Authors: Willy Vlautin
I blew the ten he gave me at the movie theater. I watched a comedy about a newscaster, and I bought a hot dog and a Coke and a candy bar. When it was over I snuck into another movie about a ship’s captain who sails around getting into fights and a kid gets his arm blown off. When it was over and I had to leave the theater I got pretty down. I knew then, that night, that Portland would be worse than Spokane. At least I had friends in Spokane.
I woke up the next day and decided I’d get a job so I could have my own money. I was only fifteen so I lied on all the job applications and applied to the places I could walk to. There were help wanted signs at Joe’s Sporting Goods, Banditos Mexican Restaurant, and Napa Auto Parts. But none of them called me after I filled out the application. I tried for a dishwasher job at Shari’s and for a job pumping gas at a
76
station but neither of them called me either. So I just stayed home and watched TV, waiting for the summer to end and for football tryouts to start in August.
I ate through that run of groceries and after that whenever he gave me money I was smarter with it. I’d buy a big package of hamburger, a couple cans of spaghetti sauce, and a box of spaghetti and I’d make a big batch of it. I’d eat on the same thing for days.
I went running past the track one morning when I saw an old man in a gravel parking lot trying to change a tire on an old horse trailer. He was swearing at it. Each time he tried to get a lug nut off he’d start cussing. He had a low rough voice, and every other word he said was fuck or cocksucker or motherfucker or motherfucking cunt. I stopped and watched from a distance.
He saw me standing there.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said. He had the lug wrench in his hand.
“Me?” I yelled over to him.
“There ain’t no one else here,” he said.
“I’m just running.”
“Are you strong?”
“I’m pretty strong,” I told him.
“Come over here,” he said.
I walked to him. He was old, maybe seventy, and dressed in cowboy boots and jeans and a flannel shirt. He hadn’t shaved in a couple days and even then just meeting him I could tell he was shitfaced drunk. He smelled like beer and his eyes were bloodshot and glassy. He had a big gut and was going bald. The hair he did have was mostly gray on the sides and he had it greased back. His right arm was in a cast and he was chewing tobacco.
“What time is it?”
“Maybe six thirty,” I said.
He shook his head.
“I gotta load two horses and get to the Tri-Cities by one, and I got a flat.”
I looked down at the tire. There were two cans of Fix-a-Flat next to it.
“Is that far?” I asked.
“Far enough. Look, my arm ain’t worth two shits. I’ll give you five dollars if you can get the lugs off.”
“I’ll try,” I told him. I took the wrench and set it on the first nut. I pushed down as hard as I could and it gave. I got four others off but I had to jump on the last one until it broke free. After that he told me he had a jack behind the seat in his truck and asked me to get it. I did and jacked up the axle and pulled off the flat, put on the spare, and tightened down the lug nuts.
When I was done he took three dollars from his wallet.
“I thought I had a five,” he said and handed it to me.
“Del,” he said and put out his left hand and we shook.
“Charley,” I told him. “What happened to your arm?”
“I slipped,” he said.
“Why are you going to the Tri-Cities?”
“There’s a race.”
“A horse race?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you need help?”
“Help with what?” he said.
“With anything?”
“You’re looking for a job?”
I nodded.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” I told him.
“You know much about horses?”
“No.”
The old man looked around. With his left hand he took a can of Copenhagen from his back pocket. He knocked the can of chew into the side of his leg, opened it with one hand, and set it on the hood of his truck. The fingers on his left hand were covered in dirt and grease and his pinky was bent out like it had been broken off and put back on wrong. He put those fingers in the tobacco, took a big dip from the can, and put it between his front lip and gum. He closed the can, put it back in his pocket, and spit on the ground. Some of the spit fell on his chin and he left it there.
“Will your folks let you spend the night away?”
“How far away is it?”
“Four hours, if we’re lucky.”
“Where will we be staying?”
