn’t help? Hell, I’m riding shotgun, ain’t I?” Sam was looking at the coffee can. “You’re still a goddamn peasant, ain’t cha, Ax?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know anybody’s told you, but they got these things called banks now, guaranteed by the government of the United States of America.”

  Axel clamped his jaw.

  Sam muttered, “Goddamn peasant. Prob’ly got it all buried in your backyard.”

  “I don’t have a backyard, Sam. I live in a motel.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Axel thought, There he went where? Sam was always saying stuff that meant nothing and acting like it proved whatever crackpot point he was trying to make.

  Axel said, “Goddamn right I do.”

  Sam looked at him. “Goddamn right you do what?”

  They drove for a few blocks, neither man talking.

  “I just want to make sure I don’t get stuck with a lemon,” Axel said.

  “You know what they say about lemons.”

  West End Ford came into view on the right, a block ahead. Axel turned on his signal and started to slow down. “What do they say about lemons?” he asked.

  “I don’t remember,” Sam said. “Something about lemonade.”

  King Nelson leaned a hip against the immaculate hood of a new Bronco and watched the two old men through the showroom window. The big one was kicking the tires—literally kicking the left front tire of the white ’94 F-150. A lot of the old farts did that, kicked the tires. What did they think, that there might not be air in them? That the wheel would fall off? King didn’t know what they thought.

  King remembered the big one from the day before. The old man had crept into the lot in a beat-up ’78, got out, and walked straight to the row of “certified preowned” pickups.

  At first, King had thought the old man wasn’t serious, just a lonely old dude who had stopped in to waste his time, but after a few minutes the guy … what was his name? King scanned his memory. Some part of a car. Dash? Hub? Axle! … Axel had zeroed in on the white ’94, a more modern version of the rust-speckled, creaking wreck he’d driven into the lot.

  An inch or two taller than King’s six one, Axel had veiny, chiseled, deeply tanned forearms and wide, slop
ed shoulders. He must’ve been a monster when he was younger, King thought. Axel’s eyes were yellow at the corners, with green irises and pupils of slightly different sizes. The top of his head shone smooth pinkish brown, sprinkled with rust-colored freckles, framed by two swaths of thick white wavy hair over each ear, which met in a curly little ducktail above the collar of his white short-sleeved shirt. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but kind of slow on the uptake. Yesterday, King thought he’d had the sale wrapped, but then the guy—Axel—had backed off, saying he’d have to have his mechanic check it over.

  And here he was, back as promised, with his mechanic, a scrawny old dude in greasy coveralls and a quilted, visorless welder’s cap, under the truck now, looking at god-knows-what, while Axel walked around kicking the other three tires and examining nearly invisible chips and dings on the truck body.

  King decided to stay inside for a while, let the mechanic finish looking things over. They’d be in a more decisive mood after the sun pounded on them for a while.

  “Carmen’s going to like it,” Axel said.

  Sam said, “Say what?”

  “I said Carmen’s going to like it. She hated that old truck of mine.”

  Sam wriggled out from under the truck. “Carmen the nudie fountain dancer? Thought you shipped her off someplace.”

  “I did. She’s in Omaha.” Axel did not like being reminded of Carmen’s naked fountain dance. He wished he’d never told Sam about it. “She’s going to medical school,” he said.

  “You’re shittin’ me. Carmen wants to be a doctor?”

  “Actually, she’s studying to be a medical technician. You don’t need college for that. It’s sort of like being a nurse.”

  Sam scratched his grizzled jaw. “Huh. She didn’t never strike me as the nursey type.”

  “She’s a good kid. Just got in with a bad crowd.” Bad company and drugs, that was what had inspired Carmen to strip her clothes off, middle of the day, and dance nude across Loring Park. She’d been arrested, on that particular occasion, while cooling off in the Beiger Fountain.

  “I’m flying her back to work the fair,” Axel said. “She’s doing much better now, Sam.”

  Sam shook his head.

  Axel said, “What?”

  “I didn’t say nothing.”

  “Good.”

  “I tell you one thing, though. I wouldn’t want her changing my bedpan.”

  King waited until the two of them were standing, looking at the price sticker, arguing, then he left the cool showroom and strode confidently across the hot tarmac. The two men stopped talking and watched his approach. He was ten feet away, still bringing his smile up to full power, getting ready to offer his hand, when the mechanic, all squints and wrinkles and dirty fingernails, jabbed a forefinger at the side of the truck.

  “What about these here stripes? He ain’t paying extra for no dee-cals.”

  King stopped and opened his mouth, not sure what to say.

  “I like the stripes, Sam,” Axel said.

  “That don’t mean you got to pay for the fuckers.”

  “Why not? You don’t think I can afford stripes on my truck?”

  “Only a damn fool pays for looks.”

  King said, “There’s no charge for the stripes.”

  Both men glared at him as though he had cut in on a private conversation.

  “The stripes were there when we took it in on trade,” King explained, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.

  Sam crossed his arms and spat, missing King’s tasseled loafer by four inches. King took that as a bad omen but not a sale-killer. He started to tell them a few things about the truck, give them the canned sales pitch, directing his best lines at the big one, Axel. Axel listened, rocking back and forth on his heels, pushing out his lips now and then and licking them with a pale tongue. King tried to draw him out a little, asking how he liked the weather lately, asking what he thought about those Minnesota Twins.

  “What about these here square headlights?” Sam interrupted.

