The Mortal Nuts (15 page)

Chapter 23

The week started out cool, in the sixties but mostly clear, with just a few cirrus clouds off to the south. The State Fair Daily News predicted attendance at 110,000—a solid weekday showing that would provide steady, profitable business for most of the concessionaires. By eleven o'clock, sales at Axel's Taco Shop had already matched Sunday's totals. Axel could count the number of times that had happened on one hand and have five fingers left over. The first Monday was usually for shit.

Sam O'Gara, heading into his second day at the donut stand, was feeling his oats.

“Maybe I'll get into it,” he said. “Get myself a joint like this, sell deep-fried lutefisk on a stick or some goddamn thing. Get myself rich like you and Tommy.”

“I'm not rich,” Axel said, a bit nettled. “And besides, it's not that easy.” He had worked hard to build his business. His first years at the fair had been tough, and not very profitable. Axel hated it when people looked at his operation as if it were a cash cow gifted to him by the state. It was a business, like any other, only maybe tougher. And the money wasn't nearly what people thought. The Taco Shop might net thirty in a good year, and if he was lucky he could make another twenty doing special events and county fairs, but it wasn't as if he was rolling in it. There were guys spinning nuts in factories making better money.

Tommy, on the other hand, was rolling in it—a fact that had not escaped Sam.

“What do you figure they cost, a little bag of donuts?” Sam asked.

Axel shrugged. They were standing in the same spot on the mall where Axel usually stood with Tommy. Every now and then, Axel would realize with a jolt that the man standing beside him was not Tommy.

“I figure about a dime,” Sam said. “So he makes a dollar forty a bag. You know how many of them bags we sold today? Man, I could get into that. Now, I'm just talkin' out loud here, but it seems to me it'd be one hell of a lot easier'n fixing cars, that's for sure. Seems to me a guy could just kick back and let the green roll in, just like findin' buried treasure.”

“You think it's so goddamn easy, I hope you take a run at it, Sam. I like the idea of lutefisk on a stick. I think you should go for it.”

“You bein' a little sarky on me, Ax?”

Axel said, “Ninety percent of new concessions, they're history in six months. Of course, those guys went broke, they didn't have the lutefisk-on-a-stick idea.”

Sam scratched his neck. “Better odds'n a inside straight, and I won plenty of times with those. Besides, how hard could it be, a peasant like you doin' so good, a guy what keeps his money in freakin' coffee cans.”

“I don't keep my money in coffee cans,” Axel said.

“Oh, yeah? What'd you do with it, then? Put it in T-bills?”

“It's none of your goddamn business what I do with my money, Sam.”

Sam bobbled his eyebrows. “That a fact?”

“That's right. I can take care of myself. I don't need your financial advice.”

“Well, la-di-fucking-da,” Sam said, fitting a Pall Mall between his lips. “You wanna be a peasant, that's your own damn problem. Jus' don't come cryin' to me if that bald- headed kid decides to hit you next.”

“Since when did I ever come crying to you?”

“Sheeit, I pulled you outta so many scrapes I lost count.”

“Well, you can just relax, on account of I don't need you looking after me. You understand?”

Sam said, “Hey, Ax?” He thrust up his middle finger. “Fuck you.”

“I'll see you later,” Axel said. He'd had his morning dose of Sam O'Gara.

“I don't like leaving her in charge,” Sophie said. “She's like a zombie lately. I caught her giving out two burritos and only charging for one. And forgetting the cheese, twice! Better we should have left that Kirsten in charge. Or even Juanita.”

“Carmen will be okay,” Axel said. “She was having a problem with her boyfriend, but they broke up.”

They were walking down Carnes Avenue, going to the Waffle Shop for breakfast

“Sometimes I think she's on dope, the way she acts. I don't know how she does so well at school. Or anyway she says she does. What boyfriend?”

“A punk with no hair on his head.”

Sophie said, “Oh, yeah, I met him. He was hanging around the stand the other day.”

“He's the one beat up Tommy, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. And Carmen too. You see what he did to her eye?”

“That how come she's wearing those glasses? She was probably asking for it. Are we going to eat breakfast or just stand around?”

Axel unclenched his fists and let his shoulders sag. “What the hell,” he said. “He's probably a hundred miles away by now. Let's go get some waffles.”

Sophie sipped her black coffee and watched Axel arrange five pats of butter on his waffle. He moved the pats around with his fork, getting a measure of molten butter into each waffle pit. When the butter was distributed to his satisfaction, he picked up the strawberry syrup, guiding the thin stream up and down the rows of square waffle pits.

