From West by Northwest.org eBooks Banjo Lane: Chapter Six By Norm Maxwell Oct 23, 2006 Banjo Lane: Chapter One, Meet the Bro's Banjo Lane: Chapters Two and Three, Complications Banjo Lane: Chapter Four, An Honest Meth Cook Banjo Lane: Chapter Five, A Dark Day for Busy Farmers Chapter Six, Happy Plans It was D-Day and the sun was bright and hot in the blue sky. The marijuana plants were dark green and happy in their gallon pots. The time had come to plant them in the berry patch out back. "The girls are looking good, Bro." Larry nodded as he examined his rose clippers and leather gloves. "We are going to do just fine with this crop. I have a good feeling about this." The potted plants were staged behind the barn and the two planters were wearing double pants and shirts for the muddy crawling in the gook tunnels through the blackberry jungle in the back pasture. Several weeks had passed since the Man in Black had been killed and buried but there was no mention on the TV news of his disappearance. Larry swiped the Seautons' newspaper whenever they were gone--read it and put it back in its tube. No mention there either. They just might get away with this. If they had left the body in the road and fled, the cops would be beating the bushes for them. Larry speculated that nobody really cared about Johnny Cash and those who knew him figured that he had just wandered off somewhere else and troubled their minds no further about him. Hayes was trying on a pair of gloves when a noisy car downshifted to the end of Banjo Lane and pulled off in the parking area by the house. Being behind the barn, they couldn't see what had driven up. "You'd better go see who it is and get rid of them," decided Larry. "We don't need spectators for this sport." Hayes nodded and trotted through the barn to see who had arrived. He shed his gloves and second shirt on Larry's armchair so he wouldn't seem odd. He cut around Ronnie's fifth wheel trailer. The TV was on and the open sewer in the blackberries was starting to stink with feeling. The berry vines looked particularly vigorous this year. There sat Brandy's tired old Honda Civic. The doors were open and Brandy was removing Jacob from the back seat. Jacob saw Hayes and held his arms out. "Daddy!" he called excitedly. Brandy turned and saw Hayes approaching. "Oh, Hayes, I'm so glad to see you! I've been evicted from my apartment and I had nowhere else to go, so here I am. We need to move my stuff immediately. My car is so small it won't haul much other than the four of us. Give me a cigarette, Honey." Hayes digested this turn of events. Pamela and Billy started fighting over who had to carry Jacob's diaper bag. "Um, Sure, Honeychile. You and the kids can stay here a while." He needed to get away and bring Larry up to date on this turn of events. Pamela saw the neighbors' two Savannah cats sitting at the edge of the brush watching them. "Look, Mommy! Little lions!" The cats drew everybody's attention and gave Hayes a minute to think. The shacky house was going to be crowded and the kids might discover the plantation out back. They would have to mitigate this situation. An expert liar, Hayes was already anticipating the problem of Brandy wondering where the Buick was. He would have to sell her one story and Cletus another. When Dad got home, with Brandy here, it was going to be extremely difficult to keep two realities in the air at the same time. He would have to hammer out the solution to this dilemma. "Kitties!" Jacob pointed at the Savannas and struggled to get down from Brandy's arms. Oscar and Gertrude sat like bookends with their tails wrapped around their feet, watching the people with their huge yellow eyes. "Don't try to pet them, kids." Hayes advised. "They are half African wildcat and big enough to hurt you." Billy and Pamela had been slowly advancing on the Seutons' exotic felines with their hands out making soft noises. Oscar stood and then Gertrude, and they faded into the green brush along the fence like tawny ghosts. "Kitties gone!" announced Jacob. Brandy had her own realities to keep straight. She had been methwhoring for Raul again and had given him the rent and what little other money she had for a glorious few days of all the meth she could possibly shoot. She had unloaded the kids with Mom and had had a really good time with crystal enhanced sex. The apartment manager wasn't accepting lame excuses or sex for the token cash Brandy was supposed to put up this time and so now she and her children were out on the street. Mom was between welfare checks herself and she'd do it again in a heartbeat if she got the chance. Now she and the kids were going to live in the Loveless house with Hayes. It was pretty obvious she was going to have to put out for Scary Larry if she wanted access to his meth. His powder wasn't as good as Raul's crystal but it was much, much better than nothing. "Hayes, Honey. The landlord is going to put my stuff out in the street tomorrow. We need to go and get it as soon as possible with your car. It's big enough to haul everything in a couple of trips. We can leave the old furniture. It is all junk anyway." Hayes dodged the Buick