Chump Change (27 page)

“He’s been adrift all these years,” I said finally.

Herbert thought it over for a long time.

“I’m having trouble staying stoic,” he said after a while.

“Huh?”

“Indians are supposed to be stoic.”

“Why’s that?” I wondered.

“It’s that Chief Dan George thing,” he said. “All those damn movies.”

“My lips are sealed.”

He closed the box. “How many people know about this?” he asked.

“You, me, and the person I got them from.”

He cocked a thick eyebrow at me.

“And that person has a whole lot more to lose than either of us,” I assured him.

“And the science . . . it’s good?”

“No doubt about it. It’s just like I said.”

He stood there, weighing the box in his hands.

“The person I got them from,” I said, “is very particular about the way remains are handled. This person would really like to know that”—I nodded at the box—“those were treated with great dignity and respect.”

“I’ll have my wife sing a proper mourning song,” he promised.

“My . . .” I searched for the proper word. “My
friend
would like that.”

Ginny and Jasmine had the front of the house pretty well covered. Most everybody left in the Chat ’n’ Chew was on the backside of breakfast, finishing the dregs of their coffee and mopping up the last of the egg yolk, by the time I limped through the door.

I’d felt a lot better. Everything I’d bruised, battered, concussed, and cut over the past week was throbbing simultaneously. My eyes felt sandy, my mouth like I’d eaten a running shoe. I stretched. Despite my best efforts, a deep groan came rolling out of me. Several of the other diners shot sideways glances in my direction. I silently bemoaned the ravages of time as I eased myself into the seat.

I was perusing the menu, like there was gonna be a test, when Jasmine came trotting by with a glass of ice water.

“Can I get you something?” she asked.

I told her what I wanted and how I wanted it. Breakfast is most everybody’s fussiest meal of the day. Folks know how they want everything, and they want it cooked just that way. Over
real
easy. Scramble em soft. Sourdough toast. Short stack. Sausage
patty
, not links. Eggs any old which way and whatever meat you got lying about just don’t cut it for breakfast.

She wrote it all down.

“Keith around?” I asked.

She grinned. “Is Ginny here?”

It hurt to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself.

“I’ll get him for you,” she said.

Breakfast arrived before Keith did.

I was loading my mouth with more Denver omelet when he sat down beside me at the table. “That was quick,” he said. “I thought you’d be gone for a while.”

“Me too,” I said around the egg.

I swallowed and then wiped my mouth.

“So . . . this thing is over,” I said.

“So you’re satisfied you know what happened to Gordy?”

“Yeah,” I said. I decided to let it go at that. Couldn’t see any sense stuffing that degree of human evil into a young man’s mind. So I made a quick segue.

“You decided what you want to do?” I asked.

He gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look.

“Like with the rest of your life,” I added.

“Oh . . . aah . . . I thought maybe I’d stick around here for a while,” he said.

“Good choice,” I said. “What do you want to do about your car?”

He’d already put some thought into it. “Figured maybe I’d put it on Craigslist,” he said. “That is, if you don’t mind.”

I waved him off. “Sign the title and send it to me. I’ll collect the money and mail it to you.”

He thanked me. Looked around.

“This isn’t such a bad place to be,” he said.

The temptation was to point out how it wasn’t that long ago he’d been telling anybody who’d listen how much he hated places like this, but, being the magnanimous sort, I decided to forgo the pleasure. Consistency is, after all, the hobgoblin of small minds.

“You got it made here, kid,” I said. “Try not to screw it up.”

I shoveled more omelet into my mouth.

“What are
you
gonna do?” he asked, while I chewed.

I washed it down, sat back, and said, “I’m gonna get me a room and go to sleep. Then, whenever it’s safe for me to be on the roads again, I’m going to get up and drive the hell home and stay there for a coupla years.”

He got to his feet. Stuck out his hand. I pushed myself upright, grabbed his hand, and looked him in the eye. “You’ll do fine,” I said. “That whole thing that happened out there with Gordy . . . that wasn’t your fault. It was one of those times when circumstances conspire . . .” I blathered on for a while, trying to undo any harm I might have already perpetrated. Most of us are good enough at blaming ourselves. We don’t need any help.

He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “We’re making a grease run out to the county landfill,” he said.

I reached out and patted him on the shoulder. He put his hand over mine.

“Take care of yourself, kid,” I said.

