The Mortal Nuts

by Pete Hautman

  Carmen drifted into work around ten, still wearing her sunglasses even though the day was overcast, getting darker, thunder rumbling in the distance. She’d tried covering up her black eye with makeup, but it hadn’t worked.

  She had dreamed that night about James Dean, the original one. Dreamed she was on this beach … Puerto Penasco? Maybe. A nice beach, and James Dean comes up on a motorcycle and gives her a breakfast sausage, then roars off. She was getting all her Deans mixed up. Anyway, she was glad he was gone. It had been a bad zigzag in her life, but now it was over. He’d probably driven back to Omaha. Left his stupid poetry book and booked. And that was okay with her, because she could damn well take care of herself. Maybe she’d go to Puerto Penasco herself. Maybe she could get Axel to send her. Maybe they had a nursing school down there. Maybe she could just take the money, few hundred dollars a day, just slip it in her pocket.

  She was thinking about that as she stepped into the Taco Shop, trying to figure out how much she could take before he noticed. Axel grabbed her wrist. “Come here, Carmen.” He pulled her out of the stand, jerking her arm.

  Carmen flashed that she was being arrested, as if he’d been reading her thoughts. He led her out onto the mall, to an empty picnic table, sat her down, sat beside her. He leaned forward and turned his head so that his face was only a few inches from hers. He said, ‘Talk to me, Carmen. Tell me about your friend.”

  Carmen leaned back. “Friend?” She pulled her purse onto her lap and dug for her cigarettes.

  Axel dropped his hand to her wrist. “Don’t bullshit me, Carmen. You know who I’m talking about. Your friend beat up Tommy last night. Hurt him real bad. Robbed him. I want to know who he is and where I can find him.”

  “Oh!” So he’d gone and done it. A nervous laugh bubbled out of her.

  “You think that’s funny? He coulda been killed. If Mack hadn’t shown up, he probably would’ve been.”

  “Mack?”

  “Big Mack, the guy runs the high-striker. He says the kid

  had a gun. Pointed it right at him. Could’ve got himself shot.”

  Carmen shook her head. She could almost see it, like in a movie. Big Mack, who could ring the high-striker with a one-handed sledgehammer blow, against Dean. Dean with Axel’s gun. Like a showdown.

  Axel’s hand closed on her wrist. “Talk to me, Carmen. You know who I’m talking about.”

  Carmen said, “That hurts.”

  Axel let go.

  “I don’t really know him,” she said. “He’s just this guy.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Dean. James Dean.”

  Axel snorted.

  “That’s what he says it is. Look, I just met him, you know? I met him in Omaha, and then he followed me up here. I had no idea he was coming.”

  “You let him stay with you.”

  Carmen shrugged, put a cigarette in her mouth. “Yeah, well, he’s gone now.” She spoke around the unlit cigarette as she searched for her lighter. Axel reached up and plucked her sunglasses from her face.

  “He hit you, didn’t he?”

  Carmen shrugged.

  “You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Maybe just to try out my gun. He’s got my gun, doesn’t her

  Carmen’s eyes slid away. “I told him not to take it. It wasn’t like I had any choice, you know.”

  “You always have a choice.”

  “Yeah, right.” Carmen found her lighter, lit her cigarette, blew smoke. “I could live or I could get myself killed. Some choice.” She fixed her eyes on Axel’s shoes. They were planted solidly on the tarmac, pointing right at her. His hand appeared in front of her face, cupped her chin, and gently lifted her head.

  “You should get that eye looked at.”

  “Axel, you’re talking to a nurse, almost. I’m gonna be okay. I just don’t want people staring at it is all.” She twisted her head away, snatched her sunglasses from his other hand, and backed away from him.

  Axel did not move. He stood with his hand still out where her chin had been, his face stiff and hard like one of those old-fashioned photographs where the men all have beards. A drop of rain hit her face. A curtain of gray moved across the fairgrounds from the east. Another large drop hit her knee. Suddenly it was raining hard, sending people running toward the buildings.

  Axel said, “Where is he, Carmen?”

  She turned her hand, shielding her cigarette from the rain. “I swear to God, Axel, I haven’t got a clue.” Then, unable to stop herself, she asked, “How much money did he get?”

