The Motel Life (8 page)

So I drove the truck down to Portland, Oregon, got a motel room, and spent a couple weeks watching cable TV and playing with the dog. But then I started getting homesick, real homesick. I don’t know why I did, but I did. We all know this town is a shithole. But it’s my shithole. Then I freaked out and bought a solid gold wristwatch with diamonds on it for my dad. It cost a fucking fortune. Or cost him. Ha! Ha! Ha! Shit, anyway, I had it engraved, ‘To the best dad I know, love Dickie Jr.’ I drove back to Reno the same day they finished the watch. Then I was in Grants Pass at a rest stop, and I let the dog out to take a leak. Problem was, when I was ready to go I just got back in the car and drove off. I forgot about the dog. I was almost in Reno by the time I remembered, but by then I was too tired to go back
.

Anyway, I gave my dad the watch and he didn’t know what to think. Then a couple days later he found out about the card, and the son of a bitch committed me to a private mental hospital for evaluation. Can you believe that? But I didn’t give a shit. Why should I? It’s better than working. At least that’s what I thought at the time
.

The first guy I met in there said he’s Liberace’s son. I said Jesus, Liberace didn’t have a kid. So we got in a fight, it was touch and go for a while then I kicked the shit out of him and ended up in the state mental ward. It took me three months to get out of there, but it wasn’t as bad as you’d think
.

Signed your pal
,

Dickie Junior
 

I don’t know what time it was when I was done, but the nurse finally kicked me out, so I set the story on Jerry Lee’s chest and made my way home.

14

I GOT UP THAT NEXT MORNING
, took a shower, shaved, put on some clothes and walked to my old job at the restaurant supply and repair company. The day was sunny, cold out, but there was no breeze and the walking warmed me up. The place I worked was on Virginia Street. I was a local driver, sometimes I’d go on longer trips with another guy to Fallon or to Lake Tahoe, but mostly it was just around town picking up and delivering fryers and ovens, doing repairs and installations, things like that.

I didn’t want to go in there since I hadn’t called or told them why I hadn’t shown up for over a week, and when I got there I could see that the truck I used was gone, so figured they’d found someone new. I went in there anyway, though, and the main boss said a few things to me, then took me into his office and sat me down in one of his leather chairs. He was an all right guy, but he was mad and he wouldn’t stop talking about how mad he was.
Then he started up on his business, his family, honor, pride, and sales. I didn’t say anything, and when he was done I just thanked him for the job. I went to the accounting lady, got my last paycheck, and left.

After I cashed it, I walked over to the Gun Rack where my friend Tommy Locowane worked for his Uncle Gary. The place was an old brick building on Wells Street. It had been around for years, ever since I could remember. On the left was a pet store, and on the right a carpet store. The pet store was an old place too, a place where my mom would buy fish for a tank we had when I was a kid.

That morning Tommy was alone sitting at the counter eating breakfast.

‘Want an Egg McMuffin?’ he asked when he saw me. A radio was playing in the background, and he was reading the newspaper.

‘All right,’ I said and leaned against the counter. He handed me one then got up and went into the back room and came out with a cup of coffee in an old Harrah’s coffee mug.

‘Sugar only?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, took the cup from him, and set it on the counter.

I’d known Tommy from when I was a kid, from high school. We’d been friends since the day we met. His mom had left them back then, and him and his dad fought all the time after that.

His dad would hit him, give him a black eye, bruise his ribs, things like that. So he began to stay with Jerry Lee and me. He did that on and off until he was seventeen, when he finally moved out of his dad’s house for good and in with his Uncle Gary, his mom’s brother.

Tommy’s half Scottish, half Paiute Indian. His build is average,
but he’s gaining weight all in his stomach and in his face. He eats worse than me or even Jerry Lee. Cans of Dinty Moore Stew and candy bars, fast food, and twelve-packs of soda. He’s always drinking soda, always has one open. He’s not good looking either, girls don’t like him.

‘Sorry to hear about your brother,’ he said and shook his head. ‘I went by yesterday and sat with him.’

‘I’m going by this afternoon,’ I said.

‘Why do you think he did it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

‘Must’ve hurt,’ Tommy said.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘The last time he was in the hospital was for his leg too. It was almost a month he was in then, wasn’t it?’

I nodded.

‘You know, seeing him in there like that, I couldn’t help but think about that night we all hopped that train. That was one of the worst nights I’ve ever had.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that as well,’ I said.

‘It’s hard not to,’ Tommy said.

The phone rang then and he answered it. It was his uncle, and as they spoke my mind wandered back to that night by the railroad tracks.

Jerry Lee, Tommy, and I were at our old house, the one my mom left for us. We were drinking in the kitchen. I was fifteen. We decided we’d catch a freight train to San Francisco. I don’t know why exactly, just one of those things we used to sit around and think about. An adventure. We all dressed in our warmest clothes, and I had a pack and filled it with beer, some beef jerky, and a
couple blankets. We walked down Fourth Street and then cut over to the tracks and sat in the darkness, drank beers and waited.

