The Car (14 page)

“What?” Waylon said to her but kept his eyes across the table, watching as Wayne watched.

“Three seconds are up. We get into these little tiffs now and then, over poker. But you're only allowed three seconds. Burk knows that, don't you, Burk?”

The red-faced man looked at Annie and then back to Waylon and slowly nodded. “Maybe later?”

“Whatever.” Waylon turned to Annie. “Good rule—the three-second rule.”

“I thought so. It saves trouble.”

The man on Waylon's left scraped up the cards and shuffled and began to deal the next hand. Terry watched Wayne close his eyes again and apparently drop into deep sleep, and he turned back to the game.

He knew some of poker—what beat what, a pair is beat by two pair, two pair by three of a kind, what a straight was (five consecutively numbered cards) and a flush (five cards in one suit). But this game was more complicated. It wasn't just the best hand, it was the best and the lowest at the same time, so even if there wasn't a good high hand they might be betting on their low hand.

The betting was wild. Soon a hundred, two hundred became the minimum bet, and Terry saw several pots that had six or eight thousand dollars in them. Waylon didn't win them all, didn't play each hand. Often he threw his hand in with bad cards. But when he did stay in a hand, he bet heavily, always raising, and while sometimes he lost, more often he won. He played every hand with the same look on his face, staring blankly at the center of the table, his eyes seemingly glazed while he bet or waited for somebody else to bet.

But none of it—the playing, Waylon, the long day, the problems that morning at the religious commune, Wayne sitting like a dozing pit bull in the corner on a box, the tension in the room as Waylon won more and more (he soon had over ten thousand dollars in chips in front of him)—in a little while none of it was enough. Terry was too tired, too pulled out by the day, and he lowered his head on his chest and fell asleep, sound asleep, gone. . . .

H
E PLACE-SHIFTED
in his sleep. It wasn't dreaming, exactly—more a belief that he was in some other place, at another time.

He was with his parents. They were on a trip (something they had never done) and they weren't fighting (also something they rarely had done, to
not
fight), and they had stopped at a small motel where his father went inside a room and came out with bundles of money wadded up in his hands, a big smile on his face. . . .

Terry awakened.

He was in the bed in the motel room. Sunlight was streaming in the windows. Between him and the door, Waylon and Wayne were sleeping on the floor, not in but on their bags, their breath coming evenly.

Terry propped up on one elbow and looked at the two men. They were sleeping soundly, Wayne flat on his back, his mouth open, snoring softly. Waylon was half on his side, facing Terry.

Terry frowned. They looked so . . . so old. Waylon was nearly bald, starting to wrinkle, and Wayne had the beginnings of loose flesh under his chin that came with age, the way Terry's grandparents on his father's side had looked before they passed away. He had never met the grandparents on his mother's side. Two old men, sleeping on the floor of the motel room, two old—what was it Wayne had said?—dangerous men. Two old, very dangerous men. The thing that happened with Waylon, his eyes, when he became still and flat sounding—like a cobra. And Wayne sitting there on the box, coming awake like that, just because of the sound of a man's voice.

They had done things before. Together. Done very hard things, and a part of Terry wanted to know what it was they did and another part wanted to not ever know.

Wayne's eyes opened. He was looking straight at the ceiling and they focused at once, glanced first toward the door, then over to where Terry slept.

He smiled when he saw Terry awake and whispered, “You sleep good?”

Terry nodded and also whispered, “What time is it?”

Wayne looked at his watch. “Three.”

“In the morning?”

“No. Afternoon. Waylon played until six. I carried you back to the room and you didn't blink an eye.”

“Did he win?”

“He always wins.”

“How much?”

“I don't know. Fifteen, maybe a little more.”

“Thousand?”

Wayne nodded. “Yeah. It's a lot of money to take out of that little game. I thought we would have trouble, but Annie handled it all.”

Waylon snorted and made a sound close to
gaack
and awakened. He sat up suddenly, looked around, then lay back down. “I could use some coffee. I feel like I've got a hangover.”

