Authors: Willy Vlautin
Lean on Pete
Lean on Pete
a novel
Willy Vlautin
Dedication
For Lee
Epigraph
It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
John Steinbeck
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Insights, Interviews & More . . .
About the author
About the Book
Read On
Praise for
Lean on Pete
Also by Willy Vlautin
Copyright
About the Publisher
When I woke up that morning it was still pretty early. Summer had just begun and from where I lay in my sleeping bag I could see out the window. There were hardly any clouds and the sky was clear and blue. I looked at the Polaroid I had taped to the wall next to where I slept. It shows my aunt and me sitting by a river; she has on a swimsuit. She’s my dad’s sister and she looks like him, with black hair and blue eyes and she’s really thin. In the photo she’s holding a can of soda and smiling as I sit next to her. She has her arm around me. My hair’s wet and I’m smiling. That was when we all lived in Wyoming. But it had been four years since I’d seen her, and I didn’t even know where she lived anymore.
My dad and I had just moved to Portland, Oregon, and we’d been there for a week. We didn’t know anybody. Two days before my school year was done we packed the truck and moved out from Spokane. We brought our kitchen table and four chairs, dishes and pots and pans, our clothes and TV, and my dad’s bed. We left all the rest.
Neither of us had been to Portland before. My dad just knew a guy who told him of a job opening as a forklift driver for Willig Freight Lines. He applied for it and got it. They interviewed him on the phone and gave him the job right then because at the time he was a forklift driver for TNT Freight Lines in Rock Springs and he’d done that sort of work for years. We lived in a motel for a few days, then he rented us a house a mile from where he worked. I’m not sure why he wanted to leave Spokane. I told him I didn’t want to go, I begged him that I didn’t want to go, but he said he’d rather go to prison and get the shit kicked out of him every day than spend any more time in a dump like Spokane.
The house we rented had two bedrooms. There was a kitchen with an electric stove and a fridge, and there was another room that was empty except for a TV we set on a chair. There was a bathroom that had a tub, sink, and toilet, and there was a back room where you could store things and where there was plumbing and electricity so you could put in a washer and dryer if you had them.
Our place was in a neighborhood of small, rundown houses next to a trailer park. The houses were built in the forties. It was called Delta Park. The streets had trees lining them and we had a backyard. Since it was a real house my dad promised we’d get a barbecue and then a dog. I didn’t care about the barbecue but I really wanted a dog and hoped this time I would get one.
I lay there for a while longer and tried to go back to sleep but I couldn’t so I got up. I put on a pair of shorts and a flannel shirt and my running shoes. It was Saturday and most of the cars in the neighborhood were still parked in front of their houses when I left and started jogging down the street.
Instead of turning left by the mini-mart like I had done every other day I turned right and ran underneath a railroad bridge. I made my way along the road and passed a series of warehouses, a machine shop, a wrecking yard, and an auto parts store. I kept going and went under another bridge and when I came to the other side I saw, in the distance, a horse track. I’d never seen one before and really the only horses I’d ever seen besides on TV were when I once went to a rodeo with my dad and some friends of his. But I always liked horses. Besides dogs, they’re my favorite.
It wasn’t even
7
a.m., but the backside of the track was already going. The whole area was fenced off in chain link and topped with barbed wire. There were at least a dozen huge buildings that housed the horses. I could see it all from the road. The place went on for acres and people and horses were coming and going out of everywhere.
I ran alongside the fence on a two-lane road. I passed a maintenance shop where two water trucks sat with “Portland Meadows” painted on them. I saw two men welding and a mechanic working on a truck. I passed the main dirt track and saw horses running on it. Then I came to the main grandstand. In front of the building was a huge empty parking lot. The building itself was old and white and green. On the front of it read “Portland Meadows” in huge red neon letters. Next to it was a galloping neon race horse.
I stopped and went up to the building, to the entrance where big glass doors were, but I didn’t go in. I just rested for a minute, then did forty push-ups and started running again.
I went for a couple miles before I stopped near a huge river. Off the banks were docks, and the docks held boats and rows of floating homes. I sat there and watched a tug boat push cargo and then I saw a speedboat and a red sailboat and then a few jet skis went racing by, chasing each other around.
