The Mortal Nuts (25 page)

That felt much better. Carmen draped the T-shirt over her shoulder. People were looking at her. Even the sword swallower, who had lost his audience, was staring. Carmen shrugged and walked away. People were weird. The air felt soft on her breasts, just like when she'd been a little kid, wading in Tanners Lake.

Chapter 37

For a second there, Tigger thought the guy had fuckin' shot James Dean. He imagined himself telling it:
The guy's pointin' this gun, and then this other old dude, like, hits him! Fuckin' gun goes off: Ka-boom! Deano goes flying right off the fuckin' Tilt-A-Whirl, man, and it's like he got shot, but then I see Dean running like a fuckin' deer, man. And these old guys, they're limpin' the fuck off, like maybe one of 'em got shot in the fuckin' foot!

It was a good story, only Tigger couldn't think who he'd tell it to, what with Sweety and Pork gone. And Dean—if he ever caught up to him—Dean probably wouldn't think it was funny. Oh, well. He knew some other guys he could tell it to. Only now he had to make a decision—should he keep following the taco guy, like Dean said, or should he go after Dean, get the hell out of there?

Since he'd lost sight of Dean, he decided to go with the taco guy.

The first thing Sophie thought—seeing them like that, Axel hanging on Sam, staggering up the mall—was that they'd gone off and gotten drunk. Middle of the day, busy as hell, and they'd gone off and split a bottle. Sophie could feel the red blooming on her cheeks. She knew what she looked like when she got mad, but it wasn't as if she could stop it, and anyways, she'd got to where she didn't even want to stop it. This entire fair had been a disaster from the get-go. People getting killed, her worthless daughter trying to poison her, Sam O'Gara mangling tortillas by the dozen, and worst of all, Axel spending practically no time in the stand helping out. If this was what it was like being a partner, she didn't want any part of it. Turning her back to the approaching pair, Sophie regarded the cramped food preparation area, where Kirsten was frantically assembling an order. She lowered her eyes to the floor. Small particles of food peppered the brick-patterned linoleum surface: bits of orange cheese, sliced green and black olive, shredded lettuce, congealing crumbs of fatty ground beef. About five tacos' worth of filling. Soon it would be up to their ankles.

I could quit,
she thought. The concept shivered her spine with orgasmic intensity. She could just walk away. That was it. When Axel walked in through that door, she'd drape her apron over his drunken skull and walk away. Go find a real job, something in an air-conditioned office where men wore suits and paychecks arrived every Friday at 4:30
P.M
. and the floor wasn't covered with organic matter.

Kirsten said, “You okay?”

Sophie jerked herself back to the present. “I'm fine,” she snapped.

“What's wrong with Mr. Speeter?”

Sophie followed Kirsten's pointing finger. At first, she didn't see him. “Where'd he go?”

“On that bench,” Kirsten said.

There he was, sitting with his leg stretched out along the length of the bench.

“Hey, Soph!” It was Sam, standing behind her, in the doorway. Without Axel draped over his shoulder, he didn't look so drunk anymore.

“Don't call me that,” Sophie said.

Sam bumped up his eyebrows, drew a malformed Pall Mall from somewhere inside his overalls, and fitted it to his mouth. “What you want I should call you? Her Holiness Madame Priss-Butt?”

Sophie's teeth clacked together. That was it. She was out of there, right now. She reached back to untie her apron.

Sam said, “Listen, before you go all lady-of-the-fucking-manor on me, how about you make up an ice pack for your partner out there. He's got himself a knee that's gonna be the size of a cantaloupe, he don't get some chill on it.”

Sophie felt her anger begin to crumble. “He. .. what happened?”

“We ran into Carmen and her little no-hair friend, and old Ax, he had his self an accident.”

Kirsten was already filling a towel with crushed ice. It was just like making burritos—you got better with practice.

The younger cop, the tall one, was enjoying himself, but the older cop looked angry, embarrassed, and unhappy.

“Put your shirt on,” he said, keeping his eyes averted.

“Okay,” Carmen said. “Keep your shirt on.” She laughed.

The younger cop, staring at her tits, laughed too. His partner glared at him. Carmen shook out her T-shirt and looked at it. It was inside out.