bullet. "We'll take the old truck. It will carry everything in one load and that will be the end of that. It could be tough to get us all in the cab though." Brandy nodded. "That makes sense. We can drive at night so the cops can't see the kids without car seats." Hayes thought about it. The old pickup's tail lights were cracked and the turn signals worked intermittently. He shrugged. "You have a license, Honeychile, you can drive." Jacob needed changing so Brandy went in the house with the three children. Pamela folded her arms triumphantly as Billy carried the diaper bag. Hayes faded away to bring Larry up-to-date on the new living arrangements. "Jesus Christ on a crutch!" exclaimed Scary Larry rubbing his forehead with a muddy hand. "I don't know how the hell we are going to grow our shit with all these kids underfoot. They teach them at school to squeal on their parents for smoking dope these days." "I don't know what else to do," said Hayes. "I'll keep them away from back here while you finish planting. Once it gets dark, We are going to take the truck and fetch Brandy's stuff. I'll just have to make sure she takes the kids and leaves for the day once in a while so we can take care of business." "Shit," Larry shook his head in disbelief. "Everything was going so well. I want to be up front by saying that I will not be left alone with those children. Anybody can call you a child molester and you go down. You can say you didn't do it if you want, but nobody cares, unless of course, you want to confess. It ain't happening to this kid. I had a bro take a fall for something like that." He picked up a couple more dark green potted plants and headed for the mouth of the tunnel. It was dark out and Brandy climbed behind the wheel of the Chevy pickup. The doors barely closed on the five of them. Hayes touched the start wires together and the V-8 thundered through its glasspacks. Jacob slept heavily in his carseat. Pamela and Billy sardined Hayes against the industrial steel door of the old truck. "Haven't seen Scary Larry tonight," commented Brandy as she stood on the clutch pedal and put the heavy transmission in second gear. The Camper Special spun bald rubber on the mud and slithered past Larry's white car. "No, um--he partied pretty hearty the past coupla days and finally crashed out in his bus." The Chevy lurched as it rear wheels bit gravel and then rolled onto the blacktop of Banjo Lane. Brandy gave it throttle and enjoyed the high ride with power compared to her little car. She roared east on the CG-Lorane Highway and idled through the Grove to minimize the cop bait exhaust. Hayes lit them both a generic cigarette and the cab was even more crowded with the smoke. The children were used to it. She didn't spare the tin on I-5 headed for Eugene and the gas gauge needle wagged back and forth between full and three quarters of a tank. It was moving day at the Pinos Ocho Estate Apartment Complex! Many of the inhabitants brought chairs out in front of their units so they could drink their forty ouncers and watch the free entertainment unfolding in the dimly lit parking lot in the pleasant night air. It was sort of like an old time pillorying in that the spectators got to feel morally superior in that they were able to keep it together enough so that they weren't evicted from their nominal rent ratholes subsidized at taxpayer expense. Nobody ever gave up a Section 8 voluntarily. It took years of waiting on lists and living in Mommy's garage or basement to achieve the super-low rent. You didn't dare get a job or you'd lose your coveted Section 8 status. The Pinos Ocho had been almost brand new when Brandy moved in less than a year ago. The place went downhill rapidly as nobody lifted a finger to keep up their domiciles. Bored children destroyed drywall and tagged the outside siding with spray paint. Nobody called the manager for maintenance as it could attract unwanted attention to unauthorized boyfriends living in the unit or drug dealing or the unbelievable squalor that most of the Eighters wallowed in. Puddles of Olde English puke dried in place in the carpets. Acrid home rolled cigarettes would eventually defeat the smell after a few years. Brandy backed the truck in a parking spot directly under the front door of Number 220. She took Jacob out of his car seat carried the sleepy toddler up the stairs. Hayes followed with the two older children. Somebody had already forced open the door and rifled the pathetic contents of the little apartment. Word traveled fast that Brandy was out of there and some opportunist had lightened their labors by stealing the TV and the beer out of the fridge. The furniture would be rejected by the Salvation Army and it had been proven over and over that the manager would not return one red cent of a deposit in this complex. "I guess we'll take the beds," Brandy decided. "And the crib and that chest of drawers." She stood in the bedroom and looked around at the stuff that had been strewn all over. Some pervert had dumped her underwear drawer in front of the mirror. She could see that all her racier numbers were gone and the plain every day ones remained. Sick, sick, sick. You