Big Maria (4 page)

He pictured Shitburger out in those mountains looking for gold. Couldn’t blame the guy for dreaming. Everyone thinks about winning the lottery, even if they don’t buy tickets. It wouldn’t even take that much gold to change the life of someone living in Desert Vista. According to one website, gold was over fifteen hundred dollars an ounce. It would take less than a pound to set his family up right. A pound didn’t seem like it would be hard to find.

The first thing Flavia said when she walked through the door was “What stinks? You step in something?”

“That guy, Shitburger, the prison guard, the short one with the acne scars, he paid to get on the computer.”

“He better not’ve been looking at naked women. How much?”

“Twenty bucks.”

She walked to the cupboard, pulled out the Glade, and sprayed the chemical wildflowers throughout the trailer until nothing was left in the canister.

“Not sure if it was worth it,” she said.

“Where’s the Rose?” Ricky’s eyes watered from the fragrant burn.

“Sleeping over at Anna’s. I thought it would be nice for her. She can swim in their pool.”

“Your sister spoils her.”

“Anna just wants to spend time with her before they move to El Centro. It’s only two hours away, but she knows she’s going to see her niece a lot less.”

Ricky had mixed feelings about his sister-in-law. She helped them out here and there. Almost all of Rosie’s clothes were hand-me-downs from Anna’s two daughters. He appreciated what she did for them, and there was no doubt Anna cared for Rosie, but it always came with a dash of condescension. Just because Anna married a dentist and they had a nice house, she thought she could look down on him and Flavia.

Ricky wouldn’t have minded if Mario the Dentist acted that way. He had earned it, but Anna had married her way there. What right did she have making Flavia and him feel bad? He worked as hard as he could. He fed his family. He kept them safe. Sure, he wanted more for them, but he could only give everything he had. He didn’t know how to give more.

“I also thought we could use a night alone,
mi guapo
.” Flavia gave him an over-the-top wink.

“Look what I got,” Ricky said, pulling the joint out of his pocket.

“Where’d you get that?”

“One of the seniors. Did him a favor.”

“I haven’t smoked since before I got pregnant. I don’t know. I got to work early.”

“Think of it as an air freshener.”

Flavia smiled. When Flavia smiled, she looked like the girl he had met. The girl who he had fallen in love with inside of a minute. Not the woman who worked too much. Not the woman who was tired all the time. But the woman who was the best mother in the world. The woman who stuck with him no matter what, even when no matter what was a bad idea. When Flavia smiled, everything was right and good.

“Get over here.” Ricky took Flavia’s hand and pulled her to him.

They got high and made love. Ricky couldn’t remember a better night. But later in bed thoughts spun in his head, keeping him awake. That much good in such a short period of time unnerved him. As wonderful as it had been, it was the kind of night that soldiers experienced before they went to die in a war.

H
arry returned to his trailer and found some cold fried chicken and three beers in the mini fridge. He felt dejected about the gold thing. But what had he expected to find? A treasure map with a big black X-marks-the-spot? Of course the good gold would be hidden or got. Harry hated knowing that there was gold all around him. Other people knew where it was. They were digging it out of the ground. It wasn’t fair.

He watched TV as he ate, but couldn’t concentrate on the fakey doctor show. It was like a soap opera, the doctors arguing relationship garbage in the middle of an operation. If those were his doctors, he’d give them the business for not concentrating on his hemorrhaging spleen.

Harry needed to do something that made him feel like less of a loser. He needed to get some lady love.

It would have been less work to tug out a hand batch and call it a night, but that would be another compromise, another failure. In the end, it would only confirm the depth of his loneliness.

Harry needed to change his luck. Rubbing all over a lady might not do the trick, but it couldn’t do any harm. In a pinch he could always pay one of the women down at the truck stop, but there was no guarantee that would shake his funk.

He couldn’t go back to the Horseshoe yet. Chico would be a jerk about the bathroom thing. It was usually a sword fight anyhow. He could try the Indian casino. Get some free drinks at the nickel slots. But there weren’t any women there under seventy.
Harry wasn’t picky, but he didn’t think he could get it up looking down at gray bush hair.

After some thought, it was obvious where to go. Boog’s.

