Don't Skip Out on Me Read online

  ‘Who wouldn’t be?’ Ander said.

  ‘What do I do now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ander softly. He wiped his eyes with a napkin and took a drink of wine. ‘But he’s tough. I bet he’s alright.’ Ander tried to smile. ‘“Mr Zubiri”,’ the old man said, trying to talk like Horace. ‘“You have to build the bricks that build the boat. And the boat will protect you and bring you to the next level. And each level will take you closer until you’re your own champion. Until you’re the best.” Building the Champion Inside of You: Believe, Overcome, Aspire, Triumph – B.O.A.T.’

  Mr Reese smiled. ‘For a drunk, you have a good memory.’

  ‘I lived with him for a fucking month in the mountains. All he talked about was that book he found at his grandmother’s. I think he must have been sixteen or seventeen.’

  Mr Reese nodded.

  ‘How can you build a boat out of bricks? That’s what I never understood. But I have to say, it sorta inspired me. It’s how I decided to finally quit working and have some fun. Being up there with that kid, I started lying awake at night thinking about my future. Thinking about who I wanted to be.’ Ander laughed and finished his wine. He called to the waitress, and she got up off her stool and went to the bar and got him another glass.

  Mr Reese knocked the ash from his cigarette onto his breakfast plate. ‘I read it ’cause he asked me to. I guess it says some good things, but it’s just a self-published book from some guy in Florida.’

  Ander laughed. ‘Horace will be alright. He’s a good kid.’

  Mr Reese nodded. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I liked his grandmother. She was mean but she sure was good in the sack. I went over there a half-dozen times with a bottle of gin and …’

  ‘Jesus, if I have to hear about you and her, I’ll throw up.’ Mr Reese put his hat on. ‘And since you won, you’re buying.’

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘I got things to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Mr Reese knocked on the table lightly with his knuckles. ‘Cattle, huh?’

  Ander laughed.

  ‘Have fun golfing.’

  Ander nodded and refocused his eyes on the keno screen, where new numbers were appearing. Mr Reese put on his coat and left.

  He drove to the Super 7 gas station, filled his tank, then parked in front of the Clubhouse Saloon and walked up the street. He looked in the window of the A-Bar-L Western Store, but it was closed. He walked to the next block and picked up his mail from the post office. He thumbed through it, finding nothing but catalogues and a single bill. He threw away the tack and livestock catalogues, rolled up Mrs Reese’s catalogues and put them in his coat pocket.

  He walked farther up, past Western Auto, and crossed the street. He stopped at Nevada State Bank and used the ATM to check the balances in their checking and savings accounts. He continued on. He looked in the window of Whitney’s Bookshelf, but it too was closed. In Wolfe’s Hardware he paced up and down the aisles, but there was nothing he could think of to buy.

  Outside the sun was breaking and he walked back across the street, got into his truck and drove to Scolari’s grocery store. He got a cart and did the shopping, and then went to the pharmacy and got refills on their medications. He put the groceries in the toolbox in the back of the pickup. It was eight forty-five in the morning and he had nothing to do.

  25

  Horace bought a small TV and a sleeping bag from Goodwill, but nothing else for his new apartment. He spent his days aimlessly drifting about the city, walking through the maze of casinos. With his arm in a cast, the patch over his eye and his ribs still hurt, he walked the entire Las Vegas Strip. He went in and out of Circus Circus, Encore, Caesars, Wynn, Treasure Island, The Palazzo, The Venetian, Flamingo, New York-New York, MGM Grand, The Mirage, Harrah’s, O’Sheas, Bally’s, Paris Las Vegas, Tuscany Suites and Silver Sevens. Thousands and thousands of people in the flashy and extravagant buildings. Rivers of people everywhere but none of them he related to, and in that regard he was completely alone.

  When he got back to his room each evening, he crawled into bed, paralyzed with anxiety and shame. Why did he have to tell Mr Reese everything? Why couldn’t he have just kept to himself that he wanted to be Mexican and wanted to be a world champion boxer? The nights crawled by. Hours seemed like days. He would get lost in thoughts of Mr and Mrs Reese, the ranch and the horses and dogs, and when he did his stomach would give out and he would feel like he was falling. He wanted more than anything to go back to them, to the comfort of them, but always something inside forced him not to.