turn your back for one minute... At least nobody had crapped on the rug. Not that it mattered. It was moving day. It was surprising just how much stuff Brandy had accumulated in her stay here. She rescued a bunch of cardboard boxes piled by the dumpster and stuffed them with household goods while Hayes flopped worn box springs and mattresses over the rail into the back of the truck parked below. The porch monkeys took in the show as they smoked and swilled malt liquor while Brandy dropped hastily crammed boxes over the side for Hayes to catch and stuff into the pickup's full sized bed. Billy and Pamela collected their few toys and books and carried them downstairs. They knew the drill. Cheryl Anne and Other Billy from Apartment 143 came to say goodbye. All the children knew the score. People came and went from from these places like the ebb and flow of the tide. Usually to other Section 8 complexes to get away from abusive boyfriends or ex-husbands. Sometimes they needed to disappear from the law and sometimes they eschewed their minimal responsibilities in order to party like they wanted to. Like the song goes, Somebody's always saying goodbye. "We're going to live out in the country with Hayes and the big kitties," announced Pamela. She meant to sound proud but she was sad and it was plain to tell. When you left a place like this, you never came back. You might see your former neighbors at the foodstamp office or free cheese line but that was all. Cheryl Anne patted her shoulder as she hugged the old velveteen rabbit that had originally belonged to Christine Flynn. Brandy had packed it around until her daughter took it up. It was well worn just like its inspiration in the book and Pamela loved it still even though she felt she was getting too old for toy animals. Billy and Billy handed up two rusty bicycles for Hayes to wedge in the top of the load. He had used the king sized box spring as a sideboard on one side of the load and the children's boxsprings on end for the other. The night was warm and fat women in shorts and halter tops flip- flopped by and appraised Brandy's worldly goods. You wouldn't think status would be much of an issue in a place like this, but it was. The Camper Special was approaching capacity as far as room went although its massive springs were good for another ton or more easily. "We ain't got room for much more, Honeychile," Hayes advised as Brandy handed him a box of canned goods. There's a hundred feet of ski rope behind the seat that should hold it all together." "That's OK. There isn't really much more anyway," Brandy sighed. "It amazes me just how much crap creeps into your life when you stay in one place for a while. Maybe it's a good thing to move every so often just to get away from all the junk you don't know what to do with." Brandy toured the empty apartment looking for anything of value she might have missed. She took down a print of a hare resting with its paws before it. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom had nothing more than old toothpaste caps. She removed the half roll of toilet paper from its spool. The dirty dishes could stay. There were plenty of dirty dishes at the Loveless house. Hayes was wrapping down the load with yellow nylon line. Brandy hooked the sprung door on the little apartment shut with her foot and descended the stairs for the last time. He arms were full of 11th hour rescued items while Pamela packed Jacob as he slept. "Guess that's as good as it gets." declared Hayes as he tied off the end of the line on a spring hook on the side of the truck. Brandy mutely presented him with her sad salvage and he packed it in cracks in the huge load. Hayes touched the wires together until the old V-8 started and Brandy drove away into the darkness. The crowded truck looked like a 21st Century remake of The Grapes of Wrath. Light me a smoke, Love." Brandy had the old truck moving at 60 miles an hour down I-5 in the darkness. Hayes complied and handed her a lit generic. She inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out the window. Just then blue lights came on behind the truck. Brandy signaled right and pulled onto the shoulder, far from traffic. She stuck her smoke in the hole in Smokey's hat on the dashboard. "Is the cop going to take you away, Mommy?" Billy asked fearfully. "No, Billy," Brandy replied trying to sound more confident than she felt. It was entirely possible that the cop would take her away. She rolled the stiff window all the way down. Hayes undid the wires so the motor stopped. "Evening Ma'm." said the State trooper, shining a Kellight into the cab. Driver's license and registration please." Brandy anticipated this and had her Oregon driver's license out. Hayes handed her the registration from the glove box. The officer looked at the overloaded truck cab and retired to his cruiser to run the numbers. In a few minutes he was back. "The reason I stopped you Ma'm, was that there is white light showing to the rear of this vehicle through broken tail light lenses. Those children belong in child car seats too. Do you have any ID, sir?" He looked pointedly at Hayes. It was show time. The two