Raul cocked his head as if to hear better. Will was nodding with all the wisdom of the centuries.
“Yep, it was that little snake. The bugger had another frog and he wanted to trade it for another shot of whiskey!”
Louisa rolled her eyes and smiled. I just shook my head. Raul looked at Will with friendly suspicion.
“The snake wanted a drink?” he said.
“To trade that frog for another drink!”
Raul got up from where he leaned on Will’s wheelchair. He went around the bar and poured two more drinks. “The snake wanted to trade the frog for another drink of whiskey,” he said, bringing Will’s drink back around; and then slugged his down in one gulp.
“This is a nice group you’ve brought in here,” he said to me. “But this one here, I think, is a liar.”
Then he laughed, and so did I. Will laughed too, but through it he was saying, “Raul! That’s a true story!”
During the two hours we spent at Raul’s and Theresa’s, Raul’s regular customers, mainly truant construction crews, came in, drank, and crept out, cautiously rereading the establishment’s sign to make sure they had been in the right place. Our gang, toothless and waving their canes (those who had them), leaned on their walkers and sat in their wheelchairs, sipping and spilling beer.
Boyd, the Boxer, swung his chair in arcs, bumping into the booths and the pool table. At one point he looked up at me with wicked glee and cried, “We are rais-ing H-E-double-L! We are.” His smile, the victim of forty amateur bouts and six amateur dentists, climbed way up under his nose.
The Mayor made six toasts (“Here’s to Brent and Eleanor! Sweethearts!”; “To Leonard, our chef!” etc.). Dick yelled: “Here’s to the Phantom, at least he can get around to shit!” And he jerked his glass upward. Cotton tried to kick in the jukebox for taking his quarter (mine), and Billingsly, who hadn’t had a thing to drink, spat on the pool table, but other than that, the atmosphere was that of a party.
When I found one old lady asleep in the john, her head against the wall, we decided it was time to go. I signed the bill with Jay Stisson’s name and listed the address of the Blue Mesa Boarding Home. It was one of the best forgeries I’ve ever committed.
On the way home in a post-tavern euphoria, magnified by the vanload chorale singing “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” I dropped Leonard off at the Safeway and let him charge up ten pounds of real ground sirloin for a real chili dinner.
Preparing that food, that night, was a different story. The whole house smelled good, edible. Ardean had requests for seconds; it was a first. Leonard was a changed man, a captain in his kitchen. We could tell something was up when he came out to simmer the beans, and he had a shirt on under his apron.
We sampled the chili, seasoning it to taste (and beyond), we drank frosty beer also procured on Jay’s tab. It was the best chili party I’d ever been to, and we drank and drank into the night.
My last memory was of a retelling of Hall’s electrocution back at the other orphanage, which I think I embellished with massive sound effects.
*************
I was too thirsty to wake up and someone was yelling. I was in a large room, very warm, dragging myself away from sleep. The little fire in my room was the yellow window over there. My eyes were swollen from sleep, but I opened them. There was a branch in my face. Louisa was asleep against my side.
“Hey,” I whispered, sitting up. The yellow square in my vision focused and became the kitchen window. We had slept out on Alexander’s sofa. I could hear Jay, yelling in the mansion. “Louisa, Hey!” I nudged her awake and held her shoulders as a signal to be quiet. My watch read 3:30
A.M.
“Let’s get some water,” she said softly, not awake. We’d probably been sharing the same dream.
“Wait a minute,” I said, and I slid off the couch into a Groucho crouch which shivered my skull in the first throbs of a major league headache. The pain magnified until I could barely squint, and Jay’s bellowing sent tremors temple to temple. I’m having a stroke, I thought; this alcoholistic interlude must be a stroke. I remembered those early evenings back at Noble Canyon and the drinking with Steele and Rawlins, and the neon “Never Again” flashed on my eyelids. Twice.
Carrying my head thusly, I managed a collapse near the sill where I could witness the interior.
Jay was ranging the kitchen, addressing Leonard and Will in tones that meant there would be questions only later. Will seemed amused, sitting at the table over the cards he and Leonard had been playing; Leonard was up, standing his ground, his arms folded across the bespattered apron. Jay’s date, pale as the fridge she leaned against, studied the scene with an appreciation only the drunk can muster. So, he’d come back with his “date” to fry up a few of the real eggs with Dolly there, and something was up.
