Los Angeles Stories

by Ry Cooder

  “Well, folks, I see by the old clock on the wall that it’s quittin’ time at Brakke’s. Happy trails, and may the good Lord take a likin’ to yuh.”

  “Merle, I believe you stole that line from Roy.”

  “Joe, I believe you’re right. Got anything you’d like to add?”

  “I don’t believe I do. How ’bout you, Kash?”

  “Tell ’em to drink up and go home, if they got one.”

  “That’s good advice, Kash, and thanks for stoppin’ by and singin’ with us.”

  “My playsure. I think my steak walked out on me. I better go see if I can relocate it before the coyotes do.”

  Gerri’s house was a survivor from a time when people worked outdoors fifteen hours a day and went inside to eat and sleep. Mike came in through the dining room, which was dominated by an oilcloth-­covered table and an upright piano. A hallway opened onto a parlor room with a fieldstone fireplace. A TV screen was set into a control panel in the center of the room, surrounded by large hydro trans­formers scrounged from the local power utility. Gerri sat at the console watching phosphorescent loops and test patterns. Mike sat on a wooden box and watched her.

  “I look for a break in the patterns, like a stone in water. Since Dolly left, something’s been moving out there. It’s small, it can hide, but I seen it here. And here. Take a look.” Mike watched the moving lines of light. Some were curved, some pointed up and down. The lines began to speed up. “Here it comes. Watch.” Mike watched without recognizing anything. “I’m locked and loaded down,” Gerri said. “I scored one hundred in rapid­ fire when I was on the cops, so don’t you worry about that.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  “I’m a watcher. I’m on to them and they know that I know. I used to go to meetings until I discovered the brotherhood had been infiltrated. The new president announced that we had been selected by a group of ‘ascended masters.’ They were going to lead us into a new golden age. All we had to do was take an oath of secrecy and give the president all our money.”

  “What’s an oath?” Mike asked.

  “A pledge.”

  “Did you pledge the oath?”

  “Not on your life. Dolly Carney and I and a friend named Orlando Hopkins split off and tried to form our own group. Orlando was a nice man, but he made a bad mistake, and he paid the price.”

  “What happened?”

  “Orlando went out to Giant Rock on a prayer vigil to amend his sins or whatever he thought he’d done wrong. He was unarmed. All we ever found was his Bible and his flashlight, the rest was burnt.”

  “You got guns in here?”

  “Smith and Wesson police positive, Colt .45 by Pachmayr, .30-­.30 by Dolly, .30­06 with a nightscope, and a Marlin 12-­gauge pump. Five hundred rounds of hollow point and fifty Jap hand grenades. I’m ready.”

  “Did Dolly believe in these things?”

  “Sure he believed, but you know Dolly. He wanted to teach me a dirty trick with cigarettes, but I drew the line there. Now I got to hold the thin white line all by myself, with no help from Fred Early and his deputy pinheads.”

  “I’ll help you,” Mike said. “What do I do?”

  “Keep watching the skies,” Gerri said. “Watch people, especially those known to you. Anyone can be infiltrated.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They look the same but act different. For instance, if someone who was a quiet person starts up talking loud and saying nothing and laughing all the time. I think that whole crowd at Brakke’s has been snatched, the way they carry on. Also, people who want to boss you around and make you do things.”

  “Every son of a bitch at the high school,” Mike said.

  “A school is the first place they’d go. To corrupt the young.”

  “Bastards never got me.”

  “That’s RMA for survival. RMA equals Right Mental Attitude.”

  Mike waited to hear more, but Gerri went back to her TV screen and said nothing further. Mike got up and went out to the backyard and looked at the night. He found himself staring up at the sky, watching and listening.

  TERRY PONCEY REALIZED Johnny was starting to slide into panic mode. Stealing the Winchester out of the trailer was going to be a two­-man job.

  “They’ll kill us,” Johnny said. “Woof Daco is crazy in his face. You said we could go to Hollywood.”

  “Listen to me, Johnny. We got news for Mr. Woof Daco, which is, we got a bonus coming to us, and then he gets his gun, and then we are going down to Hollywood and find Lorrie Collins, like I told you.”

