The Car Read online

  He moved Waylon easily toward the door, the whole mess hall watching, Terry following. Just as they were at the door, Peter said softly, “I am sorry for you.”

  Waylon stopped, his back stiffened, but Wayne nudged him and he went through the door and out of the building to the waiting Cat.

  Terry fired the engine, wrapped it up twice to get the noise, heard Wayne do the same with Baby, and they left.

  Waylon said nothing, sat in silence for a good ten miles, all the way back onto the highway, and remained quiet until Terry leaned over.

  “You all right?”

  Waylon jumped, startled. “What?”

  “You all right?”

  “Sure. Why shouldn’t I be all right?”

  “It was just all that, back at the commune. You seemed really upset.”

  “It’s slavery. They keep those women and girls like slaves, servants. Weren’t you upset?”

  Terry thought a minute. “Well, no. I didn’t think of it.”

  “Next time”—Waylon looked at him, the wind ruffling the hair around his bald spot, watched Terry for a long time, until Terry was uncomfortable—“think of it.”

  “I will,” Terry said. “I mean, I’ll try.”

  “Good. Now let’s go see Deadwood.”

  19

  IT STARTED TO RAIN as they came to the outskirts of Deadwood. They had run all day from the commune in good weather but after dark, clouds started to form in small clumps, and by ten o’clock there was lightning hitting trees along the road, and it started to sprinkle as they drove through the pine forests approaching Deadwood.

  Outside of the town proper—which Terry found to be small and busy—Waylon pointed to a small motel sign that said Piney Wood Inn. Phones.

  “There. Pull in there.”

  “A motel?”

  “Yes. It’s going to pour like hell and we don’t want to camp.”

  “But won’t it cost a lot of money?”

  “I’ll pay.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I have some money, too. I just meant that, well, you know, isn’t part of trucking to not spend much money?” Terry pulled into the motel and stopped in front of a small door next to a sign that said Office.

  Waylon laughed. “That’s how it seemed—none of us had any. Except for Wayne.”

  “Wayne had money?”

  “His repair check. Got it every month. Still does.”

  “Repair check?”

  “They blew him up a little,” Waylon said. “In Vietnam. Parts of him don’t work.”

  Terry watched Wayne pull the Harley up and reach back for a poncho, which he had already removed from his duffel bag. He looked so healthy, so tough.

  “What parts?”

  “That,” Waylon said, climbing out of the car, “is something you don’t ask.”

  “Oh.”

  “Cover the cab—it’s going to fill.” Waylon disappeared into the motel office and Terry scrambled to get the plastic tarp over the cab just as it started to pour. He crouched beneath the tarp and peeked out to see Wayne standing at the side of Baby, holding his poncho out to cover the bike seat as he would hold it to protect a friend.

  Waylon came out in a minute, dangling a key. “Room twenty-six. Follow me.”

  He walked down the row of small bungalows until he came to the right one, and Terry and Wayne followed with the car and bike. At twenty-six, Waylon opened the door and went in. Terry pulled up and jumped out, covered the cab with the tarp and pulled it into place with bungee cords, and ran for the door just as Wayne got there without his poncho on. He had used it to cover Baby.

  The rain roared down by this time and they left the door open to watch it for a time. It was eleven o’clock and Terry was exhausted and thinking of how they would sleep. There was only one bed in the room.

  “We’ll draw straws for it,” Waylon said, noting Terry’s interest. “Losers sleep on the floor. When we get back.”

  “Back? Where are we going?”

  “To show you Deadwood.”

  “It’s nearly midnight.”

  “Exactly.” Wayne laughed. “Exactly. Like Deadwood doesn’t come alive until midnight, and then it never sleeps.”

  We may go, Terry thought, but I won’t see anything.

  They made quick trips to the Cat and brought their gear inside. Waylon put the guitar on the bed, with the case open, and then went to the phone and dialed a number.

  “Yes. Please send a cab to room twenty-six of the Piney Wood Inn.” He hung up.

