Stealing Sturgis Read online

  “Gonna hit me, Leroy? After all these years?” Randy asked. Lee was about his height, maybe an inch taller, but had filled out across the shoulders since high school. “Better find something bigger ’n that wrench. I learned a few tricks since high school.”

  “What the hell…Randy?” Lee said, a grimace on his face. “What’re you doing back home, son?”

  “Just got my ticket out of the pen.”

  Lee blinked. “You serious? Why the hell would you come back to Brumley?”

  “They give you fifty bucks gate money and one bus ticket, bud,” Randy said, hitching the strap of the duffel bag higher on his shoulder. “Not many choices except my home turf, even if it is in the middle of nowhere. And now here I am.”

  “Well…hell, come back and get a beer,” Lee said, tossing the wrench in a toolbox next to the car and wiping his hands on his Levis. He led the way to the back of the garage where he kept an old fridge. He grabbed a beer and handed it to Randy, then pulled one out for himself. They made their way back to the front and leaned against the grill of the Eldorado, watching what little traffic passed by the corner of Palmer and Main. A couple of kids free for the summer crossed the town square and headed for a sub shop, one of only two restaurants in Brumley. They shrieked obscenities at each other like the words were something new and unheard of.

  “Kids still act the same, I see,” Randy said, eyeing the teens, then taking a pull from the can.

  Lee shrugged. “The more things change. You know.”

  “You change much, Leroy?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Moved in with Raylene.”

  “Raylene Jenkins?” Randy asked in amazement, then whistled when Lee smirked and nodded. “How the hell did you pull that off?”

  “Chased her ’til she gave up.”

  Randy shook his head and lifted the can to his lips, then lowered it. “That girl had an ass that wouldn’t quit. You remember?”

  “I don’t need to, Randy,” Lee said, shifting. “I live with her, you know?”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that, bud. I lost some of my social refinements having to sleep with five other guys in a cell meant for two.”

  Lee nodded, shrugged.

  “In other news, you got yourself a business here,” Randy said, pushing off from the grill and looking at the sign above them. It still said “Don Snyder’s” in faded black paint. Randy looked at Lee, eyebrows raised.

  “Been meaning to get to that. That’s all I have right now,” he said, motioning with his beer to the plywood sign that Randy had seen from the street. “Everyone ’round here knows Donnie sold it to me a couple years ago, anyway. Hardly seems worth repainting the sign.”

  “How long you had this place?”

  Lee chewed his lower lip, thinking. “Four years now? God, that long?”

  “You must be Rotary Club president, Chamber of Commerce head, and mayor all wrapped into one by now.”

  Lee huffed a laugh. “I barely get enough business to keep the electricity on. I’m ready to go out and start busting headlights at night just to bring in some business.”

  “Tough, then?”

  “You know how much this place costs? I had to go to Roanoke to get the loan even though it was a wreck. You remember? It was a dump even when we were in school. We used to throw rocks at the windows. Imagine it a couple of years later.”

  Doesn’t look much better now, Randy thought, but said, “Still, you’re in business for yourself and that ain’t half bad.”

  “I guess it ain’t.”

  They were silent for a while, getting through their beers. Lee played with the top of his can, sneaking glances at Randy out of the corner of his eye.

  “Take a picture, it lasts longer,” Randy said without heat.

  “Sorry, bud. Been a while,” Lee said, squeezing the empty can around the middle, making it go plink, plink. “You haven’t changed much since high school.”

  “Good to hear.”

  They were quiet for another minute.

  “Hard time in the joint?” Lee asked.

  Randy shrugged. “It ain’t summer camp. So many cons doing time, they got to bunk hard-timers with dumb bastards who forgot to pay their parking tickets. Every night, some fish gets shanked. Or made some bad man’s girlfriend. Otherwise, I highly recommend it.”

  “What were you in for, mind me asking? Don’t tell if you don’t want to.”

  Randy smiled, still looking straight ahead. “I’ll fill you in sometime. Maybe when we got extra time on our hands. It’s almost a funny story.”