  King explained that the new halogen headlamps were brighter, lasted longer, and were more attractive than the old round ones.

  Axel said, “I don’t like ’em.”

  King ignored the unanswerable objection. He asked Axel how heavy a payload he would be carrying. Guys liked that word. Payload.

  Axel shrugged. “Lots of tortillas,” he said.

  King said, “Tortillas?”

  “That’s right,” Axel said. “Lots of tortillas. I’m gonna need a topper too.”

  Sam had climbed into the driver’s seat. “Jesus, Ax, you get a load a this radio? I bet you gotta go to school or something to run the fucker.”

  As Axel looked at the radio, King told him about its automatic search function and ten available station presets, five AM and five FM.

  Sam said, “FM? He don’t need FM.”

  “I like the FM,” Axel said.

  “Since when did you listen to anything except ‘CCO?” Sam asked.

  “Carmen’s going to like it,” Axel said. “She hated my radio.”

  Sam said, “So who the hell you buying this for?”

  King smiled weakly, almost wishing this Mutt and Jeff team would just up and go down the street to the Chevy dealer, buy a truck off of those assholes.

  “Speedometer says twenty-five nine,” Sam said. “How far’d you spin ’er back?”

  “Excuse me?” As far as King knew, they hadn’t spun an odometer in three years, not since the state attorney general had taken a personal interest in a truck his son was buying.

  “I said, ‘How far you spin it back?’ It’s a simple damn question.”

  “Those are original miles,” said King.

  “What the hell’s that mean, ‘original miles’?”

  “I mean the odometer is accurate.”

  “I don’t doubt that. What I want to know is, how far’d you spin ’er back?”

  “What about this air bag?” Axel asked, reading the embossed letters on the steering wheel. “I don’t want the air bag.”

  King was confused, but happy to be talking about something other than the mileage. “You don’t want the air bag?”

  Axel said, “How do I know the son-of-a-bitch won’t just go off?”

  “Go off?”

  “I’m driving down the highway and the son-of-a-bitch just goes off”

  “That won’t happen,” said King.

  Sam had his head down under the dash. “My best guess is, the way these pedals are worn, she’s got better’n fifty thou on er.

  Axel said, “For cryin’ out loud, Sam, the man says the mileage is what the mileage says it is.”

  “You don’t want to know what I think, why’d you bring me?”

  Axel grunted. “Good question.”

  King could feel himself starting to lose it. It was hot as hell out there. The sun felt like an iron on the yoke of his peach-colored shirt, which was turning dark around the armpits. It wasn’t healthy, this work, walking from an air- conditioned showroom out into the heat, back and forth. That was why so many car salesmen had heart attacks. The two old men, who didn’t seem to mind the heat, were both examining the steering wheel again.

  Axel said, “What do you think, Sam?”

  Sam shook his head. “Air bag ain’t a bad thing to have, Ax. You run into something, you might like it.”

  “Yeah, and it might blow up right in my face, never know what hit me.”

  Sam muttered something, scratching his beard.

  “What’s that?” Axel asked.

  “Nothing,” Sam said. “Wouldn’t make no difference what I said.”

  “Fine. So what do you think? Think you can monkey-wrench it?”

  “Shit, Ax, I could monkey-wrench a gorilla.”

  Axel turned back to King. “You mind we take it for a spin?”

  King took a deep breath, dredged up a smile, pasted it on his face, and handed Axel the keys. Ignoring his own best instincts in favor of company policy, he sa
id, “I’ll have to ride along, of course.”

  Sam snatched the keys and hopped into the cab. “C’mon, then. Let’s have us a look at what this fucker can do.”

  A few minutes later, King felt his facial tic start up again. It had been months since it had bothered him, but Sam had coaxed it out. The old bastard must have kept a whole army of guardian angels busy to have lived so long. His idea of a test drive was taking it up to seventy-five on a residential street, then locking up the brakes, leaving about five dollars’ worth of rubber on the tarmac.

  “Brakes seem good,” Sam said. And that was only one of Sam’s several “diagnostic tests.” When they finally bounced over the curb back into the lot, missing the driveway by six feet, King had to excuse himself, go to the rest room, and sit down on the toilet for three minutes of deep-breathing exercises. It didn’t help. His cheek was twitching every four seconds.

  His only consolation was a feeling of gratitude at having survived. Axel had seemed equally shaken up by Sam’s driving. When King rejoined the pair outside, they were heatedly arguing the truck’s price. He might as well have been invisible, for all the attention they paid him.

  “Wouldn’t go a dime over twelve,” Sam was saying.

  The sticker price on the F-150 was $14,975—not a bad price, King thought, unless you considered the test drive the vehicle had just endured. That and the fact that Sam was probably right about the odometer reading. They didn’t spin odometers at the dealership anymore. They mostly bought the vehicles pre-spun.

  Axel shook his head. “Too low. There’s no way they’d even consider that,” he said.

  True, King thought, happy to have Axel arguing his case.

  “How about fourteen even?” King said to Sam.

  Sam growled, ignoring him. “Goddamn it, Ax, even with the topper she ain’t worth more’n thirteen.”

  “Sam, you told me it was solid.”

  King decided he’d do best by keeping his mouth shut. He found himself staring at the tattoo high on Axel’s right wrist. A faded blue blotch. He couldn’t tell what it was intended to represent.

  “It’s solid, but I sure as hell wouldn’t go fourteen.”

  “You think it’s worth thirteen?”