The Motel Life (20 page)

The waitress came to take our order.

‘I think I’m too nervous to eat,’ Annie James said and looked at me. ‘If I ate, I think I’d puke.’

‘I’ll get a piece of apple pie and coffee.’

The waitress wrote down the order and walked away.

‘I live by myself now,’ Annie said and picked up her spoon and began playing with it. ‘When we left that night, left Reno, my mom she said we had to. Said someone was trying to kill her. She was out of her mind. I don’t think anyone was really trying to kill her, but I’m not sure either. I was gonna stay, but I didn’t know what to do. I thought you’d want me to leave. I don’t know, I was scared, I guess. I felt horrible. I hated myself for what I did. I still do. I don’t think I could have faced myself if I stayed. I didn’t have anywhere to live either and no money. So there I was with her. First we went to Winnemucca, then we came to Elko and stayed with a friend of hers for a while, then my mom got a job working at one of the houses and I found a job as a maid and then I got the job at the Home Depot and when I’d saved enough money I rented the place I have now. My mom she left town six months ago. Met some guy and they went together. I think they’re in Texas somewhere. I haven’t heard from her much. She calls every month or so. I only met the guy she left with once, but I’m more than relieved she’s gone.’

‘I’m glad you’re living on your own,’ I said.

‘I still think about you. All the time I do.’

‘I think about you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘I got your letters.’

‘Jesus, I’m glad you’re here,’ she said and smiled again. ‘Are you gonna stay for a while?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what we’re gonna do.’

When we left the coffee shop, we left together, and as we walked along the streets towards the motel I told her about what had happened, about Wes Denny and Jerry Lee. About his leg and the fight between Tyson and Holyfield, and the money we made from it. And I told her how I saw Tommy Locowane sitting at the twenty-one table, and how I took Jerry Lee from the hospital.

It was near dusk and we could see our breath as we walked. We were near a street lamp and she held my hand. She had mittens on, and she reached for my hand and I held it and we walked the rest of the way to the room like that.

Jerry Lee was awake when we came in. The dog was next to him, the TV was on, and it was warm inside.

‘Holy shit,’ Jerry Lee said and his face cracked into a smile. ‘I haven’t seen you in a long time. I knew there was a reason we came to Elko. I just couldn’t figure it out.’

‘It’s good to see you,’ she said and smiled. ‘This must be your dog. He’s cute.’ She went over and began petting him. Then she reached over and began petting Jerry Lee’s head. ‘Here you go, Jerry Lee, I don’t want you to feel left out.’

Jerry Lee laughed and then we all sat on the bed and talked. She told him about her place and her job. How she was taking
classes at the community college, and how she had a fish tank and four fish, and how she named them A, B, C, and D.

Without her even asking and without me talking to him, he told her everything, about the guilt he had for the kid Wes Denny, a kid, Jerry Lee told her, who had no family, no one at all.

‘It makes me hurt in a way that don’t ever go away,’ Jerry Lee said and tears filled his eyes. ‘I killed him.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said.

‘I guess that doesn’t really matter,’ Jerry Lee said. ‘It doesn’t. I killed a kid and now I hardly want to live at all.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Annie James said. ‘What would Frank do without you?’

‘He wouldn’t be in trouble, that’s what,’ Jerry Lee said and turned his face away.

We sat there in silence for a long while, then I told Annie I’d walk her home. She stood up and went over to Jerry Lee and kissed him on the forehead and said goodbye, then left the room and waited for me outside.

‘You’re gonna be all right,’ I said. I sat on the bed next to him.

His head was still turned away.

‘I don’t know,’ Jerry Lee said weakly.

‘You will. You just got to ease up on thinking about it. It wasn’t your fault, these things happen. They happen for no reason. It’s horrible, but it’s not your fault.’

‘It is my fault, though, it is. It is my fault because I’m alive. Things happen because of me. Things change and are ruined ’cause of me.’ Cause of my stupid life.’ Cause I’m here on this planet.’

‘It’s not right to say that,’ I said. ‘You’re wrong when you say it.’

He turned his face to me and wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘I’ll be all right, Frank,’ he said finally. ‘I guess I’m just tired. And all this traveling and my leg and not knowing what I’m gonna do are all causing me to lose my mind. I just need to sleep, don’t you think?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘I’ll be okay in a while,’ he said. ‘You should take Annie home. You should spend the night if she wants. I’m feeling better than I was. Maybe I just needed to get it out. But really, I just think I need to knock off for a while.’

‘I’ll come back, you can’t even take a piss on your own.’

‘I can, I already got up a couple times while you were gone. You should stay if you can,’ he said and tried to smile. ‘One of us needs to have a decent time.’

31

WE WERE PRETTY QUIET
as we walked to her home, but once there she invited me in and we started kissing pretty soon after that. I hadn’t even hugged anyone in almost two years. I didn’t know what to think about it, I really didn’t, but it felt good. It felt lucky. Even so, I wasn’t real sure of her yet, so I didn’t sleep with her although I wanted to. Mostly we just talked and when we finally did sleep I left my pants on.

In the morning she made me breakfast and I walked her to work. When I got back to the motel it wasn’t even seven. It was still cold out, and I guessed it wasn’t even in the teens. When I came to our room I could see the window open, the door ajar, and when I went inside Jerry Lee was on the bed in his underwear, with no blankets on him and the heater off. The TV was on, with the sound low, and he was shaking, his skin almost blue, his teeth shaking so much that he could barely talk when I woke him.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I said and kicked the dog off the blankets, which were laying on the floor, and put them over him. I shut the window and the door and turned the heater on full. I took the bedspread and blanket off my bed and covered him. I went out to the car, took a sleeping bag and put it over him as well.

