Read God's Pocket - Pete Dexter for Free Online Page A

Mickey
settled back into his seat and looked at New Jersey. It was pretty.
He'd never say that out loud, but this part, shit, it could be Iowa.
    They drove north about twenty minutes, to Exit 7. The
truck stop was a twenty-booth restaurant with showers and bunks in
back, a couple of Pac-Man games and a parking lot a quarter-mile
square, which was full. The man in the front seat turned to Bird and
said, "Which one'?"
    Not, "Holy shit, look at
all of them trucks" or, "What
the fuck?" but, "Which
One?" So it was all in Bird's lap, any
problem they had. Mickey watched it work on him.
    "It's a silver truck," Bird said. "Here,
I got a plate .... " He went into his shirt pocket and came out
with a piece of paper.
    "They're all silver," the man said, “and
it's going to take half a fuckin' hour to read all the plates just on
that one." He pointed at the first truck in the first row.
Fourteen plates, half of them covered with mud. Then he said, "Hey,
it's runnin' .... ”
    Mickey saw Bird looking for him in the rearview
mirror.
    "That ain't it," Mickey said. "We're
lookin' for a reefer." The man in the front seat turned around
to look at him. "A refrigerated truck," Mickey said, “you
know? So the meat don't cook on the way to Vermont?"
    The man turned back in his seat without saying
anything else, but he was looking at the truck again. "They
don't turn them off" Mickey said, "they're diesels. They
leave them goin' a week at a time."
    The man in the front seat said, "That's very
interesting, the history of the trucking industry." So Mickey
shut up and Bird drove the Cadillac up and down the rows of trucks,
stopping when he came to a reefer to check the plate numbers. Then he
almost ran over a whore, coming out from between trucks. Bird hit the
brakes, then gave her a little wave and a smile. She gave him the
finger.
    "Truck whores won't have nothin' to do with
nobody but truckers," Mickey said.
    Bird looked concerned. "Is that so?"
    "That's a fact," Mickey said. The man in
the front seat looked straight ahead. Mickey wondered what kind of
trouble Bird was in that they'd pick a hard dick who wouldn't know
the difference if they stole a load of live chickens to keep an eye
on the job. Before, it was always just him and Bird.
    "Pull up here,” the man said. "I got to
piss." Bird stopped the Cadillac and the man walked between two
trucks.
    "Who is that?" Mickey said. Bird shrugged.
"He don't seem to know a hell of a lot."
    Bird said, "He knows what he knows, and he don't
give a shit about the rest."
    "I can see that," Mickey said. "But
what's he doin' here with us? I don't like none of this."
    "It's nothin' to do with you," Bird said.
    "A guy like that, I seen them do things,"
Mickey said. "I mean, he don't know somethin', that's fine until
you know he don't know. Like right now, he's standin' there pissin'
on his shoes. The wind's comin' from under the trailer, but he don't
notice it because of all the noise, which he ain't used to. But if
you were to go out there and tell him he's pissin' on his feet, he
might shoot you, just to show you he knows what he's doin'."
    Bird said, "That's why God gave you and me
brains, not to go out there and tell him he's pissin' on his feet."
    They found the truck in the last row, a new
Peterbilt. The driver was a skinny kid with a beard and a Cleveland
Indians baseball cap. Bird stopped the car in front of him, and the
kid watched the three men get out. He was sitting sideways in the cab
with his feet up on the other side, listening to some shit wasn't
even music. You could hear it even with the windows closed and the
engine on. He was a dirty kind of kid, you could see that. If the
truck was his, Mickey wouldn't let somebody like that put air in the
tires. The kid looked down at the three of them awhile, then he
turned around slowly in his seat and rolled down the window. He said,
"Yeah?"
    The man with piss, on his shoes turned to Bird. "You
notice," he said, "the fuckin' world's got an