Los Angeles Stories

by Ry Cooder

  Mike had gathered from the old man’s rambling, T­-Bird-inflected discourse there were a few things that needed taking care of when the end came. Like his engraving tools, which had a history of some kind, and the trophies. Dolly often spoke about guns he’d worked on that had slipped away over the years, but then there was the Winchester. “That’s the one they’ll come after. Get it out of here after I’m gone. Don’t never tell nobody, there’s people out there you do not want on your trail.” That was the time Mike asked to see it. Dolly pulled up a loose floorboard and took out an oblong wooden gun box. Inside was a Winchester model 1895, a commemorative reissue that Dolly had covered with minute and highly detailed engraved studies of a naked girl in various explicit poses. Customers were always after Dolly to decorate their guns with curlicues or scenes from nature featuring wild animals and trees, but this gun was hyper­realistic in a way Mike had never imagined. Dolly had even inlaid the wood stock with silver and ivory carved into tiny full-­body images. Mike saw that it was not some generic female, but the same girl over and over, rendered from every angle — front, back, top, and bottom. Mike thought she was young, possibly a teenager: “Is this what got you in trouble?” he asked Dolly.

  “They never saw this, how do you think I have it still?” Dolly said. “A man worked for me in Bakersfield. I think he found some pencil drawings and he started a rumor, and the rumor took on a life of its own. There’s a type of person that wants something nobody else has got, regardless. They’ll stop at nothing. Stay away from them, and maybe you’ll be all right.”

  The paramedics took Dolly away at four o’clock on a Friday after­noon. They asked Mike if he wanted to ride along, but he declined, saying he had some things to take care of in the shop. When he was sure they weren’t coming back, he pried up the loose board and pulled out the wooden box. He wrapped the gun in a blanket and put the engraving tools in a paper bag. He replaced the box and the floorboard. Then he remembered that Dolly kept some money in the back room. He found the envelope inside a gun magazine featuring pictures of trap shooting with nude fat women. There was a hundred and forty dollars in cash plus a personal check made out to Dolly for $28.50, signed by Merle Travis.

  Mike dismantled the Winchester, making it easier to take to school. He put the parts and the engraving tools in a canvas duffel bag and stowed the bag in his new locker. He locked it with a regular combination gym lock, but one that he bought at the True Value hardware store. The gym office issued all locks and had a master list of combinations, but Mike figured there was no chance anyone was going to start checking lockers for dope or booze with school over in a month. He changed clothes every day after school for his donut job and nobody paid any attention, since Mike Brown was the kind of kid nobody paid attention to.

  Sierra­ Vue Donuts opened every day except Sunday at 6:00 a.m. Sheree worked alone until Mike arrived after school. She usually went home for dinner at seven and returned to work until closing time at ten. Mike worked alone in the back making up the next day’s batch until eleven at night. Sometimes he was so tired he would fall asleep in the kitchen on the cot that he had retrieved from the gun shop.

  When Woof Daco and Indian Charlie Smallhouse broke into the gun shop, Mike heard it. The donut shop was two doors down, and the store in between was empty. Mike knew just what it was about. He watched them leave empty ­handed, and he saw the car, a Ford Ranchero with a fiberglass shell over the back. He didn’t recognize the car or the two men.

  Mike got up a little before six the next morning and fired up the oven. He mopped the floor in front and wiped the tables down. He was bringing out the donut trays when Sheree arrived.

  “Are they going to let you graduate, Mike?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I sure hope you can stay on here.”

  Mike got the bus to school out on the highway. He was at his locker when Coach Frazer came around the corner from the showers. “Where you been, Brown? They want you in the office. I don’t like to waste my time looking for you non­athletes.” Coach Frazer had it in for him, but Mike never knew why. He once made him get inside a metal trash can and then sat on the lid while he took roll. Bastard.

  The administration building was full of kids laughing and talking about what they were doing and where they were going. Especially the girls, Mike thought. They all look good. Why? Mr. Potts stood in the doorway, glaring at him. Mr. Potts’ glare was one for the books. He had a nervous tic of baring his lower teeth and then leaving his mouth open in an absent­minded way, like Charlton Heston.

