Lean on Pete (20 page)

“Do you like the world as it is today?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know if you like the state of the world?” he said and shook his head. “Do you like AIDS and murder and alcoholism and rape?”

“No.”

“They’re the standard bearers for the state of the modern world and you say you don’t know if you like the state of the world. So tell me the truth, do you like the state of the world?”

“No,” I said.

“Did you graduate from school?”

“No.”

“Can you read?”

“Sure,” I told him.

I tried not to look at the man, but you could smell him. He smelled like he hadn’t changed his clothes in a long time.

“Do you believe in lying and cheating and gambling?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you get drunk? Are you a druggie?”

“No.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you lived in a world where people didn’t shove gallons of ice cream down their throats while other people in the world only have a handful of rice to eat all week?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said and shook his head. “Do you think all these problems are just going to go away?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“I bet you watch five hours of TV a day.”

“I don’t have a TV anymore.”

“TV leads to sloth. Laziness leads to temptation and temptation leads to excess.”

I nodded and he quit talking again. We drove another hour in silence, and I could feel him want to talk but he didn’t. Then he pulled off the interstate and drove us to a truck stop and pulled in front of a gas pump.

“How much money do you have?”

“Me?”

“I need money for gas.”

I had ten dollars but I told him I didn’t have anything.

“You’re flat broke?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You still want a ride to Boise?”

I nodded.

The man reached into the backseat where a row of boxes sat and took out copies of a magazine called
The Watchtower
.

“Go up and give these to the people walking in and out of the restaurant. They’re free, so don’t charge anybody.”

“What kind of magazine is it?”

“A good one,” he said. “I got to take a leak, then I’ll go around to the other entrance.”

“How long are we going to be here?”

“Not long, they don’t like us here.”

He put them in my hand.

We got out of the car and both walked to the entrance. There was a row of newspapers for sale and he told me to stand near them. When people walked by I put the magazine out towards them, but nobody looked at them or even stopped.

The man went to the toilet, then went back to the car and took a stack of magazines and walked to the other entrance. I stood there for a long time and held them out. I thought about the man and the smell in the car and I set the magazines down on a newspaper box and went inside the truck stop.

There was an Arby’s fast-food restaurant and I waited in line and ordered the
5
for
5
to go. Five sandwiches for five dollars. I went to the truck stop mini-mart and bought a gallon of water. I had a little over two dollars left.

I looked out the entrance where I was supposed to be and saw his car still sitting there empty. I walked near the other entrance and saw him standing alone holding a stack of the magazines. I went to the opposite side of the truck stop and left. I found a side road that ran near the freeway and took it.

I started eating the sandwiches while I walked. I kept going for almost an hour. I’d eaten three of the sandwiches when the station wagon pulled up alongside of me and stopped. He rolled down the passenger side window. I stopped and leaned down and looked in at the old man sitting in the driver’s seat. He had an Arby’s sack next to him and a soda between his legs.

“You do have money,” he said in his box voice. You could tell he was mad, but his voice sounded the same, it didn’t change. “I knew you did.”

I didn’t say anything. He took a drink off his soda and it took him a long time to do so.

“Did you find the magazines alright?”

He nodded.

“That was pretty low down of you. Did you give any away?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“How much money do you have left?”

“A little over two dollars.”

“Give me the money and I’ll drive you to Boise.”

It was thirty miles to Boise so I reached in my pocket and gave him the two dollars.

“What about the change?”

I took that out and handed it to him and got back in the car. He rolled up the windows and started the air conditioner. He turned the car around and got us on the road back to the freeway. He didn’t say anything for a time. He just ate and drove. Parts of his sandwich began falling down on his legs and stomach and you could tell it made him mad. When he was done he began feeling around his legs and stomach and on the seat for anything that fell. If he found something he’d put it in his mouth.

He turned on the radio and flipped through the stations but he never stayed on one long enough for you to hear it, then he shut it off again.

He took a long drink off his soda, then said, “Do you understand what human kindness is?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him.

“Well, you didn’t show any of it back there. I wasn’t asking much. Just a little payment for the ride. Do you know how much gas costs?”

“Three dollars a gallon.”

“That’s right. That’s a lot of money.” He coughed and when he did it seemed like it really hurt him.

“Have you ever heard the story of the stranger?

“No,” I said.

“Do you know anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know,” the man said with his mechanical voice. He was agitated. He couldn’t stop moving his hands around, he couldn’t sit still. “You’re a piece of work. A real piece of work. The stranger comes to a village. His clothes are threadbare, his eyes are sunken and lonely. His skin lays over his bones like a death sheet. He’s dying of hunger. Of real hunger. A hunger that you wouldn’t know anything about. A hunger that would kill you. The townspeople feed him. They heal his starved body. They clothe him, they put shoes on his feet. They heal his soul through kindness, they introduce him to the Lord. Time passes and the weather changes and it begins to rain. The rain won’t stop and the river is about to flood the village. Everyone is in a panic, they are all going to be washed away, but the stranger tells the people not to worry. He cuts tributaries off the river to ease the pressure and the village is saved. They had never heard of such a thing. Without his help the village would have been swallowed in water. Crawdads would be sucking on dead baby’s eyeballs. Virgin girls would be rammed into rocks and old men split in two by passing logs. Their guts spewed about like a drunken sailor’s dinner on the sidewalk of porno alley. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I didn’t answer.

“Kindness breeds kindness. To get you must give.”

He finished his soda, then looked in the rearview and threw it out the window.

“Why are you going to Boise?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“You don’t know much.”

“No.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Me?”

