Chapter 16 at Garry Rawlins’ and from there
“Wake up Dave. We’re at Garry’s house in Oregon.”
Dave put on his shoes. “You drove all the way to Oregon?”
He stepped out of the truck, and almost ran into Garry. “Dave!”
Dave rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Garry. I just woke up. I didn’t think we were in Oregon.”
“We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.”
“Kansas? We were in Wyoming, Texas, and Montana. Did we deliver some cattle?”
“Wake up, Dave. We are in Oregon.”
“Garry.”
“That’s me. Come on in, Dave.”
They went into the house, with Jainie right behind. “So you’ve met my wife, Jainie.”
“Yes. It’s great to see you with someone like her.”
“I almost missed her.”
“But you didn’t. That’s what counts.”
“You find a good one yet, Garry?”
“No. You know how it is. Say, Jainie, are you a mathematician, too?”
“No. I’m a rancher and a dealmaker.”
“Like a car salesman, huh?”
‘Kind of. What do you think of 5 for hauling these cars?”
“Meet you in the middle. $4,500.”
“We can do that. I have a mathematician who can drive a big truck.”
“I have five cars. That’s all your trailer will carry.”
“I think that’s right.”
“What you have, Dave, is a Sterling Road master. It’s the Rolls Royce of car haulers. Worm gear drive winches for the hold downs. Wheel chocks you can set just about everywhere. All kinds of special features, and if the tool boxes have what is supposed to be in them, you can do a lot of things with it. You can recover wrecks onto either or both decks.”
“This evening, we thought we would take you to dinner. Is the Asia Palace still there?”
“Yes, and they are as good as ever.”
“We’ll go there, then?”
“Fine by me.”
“Garry, I have some pictures to show you.”
He pulled a laptop out of his satchel, and put it on the table. “This is Janie’s cousin Marcie. She’s a model.”
“Smoking.”
“Not always nice, though. And here is the sweet one, Danielle.”
“She’s real cute, Dave.”
“I think she might like you, Garry. She is very lonely.” Jainie seemed to lose her train of thought. “She works in an art gallery in New Orleans. But you could sell cars in New Orleans.”
“My house, my friends, my connections, the dealership I work part time at, everything is here.”
Dave shut down the laptop, and put it in the satchel. “It was a thought. What are we driving to the Asia Palace?”
“Not the truck. I have a car.”
Dave put the laptop in the Baby, and got in Garry’s car. “It was a thought. If I didn’t have Jainie, I’d go to New Orleans to put my claim on Danielle.”
“You’re a gypsy Dave. If Jainie had a ship, and wanted you to go with her to the Philippines, how long would it take you to pack?”
“20 minutes.”
“Jainie?”
“If his ship was pulling out from the dock, Garry, I would get on it with nothing at all before I would see him leave without me.”
“I couldn’t do that. Here is the restaurant. You’re going to like this place, Jainie.”
They went in.
“Dave! I don’t see you for so long!”
“Hi, Mama. This is my wife, Jainie.”
Mama took Jainie’s hand. “She very pretty, Dave.”
“Jainie, this is Mama Tui. I used to eat here all the time before I moved to Texas. Mama! You still have your fishes! Look at them, Jainie.”
There were two large tanks of tropical fishes. “Some very pretty fishes. I don’t know much about them. I do know Dave used to have a tropical fish store.”
“That big long one in the tank on the right is an Arawana. He’s been here for 15 years, Mama?”
“17 years we have that fish. Come now, I put you the best table. You have house special?”
“I will. Jainie and Garry might want to see the menu.”
“Not me. I want the house special. What beer do we drink here, Dave?”
“Tsingtao.”
“Garry smiled. All around, then, Mama.”
“The breaded fried scallops.”
“Yes, Dave, I remember.”
“They started selling them with the scallops stir fried but not breaded. I like them the old way.”
“I make them the old way, Dave. Just like so long ago.”
She left to get their Tsingtaos.
“This place feels nice, Dave.”
“They’re nice people. They love doing what they do. They love their fishes.”
