Trailer Park Tramp

Swifty's was a different situation. It had been there since 1947. Dusty neon and half a dozen pool tables, a shuffleboard table to the right, the walls covered with decades' worth of old photos or past customers long gone to beer heaven, newspaper headlines, even an article clipped from Omni magazine, which had voted Swifty's the place to be when the hammer finally fell.

There were a handful of customers at the bar. Regulars. I slid onto a stool beside Ian, who was sixty but looked older. I'd never been in when he wasn't there. Ian was a Brit -- how he got here I had no clue and had never thought to ask. He wore a bandanna around his thinning gray curls and was stroking his Fu Manchu mustache and reading the sports page.

I had three beers back to back and told him my situation, leaving out the stuff about the Budweiser Bandito.

"You've got to kill the bloke," he said.

"What?"

"Listen, mate," he said. He put the paper down. "Girls like that you describe find a guy and want to save 'em from their own selves. Never works. But she'll stick with him until he finds a new tart and moves on. The bastard'll squeeze everything outta her that he can, but these birds never see it till it's too late. He's a right bastard. I've seen it a million times. You gotta off the arsehole."

I finished the beer and headed home. That advice I had not expected. But he had given me a plan.

When she got home at five and was unloading the baby from the car, I was there, taking a bag of groceries from her and carrying it in. She smiled at me. Her black eye was fading a little.

"So when does your old man get out?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

Kayla put Jolene in her swinging chair and cranked it up and began to roll a joint at the kitchen table. She had made fun of me for being such a lousy roller. "My mom made me learn to do that when I was five," she'd said, laughing.

Now, though, she wasn't laughing. "Tomorrow sometime," she said. "He's gotta go in front of the judge in the morning. They'll cut him loose."

"And you all are leaving when?"

She looked irritated. "Hell if I know. Johnny Ray wants to get enough money together for us to get a place when we get to New Orleans. I talked to him on the phone today from work. He has this one job to do and we're gone, I hope."

I dropped the subject. We smoked awhile.

The second time I went to jail was for trying to beat a guy to death. I drove a cab for three years, night shift. It was easy work if you liked to drive, and you didn't have anybody hanging over your shoulder telling you what to do. You just took the runs when the dispatcher gave them to you, and you drove.

I started seeing this dancer named Pam. She danced as Shenendoah. She was a little thing, five feet and 100 pounds dripping wet. Black hair. She was a stubborn little bitch but we got along. Fat Tony Saccetta, the wannabe gangster who owned the dance clubs in town, was silent partner in the Lucky Taxi Company, so the girls got to ride for half off.

I told her a lot of jokes and smoked her out a lot of times before work, and after awhile I'd stop at the end of my shift -- she got off the same time I did -- to make sure she got home. I'd take her half a pint of Bushmills for a little nightcap. She said it was better than flowers.

We hooked up finally. One night I talked her into coming over to my cramped studio apartment, tucked above the Kinko's right at the edge of campus. I didn't make a move on her at night, just smoked a couple big bowls with her, drank some beers, and we crashed on my mattress. But the next morning I woke her up rubbing her back under the black wife-beater t-shirt she wore, and she rolled right over into my arms.

It was all fine until the night she called in sick and I went by her place to see if she needed anything to feel better. There was a big black pick-up parked out front and when I knocked she cracked the door and wouldn't let me in, and I knew the gig was up.

It made me feel better to push my way in, and when the new boyfriend took a swing at me he missed and I beat him until his face was a mass of bloody pulp and it took the cops pulling me off to end it, and I spent a month in jail but nobody would press charges and in the end they let me go.

I could tell Kayla felt guilty for fucking me the night before so I didn't push it, and by dark she was tanked and so was I. I said goodnight to her early and called in sick to work -- I didn't really give a shit at that point -- and after another trip to Big Daddy's Liquor I spent the rest of the evening over at Larry's, drinking and watching movies with him.

Larry was a funny guy. On the one hand, he was your typical white trash dope head, but then again from time to time he showed flashes of true wit. His favorite movies were "Apocalypse Now," "El Topo," and anything on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." "I love them fucking little robots," he said.

Tonight he was watching a Tarantino flick, "Death Proof." Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, killing all those hot chicks with his muscle car, until he meets some fine bitches who are too tough for his ass, which they stomp after a massive car chase.

It was just getting to Part Two, where the one chick is dressed in a yellow cheerleader outfit the whole rest of the movie.

"I'd like me a piece of that," Larry said, pointing to the girl with his beer. "I'd tear her in half. Gawd damn."

"Those chicks are way outta our league," I said.

"Hoss, all it takes is money!" he said.

"Right," I replied. "Like I said, way outta our league."

I started to tell him what I had in mind but stopped myself. He and Johnny Ray were friends of some sort, after all. But maybe Larry was right. All I had to offer Kayla was my paycheck this Friday, and that would pay for gas to New Orleans, but that was about all. No way she'd go for it.

Not unless I was the only game in town.

The plan was simple. The next morning I'd get up and go down to the corner payphone and call the cops on Johnny Ray. I'd tell them he was gonna pull another job sometime after lunch. I didn't know where, but that tip would have them all on their toes, and not out hassling people for making too much noise, like they had Larry. I didn't tip them off it was Johnny Ray, either. I wanted them to let him right on out of jail, so he could get his act together and go rob a liquor store, and then when they caught him I'd have Kayla all to myself.

I crashed about three a.m. but couldn't sleep past eight, I was so anxious to get things rolling. I tried to disguise my voice when I called 911, and when the dispatcher started asking me questions I hung up on her and went back to the trailer to roll a half-assed doobie and wait it out. Kayla was at work. By the time she got home that afternoon, it would all be over.

