Going Bovine (30 page)

“We’re sort of on a budget,” I say, hoping he doesn’t laugh and throw us out when he hears what we’ve got to spend.

“We work with all kinds here, son. No budget too small.”

“We need something for under three thousand dollars …,” I say, watching Arthur’s smile fade. “Or so.”

“Three thousand, huh?” he says, letting out a long whistle that vibrates the toothpick in his mouth.

“Or so,” Gonzo adds.

“That do put me in a bit of a pickle,” Arthur says, shaking his head sadly. “But seein’ as you boys got your hearts set on seein’ the country, and since I were a young man myself once, lemme see what I kin do fer ya. Hold on.”

“Why don’t you just fax our itinerary to the police?” I say to Gonzo as Arthur disappears into the office.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Could you get me one of those free Danish?” Balder asks. He’s propped up on the hood of a shiny pick-up truck like a bizarre cross between a hood ornament and a traffic-accident victim. I bring him a Danish and some strong black coffee with nondairy creamer that freckles the surface with little white marks. It looks diseased, but Balder drinks it anyway.

“I hope you can hold your coffee, yard gnome, because we’re not stopping,” Gonzo says.

“I’m the one who’s clever enough to eat the free food before we get on the road.”

“You don’t know how long those things have been sitting there,” Gonzo says with a shudder. “Or who’s been touching them. They’re like little pastries of salmonella.”

Balder licks a big dollop of cream cheese out of the middle. “Ummm.”

Gonzo pales. “You’re one sick dude.”

Arthur returns. I grab Balder and shove the rest of the Danish in my own mouth. I feel him sigh under my arm.

“Weeeell now, boys, never let it be said that Arthur Limbaud wouldn’t work for his money. I looked at my records and it jes’ so happens that I got a car might work out, a very special ve-hicle. It’s a rehabbed Caddy called the Cadillac Rocinante. Boys, they do not make cars like this anymore. I mean that—they stopped production on ’em back in ’sixty-eight. She’s a special car, yessir. And she can be all yourn for … what’d you say you had? Four thousand dollars?”

“Three thousand,” I remind him.

Arthur points his toothpick at me. “A smart bidnessman. I like that. Three thousand dollars it is.” Arthur M. Limbaud’s dry, cracked face spreads into a grin that makes the short black hairs of his mustache stand at attention. “Son, you have got yourself a deal.”

This means for sure we are buying a piece of shit that no one else would touch. I don’t care if it’s held together by spit and rubber bands. I just need something that costs less than three thousand dollars and can get us to Florida in one piece.

“Sounds great,” I say. “Uh, can we see it?”

“Getting there, buckaroo. It’s a process.” Arthur puts his arm around me. “See, son, when I sell somebody a car, I feel like I’m sellin’ ’em a little piece of me. I’m like their daddy. So, seein’ as that’s how I feel, I’m gonna take the liberty of givin’ you some father-son advice. You ready for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Arthur lets his tongue twirl the toothpick in his mouth for a full ten seconds. With tobacco-stained fingers, he pulls it out and pokes it at me. “A car is a lot like a woman. If you treat her right, give her what she needs when she needs it, she’ll get you where you’re going and not give you a peep of trouble. But if you treat her bad, she’ll cut out on ya. You unnerstand me?”

That’s it? That’s his father-son advice? Christ.

“Yes, sir. Got it.”

“Fine, fine.” He claps, then rubs his hands together. “All-rightythen. Let’s go see your beauty.”

He leads us out through rows of gleaming cars with their orange advertising balloons tied to the windshield wipers. Gonzo looks hopefully at each car, expecting the next one to be it. I’ve got Balder in my arms.

“What’s that there, yer mascot?” Arthur asks, pointing to Balder.

“Sort of,” I say.

“Cute little feller.”

Arthur turns a corner and we’re on a second lot tucked away behind a service garage. The cars here are like the kids who never get adopted on those TV news programs, the ones who’ve been shut away in Romanian orphanages their whole lives. Arthur takes us to the very end of the lot, where a big boat of a car sits. It’s a sort of gold color sprayed over a light blue, with dents in the passenger side door. On the front hood where an ornament should be sits a pair of large cattle horns. They’ve been rigged to the front with wire. It makes it seem like the car has a mustache.

“Gen’lemen—the Caddy Rocinante!” Arthur pries open the passenger door with a loud creak. “Slide on in. Feel ’er out, boys.”

We crawl in and settle back against the cracked vinyl seats. The foam padding’s coming out in spots. This car has the vehicular equivalent of mange. And an oversized boom box has been affixed to the dashboard by the previous owners. But the giant steering wheel’s solid in my hands, and I love looking out past the cattle horns at the sun sparkling in bursts off the hoods of other cars.

