While Drowning in the Desert

Chapter 19

I should have known.

I mean, I kicked that son of a bitch between the legs so hard I half expected to see his balls come flying out his mouth. The big muscle-bound Kraut hollered like a bull that’s becoming a steer. Neal would probably call this an “apt analogy” because-Well, never mind. You get the picture.

And Neal is always telling me that if I’m going to put a guy down make sure he stays down. You know, finish him off. “Turn out the lights, the party’s over” kind of thing.

As if Neal would know. The last time I saw him fight was a barroom brawl with some white-supremacist trash a couple of years back. Neal blocked a couple of punches with his jaw and then kind of dragged his guy to the floor and passed out on top of him. He wasn’t exactly John Wayne. But he was game.

I think fighting’s stupid, anyway.

It was just that this Muller jerk was so damn arrogant. You know, first he breaks in, then he pushes Hope around, and I’ve just seen enough of that trashy behavior to last a lifetime.

And I gave him a chance. I explicitly told him what would happen if he didn’t leave and he said he’d like to see me try it, and I was happy to oblige him in that particular request.

He was one big, strong, hulking side of beef, too. But every man has his Achilles’ heel, you know, and generally it isn’t anywhere near his foot. I mean if you’ve ever seen a cowboy chasing a little calf, and that calf kicks a hoof back around crotch-high, and you’ve seen that cowboy kneeling in the dirt sucking for air, you have a pretty good idea of what Heinz-baby looked like at that particular moment.

So, anyway, there he was on his knees with his big baby-blues bulging out his stupid face, and that’s where I ought to have finished him off, according to famed pugilist Neal Carey. But I didn’t and the son of a bitch had a gun.

A big pistol. A magnum.

I have a theory about men who own magnums. My theory is that they have to buy one because they don’t have one, you know? And the way this Muller galumph held that handpiece, you just got the feeling that however large and passed out on top of him. He wasn’t exactly John Wayne. But he was game.

I think fighting’s stupid, anyway.

It was just that this Muller jerk was so damn arrogant. You know, first he breaks in, then he pushes Hope around, and I’ve just seen enough of that trashy behavior to last a lifetime.

And I gave him a chance. I explicitly told him what would happen if he didn’t leave and he said he’d like to see me try it, and I was happy to oblige him in that particular request.

He was one big, strong, hulking side of beef, too. But every man has his Achilles’ heel, you know, and generally it isn’t anywhere near his foot. I mean if you’ve ever seen a cowboy chasing a little calf, and that calf kicks a hoof back around crotch-high, and you’ve seen that cowboy kneeling in the dirt sucking for air, you have a pretty good idea of what Heinz-baby looked like at that particular moment.

So, anyway, there he was on his knees with his big baby-blues bulging out his stupid face, and that’s where I ought to have finished him off, according to famed pugilist Neal Carey. But I didn’t and the son of a bitch had a gun.

A big pistol. A magnum.

I have a theory about men who own magnums. My theory is that they have to buy one because they don’t have one, you know? And the way this Muller galumph held that handpiece, you just got the feeling that however large he was elsewhere… well, the big pistol was by way of compensation.

And they talk about us and hormones.

So this Muller turd pulls this gun and says, “This is a. 57 magnum and could blow your head off. So do what I say.”

So I said, “Okay, Heinz-57. You got the gun, big boy, what do you want us to do?”

“What do you know?”

I felt like I was Dustin Hoffman in that movie with Laurence Olivier-you know the one where old Larry’s the Nazi dentist-because I don’t know anything except that maybe Heinz-57 burned his own house down and maybe Silverstein saw him do it, but I didn’t think that was exactly the brightest thing in the world to say at that particular moment.

“I know that you burned your house down and that Natty saw you,” Hope piped up.

She really is a lovely person, but you don’t want her holding your money in a poker game, if you know what I mean.

Heinz-57’s eyes lit up like a pinball machine, as if this news actually made him happy. There are some jamokes, you know, who are just looking for a rationale to hurt people, and I think that old Heinz-57 was one of these characters.

So he herded us outside where he had his Land Rover parked.

A brand-new Land Rover. I guess arson pays.

He starts to put me in the driver’s seat, then asks, “Do you know how to operate a standard shift?”

“Heinz-57,1 could build a standard shift.”

I didn’t bother to tell him that I grew up on a ranch that had a lot more tumbleweed than money on it, so I’d helped my father reconstruct an old flipped-over H tractor about three hundred and thirty times and did more than just hold the wrench, too.

Could I operate a standard shift. About the only person I knew in central Nevada who couldn’t operate a standard shift was Neal, and God knows I tried to teach him.

The man is just hell on cars.

So I got behind the wheel and Hope sat in the passenger seat. Heinz-57 sat behind me with his magnum (the pistol, that is) poked behind Hope’s ear.

“No monkey business,” he said. “Do not even consider blinking the lights, or speeding, or driving to a police station. I will blow her head off.”

This was a pretty smart threat. He knew he couldn’t blow my brains out or the car would crash.. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“I will give you directions,” he said. Then added, because he just couldn’t help being an asshole, “We are going to meet some Jews in the desert.”

Jews in the desert. There’s a fresh concept.

But I figured that one of those Jews was probably Nathan. And I was praying that the other one was Neal.