Don't Skip Out on Me

by Willy Vlautin

‘I wanted to ask you a few questions about the upcoming Golden Gloves tournament.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I know we’ve gone over this before, but they really said for certain that you could fight out of Arizona even though you live in Nevada?’

  Horace nodded. ‘Six months ago, when I took those days off, I got my driver’s licence changed to an Arizona driver’s licence. My aunt in Tucson said I could use her address. So in the eyes of the law I am an Arizona citizen. And I called the Golden Gloves office and told them, filled out the paperwork and paid the fee. I double-checked it all.’

  ‘Can’t you just box in Las Vegas and live here?’ asked Mrs Reese.

  Horace shook his head. His voice grew quiet and he began tapping his foot on the faded linoleum floor. ‘I’m never fighting in Nevada again. Not ever.’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad, what happened in Vegas,’ Mr Reese said. ‘You’re too hard on yourself.’

  Horace stared at the floor.

  ‘And you’re really going to stay in Tucson after that?’ she asked.

  ‘You know he is,’ Mr Reese said gently.

  ‘But you are, Horace?’

  ‘I’m sorry Mrs Reese,’ he whispered and looked at her.

  ‘And you’re for sure staying at your mom’s sister’s place?’

  ‘She has a back house that I’m renting. I’ve already arranged it.’

  ‘And you’ve talked to your mom about all this?’ Mr Reese asked.

  ‘Just a little. She’s always wanted me to leave Tonopah. She helped arrange it. She said her sister owed her a favour.’

  ‘And it’s a nice place?’ Mrs Reese asked.

  ‘I think it is, but I haven’t been inside it.’

  ‘And you’re really going to live there?’ Mrs Reese asked.

  ‘A person has to find his own way,’ Mr Reese said. ‘Especially at his age. You know that. We’re both just going to miss you, Horace. That’s what we’re trying to say. We both love you and don’t know what we’re going to do without you.’ He paused and looked at his wife. Tears welled in his eyes and his voice wavered. He smiled. ‘Anyway, I guess you better go get Víctor before I start crying. Let’s hope he can at least eat without causing too many problems.’

  *

  The next morning at dawn, Horace went over to where Víctor slept on a makeshift bed on the couch. He pushed on his leg until Víctor opened his eyes.

  ‘Uno hora, Los Angeles,’ he said and stepped outside in his workout clothes. He ran down toward the desert floor and the county road. Two miles there and two miles back. Afterward he did push-ups and sit-ups under the awning. When he opened the door to the trailer he saw Víctor sitting on the couch, dressed and waiting. Horace showered, put on clothes, and together they walked to the main house.

  Mrs Reese had the table set and they ate a breakfast of bacon, eggs and potatoes. Afterward she handed each man a sack lunch, and Mr Reese gave Víctor $300 from Pedro, the five weeks’ pay he was owed and an extra hundred-dollar bonus.

  ‘Horace will buy the bus ticket for you when you get to Tonopah, okay? Pedro’s paying for it out of his wages.’

  Víctor looked blankly at the old man and said nothing.

  ‘Can we at least call someone for you?’ Mr Reese asked in both Spanish and English, but Víctor just shrugged his shoulders. Mrs Reese even brought the phone to Víctor, but Víctor only set it back on the kitchen table.

  *

  Horace drove the thirty miles on gravel road while listening to Megadeth’s Countdown to Extinction on headphones. The sun rose over the Monitors and fell onto Ralston Valley. A truck pulling an empty stock trailer was the only traffic they passed and Víctor dozed in the passenger seat. Eight miles from Tonopah they hit paving and Horace got the old truck up to fifty and drove to Deyoe’s Mini-Mart, where he parked and shut off the engine. He tapped Víctor on the shoulder and woke him. ‘We’re here,’ he said and they got out of the truck and walked inside.

  Horace bought Víctor a bus ticket to Las Vegas and a gallon jug of water, and together they sat outside on a metal bench and waited.

  ‘The bus you’re going to catch, it’s not a Greyhound,’ Horace tried to explain. ‘It’s just a small-time line that goes to Las Vegas and back. So when you get there you’ll have to find the Greyhound station. The easiest way to do that will probably be to take a cab. Once you’re there you can get a ticket to Los Angeles. Understand?’