He turned again to Leonard and held out his hand: “And just what the hell is this?” I couldn’t see what was in his hand.
“Just what the hell is going on around here, and what the hell is this?”
Will gathered up the cards and began to reshuffle.
Leonard came out of his stance to look at the contents of Jay’s hand. There was something in Leonard’s expression that told me he was at his best. “Well, Jay,” he said, “I haven’t seen any of this particular stuff for sometime … but—” Here he paused to sniff it, “but, I’d say …”
Jay wheeled and threw it against the fridge, almost nailing his date. “Goddamn it, Leonard! It’s hamburger!—”
“That’s what I was going to say …” the girl interrupted. “I thought it was—”
“Shut up, Darlene!”Jay yelled and then checked himself, swallowing, trying to settle. He started again: “Look—”
“Would you like some coffee, young lady?” Will said, always the gentleman.
I felt Louisa crouch beside me. “God!” she said, “we’ve had it!”
“Look!” Jay shouted, losing it again, “you two old bastards better tell me what’s going on here with this hamburger!”
“Look,” Leonard said, repeating each word as if he were checking them all for leaks: “You … two … old … bastards … better … tell … me … what’s … going … on … here … with … this … hamburger?”
We were in danger of being spat upon, if Leonard got mad.
“Perhaps,” Will went on to the girl, “you’d care for some of Leonard’s famous chili.” He got up.
He stood right up like anybody. Something flashed in my fevered mind.
Will walked to the refrigerator!
I could not believe it.
“That’s what I smell! Chili!” Jay was unquestionably beyond anger now, pure stroke material.
“Want some?” Will added.
Jay may have had a stroke then for all I know. He backed out of the room like a man being operated by hot strings. I did know I didn’t want him to get any one of his hands on me now. The bill from Raul’s and Theresa’s would unseat any gaskets the man had left.
Will began heating a pan full of the chili, and Jay’s date sat down. Seeing the cards, she said, “Oh, what were you playing?”
Before anyone answered, Jay landed back in the room. He had a handful of Louisa’s clothing. Shaking it in Leonard’s face, he said, “Where are the kids? They had something to do with this.”
Louisa clutched my arm.
Leonard walked by him and opened the fridge, withdrawing the pound or so of hamburger left.
“Relax,” he said. “You want to return this and get some money back?”
Jay threw the clothing across the room and grabbed Darlene. Until then I had never realized how violent an act throwing clothes could be. As he left he mumbled something like: “I just want those kids … too much … we’ll call the police …”
“Jay!” Will said. “It wasn’t those kids.
I did it
. I got sick of eating gruel and I ordered the stuff. You should sue me, because I plan to do it again. The kids had nothing to do with it.”
“Sue you! I can do worse than sue you. You won’t do anything again. You’re out of here, buddy.”
“Not too soon,” Will said to the empty doorway. I heard three doors slam and then the gravel announced that Jay had vacated the premises. We could see his taillights headed toward some kind of a night on the town.
We watched Will walk calmly across the room, picking up Louisa’s clothing. His capability to do so, his grace, would simply not register. It cleared my head.
Louisa and I walked around and entered the kitchen.
“You kids just missed it,” Will said. He was seated, preparing the cards. “Want some chili?”
“No,” I said. “Let’s drink water.”
“Nothing like a glass of water after a hamburger fit,” Louisa said. “Lenny,” she went on, “you were magnificent. I love you.” She hugged him, and what was more surprising: he sat and took it.
“Not too bad for an ordinarily subdued chef,” Will said.
“Hey buddy.” Louisa pointed at him with a grin. “We saw. We saw you.”
“Yeah, Will! He walks and talks.”
“Oh, I walk,” he began. “But can’t walk during the day. I really shouldn’t even feed myself.” He laughed. “No one should feed himself Leonard’s cooking. The more I do for myself, the less I get from Medicare; it’s that simple. I ride the chair all day so my kids don’t have to pay the extra two hundred a month.”
I just kept drinking water, shaking my half-boiled head.
“I guess I can walk now,” Will said.
“I guess you ordered the goddamned hamburger,” Louisa laughed.