Arthur hands me the keys. “Start ’er up.”

The Rocinante grumbles, wheezes, shakes, and finally purrs into service. I’ve never had my own car.

“How’s she feel?” Arthur shouts over the engine.

“Awesome,” I say, enjoying the vibrations under my fingers.

“Dandy,” Arthur says. “We’re all set for the paperwork.”

Reluctantly, I cut the engine and slide out. Arthur takes the keys again. “I just need your license and a parent to cosign.”

“Y-you do?” I stammer. “My parents are dead.”

Arthur’s mustache twitches. The toothpick rolls from one side of his mouth to the other. “We-eee-lll, son, we got ourselves a sitchooashun. You ain’t a legal adult, and I can only sell to legal parties.”

Without the Caddy, we’re stuck hitching or trying to get on a bus or train, where we are sitting ducks for every cop with a scanner. We need this car.

Balder waves his arm over Mr. Limbaud. “These Star Fighters are not worth the trouble,” he says in a weird, artsy-fartsy voice. “You will help them escape.”

Arthur’s toothpick falls out of his mouth. “Did that thing just talk?”

“I … he … um,” I sputter.

Balder closes his eyes and lifts a hand. “Let them go.”

“Holy moley! How’dyoo get him to do that?”

“He’s a … toy,” I improvise. “A prototype.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Arthur says. “What else does he say?”

“Uh, here,” I say, pushing an imaginary button in Balder’s back.

“Who’s your Caddy!” he says, bright and chirpy.

Arthur’s eyes grow to the size of quarters. He laughs, slapping his knees. “Who’s your Caddy! Now don’t that beat all!”

“Every Jeep’s cheap!” Balder chirps.

“Amazing,” Arthur says. That sharky mind of his is circling something.

“Oh yeah,” Gonzo adds. “You can get ’em programmed to say all kinds of things.”

“No kidding? Say, listen. I might be able to forget you’re not eighteen if you could leave me this guy. Somethin’ like ’is would bring in all sorts of customers. We could do commercials!”

“This one’s not quite right yet,” I say. “Few bugs in the system.”

Arthur’s face goes mean. “Well, that’s a gall-darn shame. You boys sure woulda looked fine in that Caddy.”

“You can get another! You can get another!” Balder says in his adopted parrot voice.

“Right! I can send you a brand-new one as soon as I get to Montana. To my dad’s workshop. My dead dad’s workshop. His workers are still there. Working. Then you can program it to say things in your voice.”

“Well now. That is a fine idea. Gen’lemen, you got yourselves a car.”

Ten minutes later, with the papers signed and the money in his yellowed fingers, Arthur shows us back out to the lot and the Caddy’s brought round. A secretary wiggles out of the front seat. She’s all in pink, like somebody who got stuck in a cotton-candy machine for a night.

“Here you go, now,” she says, dropping the keys in my hand. “Y’all be careful.”

Arthur takes hold of her arm. “Carol, hold on a minute. You have got to see this. These fellas have a toy—well, you just have to see it.”

He pushes on Balder, hard, in the stomach. I can see that our gnomy friend is pissed. He’s not going to talk. No way. But Arthur keeps pushing. “Come on, now. Say somethin’, dammit!”

“Yeah, see, the bugs—” I start to explain.

“He was talkin’ fine a minute ago. I’ll get the sumbitch working.”

Arthur picks him up and shakes so hard Balder’s whole face flushes bright red. I can see from the set of Arthur’s thin lips that he’s determined. He’s not letting our gnome down till he dances for Daddy. “Come on, now,” he says, giving Balder one last, hard shake. “Do somethin’ else, dangit!”

And that’s when Balder pees on him.

* * *

We pull the Caddy into the parking lot of a Toys Mahal and duck inside. I stand guard while Gonzo rips open a Life-Sized Surfer Sammy box, switching out Balder’s pee-wet pants for Sammy’s black, neoprene surfer leggings complete with dragon etchings up the side. Some kid is in for a bad birthday.

“We’re gonna get caught,” Gonzo says, looking around like a man hunted.

“Not if you stay cool,” I say.

“They’ll take us to jail. It’ll go down on our permanent records and we’ll never go to college. We’ll end up flipping burgers for the rest of our miserable, nonproductive lives.”

“I’m almost in,” Balder says. “There.” He looks great. Like a guru of the lawn. “Take the board, too.”

“That’s stealing,” Gonz argues.

“Who got you a Cadillac?”