  Víctor just looked at him, his hurt eye still half-shut and his nose swollen. ‘Los Angeles,’ he said and tapped his chest with his thumb.

  Horace shook his head and took a note from his shirt pocket he’d written the night before.

  My name is Víctor

  I need to get to the Greyhound bus station in Las Vegas.

  I need one ticket to Los Angeles on the Greyhound bus.

  He handed the paper to Víctor. ‘Show this to the bus driver to get to Los Angeles.’ Víctor looked at the note and put it in the backpack he carried. Horace told him no and took the paper back out. ‘You got to hold onto it.’ He acted like he was driving. ‘Give to the bus driver, okay? Give it to the bus driver.’

  Víctor again took the paper and this time held it in his hand and Horace decided to stay with him until the bus came. For nearly an hour they sat in silence, side by side on the metal bench, and Víctor ate his lunch so Horace gave him his own sack as well. When the bus finally appeared coming up the hill, Horace tapped Víctor on the shoulder and pointed to it. ‘Recordar el autobús … goes to Las Vegas, not Los Angeles.’ He tried to think of more Spanish words but what little he knew disappeared from his grasp.

  The bus parked in front of the mini-mart and a small pudgy driver stepped out. Horace spoke to him briefly, gave him $20 and asked if he could help get Víctor to the Greyhound station. The driver said he’d try, and then Horace shook Víctor’s hand, gave him $50 of his own money and said goodbye.

  4

  ‘I hate the dentist,’ Horace said the next day as they sat in Mr Reese’s truck in front of a small dentist’s office in Tonopah. It was early morning and Little Lana sat curled in a ball between them as the radio played.

  ‘Everyone hates the dentist,’ the old man said, ‘but having bad teeth is worse. Remember that old guy that used to hang out at Tonopah Tire when you worked there?’

  Horace laughed. ‘Ricky. I remember him.’

  ‘Most likely he had good teeth at one point, but when you knew him he had nothing left but little rotten nubs.’

  ‘He had the worst breath of all time too.’

  ‘See,’ Mr Reese said. ‘That’s why you go to the dentist. And look at it this way: you won’t have to worry about them when you get to Tucson. You’ll be all set. Anyway, you better get in there or you’ll be late and I have a few errands to run while you’re getting stabbed and drilled on.’

  ‘I can’t believe I have two cavities,’ Horace sighed. ‘I brush my teeth twice a day and I never eat sugar.’

  ‘Soda has a lot of sugar in it.’

  ‘But I’m quitting that,’ Horace said and opened the passenger-side door and got out. ‘I bet you’re going to get a real breakfast now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Breakfast?’ the old man said and grinned. ‘I hadn’t thought of breakfast but now that you mention it, maybe I will. Of course, I’d invite you, but your face will be numb and swollen and all beat up. I bet it’ll hurt too bad even for pancakes.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Horace said, shut the door and waved him off.

  *

  Mr Reese’s first stop was the post office and then to the pharmacy for his and his wife’s prescriptions. After that he still had forty minutes left and the thought of waffles and bacon called to him. They had eaten breakfast at dawn, oatmeal with raisins and skimmed milk, but even after all the years of eating it he’d never grown to like it. It seemed a chore more than anything. He drove to the Stage Stop cafe, and decided to eat whatever he wanted. A man had to have some secrets, he thought as he walked with h
is cane across the pavement and went inside.

  But as he waited to be seated, Jerry Blano, a seventy-three-year-old retired insurance salesman, came from a hidden corner of the restaurant. Mr Reese looked at the date on his watch and sighed. It was the first Monday of the month: it was the meeting of the Old Ranch Hands, a makeshift men’s social club of retired ranchers and citizens of the area. It was their monthly breakfast meeting and he’d unknowingly walked into the middle of it.

  ‘Well I’ll be, if it isn’t Eldon Reese,’ Jerry Blano said, grinning.

  Mr Reese forced a smile and the two shook hands.

  ‘I got old-man bladder but let me bring you back to the table before I make my stop.’

  Mr Reese nodded and, not knowing why exactly, followed Blano to the corner, where seven old men sat around a table with an empty plate of food in front of each of them. They gave Mr Reese a group hello and Jerry Blano took a chair from a nearby table, put it next to RJ Holmgren and Bob Ringwald, and left.