  Axel sat on a stool at the Beef Hut, watching a Styrofoam cup of coffee cool. The creamer he had added produced an oil slick, which shimmered prismatically under the fluorescent lights. All those colors in his cup, yet when he looked up he saw only gray sheets of cold rain. He felt ill.

  Not sick in his body or in his head. He felt sick in his life. His carefully nurtured and controlled life was coming apart like an overfilled burrito. His friend had been put in the hospital by some skinhead freak. That same bald monkey—Axel couldn’t bear to think of him as “James Dean”—had beat up his…his Carmen. The rain was killing his business on what should have been a big day. And Sophie—what was going on with Sophie? Bringing in her own tortillas—he knew that for sure—but the money, the money was good. If anything, it was too good. The last two nights, he’d matched up his cash receipts with the tortilla count, and both times he’d come out two to three hundred dollars rich, almost as if she was doing some sort of reverse rip-off. At first, he’d thought that the Bueno Burrito was throwing off his estimates, but even taking the new product into account, the money was coming out too damn good. Axel didn’t like it. It would bug the shit out of him until he figured out what was going on.

  He looked out at the flooded street, its slick black surface churning with raindrops. Maybe he was sick in his head. Maybe the tortilla thing could be explained. Maybe he had simply misplaced his .45. Maybe Carmen had run into a door. Maybe Tommy had gotten too drunk and fallen down twenty or thirty times. Maybe it wasn’t raining.

  Chapter 22

  Of all the things Axel Speeter did not like, hospitals rated number one. Axel did not like the way they looked or the way they smelled, and he especially did not like the doctors who worked there. He hated their phony smiles, their dry hands, and the way they used all the buttons on their prissy white coats. Most of them wouldn’t have made it through one busy Saturday at the Taco Shop.

  He did, however, enjoy watching the nurses.

  Tommy Fabian had a room on the fourth floor of Midway Hospital. Axel set the brown paper bag on the bedside table and sat down on the molded plastic chair. Tommy had his head turned away, staring out the window at the gray sky. A plastic bag filled with clear fluid drained into his left arm.

  “I told you it was gonna rain,” Tommy said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Cost us both.”

  Axel shrugged. “Yesterday was good.”

  “Yeah. First part anyways.” Tommy pressed a button, and the bed slowly contorted, bringing him to a sitting position. The left side of his face was undamaged. Tommy turned toward Axel. The other side was mottled maroon, with deep-purple patches. His right ear was completely covered with gauze, and portions of his scalp had been shaved, stitched, and taped over. The pale-blue iris of his right eye floated on a sea of cherry red.

  “You’re looking good,” Axel said.

  “Fuck you,” whispered Tommy.

  “Okay,” Axel said. “You look like dog shit.”

  “Thank you. How my joints doing? Sam burned any of ’em down yet?”

  “Sam’s doing okay,” Axel said. He thought for a moment, wondering whether he should say more.

  Tommy asked, “Okay, what happened? He bust one a my machines?”

  “No. Everything’s fine. He did try to fire one of your help.”

  “Which one? There’s a couple of ’em maybe need firing.”


  “It was Duane. The kid told him he couldn’t smoke in the stand.”

  Tommy sat halfway up. “Goddamn right he can’t! The health heat’ll shut the joint down, they see him smoking in there.” An agonized look flooded his face, and he fell back against the pillow.

  Axel said, “Relax, Tom, it’s all straightened out.”

  “I sine as fuck hope so. Fucking Sam. I told him to just sit there and fucking watch. I shoulda known better.”

  “Well, that’s what he’s doing. I told him he should go outside, he wants a smoke.”

  “I suppose he’s sitting in there chewing that fucking snoose.”

  “Yeah, well, I told Duane to make sure he wasn’t spitting it in the batter.” Axel held up a paper bag. “I brought you some donuts.”

  Tommy tried to lift his left arm toward the bag, winced, let it fall back. His forearm was bound in a plastic splint.

  “Here,” Axel said, opening the bag and extracting a sugar-coated minidonut. “You want me to stick it in your mouth?”

  “Screw you,” he said. “You know I don’t eat the fucking things anyways.”