“I’ll be sleeping in the cab. You can sleep wherever you want, or in the back of the truck. I don’t care. You got a sleeping bag?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’ll give you twenty-five dollars if you help me up there and back.”
“Twenty-five?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon?”
He nodded.
I had two dollars and change and the three he just gave me.
“Okay,” I said.
“What about your parents?”
“They want me to get a job,” I said.
“Over there is the backside of the track. There’s a caf just off the road,” he said and pointed towards it. “You see the beer sign?”
I nodded.
“You’ll have to talk to the security guard to get in. Just tell him you work for me, Del Montgomery, and he’ll show you where to go. I’ll be there for a half-hour, then I’m gonna load up and leave. If you’re here by then I’ll take you.”
He turned and walked away. He dragged his left leg a little and it seemed like it was painful for him to walk. He made his way out of the parking lot, then across the street and through an entrance gate where the security guard stood in a small shack. When I saw where he went I ran back to my house. I left a note for my dad, changed my clothes, rolled up my sleeping bag, and tied it with a piece of rope. I put the five dollars in a plastic bag and folded the bag as small as I could and put it in my shoe and left.
Del was sitting by himself at a table in the caf drinking a beer and eating eggs and bacon. The restaurant was like a shack almost, but I liked the way it looked. It was rundown and old, and there were pictures of horses on the wall, and a couple of TVs going and two video games in the corner. The floor dipped and raised and the linoleum on it was worn and covered with duct tape in places.
I walked over to him and set my sleeping bag on the ground.
“Have you eaten?” he said through a mouth full of food. There was ketchup on his chin and some had fallen on his shirt.
“No,” I told him.
“Can you eat in a hurry?”
I told him I could and he said there was a woman behind the counter named Mora and to order from her and have her put it on his tab. I went to the counter and a lady came from the kitchen. I asked her if she was Mora and she said she was so I ordered a ham and cheese omelet. She wrote it down and told me I owed her six-fifty.
“Del said to put it on his tab.”
“Del said that?” the woman said.
“He did,” I told her and then I looked out across the room and pointed to him. “He’s right over there by the TV.”
“I know who he is,” the woman said. “He doesn’t have a tab. I won’t give him a tab.”
I didn’t say anything.
“He didn’t tell you that he doesn’t have a tab?”
“No,” I said. “He just told me to come up here.”
“It’s six dollars and fifty cents. Do you still want the breakfast?”
“I only have five dollars. I just started working for him today.”
“You only have five dollars?”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head and looked over at Del. “Give to it to me, but remember this is the first and last time.”
I nodded and bent down and took off my shoe and reached in and got the plastic bag.
“Here,” I said and handed her the money.
She took it and put it in the till.
I went back to Del. He was watching a horse race on TV and drinking beer.
“You order something?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He nodded, then a race started on TV and he began yelling at it. He seemed pretty upset while it was going and more upset after it was over so I didn’t say anything to him about not having a tab or about how the lady made me pay. I should have left right then, but I was flat broke. So I just sat down and waited until my food came up.
Del’s truck was a white
1975
Ford pickup and it was parked in the dirt lot across from the backside. There was a blanket duct taped to the bench seat and there were rust holes in the floor. You could see the ground below. The windshield was cracked in three places and it only had an AM radio, but other than that the truck was okay. He started it and moved it in front of a trailer and we got out and hooked it up. The trailer wasn’t much either. Just a faded white old rusty stock trailer with two wheels on each side.
He drove up to the front gate and the old-man guard let us in. We went past a couple buildings and then Del parked and we got out and walked down a long shedrow barn where dozens and dozens of horses stood waiting in stalls. The whole building looked like it was leaning to the right. It was dilapidated. The paint was cracked and faded and there was mud everywhere. The stalls themselves were brick on three sides. The brick was painted white, but covered in dust and mud. The gates that held the horses in were metal and most were bent and rusty. A single naked light bulb hung in the center of each stall. There was hardly any natural light shining through at all. It seemed like a prison, a foreign prison in an old movie. There were maybe fifty horses waiting in that single row and Del said there were twenty to twenty-five more rows that had just as many. He said there were almost a thousand horses there.