He grinned. “Keith,” he said. “My name is Keith.”

We shared a laugh, and then I watched the kitchen doors swing shut behind him before gingerly sitting back down to my breakfast.

Jasmine came by and refreshed my water, but I was about done eating by then. Not that I was stuffed, but at that point, even chewing and swallowing seemed like a lot of work.

I was paying the check when Irene stepped out of the kitchen.

“Look what the cat drug in,” she said with a smile.

Jasmine gave me my change. I slipped her a couple of bucks and pocketed the rest. Irene leaned into me. She smelled of new-mown hay. “You know . . . I was just thinkin I might never see you again,” she said. “Maybe kickin myself a little . . .”

So was I. I have this way of rewarding myself for the smallest of things. It’s the childish part of me. The part that thinks it ought to get a cookie every time it has a boo-boo, and, standing there, beat up as I was, there was no denying that, as cookies went, Irene was top-of-the-line macadamia-nut chocolate chip.

“I’d sorta resigned myself to the fact you weren’t coming back,” she said.

“Didn’t think I was.”

And then she reached out and touched me. She ran her fingers over my collection of bumps, bruises, and dog bites, as if she was cataloging them for future reference.

“You look tired,” she said.

I nodded. “Drove all night.”

“Where you stayin?”

“Figured I’d go back to the Holiday Inn.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I’m outta here whenever I’m fit to drive,” I threw into the silence.

“Glad you came back,” she said.

“Me too” leaked out of my mouth, with a little more sincerity than perhaps I would have preferred.

“You shoulda told me you were coming back,” Fred said. “I’da held on to that check and given it to you in person.”

“No hurry,” I said, shaking hands. “What’s going on with Olley?” I asked.

“Took a turn for the better,” Fred said. “Spoke a few words this morning, I’m told. Sarah Jane made an offer on that house she’s stayin in. Owner snapped it up in a heartbeat. Be signed, sealed, and delivered by this time next week.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

“She’s better off here in town.”

I nodded.

“Mind if I ask you a question, Leo?”

“Shoot.”

“What happened to Sarah Jane’s boy, Gordon?”

I thought about it for a couple of seconds and concluded that the sad tale of Gordon Stanley shouldn’t go any further. I supposed there might be an object lesson in there someplace, something to be learned, something to make our lives better down the road, but I’ll be damned if I knew what it was.

“Sometimes,” I said, “some of us get a little more than we can handle.”

He nodded sagely. “Money’ll do that to a man,” he said.

This is the part where I tell you how, when I first heard the tapping, I thought there might be beavers in the walls, or how I was dead asleep, dreaming I was at a tinker’s convention, and what with all the banging, I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

That’d be bullshit, though. One tap on the motel room door and I knew exactly who it was. I wrapped myself in the floral polyester bedcover and mummied it over to the door. Didn’t bother with the peephole or any of that shouting “Who is it?” through the door, just pulled it open and, as expected, found myself looking at Irene.

“You just gonna stand there?” she asked.

I stepped to the side. Made a sweeping “come on in” gesture.

She did. Walked right over to the chair beside the bed, sat down, and started pulling off her boots.

I moved the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign from the inside to the outside of the door, double locked and bolted it. When I turned back to the room, she’d managed to lose the boots, the jacket, the blouse and was wiggling herself out of her jeans.

Women, for me, have always been the most visceral reminders of how hardwired my species is. How we like to think of ourselves as logical decision-makers, who weigh the options, compute the odds, and then do the sensible thing, while, in reality, we just do what we’re programmed to do. We couldn’t do something else if we tried.

Now . . . I don’t harbor any illusions about being a paragon of virtue. I might even be willing to admit I screw the pooch a bit more frequently than your basic John Q. Public type. But anybody tells me they could have stood in that room, wrapped in a scratchy bedcover, and not found their blood supply rapidly redeploying itself as Irene stepped out of her panties, well, far as I’m concerned, they’re either of a different sexual persuasion, stone blind, or a damn liar.

The way Herbert Lean Elk told the story later, it was late in the afternoon, right before everybody went home for the day, when they found the first bone. The backhoe operator was taking his afternoon break and Herbert’s people were cleaning out their coolers and bagging up the empties when Winslow Travis started yelling from down in the dig. Everybody went hightailing it down there, Indian and Keeler alike.