What a Hundred’ll Do (2)

The second and last part of a story of the quarter they wouldn’t let me leave on Julie’s brow.

Okay … if you’re the one who sneaked into the movie during intermission, be assured we know who you are! You know and we know you haven’t paid for your admission. So, aside from the rush of not getting caught, you’re simply not going to enjoy the second half until you’ve seen the first. So, here’s your ticket to watch it now:

Part Two

~ ~ ~

Sonny Boy seems pleased to see his brand new buddy again so soon. I’m thinking he has few close friends. “Hey,” he says, through the fleshy little hole in the lower quarter acre of his face, “you better not be coming back to steal that hug, ’cause if you are — ”

I tell him I’m not, and then I smile back.

He leans toward me over the counter in the relaxed, open manner of one who enjoys a newly won, easy confederacy with life. Before long he blinks and his face takes on a mildly bemused expression. “You got your value meal, didn’t you?”

”Oh, I did. Yes.”

“Well,” he says. He takes his weight off the counter. The joint between wood and glass groans.

“I’ll tell you what,” I say from a deep center of calm. “It’s good that you’re standing up. I want you to slowly back up to the wall.” I pull the pellet gun from under my shirt and wave it in his general direction.

“Come on! No,” he says. “You’re kidding me!”

“I’m as serious as you are about the size of your next meal.” I try to smile again, but can’t bring it off.

He stares at me a long moment and then he says, “It’s no secret I’m fat. So, why — ?” His sudden intake of breath makes very nearly a whimpering sound. Shaking his head, he looks away from me briefly, then back. “Anyway, that’s a damned pellet gun! Come on, please. Put it down and we’ll have a big laugh about it, huh?”

“Nothing to laugh about, fat stuff.” I watch him wince and I feel a tightening inside. I wonder why I am doing this? Why am I being so needlessly, stupidly, childishly cruel?

“Besides, I told you there weren’t any pellets in it.”

“And you want to believe there aren’t any in it now, don’t you? Even though I had plenty of time to go to Wal-Mart®.” I had seen a Wal-Mart® about a half-mile down the frontage road when the car dropped me off here this morning. I almost chose to go there, instead, and wander around their aisles — and then I decided on the Burger King®.

“Even if you did,” he adds, and finishes with a phlegmy chuckle. “It’s still a pellet gun.”

“Ever been shot with a pellet gun? What’s your name?”

“Autry — no.”

“Well, let me tell you, Audrey …” Again, I feel the tightening.

“Why are you doing this? It’s Autry — ”

“As in Gene?”

“As in Autry Gene Kroger. If you really want to know, dad was Gene Autry’s biggest fan. Do you have to keep that pointed at me?”

I bring the barrel to the floor. “I was shot by a pellet gun, just like this, a pump action. My cousin did it. He got me right on the fleshy part of the thigh. Would you believe it penetrated a quarter of an inch? My aunt had to dig it out with a penknife she sterilized over an open flame. I don’t know which stung worse — the pellet going in or the knife she used to dig it out with. Hell, Autry, I know it’s not going to kill you.” I bring the barrel back to the level of his stomach. “But it’s going to burn like crazy. And you know how you people are doing everything for pleasure and avoiding pain at all cost.”

“Je-sus!” he says, in two emphasized syllables, as a country preacher might when under the grip of the Holy Spirit. “Just tell me what you want. The cash?” His eyes flutter involuntarily, and now I swear I can smell his sweet-hot perspiration.

“I want the little schooner the old man made.”

“What? Why didn’t you buy it earlier?”

“I couldn’t afford it and the pellet gun together — And I needed the pellet gun.” Then I smile, waiting for him to ask the question I’m prodding him to ask.

“Why?” he asks. He is already on his slow, plodding way to the table on which the schooner sits.

“I needed it to stick you up and get the schooner.”

Autry stops and half turns, swinging his great head toward me the way a heifer might. “To stick me up,” he says through a grin. But then that fades and I see just for an instant his eyes fill as he turns abruptly away from me. He reaches across the table for the schooner, but his other hand goes to his face. When he turns back, he has the schooner cradled in both palms. His fingertips on one hand glisten wetly. “You know, you never told me your name.”

I smile at his audacity. “I’m fucking sticking you up, Autry! You expect me to give you my name?”

“Forget it,” he says, but his face doesn’t conceal the injury.

I shrug. “It’s Buster.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Want to check it against my Diners Club card?”

“So, it’s Buster?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Buster,” he repeats, slowly, like he’s tasting the syllables. “Bus-ter. Bet you took a ribbing in school.”

“A little. My folks took to worshiping Buster Crabbe about like yours did Gene Autry. He was one of the movie Tarzans. You know?”

“I guess not.” It’s obvious something else is on his mind. “Buster?”

“What.”

“Buster, I want you to have this. As a gift.” He holds it out to me.

“No, now damn it, Autry!” I pull back. “You can’t just give me what I’m robbing from you.”

“Why not? Put your gun away. It’s something I want you to have.”

“Why?”

“Because — because when you left today I thought, well, that we were like friends — and well, because I would give it to a friend. It would make me feel good.”

“Fuck you! Do you think I care how you feel?”

“Oh!” he says, but it was like the word was sucked out of him as one’s breath would after being kicked in the stomach. Then, he moans.

“Well, I don’t care. I don’t! I have half a mind to take the fucking ship and before I leave to shoot you in the gut just to watch the fat ooze out.” I feel again the now familiar tightening.

