Читать книгу The Last Narrow Gauge Train Robbery - Robert K. Swisher Jr. - Страница 7

CHAPTER 2

Ronnie Wild pulled the jeep pickup into the parking lot of the Wagon Wheel. The back of the truck was filled with his fishing gear and the food. Last year he had inherited next year’s food list. He stepped out of the truck and stretched. It was a long drive from Los Angeles to Chama, but it was good. Each year the difference between the two seemed greater. After the lights and noise and hustle of LA, Chama was almost not breathing. But God it was good. Each year he would see the edge of Chama and remember the small cabin he had lived in.

It was here they had met, all of them, the group. He had come out with his girl right off the streets of ’Frisco, flying on any item that was supposed to enhance your life, groove your mind, or get you fucked up. The mountains around Chama taught him life. Snow was cold, work was a part of life. Just because one stayed stoned and grooved on nature did not mean that one did not have to eat and, most important, just because a pregnancy might result didn’t mean that one had to forego the pleasure of screwing.

After two winters and two summers he had dragged himself back to LA, let his mother hug him, put up his hippie flower-child bride and baby, and went back to college. In time, he had his law school degree. But he never forgot the mountains. No matter what case he was working on, no matter what the trouble, he could move his thoughts to the sound of the old wood stove and the breathtaking sight of the stars at night, and relax. The mountains were always close to Ronnie. There were many times when he felt like leaving his home, his Jaguar, his Mercedes, his kids with their motorbikes and surfboards, and returning to the mountains. But he never did. He settled for this week, his week with the old guys, converted like him.

Ronnie walked into the bar and saw the back of Bill’s head. He sat down without speaking and looked at his old friend. Bill smiled and the two men looked at each other. After a few moments, they shook hands. Bill waved for another beer.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Bill toasted. Their glasses clanked and they chugged the beer. Both laughed, stood, and hugged each other.

“How are the kids?” Bill asked.

Ronnie chuckled, “One smokes pot, but not like us. He just does it … you know. When we started, it was a cause, something, remember?”

Bill agreed silently.

“One kid likes pills and the other is going to grow up and make a bundle selling coke.”

Bill laughed, “Sounds like my crew. I tell the oldest, if he thinks he can get ahead selling drugs, he better think about it.” Bill leaned closer to Ronnie, “But if he does, I’ll let him build up, then I’ll rip him off myself, and retire up here.” Both men laughed.

“No, seriously,” Ronnie continued, “kids are fine, good kids. They would never guess that we used to live up here, smoke grass and live off the land.”

Both men kept their thoughts hidden. Life had been so easy back then, so simple. It was only a matter of where your head was that made the world. The lesson had been well-learned, though, never to be forgotten. The world was bigger than they were. Their peckers had, indeed, gotten them in trouble.

“How is the fire business?” Ronnie asked.

“Jesus,” Bill spoke, “let me tell you about the blonde I pulled out of an apartment with the crotchless panties. Finger lickin’ good.”

Ronnie moved his hand for two more beers. “I see Saavedra still owns the bar. I wonder where he finds these girls.” Ronnie watched the tits of the barmaid as they bounced toward them. “What they need is a wet T-shirt night.”

“What they really need is herpes, like California,” Bill laughed.

For a few moments they said nothing. Both were content as they realized how fast the year had passed. Another year, a year that seemed like nothing. It was funny, everything except the mountains, the fishing, and the trip seemed to be the dream of their lives. It made no sense.

Bill poked Ronnie with his elbow, “I have some Afghani that will do the trick this year.”

Ronnie rolled his eyes back, “Good, I have some coke that is at least sixty percent mannitol.” Both men laughed and took another slug of beer.

“God, it’s good to see you,” Ronnie spoke.

At that moment, Riley Page entered the bar, all five feet eight inches of him. Dressed in Levis and a western shirt, he looked like a short version of the Marlboro Man. When they had first met, Riley was fresh out of Vietnam. The first year he lived in the mountains, he couldn’t get it up unless the girl put on a camouflage T-shirt. He was plagued with recurring dreams that it was all built on the side, and a constant fear that he would develop syphilis when he was old.

Both Ronnie and Bill jumped up, and the three men danced in a small circle. They began to chant — big tits — big tits — big tits. The bar girls smiled and brought them a round of beer. During the greeting, two cowboys came into the bar and sat at the far end. Both looked tired, smelled of cow shit, and looked like yesterday’s windstorm. Ronnie, Bill, and Riley paid them no mind. There was nobody in their world, only them, the beer, and the big tits on the bar girls.

“Fuckin’ Saavedra still finds ’em,” Riley spoke, spilling beer down his chin. After the hippie phase of his life, Riley had gone back to school and received a degree in photography. He got a job teaching at the University in Denver and spent his time fucking young college girls. He still was not married.

