The Motel Life (4 page)

WE PULLED OVER
in an abandoned campground later that night. The entrance had been plowed so we drove as far as we could, stopped where the road ended and the snow began, and slept in the car. In the morning we drove to a town called Council and bought gas and chains. The chains were over fifty dollars.

It was snowing again by then, falling down hard, so I put them on in front of the gas station, and when I got us going I had to slow down to ten miles an hour. I couldn’t see much of anything at all.

We made it to Riggens by five p.m. and decided we’d have to stop for the night. The weather was still going, and although we now had the chains, we didn’t want to risk the chance of going off the road and having to get the police or a tow truck to get us out.

They had a store there that was open and we bought some beer and a loaf of bread and some lunchmeat. We pulled the car behind
a closed auto shop and waited. There was no one around. I could barely see across the street it was snowing so much. Jerry Lee was in the back seat and I was in the front.

‘I think we’re getting close to running out of money,’ Jerry Lee said.

‘We still got over $150. I got fifty or so in my pocket, and there’s a hundred in the glove box.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

I looked at him in the rear view. ‘I don’t know if you should go back home.’

‘You think I should stay away?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Where would I go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ve never really been anywhere.’

‘Me neither.’

‘I guess I could go to Hawaii.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Lay on the beach and eat bananas and coconuts.’

‘Sounds all right,’ I said.

‘You know he didn’t even have a coat on. There it was snowing and I wasn’t wearing any pants and he wasn’t wearing a coat. Why wouldn’t he have had a coat on? That’s weird, isn’t it? Riding a bike in the goddamn snow with no coat on? You think it hurt him?’

‘You mean with the car?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know. If it did, it didn’t hurt long.’

‘I don’t know why I put him in the car. It was just instinct, I guess. I just wish it would have happened with people around.
Maybe someone would have known what to do. I feel horrible about the kid, I really do. They’ll send me to prison now.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘You remember Wilson Dunlap?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

‘Wilson was the guy growing pot plants in his basement. I can’t remember how many he had exactly, but he had a lot. He had the lights, a humidity machine, and that special nature music always playing. He was a hell of a nice guy. We used to sit around his basement, just him and me, smoke weed and talk to his plants. It was more like a science project. Biology or something. I really liked that part of it,’ cause it didn’t seem like he was doing something against the law. I mean, we were growing things, from just seeds. That’s crazy, isn’t it? But the plants, something happened to them and they wouldn’t get any bigger. A lot of them started turning brown, wilting. He got so depressed about it I thought he’d kill himself. Seriously. He was strange that way. Then he began asking people what they thought was wrong. He got drunk one night and told a guy that he’d met in the bar about it. The guy said it had to do with lighting, that he’d had the same problem himself. So Wilson takes the guy to his house. The guy was an undercover cop, and Wilson got three years in Carson City.

‘I couldn’t believe it. His girlfriend said he would probably get out in one and a half, but still that’s almost two years. He didn’t hurt anybody. He just sat around with his plants and worked at a video store. I remember I saw his girlfriend one night, I forget where we were, but she asked me if I would go visit him. I didn’t want to, hell I really didn’t, but I took a day off and she drove me out there. I almost didn’t go in. I started thinking crazy thoughts.
Maybe they’d end up throwing me in there. I don’t know, maybe somehow they’d find something out about me. Anyway, I sat in the lot debating it, and finally I said to myself, “If I was in there I sure hope he’d be there visiting me.” And then I went in through the gates and did it.

‘Now he’d only been in there a month or two. And when I saw him, he started crying. Not just tears, but sobbing. Like a child. He told me he didn’t know if he could take it. He told me he wished he was dead. Each night, he said, he prayed that he wouldn’t wake in the morning.

‘I talked to him for a while, but I didn’t know what to say. That was the only time I went. I guess I ain’t much of a friend, but I couldn’t take it after that. I just couldn’t. When he got out I went to see him at his mom’s place, but he was different. I don’t know how he changed, but he did. Maybe he was just colder, more reserved. It’s hard to explain. I don’t know if I could take it.’

‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ I said after a time. ‘Maybe we just get rid of the car somehow and head back to Reno. Maybe no one will know anything. It wasn’t your fault some stupid kid couldn’t ride a bike.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Just seems like more than that somehow.’ He began crying.

I turned on the inside light and looked around at him. He was sitting there with his hat down to his eyes and a pocket knife in his hand, pressing into the palm of his other hand. Blood was there leaking all over his hand and dripping down on the floorboards.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said and turned back around and shut off the light.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

I began getting jittery.

‘You’re gonna have to stop crying. We got to figure out what we’re gonna do about it.’

I took two beers out of the grocery sack, opened one for myself, and gave him one.

‘I fell deep this time, didn’t I, Frank?’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘But we’ll figure it out. We have to. I mean, first off, what do you do with a car like this? I mean, it’s got numbers. Maybe someone is looking for the car, who knows? If someone saw you hit that kid, if that taxi did, then they’ll know it was you, and it’ll look bad that we left town.’

‘Jesus, Frank, I don’t know why we left.’

‘We shouldn’t have,’ I said.

‘You know, they tattooed a Hitler sign on Wilson Dunlap. His girlfriend was half Jewish. He didn’t hate anyone. He said he had to. They made him. A bunch of guys in prison did.’ Cause you have to side with someone, you know? Jesus, I don’t want Hitler tattooed on me.’

I looked out the window. There was a restaurant across the street. From the car I could just make out that there were people inside.

