The Mortal Nuts

by Pete Hautman

  He really liked The X-Files.

  So he was sort of pissed when the bell on the lobby door dinged—just when the pointy-nose guy was showing his webbing to his partner. Probably some guy with a stupid question, or needing change, or some jerk who didn’t believe the NO VACANCY sign. He kept his eyes glued to the TV, refusing to look away for a simple door ding. Maybe it was just somebody come in to use the vending machines. Maybe they’d just go away.

  Then he heard the most irritating sound in the entire universe. The goddamn bell on the counter. Usually he hid the damn thing during his shift, but he’d forgotten and now they were dinging it. Not just once, but over and oven Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

  He said, still not turning around, “I hear you. Just hold on.” Big-head was touching the toe webbing. Man, did that send a tingle up his thigh!

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  Quist spun around in his chair and looked up over the counter. “I said hold on!”

  Ding.

  It took maybe half a second for his eyes to go from the bell to the hand to the face. Shit, it was that punk kid hung out with that Carmen, old Axel’s girlfriend or daughter or whatever the hell she was.

  Ding. Standing there with his shaved head and his shitty little smile, hand suspended over the chrome bell.

  Ding.

  There was another one too, a scrawny, pimply kid, sitting in one of the chairs, scratching his neck.

  Ding.

  Quist stood up and approached the counter, picked up the bell, and put it in a drawer.

  “I need a key,” the kid said.

  Quist shook his head. “No can do,” he said. “You’re eighty-sixed. Mr. Speeter told me so.” He was of two minds. One mind was telling him that was that, the kid stays out of the guest rooms. The other mind was wondering how much cash the kid might be able to come up with if he really wanted access.

  Turned out the kid was of a third mind. Quist tried to step back, but the end of a crowbar snagged his neck like a stage hook and jerked him toward the counter.

  With Kirsten gone, the Taco Shop was in serious trouble. Sophie put it to Axel this way: “If you can stand, you can help. If you can’t, we might as well just close up.”

  Axel said, “It’s only eight o’clock. We never close at eight.”

  “We need your help.”

  Sam’s voice came from inside the Taco Shop. “Hold your horses there, young fella. I only got so goddamn many hands, y’know. You sure you wouldn’t rather have a taco?”

  Axel sighed and tried to stand up. His knee had a solid, heavy feel to it, as if packed with cement. He eased some weight onto it. For a moment, it felt all right, then a sharp pain lanced from the joint right up his thigh. He grabbed the edge of the doorway.

  “I need a cane or something,” he said.

  Sam appeared in the doorway. “Hey, you two. I got my hands full up to my elbows here.”

  “He needs a cane, he says,” said Sophie.

  Sam stepped out of the stand. “You hang on there, Ax. I’ll be back in a jiff.” He set off toward the Tiny Tot Donut stand. Sophie ducked back inside, leaving Axel clinging to the doorway.

  Sam returned in less than a minute, swinging the green yardstick cane that Tommy had taken away from Bald Monkey. He handed it to Axel, then helped him into the restaurant, propped him up against the prep table.

  “Waiting on one tostada, two bean, one Bueno,” Sophie said.

  Axel began to assemble the order, slowly at first, then picking up speed as his body rediscovered familiar rhythms.

  “What you want me to do?” Sam asked him.

  “I don’t care.”

  Sam scratched his three-day-old beard. “Maybe I shoulda let you shoot the monkey,” he said.

  Axel stopped moving his arms and gave Sam a nothing look. “You could fry up some shells,” he said. Within minutes, they had developed a sort of system, and the production line began to shuffle along.

  Tigger wanted to say, Man, I don’t hardly know you no more. Only thing was, he didn’t really know the dude in the first place anyways, so why should it surprise him the guy turns out to be this psycho nut. Tearing the room apart, snarling and muttering about coffee cans full of money. Sure, there were plenty of coffee cans, but forget about money. All they found was socks and underwear and a bunch of other junk, which was now scattered all over the floor. He was starting to think the money was just a figment somehow got stuck in Dean’s head. James Dean the psycho nut, now sitting on the bed with a crowbar on his lap, reading fucking poetry. Tigger shivered and tried to listen to what Dean was saying. Not that it made any sense.

