Chaingang

5

WATERWORKS HILL

All afternoon it had looked like it was going to rain, and Royce Hawthorne was not about to sit in his tiny, cramped cabin like some victim, hung and blasted and hurting. He was lurching out the door, still half-ripped, but the shock waves of reality had him moving up the hill paths in the direction of The Rockhouse, as soon as he remembered the impending deal.

He'd slept until nearly 1:00 P.M., coming awake, in search of Darvon. His head was a swamp. There were too many gators and snakes loose in there. He downed two Darvon capsules, washing them down with warmish Olympia Light. By the time he popped the top on his fourth Oly, the Darvon had kicked in and he thought he might live after all.

The stash was empty. There was nothing in the pantry. He put on the shirt he'd worn the night before and extracted a small vial, which was nearly empty. He tapped coke out, straightened it into a line, and did it, rubbing his gums with residue and licking his finger.

That's when he suddenly remembered the deal, and the pressure of it snapped him into action. He had fourteen dollars in his greasy blue jeans. He found a crisp hundred in the dictionary (i-MUR-jen-see: Noun. An unforeseen set of circumstances. A pressing need). When he realized that in the entire world he owned the cabin, a half acre of worthless hill, and the awesome sum of $114, he realized what a world of trouble he was in and lurched out into the depressingly wet day.

October spruce trees stood alongside the pathway up Waterworks Hill, boughs heavy with moisture. Hillside milo, russet and golden, seemingly untended, fought to stand tall in fields of rampant blotches of relentless weeds.

Gray clouds the size of aircraft carriers trailed damp tendrils over the upturned face of the Missouri countryside that flanked the hill above the small town waterworks.

Royce Hawthorne had a guy who wanted weight. David Drexel—money in el banco. Drexel was so frightened of copping burn, he'd come to Royce for the connect. Homeboy Royce with a rep for dealing and using, emphasis on the latter. Drexel had not blinked at the tab.

Royce could buy weight from Happy. Keep a piece of the rock for recreational usage, turn the balance for a solid profit. Free enterprise in microcosm—right? On the surface it was too cool.

Never mind that it put Royce-baby in a world of shit. That it might hang him up by his num-nums. Why quibble over the little details?

Happy said he would do the thing, but Royce “better not be jerking his chain.” No way, Royce promised. You get it—I buy it. How had he let himself get squeezed into this nasty jackpot?

Today Mr. Happy was coming with the Right Stuff. Three thousand down. He'd carry Royce for the balance due. If Royce pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his pants, he might as well pull his cock out too, and piss all over Happy's $550 kicks.

Happy would have his goon break Royce's knees, stand him in a fifty-five-gallon Treflan drum full of Sakrete, and drop him into the deepest part of Bluehole Trench. That is—if Happy was in a good mood. The man had all the forgiving warmth of a napalm strike.

“The thing"—as he often thought of it—hovered over him, even while he slept. Within minutes of waking he'd always be slammed back to reality by the dangerous game he'd been coerced into playing. What had it taken to pressure him into becoming a secret player, this guy approaching the big three-zero whose sum total of accomplishments was the shack of a cabin, cool enough in summer but freezing in winter, and a funky cocaine jones the size of a big fat dog? It hadn't been easy to bollix and jumble up so many parts of a life that had once been brimming with potential, as his parents, teachers, friends, lovers, and employers had often said. It had taken an iron will, a steely resolve, and the flinty maturity of a nine-year-old whacked out on LePage's Model Airplane Glue. It had taken a mutha of a jam-up.

“Yo, Royce,” Vandella the bartender said. “You up early."

“Ten-four,” Hawthorne said, shedding his raincoat and tossing it carelessly in the direction of a Rockhouse coat hanger, holding his fingers apart so Vandella could start pouring.

“Hee ya go.” He wiped the bar around the shot glass. “Beer back?” He asked.

“Yeah.” Royce tilted it back, almost gagging on the taste. Not swallowing the whole shot. The dirty version of “Louie, Lou-eye” blasted from the juke, a three-thousand-dollar Rockola. He gratefully grabbed the cold Oly in his left hand, tilting it and sucking on it, then downing the rest of the shot and washing it down with beer.

“Again?” Vandella jittered behind the bar, singing, “Stick my finger in the hole of love,” as he cleaned a glass.

Royce nodded.

“Happy been in?"

“Not since I been here."

“How long you been here?"

“All fuckin’ day.” They both smiled. They had a routine. Royce drank another shot of tequila. Cuervo in the right, Oly Light in the left, a two-handed drinker he was. None of that lime and salt and ritual, just put down four or five Mex-Tex boilers and get some hair on the bear.

He carried the next pair over to the open blackjack table when he saw who was filling the card shoe. Only one dealer had come in to work so far, the older woman everybody called Tia.

“What's your pleasure, sir?” she asked, professionally. Then she looked up, and his presence registered in her eyes.

She had lots of wrinkles. A bad dye job. White blouse and string tie. Long, Mandarinesque fingernails. But she was his secret ace, and he hoped she was every bit as good as the Feds had promised him.

He got two-dollar chips and bucked heads with the house for half an hour. Making it look good. Getting half-tanked; the Darvon and the tequila and the brewskis all floating around now in the Feelreal Goodzone while he got his balls up.

“Double down.” He had twenty against a bust. Let it ride, and was suddenly sitting with 180 bucks, without help, and feeling the power.

He pushed two hundred out. Caught a pair of face cards and edged Tia by a point. Four hundred and change.