He kept it casual with jeans and a Hawaiian shirt decorated with flowers and surfboards. He wetted down his thinning hair and splashed Canoe on his neck and scruff. He wasn’t much in the looks department and knew it. A triple threat: too short, too fat, and too ugly. But none of that mattered if you weren’t choosy and had a strategy. It’s hard to end the night with complete rejection if you’re willing to saddle a big lady.

He reached for his gold Saint Christopher necklace but decided to leave it on the edge of the sink. Gold was not his color tonight, and he didn’t think he’d need Chris looking over him on this journey.

B
oog’s Hideout emitted darkness, sweat, and desperation. A concrete bunker with no personality, but in Blythe it was as close to a meat market as you could find. People came to Boog’s for booze and sex, which should give a clear indication of the attractiveness of the clientele. The same kind of grim reality as a nude beach. Visions of youthful sexuality immediately smashed by a middle-aged horror show of lumpy grotesqueries.

Boog’s was a Tuesday bar. Dead on weekends, but midweek busy. Married people made up a large percentage of the base. Husbands and wives spent weekends with the family, but on a weekday a good excuse could get them out of the house without raising suspicion. Enough time to hit the bar for some quick alley-wrestling. More than once a husband and wife had bumped into each other at Boog’s while trawling for strange.

Boog used his bar for band practice, and Harry could hear the music before he opened the door. A fifty-year-old wannabe Lemmy, Boog was the front man for Baculum, a stoner metal
band with two basses, no guitar, and a wicked logo. He went by the stage name Oz Penis, and his voice sounded like a gargoyle looks. It never seemed to bother the drunk and horny, and sometimes even brought in a slightly younger crowd.

The bass made Harry’s skin quiver when he walked into the humid bar. Baculum was playing an extra-heavy cover of Sabbath’s “Hand of Doom.” The band wasn’t good, but they obviously enjoyed playing, and there was something contagious about music played for the sheer love of it.

Harry let his eyes adjust to the darkness, scoping the possibilities at the bar.

On his second pass, he found exactly what he was looking for: a medium-hot woman with her fat friend. Medium-Hot was a bottle blonde with party-roughened skin and a too-big behind crowbarred into tight jeans. By the way she stuck her bucket out, Harry knew that she thought she was better looking than she was. That would work to his advantage. Her friend weighed at least two bills, but she had a pretty face and the bountiful rump and chestals that came with size.

Harry walked up to the ladies, snapping his fingers and pointing at the big girl. He ignored the thinner woman.

“Where do I know you from?” Harry shouted over the music, examining her face.

She smiled. “I’m not sure.”

“Church? Maybe we go to the same church?”

“I’m not really a church person.”

One for Harry.

“I’m sure I know you though. I’m Harry.” He held out his hand, still ignoring Medium-Hot.

“I’m Tami with an
i
,” she said, holding his hand for a second too long, finger flirting.

Two for Harry.

“You’re so familiar, Tami with an
i
. I know I know you.” Harry took the seat next to her, waving the bartender over. “You want another drink?”

She quickly sucked at the straw of her margarita, nodding and smiling. Harry ordered her another margarita and himself a beer and a shot of tequila.

Three. He was in.

“I hope I’m not taking you away from anything,” Harry said, glancing at Medium-Hot for the first time but not making eye contact.

“No,” Tami said.

Medium-Hot whispered in Tami’s ear and went to shake her backside-and-a-half at the band.

Harry put his hand on top of Tami’s. “I’m sorry. Were you with your friend? I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“She’s usually the one guys hit on. She thinks you’re using me to get to her.”

“Is that what she said?”

Tami nodded.

“She thinks she’s something, don’t she?” Harry glanced toward the dance floor.

“You aren’t trying to get into her pants?”

“No,” Harry said, “I’m trying to get into yours.”

That made her smile. She took another drink and put her hand high on Harry’s thigh. She squeezed, making one of his balls move involuntarily.

A
n hour and four drinks later, Harry and Tami were deep in conversation. Some guys try to make ladies laugh. That’s fine for a handsome guy, but Harry knew that funny wouldn’t get her in the sack. Funny kept you in the game, but funny was for friends. If you want a sure thing, tell a sad story to a fat girl.