“It's inside out,” she said. They were standing near the head of the midway, surrounded by gaping fairgoers. Carmen grinned at her audience and waved the shirt back and forth over her head.

“Just put the shirt on, honey.”

“Are you going to take me to jail?”

“We just want you to put your shirt on.”

“You should take it easy,” said Carmen, pulling the shirt over her head. “You want something to calm you down? You look really unhappy.”

“Are you going to keep your shirt on?” the older cop asked.

Carmen shrugged. “Is he always so uptight?” she asked the younger cop.

The cop smiled and looked away. His partner scowled at him, then looked back at Carmen, who was scratching her left breast through the T-shirt. He turned to his partner. “What do you think?”

The small crowd was dispersing.

“We'd have to walk her all the way back up there.” He pointed. “I say forget it It's not worth it.” He turned to Carmen, put his hands on her shoulders, and spoke directly into her smiling face. “How about it, lady—are you going to keep your shirt on? Can you promise us that?”

Carmen was trying to get something out of her jeans pocket.

“We asked you a question,” said the older cop.

Carmen got the bottle from her pocket, opened it, and shook two Valiums onto her palm. She offered them to the older cop. “Here,” she said. “Eat these. You'll feel better. You really will.”

One time Tigger had gone to work for a temp agency, and they had sent him to this factory where all day long he loaded little white cardboard boxes into big brown cardboard boxes. He earned thirty-eight dollars for eight hours, then spent it all that same night at The Recovery Room, trying to wipe out the memory. It hadn't worked. He still had nightmares about that day, the white-into-brown- cardboard-box day, the most boring day of his life.

Sitting watching the taco guy was almost as bad. All the guy did was sit in his chair, holding a towel on his leg. Tigger, sitting on the grass up near the top of the sloped mall, could see the guy's foot. He had been looking at that foot for almost an hour. It hadn't moved an inch. And the other old guy, he was in the taco stand, working. That was boring too. Tigger really wanted to leave, since it was obvious the guy wasn't going anywhere, but he kept thinking how pissed Dean would be if he left. He didn't think he'd ever forget the sound of the steel crowbar hitting Pork's skull. Tigger had been in lots of fights and stuff, but he'd never heard anything like that before and he hoped he never did again. He kept remembering it, the sound, and thinking it was like the sound when you hold on to an ice cream cone too tight. When it shatters and you get ice cream all over yourself. That wasn't exactly the sound, but it was as close as he could come.

No, he didn't want to get Dean pissed off at him.

But Dean had run. The guy had shot at him and he had run. Did that mean Tigger was supposed to run too? He didn't know. But he did know that watching a guy's foot was cardboard-box boring. After a time—Tigger didn't know how long it had been or what had finally inspired him to move—he stood up and headed for the gate. The farther he got from the taco guy, the better he felt. This whole deal was getting too weird, what with people getting shot and everything. Maybe it was time to move back in with his dad again, see if the old son-of-a-bitch had mellowed out in the past six months. By the time he got to his car, he'd almost decided to do it. Just show up at his dad's house on Selby, walk right in, see what happened.

As he was unlocking the car door he decided. That was what he would do. If Dean wanted to take off the taco guy, then he could do it without Timothy Alan Skeller. Tigger opened the car door and slid in behind the wheel. He was all the way in before he realized that he was not alone.

Dean, slumped in the back seat, said, “Where the fuck you been?”

Tigger jumped, whacking his thighs on the steering wheel. “How'd you get in here?” he asked. Then he noticed the glass on the passenger seat, and the missing window. “You broke my window, man.”

“Don't worry about your window. Taco Man's gonna buy you a whole new car.”

“I don't want a new car, man. Besides, the dude's got a fuckin' gun, man. And he ain't afraid to use it. He shot at you, man. I fuckin' saw it.”

“Yeah, well, he missed me, didn't he?”

“He missed you on account of the other old guy made him miss.”

Dean sat up and leaned over the seat back. “Reason he missed me,” he said, “is on account of I got the fuck out of the way.” He took the cowboy hat from Tigger's head and sailed it out the window. “Now start the car.”

“Why? Where we going?”

“Just start the fucking car. I'll tell you where to go.”

Tigger said, “I don't think I wanna.”

“Yes you do.”