“Is that correct? ‘Fish’ is wrong?”
“I think it was, once. Aquarists and marine biologists still say fishes for more than one living fish, but ‘Fish’ is in the dictionary as an accepted plural.”
“I’ll look it up in my Funk and Wagnall’s.”
Garry looked at the aquaria. “What do you think, Dave?”
“’Fish’, as a plural, is vulgar. For a hold in a commercial fish boat, fine. But to refer to living fishes as ‘fish’, that has no class. You don’t speak of a kennel of dog, or even a cage of mouse or a jar of cockroach.”
Mama brought the beers. They all started drinking them.
“Garry, has Dave been so fussy about words before?”
“He always was. He is about to be again, I think.”
Dave was pulling some junk mail out of the satchel. “Don’t leave your family buried in debt.” “You like that one, Garry?”
“If you owed something, then she would have to pay it, still?”
“Maybe. But wouldn’t I have to be buried in debt in the first place? Would I have married her in the first place if it would put her in that kind of situation?”
“No.”
“And if we got into it together, what would I do?”
“Move your assets into exempt stuff, and line up a banko lawyer to help her if you died. Yeah, you would not buy life insurance.”
“Life insurance might make sense so the children we don’t want to have could go to college if I died young.”
“This isn’t funny, Dave.”
“We’ll try the next one. Directv. Well, it’s just stupid. I guess I can’t go anywhere with it.”
Mama brought their dinners. They started picking out shrimp and things.
“We never fight, Garry. We do this instead. Dave tries to be funny and it doesn’t work, or he talks about him dying. Which he knows I do not want to hear about. I can’t live without my mathematician.”
“He will probably be around for many years.”
“Probability and statistics. You can bet he knows his most probable date of death.”
“I hope he will not calculate mine.”
Mama came over. “Is something wrong?”
“Not anything to do with you, Mama. My wife has the blues.”
She slipped away.
“Dave, the Ducks are playing tonight. Does Jainie like football?”
“I’ve never watched a game, Garry.”
“Well, eat up, and let’s go.”
She pushed her food around on the plate while Dave and Garry ate theirs. When they were ready, Mama put her food in a box. Dave handed her $200. “We’re doing pretty well these days, Mama.”
Jainie got in Garry’s car. Dave followed in the Baby. It was not far to the stadium. They got some pretty good seats for a game in which the Ducks were expected to be beaten by the Beavers.
Jainie burrowed into Dave, and they watched the game. Garry, on the other side of Jainie, told her about the players. Many of the Ducks, he knew personally. Jainie got excited by the game, and started cheering when the Ducks made a pass, a touchdown, whatever. The Ducks lost. Garry took them down to the locker room, and Jainie got to tell some of the players how great she thought they had played. The players had style enough not to tell her how great her bosom looked with her husband right there.
They drove back to Garry’s house.
“I didn’t think I would like the game so much, but it was really fun.”
Garry showed them to the guest bedroom. “It’s not much, but maybe a little more comfortable than the truck.”
“It is, Garry. Thanks.”
They got into bed. “I really liked the game. The great passes, and the great runs. I mean, even though we lost, the guys were great.”
“They were. It was a good game.”
“You’re a football fan?”
“Not especially.”
“You’re a Jainie fan, though.”
“Oh yeah. That I am.”
“Well, I would like some cuddling and caressing, if you would.”
He started stroking her, and then she got on top of him, and he started massaging her back.
* * *
The morning sun came in the window. Jainie was gone. Dave took a shower, got dressed, and put his stuff in his duffle. He came out and sat at the breakfast table.
“She’s out at the truck. We figured on going over with me in my car, and then all three of us can load the cars.”
“Sounds good.”
“She’s high energy. And she is in a good mood this morning.”
“She likes to have a lot of highway in front of her.”
Garry put some scrambled eggs in front of him.
“Thanks.” He started eating them. “I don’t know what it is.”
“She might be borderline manic depressive. She’s a very nice lady, though.”
He finished the eggs. ‘Is it the same dealership?”