  Dean read, “Unvirtuous weeds might long unvexed have stood…” He paused. “What do you think, Tig?”

  Tigger said, “What’s unvexed?”

  “Like the motel guy. He’s unvexed at us.”

  “It means, like, pissed off?”

  “Right. And I’m unvexed too. And I’m gonna stay unvexed until I get my hands on that taco man’s money. Listen. But he’s short liv’d, that with his death can doe most good.“

  Tigger did his damnedest to look as if he agreed, even though he was afraid that what Dean was saying was that somebody else was going to get killed pretty soon. He’d gotten to the point where the money seemed unreal. All he wanted now was to get out of this deal alive. The money didn’t matter.

  Dean asked, “So what are you going to do, Tig, you get a couple hundred thousand bucks in cash? You gonna buy yourself a new car?”

  Tigger thought for a moment. He kind of liked the idea of one of those big black Dodge pickups with the big engine and the big wheels and the lights up top. Maybe the money mattered some after all.

  “I was thinking maybe this truck I seen,” he said.

  Axel stood outside the restaurant and watched Sophie closing the food bins and fitting the perishables into the cooler. She looked exhausted. He wanted to say something to her, but he couldn’t think what it was. Using his yardstick cane, he limped around to the front. His good leg, the one doing all the work, was giving him trouble now. His burlap bag, with the day’s receipts added to it, hung like a one-sided yoke from his shoulder. Axel moved a few feet to a picnic bench and lowered himself onto it, keeping his bad knee straight. He lifted the bag onto the bench and watched Sam lower the plywood over the service window, snap a combination lock into the hasp.

  He said, “So, Sam.” He was hurting, but he felt better than he had. Work helped.

  Sam lit a cigarette and sat down beside Axel.

  “I got to tell you Ax, you got yourself one tough way to make a living.”

  “Beats fixing cars.”

  Sam puffed vigorously on his Pall Mall. The air was warm, moist, and still; a ghostly column of smoke gathered above his head. They sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the murmur of closing concessions, the grinding and whining of the sanitation trucks. “No it don’t,” he said.

  Axel could feel a question boiling in his throat, getting itself ready. He said, “So, Sam. Let me ask you something. Suppose a guy found something that, say, was the property of this other individual, this friend of his. What would you think he should do about that?”

  Sam rolled his cigarette between his thumb and his forefinger, examining it closely. “You find something, Ax?”

  Axel shook his head. “Not me. But if I did—like, say, if you were to drop your wallet in my restaurant and I was to, say, find it—what I’d do then is I’d give it back.”

  Sam said, “I keep my wallet on a chain.”

  “Yeah, but hypothetically. Hypothetically, I’d give it back.”

  Sam snorted and took a huge drag off his cigarette, flicked it out onto the grass. Axel watched it land, suppressed an urge to hobble over and pick it up. There were a thousand other butts on the mall. One more wouldn’t make any difference.

  “Hypothetically,” Sam said, “if a guy’s dogs dig something up in his own backyard, then a guy ought to be entitled to keep whatever it is they dig
up.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Axel said.

  “I mean, the whole point a private property is finders keepers.”

  “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Sam shrugged. “You want to talk about who’s making sense, I ain’t the one was shooting off a forty-five on the midway a few hours back.”

  “Speaking of which, you gonna give me back my gun?”

  “What for? So you can go get yourself killed like Tommy?”

  “No, so I can get some answers from you.”

  Sam cackled and fired up another cigarette. “I might maybe be a horseshit burrito-roller, Ax, but I ain’t a fucking idiot.”

  Sam turned his head away and stared at the Tiny Tot Donuts stand. Axel suppressed an urge to whap him with his cane. He wasn’t sure what kind of twisted passageways were contained in Sam O’Gara’s compact skull, but he figured it wouldn’t do any good at this point to piss him off. He decided to open up the other subject they’d been avoiding, just to see what popped out.