The Waffle Shop was one of the older concessions at the fair. You could still get a full breakfast there, but most of their business these days was in oversize, hand-formed waffle cones with your choice of ice cream flavors.

Sophie felt jittery. Axel had never before asked her to have breakfast with him. Something was going on. “You shouldn't eat that,” she said.

Axel cut into the waffle with the side of his fork, speared a large wedge, and pushed it into his mouth. When he had swallowed it, he said, “I've been wondering about something.”

“You should wonder about what you eat.” She didn't know why she ragged on him that way. She watched herself do it again and again, always with the invisible, internal wince, expecting to be hit. With her husband—ex- husband—that was how it had worked. Made remarks, poked at him until he hit her. Poked at him some more. He'd been so dense, if she said something subtle he never got it. Just asked her what the hell she was talking about. She could see his stupid face, hear herself berating him.

“I think about it all the time.”

“You didn't eat that stuff, you'd still have all your teeth.” Difference was, Axel got it all, but he never hit her. That made her mad too. If she couldn't get under his skin, how much could he like her?

“Sophie, my teeth are gone whether I eat this or not. I'm not worrying about my teeth today. What I'm worrying about is, how come I've got so many tortillas at the end of the day?”

“It's not just your teeth,” she said. Then she replayed, in her mind, what Axel had just said, and this time she heard it. She felt the heat building in her cheeks, feeling his green eyes. Axel had told her he used to be a professional poker player. She had always thought that was just a story, but seeing him now, seeing his intense, utterly unreadable expression, she believed it. “It's your heart,” she said weakly.

“See, what I don't understand is, if you're going to all that trouble to set me up with the tortillas, how come you don't take the money?”

Back in the 1960s, when she was in her twenties, before she met her jerk-off ex-husband and got pregnant and had Carmen, Sophie had spent a few months living with a bunch of pseudointellectual dropouts down on the West Bank. They'd taken over a trio of roomy apartments above the Triangle Bar and formed a commune loosely bonded by a lack of money, a taste for cheap wine, and a tolerance for the seismic event that occurred each night from nine till one in the morning, when the blues bands cranked up their Peaveys and started the walls shaking. She'd been with this guy back then, a protohippie they called Mr. Natural, Natch for short, an occasional bass player with Skogie and the Flaming Pachucos, who had thumbed his way out to San Francisco and returned in a VW bug with a cigar box full of discolored sugar cubes. Sophie had stirred one into her jasmine tea one morning and, shortly thereafter, noticed that the walls were breathing and that a microscopic receiver in her left ear was playing the theme to
I Dream of Jeannie
over and over again,

Which was much the same way she felt right now, only it was the table breathing and the theme to
Jeopardy
.

Axel said, “Are you okay?”

Sophie shook her head, meaning yes. She'd had moments like this before. Like when she got pulled over for speeding, or the time Carmen, at age eight, had come home from school unexpectedly and found Sophie on the bed astride a neighbor's undressed body. Her embarrassing moments always brought with them this sense of unreality.

“Did you hear what I asked you?”

Sophie cleared her throat but was unable to reply. The thing was, what did she have to be embarrassed about? Axel was the one who benefited. What right did he have to accuse her of anything?

Axel said, “Aren't you going to eat your muffin?”

Sophie regarded the untouched bran muffin on her plate. Of course, if you looked at it another way, he wasn't really accusing her of anything. “I'll eat it later,” she said.

Axel nodded and ate a large bite of waffle, watching Sophie. She noticed that one of his eyes was tending to drift these days. It would wander off on its own, then snap back a second later.

Axel set his fork on his tray and said, “Look, I'm not accusing you of anything, Sophie—I swear I'm not. I mean, even if you were holding out a few bucks, which I'm not saying you are, I wouldn't mind it. I mean, you work harder than anybody. But it's driving me nuts, trying to figure out why you've been sneaking in those extra tortillas.”

Sophie crossed her arms. “Those Bueno Burritos, the girls ruin a lot of tortillas when they make them. Too much filling.”

“So?”

“You told me part of my job was to reduce the shrinkage. You told me if I got the net up, you'd pay me a bonus.” She pushed her chin forward and stared back at him, watched his face changing, saw his lips part, then curve into a loose smile, saw his left eye drift up and away. For a long time, he said nothing at all.