  They were quiet for a moment. “What’d you do after high school?” Lee asked. “You left before graduation.”

  “Yeah, I’d had enough of that shit,” Randy said. “I hitched a ride east, raised some hell, found myself at the beach. That was the first time I got busted.”

  “You been in more than once?”

  “I was doing construction over near Virginia Beach. Norfolk area, you know, near the bases. Houses were growing like weeds. Folks so hot to get into their new house, they were moving in before the paint was dry. Anyway, this outfit had me doing shit work, mixing cement all day. Dumb kid from the mountains, right? Ten bucks an hour, which is getting me about one meal a day and I get to share a room with four Mexicans don’t speak any English. Meanwhile, foreman’s getting thirty plus kickbacks. I’d had enough, so one night I drove my pickup to all these new houses and loaded ’er with TVs, computers, you name it. Not the smartest thing I ever done, but I didn’t see no other way out, you know? Like I’m gonna mix cement the rest of my life?”

  Lee nodded.

  Randy continued. “So, I take this stuff to a pawnshop in Norfolk, trying to get, hell, I don’t know, five hundred bucks for about three thousand worth of stuff, enough to get a steak and a decent place to sleep. With my luck? Shop owner’s daughter is one of the people’s houses I knocked over. Her name is stenciled right on the back of a stereo. Next thing I know, I’m leaning on a squad car, railroaded through trial, and sent to the local JD camp for breaking and entering.”

  Lee shook his head, then said, “Hold on,” and walked to the back for two more beers. He handed one to Randy, who nodded his thanks.

  Randy said, “Only good luck I had was I didn’t get sent to one of them county lockups. I would’ve been the only white boy in the place. Probably have to knife somebody, add twenty years to my sentence just trying to stay pure. Or alive. As it was, good behavior and a record of nonviolence and I walked after a year.”

  Lee looked at the ground for a while. Randy stared off into the distance, reliving it. Across the street from the garage the sandwich shop door opened and the same kids from before swaggered out. One was still chewing, the lettuce falling from his sandwich and onto the ground. They were dressed in black despite the heat and had chains leading to wallets, keys, nowhere.

  “What’re you going to do now?” Lee asked.

  “Dunno, bud,” Randy said, sighing. “Pick up, start over here in Brumley, I guess. How’s prospects these days?”

  Lee thought about it. “Not so good.”

  “You got a job I could do?” Randy said.

  “Well, I don’t know…” Lee said, taken aback.

  “Doesn’t have to be much, Lee. Just something to tide me over. I can’t stand to stay here too long anyway. Got itchy feet.”

  Lee looked at him, thinking. “You ever work on cars?”

  Randy smiled, knowing he had him.

  Chapter Three

  A month after hiring Randy, Lee motored along in his pickup truck, weaving around the potholes on Jefferson Street, heading to the garage. He’d left the trailer he shared with Raylene two hours later than normal. He didn’t like starting the day already a step behind, but honey baby had decided this morning would be a good time to climb his frame again for hiring Randy.

  “Randy Watson?” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “He used to lick his hand and slap you on the back of your neck. Now he’s your best friend?”
/>
  Lee tried to explain that the guy deserved a break, a new chance, not to mention that it might be the best move they could make. Cheap help that would let them get ahead? It would free him to do more business, maybe turn around more cars. He might eventually be able to afford to turn on one of the gas pumps. What could be wrong with that? But nothing convinced her and, predictably, the fight came back around to money—or, rather, the lack of it—a circular argument that had been growing more vicious in the past six months.

  The seed of the argument wasn’t only that he couldn’t afford to buy her nice things or hand her a hundred bucks to go shopping. When they had started seeing each other, her daddy had sat her down one day and told her that he didn’t think a greaseball mechanic was good enough for his little princess and why couldn’t she find some nice lawyer from Roanoke? Which, of course, tickled Raylene, who took every opportunity to shove Lee’s financial straits and blue-collar background into her parents’ face any chance she got. Sometimes he thought Raylene had shacked up with him for the sole purpose of getting under her parents’ skin.

