Lean on Pete (2 page)

“You gonna be okay on your own today?”

As I nodded Lynn walked back out into the main room dressed in jeans and a black shirt. She had put her hair back in a pony tail and was wearing dark red lipstick. She went up to my dad and he ran his hand across her ass and then they left.

Chapter 2

I moved the TV into my room and lay on my sleeping bag and watched it until late afternoon. Then I walked to a main road and stayed on it until I came to a lady and a man walking down the street. I asked them if they knew where a movie theater was and the guy told me to walk two miles down the same road and so I did.

The theater was in a part of town called St. Johns. It was lined with stores and bars, and there were a couple of taquerias and a pharmacy that had an old-fashioned diner in it. There was a bike shop, a dollar store, and a workingman’s clothing store. I went into a used bookstore and a Salvation Army thrift store, then I bought a couple tacos and sat down against the wall of a closed-down office and ate.

When the time came for the seven o’clock showing I went inside and sat through two movies. One was about an undercover spy who gets chased all around Europe and the other was about a group of women who get trapped in a cave. The women were good-looking but it was a horror movie and I can never sleep after horror movies.

It was dark out when I left the theater. I walked around for another half-hour or so, then sat back down where I had eaten earlier. I saw a group of girls my age walk by, but they didn’t notice me. One of the girls had long blonde hair and she was really good-looking. They were all laughing and having a good time. It wasn’t much after that when I saw a fight across the street. Two men came out of a bar called Dad’s and started hitting each other. They were near a street light. One man was young, maybe in his twenties, and the other looked old. He had gray hair and a big bald spot on the top of his head. The younger man hit the old man so hard he fell to the ground. Both of them were dressed in work clothes. They had on the same orange-colored T-shirts with the same writing on the back. Then the younger guy kicked the old man in the head and he was about to do it again when people from inside the bar came out and stopped him.

They pushed him against the window of the bar and held him. The old man didn’t move from the ground. He just lay there still. An older woman came out of the bar and went to him and kneeled down. You could hear her crying and screaming. I just sat there across the street and watched. A police car pulled up and after that an ambulance. I watched the medics work on the old man and then put him in the ambulance and drive away. The young guy was still there but by then they had handcuffs on him and they were putting him in the back of the police car. I watched until they drove off, then I got up and left. I started off walking, but everything I’d seen that night had made me nervous and before I knew it I was running.

Back at the house I made sure all the windows and doors were locked. I turned on all the lights and got in my sleeping bag and watched TV with the sound down low. Around three or so I got up and ate a couple bowls of Cap’n Crunch before I finally knocked off around dawn.

When I woke up again it was past noon. I looked in my dad’s room but he wasn’t there, and his truck wasn’t in the driveway. I drank a glass of water and did a hundred sit-ups, then I put on my running clothes and left. I turned right like I did the day before and went under the railroad bridge and when I came out the other side I could see Portland Meadows in the distance.

I ran to the grandstand parking lot and did four laps around it before I stopped. I sprinted the last one and by the end I was so tired I could hardly stand. Then I went inside the big glass doors and saw a bar and a food stand and a souvenir shop. There were rows and rows of tables with people sitting at them watching huge TVs with races showing on them. I went outside but there were no horses on the track and I asked an old man why, and he said they only worked out in the mornings and that the real races started in a month or so. I went back inside and stayed there until the food stand closed and the bar closed and the TVs were shut down and I was told to leave.

After that I went to the big shopping center that was next to the track. It had a sporting goods place, a pet shop, and a home improvement store. For a couple hours I walked up and down the aisles of those places, then I went to a mini-mart and bought a can of chili and a can of SpaghettiOs and walked back to the house.

It was night by the time I got there and my dad still wasn’t home. I moved the TV into the kitchen and opened the can of SpaghettiOs and heated it on the stove and watched Sunday night TV until I got tired. I moved the TV back to my bedroom and watched from my sleeping bag but the same thing happened that night that happened every night I was alone. I began hearing things, and I got nervous and made myself get up and check the windows and the locks on the door. I turned all the lights off and looked outside. Then I turned them back on and looked in every room. After that I wasn’t even tired anymore. I lay back down and watched TV and finally fell asleep around
5
a.m.

The next day I got up and finished unpacking. I had three boxes and a plastic garbage bag full of clothes. I took the clothes out and laid them on my sleeping bag and folded them. I had two pairs of Levi’s, a couple long-sleeve shirts, four T-shirts, five pairs of underwear, and a half dozen pairs of socks, a sweater, and two jackets. One was a down parka for when it was really cold and the other was an old canvas work coat my dad had given me.

Two of the boxes had books in them, and in the last one was a clock my dad had gotten me from San Francisco. It was red and sparkly and had a picture of a cable car in the center of it. There were also two football trophies wrapped in T-shirts. One was an award for the best freshman defensive back from my high school in Spokane and the other was older, from Pop Warner football. It was just a normal team trophy that everyone got but I liked it just the same. I cleaned them both off and put them on the window sill.

I broke down the boxes and stuck them in my closet and watched TV for the rest of the day. I left the house in the afternoon and walked towards St. Johns. It was near dusk when I got there and I spent my last four dollars there on a burrito from a taqueria. I sat against the wall of the same closed-down office I had before and ate.

After that I started talking to three men who were sitting in an alley drinking beer. They were older and one guy was missing all his front teeth, and another one had tattoos all over his hands and every time he spoke he stuttered. The other man didn’t say anything at all. He just sat there and mumbled and wore glasses with the thickest lenses I’d ever seen. The two guys talked about a friend of theirs who got hit by a car and then they talked about some other guy who stole their backpack. Then the guy with the thick glasses puked. He didn’t move, he just sat there and threw up on himself. The other two guys got up and took their things and left and so I did, too.

