Roadside Bodhisattva

by Di Filippo, Paul

  “Officer, my little buddy here wants to keep his name to himself for a while. Personal reasons, nothing illegal about it. Kid A is all he goes by when he’s on the road. Now, I don’t believe that he necessarily has to supply you with his actual moniker, unless he’s under suspicion of some crime. And you can plainly see that’s not the case. He’s not a vagrant, he’s a gainfully employed working man. In fact, his boss is expecting him in the diner right this minute. You got my credentials, and I stand bond for the Kid. Plus I think Miss Danielson will vouch for us too. Can’t we all be satisfied with that? After all, we’re not going anywhere. You know right where to find us if you need us for anything.”

  Vakharia said, “Don’t like anyone in my district not having some id.”

  Those words made Sid bristle. “You know, officer, that’s one of the great things about America. Leastwise, the America I know and grew up in. We don’t have any national id system. No internal passports like the Red Chinese and the goddamn South Africans before Mandela. I showed you my driver’s license, but that was just a courtesy. That square of plastic is permission from the government for me to drive a car, not permission for me to exist. And I sure as hell ain’t driving no car as I stand here jabbering to you. So if I were you, I’d be content with the half a loaf I got, wish us a pleasant goodbye, and let us get back to work, before I ask for your badge number and your boss’s name.”

  Vakharia glared at Sid for a long time. One corner of his mouth was twitching. Finally he said, “You sound like a troublemaker, Hartshorn. The kind of troublemaker we don’t need around here.”

  “Maybe that’s because you forgot what a real goddamn American citizen sounds like, officer. Been so long since you heard one, maybe. But then again, we might just both be right. In my book, troublemaker and real citizen have always been more or less synonymous.”

  I braced myself for the cop to take out his cuffs and slap them on Sid. But then, incredibly, Vakharia laughed. It was a nasty laugh, but it was better than the alternative.

  “Okay, Hartshorn. You talk tough, but you don’t look like any ex-con I’ve ever met. Plus I respect Ann. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. I’ll cut you and your friend some slack. But just remember this. If anything bad goes down within my district and the perp’s not obvious, then you two’ll be the number one suspects on my list. And we’ll see then if you walk it like you talk it.”

  “Fair enough, officer. Got any raffle tickets for the fop you want to sell me while you’re here?”

  “Don’t push your luck,” said Vakharia. Then he got into his car and took off. He used his siren to stop the traffic on Route 1 so he could merge, even though there was obviously no emergency.

  I turned to Sid. My anger toward Vakharia was swamped by my gratitude toward Sid. “Boy, thanks, Sid. I didn’t know how I was gonna get out of that one.”

  “Small lesson for you there, Kid. Respect and deference as a tactic only goes so far with some jerks in positions of power. Sometimes you gotta rear up on your hind legs and let out a roar. Shout it to the top, right? Might not even make things go any smoother, but at least you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. Now why don’t you go help the ladies inside? And don’t bother Ann with an account of this crap, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Inside the diner, Yasmine scowled at me. “I got two dirty tables here, Kid. You’re not earning your share of my tips this way.”

  I started to say something sharp back, but then I bit my tongue. The story Sue had told me about Yasmine and her mother left me feeling kinda bad for the woman.

  “Sorry, Yasmine. I was busy with Sid.”

  My apology seemed to throw her for a loop. “Well—okay, then.”

  In the back I strapped on my apron, grabbed the scratched plastic gray tub and went out front to bus the dirty tables.

  Time went by pretty quickly. Sid came to pick up lunch for himself and Angie. By three I was really hungry. Sonny made me a triple-decker tuna sandwich with fries. I scarfed it down, finished my share of the cleanup, got my few bucks from Yasmine, then went to look for Sid.

  I found him at the garage, sitting in the little office with Angie.

  They were playing chess.

  At first I didn’t believe my eyes. There they sat, underneath a tattered calendar of a babe in a bikini stroking a transmission. Fanbelts in their cardboard sleeves hung from a pegboard. Tottering piles of new air filters and oil filters and spark plugs stood all around them. The greasy wrappers from their sandwiches lay across the rubbery green desktop. There was barely room left for the chessboard. They were hunched over it deep in concentration, and didn’t even hear me come in.