“Yeah. Follow me in case you forget a turn.”
“OK. Let’s do it.” He got his duffle, and went out to the truck. He threw the duffle in back, and got in the driver’s seat. Jainie was in the sleeper, fiddling with some papers. “We are ready to get the cars?”
“Long since. Head on.”
They reached the dealership in a few minutes, and started going over the cars, with Garry putting them on the bill of lading, putting papers in the glove boxes, and tagging keys. Jainie thought it was fun driving up the ramp and putting the cars on the second deck. It didn’t take long to load them all, and block the wheels, and use the nifty little worm gear drive hold down winches. They closed and locked the gates.
“It was nice to see you again, Dave.”
“You too, Garry. Maybe it won’t be so long till the next time. We don’t really need the trucking business, but we can find time to move some cars for you.”
“Well, then, have a good run to Montana.”
He got behind the wheel, and pulled out. Jainie fussed over the bill of lading and the keys to the cars.
“I wish he would have wanted to meet Danielle.”
“Me, too. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a nice guy. I think he would be good to her if they hit it off.”
“What would you do if it was all the other side up?”
“Go to New Orleans. Meet the pretty girl your buddy says is nice. You might find one good one in your life. I’d go to Indonesia to meet her.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“I found mine closer to home. But whatever it takes, you do it.”
“I’d have gone to Jupiter to find you.”
“I know that’s true.”
“Take exit 71. Pull in to the truck stop. I want a little cuddle, and then we’ll get some coffee and head on.”
“OK”
“I wasn’t actually on Jupiter, anyway.”
“You were inside the 80xx microprocessor. Somewhere out in a hyperbolic topography. Places much further than Jupiter.”
He pulled into the truck stop.
“Don’t get any coffee, Dave, because I’m frisky, and I want to drive the day, save you for the night.”
He went back into the sleeper, where she had put all the papers and keys in order in a little zip up file container. She pulled him to her, and burrowed in. “Do you know how much I love you, my mathematician?”
“Like I love you.”
“No. Much more than that. I love you right to the infinite limit. Did I say that right?”
“Pretty much. Don’t ever doubt that I love you. Pretty close to the asymptote, anyway.”
“You had better.”
“I just said I do.”
“You had better mean it.”
“I do.”
“I just need some coffee. We have all the sandwich stuff, right?”
He looked in the refrigerator. “Yeah. We can get some more next time we get a chance to stop at a grocery store, but we’re good for now.”
“Good. I hate those sandwiches in the plastic boxes. And they charge too much for them.”
“Does that matter to you?”
“Yes. I’ll give $100 to a poor guy to help him out a little, and not mind it, but to pay $3 for a sandwich that’s hardly worth $1, I don’t like that.”
They went inside, and she got her coffee. The guy in front of them in line had two quarts of beer, and a bunch of change that did not quite cover it. The cashier, who was somewhere over 50, would not let it go.
Dave spoke up. “We’ll cover it, ma’am.”
She looked at him like she would refuse to let him. He looked back at her with his assured sense of authority. In the military, they call it ‘command presence’. “All right, sir.” She said.
He put their stuff on the counter. She rang it up, and he paid the change the other guy had lacked as well as the new total. “Excuse me, Sir, but would you stay for a moment?”
The guy with the 2 quarts nodded.
“May I speak with the manager?”
“Uh, yes, of course.” She went back to the office to get him. Dave stepped aside, taking his bag of stuff out of the counter space. “Batter up.” A hard worked woman of about 40 stepped up. “Like your style, Sir.”
Dave nodded and smiled. The store manager came to Dave as the cashier went back to business.
“I’m Robert. General Manager of the truck stop. What can I do for you?”
“I noticed that there is a lot of trash on the streets around the truck stop. I intend to hire this gentleman here to clear some of it. May we have a roll of trash bags and permission to use your debris boxes?”
“Certainly. Let me get the bags for you.” He went to the back.
Dave addressed the man with the two quarts. “I would like to hire you from now until sundown to pick up the ugliest of the trash around here.” He held out a $100 bill.