“Listen,” he would say, “you can have your kids, your wives, your responsibility. No steady squeeze for this kid. I’ll take my chances getting herpes.”

There was nothing finer to Riley than the beginning of the new school year, and the anticipation of which young coed would be sitting in the front row. He counted beavers like some people counted the fish they caught. But the highlight of each year was this week in the mountains. Whatever else Riley was, he loved the mountains. The dreamer, the veteran, the photographer. He was constantly on the search to make life more than it was.

The three men sat at the bar. By nine there were over half-a-dozen other customers staring at the girls through the cloud of cigarette smoke.

Riley looked out the window into the darkness. “Frank is usually here by now,” he spoke to himself more than to the others.

Everyone looked nervously at each other until Bill told a joke, “You heard about the new DeLorean car? You drive around the street until the white lines disappear.”

“That reminds me, anybody want a toot?” Ronnie asked, not laughing. Riley nooded his head and took the folded paper as Ronnie handed it to him under the bar.

As Riley walked off, Ronnie looked at Bill, “You know, the bathroom has become, in modern times, the most active area of any party or restaurant. Have you noticed how many people go to the bathroom with somebody else?”

Bill scratched his head, “I wonder what will be next on the list of recreational drugs that blow your mind.”

Ronnie sipped his beer, “I don’t know, but whatever it is, I hope a lot of it grows in my back yard.”

Riley walked by the assorted cowboys and Mexicans along the bar. Inside the bathroom, he locked the door and opened the folded wrapper. Taking his knife from his belt, he dipped the point in the white powder and placed it under his nose. He inhaled, made a face, and repeated the process. He folded the paper carefully and went back to the bar. Sitting back down by Ronnie, he slipped the paper back to him.

“Jesus, you buy the worst shit I have ever snorted. That must be at least sixty percent mannitol.”

Ronnie shook his head, “That’s what I figured.”

Bill put his hand under the bar, “Let me have some of that shit.”

Bill made his way past the line of onlooking Mexicans and cowboys. One nodded, one smirked, and one drank his beer. Inside the bathroom, Bill opened the paper carefully, poked his finger in the pile, and then rubbed his gums. He had heard that this was better, no chance of burning holes in your nose. Walking back past the line of beer drinkers, nobody looked.

After he sat down, he handed the paper back to Ronnie, “Riley is right,” he spoke, “that stuff is terrible.”

“Sugar rush better than no rush,” Ronnie chirped.

By ten in the evening, all the men were sufficiently full of beer to make the walk to the bathroom after each glass. Filled with mannitol, the beer didn’t seem to have any effect except to run through their bodies, leaving nothing but a few hops and grain as it went.

“You know,” Bill spoke, “I know I’ve pissed a fortune in my life; enough beer to fill a beer truck, buy a house in the mountains, do a drug deal.”

Everybody laughed. Riley sat drinking his beer and became silent while Bill and Ronnie told stories. Bill noticed his quietness, “Now don’t go getting sentimental on us yet, Riley.”

Riley was known to grow despondent. His attacks would come at various times, eating, drinking, driving, sitting in the tent with the guys, in the middle of making love. Riley had a general and precise understanding of the futility of the human condition. At times, there was not enough outside stimulus to keep the wisdom covered, and he would see everything as the passing thing it is.

He looked at Bill and Ronnie, “We’re just like all the rest,” he spoke quietly, “cramming moments and periods of time we love into small bits of life. Hung up, strung up, fucked up; God, how depressing to be lumped in with mankind.”

Bill sipped his beer as Riley continued. “Remember when we first met — sitting in our log homes, cutting wood, freezing our asses — boy did we know the world. We believed we were the changers of life, everybody would join the flock. Remember sitting and smoking pot, discussing life and love, war, hate? Now look at us, scattered across the face of America. We fit. We molded our thoughts and beliefs until we fit.” Riley started to continue, but Bill cut in.

“Everybody had to fit, everybody has to, Riley. Nobody here is a hermit, nobody can keep the vigil. Fuckin’ world is too big. We were just like everything else, a passing, that’s how it is. Nobody likes it, but that’s how it is.”

Riley looked at Bill, looked at Ronnie, sipped his beer. “I know,” he spoke with a twinkle in his eye. “I know, but what a bummer.”

Ronnie chuckled, “You ex-hippie fuck. Maybe you should go back to living off the land or sell a load of pot.”

Riley scratched his ear, “No, that’s over. Used to be a bunch of guys sold pot, heros, culture heros, not now. Italians, Cubans, and Colombians now, big fat grease balls with diamonds and fancy cars, and people who will cut your fingers off and kill your mother. Gangsters, nothing but gangsters. You know, it’s like everything else, too many people, too popular. If you have good thing going, keep it small and quiet.”