The kid, Duane, intercepted them as they were walking back to the donut stand. Axel let his arm fall from Sophie's shoulder, feeling sheepish, as if he'd been caught kissing on school grounds.

“Mr. Speeter? Can I talk to you a minute?” The kid seemed upset.

“Sure.” Axel let his hand brush Sophie's arm. “I'll catch up with you,” he said.

The kid was shifting nervously from one foot to the other, like he had to pee.

“What's the problem?” Axel asked.

“You know Mr. Sam?”

Axel nodded.

“I mean, he's a nice guy and everything, but I don't think Mr. Fabian would like it, you know?”

Axel said, “No. I don't. What are you trying to tell me, son?”

“Well, it's, like, he's changing the mix.”

Axel wasn't sure he'd heard that right. He cocked his head and waited for more.

“I mean, he thinks the donuts need more salt, you know? So he's changing the mix.”

“He's changing the donut mix?”

“They're tasting sort of weird now, you know?”

Axel had to say it again. “He's changing the donut mix?”

“I mean, they're not bad, but I don't think Mr. Fabian would like it. Can you talk to him, you think?”

Chapter 24

“I could get arrested for this,” Axel said.

“You could get arrested for blocking traffic, f'Chrissakes. This is a freeway, not a cow path. You're driving like an old man.” Tommy Fabian had one of his little cigars going, his first in three days. “Damn, this tastes good!”

“It smells like your bandages caught fire.” Axel edged the truck up to fifty-five miles per hour and moved into the left lane. “Just don't let it kill you while you're in my truck. I don't want to go to jail. I don't know how the hell I let you talk me into this. I shouldn't have said anything.”

“I got a reputation,” Tommy said. “My donuts, they gotta be right every fucking time. Fucking Sam. Salt, f'Chrissakes!”

“I made him go back to the standard mix, Tom. We had a little talk. He's pretty pissed at me, but everything's okay now. You got some damn good kids running it for you. That kid Duane is humpin' like a camel. I think he runs it better than you do. Three days without you, and it's running smoother than ever, despite the fact you got Sam in there.”

“Don't tell me that shit. All the more reason I gotta get back. These kids figure out they can make it without you,

and the next thing you know, you tell 'em to do something and you might as well be pissin' at the moon.”

“Maybe you oughta relax, quit yelling at them. I've been thinking lately that we try to do too much ourselves. Besides, you got bunged up pretty bad there. I don't like doctors either, but when they say you gotta stay in the hospital you ought to at least think about taking it easy. Let Sam and the kids run the stand a couple more days. I mean, you can't do it all yourself, right?”

“Speak for yourself. Anyway, those doctors haven't got no sense of priorities. All they worry about is if somebody's gonna sue them. Once I get back in the saddle, I'll heal up faster anyway. By the way, you seen our bald friend hanging around anyplace?”

Axel hesitated. “He's gone,” he said.

“What?”

“He was staying with Carmen, like you said. But he's gone now. Got in his car and took off. We probably won't see him again.”

“Shit I was looking forward to jumping up and down on his face. You think he's really gone?”

Axel guided the truck up the Snelling Avenue exit ramp. “Yeah,” he said, “I do.” It felt like a lie.

“Son-of-a-bitch.”

Axel drove down Snelling at twenty-five miles per hour. He turned west at Como Avenue. While they were sitting in line, waiting to get into the parking lot Axel said, “Hey, Tommy, you know kangaroos?”

“Kangaroos?” Tommy blinked and looked at Axel, who was staring vacantly out the windshield. “Not personally. What about 'em?”

“You ever see how they fight? They tear each other up. They got these big kangaroo feet and claws, and they just take turns jumping on each other and tearing each other's bellies open until one of them goes off in the desert and dies.”

“Yeah? What are they fighting about?”

“Lady roos, what else?”

“Lots of stuff. They could be fighting about who gets the kids, or about politics, or about money.” Tommy flicked away his cigar.

Axel looked at his bruised and bandaged friend. “Don't be stupid,” he said. “Roos don't care about that kind of stuff.”

“I gotta sit down.” Tommy Fabian veered to the right and collapsed on a bench.

“You okay?” Axel sat down beside him. They were on the fairgrounds just north of the Coliseum, halfway between Tommy's Winnebago, where he had changed his clothes, and the main Tiny Tot stand on the mall. “You don't look so good. Maybe you ought to go back, take a little nap.”

“I just gotta rest a minute. I get to the stand, I can sit down, relax.”