“You’re the only one here.”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t watch it all your ‘I don’t knows’ will get you syphilis from one of your girlfriends.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“You don’t have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“What are you, some sort of pervert?”

“No.”

“God punishes those who let the devil inside them. You have to fight it. You have to battle it. It’s a struggle. But I guess you’re not much of a fighter.”

As I sat listening to him images of Pete began coming to me and they wouldn’t stop. Pete’s lying in the middle of the freeway and cars are rushing past him. He’s too hurt to stand but he keeps trying and he’s crying and scared. He’s in horrible pain. He really wants to get somewhere safe but he isn’t able to. I can see the fear in his eyes, I can see tears. Blood’s everywhere and cars are missing him by inches and they’re not even slowing down. I look in the cars and every driver and passenger is mad and yelling and spit’s flying out of their mouths.

“I had a co-worker,” the man said. “He had all the good accounts, but he was poking our only sales lady. They were both married to other people. They did it on company time. He banged her in motels and in cars and in alleys. They fornicated in the building where we all worked. I know they did. I almost caught them once. So one day I left an anonymous letter on the vice president’s desk. I told him how to catch them. I told him how the salesman was using his expense account to pay for their motel rooms. I laid it all out for him. The vice president brought my co-worker in, and he confessed and was fired. The saleswoman was put on probation. When it was clear public knowledge I went to the vice president and told him I would be happy to look after the good accounts, the accounts that my co-worker had, that I was ready for the challenge. That I was the right man for the job. But in the end, when it was all settled, I was overlooked. He didn’t give the accounts to me. He transferred Bob Harbuckle out of the Salt Lake City branch. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Does it make sense?”

I nodded but he didn’t see me.

“Do you know how to listen?”

“I heard you.” In the distance I could see Boise. I could see high-rise buildings and miles of houses and stores beginning to appear.

“Do you have a learning disability?”

“No,” I said.

“I’m talking about justice. Do you know what justice is?”

I nodded my head.

“I sweated and toiled for those dirty uncouth cocksuckers and what do I get? I get transferred to Eastern Washington and three years later the branch is closed. And the bitch who spread her legs from here to Sacramento ends up running the Salt Lake City branch and now drives a brand-new Mercedes. Is that justice?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Is it?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Have you ever heard the story of the lost dolphin?”

“No,” I said.

The man coughed and shook his head. “You’re a tribute to our education system. A real champ. The dolphin was lost from his family during a big storm in the Pacific Ocean. He ends up alone two hundred miles away from anything he knows and he’s got a broken fin. He keeps trying and going day after day and month after month. He’s lonely, he’s tired. He’s physically tired but, worse than that, he’s soul tired. He’s tired in a way that would kill you if you felt it for thirty seconds. But he keeps going until he comes to a cave and in the cave is the devil. The devil is part man and part sea beast. He tells the dolphin that if he gives up he’ll get to live forever in comfort. He’ll be snorting lines of cocaine and frolicking with naked women and eating bonbons for breakfast. But to get all that he has to kill one fellow dolphin. The dolphin could be his family, it could be a stranger, he wouldn’t know who it was until he did it. The dolphin is so beat up he can hardly move forward and his broken fin hurts, and the devil calls him and begs him towards the cave, towards the comfort.”

The man left the freeway and kept talking about the dolphin. We came to a stoplight and while we waited for it to change I opened the car door and got out. I didn’t say anything. I started walking down the shoulder of the road. I kept my head down and didn’t look back. He honked his horn over and over. When the light changed he drove slowly past me and I looked at him. He had the passenger side window rolled down and was yelling at me but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of the horn. Then he sped off and I made my own way into Boise.

Chapter 23

I walked into downtown and spent the afternoon looking around. There were big buildings and shops and people all around. I still had two Arby’s sandwiches and I ate one and saved the other. I went to the bus station and asked the counter lady how much a one-way ticket to Rock Springs, Wyoming was and she told me a hundred and thirty-eight dollars.

There was a university and a river that ran by it. People were swimming in the water and others were lying in the sun next to it. I walked across a bridge and there was a park on the other side and I went to it and sat down and rested by the river in a place where no one could see me. I sat there for hours and ate my last sandwich and I didn’t leave until it was nearly dark.

I headed back downtown and went to a pizza parlor and stood in the video arcade. The whole place was crowded with families, and I saw a birthday party going on and I watched them as they ate. When they left they left half of a pizza. Before the busboy could get to it I went over and sat down. There was a full glass of Coke and I drank that and ate as much pizza as I could. Then I stacked the rest of the slices on a paper plate and left.

I went back to the park and hid by the river in a bunch of bushes. I used my lighter so I could find my way. Inside the bushes I found a small space and I sat there and it wasn’t too cold. I ate the rest of the pizza and finally sometime during the night I fell asleep.

I woke up at dawn and it was cold. I sat there for a long time and I couldn’t stop thinking about Pete, then I got up and crawled out of the bushes and went across a bridge to the college and went in and out of the buildings. I found a few places where I thought I could hide without getting caught and I found a bathroom that had a separate shower room. I washed my face in the sink and drank water until I couldn’t drink any more.

I walked downtown again. There was a skate park and I sat down and watched kids skateboard. A girl was sitting near me doing the same thing. She was alone. She seemed younger than me but when we started talking she told me she was sixteen. Her name was Ruby and she wore all black and had a ring through her bottom lip. She said she was staying at the Cabana Motel with a woman named Sue and a man named Joe. She told me they were heading to Arizona where Joe knew someone who owned a hundred acres out in the desert.