“Give him the board,” I say.

Balder hops on it, bending his knees, fighting imaginary waves. “Wicked.”

“How did you get the idea to Star Fighter him?” Gonzo asks once we’re on the road and sharing a drive-thru meal together in the front seat. “What if he’d seen the movie?”

“It was a calculated risk,” Balder says. He’s camped out in the spacious back like the king he thinks he is.

“How did you even know about Star Fighter in the first place?” Gonzo asks.

“One of my kidnappers was a devotee of science fiction. He took me to those—what are they called? Fields of battle where people dress as Visigoths and androids and those marauding teddy bears who are strangely lethal?”

“Teddy Vamps,” Gonzo fills in. “Dude, you’ve been to all the cons! All right.”

“Indeed. I have been photographed with the one they worship as a god, Silas, son of Fenton,” he says, mentioning the name of the director revered by millions.

“Silas Fenton? You took a picture with Silas Fucking Fenton? Oh my God! Balder! You sly little kick-butt gnome. You are the man!”

Balder leans back against the seat, his arms behind his head. “Damn right.”

We drive on, the Caddy and its bull-horn hood ornament cutting a colorful figure through the slick sedans and dime-a-dozen SUVs. Some little kids press their noses to the windows of their child-locked doors, gaping at us. Gonzo opens a bag of chips and hands it to Balder, who takes a handful and forwards it to Gonzo.

“Dude, I can’t believe you whizzed on him.”

Balder wipes his hands on the Sammy Surfer bandana he’s now wearing around his neck. “He was very disrespectful. I have learned much in my current form. I have seen how those supposed to have no power can be disregarded quite easily. Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I have no worth.”

Gonzo nods. “Say what-what.” He puts a stubby fist on the back of his seat rest.

“What-what,” Balder says. He reaches up and bumps fists with Gonzo, and they go back to eating their chips in satisfied silence.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Wherein We Make Up Bumper Stickers and I Introduce the Joys of the Great Tremolo

We drive for miles. The Caddy takes us past ordinary sights that seem amazing and new glimpsed from open car windows on an unexplored road. Out in the fields that run alongside the endless highway, prisoners in orange scrubs that read PASSAMONTE CORRECTIONAL UNIT pick up trash with long pointed sticks and drop it into the huge Santa sacks tied to their backs. Parker Day’s blindingly white teeth glare from a billboard for Rad Sport—OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE DEMANDS THE OPTIMUM SODA EXPERIENCE! Dogs stick their heads out to catch the breeze and we answer their howls with our own. An eighteen-wheeler rumbles by on the right, shaking the Caddy. UNITED SNOW GLOBE WHOLESALERS. FREEZING LIFE BEHIND GLASS. HOW’S MY DRIVING? CALL 1-800-555-1212. Above us, the clouds drift along in a blue, indifferent sea.

To pass the time, we make up bumper stickers and deliver them in movie trailer announcer voices.

“I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing.”

“My honors student sells drugs to your honors student.”

“I know you’re stalking me.”

“Please don’t tailgate: body in trunk.”

“Quantum physics has a problem of major gravity.”

When we get hungry, we eat at greasy-spoon diners, where Balder and I order things with names like “The Count of Monte Cristo Sandwich” (a fried egg in a ham-and-toast “mask”) and “Devil Dogs—hot dogs so good you’ll swear you’re sinning!” Gonzo always orders the grilled cheese. It’s the only thing he deems safe.

We drive through interstate rainstorms that last all of ten minutes, like the weather’s just in a bad mood. I like looking out through the metronome of the windshield wipers at the rain bouncing off the bull horns. When the storms pass behind us, the sun cuts through, and sometimes there’s a greasy smudge of a rainbow.

At the Georgia-Alabama border, we park the car on the shoulder and Gonzo and I stand with one foot on either side of the WELCOME TO GEORGIA sign, just so we can say we were in two places at the same time. Then we hold Balder between us so he can say he did it, too. I like the way Georgia looks, so different from Texas. All those tall pine trees and that rich, red dirt, like the ground bled and scabbed over, like it’s got a history you can read in the very clay.

We talk about stupid things, things that don’t matter, like why no one ever has to go to the bathroom in action movies or what you’d do if you found a suitcase full of money. Gonzo wants to start a dwarf detective series called “The Littlest PI” or “Dwarf of Destiny.” Balder argues that you can never know about destiny: are the people you meet there to play a part in your destiny, or do you exist just to play a role in theirs? I tell them about my secret cartoon fantasy, the one where the coyote stops chasing the roadrunner, sells all his contraptions of death, buys a boat, and goes fishing instead.