  Two stainless steel pitchers of coffee sat on the table and RJ filled him a cup. Across the table Saul Dennison said, ‘So, you still running your operation, Reese?’

  ‘I’m trying,’ he replied.

  ‘How’s business?’

  He smiled. ‘I’m still afloat.’

  ‘They don’t make it easy nowadays, that’s for sure.’

  Mr Reese nodded.

  At the end of the table Corbett Dalton said, ‘How you dealing with those sons of bitches at the Bureau of Land Management?’

  ‘The same as I always have,’ Mr Reese said. ‘It’s a hard job to keep any side happy right now.’

  Corbett was a fat, squat man who had been a bad doctor in Sacramento and then Reno and then Elko and finally Tonopah. Mrs Reese said he was like a bad priest. Due to incompetence and malpractice, he was getting shipped to smaller and less desirable places until he landed at the end, Tonopah.

  ‘You been keeping up on the Bundy fiasco?’ asked RJ.

  Mr Reese shook his head and looked for a waitress but the two women waiting tables stayed clear of the old men.

  RJ said, ‘They should put the entire federal government in a Sani-Hut and have NASA send them up to space.’

  Bob Ringwald, a retired highway paver, laughed. ‘Take that so-called president with them too.’

  ‘And Harry Reid,’ said Corbett.

  They all laughed except the two men in the corner, Hudson Dreary and Vince Pollen. They were talking University of Nevada, Reno, football. Jerry Blano came back to the table and began going on about driving to Reno for a doctor’s appointment. That led to a long rant about the city’s growth, crime, and that led to a talk about Las Vegas and golfing fees and then to a series of tirades between Blano and Corbett and Saul about Obamacare.

  Mr Reese drank the lukewarm coffee and wondered if he could move to the counter and order his waffles and bacon there. Would they leave him alone then or would it cause more of a disruption? Would he then become the focus of the table, when all he wanted was to eat waffles? He again looked out but both waitresses had disappeared from view.

  ‘Reese, what’s your personal experience with the BLM?’ asked Corbett.

  Mr Reese turned back around. ‘It’s a hard job managing the public’s land. In my experience, no one’s that happy on any side but they’ve got good people there. Most of them, in their own way, care about the land.’

  Corbett shook his head at the answer, and turned to RJ and whispered.

  They began talking around him. Mr Reese figured he could wait a few more minutes and then move to the counter to eat. Anyway, he had to pick up Horace. He was running out of time. He looked out across the table. None of these men worked anymore and only two of them had been ranchers, Hudson and Vince. Both of them had sons who had taken over for them. Mr Reese’s youngest daughter, Lynn, went out with Hudson’s youngest son for a year and a half in high school but then the boy was killed when his horse slipped down a gully. If the horse hadn’t slipped, maybe the boy would still be alive and maybe his daughter would have married him. Maybe if the boy would have knocked up his daughter in high school, she would have stayed. He was handsome enough to fool her for a little while. If she’d been reckless and he hadn’t been killed, Hudson’s son would have, by now, taken over the Little Reese Ranch. He wasn’t the smartest kid, but he would have been an alright son-in-law. Mr Reese couldn’t remember the boy’s name. Terry, maybe? How many times did he think about Terry running the ranch? A dozen times, ten dozen? His daughter was smarter than Terry or himself and after a year or two of him being in charge she would have ended up running things. She’d fix it right. Maybe they’d get a divorce and she would take up with Vince Pollen’s littlest son. That boy knew how to run a ranch. Luke Pollen was a born livestock man. He wasn’t much to look at, but once she had her fill with Terry, if Terry hadn’t died, Luke would seem like a good catch in the ranching world. He worked from sunup to sundown. With her smarts and Luke’s work ethic, that would be something. If she was three years younger and had been in Luke’s class, maybe that would have happened. Maybe somehow and for some reason she would have liked him.

  ‘Excuse me, fellas, I gotta hit the can,’ Mr Reese said and stood up. He nodded to Vince and Hudson and made his way across the restaurant. He found one of the waitresses behind the counter and told her he drank a cup of coffee, left $3 and headed out the door.