bigger children watched with wide eyes. Hayes had been rehearsing for just this eventuality. "No Officer, I forgot my wallet. I'm Zach Loveless. I'm giving Brandy here a hand. "What's your full name?" the cop demanded. "Zachary Lester Loveless," Hayes lied, looking the cop straight in the eye. He had his brother's birth date and ODL number memorized too. The cop retreated to his cruiser again and ran the name of Zach Loveless along with Brandy's. Of course Zach came back as cold as ice. He had never been busted for so much as a parking ticket. "What's your birth date, Mr. Loveless?" The cop was back. "9 September 75." responded Hayes easily, giving the date in the military way Zach would. He and his brother were born close enough together that he could pass. "You still reside at 1234 Banjo Lane?" "Yes I do." He had learned in Crossbar College to never volunteer information to the police but knew the next question and figured he might as well head it off. "This here's my father's truck." "I see. What is Cletus Loveless' middle name?" "He doesn't have one." Hayes let just a little bit of annoyance grate in his voice. A legitimate citizen would start to get pissed off at this point. The State trooper played his trump card. "Why is this truck hot-wired?" He pointed at the hole where the ignition switch used to be with his flashlight. Hayes looked at the hole in the dash and then at the cop. "The ignition switch is so old that it just plumb wore out. Dad looked into buying a new one--you can't. He figured if you bought one in a junk yard it would be just about as worn out as this one. He heard you can get these rebuilt but that would cost as much as the truck is worth so he just hung some wires off it. Works fine." He shrugged. The cop was fishing and clearly wasn't getting a bite. The truck was older than Zach. It was entirely plausible "Why aren't you carrying identification Mr. Loveless? "Sorry Officer. I'm not driving so I don't need a license. I'm just here to load and unload tons of junk for Brandy. I threw on some old clothes and come along. I never drove anything that didn't have an automatic transmission. Brandy has." He closed his mouth. He knew the cop must wonder why he wasn't driving Cletus' truck. The trooper sensed something wasn't quite right but couldn't put his finger on it. As if on cue, Billy and Pamela started blubbering. "We don't want to go to jail!" wailed Pamela. "We didn't do nothin'!" sobbed Billy. At that point Jacob woke up and started crying too. The cop didn't want to deal with it any longer. "You get your stuff where you're going and park this truck. I don't want to see it on the road again without the tail lights replaced. "Yes sir," said Brandy and Hayes with one voice. The cop returned the truck's registration and Brandy's license and walked away. Hayes made a production of getting out and critically examining the load of household junk lashed to the truck. He drug this out so that the cop was gone with a chirp of rubber before he climbed back in the cab. Hayes laughed as he touched the wires to start the old truck. "Good job kids! We don't wanna go to jail! Right on time!" The 327 roared to life and Brandy put the truck in gear and rolled into a gap in the traffic. Hayes re-lit her snipe from the Smokey bear butt snuffer and lit a fresh one for himself. "You kids did real good back there," Hayes praised. "You snowed that dumb pig big time." This struck the kids as extremely funny and they oinked and squealed like pigs all the way to Cottage Grove. Even Jacob got into the swing of it. Finally Brandy got tired of the whole thing and yelled: "Shut Up! No more pigs!" Billy did a tiny "Weee! Weee! out of the side of his mouth and Pamela giggled hysterically. Brandy backhanded them both after she shifted high onto CG Lorane Highway. Keith reached for the log when he heard the old truck grumble past and neatly recorded the time as Bruce remoted the TV so that they could see what was happening at the end of the road. The porch light was on and you could make out the towering load of mattresses and household junk on the back of the truck. "Oh God, Keith. It looks like the Joads are moving in next door with the Squatleys and Charley Manson. There goes the neighborhood. What did we do to deserve this?" At the other end of Banjo Lane, Dee Dee picked up the telephone on the first ring. Ken was in bed and she was having a glass of wine in an expensive penoir before turning in as well. "Hello," she purred in a sexy voice. You never knew who might be calling and you also never knew when you might need to recruit a new sugar daddy. She was feeling her 49 years and knew that 50-something women were a drag on the market. "Donna?" The voice was cracked and blurry. "This is your momma. How are you? I haven't heard from you in years." Dee Dee wanted to cry. All the careful distancing herself from her trashy family she had done over the past decades was now for naught. The repeated moving, leaving no forwarding address--the name change--marrying money--marrying more money--relocating all the way to Oregon and now this voice over the wire had just yanked a tether taut that she thought