One of the big-titted barmaids walked down in front of them smiling. Riley lost his melancholy look as he stared at the tits before him.

The girl looked at Riley. He pushed a ten dollar bill in front of the girl and spoke, “Ten bucks and let me see your tits.”

The girl didn’t stop smiling, but leaned forward and whispered, “See that man at the end of the bar?”

“Yes,” Riley answered, “the big guy with the nose that looks like it caught too many fists?”

“That is my husband,” the girl answered.

Riley smiled, “Ten dollars to keep your mouth shut.”

The girl laughed and slipped the ten dollars in her cleavage.

Ronnie chuckled, “This isn’t your freshman photography class here.”

Riley shivered, “Give me that wrapper, I need another toot.”

Frank Cummings felt the four horses moving in the trailer. He scratched his balding head and sipped on the Coors beer. In the back of the truck was all the gear, tents, packsaddles, fishing poles. Every year, he brought the pack gear and the four horses. Of all the men, he still lived in the mountains. He had become a guide and outfitter, hanging on to his dream of freedom. Somehow, he had managed to stay alive during the lean years. By growing a few pot plants, he always seemed to make it. While the others were getting their ladies pregnant, he was like Riley.

“No sir, not me,” he swore. And he went down and had the knots put in. It wasn’t that he didn’t like kids, he just figured that if the world was as fucked up as it was, why have more people to make it more fucked up?

“After the war is when we’ll need more kids,” he told everybody, “but not mine. I’d hate for people to walk around with my brain.”

During the year he never went to see Bill in Albuquerque, even though he was only a hundred miles away. Frank was the kind of guy who loved his friends dearly, but after a week, people made him nervous. He would have to run back to his cabin and sit alone and relax. There were periods in his life when he could only sleep with a gun by the bed, one behind the door, one in each drawer he might open, and one in his back pocket. To most people, Frank was distant, quiet, not easy to understand or get to know. Handsome in a cowboy way, he was a loner, a man who sat and watched the world from his hermit hideaway. To Frank, life boiled down to his favorite phrase, cocksuckers; everything, everybody, at one time or another, was a cocksucker. Horses were cocksuckers, trees, chainsaws, trucks, doors, radios, presidents, kings, mailmen, tax men, and people in general. Frank finished the warm beer in his hand and parked the truck across the street from the Wagon Wheel. He could see the reflections of his three friends behind the Miller sign. He took some hay from the truck, fed the horses, and walked toward the bar.

Entering the bar, he looked at the backs of the heads of his companions. The various people in the bar were all involved in some overly loud conversation about something the government was doing to fuck it all up.

Frank walked up behind Bill, Riley and Ronnie and hollered, “Cocksuckers.” The three men jerked around, relief flooding their faces.

“Jesus Christ,” Ronnie blurted out, “we were getting worried.”

“Won’t be me the first to die,” Frank laughed, “only the good die young.”

The four men sat and were silent for a moment. Frank got his beer and looked at the others. He stood.

“A toast to ex-hippies and dreamers and outlaws at large.” He raised his voice and looked at the other men in the bar and hollered, “Fuck the communist cocksuckers.” The various people responded with grunts and scowls.

At mignight they decided it was time to go. Bill left the bar first. Outside, the stars seemed as though they could be touched. Bill stood and saw the Narrow Gauge train resting silently with the night. Bill saw what looked like the engineer climb down from the engine. For a moment, it was as though the man with the bib overalls and the train silhouetted behind him were pulled out of place and made one entity. The train seemed to twist and turn until the headlight was following the old man and it watched him until he walked into a small house by the tracks. Bill looked at the train and the space where the man had been. He began to wave his arms and make strange noises. When the others came out of the bar, he was standing there looking crazed.

They looked at him. “What is it? What is it?” Ronnie asked.

Bill shook his hands and looked at the stars. “I know what it is,” he hollered, “I know what it all is.”

“What is it?” Frank asked.

Bill put this hands down and lowered his voice, “There’s not enough outlaws left; do you understand, there’s not enough outlaws left.”

Bill turned and looked at the train, then turned and looked at his friends once again. For a moment, he was lonely; for his friends, for the train, for the old man. He didn’t know exactly why, but he was lonely.

Leaving two vehicles parked by the bar, Frank and Ronnie unloaded Ronnie’s gear and got into Frank’s truck. Bill and Riley got into the other. Pulling the horse trailers behind, they started off in the dark, headlights reflecting off the trees and barbed wire fences that bordered the highway. Frank stared into the dark. It seemed so distant — the trees, the dark — so solid and impersonal, uncaring, filled with eons of time. And he was with it all, so small and tiny and vulnerable. They drove into the mountains, and stopped at the trail head to sleep. Around them the crickets chirped and the mountains waited.