Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

“I’ll go myself,” said Leonard, and got out of the car. He pawed through the trash barrel in front of the grocery store, took out a discarded green bag from the drugstore and entered through the automatic doors. Billy Joe slid over and sat next to the window sharpening his knife.

“Here, let me see it,” said Wally. “Hell, this ain’t sharp at all. They ain’t sharp unless you c’n lay ’em up against your thumb-nail like this here . . . and without pressing on it, if it’ll keep from slippin’ off when you tilt it forward, then it’s sharp. If it won’t, then it ain’t worth a shit for anything. This is cheap steel.” He tossed it back. “I wouldn’t never carry a blade so dull as that’n, not if I had me a knife. Automatics is more my style. Always has been.” And he stared out of the window as though reviewing all the numerous wild things he had done in his life. Leonard came back with three ice-cream bars and a tin of sardines. They were eating them when Mal walked out the large automatic doors and past their car carrying a small bag of groceries and wearing her waitress uniform. She climbed into the old Chrysler and pulled slowly out of the parking lot.

Without saying anything, Wally started the Mercury and got onto Highway 1, heading out into the country behind her.

“Hey, where you goin’?” asked Leonard.

“Di’n’ you see that waitress? Hell, they’ve always got a lot of money lyin’ around. We’ll just check it out where she lives. Most of ’em works at night. Probably get a hundred or maybe two.”

“Waitresses don’t have any money.”

“Shit they don’t. Hell, where you been anyway? You talk like you haven’t been around. Sure they got bread. Most of ’em fuckin’ whores ‘n’ shack up with their bosses. Jesus, don’t you know nothin’? There ain’t hardly a waitress that ain’t a whore.”

“She probably lives out here on some farm with ‘er folks, I bet. Can’t nobody break into a farmhouse. They got dogs, ‘n’—”

“I just said we’d check it out. We got nothin’ better right now. We already sat almost all afternoon in the parkin’ lot.”

“It wasn’t such a bad place.”

“Cops get suspicious after a while. Besides, who c’n tell, we might be on ta somethin’.”

The green Chrysler made a lefthand turn onto a gravel road and they followed from a quarter-mile back.

“You think she fucks, Wally? Could you tell by lookin’ at ’er?”

“I could tell. It’s the way they walk, sort of loose like. She’s a whore, you c’n bet.”

“You’re gettin’ too close.”

“Shut up.”

“Put that away, Billy Joe. We’ll hit a hole in the road and you’ll rip open your finger.”

Mal pulled the Chrysler into the driveway. They slowly stopped, opened the trunk, took out the jack and lifted the back bumper—Leonard’s idea to look as though they had a flat while inspecting the house. The girl was inside. A three-legged dog began to bark at them from the corner of the yard.

“See?” said Leonard. “Come on, let’s get out a here.” But no sooner did he say this than the waitress stuck her head out of the front door of the house and hollered at the dog to stop. And when it kept on she came out, grabbed it by the fur around its neck and dragged it off toward the house, around the side and put it in the basement. Then she went back inside.

“There’s other people livin’ there,” said Leonard. “Let’s go back to the parkin’ lot an’ you’ll think of somethin’ else. We c’n get us a gas station tonight. This place gives me the creeps.”

“There ain’t no way we c’n know for sure. What we should do is go on up there to the door—hell, dumb bitch put the dog in the basement—’n’ pretend we wanna use the phone ‘cause we got a flat ‘n’ no spare. Then, see, we get a chance to look around, ‘n’ if there ain’t nobody there but her, then we c’n wait until she gets off to work ‘n’ go in then.”

“But she’ll let the dog go again. He’s big.”

“Dogs c’n be handled with . . . ‘n’ maybe she’ll leave it down in the basement anyway.”

“No girl’d be livin’ out here alone.”

“I just said we’d check it out, you jackass.”

There was an anxious silence while all three of them stared at the house.

“OK, let’s go,” said Leonard. “Billy Joe ‘n’ I will stay behind you.”

At this point Wally seemed to freeze from the center of his eyes outward and he turned his head. Leonard and Billy Joe had already stepped forward and were waiting for him in the middle of the road. His pale hands shook and curled up unconsciously.

“You fools,” he said, in a fast, whining voice. “You fools, we can’t all go in. Only one or two got to go in. It wouldn’t seem right all of us goin’ in.”

“Then you go,” said Leonard.

“You dumb fuck, how smart do you think that would be? The cops drive by and you’re in the car, so they get out and ask you some questions while they call in your description on the radio. Go ahead, try to answer as if I was a cop. ‘Where’re you goin’? What’re you doin’ here, kid? Let me see the registration for this car. Where’s your license?’ ”

“There’s no police goin’ a come way out here.”

“ You want to take a chance? You want to? Now get going. Take Billy Joe with you if you want to.”

“What’ll we say, I mean for using the phone?”

“Just say you want to call to a station, dial some phony number and pretend to talk.”

“Then what’ll I say?”

“Then I don’t know. Say something.”

Wally got into the car, though the jack still held the back tire off the ground.

“Why don’t you come up then and say you got it fixed? Then we c’n leave.”

“Sure, sure.