  “Uh, Sid, shouldn’t we be getting back to scraping?”

  “Shhh! Not now, Kid. This bastard’s getting ready to whip my ass, and I gotta focus.”

  I had never played chess before, so I couldn’t tell who was winning. It seemed like each player had about the same number of pieces left. But I knew that some pieces counted for more than others.

  At last Sid moved a piece. Angie followed up quickly. Sid said, “Damn!” and knocked over one of his own pieces. “You got me, Ange.”

  The burly mechanic did not smile exactly. But he gave off this kinda satisfied glow. “Well, you put up a good fight.”

  The phone in the office rang, making me jump for some reason. Angie picked it up. “Uh-huh. Right near the Li’l General store? I’ll be right out.

  “Lady with a flat,” Angie said after he hung up. “You guys wanna come?”

  “Sure,” said Sid.

  “All right,” I said.

  Angie flipped a cardboard sign in the office window to closed, but didn’t bother to lock up. We piled into the front seat of the Deer Park Filling Station tow truck, with me in the middle. Angie and Sid both smelled sweaty, but not gross. I figured I probably smelled worse than either of them. I’d have to try to take a shower before I hung out with Sue tonight. That is, if she even showed up.

  We had to wait for a break in the traffic to cut across all four lanes, but then we drove fast.

  While we drove, Angie and Sid talked about chess. Angie had learned to play at a Boy’s Club when he was a kid. Sid had learned in New York City, from people who played in some park somewhere. It was hard to imagine Angie as a kid. Sid in New York I could picture better, even though I had never been near that city myself.

  The woman was standing outside and behind her car in the breakdown lane. I had been kinda fantasizing about some real glamorous young babe in distress, maybe because of that calendar picture. But instead she turned out to be short and stocky and maybe thirty-five years old, wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants. But her face was kinda pretty, and she smiled real big when we pulled up.

  Between the two of them, Sid and Angie made short work of changing the tire. The spare was a doughnut, not good for much, and the woman agreed to follow us back to get the real tire patched up.

  Back at the station, I helped too. Angie showed me how to find the hole and plug it. That was cool. Pretty soon, we had the woman back on the road. She gave us a five-dollar tip to split between us. I told Angie to keep my share.

  “No way, boy. You earned it.”

  I stuck the dollar and change in my pocket. With what I made yesterday and today from Yasmine, I had over ten bucks. There was nothing to spend it on here at Deer Park, so I thought I’d keep saving whatever I earned, as a stake for once I hit the road again.

  “Well, Kid, guess we should get back to our scraping, at least for another hour or so.”

  Angie said, “Another game tomorrow?”

  “Sure, Ange. I gotta reclaim my goddamn honor somehow.”

  Sid and I headed back to the cabins. I wanted to ask if Sid had lost the game to Angie on purpose, but in the end I kept that question to myself.

  We went back to work until around five o’clock. Then Sid said, “Hellfire, that’s a long enough day for me. Ann’s paying us, but she’s not paying
us time-and-a-half. Let’s call it a day, Kid.”

  “Fine by me.”

  We cleaned up our stuff. Sid said, “Race you for a shower.”

  “You’re on!”

  He beat me to the outer door to Ann and Sue’s rooms by about five seconds.

  While I waited outside for Sid to finish his shower, Sue strolled by. She looked more bored than tired.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “Still think you wanna listen to some music with me?”

  “Okay. But just till nine or so.”

  “That’s cool I’ll meet you at the trailer. Bring some sweet stuff.”

  Sue grinned wickedly. “Oh, I always bring that.”

  I got flustered. “Well, all right then.”

  Sid came out. He had on clean clothes. “You the angel that washed these?”

  “That’s me,” Sue said.

  Sid took Sue’s hand, bowed down and kissed it. “You got a big heart, young lady.”