  “It’s like he’s not really dead, isn’t it?”

  Sam’s head bobbed slightly; a cloud of smoke materialized and slowly dissipated. “I got this feeling we’re not too far behind him, Ax. Tommy, he’s down there getting warmed up, dealing hands with that leather-ass Satan.”

  “Telling him how to play,” Axel said.

  “Losing every hand too, I bet. Satan, he don’t bet without he’s sitting on the mortal nuts.” Sam expelled a burst of smoke through his nose, laughed, then started sneezing. “And I bet you he gets ’em every time, Ax. Every fucking time.”

  “We never got together for that game, the three of us.”

  “No,” Sam said. “We never did.”

  “I think Sophie’s ready to go.” Axel got his good leg under him, braced himself with his cane, and rose painfully to his feet. He started toward Sophie, who was locking the back door to the restaurant.

  “Look at you,” she said.

  “Look at me what?”

  “You can hardly walk. You should see a doctor.”

  “No way. Look what happened to Tommy. He went in the hospital, now he’s dead.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Well, I’m not going to any hospital. We’ve got two more days till the end of the fair. I’m not spending them on my back.”

  “Fine. How are you going to drive yourself home?”

  “I don’t think I can,” Axel admitted. “I don’t think I can bend my leg.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to take you,” she said.

  “I don’t think I can get in that little car of yours.”

  “We’ll take your truck.”

  Sam said, “Y’know, I could use a ride home too. I took the bus over here. Cost me a buck and a quarter.”

  Sophie sighed, shaking her head as if disgusted, but a part of her was clearly enjoying her role. “What would you two do without me?”

  Chapter 39

  “You sure you can make it?” Sam asked.

  Axel stepped carefully down from the cab. “It’s only a few steps to my damn door, Sam.” He transferred some weight to his yardstick cane, took a quick step, testing his bad knee. It had stiffened some more, but at least it didn’t hurt worse.

  Sophie, sitting behind the steering wheel, said, “Don’t just sit there. Give him a hand, Sam.”

  Sam made a move to climb down.

  Axel lifted the cane and waved its tip in Sam’s face. “I can do it myself, goddamn it.”

  “He says he don’t want no help,” Sam said.

  Sophie said, “Yeah. Like he didn’t need any help walking to the truck.”

  “That was a quarter mile,” Axel said, taking another painful step. “This is ten feet.”

  “I never seen anything so pitiful,” Sam said. “Soph is right. You oughta be in the hospital.”

  “It’s just a sprain.” Axel took two quick steps, reached the door. “You know, you don’t have to sit there gawking at me. Go on. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

  “I’ll be here,” Sophie said.

  Axel inserted his key in his door and stood there watching as Sophie and Sam drove off. He turned the key, twisted the knob, pushed the door open. His hand had just hit the light switch when something crashed into his mouth, knocking his dentures back into his throat. His knee collapsed, and he fell to the floor, choking.

  “That was easy,” said Dean, kicking the door closed. It was always easy. Pork had been easy. And with Mickey, he hadn’t even been trying.

  “He’s, like, having a fit or something,” Tigger said.

  Axel lay on the floor, holding his neck with one hand, digging the fingers of his other hand into his mouth. Dean tossed the crowbar on the bed, bent over Axel, and quickly felt under his arms and around his waist, looking for the heavy, solid shape of the .45. Axel writhed under his hands, red-faced, eyes bugged out, making wheezing, gagging noises.

  “He don’t have it,” Dean said. “Unless it’s in here.” He grabbed the shoulder bag, pulled it away. Axel’s body convulsed, he gave a loud cough, and something jettisoned from his mouth and bounced across the carpet toward Tigger.

  Tigger jumped back “Fuck, it’s his fucking teeth!”

