The Complete Drive-In

3

High noon and we ran out of Sleepy LaBeef. Then we got Steve.

“Now the reason I’m here is my wife. Finding out your gal can work a dick better than Tom Mix could work a lariat is all right, but the bad news on a thing like that is finding out the dick she works best don’t belong to you. Wrong cow pony, you know. It can deflate a man’s ego.”

“What about you?” Grace said.

“Oh yeah,” Steve said, not catching her tone. “Especially when all I ever got was the old in-and-out and are-you-finished-yet.”

“Imagine that,” Grace said.

“Worse than that, her man was none other than Fred Trual, and that goddamn got me, I’ll tell you. He’s a real baboon’s ass, all the personality of a snot rag and as loyal as a paid-for date. He also stole my song ‘My Baby Done Done Me Wrong,’ and that was enough for me to swear I’d kill him.

“How in hell do you figure a woman. This Fred is not only ugly, but he’s been in the pen and rumor has it he poisoned his old maiden aunt for what she was gonna leave him, and he knew that wasn’t nothing but five hundred dollars. I mean we’re talking a greedy sonofabitch here. He even eats until he gets sick. I’ve known him since grade school. Wasn’t worth a damn then either. But the gals always went for him. Must have had some kind of smell that got to them. Had to be that. He wasn’t pretty and he wasn’t smart and he wasn’t nice. He and Tina Sue even stole my car.”

“See you got it back,” I said. “Are you sure we heard both sides of Sleepy?”

“About three times to a side,” Steve said. “I got it back all right, but not because they gave it to me. I’ll tell you about it.”

“That’s all right,” Grace said. “No need to bother.”

“I don’t mind,” Steve said, and he made a corner and the tires screeched like startled owls. “I told myself when I caught up with them I was going to kill Fred. I thought I might even kill her too. And I thought when they were both dead I was going to get out my guitar and sing the song I wrote over their dead bodies, then maybe on the back of my guitar I’d write another one in their blood, right then and there. That’s how mad I was. Nasty, huh.”

“You’re not a nice fella, Steve,” Bob said.

“Now I didn’t mean to run over that ol’ boy, I swear it. I’m a sensitive fella, don’t think I’m not. I mean I can write the kind of songs that make the whiningest, sorriest-living, beer-drinkingest and gal-losingest sonofabitch cry like a baby with a thermometer up its ass. Kind of song that’ll make women’s thangs tingle and make fellas call home to make sure their old ladies aren’t doing it with the next-door neighbor. Know what I mean?”

“I think you sort of summed it up there,” Bob said.

“It’ll make me a rich man. Or would if we were back in the real world. I’d be able to buy clothes that aren’t on sale at the goddamn K-mart. Go to some place to buy stuff that ain’t made out of genuine plastic and genuine cheap. I’d be able to get me a new hat made out of real hat stuff and have it be one of those with a fancy band around it with a feather fresh out of a peacock’s ass sticking up in it. I’d get me some unchewed toothpicks to stick in the band. I’d move to Nashville and sing my sexy little heart out. I’d wine and dine and chase them honky-tonk angels until my dick needed a wheelchair to get around. Course, that’s what I would have done. I reckon Fred’s made a mint off it now. It’s probably on the radio back home. Go in any joint with a juke and I bet you can hear my song coming out of it, probably sung by George Jones or Randy Travis. And ol’ Fred’s spending my money. Tell you, I still want to kill him. If I got the chance I’d kill him deader than the ol’ boy in the back seat there, then I’d really get rough.”

“I take it you don’t like Fred,” Bob said.

“You’re getting it. Let me backtrack on my story here.“

“I thought that was all of it,” Grace said. “I mean that’s enough to hold me. What about you guys?”

“I want to hear it all,” Bob said.

I was starting to get interested too, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want Grace to kick me in the balls.

“Well, when I found out Fred and Tina Sue were doing what they were doing from this private detective fella I hired, I couldn’t hardly believe it. ‘Cept that he had some real clear pictures of them in action and he didn’t help matters none by saying stuff like, ‘That’s her best shot there, the one with the whip and the Mouseketeer hat,’ and ‘By God, I didn’t know human bodies could do them sort of things. Hell, I didn’t know snakes could do them sort of things. Look at that, will you. I bet he’s got his head halfway in there, whadaya think?’

“I wasn’t just hurt that Tina Sue was waxing another man’s rope, or that the man was stupid, greedy, and maybe a murderer. There was the fact that Fred seemed to be having a hell of a lot better time with Tina Sue than I’d ever had. I didn’t even know she had a Mouseketeer hat. To put it simple, I was charmed by them sweet little eight-by-ten color glossies. Here I was busting chops and sweating gravel just to make a living, trying to write songs on the side so I could be a country-and-western singer, making the occasional trip to Nashville to try and peddle my songs-and not having much luck with it-and I find out my suspicions about my wife are true, and worse, it’s old Fred and he’s having a better time than me. Then to put the goddamn Howdy Doody smile on it, I found out they not only went off together in my car, but took my song on account of Fred claimed he wrote it some years back and I won it from him in a poker game. I only played poker with Fred and them other boys a few times, and I didn’t never win. Come to think of it, I think Fred cheats.

“Anyway, I got all this from the note.”

The wind was picking up and posters and cups and popcorn bags were tornadoing around the car and beginning to collect on the windshield and flutter into the seats and slap Crier in the face.