  “Tell about it,” said Johnny.

  “We are going to get her in a room and you are going to fuck her real good.”

  “That’s too fast! Tell it the way I like it.”

  “We ain’t got time for all that. We got business to take care of. You all right now, Johnny?”

  “No.”

  “Sure you are. We’re gonna hide that thing out where they can’t never find it unless we tell them, and they won’t have no other choice but to give us more money.”

  “I can’t walk.”

  “You stay with the car. Keep the engine running. We can’t start it in time if it goes out. You understand that?”

  “I keep it running,” Johnny said.

  “Then, I come back and you slide over and I drive. You got nothing to worry about but to keep the motor on.”

  Terry figured to go in from the back of Gerri’s property where the shallow arroyo ran down to the highway. There were oak trees there, and a man could get some cover. Terry had checked the place out in daylight, and he had a good sense of how far down Gerri’s house was. There was no fence along the back, just the trees. It was hard going in the dark. After a while he could see the trailer in the moon­light. He crept up from behind and waited. There was blue light coming from inside the house. Nothing happened, so he went around to the front of the trailer. He had brought along a short crowbar, and he pried the door open in seconds. He got his flashlight out and looked around inside. The table was covered with motorcycle magazines and mechanical drawings. There was a duffel bag under the table. Terry pulled it out and looked inside. He saw gun parts. “The shit,” he whispered. Then he heard the sound of heavy footfalls in the dry brush. A voice cried out, “Terry, where are you?” and Johnny came staggering out of the arroyo like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  The sudden movement triggered the floodlights. A voice came booming out of the trees: “I see you. Who are you?” Johnny froze in his tracks and looked up. “Johnny Poncey,” he answered. Terry grabbed the duffel bag and ran. The back door of the house opened and Gerri came out. She raised the Smith and Wesson in both hands and fired at Johnny. The big .38 roared. “Terry!” Johnny wailed, stumbling and clutching at his leg. Terry grabbed Johnny’s arm and dragged him down the gravel driveway toward the front of the house. More lights went on. Gerri was following them. She fired again, and Johnny screamed. “Run, Johnny!” Terry shouted. Johnny ran, kicking his right leg out. They made it to the Ford. The motor was still turning over. Terry managed to get Johnny and the bag inside. There was a back road out. The cutout boomed as the car got moving.

  Terry had worked it out so that he would get to the meeting place first and hide the gun. He hadn’t figured on Johnny getting hurt. He made the turn onto the dirt road and pulled into the dump site. It was pitch dark and dead quiet. He cut the motor and the lights. Instantly, Woof Daco and Indian Charlie Smallhouse appeared, dump zombies on the prowl. Woof yanked the driver’s door open. “The early birds. What’s the early bird get, Charlie?”

  “Give ’em a chance,” whispered the Indian.

  “What’s it going to be?” Woof said. Terry reached in the backseat and pulled out the bag. He threw it on the ground. Woof used his big flashlight to look, then he closed the bag and turned to go.

  “Just a damn minute,” Terry said. “Johnny got shot.”

  “Shot where,” Charlie said.

  “Right leg
,” Terry said.

  “Shine a light on him,” Charlie said. He bent over Johnny, looking at one leg and then the other. “I don’t see anything. What’s the gag?”

  “That bitch shot him. What about the rest of our money?”

  “Kid, there’s nothing wrong with your brother except naked fear. I would sit here for a little while and let him rest. Give us a good start. Woof wouldn’t care to see you or this shit car anymore.” The Indian smiled at Terry and walked away into the dark. Terry heard the Ranchero start up, heard it pull out onto the highway.

  Mike cut through the oak grove behind the donut shop. He saw police lights; he heard voices as he walked up. Two sheriff’s deputies drew down on him. “Stand easy, that’s my boarder,” Gerri commanded. The officers went into parade ­rest without thinking. “They hit the trailer, Mike. I think I got one of ’em in the leg, but they got away. I’m out of practice.” Her eyes told him to keep quiet.

  “Lucky for you, Gerri, ’cause you been wasting a lot of my valuable time with those crank calls of yours,” Fred Early said.