“I realize it’s not much for your time, but is it acceptable?”
“Yes.” He took the hundred. He accepted a roll of bags from Robert. He left to get to the trash, pulling one bag off the roll and pushing the roll into his hip pocket.
“Did you buy fuel? If you get over 100 gallons, you get $10 in food and drink free.”
“We don’t have space for that much fuel.”
Robert nodded toward the store. “What would you buy if you did?”
“A can of coffee.”
Robert walked down the aisle, and picked up a can of coffee. “We would like to sell you some fuel.” He said, handing the coffee to Jainie.
Dave handed him two hundreds. “I’m sure we can use that much anyway. I’m not sure what island we will be on.”
“I’ll see on the camera.”
They went back out and got in the truck. Jainie pulled around and into a diesel island. The pump reset. She fueled the truck, and it ran to $200 even. She got back in the truck, and pulled around. “I liked that guy, Robert. And you put the cashier in her place also.”
“She’s a poor person who works like a dog to make a living.”
She locked the air brakes. “Give me a hundred.”
He did, and she went back into the store. She came out and got into the driver’s seat, and headed for the highway. “Now I have done the right thing. I like this outrageous tipping thing. She was astounded. Robert told her she could accept a tip, put it in your wallet. She’s a single mom, pretty sure.”
“It’s a pretty worthwhile thing to do with our money. The guy with the beer has a bag full of trash. He’s going to work for the money.”
“Good. I figured him for an honest man.”
“I wouldn’t want, though, to make someone feel demeaned, or like they got charity.”
“Make it sound like you think $100 is not really enough, but that’s what you have. Project the feeling that you are a little embarrassed that you didn’t give them more. With Mama, I sort of implied that I should have tipped her better years ago, which is true, if I’d had it.”
“That’s the way to do it.”
“Want to pick up this hitchhiker? I’m armed it he turns out wrong.”
Dave went in the sleeper.
“He won’t.” She pulled over. The hitchhiker got in, putting a small bag on the floor between his feet. “Thanks, ma’am.”
“It was my husband’s idea, actually.”
He looked back. Dave nodded to him.
“I been there most of the day.”
“Where you headed?”
“Sun Valley, Idaho.”
“Could you get a bus from Boise?”
“Don’t have the money. My name is Wayne Katz, by the way.”
“I’m Dave, and my wife, Jillian.”
Dave was on the phone. “From Boise to Sun Valley. When is the next one? Tomorrow morning. Well, it will have to be. This is for Wayne Katz. He will be at your ticket counter in Boise long before 0900. If for some reason that does not work out, he can get on a later bus? OK. I’m writing it down. Wayne, what is your drivers license number?” he handed the phone to Wayne, who gave the number. “So that’s it? He read the number off a credit card. “Thanks, Gloria. You will be there? OK, he will ask for you. Great.”
“Wayne, we are going to take you to the Boise Greyhound station, and you will see a lady named Gloria, who will have a ticket for you to Sun Valley.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I didn’t think I did. I’ve been stuck on the road myself, and someone helped me. I expect you to pay it forward.”
“I will.”
He handed Wayne a slip of paper with Gloria’s name and the confirmation number.
He lay back in the sleeper, and fell asleep.
“Dave, wake up. We’re stopping for dinner.”
Dave put on his shoes, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and they started down a narrow, dark street. “This don’t look like a truck stop, Jainie.” She kept walking. A grungy man came out of an alley with a gun in his hand. “Give it up, bitch!”
Wayne grabbed the man’s wrist, and pushed his elbow the wrong way, dislocating it. The gun fell to the ground. Dave picked it up. He pointed it at the would be robber. “I’m Sam, this is Alan, and the woman you tried to rob is Felicia. Take your clothes off, punk.”
“I’m Billy.”
“No. You’re punk. Take your clothes off.”
He did so. “All of them.”
He stripped naked. “What are you going to do to me, Sam?”
“It won’t be so bad if you do what I tell you. Go across the street, and down that alley. Do not look back. Just keep going.” The robber took off.