she had completely severed. It wasn't fair. She had to keep her past hidden from Ken at all costs. Ken wasn't going to want to up and move just for some unnamed reason on her part. He wouldn't understand the necessity of keeping her past hermetically sealed from the present. He would laugh at her shame and call her a mule in horse harness or some other insult she didn't understand. She couldn't run. She could only try to repel this boarding party from the past. "What do you want?" Donna Dolores Dever demanded in a totally different voice, Hard and dry as the streets of Bakersfield. "Why Donna, I'm your mother. I've been worried about you all these years. I didn't know if you were alive or dead. You never call or write. I haven't seen you since you divorced Tommy and left town. It's like you're ashamed of your family." It was exactly like Dee Dee to be ashamed of her family. She was completely at peace without contact with her boozy mother and two younger brothers she had molested in the wretched camp trailer that served as their bedroom. Why did this have to surface and ruin her perfect life? "John and Mike both joined the Marine Corps and are in Iraq now. There wasn't much in Bakersfield for them. They could have retired years ago but I guess they like it. They're both gunnery sergeants. Mike got hurt by some shrapnel a year ago but he's all right. They bought me a little house in town a few years ago. They are such good sons. They should be home on leave in a month or two and we'll all come and visit you." Oh God NO. Not that. She thought she had completely submerged and rigged for silent running but somehow dear old Mom had ferreted her out. Damn, Damn, Damn. She had tried to convince Ken to have a totally unlisted phone number but he saw no reason for it and they were listed as K. A. McCally in the Eugene and Cottage Grove phone books. He throat was dry and she slurped instead of sipping her wine. The thought of her mother, reeking of cheap beer fumes and cigarette smoke on the door step of the multimillion dollar house, made her want to hit herself. Undoubtedly, Mom would be driving some crap car with the back seat full of beer bottles. It was not to be born. "Just stay out of my life, OK? You never gave a damn about me when I was growing up. Why should you care now all of a sudden?" "Donna Honey, why are you so spiteful? Maybe I wasn't the best mother in the world but didn't I always make sure you were clean and fed?" "No, Ma, you didn't." Dee Dee reflected on the many times dear old Mom would be too busy screwing some other deadbeat in the bedroom of the old trailer to worry about her children. The refrigerator would be completely empty except for fortified wine or quarts of Burgie. She remembered drinking catsup and eating pickle relish because Mom had to choose between alcohol and food. "Catsup is a vegetable." "I don't want to see you ever again, Ma. Just stay away. I don't bother you. Why are you bothering me?" "I need money, Donna. I don't have enough for groceries. You can afford to send me a couple thousand dollars a month." There it was. Dee Dee was being blackmailed. Mom didn't have enough money to drink like she wanted to. Donna Dolores had to maintain the watertight compartments in her life. It would be impossible to send Mom blood money every month without Ken figuring it out rapidly. A couple grand a month was bubble gum money for Ken but he would sense a small drain like that in his finances the way a beaver senses a leak in its dam and rush to plug it. Ken kept only small amounts of cash around as far as she knew. Dee Dee had credit cards and she could spend plastic on all the indulgences she wanted to with no comment when Ken reviewed the statements at the end of the month. If she tried to access cash, her husband would want to know why. Ken wrote all the checks for the dull boring household bills. But he did pay Maria Garcia, the illegal alien housekeeper, in cash. He must keep some money around the house. If she sent Mom a dime, then it would never stop. Mom might decide she needed more money in order to party like she wanted to and Dee Dee would have to cough it up or be exposed as common trailer trash. Something like this could be just enough for Ken to dump her and find himself something younger and hotter. She did not want to have waste the rest of her life working a mind- numbing job and the thought of having to balance a checkbook made her gag. She should have never signed that stupid pre-nup agreement. "Drop dead, Ma." Dee Dee hung up the phone and glared at it, daring it to ring again. Maybe she could convince Ken that a pervert was calling and they needed a new unlisted number. Ken would immediately have the incoming calls for the past six months or so printed up. There was no easy way out of this mess. What is so rare as a day in June? Billy and Pamela crept out of their dog nests on mattresses and rushed into yesterday's clothes to explore the new world so different from the noisy concrete of the city. They tumbled out the back door of the little house at the end of the road while it was still not quite warm out. There was big bad brush growing in fence