  Sue seemed to eat up this cornball shit, and I got a little angry. She smiled and said, “Oh, it was easy”

  “I’m gonna keep your aunt company. You guys have a ball.”

  “We’ll try,” Sue said.

  Sid went into the rental office, while I went to take my shower. My clothes from the road, all washed and folded, were waiting inside for me. When I came out, Sue was nowhere to be seen, so I headed back to the trailer.

  She was inside, sitting on my bed, already spinning the wheel on my iPod, which she had lifted from my pack. That burned me a little, but I tried to put that stupid feeling aside. I should just be glad to have her company. I noticed she hadn’t bothered with my books.

  I sat down on the edge of Sid’s bunk. The trailer was so small our knees were almost touching.

  “Not bad, not bad,” Sue told me. “No rap though?”

  “I don’t like that hip-hop shit.”

  Sue shrugged. “Your loss. Let’s listen to some Foo Fighters.”

  She dropped my iPod into a dock she had brought Soon the music was filling the trailer. I bet Sid would’ve had a fit if he had to listen to our music, him and his geezer tastes. So much for his surface coolness.

  We talked a little, mostly about school and stuff. Around seven-thirty, I began to get hungry. Last night I had been too tired to think about my stomach, but tonight was different.

  “What do you guys do for supper around here, with the diner closed?”

  “Oh, sometimes I whip up some mac and cheese, or nuke some fried chicken. Why, you hungry?”

  “I could eat something.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  We carried my iPod and the dock back to Sue’s rooms. She fixed the food while I sat at the tiny table in the kitchenette. When she was done, we both chowed down.

  “Man, that was great. Can I give your aunt some money to buy some more groceries for us?”

  Sue had lit a cigarette. She kept looking at the clock on the wall. It was nearing eight-thirty. “She wouldn’t mind.” Sue got up abruptly. “Kid, would you mind cleaning up? I’ve gotta be someplace.”

  “Uh, no. I mean, sure, go ahead.”

  Sue ran out. I wanted to look where she was going. Was someone picking her up, or was she taking Ann’s car again? But I held back. Her business was her own.

  I pumped up the volume as I cleaned the dirty dishes and pans. It must’ve been pretty loud, because soon Sid stuck his head in from the office and yelled, “Kid A! Turn that shit down!” Didn’t I predict he’d hate my music this loud?

  Four

  Ann counted out the money into my hand, which was kinda puckery from hours in dishwater. “Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, sixty-five. That seem fair, Kid?”

  I did some quick addition in my head. When you figured in my share of Yasmine’s tips, my pay for the past week came to about a hundred bucks. No taxes taken out either, since Ann was doing everything under the table. Even back home, when I had an after-school job for a few months at the mall stocking shelves at a Sam Goody’s, I had never made that much. I felt rich.

  “Yeah, that’s cool.”

  I gave Ann a big smile, but the one she gave back was kinda lame. I got worried.

  “Anything the matter? Is it the money? Can you really afford to pay me and Sid?”

  Ann tucked some loose hair behind her ear. I noticed a streak of gray mixed in with the brown. “Well, more or less. You two have been invaluable around here the last week. Deer Park is looking better than ever. Yasmine’s not bitching so much about being overworked. Even Angie smiles once in a while. But business is flat, and I was basically just scraping by even before I added you and Sid to the payroll. I don’t mind though, because the difference between paying you guys and not paying you doesn’t really represent much of a margin. If I ever decide to close this place, my decision won’t hinge on what I spend on the help. It’s the costs like electricity and propane and food and gasoline, unavoidable stuff that keeps going up and up, that are going to kill me.”

  This was more information than I really wanted. I wondered if this was the kind of boring thing Ann and Sid talked about each night, when Sid hung out with Ann on the couch in the front office of the lodge, with a crappy old black-and-white Radio Shack tv filling the time between guests showing up. After that first night, when Sid came back to the trailer so late and a little grumpy, and I had thought he was maybe screwing Ann, I had changed my mind about what they were up to. Sid didn’t seem boastful enough to be getting any. I figured he’d be grinning all day like a happy idiot if he had gotten into Ann’s pants, and would’ve let something slip to me. But he hadn’t. And besides, Sue also felt that there was nothing nasty going on between her aunt and Sid. And she should know, since she shared her bedroom with Ann.