He came to the end of the row and stopped.
“These two,” he said and pointed at two horses that were in stalls next to each other. He opened the gate and went inside and put a halter on the first horse and led him out.
“This is Tumbling Through,” he said. “He’s a biter. If he goes for you, just hit him on the nose and he’ll quit.” He handed me the lead rope and told me to walk him down the row and wait for him by the truck.
“And don’t let him stop on you. If he wants to stop just give him a quick pull. And watch your feet, don’t let him step on you. And if he tries to pull away from you give a hard pull on the rope and he’ll stop. And remember, he’ll bite the hell out of you. And don’t let go. Okay?”
I nodded and took the rope and Del disappeared into another stall. I wrapped the rope around my hand and started going, but the whole thing made me uneasy. Tumbling Through was huge and dark brown in color. I led him out alright and stood there by the horse trailer and I tried my best to keep him from dragging me around. He didn’t try to bite me, though. Five minutes later Del came out with another horse.
“Never wrap the rope around your hand unless you want to lose your hand.” He spit on the ground.
I nodded and unwrapped the rope.
“This is Lean on Pete.”
The horse was black with a small white mark on his face. Del led him to where I was standing and took Tumbling Through from me and told me how to unlock the trailer door and I did. Then I held Tumbling Through while he loaded Lean on Pete. Pete went in easy and calm, but Tumbling Through took a long time to load and you could tell he was nervous. When Del finally got him in and closed the back door we got in the truck and drove to the gate. Del signed out with the old guard, and then we got on the highway. We left the windows down and he spit chew into an old soda cup and left the radio off. We didn’t talk. He just sat there hunched over and steered with his good hand and used his cast hand to shift gears. I tried hard not to fall asleep but I always fall asleep in cars and we weren’t even ten miles out of Portland when I conked out. I stayed that way until he got off the highway and put us on a small two-lane road somewhere in Washington.
“You ain’t much company,” he said when he saw that I was awake.
“I have a hard time staying awake in a moving car,” I told him.
“No shit,” he said.
He had a beer between his legs.
“How much farther?”
“Maybe an hour,” he said.
“Hey, Del, how old are these horses?”
“Tumbling Through is two,” he said. “He’s green but he can run. Lean on Pete’s five. He’s a piece of shit but he’s good enough for this.”
“What kind of horses are they?”
“Quarter horses,” he said, and then he began coughing and he coughed for a long time so I quit talking and looked out the window. We were out in the middle of nowhere. We passed miles of sagebrush and rocks and hills. Then farms and ranches slowly started to appear. Del turned off on a dirt road and drove down that for almost a mile before we came to a stop. There was nothing around us at all. You couldn’t even see the main road.
“We’ll get Lean on Pete out first,” he said and opened the truck door. He stepped out with his beer, finished it, and threw the can out into the desert. I followed him to the trailer and opened the back door.
He climbed inside, grabbed Lean on Pete by the halter, and led him around and out. He tied him to the side of the trailer and told me to stay with him. The horse nudged me with his head and I began to pet him. When I did he kept his head still and didn’t move. He was like a dog almost. When I’d stop he’d look at me, as if he was startled, and his eyes would look right at mine so I’d go back to petting him and he’d get still again.
Del came back with an old leather travel bag. He set it down on the hood of the truck and took a fifth of vodka from the bag, then a long needle with a huge bottle and plunger. I watched as he filled the bottle with the entire fifth and injected it into Lean on Pete.
“Why do you do that?” I asked him.
“It makes him focus,” he said.
Del was sweating and you could tell he was in pain just doing that much work. He threw the vodka bottle into the brush and took a small syringe and a glass medicine bottle. He put the needle into the bottle and filled it with liquid, then injected it into the horse’s front hooves.