He no longer tries to conceal the tears that rim his eyes. We seem at an impasse. For perhaps a full minute neither of us says anything. Then, Autry leans into the counter and sets the schooner on the glass surface. He steps back. I study it, aware that he is all the while studying me. It is listing to the right. It wasn’t before. Anticipating my question he says, “There’s no stand. I had it leaning against Cerberus.”

I nod.

“The old man said it’s precise-to-scale, though. Said it floats perfectly in water. Shall I get a basin and we can try it?” He has regained his composure. There is something childlike and playful in his manner.

“No! Just give it to me.”

“We can, though. No trouble at all.”

“No, goddam it!” I grab it off the counter, surprised at how light it is. I get to the door, open it to the tinkling overhead, and then without going out, I close it again. I turn and then go back and lay the pellet gun on the counter.

“No, take it with you.” His face instantly reddens.

“I don’t need it now.” I turn back toward the door.

“But that means I owe you seventy-five, no, seventy dollars, deducting for the value meal, you bargained for.”

“That would be like I bought the ship. This is a fucking robbery!”

“Well, if you insist on it being a true robbery, then I have to give you your whole hundred dollars back.”

“Go to hell! I don’t want your goddam money, Autry!”

“Well, then you just bought yourself a very expensive schooner,” he says.

“I didn’t buy it, and you know I didn’t buy it,” I say, stalking to the door, then, over my shoulder, add: “And I won’t accept it as a fucking gift!” I slam the door behind me.

* * *

Sitting at the curb, I lay the schooner beside me, while removing my sneakers and socks. I swing my legs around and put my feet in the flowing water. Picking up the schooner again, I examine it from all angles. It is a fine piece of craftsmanship. At twenty bucks, Autry was the one stealing it from the old man! It’s worth probably two-hundred. I just stole it back for half that. I am uncomfortable with the feel of my logic. It’s always been trustworthy. Now, I wonder if it’s losing its fine edge. After all, I did end up buying it. I need to stay with my senses for a while — and away from my thoughts.

I trace my fingers along the deck from its widest point and then its gradual narrowing to the bow where the old man had even carved a delicate figurehead. I feel the sail between my fingers. It is canvas. The deck is recessed slightly. I think it just might work. I dig my hand into my pocket and fish out the quarter, lay it flat on the deck, head up, and slide it slowly toward the bow until it snugs into the narrowing deck. Applying a slow, steady pressure against the deck walls, I gently rotate the coin a half turn. The walls yield enough for the quarter to seat into them. I inspect the schooner again from different angles and give it a prayerfully diffident shake. The quarter stays. Then, holding the schooner gingerly in both hands, I lower it to the water, my hands forming a safe harbor around it. It lists only slightly to the left. But it appears seaworthy. Lifting it from the water, I touch two fingers to my lips and then to the quarter. I close my eyes. “An eternity, dear Jul, without focus or borders.” I put the schooner in the water at my feet and let it go. It immediately caroms off the curb in a swirl of water that wets the deck, and it makes a complete revolution before continuing on, leaning just a little to the left. The sunlight glints off the quarter.

I get to my feet to follow along on the curb. Something catches my eye. Turning, I see the lazy rotation of red and blue lights atop a police car. It is parked at the curb on the far side of the pawnshop. A cop standing in the pawnshop doorway is waving his hands and now throws a thumb over his shoulder in my direction. I’m guessing that Autry had second thoughts and called. Or, he pushed the silent alarm after I refused the schooner as a gift. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. From the look on Autry’s face, which I can see along with that part of his body not eclipsed by the cop’s blue-uniformed back and sprawled high-booted thighs, the weight of evidence points to the alarm theory. Autry’s head is now moving from side to side with slow deliberate resolve.

Turning my attention back to the ship that moves closer to its journey’s end, I watch as it catches the eddy and is swept, whirling, tilting, dangerously near capsizing, away from the drain. This troubles me, and I take a few steps along the curb toward it. Then, I stop. The ship has to complete its journey unassisted. There is something sacrosanct about the process. Once released from human agency it must be pulled along only by the tug of the Fates. I take another step just as the schooner escapes the grip of the eddy, dips its sails, and plunges down the drain. I intone my third and my final “good-bye” to Julie and turn back to retrieve my shoes.

The police car is gone. Autry is still standing behind the closed door, staring at me, his face immobile. The corners of his mouth hold the slackness you’d see in the sleeper or corpse. Only his eyes carry in them an immensity of sadness and grace that causes that now familiar constriction in my stomach.

I keep my eyes averted as I put on my socks and sneakers. When I get up I see that he is still there, still watching me. Then, as I get to the street that leads to the frontage road I look back again. But now he is gone. He has vanished so absolutely, so completely from the door, it is as though he never had been there.

And isn’t that the way it should be? He’s not there. There never was an Autry. I make my way down the frontage road to the I-5 onramp and wait for someone to pick me up. Burger King® and Kroger and Son’s are out of my sight. They, too, never existed. They no longer have any focus in my mind.

One thing remains. It is not of this day. It is not of any day. Nor is it at all connected with time in my mind. But it remains, nonetheless, drifting inexorably, as timeless as stars, as solidly rooted as myth and symbol. Unresisting, it is one with the force that pulls it along, unerringly, until it drops off into that boundless, borderless eternal.

I watch it drift through my mind with dread and longing.

~ ~ ~

Thank you. Now … while the actors take their bow, won’t you stay with the rest of the audience to clap at its conclusion? I know you’re hankering to get out of the theater but before the lights come on full, won’t you show your enthusiasm by clapping! Spontaneous applause sounds like this: *sound of palms slapping together 50 times* — J.S.