Got chicken and slowed down for about an hour. Eased back on the booze, letting Vandella kick a free Oly over now and again. Nursing six bills.

He lost eight hands in a row. Bet a ten and stood on fourteen and she took it.

Bet ninety and was down one eighty and change. Bet the one eighty. Changed his mind and swept it all back but a dime. Lost.

Pushed it all out again and caught eighteen. She hit seventeen and caught a ten. He won. Ended up with eight hundred bucks.

Bet it all and about crapped when Tia turned over a bright red king. He was sitting there with a nine and a seven, and he put his stack of chips on it and stood. She flipped the hole card, and it was a six. She tapped it and broke her back, and Royce had to go wee-wee real bad. He pocketed his sixteen hundred-dollar chips, toked Tia half his change, and excused himself.

When he came out of the room with “Trouser Snakes” on the door, there was Happy and his bonebreaker, Luis. Luis was a big, dumb goon. He'd been a pro fighter, and the word was he liked to spar with kids and hurt them. He had a face that resembled the bad side of a heavily cratered planet, and fists like cast-iron doorstops.

“Que pasa, amigo?” Happy called to him jovially.

“Nada."

“My man,” he told Vandella, who carefully poured tequilas, “whatever my amigo wants."

“Less sit,” Happy said, smiling only with his mouth. “So.” He drank. Licked his lips. Nodded. Said “So” again.

“So.” Royce smiled.

“I think a cold one would go down real slick,” Happy said, pulling the fourth chair out and putting his cowboy boots up on it, getting mud on the chair seat.

“Yeah."

“Cervezas, por favor,” he told Vandella without raising his voice, as if he knew the bartender would hear it. Then, in the same tone, as if he didn't care who heard what, he asked Royce, “You gonna take the weight or what, amigo?"

“Sure!” It caught him off guard. “What you think, Happy?"

“Hmm?"

“Don't I always?” Big smiles all around. Big buds having a pleasant drink together.

“Hub?” Happy suddenly had appeared to have lost his hearing altogether. Very hard to talk to. Luis looming at his side.

“Don't I always?"

“Yeah, bro, but you an ounce-pouncer, senor. No offense. I wanna know you gonna take the weight for true now.” Still the fake smile through Columbian tan and expensive teeth.

“No problemo."

“Okey dokey.” He laughed his loud bray. Looking at Luis. “I like that: no prob-lem-o.” The ferocious-looking dummy beside him tried to look like he was smiling too.

“This is King of Peru now, right?” Royce was going to play it out straight to the end. He even sounded concerned.

“Zorro-d'Oro. El Primo-dreamo. You wanna leetle taste up front?"

“Oh—” he spread hands “—not nec-essary.” Getting into it. “Satisfaction gay-ron-fucking-teed, amigo.” A hand reached into inner recesses, came out, slid across, and laid something in Hawthorne's palm. “Horn some of this li'l girl up your snout."

“Excuse me for a minute?” Royce pushed the chair back and started for the “Trouser Snakes” sign.

“Be my guest,” Happy Ruiz called to him in a loud voice as he headed for the john. Jack Eigen from the beautiful Chez Paree—"Be my guest."

Royce turned with a pinched grin on his face. “Be right back."

“Muy bien."

He went into the men's room again and did some of the blow. It knifed through him, getting his head right for the first time since he'd opened his blinkers. He rubbed his nose, came out, and walked over to the table where Tia was about to deal a customer. He threw his pocketful of chips down on the felt twenty-one layout.

“Let's ride that. You want to?” he asked, those being the magic words. For whatever reason, she wasn't with it. The woman began counting, stacking fifteen chips with 100 stamped on each one in green and yellow. Her eyebrows, painted an inch above where they had originally grown, arched another half an inch as she dealt him in automatically, flipping pasteboards to the three of them.

“You got it, sir,” she said. Half a beat late. The encoded response, all right, but clearly she was just registering what had happened. The end of her first shift, probably. The woman was tired. She was human. What the hell.

He stared at seventeen, really starting to sweat. Maybe that stuff about the unknown capabilities of the human brain has some basis in scientific fact—he felt as if he'd known she was turning up an ace for herself the second she began to turn the card, giving herself a blackjack and him a death sentence all in one move. If she turned up an ace, she might as well break out a tarot deck and deal him a death card and be done with it.

It hit him like a lightning bolt as he visualized her raking chips. He'd say—what? Can I go shy? She would have to tell him no—sorry. Rules of the house.

He could feel Happy and Luis staring holes in his back. Wanted to whisper What are you doing, honey? You're gonna kill me in the loudest stage whisper in history. Watched her color a little as she snapped back into gear, vanishing the ace and taking another card as smooth and cold as ice—right under the other customer's nose.

Her little red five was like a 10:59 reprieve from the warden. The other guy stood pat. He stacked fifteen hundred dollars on his sorry seventeen. Watched her clobber her fifteen with two taps, the retrieved ace and a natural ten.

“That busts the house, gentlemen, nice going.” He breathed again, raking the chips over and filling his pockets.

He toked her, willing his hands not to shake, and strolled back to the table.

“I thought you was changing your mind. You didn't like my stuff and was gonna play cards for a while.” Happy was not happy.

“Shit no, bro. That was outray—! Hey! What chew talkin’ about?’ Royce was now happy enough for the pair of them. “You want some now—” he made the money sign with first finger and thumb—"or what?” he asked in an innocent tone.

“Whatever makes everybody happy,” Happy said, as Royce Hawthorne reached for the three thousand in Rockhouse money. All according to somebody's master plan, right? Right.