But hours passed and nothing happened, no train at all. I remember Jerry Lee had fallen asleep against a concrete piling, and Tommy and I were still drinking when a train finally came heading west. I can’t remember what time it was, but it was late, probably near dawn. I shook Jerry Lee awake as the train arrived, and we all got up and stood ready to catch it as it slowed through town sounding its horn in the quiet darkness. There were a few lumber cars and on them there were pockets where you could hide, so we decided we’d try for one of them. We picked a car and ran alongside chasing the metal ladder at the end of it. Tommy got on first, then me, but by this time the train had picked up speed again, and Jerry Lee, who was last, fell as he tried to get on. His leg, just below his knee, went under the train.

We both jumped off, not real sure of what was going on. He wasn’t even screaming, and all we knew for sure was that he didn’t make it. The train was moving pretty quickly by then and when I jumped off I fell and landed wrong on my arm. When I stood up I could see something pushing out my coat. I slowly took my parka off and you could see the bone pressing out against my flannel shirt. Tommy came running to me saying that Jerry Lee had gotten his leg cut off.

We went over and Tommy took off his belt and used it as a tourniquet, and then he wrapped a blanket around the stump and ran for help.

By the time the ambulance came only ten minutes had gone by. It was that fast, or at least it seemed like it. I remember while we waited I sat next to Jerry Lee. He was in shock and wasn’t saying
anything, just sorta staring at the sky. I wasn’t sure what to do, I just held his hand and looked at him and told him he would be okay.

They found his leg and we brought it with us in the ambulance. They did things to him, put oxygen on him, started an IV, put some sorta thing over where his leg was. The leg itself they put in a bag. I couldn’t see it, though, I wasn’t sure where they kept it. I just sat there while the ambulance drove us the short distance to the hospital, and it wasn’t until they had brought him in, and he had disappeared to the emergency room, that I finally showed someone my arm.

It took a long time until they came to get me. Finally they took me to a room and numbed my arm and set the bone, sewed it up and put on a cast.

Jerry Lee was in the hospital for four weeks. We didn’t have any insurance. Our mother had been gone only six months, and the money she had left, we used on the hospital bill. It was a terrible time: Jerry Lee lost his leg, and we were in constant fear that they’d send us off to a foster home. My mom’s father from Montana was called and eventually came down to Reno. He met with the Children Services, as he was supposed to be our legal guardian. He stayed in town almost three weeks. He seemed like an okay guy, but both Jerry Lee and I weren’t sure about him and were nervous about living with him in Montana. But he and I moved us out of our old place and got rid of all our things, like the beds and the furniture, the dishes and the TV. We kept only what was small and a necessary. My grandfather got a room at the Virginian and I moved in there with him.

When Jerry Lee was finally getting better my grandfather decided that he couldn’t have us up in Montana after all, that he
didn’t have enough room, that he was too old, that he didn’t have enough money. He was a retired mill worker. His back was wrecked and he lived on social security. I remember he stood in the hospital room and gave us $200 and his phone number, saying that he’d try to get us up there as soon as he could, if he could at all. He left the day that Jerry Lee was released.

When the time came we had a wheelchair and I pushed him out of the hospital down Fourth Street in the early sunlight. We didn’t know where to go, and finally just got a room at the Rancho Motel. I paid in advance for two weeks, and that left us with less than thirty dollars between us.

I remember then making two trips. The first was to get our things I’d left with the Locowanes, and the second was to the store, where I bought two loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a glass jar of jam, and a TV guide. When I got back Jerry Lee was laying on the bed watching the television. He said while I was gone he’d heard people yelling in the room next to us and had gotten scared, and the only thing that made sense to him was ordering a pizza. A large with pepperoni, mushrooms, and olives. When the pizza man came, I gave him the money, and tipped him with our second to last dollar.

‘Well, Frank,’ Tommy’s uncle said, bringing me back to where I was. ‘Frank, I wondered if you’d like to make a few bucks today?’

I nodded and told him of course I did.

It was an errand, he said, to pick up five guns from a broker in Carson City. He gave me the keys to his car and directions, and so I filled up my coffee and headed out the door.

15

THE JOB I HAD
when my mother passed away had been washing cars under the table at Hurley’s Used Auto Hamlet. This was before the accident, before we needed more money. I did it after school, and on Saturdays and Sundays. My bosses were the old man, Earl Hurley, and his grandson Barry, a guy who always wore light blue suits and drank Budweiser. He was married to a real great looking girl named Helen, who wore sunglasses all the time. You couldn’t help but stare at her. I remember I’d bring Jerry Lee by sometimes when I knew she’d be there just so he could see her. She and Barry were always together; they were in love with each other and most evenings when I was there she’d stop by on her way home from work and pick up a different car.

She drove a different one every day of the week, or at least every day she felt like it, I guess. On Saturdays she would bring us food. Sometimes Chinese, or Mexican, or sub sandwiches. A couple
times in the summer she’d set up the grill there at the lot, and we’d have a barbecue. She’d wear an apron and her hair would be pulled back and she always wore shorts and a tight T-shirt.

But it was Earl, the old man and head boss, who I really got to know. He was the one that I always went to talk to. He’s the one that’s probably the greatest man I know.

Right after my mother died, maybe a couple weeks later, I was washing this car, it was a Saturday, middle of the day. I even remember the car, an American Motors Company 1985 Eagle. A copper/gold four door. I had rinsed it down and was beginning to wash it when I stopped, and just stood there, frozen almost, and began crying. I was doing that quite a bit back then. It was hard to explain, but sometimes, out of nowhere, I’d just stop and daze off and I’d cry or I’d start hyperventilating and I wouldn’t be able to stop.