“And food,” Terry said. “I'm starving.”

“First we have to do the money,” Waylon said. He started digging in the pockets of his pants, which he'd slept in.

“Do what?”

“Bust it up.” Waylon pulled wads of bills from both front pockets, then from both back pockets.

“How much did you win?” Terry asked.

“Just at eighteen thousand. I figure it comes to about six thousand each.” He started arranging the money in three piles, stacking fifty- and hundred-dollar bills until they were about evenly matched. He handed one stack to Wayne, jammed one back in his pockets, and the other he leaned across and held up to Terry.

“You're giving me six thousand dollars?”

Waylon nodded. “Sure. You've got to disperse wealth or it doesn't work. What if we get separated?”

“But I didn't do anything. . . .”

“That doesn't matter. You were there, part of us, part of how we are.”

“But six
thousand
. . .” Terry looked at the wad of money in his hand. “It's so much.”

Waylon lay back. “It is—
only
—money. A way to store energy. That's all it is. You use it, live with it, don't worship the crap. It's just something to get you through the night.”

“Let's go eat,” Wayne interrupted. “We can always talk. My stomach feels like my throat was cut. It's OK to be hungry, but starving sucks.”

They found a hamburger stand and ate burgers and fries and drank malts until they could barely move.

“So,” Wayne said, looking at Terry, “what do we do next?”

“Me? You're asking me?”

“Sure. It's your turn.”

“No.” Waylon cut in. “It's nearly four o'clock—too late in the day for him to make the choice as to what we do next. He can start in the morning.”

“Aren't we going to play more poker?” Terry asked. “I mean you. Aren't you going to play more? Wayne said you always win. Maybe you could win more and we would have even more money.”

Waylon and Wayne looked at each other—again, that look. Like they knew something without having to talk about it.

“You never beat the game,” Waylon said, and Wayne nodded slowly. “You go in, take what you need, get out. Never stay too long and never, never try to whip the game. Stay there too long and they figure you out, start chewing at the corners on you, know your betting. Then maybe two, three of them get together and whipsaw you.”

“Whipsaw?”

“Bet against each other with you in the middle,” Wayne said. “One might have a good hand, the other a bad one. The bad one raises the pot even though he knows he can't win, then the guy with the good hand raises and they keep doing that with you caught between them. Whipsaw. Later they split what they take off you.”

Terry slurped the last of his malt. “Well, if we aren't going to play poker, what are we going to do?”

Waylon pointed across the street. “Wanda.”

“What?”

“Wanda,” he repeated. “See that doorway? It leads up a staircase to Wanda. . . .”

“Oh, man. Wanda isn't still here.” Wayne leaned back and shook his head. “It's been twenty years.”

“Some things, like love,”—Waylon smiled—“never die. I want the boy to meet her.”

“Nobody does that anymore,” Wayne said. “It's dangerous.”

“Not to do—just to meet. He's too young for the other thing.”

Terry listened to both of them, his head going back and forth like he was watching a tennis match. He was going to ask more but he was learning—slowly, he thought, but learning—and one of the things he'd learned was to not ask too many questions. They would show him what they meant.

Waylon looked at his watch. “Four-thirty. About time they got up anyway, don't you think?” He stood and went to the sidewalk, started across the street, and Wayne and Terry followed.

The door opened into a stairway and there was another door at the top of the stairs. This second door was locked and Waylon knocked and stood back so he would show in the peephole at eye level in the door.

There was a moment's hesitation, a scuffling at the door, then a muffled woman's voice.

“He's too young.”

“We're not here for that. We're looking for Wanda. We're old friends.” Waylon pointed to Wayne and Terry. “These are friends of mine.”

Another moment or two, then a clicking sound and the door swung open enough to let a large woman wearing a flimsy negligee fit into the opening. She was not fat, just huge—standing well over six feet—and to Terry she looked like a living mountain.

“I'm Betty,” the woman said. “I knew Wanda.”