lines that looked nothing like the beaten down landscaping at the apartment complex. Billy looked at the leafing oak that completely covered the little blue house. He would climb way up in it if he could just get up to the first limbs. There was mud and tall green grass and birds sang. Pamela looked towards the big house to see if the giant kitties were around. She knew that Mom and Hayes wouldn't be up for hours yet. Jacob would be awake and fussing soon. She would have to stay near the house and keep an ear open for him. The children wandered behind the little house and studied the old bunkhouse Cletus had built. Ronnie was stirring and the toilet flushed in the old fifth wheel trailer. You could see the brown of Larry's bus through the partially slid open barn door. Scary Larry wasn't good and ready to get up yet. They drifted between Ronnie's trailer and the corner of the house to the parking area where the old truck usually sat. The raw sewage in the blackberries was gathering strength in the early summer heat. "Ewww-you stink!" Billy held his nose and pointed at his big sister. "You didn't wipe your butt," Pamela retorted. The garbage in the front yard was a new concept to them. Trash lay around the apartment complex but eventually somebody put it in the dumpster. Pamela looked around for the familiar green iron box with DO NOT PLAY ON OR AROUND signs on its walls. "Look! A TV. It's all broken!" Billy pointed. They were standing on the pavement of Banjo Lane now and could see the old truck where Brandy had parked it with its tailgate near the front walk. There against the rickety picket fence were their two bicycles. They had been confined to riding the old bikes around the parking lot at the section 8 complex. When Mom was busy with Raul or Hayes in the bedroom it was OK to ride around the block on the sidewalk. The police were too busy to make an issue of it. But here... the open road called to the children. Not a single car had come by in the half hour or so they had been up. On one side, a steep gravel track stretched away uphill into a real forest. On the other, black pavement gently ascended around a turn with big trees and old fences in the right of way. Without a word being spoken, Billy and Pamela beelined to the bicycles. Hayes had leaned them carelessly out of the way when he unloaded mattresses and other needed items last night. The bicycles were old and had been stolen and restolen many times. They weren't much when new but their faded treads rolled smoothly on the worn macadam as the half siblings rode in circles around the wide spot where the school bus used to turn around when it picked up Hayes and Zach in the morning. The little silver pickup eased past the cycling children and thumped up the rock road trailing a tail of light dust. Billy followed the truck to the end of the pavement and then turned and pedaled his Huffy the other way as fast as he could pump the single speed up the curve towards Cottage Grove-Lorane Highway. Pamela felt the vague nag of responsibility. She knew she should stop her brother but instead drove her battered Trek to catch up. They stood up on the cranks as they climbed the rise past the Seautons' house. Their tires were soft and it made it hard going. Pamela remembered seeing a bike pump on the back porch by a big Schwinn. She would pump up the tires so that they would spin easily and fast on the blacktop. Banjo Lane leveled off and Pamela took the lead. The margins of the asphalt were carpeted with years of brown needles from the big firs that grew alongside. There was no centerline. Cars needed to slow down when they passed each other head on. Billy looked to his left and saw bales of hay with a paper target feathered with arrows. His eyes widened and he stopped pedaling, coasting behind his sister. The pavement undulated up and down, right and left in the manner of Oregon county back roads. Dee Dee came running around the corner towards them. Her stride was long and she wore earphones, sunglasses and a big billed cap along with her black running outfit. Pamela admired her long nails and numerous rings. She stopped and jogged in place, motioning the children to stop. "You two be careful," she said, running easily in place. "There's an ambulance and a sheriff car in the Brand's driveway. I think somebody had a heart attack or something. You don't want to get in the way." The two sat astride their bikes. Billy's Huffy was a little big for him and he had to lean to the right and stand on one foot. "Yes Ma'am." said Pamela politely. She stared at the runner's dark tan and tight body and the new white shoes going up and down. She looked like she just stepped off one of the beautiful people TV shows that Mom liked to watch so much. Billy just stared. Dee Dee smiled brilliantly from behind her mirror shades and took off the way they had come with her platinum pony tail bouncing over the back of her jog bra. There were little balls on the back of her ankle length socks. Pamela looked at her own scuffed sneakers and worn out Goodwill hand me downs. She instinctively knew that good things come to girls who looked like the pretty lady in the new