  One evening, as he walked toward a casino for dinner, he saw an ad on a telephone pole for day labour. He took the flyer with him and ate at a casino coffee shop. When the waitress wasn’t looking, he stole a steak knife and put it in his coat pocket. Back at his apartment, even though his hand was still too weak and not fully healed, he cut the cast off his arm with the knife. In the bathroom he took the patch and bandage off his eye, to find he could see only streaks of light. His eye looked normal but the doctor had been right: his vision was ruined.

  The next morning Horace got up at five and walked two miles in the desert cold to the state day-labour office, a small, nondescript, cream-coloured building near the highway. Dozens of men and a handful of women stood in a plain, square room and took numbers from a machine in the corner. When Horace’s number came up, he was helped by a short Mexican lady behind a counter. She found him a week-long job doing clean-up on a construction site in North Las Vegas. She handed him a slip of paper to give to the site boss and told him he could get a ride with a man named Felix, who stood in the corner of the room holding an unlit cigarette.

  Felix, a thin, bald black man, had a rusted-out white Econoline van with Michigan plates. He drove Horace and two Mexican men to the site, where they met the boss. The boss took the Mexicans to a corner of the building and had them sweep the concrete floor. Felix and Horace were told to clean up the scraps and debris that littered the job site. They moved broken and discarded cinder blocks, scraps of wood and metal and pieces of Sheetrock to an industrial-sized dumpster.

  Throughout the day, Felix worked lethargically and spent long breaks in a Sani-Hut. When he thought Horace was working too hard, he’d say, ‘Slow down, motherfucker’ or, ‘Relax.’ ‘The point of these jobs,’ he said finally, ‘is to go just enough to get paid and not a bit harder. If you work hard then I’ll have to work hard, and there ain’t no point to that. These assholes make twice as much as we do. Let them bust their ass and kill themselves for the dough –we’re sure as hell not gonna.’

  Horace forced himself to slow down, even though he hated to and it made the day grind by even slower. At quitting time, the supervisor gave each of the men a $65 check, and Felix drove them to a liquor store that would cash them. Felix bought a twelve-pack of beer and a pint of gin and Horace bought a litre of Coke, and they went their separate ways.

  The next morning, Felix picked up Horace and two different men at the labour office and drove them to the same site. They worked like that for three days, until Friday, when Felix didn’t show up and Horace had to walk the three miles to the job site on his own.

  On the weekend, Horace barely left his bed. He watched TV and ordered a pizza from Domino’s on both Saturday and Sunday. There were moments when he’d almost run out the door to get a bus ticket home, but he never did. He just laid on the bed, watching TV, his mind racing and falling apart. He was stuck.

  On Monday, he got a swing-shift job with two men at a warehouse in South Las Vegas. One of the men, Stew, had a car, a mid-80s yellow Chevy Cavalier, and drove them. The car had been hit from behind and the trunk was dented and bent. The signal cases were broken and covered in red plastic and held on with duct tape. Stew was white and middle-aged with a small, flat nose and eyes that were set too far apart. He had a smoker’s skin and a moustache yellowed from tobacco. Each day he wore faded black pants, a denim coat and a green Fitzgeralds Casin
o baseball cap. The other man, Gene, was lanky and hollow-faced with rotten teeth and greased-back black hair. Each day he wore stained work overalls and a shiny gold coat that read Gold Dust West in black ink. They worked together five days straight. The last shift of the week ended at ten o’clock Friday night. As he did each evening, Stew drove them to the same liquor store Felix had to cash their checks.

  ‘So what are you doing now, Horace?’ Stew asked as they got out of the car.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ replied Horace. His black hair had begun to grow out and his face looked gaunt. He was having a harder and harder time sleeping and he had begun to lose weight. He figured he slept three hours a night, mostly in twenty-minute fits and starts. And food seemed to mean less and less to him as the days passed. Where he used to crave lunch and eat early, he would now forget to eat at all.