  But even if the adults had to waste their time on this business shit, it didn’t apply to me. I wasn’t the owner of Deer Park, and I didn’t feel like I should have to worry about the survival of the business. On the other hand, I had made the mistake of asking Ann how things stood, and I figured I should at least sound like I was taking her problems seriously.

  “That’s tough, Ann. Maybe things will turn around for this place. The whole country’s hurting right now, I guess, but if things pick up—”

  Ann smiled bigger then. “You’re sweet, Kid.” Without any warning, she grabbed me and hugged me. She felt pretty sexy for a geezer babe, and I got kinda nervous that maybe I’d embarrass her with a woody, so I pulled away as quick as I could without seeming like I was trying to escape. My face felt hot. I remembered something I had meant to do, and doing that thing meant a welcome change of subject.

  “Uh, Ann, Sue’s been feeding me supper almost every night in your apartment. I wanna give you some money for groceries.”

  I dug a twenty out and handed it to her. “Is that enough?”

  “Kid, you don’t have to bother.”

  “No, no, I really want to. It’s only fair.”

  She tucked the money into her pocket. “Okay. Anything special you want me to lay in?”

  “Uh, how about some of those frozen pocket things, with the cheese inside?”

  Ann laughed. “I’ll get a stack of them, and any other horrible junk food I can possibly bring myself to purchase.”

  “Neat. Uh, Ann, I’m gonna go help Sid with the painting now.”

  “Go, go.”

  I took off my apron and left the empty diner. It was four in the afternoon, and Yasmine and Sonny had gone home. I didn’t know where Sue was.

  As I walked across the lawn toward the cottages, I felt kinda mixed up inside. The money in my pocket made me happy. And I didn’t feel guilty for taking it, despite Ann’s tight finances. After all, the Prophet says, “Before you leave the market place, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands.” But being tied down to this steady job, postponing my travels on the road. Well, that still sucked, no matter how hard and how often I tried to pretend it didn’t. I felt like Jack when he had signed up for the fir
e ranger school. “I wasn’t a free bhikku any more.” The tug-of-war between the two feelings, and between the two books, left me confused.

  I wondered if maybe Sid hadn’t been right when he said Kerouac and Gibran just didn’t belong together.

  And then there was the way things were going with Sue. Or not going.

  I figured I’d talk to Sid about my problems with Sue, but not about my changed feelings about the two books I tried to live by. I didn’t want to give him any cause to say, “Ha-ha, I told you so!” That seemed to be one of the things that adults liked to say best.

  Sid was working on the front side of the cabin we had started scraping first, a week ago. We had gone like robots down the line of cottages, prepping them all before we could ever even crack open a single can of paint, just like Sid insisted we should. The constant scraping had been pretty boring, but I had to admit that somehow doing it day after day sharpened your focus, made you more of an expert, at least in that one crummy area of work. Today was the first shot I was going to get at using a brush, which seemed a lot more interesting to me.

  Standing on a low ladder, Sid worked at the eaves, laying on broad lines of dark green paint in a slow, steady way that seemed to cover a lot of square feet of boards almost before you realized it.

  “Hey, Sid, do we have to paint all the fronts first? Or am I actually going to be allowed to work on a different wall from you at the same time?”

  Sid turned half around without getting down. His face and arms were sunburned even darker than when I had first met him, from so much outdoor work. The dark tan made his old zit scars disappear somewhat. Maybe one day soon he’d finally look good enough to Ann to score with her.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the budding Michelangelo. I don’t know if you’re gonna be allowed to paint anything yet This is too much fun. Maybe I’ll just keep you around for stirring the paint and washing the brushes.”

  “Yeah, right, I read Tom Sawyer too, you know. Just give me a brush and let me get busy.”

  “Oh-ho, a literary man! I should’ve known, what with your consorting with ol’ Jack and that other joker. All right, you can join in. But let me give you a few pointers first.”