  Of course, once the novelty of pissing off her parents faded away, real issues like just how little money they had in their bank account became a nightly topic of conversation. He’d tell her he was trying, she’d tell him to try harder, he’d tell her to get a job, then she’d remind him about her daddy’s greaseball loser remark. That made him feel just swell.

  They’d replayed all of the arguments again this morning, considerably before eight o’clock. He had barely gotten out of bed and stumbled into the galley kitchen to make the coffee when she’d started in on him about the mortgage, firing Randy, selling the garage, getting a real job, and on and on until he’d shouted “Good God, what’s wrong with you, woman? Sell your damn Mustang if you’re so worried.”

  She’d ripped into him something fierce, then, and he’d lost his cool, shouting back and saying things he probably shouldn’t have. Her eyes had spilled tears, then she ran into the tiny closet that was their bathroom, locking the latch. Groaning, feeling rotten, he had scratched and tapped at the cardboard-thin bathroom door, resting his head against the door frame, asking her to come out, but she was in there for good. He’d worked at it for a few minutes, then left quietly, feeling bad.

  A mile down the road, though, he’d gotten angry, replaying the argument in his mind, making himself mad as he thought of some of the things she’d said. He punched the gas, taking the bends too fast and ripping the kudzu hanging down off of roadside trees with his side-view mirror. It wasn’t enough that he was working twelve hours a day and mortgaged up to his ears. He was supposed to feel bad about it all the time, too. He pounded the steering wheel, making the heel of his hand ache, and swore most of the way to work.

  He turned into his garage and parked to one side of the building so he wouldn’t block the view of the sign with his phone number on it. The truck coughed a little, rattling before it shut off, and Lee patted the dashboard before climbing out. The last thing he needed was for the truck to go bust. He was cooled off from his fight with Raylene, but thought of it again when he caught sight of Randy sitting on a milk crate, sipping a beer and looking like ten miles of bad road. Randy lifted the can in greeting and Lee tried to keep his face neutral.

  “Morning,” Lee said. “Rough night?”

  Randy hawked and spat off to one side. “You know it, bud. Them girls at the Drake mean business. How about you?”

  Lee looked down, then across the street. He wanted to say something about the beer, but said, “Raylene’s giving me hell.”

  “Yeah? What about?” Randy squinted at Lee, even though they were in the shade. “She say I’m a no-good son of a bitch?”

  “Well…yeah, in so many words.”

  Randy grinned. “I bet she did. She’s a firecracker, just like in school. I remember one time she told Principal Martin to go ef himself when he caught her smoking. Those were the words she used, too—ef instead of fuck. Everyone talked about it, how a young lady had such a mouth on her. You remember?”

  Lee smiled in spite of himself. “Yeah, I remember. The whole school board had to come and watch the class after that.”

  “Trying to find out if there was anything wrong with us, like they hadn’t raised hell themselves twenty or thirty years before.”

  “Yeah.” Lee ran his hand through his hair, waiting a moment for the memory to play out so he could speak. “Look, Randy—”

  Randy raised his hand. “I know, Lee, you want to talk about what I’m doing here, whether you can afford a freeloader around. I got you. I’d want to know why I was paying me, too. All I ask is that you be patient with me. Hasn’t been that long since I wasn’t even allowed to keep my own toothbrush and had to take a crap in view of three hundred other dudes. Takes a while to readjust to a regular life. I appreciate what you’ve done for me. I really do. And I promise I’ll toe the line soon enough—it’ll just take me a while to figure out where the line is. Deal?”

  Lee blinked. This wasn’t how he’d imagined the conversation going. While he stood there, bemused, Randy got to his feet and held out his hand. Without thinking, Lee shook it. Randy pumped his hand once, twice, then slapped him on the back.

  “C’mon, partner. Let’s see what’s wrong with this goddamned Ford Bronco.”

  They worked the rest of the morning and early afternoon without much conversation as the temperature rose outside. Randy made sure he busted his ass, despite the headache and sick stomach. Sweat was rolling off both of them and dripping onto the engine block by the time they got a new radiator in the Bronco and finally Lee called a break around three o’clock.

