The Long Fall (6 page)

His whole life the old man had played it straight, never complaining, right up to the day his heart exploded on the way home from the insurance agency he ran, the old man having just made the entrance ramp to Route 10 when it happened, and he ended up plowing his car into the side of an eighteen-wheeler on the westbound.

Jimmy misses him, Jesus, he does.

Try explaining that to a tombstone though.

When he gets to the Chute, the place is quiet, the afternoon regulars just starting to show up. There are seven or eight scattered among the tables and a few more perched like dash ornaments at the bar.

Leon’s tending, a sheet of newspaper spread flat in front of him with a fuselage of a model airplane in its center. Leon’s got a long, crumpled tube of epoxy in one hand and a wing in the other when Jimmy sits down.

“A Zero,” Leon says, nodding at the model. “Fast and to the point. The Nips knew aircraft.”

Jimmy orders a draft and watches in dismay as Leon levers the handle.

Leon’s a decorated air force vet with twenty missions over North Vietnam, but despite the legendary accuracy Leon has accorded himself in his war stories when it came to anything that passed between his crosshairs, Jimmy has never seen him draw a draft without leaving at least four inches of foam broiling below the lip of the glass.

Jimmy leans forward and squints at the shelf behind Leon. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Found it asleep in the jukebox,” Leon says. “No telling how long it was there.”

A couple of feet down from the cash register is a cracked aquarium patched with masking tape and topped by a piece of fine meshed screen held in place with a rock. In it is a fat sidewinder, its back alternately marked in brown and white dots the size of chocolate chips. Even in the bar light, the pattern of scales on its sides is as regularly defined as the tread on a new tire.

Leon flips a thick gray ponytail over his shoulder, then leans down and taps the glass with his index finger.

When the snake shifts its blunt wedge-shaped head and lifts its tail, Jimmy counts six rattles.

“That’s some kinda mean,” he says. “A real venom machine.”

“Pass me the glue, will you, Jimmy?” Leon says before stepping over and tossing a small white mouse into the aquarium tank.

At around a foot and a half, the sidewinder takes up most of the floor of the tank. The mouse is on its hind legs, sniffing the air, its world shrunk to four square inches of loose dirt.

When the fangs hit, the mouse is flipped into the air. It flops around in the tank for a while. The snake, watching, slowly lowers its head, its jaws already starting to loosen and unhinge.

Jimmy hands Leon the glue. Leon starts to attach a miniature set of machine guns to the wing.

“Hey, don’t talk to me about artificial intelligence,” someone booms from the other end of the bar. “How do you feel about artificial beer? Same working principle. Artificial’s artificial. It doesn’t matter which way you try to slice the ham, Bill Gates ain’t Solomon. No way.”

Leon glances up, sighs, and shakes his head. “Tell you something, Jimmy. There’s nothing more tiresome in this world as a drunk philosophy professor.”

“Hey, Howie’s all right,” Jimmy says.

“Howard Modine is not all right,” Leon says, setting down the wing. “The guy never shuts up. You think he’s okay because he buys you drinks.”

Modine walks over to where Jimmy’s sitting and claps him on the back. He takes in the action in the cracked aquarium, the mouse half gone now, the closed eyes of the snake, the steady rhythm of jaws and throat.

“We must all suffer History,” Modine says. His voice is deep and gravelly and always a couple of decibels louder than it needs to be, as if Howard works under the assumption that most of the people in the world have gone deaf.

“Even the snake,” Howard adds. “The snake’s not exempt.”

Leon points across the room. “Take it to a table. I’m working here.”

“Fine,” Modine says. “Just how about bringing a few cold ones for my compadre, James Coates, the Cacti Bandit, and myself then?”

One night, near closing, Modine had heard the story about Jimmy’s mishaps with the black-market saguaros and how that had landed him in Perryville Correctional, and Modine sent over a Lone Star on the house and they got to talking, though the conversation became lopsided, Jimmy doing most of the listening and signalling for more beers as Howard explained the shared underlying assumptions between the vagarities of the tenure review system at ASU and the venality and hypocrisy of the developers’ landscaping practices.

Leon brings over some cold ones and quickly retreats behind the bar. Modine sets his attaché case in an empty chair, drops a stack of student papers to his left, and unwraps a fresh cigar. He’s a small man with large features, a headful of tangled gray-brown hair and a bird’s-nest beard.

“You’re in early today,” Jimmy says.