Then I got in bed with him, next to him to warm him. I held on to him to try to warm him, and it was like holding ice.

‘Wha … are … you … doing?’ he said and looked over at me. He was shaking so hard it was like he was having convulsions.

‘Trying to warm you up, you stupid motherfucker.’

‘Yeah?’ he said and closed his eyes. We didn’t say anything else, and then he fell into a sleep. I stayed there for a long while holding him and I fell asleep myself and when I woke maybe an hour had passed and his body temperature seemed closer to normal and the room had warmed. I got up and took a shower and shaved, and as I dressed the dog began scratching at the door. Jerry Lee was still out, so I wrote him a note and told him not to do anything while the dog and I went out for a walk.

We went downtown and over the bridge and once again followed the path that ran next to the Humboldt river. There was snow on the ground, and I threw the dog the tennis ball and he’d run after it trying to find it in the snow. But then I threw it way past him and into the bushes alongside the river. The dog went after it, disappearing into the brush. But he didn’t come out and then I heard him start to bark. I called for him but he wouldn’t come, so I went to get him and worked my way through the maze of bushes and frozen brush until I came across him yelping hopelessly at a partially snow-covered sleeping bag.

It looked as though there was a person in it, but nothing was moving, and I thought that if someone was in there, they were most likely dead. Frozen.

I kicked the sleeping bag to make sure, and something inside moved, then a head came out from it. The dog began barking harder.

‘Be quiet,’ I yelled at the dog and he stopped quick.

‘You all right in there?’ I asked.

The person in the bag got out and stood up. It was a kid, a boy in a parka and jeans. His hair was long, black and stringy. He was dirty and shivering.

‘Seems like everyone I know has gone totally fucking crazy,’ I said.

The kid didn’t say anything, just stared at the ground.

‘You all right?’ I asked him.

‘Are you gonna take me to jail?’

‘Why’d I do that?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Why the hell are you sleeping out here?’

‘I didn’t know it was gonna snow,’ he said. The kid still wouldn’t look at me. He was young, fourteen, maybe fifteen at the most.

‘It’s winter,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he said. He bent down and felt inside the sleeping bag and pulled out a pair of cowboy boots and put them on.

‘You a cowboy?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You sleep much? That bag don’t look like it’s made for snow. Looks like a slumber party bag.’

‘I’ve been freezing my ass off all night,’ the kid said and
laughed in an awkward sorta way.

‘You got any folks?’

‘No,’ the kid said.

‘You hungry?’

‘I haven’t eaten anything but bread and peanut butter for a week.’

‘Get your things and I’ll buy you breakfast.’

‘You ain’t gonna call the cops?’

‘Have you killed anybody?’

‘No.’

‘Then I probably won’t.’

‘If you leave me your address I could send you the money for breakfast when I get where I’m going.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Wyoming,’ the kid said and smiled and finally he looked at me. His eyes were brown and his teeth were crooked and he had silver caps on three of his bottom teeth.

‘What’s in Wyoming?’

‘A lot of things,’ the kid said and shook the snow off his sleeping bag and rolled it and tied it with two pieces of string that he took from his pocket. Then he stood before me and took a picture from a worn-out leather wallet. The wallet was faded black with a white horseshoe emblem on it, it was thin, and from what I could see there were only a few dollars in it.

‘This,’ he said, ‘it’s my horse. It’s in Wyoming. It’s a goddamn thoroughbred.’

‘Is he fast?’

‘He’s really goddamn fast,’ the boy said, smiling as he stared at the picture. ‘Just look at him.’

I looked at the picture and then the kid put it away, and we began walking towards the road.

The kid didn’t hardly talk the whole time we ate breakfast. He only looked at me when I talked about Wyoming or the horse, asked him questions about it, its name, its age, things like that. The kid just stared at the place mat, and when the food came he ate with his head down, shoveling the food in. A ham and cheese omelet, hash browns, toast, a side order of sausage, and a side order of hotcakes.

When we left the diner, we stood out on the sidewalk and watched the dog eat the side of bacon I’d gotten him.

‘You really heading to Wyoming?’

‘Yeah,’ the kid said.

‘You a runaway?’

‘Sorta,’ he said.

‘You know anybody in Wyoming?’

‘My grandma. She has the horse.’

‘How much dough you got?’

‘Seven dollars,’ the kid said.

‘I’ll buy you a bus ticket. Where in Wyoming exactly?’

‘Laramie,’ the kid said and looked at me again.

‘I’ll get you a ticket there,’ I said.

‘You don’t have to do that, mister.’

‘My brother would kill me if he knew you were out there in that sleeping bag and I didn’t help,’ I said. ‘You got to get yourself a better bag.’

‘I intend to.’

‘Good.’

‘If you give me your name and address I’ll send you the money when I get there. I swear I will.’

‘Worry about that later,’ I said and went back inside the diner and asked the cash register lady the directions to the Greyhound.

When I got back outside the kid was playing with the dog, chasing it around in circles. I told him that I had the directions and we began walking down the street towards it.

The dog and him followed behind, still playing, chasing each other around. The dog was barking and the kid was laughing.

Every once in a while I’d hear the kid whisper to the dog. ‘You’re a good goddamn dog,’ he’d say and bend down and pet it.

‘You’re a really good goddamn dog.’