I had the TV on the local channel with the volume low and paced the length of the living room 5,000 times starting around noon, watching it out of the corner of my eye for news updates. I got drunk and then got sober again. Nothing on the noon news. The soaps came on.

It was 2:15 when they interrupted the soap with a news update. I jumped halfway across the room and cranked the volume up to listen.

"We interrupt our regular schedule programming to bring you a KTHV news flash," said the blonde bimbo. "Police have engaged in an exchange of gunfire with the so-called 'Budweiser Bandit' who has committed a series of armed hold-ups of local liquor stores in the area the past month. Our own Mick Vargas is on the scene."

Mick Vargas, who had game show host written all over him, was standing in front of the Red Wagon Liquor Mart on the other side of town, near the mall. "Thanks, Trisha," he said. "Police tell us they were tipped off anonymously that the Budweiser Bandit was planning a robbery sometime in the early afternoon, and one of their squad cars was in the area when the robbery occurred. According to Police Chief Keller, the masked hold-up man escaped but was shot at least once during the gun battle. No one else was injured. Police have put out an all points bulletin for the suspect, who is to be considered armed and dangerous. Anyone with further knowledge should call police immediately."

I was stunned. It had happened! Holy shit! But he'd gotten away. I didn't count on that. But whatever. He wouldn't make it far.

I heard a car pull in and went to see who it was. I was stunned to see Kayla getting out of her car next door.

"Hey, what're you doing home?" I asked, stepping out. "I thought you were at work!"

"Not today," she said. "Johnny Ray's supposed to be home sometime this afternoon. I wanted to be here."

Shit, I thought. Should I tell her?

"They shot the Budweiser Bandit," I said.

She looked at me flatly. "Is he dead?" Her face was blank. She was barely controlling herself, I was sure.

"He got away," I said. "They're looking for him. He tried to pull a job but got caught."

"Poor son of a bitch," she said, and went inside.

Shit, I thought. I went next door to Larry's. I needed change for the payphone. Maybe the police needed a little extra push. His Pinto was parked out front.

"Hey Larry," I said, opening the door and walking in. "Have you got any quarters I could borrow? I'll pay you back tomorrow if --..."

Larry sat in the center of his couch, which was, like Larry, soaked in his blood. There was a hole in the front of his shirt, and the blood was still oozing out of it.

In one hand was a snub-nosed .45 I'd never seen before. In the other was a can of Budweiser. On the floor in front of him was a black plastic liquor store bag. It was open and I could see the money inside.

Larry looked at me. "What's up," he said hoarsely.

"What the fuck!" I said. "You're the one?"

Larry nodded. "Yeah. Fuck this hurts." He took a drink of beer. Some of it ran down his chin. Then he sighed and dropped the can and quit breathing. Beer ran out on the carpet in a big puddle on the cheap carpet.

But wait.

I grabbed the .45 and the bag of money and bolted out the trailer door. Johnny Ray would be home any time, as soon as he finished detailing cars or whatever the fuck his "job" was, but Kayla wouldn't be there when he got home.

She looked at me bug-eyed when I pounded on the trailer door and she opened it and I was standing there with a gun and a bagful of cash.

"I'm going to New Orleans and you're going with me," I said. "Get the baby and let's go."

She shook her head. "But I can't just -- hell, Johnny Ray will be home in a minute!"

"Fuck Johnny Ray," I said. "I've got the gun and the money, and you're coming with me."

She gave me a look I couldn't read at all, then went inside and got the baby and threw some clothes in a pillowcase and came on back out. "I don't have time to get all my stuff," she said. "You'll have to buy me new when we get there."

"Sure, whatever," I said, motioning her toward the car.

She had Baby Jolene strapped in her car seat and was getting in herself when I looked around and a cop car, lights flashing, made a right onto the dirt drive of the trailer court and headed straight for us.

"Shit, they've tracked him here," I said. I looked over at Kayla. "Just don't say anything."

The car came to a halt in front of Larry's yellow Pinto and three cops jumped out. One had a shotgun, the other two pistols. They looked pissed.

I threw the cash bag in with Kayla, who tucked it out of sight under Jolene. I stuck the .45 in the back of my pants and stood watching.

They assaulted Larry's trailer and eventually came out and got on their car radio. Three other cop cars had followed them in, and a van that looked like it was full of S.W.A.T. guys.

We were gonna make it, I thought, cops or no cops. All I had to do was ease into the car, and drive right on out of here right under their noses, and we'd be scott free, on our way to New Orleans.

About that time a taxi came rolling into the trailer court. It eased around the cop cars and kept coming right on down to us, and stopped right in front of Kayla's trailer.

Johnny Ray got out. He still had the duckass Elvis mullet and the cheesy muttonchop whiskers, and he didn't look too happy to see me standing there.

"Kayla Marie," he said to his baby mama, who was still in the car, "what the fuck's going on here?"

Kayla chose to respond to the situation by screaming her lungs out.

Twenty pairs of cop eyes were upon me.

I did what anyone in my position would do. I pulled the .45 and started shooting.

I guess it could've ended up worse, but not much. I shot Johnny Ray but not very well, and he lived. The cops shot me, but they were fuckups too, and I lived. At first the cops thought I shot Larry, but finally they figured out it was their bullet that killed him. Fucking geniuses. But they pegged me for the wheel man -- like I would ever drive a fucking Pinto -- and locked me up.

I got a postcard a couple weeks after they locked me up. Postmark New Orleans, 70117. Picture of Jackson Square, that big statue of Andrew Jackson rearing up on his horse. "Welcome to New Orleans," it said. Except for my name and inmate number and address, the back was blank.