  “A cab?”

  “It’s raining. We don’t want to walk. Besides, we need information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “We have to find a game.”

  “Game?”

  “Poker.”

  “That’s what Deadwood is all about,” Wayne added. “It’s bikers in the summer and poker all the time.”

  “You gamble?” Terry leaned against the door.

  “No.” Waylon shook his head. “I play poker. There’s a big difference. Poker is skill, not gambling. There are legal games here in poker parlors that we could go to, but you’re too young to get in so we have to find a private game. Cab drivers know everything. . . . Ahh, and here he is.”

  They scooted from the bungalow door to the cab and piled in.

  “Where to?” The cabbie was thin, wiry. He had a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth and the inside of the cab smelled like a mixture of stale smoke and week-old vomit. Terry cracked the window.

  “Looking for a hold-’em game,” Waylon said.

  “You came to the right place.” The cabbie snorted. “Hell, that’s all we got here is poker parlors—’less you’re looking for the other thing.”

  “No. A game. But it has to be a side game. They won’t let the kid in a parlor—he’s too young.”

  The cabbie smiled. “I know just the place.”

  “And safe. I don’t want somebody jumping us when we get there.”

  Terry grinned and turned to look out the window. God help anybody, he thought, who jumped Waylon.

  “It’s run by an old woman named Annie,” the cabbie said. “She’s eighty-four and keeps a little automatic in her purse in her lap. It’s a very safe game. . . .”

  “What kind of limit?”

  “No limit—table stakes.”

  “That sounds right.” Waylon nodded. “Take us away.”

  The cabbie drove exactly three blocks, turned right, and stopped in front of a log cabin that had seen better days. It was stuck in among some brush and other newer buildings and was so small Terry didn’t see how there could be anything inside but a cot or a table. The windows were covered with plywood.

  The cabbie opened the door for them and they stepped into a room so brightly lit it hurt Terry’s eyes and he had to close them for a moment.

  There were five men and a woman sitting at a green table in the middle of the one-room cabin. At least half the men were smoking, but the room was clear of smoke and Terry saw and heard the reason as they came in. Set off in a corner on a two-by-four stand was a huge air cleaner, whirring and hissing away.

  Facing the door was Annie. She was playing but looked up and smiled when they came in the door.

  “Room for two,” she said.

  Wayne shook his head. “I’m not a player. Too damn dumb—all I do is lose.”

  “So much the better.”

  Terry had trouble not staring at Annie. She was old, like the cabbie said, with wrinkles and gray hair, but she was still pretty in some way he couldn’t understand. Her hair was long and full and braided neatly down her back and her cheekbones were high with tipped-up green eyes that looked full of humor and something else as well—something that made Terry think of girls he knew in school, pictures he had seen, movies about love.

  “Is it all right for the kid to watch?” Waylon moved around the table next to Annie and took an empty chair. “I’m trying to teach him the finer things in life.”

  An
nie nodded. “They’ve got to learn, don’t they?”

  “How about the rest of you guys?” Waylon asked.

  “I said it was all right,” Annie answered. “That makes it all right with everybody—don’t it, boys?”

  The men, a mixture of young and middle-aged, one old, almost all overweight, nodded and smiled up at Terry.

  Wayne moved to a box in the corner and sat down facing the door, lowered his head, and as near as Terry could tell was instantly asleep.

  “We’re playing hold-’em,” Annie said. “Straight Texas hold-’em, high-low split. You know the game?”

  Waylon nodded. “What’s the buy-in?”

  “Three hundred minimum, but most are buying in for five or better.”

  “Give me a grand.”

  Waylon took a wad of hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket and Terry stared openly. He somehow had thought of Waylon as broke, or not really very rich. There were at least sixty, seventy hundred-dollar bills in the wad—six or seven thousand dollars.

  Waylon peeled ten of them off and handed them to Annie, who pushed several stacks of chips over to sit in front of Waylon.