Howie explains that he’s begun holding his afternoon office hours at the Chute. “The president wants more faculty involvement in the distance learning program,” Howie continues. “It’s his pet project. I’m doing my part to support it by putting as much distance as I can between my students and myself.”

Modine parks the cigar in the ashtray and pulls the stack of papers closer. He glances over at Jimmy and uncaps a red pen. “I’ve seen you looking better, Compadre,” he says.

Jimmy shrugs and takes a pull on the Lone Star.

“In fact, the way you look right now,” Modine says, “I could probably use you as a visual aid for my Kierkegaard seminar. This week we’re doing
Fear and Trembling.”

Jimmy watches Modine put a red C-plus on the top paper and then methodically work his way through the stack, putting the same grade on each, except for a couple he’s separated and set to the side.

Modine recaps his pen and picks up his cigar. “The plus is for encouragement,” he says. “Don’t want to do any lasting damage to the self-esteem of the customers. You see, I don’t have students anymore, James. I have customers. My job is to render unto Caesar and facilitate their needs so that what formerly was known as an education is now the equivalent of a Jiffy Lube for the soul.”

Jimmy points his bottle in the direction of the small stack of unmarked papers and raises his eyebrows.

“I’m saving those for later, when I get home. Those I read and comment on. I’m blessed to have three or four unregenerates who are still laboring under the unfashionable assumption that a university is a place to explore ideas and enlarge the human spirit. Those papers are a reminder of why I got into this profession in the first place.”

Howard pauses, quickly counts the number of dead soldiers on the table, and hollers to Leon to bring more reinforcements.

“You still haven’t told me what’s wrong,” he says.

“In a nutshell, I’m more than a little short in the time and money departments.”

“You need a loan?” Howard asks, pulling out his wallet. “I can spot you a couple twenties.”

Jimmy waves him off. “I appreciate it, Howie, but we’re talking Big, not Little, Picture here. And I’m running out of time.”

“That’s where we always find and lose ourselves,” Howie says finally. “In Time. Always in Time.” He scratches his head. “Our compadre Kirkegaard knew that. You take the leap of faith knowing that sooner or later it’s going to become the long fall, because we’re stuck in time and can’t do anything about that, nothing. But for my money, the truth lies not in the leap or the fall, but precisely at the point where one becomes the other. That’s where you want to set up shop.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jimmy says.

Forty-five minutes later, when Howard leaves for his evening class, Jimmy drifts over to the bar, and it’s not long before Winston, owner of the Chute, steps up next to him.

“No tabs,” Winston says, crossing his arms and nesting them on his chest.

Jimmy pantomimes deafness and waves him closer.

“No,” Winston repeats, “tabs.”

“Since when?”

“Since I checked the books and saw the one you ran up after first getting out of Perryville.”

Winston’s in his early fifties with a great sloping paunch avalanching against a pair of thick black suspenders and a wide round face that high blood pressure has shaded the color of wet bubble gum. There’s a small, lumpy gray mustache hanging around his thick upper lip.

“I’ve also heard about your troubles with Ray Harp,” Winston says. “No way I’m going to let a potential corpse stiff me.”

“Okay, okay,” Jimmy says, digging around in his jeans. He pulls out a crumpled wad of ones, all he has left from what he fenced out with Pete Samoa.

Winston leans over and fingers his way through the bills Jimmy’s piled next to the ashtray. Jimmy can hear him counting to himself.

Winston steps back and tells Leon, “You shut him down when those are gone, understand?”

Someone calls Jimmy’s name, and he turns and sees Don Ruger working his way through the tables, all smiles, his gait with a permanent hitch from a knee injury he got in one of the long string of auto accidents he’s been in over the years.

“What’s wrong with the forehead?” Jimmy asks when Don gets to the bar. “That’s some kind of nasty.”

Don grins sheepishly and lightly fingers the dark mass of bruise and contusion running from above his right eye to temple. Through its center is a vertical line of ragged homemade stitches.

“Got clotheslined by the Missus,” Don says. “She had it strung across the front steps, knee-level, when I came home late from the track, you know, the one on Washington and thirty-eighth?” Don drops his hand and grins again. “Porch light was out, and I walked right into the line, went headfirst into the storm door. Glass everywhere after. I guess I should stay away from the dogs.”

Don lightly punches Jimmy on the shoulder and winks, then turns to Winston when he notices that Winston hasn’t moved off. “What’s up?” he asks.

“What’s up is whether you’re going to pay up. I want to be sure you’re more solvent than your pal there.” Winston goes on to deliver the usual litany of complaint about Jimmy’s overdue tab.