running shoes. The youngsters pedaled on. Pamela's front wheel wobbled and Billy's chain clanked as they rolled from the cool of the shade into the warm of the sun and back into the shade again. A big ambulance sat in the front yard of a little house above the road. A green Lane County Sheriff car sat at the beginning of the driveway. Pamela stepped through the frame of her bicycle and leaned it against a big fir. Billy struggled off his and lay it in the weeds alongside the mail box. A man and a woman in blue uniforms rolled a gurney out the front door of the neat little house. There was no urgency in their movements and they easily moved the conveyance into the back of the ambulance. The craning children could see a body covered by a sheet belted on top as it disappeared into the orange and white truck box of the rig. The blue suiters closed the back of the ambulance and drove away with no sirens or flashing lights. The driver waved without smiling as he pulled away on the pavement. A tall sheriff stepped through the door next. He rubbed his face tiredly and placed his Smokey hat on his head while walking to his car. Billy thought about making a pig noise but it didn't seem very funny and the squeal died in his throat. The children said nothing as the green car drove off. Pamela could read K-9 Unit on the back door but she didn't see a dog through the dark glass. Without a word they turned their wheels around and rolled off the way they had come. A dog sat in the driveway of the old Fernow house with the home made FOR SALE sign by the driveway. He didn't chase the bicycles but looked like he would like to run along with them if he wasn't so busy guarding the house. Two boys with bows came out of the trailer with the engineless bubba truck in front of it and headed for the hay bale target to shoot arrows. They stopped and stared at Billy and his sister as they clanked and wobbled past. Billy waved and they waved back. Banjo Lane was descending slightly and they gathered speed as they passed Dee Dee striding up the grade with sweat starting to show on her brow. She waved and smiled and stepped it out. It was just another morning on Banjo Lane. They parked their bikes against the old fence and watched Ronnie push her Schwinn out on the pavement for her morning beer run. Mom was up and packing Jacob around as he fussed while she stirred a pot of oatmeal and smoked. "There you are! I was worried sick about you." They all knew this wasn't true but it was a standard mom line. "Mom! we saw the ambulance come and take away a dead man--and a sheriff was there and everything!" "Look at me! I'm an old pig!" Billy thrust his belly out over his shoes and made oinking noises. Brandy handed Jacob to Pamela and dished up the oatmeal in mismatched crockery she had washed in the disgusting sink. Larry sat in his worn chair in the barn and rolled a Top. He actually had half a pack of name brand cigarettes in his jacket but it felt good to roll a home made sometimes when you didn't have to. "I've been thinking, Dawg." Hayes was sitting in the stairwell of the old bus with his feet stretched before him into a shaft of afternoon sunlight that slanted through the barn door. "Uh oh," said Larry as he licked the gum of the paper and closed the white cylinder so that it was about three quarters the diameter of a store bought. He tamped a few loose shreds of tobacco into the end of his smoke with a fingertip and put that end in the side of his mouth. "Naw, seriously. Dad is gunna be home sooner or later and he will be warped out of shape about his old car." "Uh huh." Larry nodded. That didn't take too much effort to figure out. "Well what if his car was right here when he got home?" "Not following you, bro. You lit up that Buick big time. Had to be done." "But..." Hayes paused for dramatic effect. "I know where there is one just like it right down to the interior and the trim. Same color, too." Larry lit his smoke with a blue Bic. It all fell into place. "You mean you figure to steal an identical Buick and put your dad's plates on it and act like nothing ever happened?" "Exactly, Dawg." Larry didn't like the idea but grudgingly admitted to himself that it could work. It all hinged on finding an exact duplicate of the torched off Buick Special. "I know where there is an exact same Buick Special over in Eugene. It's parked near Bi-Mart. An old man owns it. He bought his about the same time Dad did. It's parked under a carport and looks as good as Dad's did. I see it every once in a while when I drive through Eugene." "Yeah? When's the last time you saw this car?" "Been a while but I'll bet it's still there." "OK Bro, supposin you steal the thing and it really is a total match--enough to fool your dad--you're gunna have to hot-wire it or something and then the key isn't going to work and he'll be suspicious." "Yeah, that might be a problem but I think I can work around it. I could just hot-wire it and act like I've been driving it since I got out of jail. He'll be mad but he'll get over it. A better way would be to steal the key for it." Larry frowned. He immediately pictured breaking and entering some old fogey's house