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

attitude
anymore." He glanced at Mickey, to include him, and then he
stared up into the cab. The kid shrugged, turned off the tape and
climbed down. Bird handed him an envelope and said, “Go on in there
and have some breakfast, pal. Take an hour, unnerstand? An hour
before you come out here lookin' for your outfit."
    The kid smiled. "Who's driving?" he said.
He looked them over one at a time, still smiling. Some private joke.
The man with piss on his shoes was left-handed. He turned halfway
around, like he was walking away, and then he came back. The fist
drove up under the ribs, toward the liver. The kid's face all came
together in the middle, and he dropped.
    He lay where he fell, afraid to move anything that
might make it worse. The man watched him, nodding as the kid
improved. "All of a sudden," he said, "the world don't
have no attitude no more." He sat down on the hood of the
Cadillac and waited.
    Bird bent over the kid and started talking. "Lookit,"
he said, "it's none of your business who's drivin', am I right?"
    The kid held himself waiting for things to come back
together. “Lookit, you all right, pal? You run your business, we
run ours. We give you the trump, your business is over. Now go on
into the restaurant like I said, eat a nice breakfast, all right?
Nothin' happens. I mean, it was lucky you wasn't hurt, pally .... "
    Bird was sweating. Mickey saw things were getting
away from him. He didn't like the job at all. He didn't like what had
happened to the kid, but more than that he didn't like it that nobody
was under control. The next you knew, the kid would be crying.
    The man was looking at him now. "Business is
business," he said. The kid sat up in the dirt, still holding
his side.
    "An hour," Bird said, "all right? You
go have a nice breakfast, you feel a lot better, then you come out
lookin' for the truck."
    The kid stood up, Bird
holding his arm. "Take a couple deep breaths," he said. The
kid took a couple of deep breaths, so his ribs weren't broke. Bird
picked up the Cleveland Indians hat and dusted it off then put it on
the kid's head. "Am I right or wrong?" he said.
    * * *
    The cab of the truck smelled like a Chestnut Street
double feature. There were a couple dozen roaches in the ashtray,
smoked down to raggedy little squares. The kid had left orange peels
and banana peels and empty cartons of Wendy's chili all over the
floor. Mickey wondered how people could live like that. You did live
in a truck.
    He pulled the rig out of the lot, getting used to the
throw of the gears, fixing the mirrors. The Cadillac came out behind
him, Bird was alone with the man again. Mickey looked over the tapes.
Plasmatics, AC/ DC, the Sex Pistols. Sex Pistols? He remembered the
look on the kid's face before the man with Bird hit him. Queers
always thought they were smarter than anybody wasn't in their club.
    He drove away from the Turnpike, up over a little
hill, and pulled onto 295 South. The truck was new and tight and
strong, ten forward gears, and his hands and eyes fell into old
patterns, and there was something simple and comfortable about it
that he didn't have anymore.
    He'd driven trucks since he was fourteen years old.
He'd made the run from Miami to Atlanta with the old man a hundred
times before that. The old man didn't care if he went to school, as a
matter of fact he felt better if Mickey was with him because there
wasn't nobody to watch him at home, and when he'd died Mickey had
taken the truck and made the runs for him. He was sixteen, and that's
what it felt like he was doing.
    Daniel had taught him the driving end and he'd taught
him the business end. He didn't talk about much else. Once, coming
down old 441 through Georgia, Mickey had said the sunset was pretty
behind the pines. The old man had said, "If it is, you can't
make it no better, sayin' it."
    And when he'd died—the old man thought he had
hemorrhoids for two years, truck drivers always had hemorrhoids, and
by the time the doctors went in