I stretched out, then ran easy and slow back to the house. Even so I was dead tired by the time I got there. I went in the front door and to the kitchen to get a glass of water and saw a woman I’d never seen. She was cooking eggs and bacon and she was wearing only a T-shirt and underwear.
“Who are you?” I asked her.
She turned around and smiled. “Who are you?” she said back. She was old, maybe in her forties. There was a cigarette going in a tray on the kitchen table, and she went over to it.
“I’m Charley Thompson.”
“You’re Ray’s kid?” she said, and smoked from the cigarette.
“Yeah,” I said. You could see her nipples coming through the shirt she was wearing. Her underwear was black, and it was almost see through. She had red hair and her face had freckles all over it. She wasn’t good-looking.
“You look just like him,” she said.
“But I’m gonna be taller,” I said.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m almost as tall as him already.”
“I’m cooking breakfast,” she said. “Do you want some?”
“Where did you get the food?”
“I made your dad go to the grocery store. All you guys had in the fridge was beer, milk, and Cap’n Crunch. I bet the cereal is yours.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You don’t have to keep cereal in the fridge, you know.”
“There’s cockroaches here.”
She nodded, then went back to the stove.
“I’m going to get a glass of water, okay?”
“It’s your house, isn’t it?” she said, and looked back again and smiled.
I didn’t know what to think but I was hungry. I got a glass of water and sat at the table and waited. After a while my dad came out of the bathroom in his underwear and walked into the kitchen and took a beer from the fridge and sat down. He took a pack of cigarettes off the table and lit one.
“You meet Lynn?” he said, and yawned.
I nodded.
Lynn looked around and smiled at him.
“She’s a secretary in the front office where I work.” He opened his beer and drank from it. “How far did you go running?”
“Pretty far. Did you know there’s a horse track down the street?”
“I’ve driven past it,” he said.
“They were working out when I ran by. I saw maybe fifty horses.”
My dad sat back in his chair and didn’t say anything. He was looking at the woman and smoking. He was six feet or so and he was skinny and had black hair. His hair was combed back and wet. His chest had this sort of caved-in look to it, and he had a big scar on his leg from burning himself on a motorcycle. But he had a good face, it was kind and he had dark blue eyes and he smiled a lot. Everyone said he was good-looking.
Lynn stood there with her back to us. Her ass was hanging out of her underwear and I looked down at her legs and on her ankle was a tattoo of a flower, and coming out of the flower was some sort of snake.
We all ate breakfast sitting around the table. I kept looking at her and thinking about her underwear and her nipples pressing through her shirt and when I did she seemed pretty nice, she seemed alright.
When breakfast was over they went into his room to get dressed. My dad came out a few minutes later and sat across from me at the table and put on his boots.
“Is she your new girlfriend?” I asked him.
“No,” he said.
“Is she gonna be?”
“I don’t know.”
“I like her better than Marlene.”
“Marlene was alright.”
“She was mean,” I said. “She couldn’t cook either.”
“Lynn and I just work together. Plus she’s married.”
“She’s married?”
“Well, she’s separated from her husband. Supposedly he’s a Samoan.” He leaned over and whispered, “He’ll probably chop my head off with a machete.”
“What’s a Samoan?” I asked.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Don’t they teach you anything in school?”
“They teach me some things,” I said.
“Samoans are big fuckers. They play football sometimes. You should know that. There’s a few pro ones here and there. They’re tough and they love to fight. They come from the island of Samoa in the Pacific. They’re the size of mountains.”
“Is he that big?”
“She says he is, but I’ve never seen him. She says he’s fucking nuts. This guy at work said the same thing.”
“Is he gonna be mad?”
“She said he moved in with a stripper, so who knows.”
“Will he come here?”
“You mean to get me?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Hell, I’m just talking, Charley. He doesn’t know where we live. Don’t worry about him. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“What did you do last night?”
“Watched TV.”
“Was there anything good on?” He finished his beer and lit another cigarette.
“Not really.”
He took his wallet out and gave me ten dollars.
“Sorry I can’t give you any more.”
“I don’t need any more.”