They were even drunk enough to dance to some Baculum originals that sounded incredibly similar to the Sabbath covers. One heavy sound that made Harry’s jaw muscles hurt, but with titles like “Witches and Wolfbane,” “Blood from the Pharaoh’s Tomb,” and “The Antediluvian Reign of Yog-Sothoth,” how could they not have a good time? “You want to get out of here?” Harry said, making his big move.

Without a word, Tami took his hand and walked him to the back door.

The back lot was dark. Couples coupled in the shadows. Harry caught the shapes of a lady on her knees mouthing snake and a bent-over-a-trash-can quickie that sounded like someone was plunging a clogged toilet. As close to love as you’ll find in the Boog’s Hideout parking lot.

“That’s my van,” Tami said, pointing to a paint-peeled, mid-eighties Vanagon. She got out her keys and slid open the side door. Harry gave her a playful slap on the backside.

With alarming speed, she turned and slapped Harry hard, loosening a tooth. Her voice scared him. “You hit me again and I’ll hurt you. No rough stuff. I’m not playing.”

Harry stared at her, feeling his cheek. He was as excited as he was hurt. “I was kidding around.”

But Tami was all business. “Are you going to fuck me or what?” she said, pulling her underwear past her skirt and down her chunky legs.

Harry shrugged. “Let’s do this.”

He unzipped his pants and let them fall to his ankles. Light flashed across Tami’s body as she half sat, legs splayed, waiting for Harry to climb that mountain. Harry turned toward the light, hearing a motorcycle. The single headlight blinded him for a moment.

When his eyes adjusted, a big, prison-tatted Mexican stood in front of him. Harry stared at the gothic “13” on his neck.

“What the fuck you’re doing?” The inked Mexican spit-sprayed Harry’s face.

“I’m just…” Harry stammered.

Over his shoulder Tami screamed, “Fuck you, Nestor. You fucking asshole.”

“You’re my woman. I’m going to let you mess up what we got? I love you,
princesa
,” Nestor said.

“I ain’t your woman. I ain’t nobody’s woman. We done. Harry’s my new man.”

Harry zipped up his pants and took a step back toward the bar.

“Where the fuck you going?” Nestor and Tami said in unison.

“Back inside?” Harry said, definitely a question.

Tami waved a finger at him. “No, you ain’t. I talked to you for an hour. Listened to your boring-ass, bullshit sob stories. You owe me one cock up in here.”

“Owe you what? Oh, no.” Harry turned to Nestor. “Oh, shit.”

“You’re dead,” Nestor said. His matter-of-fact calmness was terrifying.

Nestor got into a boxing stance. Harry kicked him in the balls. Harry didn’t look like much, but he’d lost enough fights to have a few moves. Nestor dropped to one knee. But before Harry could kick him in the head, Tami jumped on his back and clawed at his face. His knees buckled under her weight, and Harry fell face-first in the hardpack with Tami on top of him. He writhed wildly but was pinned.

“You don’t hit Nestor,” Tami shrieked, pulling his hair toward her. His head followed so far back he thought his Adam’s apple was going to pop out.

“I got this,
princesa
.” Nestor stood, one hand massaging his groin.

Tami gave Harry’s face a slam into the ground and got off him. The release made his body feel weightless for a moment. Harry scraped his hand across the ground and threw a handful of
dirt in Nestor’s face. He turned and hit Tami square on the nose, knocking her back into the van with her legs up in the air for the second time that night.

It was a decent plan, but not a great one. That was as far as he got. Nestor proceeded to give him a thorough beat-down.

And for the second night in a row, Harry Schmittberger woke up behind a bar, covered in shit. Unfortunately for Harry, this time the shit wasn’t his own.

“I
ron Eyes Cody was an Italian.”

“Why would you say that?” Frank said. “You like picking fights with old Indians?”

“I read it,” Ricky said.

“What lying sumbitch wrote that?”

Ricky stood in front of the open hood of the bus. He toyed with the carburetor, raising the idle while he waited for a couple of seniors to find their way back. They had been gone a little too long and he was concerned. Not about the seniors, but that they might make him late for his next run. In five minutes he would have to head into Los Algodones and find them. Either way, he’d have to book on the drive back.

Frank had walked next to him and leaned on the grille. At first, he had stood uncomfortably close to Ricky and made no effort to start a conversation. After a couple of minutes of silence, Ricky had decided that his research on Iron Eyes was a good icebreaker. Apparently not.