  “Just do your damn job, Early. I told you I been cased, but you couldn’t be bothered. Finally got your lousy B & E. Happy now?” The deputy shook his head and took off in his Plymouth.

  “Sorry, Mike,” Gerri said. “Your bag is gone. I guess they got the Winchester.” She put her hand on Mike’s shoulder. “I told Early they took only hand tools.”

  “Who was it?” Mike said.

  “It looked like two guys in an old Ford ragtop. You got to hand it to ’em. They got it down, Mike, they really got it down.”

  “That’s not your goddamn spacemen, it’s the Poncey Brothers.”

  “Oh sure, Mike. Just a couple punks looking for Dolly Carney’s famous Winchester and knowing right where to get at it. Tell yourself anything you want to believe. I’m going back inside, I got to reload.”

  Mike changed out of his work clothes and lay back in the trailer bunk. He thought he had it figured right. The Poncey Brothers were working for the two strangers in the Ranchero. The Brothers knew who Mike was and they assumed correctly that he had the Winchester. Dolly had warned Mike that something like this would happen, but suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Gerri’s theory, that the aliens had replicated Terry and Johnny Poncey and their ’49 Ford, worked only if you accepted Sierra Highway as a staging area for earth conquest. Mike drew the line there — who’d want it? But just the same, he took a sheet of paper and a black Marks-­A-­Lot and wrote out WELCOME SPACE BROTHERS in big block letters.

  SOMETHING WAS WRONG. One by one, the diners stopped eating and pushed their plates back. The T-­bone, the Spencer, the rib eye, the fried calamari and garlic bread just sat there. The laughter died and the talk ground down to a murmur. It was the smell, something sudden and terrible that took over the place, killing the fun.

  Deputy Fred Early pulled up and left the engine running. “I need a double bourbon, right now,” he said. Alice was tending bar since Ray was out looking for his wife somewhere. She poured the deputy a triple, and he used both hands to hold the glass. The diners watched him drink it down. He turned to face them.

  “You all want to know what that smell is, don’t you? Well, I wouldn’t let you down. It’s two men in a Ford Ranchero. They’re just sittin’ in that car, burnt black, down to the bone. I saw their teeth.”

  “Electrical?” Smokey McKinney asked.

  Early shook his head. “There’s an empty gallon gas can on the ground, like a calling card. This is a homicide. It ain’t my job.” He staggered out to the patrol car and called it in and threw up on the seat. The diners made a bee­line for their cars to get a look at the Ranchero before the meat wagon arrived.

  Gerri’s face was blue in the light of the monitor screen. The lines moved across the screen, up and down, up and down. “It’s quiet out there now. They got what they wanted,” she said.

  “What do they want the Winchester for?” Mike asked.

  “I don’t know. Dolly’s with them now, maybe he wanted it back.”

  “Dolly got his gun?”

  “Makes good sense, don’t it?” Gerri had called Mike to come inside the house when he got home from work Sunday night. “Pull up a chair and look at this,” she said. “It was on the screen when I came in. Must be an attack weapon or some new­fangled torture machine. I don’t know how I’d stand up under torture.”

  Mike studied the image. It appeared to be a three-­dimensional diagram, like a blueprint. The image rotated on its axis. “Can you make it stop?” he asked Gerri.

  “Well, I just don’t know.” Gerri said. She turned knobs and switches at random, and the image froze.

  “Hold it right there,” Mike said. “I seen this before, like a cutaway picture in the hot­-rod magazine. It’s a motor. Make it go ahead.” Gerri turned a big, black knob, and the image righted itself and a framework appeared, then two wheels. “It’s a motorcycle,” Mike shouted. “It’s the Honest Charlie!”

  “They saw you come in,” Gerri said.

  “Make it get closer. I want to see the transmission linkage,” Mike said. Gerri fiddled with the knob, and the drive link got bigger. “That’s it! How the hell they know what it is I need to know about?” Mike said.

  “Told you before, they know about everything we think and do.”

  “That’s all right with me, now I can get the job done right, I can feel it,” Mike said. He got paper and pencil and made a sketch of the transmission section. When he was done, the screen went blank.