Steve pulled over and put the convertible’s roof up and Bob took the bags off Crier’s face and tossed them out. Back on the road, Steve continued his story.

“The note was stuck in the refrigerator door when I got home, on account of the bitch took all the fruit magnets with her. Even the one I bought for myself that was made like a big strawberry. The note said what she had done and that she thought the car was as much hers as mine (which was a hoot) and that the new song I said I wrote and was bragging about I didn’t write ‘cause her boyfriend did and she said she and the boyfriend were heading to Nashville to make the money off of it. She said she thought it was a better song than she thought before, now that she knew I didn’t write it. She said goodbye and that she had popped the tops on all the beer in the refrigerator so it would go flat, and for me to take a water hose and run it up my ass and turn it on full blast.

“I tell you, there wasn’t a cheerful line in that note. I of course went straight on over to Fred’s. I was back a day earlier than they expected. I had been up to Nashville, see, and I come back early to check with the private detective guy, and to see if I could talk some things out if my suspicions were correct, so I figured I just might get the jump on them two before they were gone with my song.

“Thinking that I had left my convertible with Tina Sue and drove her damned old VW up to Nashville didn’t make me no happier, and I tell you when I got up in Fred’s yard and seen my Plymouth sitting there, the sides of it all muddy and the hubcaps covered over with the stuff, my eyes filled with murder. I slammed on my brakes hard enough to throw my hat in the backseat. I got that dude back on my head and went straight up on Fred’s porch. Last year’s Christmas wreath was still hanging on the door; one of them with the plastic mistletoe and those damned ol’ gold-sprayed pine cones glued on it. I jerked that little buddy off the door and stomped the cones and kicked the rest of it out in the yard.

“One of Fred’s old two-bit hounds come around from the back then and stood off the porch growling at me. I got hold of Fred’s sandy old doormat and threw it at the dog and it ran off under the house where it could collect some more ticks.

“About the time I turned around, I saw that the curtain over one of the windows was falling back into place, and I knew then that Fred was home. The window he’d taken a peek out of had MERRY CHRISTMAS stenciled on it, and I yelled out, ‘I know goddamn good and well you’re in there, shit-bag. Come on out. And it ain’t even Christmas, you dumb cocksucker.’

“He didn’t come out so I got off the porch and got hold of the cinder block he was using for a step and put it on the porch, got up there and got hold of it again and shoved it through the window with the stenciling on it.

“He come out there then with a chair leg in his hand, and he come out swinging. We sort of run together and rolled off the porch and out in the yard. His old hound come out from under the porch then and got hold of my pants leg and started growling and tugging on it. I kicked the mutt off and wrestled up to my feet, and thought I was going to do pretty good, when Fred hit me one on the noggin with that chair leg, and the last thing I remembered was the toes of my K-mart boots coming up.”

“But it didn’t kill you,” Grace said.

“No it didn’t. I woke up and the first thing I seen when I got up on my elbow was the toes of them boots again.”

“And they were still from K-mart,” Grace said.

“Still from K-mart. But the knot on my head was from Fred. Next thing I see is Fred and that hound dog. The dog is sitting on his butt staring at me, his ol’ tongue hanging out like he just had him a bitch and was damn proud of it, and Fred he still has his chair leg, and he bends over me and says, ‘Hurt much, Steve?’

“I tell him, ‘Not at all. Sometimes when I’m home I take a chair leg to my own head.’

“He hit me again, and when I woke up, I was hot and it was dark and crowded and I could smell that perfume Tina Sue always wore.”

Steve paused and pointed at the glove box. “I got a last cigar in there. Been saving it. Get it for me, will you?”

I got it out and he bit off the end and spat tobacco out the window and put the cigar in his mouth and sucked on it. “I don’t care what they say, these things taste a hell of a lot better when you know they ain’t made by a bunch of Cubans.”

He punched in the lighter.

“All right, damnit,” Grace said. “‘What was this dark, cramped place that smelled like Tina Sue?”

“I’m gonna tell you.” He took the lighter and lit the cigar, puffed dramatically. “The trunk of this car.”

“Uh oh,” Bob said.

“Uh oh is right. The greedy sonofabitch had shown his true colors. I figure he decided he wasn’t gonna share any song money with Tina Sue, and he killed her. Then I come along and he had to kill me-least he thought he killed me. And he put us in the trunk of the car and drove us out to the Orbit and walked off, probably hitched home. It wasn’t such a smart idea, really. I mean someone would have caught up with him. But then whatever happened to the drive-in happened, and I was trapped in there, and I guess back home in Texas there isn’t even a drive-in no more. I don’t know what would be there in its place, if anything. But there’s no body in the trunk for the police to find, in fact there’s no car. So I guess Fred did all right by accident. He’s probably making money off my song right now.”

“Look at it this way,” Bob said. “Maybe the song wasn’t any good and he couldn’t sell it.”

Steve sat and thought about that. The fire on his cigar went out. Finally he said, “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“What I want to know,” Grace said, “is how did you get out of the trunk?”

“Oh, that. Wasn’t nothing to that. I was hot and pissed and I bent up my legs and kept donkey-kicking the trunk till I busted the lock. When I got out of there didn’t nobody care, things being like they were. I ended up using some wire I had back there to fasten the trunk down.”

“Is Tina Sue… you know?” Grace said.

“Back there? Naw. I left her there a while, but when things got real bad back there, well, I ate her.”