‘Let’s go get something to eat at that diner.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jerry Lee said, ‘I don’t feel like being around anyone. You go. I don’t think I can eat anyway. I’m gonna just sit here.’

So I finished my beer, put on my hat, zipped up my coat, and got out of the car.

With the snow coming down, the street lights lit up the main
road like it was almost day, it was so bright out. As I walked across the street I saw an old man and woman playing cards in the camper of their truck. They were parked outside the diner. Then I heard somebody honk, and I knew without looking who it was. I turned and saw Jerry Lee slowly driving the Dodge out of town. I stood there and watched until the tail lights just flickered into nothing.

9

AFTER STANDING THERE
for a while, looking down the road, I went to where we were parked to see if he had left my things. There were food wrappers, a nearly empty Jim Beam bottle laying on the ground, but also my sleeping bag and a six-pack of beer.

I put my things in the covered doorway of the auto body shop and went across the street and into the restaurant.

There was a wood stove burning in the center of the room, and there were deer heads on the wall, and a stuffed rattlesnake curled with its head raised and its fangs out resting on top of the cigarette machine.

I sat at the counter and kept looking out the window expecting to see Jerry Lee, but each time I looked back there was nothing, just the falling snow and the street lights in the distance.

The waitress poured me coffee and gave me a menu. She was smiling and talking to the other people at the counter. She wore an
old metal brace on her right leg, which made her limp. I could see the cook: he was an older man, overweight, smoking cigarettes in the back. After she gave me coffee I looked in my wallet and saw I had only sixty-seven dollars left.

I asked her if they had a bus that went through. She coughed and said there was a bus, Greyhound, but that it wouldn’t be coming through town until tomorrow afternoon.

‘That is if it can make it,’ she said. ‘This snow doesn’t look like it’ll let up. Maybe, but maybe not. You never can tell. I don’t trust forecasts anymore. They plow, but you’ll just have to see.’

‘Where do I pick it up?’

‘Right here when it comes. We open at seven. The bus, if it shows, will be here anywhere from two on.’

‘You know how much it is?’

‘It’s twenty-two dollars fifty to Boise, anywhere else I don’t know. You can call them from the payphone in the back. It’s next to the bathroom.’

I got up and went to the phone and looked up the number for Greyhound and called them. The fare to Reno was sixty-one dollars seventy-five. That only left me with around seven dollars.

I ordered toast and milk to help my stomach, and listened to the radio they had playing until the restaurant closed two hours later.

When I left I began walking around the small town, but there wasn’t much to see and my feet began to freeze, so I picked up my things and looked for somewhere to sleep.

I found a small grocery store that was closed down. There was a For Sale sign in the window. It had once been a filling station
and had a huge overhang, and I stopped underneath that, got in my sleeping bag, and waited for morning.

The snow stopped during the night. I got up once to take a leak and I checked the road and it didn’t look too bad. I went back to sleep and when I woke the next time, there were no clouds and the sun was coming up. I got out of my sleeping bag, got dressed, and began walking around to warm up.

The same lady who closed the restaurant drove up in an old white Ford pick-up. She opened the restaurant, and let me in.

‘You been walking around all night?’

‘Kind of. I had a sleeping bag.’

‘It’s a good thing you didn’t freeze,’ she said. ‘You know how to start a fire?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Well, you get the wood stove burning, bring in some wood from the back, and I’ll cook you breakfast.’

I thanked her and followed her in.

I got the fire going okay and when I stacked enough wood she cooked me a ham and cheese omelet, hash browns, and toast. The food tasted better than any I could remember. The morning customers began arriving, and I sat at the end of the counter and ate by myself. When I was done I drank hot chocolate and waited. Every time the waitress would pass by I thanked her and pretty soon she made a joke of it that I did. I got her address and told myself I’d pay her back when I had the dough. Maybe I’d get her some sort of gift or at least send her a postcard.

Once in a while I’d look out the window for the Dodge and Jerry Lee, but each time I saw a car go by, or a customer arrive, my heart fell as it was never him.

My mind started to drift and I began thinking about Annie James, which I hated, but they just kind of fell on me, my memories of her did. She was the only girlfriend I’d ever had, and the only girl besides a prostitute I’d been with. For a while she and her mom lived three doors down from me and Jerry Lee at the Sutro Motel on Fourth Street.

Her mother was an on-and-off-again prostitute who had been fired from most of the local brothels for drinking, drugs, things like that. She’d stay up for days at a time as she liked speed. Annie told me stories about her. There were a lot of fucked-up ones, she told me, but I’d also seen it with my own eyes.

Annie James and I met in the parking lot of that motel, and once we got to know each other she would stay some nights with me and Jerry Lee in our room. I was eighteen then. She was seventeen. She went to high school and tried hard at it. When Jerry Lee and I’d be watching TV in the evening, she’d just sit there on the bed reading or doing her homework. She was like that, worked hard. She didn’t have a temper either, she wasn’t mean like her mom. Her mom had an edge most of the time where you never knew what would happen or what she’d say. Sometimes she’d be nice, polite, and then an hour later, maybe less, you’d hear her yelling from three doors away like a crazed maniac.

Annie James is blonde, skinny, with dark blue eyes. When I knew her, she kept her hair back in a ponytail. She was funny too, said funny things, and she had a good smile.

The memory that came to me while I was sitting there in that diner was of a night when she was still in high school and she was spending the night at our room at the Mizpah.

She came over late and me and Jerry Lee were in bed watching TV. She didn’t say much and just sat on the bed and soon after I fell asleep. The next time I woke it was the middle of the night and she was laying on her back listening to a small radio I kept by my bed.