  “Did you get it?” Gerri asked.

  “I believe I did,” Mike said. The wavy lines returned.

  Mike walked into the front office of the Hammond Lumber Company. He was looking for someone who could tell him about the old flathead­-powered band ­saw contraption they had in the back. Out of service and rusty, but it had the original clutch and transmission, and he could get started on his motorcycle if they’d let him take it. The office was empty except for a Mexican girl sitting behind the cashier’s desk, crying. The girl looked up and saw Mike. “Please excuse me,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Can I help you?”

  “Sorry to bother you.” Mike felt embarrassed for her.

  “I ’m okay. Just a stupid family problem,” she said.

  “What’s the matter?” Mike asked.

  “I talked to my sister. Her boyfriend is bad. She is young, what can you do when there is no father?”

  “My father’s in prison somewhere,” said Mike.

  “Our father went back to Mexico, or who knows?” The girl smiled at Mike. He noticed there was something wrong with her teeth. They looked damaged, and he got embarrassed again. A pretty girl with messed­-up teeth, that was tough.

  “Are you from around here?” Mike asked.

  “Yes. I went to Canyon Country High School.”

  “I went there,” Mike said.

  “I never saw you at school,” the girl frowned, trying to remember. “Did you graduate?”

  “They passed me out, I didn’t get a diploma.”

  “I didn’t get one either. I did something that made them angry.”

  “What?” Mike leaned forward on the counter. This, he wanted to hear.

  “They wanted me to speak to the class at the ceremony. I asked, ‘Why me?’ They said, ‘Learn these lines.’ It was all about the way Meskins should think and act. I said, ‘But I don’t feel this way.’ The vice ­principal said, ‘Don’t you want to help your people?’ I said, ‘How does this help them?’ She said, ‘Do as we say, or you won’t graduate with everyone. You can do better for yourself, or be just another Meskin.’ I said, ‘But the white girls will hate me standing there.’ She said, ‘How dare you say such a thing.’ I didn’t make the speech, and I didn’t get my diploma.” The girl looked like she was going to start crying again.

  Mike got excited listening to the girl’s story. “Look, they are nothing but bald­-faced liars. I heard about you. Mr. Potts told me all about the Mexican
girl who was smarter than me. The same thing happened to me, I didn’t do what they wanted, whatever it was. So what? You don’t have a thing to worry about.” Mike laughed, and the girl laughed.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Mike Brown.”

  “Andrena Palacios,” the girl said. She reached across the counter and took Mike’s hand and squeezed it, sending an electrical current through his body like a dual ­ignition Vertex Magneto.

  Mike looked up from his drawing as two men came in. They were dusty and hot looking, like they’d been outdoors for a while.

  “I’m so doggone hungry I could eat my right hand if it had bread,” said one man.

  “Dry bread, shore ain’t greasy. Hard work, shore ain’t easy,” said the other man.

  “Dry bread and hard work is always comin’ my way,” the first man sang in a voice Mike recognized instantly.

  “Merle Travis,” Mike said.

  “And Missus Bigsby’s boy, Paul,” Merle said. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Mike Brown. I used to work for Dolly Carney. You remember Dolly.”

  “I certainly do,” Merle said.

  “Last of the best,” said Paul Bigsby. “What do you recommend for a couple of old ­timers just in from three days of racing at El Mirage?”

  “We got cheeseburgers, new on the menu,” Mike said. “Get ’em for you in a jiffy.”

  Mike put two deluxe­ cheeseburger plates down on the counter and went back to his drawing.

  “What you doing there?” the man named Paul asked.

  “I’m trying to design a motorcycle, but this drive link’s got me stumped,” Mike said.

  Merle Travis said, “Well, Mike, today is your lucky day, because Paul here is the greatest genius of mechanical design in Downey, perhaps the world. Take a look, Paul, help the boy.”

  Mike passed the drawing over to Paul. He studied it while he ate his burger. He looked at Mike and said, “Now, this here is very interesting. This is your idea?”

  “No, sir, I picked it up. I’m trying to put it together with flathead power. I just don’t understand it so well.”