  “Do you want to grab lunch?” Lee asked, wiping his face and arms with a greasy towel.

  Randy was dousing his head under the cold water faucet in the back sink. He threw his head back and slicked his hair down with his hands. “Nah. I’ll eat big tonight, but not really feeling it right now. You?”

  Lee shook his head and walked out to the truck, bringing back a bag of chips from the passenger seat. He dropped onto the same milk crate Randy had sat on earlier. He grabbed a handful of chips and laid the bag open so that Randy could have some if he wanted. The shadow cast by the garage stretched wide from the afternoon sun so they didn’t have to hover near the door to stay in the shade. Randy scratched his belly, looking over the sleepy street. “Lee, where’s all this going?” he asked, turning around.

  Lee raised his head, his mouth full of chips. “Huh?”

  Randy gestured expansively, taking in the garage, the lot, the town. “This. Where is all of this heading?”

  Lee swallowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “This, Lee, this,” Randy said, slapping the siding of the garage. “This business you got is nice and all, but how far can you go with it?”

  Lee frowned. “Randy, you’ve been in the heat too long. What’re you talking about?”

  Randy squatted down next to Lee. “I’ve been here a month or two now and I’ve seen the amount of trade you’re doing and, bud, it ain’t much.”

  Lee straightened in his seat and Randy held up a hand. “Don’t get mad, Lee, just listen for a second, will you? In an average week, we’ve been fixing, what, one car, maybe two? Sometimes they take the whole week or longer. You can’t pump gas, you don’t have any more space in the garage, you work ten, twelve hours a day. Sometimes more.”

  Lee brushed his hands on his jeans and folded his arms across his chest. “Those are the facts, all right. What about it?”

  “It can’t last, that’s what. Look, I’m a survivor. I’ll always land on my feet. But Lee, you and Raylene, all you’ve got is this place. And I’ve been watching it sink.”

  Lee shifted and said, “That’s not true. We got four new work orders just last week.”

  “Right,” Randy said. “Two of those made a grand total of about seventy-five bucks. How’re you going to survive on that?”

  “Now hold on a second, those weren’t ty
pical jobs—”

  Randy shook his head. “It’s simple math, Lee. How much do you pay for this place every month?”

  “Eight hundred.”

  “Okay, and the trailer?”

  “About six,” Lee said, shifting again, uncomfortable.

  “How much do we bring in every month, even with the four work orders? C’mon now, no lies.”

  Lee stared at him for a second before answering. “Twelve, thirteen hundred, maybe more.”

  “On a good month. Lee, it don’t take a rocket scientist to do the figuring here. You’re losing the race.”

  Lee put his head back against the cement wall and closed his eyes. There it was. Again. Pretty much the way Raylene had put it, except without the tears and the screaming. Maybe he just didn’t want to admit it—that everybody but him could see his plans were going down the chute one mortgage payment at a time.

  Lee opened his eyes. “You’ve got a plan.”

  Randy looked at him, considering, then nodded. “I might. You won’t like it to hear it, but it’ll get you out of the jam you’re in.”

  “Lay it on me,” Lee said. Randy took a deep breath and started talking, slow at first, then faster, feeding out the idea a bit at a time. He talked about Sturgis, about the Rally, the bikes, the half million people, grinning as he painted a picture of the boozing, the good time, the chaos that was Sturgis, South Dakota, for one short week in August.

  Lee frowned as Randy talked. “What’s that got to do with us? Sounds like a big party. Weren’t you talking about me bailing myself out of this trouble I’m supposed to be in?”

  “All right. The best part of this whole thing—besides the partying—is that it’s not just long-haired bikers and Harley reps. There’s a group of Hollywood posers that like to go there, to Sturgis, and play like they’re Hells Angels for a week. They drive around, party, wear leather pants, all that. They pose for a couple of pictures, sign a couple of autographs, and then they’re back to their mansions in Beverly Hills. Rest of the peons go back to their jobs.”