  5

  Horace came alone into Tonopah three days later. He picked up the ranch’s mail, stopped at the auto parts and hardware store for Mr Reese, and then parked in front of a small yellow house with brown trim. A dented green Buick Regal and a 1960s camping trailer filled the carport and a chain-link fence surrounded the yard. As he went through the gate, a scraggly Pomeranian shot out from a doggy door on the side of the house and frantically barked.

  ‘It’s just me, Pom-Pom,’ Horace announced. The front door then opened and an elderly lady appeared. She wore a navy-blue muumuu with orange and red tropical flowers on it. Her long grey hair was pulled back and held together with a ballpoint pen.

  ‘Shush your ass, Pom-Pom,’ she yelled in a gravelled smoker’s voice. ‘Horace, just kick her if she tries anything funny.’

  ‘Okay, Mrs Poulet,’ he replied and walked up to the house as the dog continued to bark and run circles around his feet.

  The old woman led him through a cluttered hall to the living room, where she sat in an easy chair. On a wooden table in front of her were two sewing machines. Fabric lay in piles on metal shelves against the back wall and on the floor around her.

  She picked up a thin cardboard dress box, opened it and lifted out red boxing trunks. The legs were trimmed in gold, as was the waistband, which was three inches wide and had Hector embroidered in red cursive letters at the front. Halfway down the front of each leg, stitched in gold thread, was a Thompson machine gun. She flipped them over. On the back of the waistband, in the same red cursive lettering, it read Hidalgo, with a small embroidered Thompson machine gun on each side of the name.

  She handed the trunks to Horace and softly he ran his fingers over the cursive letters of the name. ‘I can’t believe they came out so nice,’ he whispered to her. ‘It looks even better than I thought it would.’

  ‘I found a book on machine guns. There’s a lot of different kinds but I thought the Thompson worked the best. It’s the most dramatic. Why did you want a machine gun on there anyway?’

  ‘Do you remember Arnaldo?’ asked Horace.

  She sighed and shook her head grimly. ‘Your poor grandmother…I don’t know why she would date him. He was such an awful man.’

  Horace nodded. ‘When he trained me, he said my combinations had to be like machine-gun fire. “Faster, Horace, faster like a machine gun. Like a machine gun!” That’s what gave me the idea.’ He again looked at the trunks and ran his fingers over the embroidery. ‘I just can’t get over how nice it looks.’

  ‘I’m glad you like them,’ said Mrs Poulet.

  Hor
ace put them back in the box and took a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to her. ‘I have to go now,’ he said and stood up. ‘But when I become a champion, I’ll hire you to make all my trunks and robes. It’s gonna take me a while but I’ll get there and I’ll hire you to make me custom-embroidered shirts and coats too. It’ll be a lot of work but I’ll pay you better than you’ve ever been paid. I’ll make sure of it.’

  *

  It was noon when he headed back to the ranch. He drank off a Coke and chewed Copenhagen and drove through the desolate valley trying to stay awake in the midday heat. The afternoon was spent helping Mr Reese dismantle Morton’s tractor. Mostly the old man sat in a chair resting his back, telling Horace what to do. At six thirty they ate dinner on the porch and listened to a San Diego Padres game on the radio. When the meal was finished, Mr Reese opened a can of beer and Mrs Reese headed to the kitchen with a stack of plates. There was a slight breeze as the sun moved behind the mountains. The sky was cloudless and darkening blue, and the two men sat across from each other at the picnic table.

  ‘I hate to do this but I have to ask you something,’ Mr Reese said. ‘You’re heading out the day after tomorrow, right?’

  Horace nodded. ‘The bus leaves at seven a.m.’

  Mr Reese drank from the can of beer. ‘Well, I’ll just say it. As you know, I still can’t get on a horse and I have to get the supplies to Pedro. I thought I had Rico’s kid, Lenny, coming to help for the next month. He promised he could do this week’s drop, but today his mother called and now he won’t be able to start until next week. I don’t know why they didn’t tell me earlier, but they didn’t. I hate to ask this, but I was hoping I might be able to convince you to stay on an extra couple days and do one more run. We’d get you packed tonight and then tomorrow I’d take you. I know you could make the drive alone but I was hoping to spend a bit more time with you before you leave. I’d pick you up the day after tomorrow at noon. I think that gives you plenty of time to get back if you leave at dawn. Then you could take the bus out the next morning. I hate to mess up your plans, but I’m afraid I don’t know what else to do.’