A bad
wind was blowing out of the desert the day the yellow -eyed blonde showed at the
Gas & Eats, her heart-shaped face sunburned, lips you’d want to eat, and tits
that wouldn’t quit for a kid not even halfway into her teens. I was twenty-two,
just out of the army feeling nothing but mangy as a dog, and soon as I saw her
(and this is the God’s truth), I knew in my gut that’d be no holding back what
I’d believe was a collision of fate.
They’d say she was too
young —underage— nothing more than a snotty little
down-home jailbait bitch—but I said fuck it, gave a wave to my old pal’s
convertible and he came banging off the asphalt, steam shooting out under the
chassis. I hadn’t seen Clyde Bagger in a long time, not that I’d missed him, and
I laughed as he wrestled the wheel across the ditch, elbows flying, the rest in
the car bouncing like corks, blondie’s pink sunglasses jumping, her hair sailing
and pretty mouth wide open giving a squeal like a little pig with a stick in its
ass.
Dirt
was spinning in the air, swinging the rusty SERVICE sign, sunlight glinting
through the bullet holes, and some coyote’d yowled half the night, keeping me
half-awake. He shut up when the sun started climbing the Sierras’ stone faces
and by two that afternoon the Pepsi thermometer was stuck at a hundred and one
in the shade. Crackled skin’s what I had, as if I could dig a nail in a hunk and
peel it back like a strip of jerky. Not to mention the bugs beating so hard
against the station window I thought someone was popping slugs from a passing
car. But only a few yokels still used the old road since the county’d detoured
to a four-lane highway.
Clyde
was clanking out of the ditch and that staked trailer he was towing bucked on
the hitch, the two motorcycles chained to the bed yanking and shaking at the
slats. Cardboard placards of Mayor Bagger’s basketball face—Clyde’s adopted dad
pushing a third term—wagged on the wires wound to the trailer stakes, making
slapping noises as the car slid to a stop, damn near butting the old
glass-topped gas pump that wasn’t pumping any longer.
Throwing open his door, Clyde climbed out yelling, “You son of a bitch!” and
grabbed for my hand. “Out of the fuckin’ army a week—you don’t even tell me
you’re back!” His alligator boots had him taller than he’d always looked and the
mustache he was growing wasn’t going to show much since the rest of him seemed
so hairless, except for his head and that lacquered look so stiff the wind
wasn’t even raising a strand. I pulled my hand back, showing the grease and he
said, “What’re you doin’ up here? Hidin’ out?”
Getting hold of my arm, he jerked me around, faking a jab and I grinned at Pam
Novak on the front seat, trying not to show I was seeing how fat she looked.
Pretend she’s pretty and skinny, I told myself, like she’d been before I’d
enlisted, but it wasn’t easy—her face blown-out round as a pizza and topping a
body I hardly recognized. I spied the gold chain I’d given her, cinching her
throat under a double chin thick as a baby’s arm around her neck.
“Long
time no see,” she said, squinting. I said you’re right—long time. “You look the
same as the day you took off,” she said, and turned a little to blondie on the
back seat. “This is ugly Bobby McGee,” Pam said, “who everybody talks about—and
he’s even uglier now than he used to be!”
“I
love you, too—” I said and she laughed. I could’ve said more, like I’d loved you
and could’ve hung my head out to dry but you wouldn’t marry me and leave your
folks—you took up with Clyde who was supposed to marry you but nobody married
anybody.
“I’m
joking!” she said, and told the girl, “I mean how good-looking he is. Bobby’s
always had a terrible sense of humor—”
“Christ’s sake,” the kid said in a slightly Southern drawl, “I know what you
mean when somebody’s good-looking or just plain ugly.” She stretched a hunk of
pink bubble gum out of her mouth, same color as her lipstick and sunglasses
which she pulled off, and wrinkled her nose like a rabbit. “They all talk about
you so much,” she said, “I feel like I already know you, only you look shorter
than I’ve pictured from all their yakking.”
I’d
never seen anyone with yellow eyes, like somebody’d cut egg-yolk circles and
stuck them on, her pupils shining out like little pits of black or balls of
buckshot. She gave a smile like a child angel, stuck the hunk of gum back in her
mouth, and I felt a twanging in me like someone was plucking a long string.
Next
to her on the seat slumped a skinny goon in a dirty undershirt, gripping a beer
can like a monkey with a banana. Jailhouse tattoos—the kind you prick in your
skin with a needle and ink—scrawled down his arms and the backs of his hands.
Glaring at me through brass-rimmed shades, eyes sagging like a dog’s, he said,
“I don’t know this guy and sure as shit don’t go around talking about him—”
Nobody paid any attention and he raised the beer like saludo, then slurped at
the rim as if the next thing he’d do was shove the can in his mouth. Some people
you just happen to see on a street and you know you’re going to tangle. It’s
only a matter of time.
and