Don pulls out his wallet, then pauses. “You a betting man, Winston?”

Jimmy sees what’s coming. “Not a good idea, Don. I’m a little rusty.”

Don lays a hundred down on the bar. “Jimmy’s tab against that. He’ll do the Titties.”

“I told you, I’m out of practice, Don. I don’t think this is such a good idea.” Jimmy’s seen it before, Don wagering the weekly grocery money. Ditto with the green for the electric and water bills. “If we lose, Teresa will do more than clothesline you.”

“I have faith in you,” Don says. “I’ve seen you work.”

Winston’s looking at the hundred. “What do you mean, he’ll do the Titties? What kind of bet is that?”

By now, word has started to snake through the bar, and a number of regulars have left their stools and tables and drifted over, standing in a clump behind Winston.

“Jimmy can give you fifty—” Don says, concentrating. “What you call them, Jimmy?”

“Synonyms,” Jimmy says quietly.

“Yeah, okay,” Don says. “Here’s the deal. Jimmy can give you fifty synonyms for titties in a minute.”

“No way,” Winston says. “He can’t. No one can. Not in a minute.”

“I say yes.” Don reaches up and lightly scratches at his stitches.

Jimmy shakes his head and sighs, but lets it ride.

Winston’s fidgeting, his broad forehead sheened in a light sweat. He keeps tugging on his suspenders and then glancing at his watch. When he bites his lower lip, the slug of a mustache perched on his upper twitches and dips. Winston cranes his neck, looking around, taking in the crowd watching him, then resolutely dips into his pants pocket.

“Tell you what,” he says. “Double or nothing.”

“Don,” Jimmy says, but he’s waved off.

Don’s nodding at Winston. “How about a little side bet, too? Five bucks for each one over fifty.”

Winston takes off his wristwatch and sets it between Don Ruger and him. Then he pulls a small calculator from his shirt pocket and presses a couple buttons, clearing its face.

“You ready, Jimmy?” Don asks.

Jimmy looks at the door, but stays put. He nods.

“Ten seconds and counting,” Winston says, looking down at the watch. “And it’s fifty synonyms besides ‘titties.’
Titties
don’t count in the total.” He smiles and points at Jimmy. “Go.”

Jimmy leans back on the stool and aims his face at the ceiling, closing his eyes. “Silos. Jugs. Hooters. Tubes. Boomers. Torpedoes. Milk Steaks. Little Debbies. Melons. Rockets. Knockers. Bazooms. Saddle Bags. Paps. Milkshakes. Mammals. Jigglers. Snuggle Puppies. Headlights. Cushions. Squeegees. Pods. Balloons. Softies. Fixtures. Slope Heads. Tomatoes. Milk Duds. Meat Pies. Bags. Dynamic Duos. Hand-to-Mouths. Nipple Condos. Pillows. Tubes. Saucers. Chesties. Bouncers. Lamps. Dairy Products. Cha-Chas.”

Winston’s loudly marking time, trying to break Jimmy’s rhythm. Jimmy, though, is in the zone, auctioneer-overdrive.

“Home stretch, Buddy,” Don Ruger says.

“Full Moons. Dinner Plates. Tongue Twisters. Bra Babies. Three-Sixties. Bay Windows. Peaches. Sugar Bags. Badges. Butter-balls. Twins. Hang Gliders. Plums. Knobs. Roundtables. Soft Touches. Chest Antlers. Cheese Keepers. Holy Rollers. Pies. Mommies. Peaks. Hat Racks. Front Lines. Handles. Ear Muffs. Chubbies. Tourist Attractions. Safe Harbors. Grillwork. Sno-Cones. Tahitis.”

“Seventy-three,” Don Ruger says, slapping the bar top after Winston calls time.

Winston looks at Jimmy, picks up his watch, and then stalks off to his office. He’s back in a few minutes with the money and Jimmy’s tab, which he rips in two and drops on the floor.

Jimmy snaps his fingers. “Satellites,” he says. “I forgot Satellites.”

“Man,” Don Ruger says, fingering his forehead. “I wish you’d been the dog running in the third at the track the other night. Would’ve saved me a whole lot of grief and green.”

F
rankie Coronado was the best jailhouse lawyer in the Perryville branch of the state of Arizona State Prison Complex, and Jimmy had driven out for early afternoon visiting hours and passed on two cartons of Camels and a couple bags of Almond Joys to Frankie and then the paperwork from his last meeting with Richard. Frankie took a distressingly short time looking over the stuff. There was also a lot of slow head-shaking.