I started stuffing the bills back in the jar but dropped a shitload of ones all over everywhere. Scooped it all up, jammed the jar in my backpack and zipped it, trying to be quiet. I leaned over and tried looking under the stall but couldn’t see any feet.
“Whatsamatter, you mad at me honey? I didn’t mean nothing. Just wanting to have fun with you is all. You look like you need to have you a little fun.”
Not wrong. This was not it. I could hear her shoes clacking around. Nothing to do but sit tight. Enough of God’s truckers in this world were needing to piss, surely one of them would get in here and run her off. But he was taking his damn time.
And then holy fucking shit she was looking down on me. Over the top of the stall.
I bolted. The shape she was in, it would take her a minute to get down from her perch or with any luck, fall in. I was out of the restroom and almost to the entrance before the screaming started: Damn you little asshole give me back my money help police help me I been robbed!
I got outside but my shirt was grabbed and I was pulled back in. The stink-eye cashier. A lot younger than Willie, stronger than he looked. He shoved me against a rack of magazines and asked where I thought I was going. I said outside. The lady was whooping and hollering about how I stole her money. He asked if we knew each other, and she said she’d never seen me before.
He eyed me up and down. She was doing the same, getting her first good look, probably surprised to learn she’d been chasing something in the line of grade-school cock.
“Do we need to call somebody, son? Or are you going to give this lady her money?”
“For Christ’s sakes,” I said. “It’s my goddamn money.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “And your foul mouth isn’t helping you any.”
“Sorry. But it’s my money.”
The guy rolled his eyes. I was hugging my backpack in both arms like every friend I didn’t have. He would have to kill me for it.
He looked around at the gang of late-night shoppers watching the show. “Did any of y’all see this boy mugging my customer?”
Nobody said a word. They got interested in the snacks or souvenir bottle openers at hand. His so-called customer was now in a righteous old-lady snit, giving a fair impression of sober. Somewhere between outside and now, she’d pulled on this pink housedress or shirt type thing that made her look like somebody’s mammaw with a bad hand for makeup. She must have been living out of the giant purse. She buttoned her top button and sniveled. “It’s my pin money I been saving up that I keep in a peanut butter jar. This here little boy grabbed the jar out of my purse.”
This here little boy that one minute ago you wanted to party with, I thought. And not a person here was going to believe me. Because under the bright lights, this crap-jacked world is what it is and we were what we were: a grown-up and a kid.
“You were watching me like a damn hawk,” I told the cash register guy. “You saw me go in the men’s, and if you’ve got any eyes you saw her go in the men’s. She followed me in there trying to talk me into a . . .”
“That’s enough of that,” he said, holding up his big knuckly hand. I was terrified he would put it over my mouth. Because I knew what I would do.
“Just look in his backpack thing,” she said. “See if he’s got my jar in there.” Higher and mightier than you’d think possible for a truck-stop hooker. How could this guy not recognize her, if she was a regular? But what did I know. Maybe they shopped around.
“A Jiffy peanut butter jar,” she said. “Full of dimes and quarters.”
Holy shit. She didn’t even know about the bills. She must have seen it under the door while all the real cash was on my lap.
“Ask her how much money was in there,” I said. “If she gets it right, she can have it.”
That got her wailing. “I don’t know, I don’t know! It’s all my spare change I been saving up forever, how am I supposed to know how much it is?”
Customers were now shuffling over to the register.
“Nobody thinks you’re funny, kid. Give the lady her money and I’ll let you go.”
“It’s my money. Sir. She came in the bathroom and saw me with it, and now she’s scamming you, trying to get it away from me.”
I tried staring him down. He crossed his arms, shook his head, all the signs of “We’re done here and you are screwed.” I considered bolting out the door, running away into the dark. I was faster than anybody here. And he’d get the cops out on me for sure.
“Do I need to call your parents?” he asked.
I laughed. “Good luck with that.”
He didn’t get the joke. “Can I see some form of identification?”
“Form of identification like what?” I asked, and he named some things, driver’s license, school ID, nothing I had or ever did have. It dawned on me that I could get run over flat on the highway out there, and nobody would know or care what to call the carcass. Roadkill.
By this time the whole place is on edge, crazy lady caterwauling, people shifting around in the checkout line, and Willie throws a sucker punch that doubles me over. Grabs my backpack. Professional-quality moves. I can’t even catch my breath before he’s pulled out the jar and is asking all high-handed, “What do you call this, you little fucker?” Shaking it in my face like now he’s got me ha-ha, while the rage blows up in my gut, and the hooker bitch is all, I told you! Only she’s wide-eyed, seeing we are talking money plural, major bucks. Her shrieking goes sky-high. Singing her happy song of getting shitfaced for the foreseeable month of Sundays.
It doesn’t even seem real, seeing this guy put my money in her hands. With all those people watching, not one soul on my side. Nothing to do but punch the magazine rack so hard it crashes over, spilling free brochures all over the fucking welcome mat. Where the screaming is coming from, who knows, it doesn’t feel like me telling this guy he’s a Nazi and I worked all year at my job for that cash so he could give it to a lying fucked-up whore. Telling her off too, getting up in her little wrecked face, telling her to go buy herself a fucking overdose.
I did that. With all the hate in my heart, I told her to go ahead and die like my mom did. Go have a party and get rid of her ugly self all alone behind a dumpster.
I walked out the door. It opened for me, and closed behind me.
My heart was pounding so hard I felt it in my eyes. I walked past the pumps where travelers in a haze of fumes were gassing up their cars. Past the big lot where the tractor trailers idled in their sleep, waiting out this godforsaken night. Shadows of people hung around the trucks, cutting their bargains. Part of me was waiting for somebody to come after me saying this hell is not real and you are not this person. It’s a mistake.
That’s how I left Virginia, walking down the shoulder of 26 with my thumb out, headed towards my grandmother with the exact
same naked-ass nothing I’d had the first and last time she saw me.
25
My words came around to haunt me. Before another night passed, I’d be hunkered in the dark between a dumpster and the back of a gas station, wondering would I die there by morning.
I got shed of that hell-hole truck stop in a hurry, picked up by a long-hauler with a fist of skoal in his cheek and nothing to discuss. His radio was all Garth and Reba, fine, just no Willie please. I was wiped out from what had happened, so I told him I was Tennessee bound and then I guess fell asleep. Mistake. Tennessee turns out to be something ridiculous like four hundred miles long. We covered over half that before I woke up to see the sun rising over these skyscrapers like a freaking movie. One building had horns like Hellboy, I’m not even kidding.
Nashville, says the driver, and I’m like, Mother fuck, mister, Nashville? Simple as that. How I got farther away from Murder Valley than I’d ever been in my life so far.