  ‘It’s Friday night,’ Stew said, and smiled.

  Horace just nodded.

  ‘We’re having a little party at my place. Why don’t you use some of that check and get a bottle, and then you can come over too.’

  Horace looked at them. He didn’t like either of the men – they didn’t work hard and Stew had stolen a shovel and a pair of gloves, and like Felix they both spent long periods of time in the bathroom when they were supposed to be working. But the idea of going back to his apartment alone seemed worse than spending time with them. ‘Alright,’ he said weakly.

  Stew clapped his hands together and smiled. ‘Well, okay! You get a fifth of Old Crow and a twelve-pack of Keystone and you’re in.’

  Horace nodded and they went inside. He cashed his check and bought the whiskey and beer. Stew cashed his and bought a twelve-pack and cigarettes. Gene bought three packages of Skittles and another twelve-pack.

  They drove to the El Cortez Casino, parked in the lot. Stew seemed to be waiting for someone. He left the engine running and Gene got in the back seat with Horace. They all began drinking beer. After twenty minutes, a Native American woman with long black hair came from the casino and got in the passenger seat. She wore fake-fur-lined boots, blue sweatpants and a black-and-orange Giants baseball jacket.

  ‘How long did you think we were going to wait?’ said Stew.

  ‘I got out here as soon as you texted me,’ she said.

  ‘My ass you did,’ Stew said.

  ‘I did!’ the woman cried.

  ‘And you’re already shitfaced.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘I can tell.’ Stew coughed, looked in the rear-view and lit a cigarette. ‘Horace, this here is War Hoop.’

  The woman sighed as he said it, he laughed, and they left. He drove them two miles and parked in front of a single-storey 1960s tract house. There were two Cavaliers parked in the carport. Both were on blocks, with no tires. The house itself was dark and only a single street lamp gave off any light.

  A plastic flashlight sat on a cardboard box near the front door. Stew turned it on, took the house key from his pocket and opened the door, and they walked into a dark living room. He went to a lamp and turned it on. There were two couches facing an old TV. There were stacks of cardboard boxes in the corner and a table covered with empty beer cans and two ashtrays full of cigarette butts. Stew turned on an electric space heater and stood near it. The window behind him had a broken pane and a series of orange extension cords ran through it, leading outside.

  ‘Horace, what you’re looking at is my breaker box. The next-door neighbour goes out of town for months at a time. I keep an eye on his house for him and make sure nothing funny goes on. In return he gives me free electric.’ He pulled Horace’s twelve-pack from the bag, took three beers from it and handed one to the woman, one to Gene and one to Horace. He then grabbed one for himself and opened it. The woman went to the kitchen. She took a large pot, filled it three-quarters full of water and set it on a hot plate that ran off another extension cord. They drank two more beers each while the woman made macaroni and cheese. They ate on paper plates with plastic forks and huddled around the glow of the box heater. When they’d finished, they threw the plates in a large black sack in the middle of the room.

  ‘Now listen,’ Stew announced as he grabbed the fifth of Old Crow. ‘This here is for Horace, Gene and me. War Hoop is to keep her goddamn mitts off it.’

  ‘I don’t want that shit anyway,’ the woman said as she tried to open a pack of cigarettes. Her fingers couldn’t manage the plastic wrapper, and she dropped it on the floor and nearly fell trying to pick it up.

  ‘Watch out for her, Horace,’ Stew grinned. ‘You can’t leave a goddamn drop in this house without her slugging it down. You Indians can sure put it away.’

  The woman opened the cigarettes. She put one in her mouth and lit it. ‘I hate when you get drunk,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ said Stew.

  ‘You only call me War Hoop when you’re drunk and mean and trying to brag in front of new people.’

  Stew took the pack of cigarettes from her, lit one and shook his head. ‘If you’d listen to me for a change, you’d see I was trying to help you. Is that so goddamn hard for you to understand? You’ll be in bed for three days crying like a little girl if you start messing with this bottle.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Remember what happened last week?’