  “You haven’t done very well, Mike,” Mr. Potts looked over the top of his glasses and rattled some papers. “You haven’t done as well as some of us had hoped. Some of us are aware of the extenuating circumstances at home, but there are other students here with backgrounds not unlike yours who managed to do a fine job. I can think of several who really tried to pull themselves up. There’s a Mexican girl, Andrena Palacios, who will be giving a talk at gradua­tion. We’re proud of her.” He leaned back in the chair. “All right. I’m recommending you for what is called a General Education Certificate. That will indicate that you have completed high school, but it is not a diploma. That would be unfair to those who have worked hard for theirs, and I’m sorry to say you won’t participate in the graduation ceremony. Do you understand? ” Mr. Potts stapled the papers together and signed his name on top.

  “Yeah,” Mike said. You baboon-­faced prick.

  “So, Mike. I would say, probably the military?”

  “No,” Mike said.

  “Good luck, Mike.” They didn’t shake hands. Mike left the office and walked down the hall through the crowd of happy kids. Wait a minute. I can walk out of here right now; baboon­-face signed the paper. He went to the gym and took the duffel bag and his donut shop clothes and left the school without speaking to anyone. The bag was heavy, but Mike didn’t notice.

  Who made the decisions? This person will have a hundred friends, and this other will have none. It’s okay to put this kid in the trash can, we won’t mention it. A tiny part of him had been waiting for a friend to come along, but it never happened. The sudden impulse to walk away sealed it for good, and with each step, he knew he had done the right thing.

  The first problem was where to live. He wasn’t going back to his mother’s. She and the new boyfriend stayed drunk most of the time, and Mike didn’t want to be there when the shit hit the fan like it always did. He couldn’t go on sleeping in the donut shop. He needed a place, and some wheels. Mike thought about a pick­up with a camper, which he could live in comfortably, but that cost real money. Sheree paid him okay, but not enough to buy a rig like that. Mike liked motorcycles. He believed there were three known kinds of people: Jap bike riders, who were beneath contempt; American big bike riders, who were okay but they all wanted the same bike over and over; and the chopper guys. They had the right idea: make your own machine — that was the only way to be yourself. If you can’t unscrew it, you don’t own it, as Dolly used to say. Mike had picked up some welding skills, and Dolly had taught him a basic understanding of gun mechanics: the key was balance and simplicity. Build your design around a single good principle, like the lever ­action Winchester or the Smith and Wesson revolver. Fancy, complicated things never worked out in the long run, it was true for guns and women.

  Mike had a photograph of a bike he had cut out of the classified section of a motorcycle magazine. It was called the “Honest Charlie.” This was no mass­-produced Harley-Davidson, but a custom­-made bike with a vintage Ford sixty­-horsepower flat-head V­8 car motor mounted lengthwise in a long frame. Fat tires and no fenders gave it a rough, badass, take-­no-­prisoners look Mike loved. “Not for the faint at heart,” it read. All you had to do was send two thousand dollars to a shop in Tennessee and wait six months. Two thousand was as good as two million, but Mike felt in his heart that he could make one from scratch. And, if he did, the world would come to understand the secret truth about Mike B
rown.

  Mike remembered Dolly had a girlfriend, a retired policewoman living around the corner in an old farmhouse with a travel trailer in the backyard. He spoke of her as being hipped on the subject of aliens and alien invasion. Armed and dangerous, but otherwise nice enough. The house was set well back from the street, surrounded by oak trees, and three giant ham radio antennas sprouted from the roof. There was a ’47 Plymouth coupe in the driveway, with a “Support Your Local Police and Keep Them Independent” bumper sticker. Mike walked up the steps and knocked. He waited and knocked again. A woman’s voice called out from loudspeakers mounted in the trees, “I see you. Who are you?”

  “Mike. I work for Dolly.”

  “Dolly Carney has gone.” The door opened against a heavy chain, and the woman stood there looking down at Mike. She was tall, six feet easy, and bone thin but strong looking. She had a heavy-­caliber revolver with an extra­-long barrel in her right hand, pointed down.

  “What do you want here?” she asked, putting the gun away.

  “I want to ask about your trailer.”

  “Not for sale.”