“Knew?” Wayne had been leaning against the wall through the exchange and he stood straighter.

“Yes. She passed away three years ago.”

“Ahh.” Waylon sighed. “That's too bad. She was a good person.”

“Yes. She was. Everybody who knew her loved her.”

“She kept me from deserting,” Waylon said. “I was stationed over at Rapid City for a while when I first went in the army—before I went to . . . school. I hated it and was going to split and she talked me out of it, talked me into staying in. I used to come here every week and she would sit and play classical music on that old Martin she had. . . .”

He let his voice slide off and for a long time they stood—the large woman in the see-through gown, Waylon, Wayne, and Terry—stood in silence at the top of the small stairway in front of the door and it was then that Terry realized what the place was, knew what Wanda had been.

“What got her?” Waylon asked.

“AIDS—what else?”

“Ahh . . .” Another sigh, deeper this time, sadder. “It gets so many.”

Betty nodded, again there was silence, then she coughed softly “Are you boys sure I can't offer you a little something?”

Waylon shook his head. “Not this time. We're just traveling through and I thought I'd say hello to an old friend.”

“Well, then . . . it's cold standing here this way.”

“We'll be going.” Wayne turned to go down the stairway. “Thank you.”

She closed the door and they were back on the street before Terry spoke.

“Were they—I mean was she, you know, a prostitute?”

Wayne said nothing, but Waylon smiled. “She was a lady named Betty. Other names don't count.”

“Was Wanda one of them?”

“Too many questions,” Waylon said. “The wrong kind. Wanda was a lady, Betty is a lady—why do you need other labels?”

“I guess I don't.”

“That's right.”

Waylon suddenly stopped dead and turned to Terry. “Ever hear of Wild Bill Hickock?”

Terry nodded. “Sort of. Wasn't he a marshal or something in the Old West?”

“Close. He was a drunk who could shoot a handgun very well—and once was a marshal in Dodge City, Kansas. Mostly he was just a drunk. He died here.”

“Where?”

Waylon poked his finger over his shoulder at a bar next to them. “Right there.”

He led them into the bar and at the back there was a poker table, roped off, with cards lying on the top of it.

“He was playing poker,” Waylon said. “Had his back to the door and somebody came in, walked up, and put a bullet in his brain.”

“Aces and eights,” Wayne said. “His hand. Two pair. Aces and eights. It's still called a dead man's hand.”

They turned to go but Waylon hung back for a moment. “Clean . . .”

“What?” Terry asked.

Wayne went back to Waylon. Took him by the arm. “Come on, Wail . . .”

“So clean. In the head. It ended then, didn't it? Ended . . . right . . .
then.
Just clean and over. Head shots are so clean. . . .”

“Let's go, Wail,” Wayne repeated. “Let's go now, come on.” He made his voice soft, as it had been when they were at the religious commune. Like he was speaking to a dog. “Come on, Wail, let's go. . . .”

Waylon turned away from the poker table with the cards arranged the way they were supposed to have been the night Wild Bill Hickock was shot in the back of the head.

Outside they stood for a time, adjusting their eyes to the sudden bright light of the late afternoon sun.

“Looks like it's going to clear,” Wayne said, still holding Waylon's arm. “Be a nice day tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” Terry nodded. “I'll have to think what to do.”

“Why don't we go back to the room? Order pizza and pig out and watch television, then get an early start in the morning. Can you dig it?” Wayne led Waylon along the sidewalk, away from the bar.

“Sounds good.” Terry followed.

“Maybe there'll be a good movie on. A western. I dig those old John Wayne westerns. The Duke—man, he could kick some serious . . .”

“He dodged.” Waylon had stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and spoke suddenly, his voice soft but his eyes were back and his lips were in a half smile.

“What?” Wayne asked.

“The Duke. He dodged—skipped combat. Played all those hero roles and he dodged. Couldn't handle the freight, you know? Like the president. They talk good and wave the flag, but when it came time to pay dues they dodged.”