  “No limit,” Annie said. “Even on first bet. You can’t check and raise. Other than that, straight poker. Ante is a dollar. House rakes five dollars a pot. Any questions?”

  Waylon shook his head and Annie picked up the cards, shuffled them professionally, the cards flying together. She dealt each player two cards, face down, then set the deck down and took two chips out of the ante in the middle and put them on top of the deck.

  “Open deck,” she said. “You bet.” She pointed at Waylon, who was sitting to her left.

  Waylon looked at his cards without taking them off the table, cupping one hand and using the other to curl the edges up slightly to see what they were. Terry couldn’t see them at all, nor could any of the others at the table.

  “Pull up a box,” Annie said to Terry, smiling. “And watch your daddy win.”

  “Uncle,” Waylon said. “I’m his uncle. His father is . . . gone.”

  “Ahh. These things happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your bet?”

  “Fifty dollars.” Waylon pulled five ten-dollar chips off his stack and put them in the pot. Some of the men called—matched it—some threw their hands in. When it came around to the man sitting on Annie’s right—a heavy-set man with a red face, smoking a cigar that one of the other men had called a dog turd—the man added ten more chips.

  “Raise a hundred.”

  Annie threw her hand in and it came to Waylon. He stared at the pot, his eyes glazed a bit, then nodded. “I’ll raise. Your hundred and four more.”

  Terry swallowed. Waylon hadn’t been sitting at the table for six minutes and he had over five hundred dollars in the pot. And they’d only been dealt two cards each.

  This heavier bet made all the men fold until it came back around to the red-faced man.

  He sat, staring at the pot, his eyes glazed as Waylon’s had been. A beat, two, a full thirty seconds.

  Then he threw his hand in and sighed. “Take it.”

  Terry realized he’d been holding his breath and he took a lungful of air. Waylon raked the pot and Annie handed him the deck.

  “You won it all—high and low—pot, money, everything. . . .”

  “You were buying it,” the red-faced man said, his eyes on the edge of hard. “Bluffing.”

  “You could have called it.” Waylon shrugged. “Four hundred and you could have seen the cards.”

  “Next time.”

  “Fine.”

  Terry had no true idea of what had happened except that Waylon had bet five hundred and fifty dollars on two cards and won because nobody else would call his bet.

  This time Waylon dealt, the same game, and for a change the hand played out. He dealt two cards face down to each player, the man to his left bet twenty dollars, everybody called—Waylon didn’t raise—then he dealt three cards face up in the middle of the table and everybody looked at their hole cards again.

  Annie sighed and threw her hand in. “Bad flop,” she said. “You guys play. I’m out of this one.” She turned to Terry. “You know how to play?”

  He shook his head. “I know a little about poker, what the cards mean. But not this.”

  “This is poker. You get two cards down, then three up, then one more up, and one more up. Everybody plays their two cards and the five cards in the middle as part of their hand. It’s really straight seven-card stud except we all use those cards.”

  “And high-low,” added a man across the table, tall, thin, wearing a down vest though the temperature had to be over ninety in the room. “The split.”

  “Oh. Yes. The highest and lowest hand split the pot. That makes the betting a little looser.”

  Terry nodded but he still didn’t understand it—just snatches. He was drawn back to the pot. The first three cards face up in the middle had triggered betting and the pile of chips grew rapidly until he guessed there was close to two thousand dollars in the pot.

  Waylon dealt another card face up.

  Everybody bet again, except that this time when it came back around to Waylon, he stacked all his money in. “I’ll raise three hundred more and I’m all in.”

  Other people called, added money until the pot was close to four thousand dollars.

  They had to declare if they were going high or low. Everybody went high except Waylon and the man with the red face, who both went low.

  Terry looked at the cards in the middle of the table.

  There was an ace, a five, a three, a king, and a queen.

  The high hand was won by the thin man with the down vest. The red-faced man turned his hand up.

  “I have a six, four.”

  Waylon said nothing but turned his cards over. He was holding a deuce and a four, which gave him a lower hand than the other.