  “I need a place.” Make it sound good. “I work at the donut shop. My mom’s got a new boyfriend, and I can’t sleep. My dad’s in prison up north.” The woman stepped out onto the porch. “Let’s go take a look,” she said. Mike followed her up the driveway. She took big strides over the gravel, and her feet made loud crunching sounds. She carried the revolver in a quick-­draw holster on her right hip. “The trailer’s empty since I moved my equipment in the house.”

  “What equipment?” Mike asked, trying to be conversational.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing. I like tools, is all,” Mike said.

  “Tracking and detecting. I ran out of room in the trailer, plus, there’s been some trouble around here lately.”

  “Trouble?”

  “You just bet. I called the sheriffs. They hadn’t heard about any B & E locally. I said, this is enemy surveillance, and you couldn’t identify B & E on your own assholes.” She unlocked the trailer. It was a seventeen-foot Kenskill aluminum single axle, tall enough to stand up in. There was a bedroom/bathroom aft, and a large table and galley stove forward. It was dusty but in good shape.

  “I used to pull it behind the Plymouth to meetings — Roswell, Mount Rainier — and it was a pleasure to pull. I don’t go to meetings anymore for obvious reasons.”

  “I could help keep an eye on things. I work late.” Mike wasn’t sure what the woman was talking about. She was tough like Dolly said, but she wasn’t mean.

  “Five dollars a week suit you?” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Stop in, I’m usually up late myself. It’s too bad about Dolly. They take what they want. I’ve been lucky, so far.”

  “The paramedics took Dolly, I saw it,” Mike said.

  “You saw what you were supposed to see. Who called ’em, you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “From Dolly’s phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He knew he was tapped. How long did it take ’em to get there? How many?”

  “Five minutes. Two guys in white coats and a white van.”

  “The paramedics on Sierra Highway are RFD, and they wear yellow and their truck is yellow. ETA, thirty minutes, minimum. I’ve got to get back inside and get situated. You got a gun?”

  “I got one of Dolly’s.” Mike held up the duffel bag.

  “Bet you got the dirty one. Maybe that’s good, maybe it’s bad. We’ll find out. My name’s Gerri.” She put out her hand and Mike shook it. It had a soft feeling of strength that surprised him. She went back inside the house. Mike heard the back door locks turn one, two, three times. Short fuse, high detonation.

  THE PARKING LOT in front of Brakke’s Char­Ur­Own was filling up: There was deputy sheriff Fred Early’s Plymouth, bartender Ray McKinney’s unpaid ­for Buick Roadmaster, Smokey McKinney’s Mercury station wagon, which he needed to haul his pedal steel guitar and amp, a purple ’49 Ford rag­top minus the right ­front fender, and an unfamiliar Ford Ranchero.

  Inside, things were about to get started. Merle Travis had told Cousin Joe to come by for him; he felt like playing. They loaded Merle’s Gibson Super 400 guitar and Standel amp in the Cadillac and headed out, but Merle asked Joe to make a stop at the liquor store, that he needed something for the drive. By the time they got to Brakke’s, Merle was starting to slide, so Alice Brakke gave him some coffee and sat with him in the corner while Joe set up the amps. Smokey McKinney was ready with his Sho­Bud pedal steel and the two chairs needed to park his seven-hundred-pound bulk. Once situated, Smokey rarely moved again.

  Brakke’s wasn’t much of a place, more like a roadside bar than a restaurant, but there was always a convivial atmosphere and plenty of music. If you were female and you bought the bartender a drink, he’d get his guitar from under the counter and sing you one. Folks were encouraged to pick out their steak from the kitchen and then take it outside to the barbecue pit, which was fired with oak to a tempera­ture high enough to melt lead. Everyone really enjoyed standing around in the cool, high ­desert night air cooking their steaks. The results varied, depending on the alcohol content of the individual.

  Cousin Joe broke out his trademark Mosrite double-­neck guitar, which got a round of applause that prompted Merle to leave the table and walk over. He took his Gibson and strummed a G ­chord, and that Merle Travis smile appeared. “Well folks, ain’t nothin’ in this world I like better than a big fat gal,” he said. “Well Merle, that goes double,” Joe said. Bartender Ray McKinney got seated behind his unpaid­ for Radio King drum set. He counted off a good swing tempo, and they hit it.