“Let's go back to your Winnie. You can take a nap.”

Tommy shook his head. The two men sat in silence and watched the flow of people passing before them. It was a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, the sky a clear, distant blue. A mild, changing breeze kept the fairground odors moving and shifting, and even here, at the periphery of the grounds, Axel could pick out the hot, greasy smell of frying corn dogs, the tangy raw-onion scent from the foot- long stand half a block away, and the sour reek of spilled beer. Underlying the food odors were earthy animal aromas from the hogs, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, geese, turkeys, rabbits, and other blue-ribbon contenders contained in the barns and exhibition halls that dominated the southern quarter of the fairgrounds. Thinking about it that way made the odors overwhelming; Axel shifted to breathing through his mouth.

“I got a feeling he's still around someplace,” Tommy said.

“Who?”

“Bald Monkey.”

“He's not staying with Carmen anymore, I can tell you that.”

“You wondering how come he went after me instead of you?”

“I think he was thinking about both of us. He got in my room and went through my stuff,” Axel said. He was about to mention the missing .45 auto but decided it could keep until later. He didn't want to get Tommy thinking about guns. Until a few years back, Tommy had carried a little nickel- plated .32 in his belt. Then he'd gotten into an argument with the fried-zucchini guy, pulled out his piece, and started waving it under the other vendor's nose. The zucchini guy made a big stink and got the cops and the fair administration involved, and there had been a bunch of meetings that added up to Tommy retiring his pistol and—worst of all, according to Tommy—having to apologize to the fried-zucchini guy. “After all, it wasn't like I shot the son-of-a-bitch,” Tommy had complained. Axel thought it just as well, the way Tommy could blow his cork over nothing, that he didn't carry his gun around anymore. “He didn't get anything,” Axel continued. “And my guess is he's left town. Carmen says he's from Omaha. Maybe he went back.”

“Didn't get into your coffee cans, huh?”

“I got rid of the cans.”

“You put it in a bank like a normal person?”

“Something like that.”

Tommy took a breath, then pushed himself up off the bench. As Axel watched Tommy walking away, he thought, Maybe I
drive
like an old man, but
he's
the one that's
walking
like an old man. Is that how I'll be walking soon? Like the world is made of Jell-O? Axel remembered something then.

He remembered being in a duck blind with old Andy, his dad, on a rainy but unseasonably warm November day in 1940, waiting for the ducks to come, his last hunt before signing up for the Merchant Marine, the father and son wearing nothing but cotton dungarees, hip boots, flannel shirts, and light raincoats; standing in the wet cattails with seventeen cork decoys floating on Long Lake, searching the horizon for the black specks that would become mallards, bluebills, canvasbacks, teal. The sky was close and gray and wet. Old Andy's faded canvas hat rested on top of his ears, flaring them at the tips. Axel remembered standing on the trampled cattails that made up the floor of the blind, watching his dad, wondering how the old man could see with his eyes squinted down into little wrinkled slits. Andy had pointed across the lake and said, “Lookie dere, Ax.”

Axel looked, expecting to see an approaching flock, but what he saw was a disturbance of the lake's surface. The water on the far side of the lake was leaping and chattering, yet the water directly in front of the blind was perfectly calm. As they watched, the disturbance raced toward them, and then the wind hit the cattails and bent them back, and Andy's hat went up into the air and disappeared. The temperature dropped twenty degrees. Axel looked at Andy then and saw the fear in his father's face as the weather struck.

The temperature continued to fall as the wind whipped their faces with stinging sheets of ice and snow. It was over a mile to where they had parked the '36 Ford. They trudged along the dirt road, heads down, slogging through the freezing mud and gathering snowdrifts, moving their hands from their armpits to their ears. Axel remembered looking at Andy, thinking: He's an old man. He's not gonna make it.

But they had survived. Andy had lived another twenty-two years. Now, watching Tommy Fabian's painful gait, he counted back and realized with some sadness that on that day in 1940 old Andy had been only sixty-two years old, younger by eleven years than Axel was today.

Axel caught up with Tommy. “You ever feel old?” he asked.

Tommy shook his head. “Just a little sore sometimes.”

“You ever think about taking a partner on? Somebody to help you when you get old? I mean, older?”

Tommy said, “No way.”

“I've been thinking about my future,” Axel said. “I get sick or something, I don't want to have to close up shop, you know?”

