Installment #24
Chapters 43 & 44
43
“Back in high school, he was a cheap shot artist,” Randall said over the walkie-talkie, keeping an eye on his side of the salvage yard.
“I mean, Vern wasn’t a good football player. Too slow, too scared. But I’ll tell you what—you didn’t turn your back on him. No sir. At practice, you’d be standing around a pile during a scrimmage, you know, arrived a second too late to jump in on the tackle. So you’d gear down, relax a little. BAM! Your head snaps. You’re knocked off your feet. The world goes wheeling by all upside down. Your whole body hurts. And that’s good because at least your neck isn’t broke. Heck, one time Vern cheap shotted me during a damn game! We were on the same damn team!”
“Speak of the devil. Jesus, you should see this,” Sheriff Cady said over the walkie-talkie. He was sitting in his truck on the other side of the yard. “Vern’s running that Lincoln of his over the access road like you’re the one paying the insurance on it.”
“Want me to follow him in?”
“It’s his place. He can come and go as he pleases,” Sheriff Cady said. “Let’s do this right. Go ahead, finish your story.”
“All right,” Randall said. “It was senior year….”
44
Walt paced around Geri’s wrecked Camaro in the salvage yard. More bored than anxious, waiting for Vern to show.
As he paced, Walt absentmindedly rubbed the rust on the odd bumper or crumpled side panel stacked in the junk surrounding him. The rust sucking the nutrients right out of his skin. His fingertips felt dry, worn smooth.
The odor of burning wheat stalks was strong in the air. Turning his ear in what he guessed was the direction of the highway, Walt heard only crickets rubbing their legs together and locust shedding their skin.
He stretched his own legs to ease the tightness in his knees. Geri had made him crouch in a gap between two stacks of trucks, her idea of a good hiding place. Not long after he heard her drive off, Walt’s knees had begun to ache.
To hell with it. He pitched forward, rolling out from his hiding place between the trucks.
Walking, knees hurting less now, Walt pulled his cowboy hat low over his eyes and looked high above him at the wall of junk. He saw that the open space he was standing in was actually some sort of hub. There were five aisles between five rows of junk, all feeding into an arena-like circle of scrap metal and junked automobiles.
The grass of the salvage yard was soft under his boots. Hottest month of the summer, Walt thought, lawns and wild grass all through the Great Plains dried brown by the sun but here is Vern’s salvage yard carpeted with green grass. He had to be watering it. Walt would ask Vern when he showed up. If he ever did.
Walt considered getting his gun.
It was in the glove compartment of his truck. Which was where? He’d lost track of which way Geri had led him through the junkyard.
Walt picked up a straight piece of wire, about seven inches long, and began to bend it into random shapes. Did he really need his gun? No, Walt assured himself, just be careful. Then again, just being there wasn’t being careful so, yes. Get his gun.
Walt unwrapped the wire from his index finger and tried to straighten it. Walt held the thin wire up to the floodlights in the yard. He had managed to stretch it straight again but not perfectly straight as it had been. He rolled the wire between his thumb and forefinger, felt it ripple with uneven bumps. He looked around. Geri had led him which way? Left? Right?
Walt started off down an aisle to his right, still twisting the wire in his fingers as he passed between the rows of junk towering over him. When he reached the end of the aisle, Walt took a left into a dead end, a heap of Pintos or Gremlins, he couldn’t tell which.
Walt looked behind him. Also a dead end.
Tossing away the bent piece of wire, Walt backtracked to his hiding place near Geri’s burnt Camaro. He wandered down another aisle, advancing one way, then backtracking and switching directions as each aisle concluded at a wall of junk or at the 10-foot fence topped with barbed wire that ran the perimeter of the salvage yard. Turning a corner, Walt spotted his truck at last.
Fishing his .38 from the glove box, Walt checked the cylinder in the dome light of the cab and saw the hammered butt of a spent shell. He remembered the hole in his hat. Removing his hat, Walt set it upside down on the seat before digging out the box of shells from the glove box. He put a fresh one in the cylinder. He slammed the door, laughing at himself: Kiss her or kill her?