  “Oh. Screw me.” Axel ate the donut, watching Tommy’s red eye watching him back. He finished chewing, swallowed, then looked in the bag. His eyes widened, and he said, “Now what’s this, do you suppose?” He pulled out a half pint of Jack Daniel’s, the black label speckled with sugar from the donuts. Tommy reached across his abdomen with his right arm. Axel brushed the sugar off the bottle, opened it, and placed it in Tommy’s hand.

  “Thank you,” Tommy said.

  “You’re welcome.” Axel watched Tommy empty a quarter of the bottle. “So, you tell the cops who hit you?”

  Tommy said, “I don’t tell the heat nothing, Ax. You know that. I take care of myself.”

  “Looks like you take care of yourself real good.”

  “That fucking Bald Monkey blindsided me. Got six grand off me.”

  “This is the guy you said was never gonna mess with Tommy Fabian again? Doesn’t sound to me like he stayed scared for long.”

  “He’ll be plenty scared, I ever see him again.”

  “They found a baseball bat by your Winnie.”

  “My own fucking bat.”

  “Doctor says you’re gonna be here at least a week. You got blood clots.” He pointed at the fluid dripping into Tommy’s arm. “They have to get you thinned out.”

  “I ain’t being here no week.” He took another pull at the Jack Daniel’s. “It’ll thin out faster with Jack.”

  “You know what his name is?” Axel asked.

  “Who?”

  “Bald Monkey. He says his name is James Dean.”

  Tommy blinked. “What, you mean like the sausage guy?”

  When Axel got back to the fair, the three girls—Carmen, Kirsten, and Juanita—were huddled in the stand, looking

  out at the nearly deserted mall. It was raining, getting dark, and the only people outside were crouching under umbrellas or running from one building to another, shielding their heads with plastic bags or newspapers.

  He’d be lucky to clear a thousand bucks. The day was a bust. None of the concessionaires would do well, not even the joints inside the buildings, where the crowds clustered in stagnant, sodden masses. A rainy day was bad for everybody. Even Tiny Tot Donuts, possibly the most weatherproof concession at the fair, looked dead. They had only two machines going. Sam O’Gara’s green feed cap showed above the top of the machines, moving from one end of the stand to the other, then back. He still had eight kids working; all of them standing at one end of the stand, talking.

  Axel changed course, veering away from the Taco Shop, heading for Tiny Tot.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  Sam looked up, met Axel at the side door. “What the hell do you call this?” He made a gesture that included the entire universe outside the stand.

  “I call it rain, Sam.”

  “So what are they sayin’, Ax? They saying the fucker’s gonna let up?”

  “Won’t make any difference at this point, Sam. It’s after eight. Won’t be anybody more coming to the fair this day. Maybe you ought to send some of your help home. What do you think?”

  Sam regarded the group of teenagers at the other end of the stand. “I don’t know,” he said. “What if it gets busy?”

  “It’s not going to get busy.”

  “I mean, what the fuck do I know about donuts? I never sold a fucking one of ’em before this morning, Ax. Swear to Christ, that fucking Tommy—even when he gets the crap beat out of him he’s making trouble for me. You remember that time in Deadwood?”

  Axel nodded.

  “Fucking Tommy-the-Mouth fucking Fabian. Probably how he got his ass kicked last night, mouthin’ off.”

  “You know, you don’t have to do this, Sam. I can keep an eye on things, you got something else you got to be doing.”

  Sam rolled his shoulders. “Fuck it. He wants me to run his business, I got no problem with that. How is the little shit anyway?”

  “He’s hurting. But he’s got all the nurses pissed at him, so I’d say the prognosis is good. They’ll have him out of there as soon as they can.”

  “I sure as fuck hope so. I got this Camaro I’m working on. Got a guy wants to buy it if I can get the fucker running.” He tugged his cap down low over his eyes. “So you think I got too much help?”

  “Send half of them home. The other two stands too. Waste of money. Besides, they’ll just be thinking too much, getting into trouble.”

  Sam nodded uncertainly, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. Axel enjoyed seeing him out of his element. He was such a cocky son-of-a-bitch, it was good to see him floundering for once.

  Sophie had gone home at seven, according to Carmen.