  “You get half the pot,” Annie said. She raked the whole pot and started to stack the chips in two even piles, one for the high winner, the other for Waylon.

  “You should have bet the hand.” The red-faced man’s voice was brittle.

  “I did.” Waylon shrugged. “All I had.”

  “Next time buy more chips.”

  Waylon said nothing, but out of the corner of his eye Terry noticed that Wayne had come awake. There was no movement. His eyes merely opened, stayed open, and didn’t miss anything that went on in the room. It was like a cat watching something it was going to pounce on.

  “I won’t need to,” Waylon said. “I just won all these.” And again that quiet sound in his voice, that still menace that had happened before at the religious commune. Wayne moved behind them. Moved his shoulders.

  “Three seconds,” Annie said.

  “What?” Waylon said to her but kept his eyes across the table, watching as Wayne watched.

  “Three seconds are up. We get into these little tiffs now and then, over poker. But you’re only allowed three seconds. Burk knows that, don’t you, Burk?”

  The red-faced man looked at Annie and then back to Waylon and slowly nodded. “Maybe later?”

  “Whatever.” Waylon turned to Annie. “Good rule—the three-second rule.”

  “I thought so. It saves trouble.”

  The man on Waylon’s left scraped up the cards and shuffled and began to deal the next hand. Terry watched Wayne close his eyes again and apparently drop into deep sleep, and he turned back to the game.

  He knew some of poker—what beat what, a pair is beat by two pair, two pair by three of a kind, what a straight was (five consecutively numbered cards) and a flush (five cards in one suit). But this game was more complicated. It wasn’t just the best hand, it was the best and the lowest at the same time, so even if there wasn’t a good high hand they might be betting on their low hand.

  The betting was wild. Soon a hundred, two hundred became the minimum bet, and Terry saw several pots that had six or eight thousand dollars in them. Waylon didn’t
win them all, didn’t play each hand. Often he threw his hand in with bad cards. But when he did stay in a hand, he bet heavily, always raising, and while sometimes he lost, more often he won. He played every hand with the same look on his face, staring blankly at the center of the table, his eyes seemingly glazed while he bet or waited for somebody else to bet.

  But none of it—the playing, Waylon, the long day, the problems that morning at the religious commune, Wayne sitting like a dozing pit bull in the corner on a box, the tension in the room as Waylon won more and more (he soon had over ten thousand dollars in chips in front of him)—in a little while none of it was enough. Terry was too tired, too pulled out by the day, and he lowered his head on his chest and fell asleep, sound asleep, gone. . . .

  20

  HE PLACE-SHIFTED in his sleep. It wasn’t dreaming, exactly—more a belief that he was in some other place, at another time.

  He was with his parents. They were on a trip (something they had never done) and they weren’t fighting (also something they rarely had done, to not fight), and they had stopped at a small motel where his father went inside a room and came out with bundles of money wadded up in his hands, a big smile on his face. . . .

  Terry awakened.

  He was in the bed in the motel room. Sunlight was streaming in the windows. Between him and the door, Waylon and Wayne were sleeping on the floor, not in but on their bags, their breath coming evenly.

  Terry propped up on one elbow and looked at the two men. They were sleeping soundly, Wayne flat on his back, his mouth open, snoring softly. Waylon was half on his side, facing Terry.

  Terry frowned. They looked so . . . so old. Waylon was nearly bald, starting to wrinkle, and Wayne had the beginnings of loose flesh under his chin that came with age, the way Terry’s grandparents on his father’s side had looked before they passed away. He had never met the grandparents on his mother’s side. Two old men, sleeping on the floor of the motel room, two old—what was it Wayne had said?—dangerous men. Two old, very dangerous men. The thing that happened with Waylon, his eyes, when he became still and flat sounding—like a cobra. And Wayne sitting there on the box, coming awake like that, just because of the sound of a man’s voice.

  They had done things before. Together. Done very hard things, and a part of Terry wanted to know what it was they did and another part wanted to not ever know.