I felt rotten, despite the cool water, for having caused this mess, having wrecked everything. Now we wouldn’t get paid.
“Where will you go?” Louisa asked Will.
“Oh, I can go up to Las Vegas and stay with my son.”
“You can?” I was surprised.
“Oh, for a day or two, until we find something else.”
“Something else like this?” Louisa asked.
“There is nothing else like this,” he answered.
“No,” Leonard added, “there’s worse.”
“No!”
“No, he’s right,” Will said. “Jay isn’t really a bad man; we’d probably do all the same things in his shoes.”
“Powdered gumbo seven nights a week?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe
not
.”
We argued in those ways for a while until a bowl of chili actually sounded interesting, and then we ate some of that, arguing some more. By the time it started to get light and the local bird made a noise or two, Louisa and I had decided to go with Will, or vice versa, since it seemed a thousand times better than waiting for Jay to pull our arms off.
At one point late in the night, early in the day, someone asked Leonard if he wanted to go along too.
He said, “I can’t go, now that I’ve got things set the way I want them.”
Nevertheless, he did go with us to Jay’s office and stand as witness while Will dictated and Louisa typed two beautiful letters: one to the Department of Aging, may they rot, and one to Medicaid Services which was paying Jay a flat fee per month to supply the residents of the Blue Mesa Boarding Home with fresh dairy products, namely milk. Leonard told us enough stuff for a dozen letters, but there just wasn’t time. They were good letters, both beginning: “Dear Sirs: It has come to our attention …” I liked that.
I wanted very much to inform the social security of Alexander’s death, but the sun was up and blazing, and we were worried about Jay arriving any moment. Finally, I settled for a postcard. It was one of Jay’s and bore the clever photo of The Blue Mesa Boarding Home, showing the finished portions of the mansion only. I addressed it to the Social Security Division and simply wrote in my loopy longhand:
“Stop the checks! Alexander S. Tuttle has gone to a greater reward than yours! He’s dead, no kidding. Sincerely, Blue Mesa Boarding Home.” I wanted to add: “He died in my arms,” but I didn’t want to confuse any federal agencies.
After the letters, we went up to Will’s room. (“The smallest room I’ve ever lived in, and it took me eighty-four years to get here!”) In a pair of socks he had four hundred dollars and three dozen pills. He spilled it all on the bed.
“My allowances. I’ve been saving them for thirteen months.”
Louisa scooped up the capsules. “We can’t spend these.” She dropped them into the wastebasket.
He picked up the money and said, “Let’s go to Las Vegas.”
“Are you sure you want to leave?” I asked.
“This rest home? No choice. Besides,” he smiled at us, “I’m rested.”
Rest home
, I thought: that’s right. What was odd was that I felt part of them, part of the leftovers, part of the rest. Will was right, there was no choice.
Downstairs, Will said goodbye to Leonard. Leonard’s throat was growling as they embraced.
“Take care,” Will said.
“Oh, shit,” Leonard waved him off. “Next time you see me, I’ll be a fat man.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Will replied, “and next time you see me, I’ll be an old man.”
On our way out we crossed the Phantom’s most recent strike—on the porch—and I had to laugh. The Phantom. The only unsolved mystery in the place. His was a spiritual presence and he would live forever, continuing his one-man protest at The Blue Mesa Boarding Home, Kingman, Arizona 86401.
**************
We were leaning against fine, a-okay, clean and solid used cars before the lot in Kingman opened at nine. Louisa and I had already engaged in a thorough discussion of color, the only basis on which we would buy a car, but Will said, “We want one with good tire tread and one that sits high off the ground.” His requirements were best met by a pearl-colored Chevrolet, one of the many slope-backed models made just ten years before I was born. There was a blue carboard sign in the windshield which announced the vehicle as being “Dependable!”
When a salesman, a middle-aged kid in a three-day shirt, finally came out, Will handled him. Will opened the hood and wiped thrown oil off things for a while, shaking his head. At one point we all dropped to the ground to see the phenomenon known as “a broken spring.” All of these activities saved us 125 dollars, a mere 50 percent of the purchase price. I felt almost sorry for the salesman; he didn’t know anything about cars. He was probably just hanging around the lot waiting for his inheritance.