  Dean laughed, stepping back Nothing fazed him now. He had finally hit a plateau with the meth, a perfectly level place where all things came easily under his control. His body had adapted to the high levels of amphetamine; he had the buzz under control. He was a machine now, turbo-charged and running at peak capacity. He could see with perfect clarity. He unzipped the bag and dumped its contents onto the bed. Things fell out in slow motion. A pair of dirty socks. A bottle of aspirin. A heavy bank bag, obviously full of coins. And five white paper bags held closed with rubber bands. Dean ripped open one of the bags and found a thick bundle of paper money. He thumbed the bills, then tossed the packet to Tigger. “What did I tell you?”

  “He’s been carrying it with him?”

  Dean shook his head. “This is just a taste. Carmen says he has coffee cans full of the stuff.” He watched the old man pull himself up onto one hip, a rope of pink drool reaching from his mouth to the carpet, breathing heavily, still trying to catch his wind. “We just got to get him to tell us where.”

  Axel heard the kid’s voice. “That’s right, ain’t it? You got more?”

  He wiped his mouth, looked at the blood on his hand. The kid took a step toward him. “You hear me, old man?”

  “I shoulda shot you.” The missing dentures distorted his voice. He coughed, leaned to the side, spat a glob of spit and blood on the carpet.

  “So talk to me. Where’ve you got those coffee cans stashed? All you got to do is tell me, and we leave you alone. Nobody gets hurt.”

  Axel shook his head. “Too late,” he said. “I’m already hurt.” His mouth tasted of blood, and his knee was pulsing unpleasantly, but oddly enough, he felt stronger, felt a kernel of anger where moments before there had been only empty spaces.

  “And you don’t want to get hurt more, right?”

  Axel said, “That depends.” This anger, it was not like the fury that had driven him that afternoon. This was a cooler, harder-edged emotion. Before, it had been his imagination driving him, but this time he could see it, right in front of him. He set his jaw, trying not to let what he was feeling show in his face.

  “Depends on what?” the kid asked with a smirk.

  Axel did not reply, thinking that he wouldn’t mind getting hurt some more if it would get him a shot at this punk kid, this kid who’d been in his stuff, messing up his room. That would be worth getting hurt for. He had a sudden memory of the kangaroos he’d seen on television. The old boomer had run away, had survived the battle only to die alone out in the Australian desert. That wasn’t for him. One way or another, he had to play this hand to the end. The only problem he could see was that there were two of them, and he was lying on the floor with a bad leg and no teeth. He couldn’t kick. He couldn’t even bite the
son-of-a- bitch.

  He said, “You’re James Dean.”

  Dean shrugged. He didn’t seem to care that his name was known.

  Axel said, “He was a punk too. You see that movie Giant?”

  James Dean rested his weight on one hip, cocked his head. “The one where he got to be this rich guy,” he said.

  “The one where he started out a punk and then turned into a creep.”

  “Least he got the money. Only he didn’t keep it in coffee cans.”

  Axel said, “You know what Tommy called you?”

  Dean said, “Who the fuck’s Tommy?”

  Axel ran his tongue over his upper gum. “He called you the Bald Little Monkey,” he said, adding the “Little” just to give it more punch.

  The skinny kid laughed abruptly, shut it down when Dean snapped a look at him.

  “Well, maybe I’ll pay this Tommy a visit too,” Dean growled.

  “Maybe sooner than you think,” Axel said.

  Realization touched Dean’s features. “Oh!” He laughed, then explained to Tigger. “He’s talking about the donut guy, Tig. He’s, like, threatening us!”

  The thing to do, Axel decided, was to think of it like a game. The one with the muscles, James Dean, he was the one to beat. The skinny, slack-mouthed kid, the one called “Tig,” wouldn’t be much of a problem. He said, directing his words at Tig, “When it happens, you’d best run.” The kid’s mouth fell open another half inch. Axel figured that might just do it. Plant the idea, let it grow. Everything about the kid, his body language, said he didn’t want to play this hand.

  Dean said, “He’s a tough guy. Look how tough he is, Tig. No teeth.”