  ‘Okay!’ she yelled and looked at him. ‘I already said I won’t touch it, so leave me alone.’

  Stew let out a short laugh and opened the bottle. ‘You want any, Horace?’

  ‘I’ll have a little, I guess,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Stew said and went to the kitchen. He came back with three small glasses and poured himself, Gene and Horace a drink.

  ‘To Friday night,’ he said and they drank their shot. He poured them another and cleared his throat. ‘You know, Horace, I was a baker for thirteen years. Now I’m out of work or taking these bullshit day-labour jobs. All because of the government and the way things are. I’m telling you,there ain’t no real jobs for real Americans anymore. And I’m afraid there ain’t ever gonna be again.’

  ‘That’s a laugh,’ the woman said. ‘You hate working. You always tell me how working’s for fatheads and morons.’

  ‘I wish for once you’d shut your hole,’ Stew yelled at her. ‘Goddamn it. How many times do I have to ask you?’ He picked up the glass and looked at Gene and Horace. ‘Let’s forget about her and drink to being out of that warehouse.’

  The three men clinked their glasses together and drank the whiskey. Stew poured each of them another drink. He took a drag off his cigarette and sighed. ‘Before I was a baker, I ran a roofing crew. This was back when I was married and living in Bullhead City. Roofing in a town like that is hard work. It’s hot as a Mexican tamale down there by seven a.m. Imagine being on a roof all day in that sorta heat.’

  Stew stared at Horace as he spoke, but Horace was already drunk and his mind drifted. He tried to remember where they were, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t paid attention. Stew handed him another beer, but the whiskey and beer mixed with the macaroni and cheese felt wrong in his stomach. And even in the cold, the room smelled like piss and rotten food.

  The woman opened a bag of Skittles and hummed a tune while putting them in her mouth.

  Stew looked at her but continued talking. ‘I made a lot of money on roofs over the years. Had three trucks and two full crews. Running a crew of roofers is like being a warden in prison. You gotta be twice as tough as any of them. And you have to ride them just to get a decent day’s work out of them. You ride them hard – but not too hard, or they quit. You have to get that balance right.’

  The woman laughed.

  Stew turned to her. ‘What are you laughing at, you fatass War Hoop?’ He took an empty beer can and threw it at her. ‘Can’t three grown men have a conversation without you ruining it?’ He shook his head and took a drink of beer. He stared at the glass of whiskey for nearly a minute, drank it down and then looked at Gene. ‘Tomorrow we’ll put in the radiator. I thin
k those hoses will hold and then we’ll swap out the alternator. We’ll put her back together and damn it if we don’t have a car to sell. I bet we could make three or four hundred off her at least. And you’re sure you still have the title?’

  ‘It’s in my suitcase,’ said Gene.

  Stew nodded and leaned his head back, looked at the ceiling, and rubbed his chin. He blew out a plume of smoke and refilled his glass. ‘Boys, let’s drink to the car. Tomorrow we’ll get it running and by next week we’ll have it sold.’ The three clinked their glasses together and drank, while the woman reached into the twelve-pack, took another beer and opened it.

  ‘That car will never start,’ she mumbled.

  Stew stared at her for a long time after that, his eyes flat and cold, and then he got up from the couch and went to a back room and came out with a pint glass and a half-gallon of VO whiskey. ‘How about another round?’ he said and poured Gene, Horace and himself a drink from the Old Crow bottle. He then filled the pint glass three-quarters full with VO.

  ‘War Hoop,’ he said to the woman, ‘do your duty.’

  ‘Why should I?’ she cried and looked at the glass.

  ‘Because I’m telling you to. You think you’re so goddamn smart. Well, we’ll see how smart you really are. Watch this, Horace. She can drink the whole thing in one swallow. Like apple juice.’

  ‘I’m not going to do it,’ she said, her voice suddenly weak. It became a little girl’s voice. ‘I’ve had too many already.’

  ‘Then leave.’

  ‘Leave?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where am I going to go?’

  ‘I don’t give two shits,’ Stew said.

  ‘Why do you have to be so mean when you’re drunk?’ she said, nearly crying.