  Warm in the winter, shady in the summertime,

  That’s what I like about that fat gal of mine

  Everybody in the place knew it: Joe Maphis and Merle Travis were the perfect combination, like a flathead motor and Lincoln gears. Everybody, that is, except for the four men seated in the back behind the post: Woof Daco, Indian Charlie Smallhouse, and the Poncey Brothers, looking spooked. If you were paying attention to them instead of Joe and Merle, you’d have figured that a deal was being discussed and the discussion was not amicable.

  “It’s your choice,” Woof said. “I paid you money. You got two days more to get me what I want, or I’m going to start hurting you real bad. Isn’t that so, Charlie?” He turned to the Indian.

  “They can run, but they can’t hide,” Indian Charlie said in his hoarse whisper. He smiled at the boys.

  Terry Poncey had a little bit of a cool­-cat act he’d been working on most of his twenty-two years, but it was all he had. “We lost track of the kid for a while, but we know where he’s at now. We’ll get it. You ain’t got a problem.”

  “A little problem for me is a big problem for you punks,” Woof said.

  “Gone be a­dee­yos, baby,” Charlie said. The two boys got up and left. Terry used a piece of copper wire to jump­ start the Ford, and the car limped off into the night, pulling slightly sideways in the direc­tion of Palmdale.

  A woman in a pre­war Dodge coupe passed them on the road. She was headed for Brakke’s. She turned into the parking lot and drove the car up to the front door. Inside, the boys were just getting started on “Divorce Me C.O.D.,” which had been a big hit for Merle. The woman opened the trunk and began to throw items of men’s clothing out onto the parking lot. Suits, shirts, underwear, shoes, the works. When she was done, she backed the Dodge out. The future ex-Mrs. Ray McKinney headed north toward Willow Springs in a cloud of oil smoke.

  Indian Charlie made his way over to the bar. He held up two thick fingers. A man standing at the bar looked Charlie up and down. “Alice has got a sense of humor, I don’t,” he said.

  “Now, Earl, that’s all right,” Alice said.

  “You’re a nice woman, Alice. This is a man’s business,” Earl said. He was medium drunk.

  Charlie turned to the man. “What are you drinkin’
, friend? I’d be real pleased if you’d allow me to stand you.” Charlie smiled his strange Navajo smile and nodded.

  “I don’t allow no redskin to address me in that style and manner, nor do I appreciate redskins coming inside a place where I drink,” Earl said. It was his last remark, followed by a deep gasp of shock and pain brought on by Charlie’s surprise balls-­in-­a­-vice grip and the unmistakable sawed-­off shotgun barrel that Woof Daco jammed hard into the seat of Earl’s Western-style trousers. Nobody noticed as Charlie and Woof eased Earl out the side door into the parking lot.

  “It’s your choice,” Woof said after Charlie got Earl pinned down on the asphalt. “Repeat after me: ‘It’s a known fact that I am no better than a sack of pig shit,’ or we take your pants and shoes.” Earl tried hard to talk, but all he could do was grunt. Getting no reply, Woof unsheathed an eighteen-­inch bowie knife and cut Earle’s pants from the waist down to the cuff. Charlie pulled the pants away and considered. “I say we leave the shoes,” he said. The two men drove away in the Ranchero. After a while, Earl felt his groin start to relax, but he had been drinking rye and his head was spinning. He lay there staring up at the stars, trying to focus. The band had switched to a walking ­bass, honky-­tonk ballad he didn’t recognize. Someone other than Merle Travis was singing:

  Going to Shmengy Town, back to Shmengy Town

  Big city life has really got me down

  It’s a place of sin, there’s no room for me

  I won’t be around, I’m going to Shmengy Town

  My dreams of yesterday have all passed and gone

  I watched them slip away like a bird that’s flown

  I saw my chance go by, and the sands of time

  Drift through my hands, I’m going to Shmengy Town

  The air was cold on his bare legs. Earl made an effort to stand but he stumbled and collapsed facedown on the asphalt again. The disappointment and self-­pity in the song got to him, piercing him with a memory of his ex-­wife somewhere back in Oklahoma. He started to cry and the crying made his nose bleed.