“Alan, take his clothes. We’re going to throw them somewhere soon. Felicia, are you all right?”
“Sure, Sam.”
“Let’s go back to the station wagon.”
They went back, Dave taking the wheel. He took a turn and cleared the area. “Alan, hold on to the wallet, but throw his clothes out the window. Take the cash out of the wallet, and put it in your pocket. Wipe the surfaces you touched with your shirt sleeve, and throw the wallet out the window.”
“I don’t want his money, Sam.”
“Keep it. It isn’t his anyway. Pass it out at the Greyhound station. No, that’s not secure. Give it to deserving poor people, or Felicia will do it for you.”
He handed it to Jainie. She put it in her back pocket..
Jainie gave Dave directions. He parked the truck by a diner.
“Who are you guys anyway?”
“If you can keep a secret, I’m the Archangel Gabriel and she is Mary Magdaline.”
“I am Sue, you are Bob, and that is Carl. Let’s go get dinner, Bob.”
They went into the diner. The waitress came right over. “What will you have?”
“Burger. double cheese with everything, including jalapenos. Fries, and a Sprite.”
“I would like the same. Oh, can I get the fries with nacho sauce on them?”
“Sure.”
“I would like the nacho sauce too, please. Bob?”
“I’ll have the same as Carl and Sue.”
The waitress left.
“Carl, you guys aren’t organized crime or something?”
“We work for uh, well, uh.”
“An agency of the U.S. Government?”
“Ah, well not exactly.”
Jainie popped in. “You don’t have any need to know.”
“Oh.”
“When we get you to Boise, we would like it if you would forget our names, and our vehicle, and everything else. It would sort of tie up a loose end.”
“I understand, Carl. I thought that guy was, you know, a mugger.”
“He pretty much was. Don’t lose any sleep.”
The food came, and Jillian looked at the tag. $30.24 She put the mugger’s money on the table with a plate on top of it. Let’s get going, musketeers. We’re a little behind schedule.”
They trooped out, and Dave gobbled his sandwich. He ate some cheese fries, and then put the burger in the boat the fries had come in. Dave took the wheel and drove out by a deceptive route that would cause an onlooker to think he was going west. He picked up the Interstate eastbound. He got to the speed limit, and hit the cruise.
They rocked across the bleak winter highway. It didn’t seem long before they got to Boise. Dave parked around the corner from the Greyhound station, and left Jainie with the gun he had taken from the mugger. It was a nice one; a Glock compact 9mm. Jainie made sure she knew where the safety was, and got in the sleeper of the darkened truck.
Dave followed Wayne into the station, and saw Gloria issue his ticket. He came up to the desk. “May I have change for a dollar? For the phones.”
“Certainly.” She handed him four quarters.
“There was something else. You did something very nice for someone some time ago. This is for you. Just put it in your pocket for now, and don’t remember me.”
“Uh, is there something illegal about this?”
“No. It would be inconvenient for this person you were nice to if you figured out who she is. You can understand that not everything an actress does is, ya know, on the record. I was a short, chubby Hispanic guy about 25 years old if you need to say anything at all.”
She nodded. He left.
When he got back to the truck, Jillian hopped into the driver’s seat and opened the passenger door. Dave got in and locked the door. Jillian rolled. “I was so scared.”
“Wayne is an ex-marine.”
“How…Did he tell you?”
“The way he took the gun from the punk.”
“So we are clear of that? You talked to him jarhead to jarhead?”
I just left it looking like something from the Secret World. He won’t talk, and the thousand bucks I slipped into his bag won’t hurt.”
“Gloria?”
“When she opens the envelope, will have $500 she thinks came from an actress she did something nice for.”
“You are so devious.”
“Oh, I’m not anywhere near as devious as you. I’m sure you work for Christians in Action.”
She giggled. “Now you being a mathematician and assembly language programmer with specific knowledge in non linear topography and probability and statistics, I would think you would be a cryptographer. You would probably work for an agency that intercepts communications and uses supercomputers to decrypt