Chapter 3

My dad didn’t come home that night either and there was no food left and I’d spent all the money he had given me. The next morning I walked down to a Safeway grocery store and stole two cans of soup and a loaf of bread. I put the cans in my coat pocket and carried the bread and left. The second I was outside I started running. I didn’t look back or stop until I was nearly a mile away. I was nervous alright but I’d done the same thing quite a bit when I lived in Spokane and I’d never been caught. I walked the rest of the way home and when I got there I ate one of the cans and five pieces of bread. After that I sat in the bathtub and tried to read a spy novel my dad had left in the bathroom.

He came back the next night. I was in bed when I heard his truck pull up. I shut the light off in my room. I could hear him unlock the front door and walk through the living room. After a while he opened the door to my bedroom and looked in. I closed my eyes and kept them shut even when he called my name. He stood there for a time, then turned off the TV and closed the door and I fell asleep right after that.

I woke up early the next morning and got dressed to go running. When I walked out into the main room I could see him in the kitchen sitting in his underwear drinking coffee.

“How have you been?” he asked in a voice that was tired and raw.

“Alright,” I said.

“I was on call all weekend but it was slow so Lynn and I drove out to Pendleton to pick up some furniture her uncle gave her. I stopped by once but you weren’t here. You get my note?”

“I got it.”

“I’ll get the phone hooked up next week.”

“Maybe we could get cell phones?” I asked him.

“Cell phones?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you get people calling all the time and everybody knows where you are. A regular phone is bad enough, with cell phones you end up talking on them while you’re on the can, while you’re in the movie theater.”

“When was the last time you went to a movie?” I said and grinned.

“You know what I mean, smart ass. I’ll get a regular phone, but I ain’t getting us cell phones. Alright?”

I nodded.

He hadn’t shaved and his hair looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. He took a cigarette from a pack on the table and lit it.

“You going running?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How far today?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ve been thinking, we should go to the coast this summer. I hear you can go swimming in the ocean. It’s cold, but a hotshot athlete like you could take it.”

I sat down at the table and put on my shoes.

“What did you do here?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Did you have enough money?”

“I did alright.”

“I was gonna make breakfast but there’s nothing here, is there?”

“No.”

“We’ll go shopping when you get back.”

“Alright,” I said and he nodded and I got up.

I ran to the mini-mart and turned left and ran past a row of warehouses, then past the Freightliner plant and I came to a small two-lane road and I stayed on it until I began to hurt, then I turned around.

When I got back he was asleep on his bed. It took me a while to get him up but after a while he did and drove us to Jubitz truck stop and we had breakfast in the diner. I ate mine and part of his and then he ordered me a cheeseburger.

Afterwards we walked around the truck stop. It was like a little city. There was a movie theater, a church, a post office, even a medical office, and it was all enclosed like a big mall. We stayed there for a long time and he tried on a pair of boots in a Western store, then we went back out to the truck.

“It’s always good to go grocery shopping on a full stomach,” he said and started the engine and took us out on to the main road. He lit a cigarette and rolled down the window.

“But you never buy as much when you’re not hungry,” I said.

“That’s the point,” he said.

“It’s not a very good idea,” I said.

“How do you like Portland?” he said after a while.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen much of it.”

“Meet any girls?”

“I don’t think there’s anyone my age in any of the houses around us. I haven’t met anybody at all.”

A man passed us in an old station wagon. His car was smoking. He had his head out of the window and was trying to drive like that.

My dad laughed.

“Do you think the car’s gonna blow up?”

“No,” he said and paused. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe.”

We watched the car. Black smoke streamed from under the hood, then it seemed like it was coming from inside the car too. The man got in the right lane and turned down a side street but he didn’t pull over, he kept driving.

My dad turned on the radio and began going through the stations.

“Do you like it here?” I asked him.

“The work’s alright,” he said, “but I’m a low man and I’ll have to work swing and graveyard for a while. It’s better than Spokane, though. That’s for sure.” He took a cigarette from a pack lying on the seat. “There’s a Safeway around here, isn’t there?”

“I can’t go in there,” I said.

“Why’s that?”

“I stole a couple cans of soup and a loaf of bread from there.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“You didn’t steal any beer or maybe a bottle of wine?”

“Nothing like that,” I told him.

“I should have left you more money.”

“I guess.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“You gonna turn into a bank robber?” he said and looked over to me. He smiled and pushed on my arm.

“No, I was just hungry I guess.”

“We’ll get you food. Just lay off the armed robbery, alright?”

“Alright.”

“So where do we go?”

“There’s a Fred Meyer on the way to St. Johns. If you go down to Lombard and take a right.”

“How do you know that?”

“There ain’t much to do but walk around.”

“Then Fred Meyer it is,” he said.

We spent over a hundred dollars grocery shopping. We bought hamburger, cans of soup, frozen dinners and vegetables, cereal, bread, hot dogs, pork chops, spaghetti, and donuts. We went to the outdoor section and he bought me an air mattress to go underneath the sleeping bag. It was the kind with the motor and all you had to do was plug it in and it would automatically fill up the pad. He also bought a small hibachi barbecue, briquettes, and lighter fluid. I don’t know how he had money then, when he didn’t a couple days before, but he did.

Back at the house we put the groceries away and he lit the barbecue. We sat outside on the front lawn. When the coals had burned down enough we put hamburger patties on the grill and he drank beer and watched them cook and I put a can of pork and beans on the stove.

When he left that afternoon he told me he was going to spend the night at Lynn’s but that he’d be home in the morning. He gave me ten dollars and got in his truck and left. But the next morning he didn’t show up and he didn’t show up that night either. I knew he wouldn’t but it still made me mad, and I still waited up most of the night for him.