Tommy Fabian wasn't listening. They had reached the mall, and he was staring at Tiny Tot #1. The lines were good, and most of the machines were cooking. Tommy watched the stand as though he could not quite believe it could run without him. His employees, most of whom had cooked their first donut only a week before, were cranking the little rings out like they owned the place. Sam sat atop Tommy's stool, an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

Tommy turned to Axel, shaking his head in wonder. “Just stay with it and don't get old. The best thing you can do about it is don't get old.”

Axel said, “I don't know, Tom. I can't say I much like the other choice.”

Kirsten sat on the folding chair behind the stand, smoking a cigarette, blowing smoke out through her nose like Madonna. She was halfway through her second pack ever of Virginia Slims. It was her first break practically all day, and now it was starting to rain again. And wouldn't you know, Sophie shows up with her evil eye and says, “Can't you find anything to do?” She never showed up when Carmen was taking a nap behind the stand, no way. Kirsten wanted to stomp her feet and say, “You can have your stupid job, you smelly old … witch!”

Instead, she dropped her Virginia Slim and followed Sophie into the stand.

Carmen, moving as if the air were syrup, was making a Bueno Burrito for a rosy-cheeked, alert young man wearing a mesh Wayne Feeds cap.

Sophie glared. “For Christ's sake, Carmen. What did you do, take a slow pill today?”

Carmen said, “Hi, Sophie.” She folded the burrito, giving it a final delicate pat, and presented it to her customer. “Thank you,” she said, turning away, ignoring the five- dollar bill in his hand.

“Don't you want my money?” he asked Carmen, who seemed not to hear him.

Sophie stepped forward, snatched the bill out of his hand, and gave him his change. She grabbed Carmen by the arm and spun her around. “What is wrong with you?”

“Oh, I don't know. Why do you ask?”

For a second, Kirsten thought Sophie might rip the sunglasses off and claw Carmen's eyes out. A group of kids approached the stand. Sophie took Carmen by her shoulders and shook her, Carmen's head flopped back and forth. The group of kids stopped and watched for a moment, then left. Seeing this, Sophie let go and told Carmen to go sit behind the stand.

Carmen said, as though nothing had happened, “We need change.”

Sophie checked the cash box. They were out of ones and quarters.

“Well, then, go tell Axel. He's over at Tiny Tot, talking with Tommy.”

Carmen nodded, hung her purse over her shoulder, and drifted across the mall toward Tiny Tot Donuts.

Axel and Tommy, sitting on a pair of canvas chairs behind Tiny Tot, watched the light rain darken the street. People were moving into the buildings, some of them holding plastic bags over their heads.

Axel said, “You were a little hard on Sam there, Tom. I mean, he deserved it and all, but it's not like he was one of your employees.”

“Son-of-a-bitch smoking in my stand.”

“He was just trying to help you out while you were laid up.”

“I ain't laid up anymore. Changing my mix, f'Chrissakes.”

“Sometimes you got to let people help you the way they know how.”

Tommy shrugged and lit a fresh cigar, his hand shaking.

“You feeling okay?” Axel asked.

“I feel great. How the fuck are you feeling?”

Axel took the question seriously. “I'm feeling alone,” he said. “That's why I decided about Sophie, you know?”

“I still think you're nuts,” Tommy said. “The broad's rippin' you off every day, and you want her for a partner? That's nuts.”

“I told you, she's not ripping me off. She was just trying to make herself look good.”

“You believe that, you oughta be down on the midway, trying to win yourself some plush.”

“I'm tired of doing it all myself.”

“What the hell? It looks to me like you got a bunch a broads in there doing it for you.”

“You know what I mean. You ought to, anyways—I mean, look at you. You got a head all covered up with bandages, and every time you stand up you get dizzy—”

“That was earlier. I feel fine now.”

“Whatever. The point is, if you had a partner you wouldn't even have to be here.”

“A few hours ago you were telling me I didn't have to be here anyway.”

“You wouldn't even want to be here. Besides, we're talking about me, and I'm tired of running the show all by myself. Sophie works her ass off. Sometimes I think she cares more about that stand than I do.”

“She's so great, how come you don't marry her?”

“Too old.”

“Seventy-three's not so old.”

“I mean her.”

Tommy, who had been drawing on his cigar, broke into a coughing fit He leaned forward in his chair, and Axel thumped him on the back. When he got his breath back, he said, “Chrissakes, Ax, she's young enough to be your daughter.”

“She's almost fifty,” Axel said.

Tommy's eyes were still watering. “Pretty goddamn selective for an old cocker, you ask me.”