  “She said she wasn’t feeling good. I dunno.”

  “She was sick?” Axel asked.

  “I don’t think so. More like she was pissed off about the weather. You couldn’t hardly talk to her. Bite your head off. Maybe she was having her hot flashes again. She said she’d be opening in the morning.”

  That Sunday night, the grandstand featured something called a Christian Rock Festival. The rumor was that advance ticket sales had come in at a record low, and the rain had reduced attendance even further. Axel closed the Taco Shop at nine-thirty and sent the help home. He didn’t even have the heart to wait for the small rush of business that would come after the show. He just couldn’t see a

  bunch of wet Jesus rockers getting excited about his Bueno Burrito. He lowered the front of the stand and performed the end-of-day cleaning and counting rituals.

  Once again, the numbers didn’t make any sense. He’d started the day with 1,500 flour tortillas and 764 corn tortillas, more than enough for a busy Sunday. But the day had been a bust. He’d taken in $ 1,407, roughly a break-even day. But based on his tortilla count, he had sold only 260 burritos and 126 tacos and tostadas. Again, he was three hundred dollars long. In other words, he thought, about what he’d expect if someone was adding a hundred tortillas to his stock.

  Somewhere in all this, there had to be a scam. But for the life of him, Axel couldn’t figure it. It just didn’t make any sense.

  Something Axel had told her that she couldn’t get out of her head: “A bad day is a bad day. You can’t unlive it. You try to get it back, you go nuts.”

  Sophie thought she knew what he meant, but it didn’t help. She took the rain personally. She felt herself responsible. Saturday had been such a great day. Record sales. Axel had been elated. Then they get rained out the very next day. It killed her to have to pay those girls to stand there watching it rain. She wished now she’d sent one of them home. But she’d been thinking all day that it might clear up, the people might come.

  Pouring herself a second glass of white zinfandel, Sophie listened to the sound of steady rain filtered through the mosquito screen. Landfall could be a noisy community—some summer nights, the parties and fights went on till dawn—but on this wet Sunday the
only sounds were those of rain on aluminum and the hissing of traffic from Interstate 94.

  She wished Axel were with her.

  As soon as the desire reached her conscious mind, Sophie recoiled from it. He was busy. Too busy. And anyway, why should she care? All the things she did for him, did he ever say thank you? Actually, he did. But there were a lot of things she did that he didn’t know about. Like coming in early. Like taking responsibility for the shrinkage—how many managers would do that? Sophie set her jaw, the quickly dissipating but heady joy of martyrdom flowing through her. One way or another, she would make this the Taco Shop’s best year ever. She would show him what a good manager could accomplish. They still had a shot at setting a record gross, if next weekend was good. And even if the gross was off, she’d show Axel a net like he’d never seen before—she would cut back the help, eliminate shrinkage, and push every sale like a pro. Sell those nachos, those extra-large Cokes. She’d show him. When he saw what she could do, he’d come up with one beluga of a bonus. How could he not?

  Chapter 23

  The week started out cool, in the sixties but mostly clear, with just a few cirrus clouds off to the south. The State Fair Daily News predicted attendance at 110,000—a solid weekday showing that would provide steady, profitable business for most of the concessionaires. By eleven o’clock, sales at Axel’s Taco Shop had already matched Sunday’s totals. Axel could count the number of times that had happened on one hand and have five fingers left over. The first Monday was usually for shit.

  Sam O’Gara, heading into his second day at the donut stand, was feeling his oats.

  “Maybe I’ll get into it,” he said. “Get myself a joint like this, sell deep-fried lutefisk on a stick or some goddamn thing. Get myself rich like you and Tommy.”

  “I’m not rich,” Axel said, a bit nettled. “And besides, it’s not that easy.” He had worked hard to build his business. His first years at the fair had been tough, and not very profitable. Axel hated it when people looked at his operation as if it were a cash cow gifted to him by the state. It was a business, like any other, only maybe tougher. And the money wasn’t nearly what people thought. The Taco Shop might net thirty in a good year, and if he was lucky he could make another twenty doing special events and county fairs, but it wasn’t as if he was rolling in it. There were guys spinning nuts in factories making better money.