at night. Maybe the geezer was on the ball and had a gun. Maybe the cops would come running. If you were totally lucky, the geezer would sleep through it all and the car key would be in plain sight. The situation could easily degrade into having to subdue and tie up the geezer. He might die of a heart attack and the stakes would be raised to a whole other level. He didn't like any part of it. "I dunno, Bro. I can see a lot of bad shit happening if you break in the house for the car key." "Could be. We need to check it out. I'll tell Brandy we're going off on business. I've managed to not talk to her about the Buick. It would be really a good thing if we could completely dodge that bullet." "I guess we can recon the situation. It would be good if your dad didn't have to be pissed off right off the bat." He picked up half a bottle of flat tokay from the floor. He had left it overnight with the cap off but it didn't matter. "Let me drink my breakfast here and we'll do it." The old white car squealed to a stop at the light coming down the steep hill on Chambers Street in the South Hills of Eugene. The brakes were on the last bit of lining and Larry was going to have to deal with his car issue soon. Hayes lit a smoke. "Dad and I used to see this Buick when we were driving together sometimes. He would come and get me for the day when him and Mom were divorced and she lived in Eugene. When he saw the car passing by he'd say: 'Stop! Thief! Somebody stole my car!' One time, it was parked in the Bi-Mart parking lot when we were shopping there. Dad parked right next to it and I remember him looking at them both and remarking that we were peas in a pod." "Uh huh." Larry wasn't impressed but it was worth checking out. It wasn't like he had a job to waste his time or anything and the tank was full of stolen gas. "Turn left there," directed Hayes. "No I mean the next block." Larry did so and the white car wandered through a modest neighborhood as the two criminals scanned every driveway trying not to be too obvious about it. "It's around here somewhere," said Hayes lamely." "The old fart might have died by now or moved or even bought a new car" argued Larry. "Naw, you can tell he was just like Dad as far as keeping the same old car. He was pretty old though the last time I saw him cruising by with his wife. Turn there." Larry sighed and made a right and they low profiled down another residential street behind the school. "There it is!" breathed Hayes. "No shit Bro! Looks just like it--and it's for sale!" Sure enough, there was a big plastic FOR SALE sign propped on the steering wheel under the windshield. "I guess the old guy must be too old to drive any more. I have a plan! Let me out here and go park down the block. If I can bullshit the geezer into letting me test drive the thing by myself, I'll just drive off and meet you at home." Larry felt vaguely uneasy at the idea but he stopped the car and Hayes hopped out and slammed the door. He orbited the block and parked fifty yards behind the Buick with a new Japanese car between the old white car and the back bumper of the maroon Special. Hayes was nowhere to be seen and Larry felt out of place with his long hair and beard sitting in his junky car in this tidy neighborhood. He had his empty .38 pistol in his jacket pocket. Maybe he should stop at the Bi-Mart at 18th and Chambers and buy some rounds for the thing. He wished he had a newspaper to pretend to read. The last day of school was letting out and small groups of children were laughing and swinging their back packs as they skipped and chased each other. Suddenly Hayes came striding briskly out the front door of a little white house. He unlocked the driver's door of the maroon Special and tossed the FOR SALE sign in the back seat as he started the car and threw it in gear. He glanced in the mirror and drove swiftly away without actually burning rubber. Larry started the Fairmont and slowly followed after without staring at the house Hayes had left. He made several turns before joining the heavy traffic on Chambers Street and heading north. Hayes would be going south onto Lorane Highway where he would take the back roads to Lorane and then to Banjo Lane between Lorane and the Grove. Larry parked his nondescript car in the Bi-Mart parking lot and strolled into the store. He flashed his old worn membership card at the clerk and walked back to the sporting goods department. He picked up a couple five packs of shotgun slugs for the old 20 gauge but had to ask for pistol cartridges from behind the counter. He paid for the ammunition and walked casually out the exit. Two police cars and an ambulance were moving south on Chambers Street with sirens blaring. Larry had a bad feeling about this and decided to drive east on 18th Street and take the other way to Banjo Lane, down I-5 and through the Grove. Copyright 2006 by Norm Maxwell Norm Maxwell writes fiction and non-fiction for WxNW.org and The Eugene Weekly. He is a regular columnist in these web pages (see Voices of Spencer Creek) and writes about rural issues and county politics. He lives in Lorane, Oregon. © Copyright 2000-2006 by West by Northwest.org