Walt tucked the gun behind him into his waistband, the gunmetal cool against the small of his back. He fanned his shirttail, sending a breeze up his short-sleeve shirt, and then let it hang out, covering the gun.
In the distance a squeaking noise came toward him, and Walt recognized it as the shock absorbers of a car bucking across the rutted access road toward the junkyard.
“Jesus, this is ridiculous,” Walt said, giving himself a criminals’ pep talk as he started back toward the Camaro.
Just do these things
Watch and steal.
Get the money, Geri will follow.
After that, whatever happens, happens.
Walt whipped around a corner, banging into a stack of corroded mufflers. He looked back over his shoulder, puzzled.
Long aisle, right turn, short aisle, right turn?
Or was it long aisle, left, short aisle?
Or short aisle….
Walt heard Vern’s Lincoln sailing down the central path of the salvage yard coming his in direction. The engine roared on the other side of a stack of junked Jeep Wagoneers, gravel popping like bones under the weight of the heavy car’s tires, then receded as the Lincoln continued on toward another area in the junkyard.
Walt gave up trying to retrace his steps. Instead, he began making his way toward the sound of Vern’s car. It had stopped moving and was idling faintly. Walt took off running, his boots clomping on the grass.
He ran down one aisle of junk, turned and started down another. Walt slowed a bit, trying to pace himself. He stopped now and again to listen and catch his breath. He ran in a haphazard pattern down aisle after aisle of junk, one aisle turning into another, all of them ending at junk piles or the fence. Walt stopped again to listen.
He realized Vern had shut off his Lincoln.
Walt started down another aisle. Quieter but still stepping swiftly. As he emerged at the end of the aisle he came upon the main path running through the center of the salvage yard.
Walt stepped as lightly as he could, the gravel crunching under his boot heels. It occurred to him that it must be a lot of money to go to all the trouble of hiding it. Or stealing it. How much was worth getting shot or killed? Walt skulked and peeked around the skeletons of cars and jumbled mounds of automobile parts.
He heard Vern swear. He was close.
Walt quietly made his way toward the sound. He moved past the mouth of a long aisle. Out of the corner of his eye, Walt saw Vern at the far end of the aisle. Walt scrambled back out of sight.
He squatted, sneaking a glance around the corner. His knees began to ache again. Walt watched as Vern climbed into his car and started the engine. Walt winced. He had missed seeing Vern pull the money from its hiding place.
The reverse lights on the Lincoln brightened. The engine roared as the car came flying backward down the narrow aisle. Walt’s knees locked up, freezing him in a crouch. He couldn’t take his eyes off the red taillights closing on him.
Just as Vern’s car whipped back-end-first into the main path, the high beams flashing over the junk, Walt managed to flatten himself on the ground. He shimmied under a smashed up Monte Carlo.
Vern’s car stopped. Walt waited. He heard the door slam and saw Vern’s tasseled loafers step out and walk to the back of the car. He heard Vern pop the trunk. Walt’s heart pounded against the ground. Vern closed the trunk and climbed back into his car.
The Lincoln’s wheels spun, throwing gravel across the yard. Walt hid his face in the ground until finally, he heard Vern gunning the car out on the highway. Walt rolled out from under the Monte Carlo.
He lay there in the grass, breathing. Looking up at the moon and the stars. How much money? Not just money but Geri too. Better be a lot of both.
Walt got to his feet and started down the aisle to where he’d seen Vern. At its end, the aisle opened up into a wide circle, a hub with five rows feeding into it. Walt walked over and sat on the crispy frame of Geri’s Camaro. Another car accelerated somewhere out on the highway but receded quickly.
“Geri’s always right about one thing,” Walt said. “M-O-N-E-Y.”
Walt looked from side to side. He considered chucking it all. Just find his truck, if he could, and head out, home to his horses. Forget the money. Forget Geri.
Walt spit, stood up. He began looking for their money in the cracks between the junked cars. Starting at eye level and slowly working his way to the bottom.