After seven-plus decades of living, Axel had thought that he had experienced all the emotions his body was capable of producing. He had plumbed the dark, bottomless depths of terror, sailed the heights of pleasure and joy, waded through swamps of anger and disgust, and baked in the desert of despair. But he'd never felt like this before, as if the reins had been severed, as if the brake lines had ruptured, as if he was watching himself flail at life without purpose or effect. When things were going badly, Axel's thoughts took a literary turn. If life was a metaphor, perhaps he had the power to change it.

What if he had shot the kid? What if he'd killed him? Cold radiated up his leg from the ice pack on his knee. He would have gone to jail. The thought shivered his spine. Other thoughts, perhaps even worse, threatened to surface.

Feeling eyes on him, he tipped his head back and saw Sophie standing in the doorway to the Taco Shop.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I'm fine,” he said.

Sophie shook her head. “She's a big girl, Axel. There's only so much we can do.”

Axel felt his eyes heat up; he turned his face away from Sophie and blinked rapidly. She thought he was worried about Carmen. Hell, he hadn't even been thinking about Carmen. He'd been thinking about himself. Poor Carmen, wandering around out there by herself or—even worse—not by herself. What an all-time shitty day. He felt Sophie step back into the restaurant, heard her say something to Sam.

Damn.

Sam.

The other thing he was trying not to think about. The hole in Sam's backyard. Axel drew a deep breath, waiting for the fear and anger to hit him but feeling nothing beyond a sort of dull, distant thudding, the sound of a flaccid heart herding blood through a network of aging vessels. Not long ago that heart had been hammering, powered by the need for vengeance, driving a rage that had nearly caused him to commit murder. Now such emotion seemed unreal and impossible. He felt nothing other than weariness and the unpleasant pulsing from his swollen knee. The fact that his entire fortune had disappeared seemed meaningless. He knew he had to ask Sam about it, but he was afraid of what he might hear. Better, for the moment, not to know. Either Sam had the money and he would give it back, or he had it and he wouldn't, or the dogs had eaten it, or someone else had taken it. It didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that he did not seem to care. He'd lost his edge.

“I think we should take him to see a doctor,” Sophie whispered.

“He don't want no doctor,” Sam said. “Leave him be.”

“He's just sitting out there staring. Did he get hit on the head or something?”

“He'll be okay. He's just noodlin'.” Sam finished folding a lumpy Bueno Burrito. A glob of guacamole oozed out from a tear in the tortilla. A few hours earlier, Sophie

wouldn't have dreamed of serving such an abortion to one of her customers, but now she simply watched as Sam wrapped it and handed it to a waiting Kirsten.

“What about his leg? He can hardly walk.”

Sam said, “It'll get better or it'll get worser. Leave him be.”

“I think he's worried about Carmen.”

“Maybe he is, maybe he ain't. Maybe he's just pooped.”

Sophie thought, Axel's worrying about my daughter, and I'm worrying about Axel, and Sam doesn't seem worried about anything. Thank God Kirsten is just doing her job, or this business would fall apart. She returned her thoughts to the restaurant. There was a small line in front of the window. One at a time, she said to herself wearily. Just keep on serving, and in time everyone will get fed. It had gotten to where all the customers' faces had morphed into a single identity-free blob. A couple of hours ago, when she had almost decided to quit the Taco Shop, much of the state fair energy had leaked out of her. But Axel's getting hurt, that had changed everything. She couldn't leave him hurt, couldn't let the business collapse. She wished, though, she could get that energy back.

She wanted Axel on his feet again. Seeing him sit on his folding chair with his leg out, his face sagging, his eyes staring across the mall toward the boarded-up Tiny Tot Donuts stand—it was hard to take.

“Can I help you?” she asked the next face in line.

The customer did not reply. Sophie forced herself to focus, to see the person more clearly. A woman. As her features came into focus, Sophie had a startled moment when she thought it was her mother, who had died nearly ten years before. The face displayed the same pinched nose, cold blue eyes, and determined, jutting jaw. But this woman was taller and had a large supply of gray-blond hair piled atop her head. A red spot burned high on each pale cheek.

Sophie smiled at her and repeated, “Can I help you?”

The woman's eyes were fixed on something behind her. Sophie turned her head and saw Kirsten pressed back against the stainless-steel cooler, staring wide-eyed at the angry customer.