8
My release paperwork didn’t come down on Monday. Tuesday Morning, July 2nd, my eighteenth birthday, I had warm milk and cold oatmeal for breakfast. After I finished, the guard who picked up my tray told me I was going to start out-processing.
When the guards realized it was my eighteenth birthday, they purposely misplaced my paperwork. I had to spend my birthday in jail. The sons of bitches thought it was funny. They finally released me at ten minutes to midnight.
I stood in front of a liquor store and bummed enough change to make a phone call. I called my cousin Vince, and the operator told me the phone had been disconnected. I walked over to the 10 Freeway, turned up the westbound onramp, and stuck out my thumb. Over the next couple of hours, three or four cars went by, and none of them looked remotely like they were going to pick me up. I slept under the freeway overpass. In the morning, I walked over to a gas station and bummed a smoke off a construction worker who’d just finished using the payphone. I smoked my breakfast and then tried the onramp again.
I stuck out my thumb and a young dude, sporting a long blonde ponytail, driving a rusty ’55 Citroën with a surfboard tied on top, stopped and gave me a ride. He took me all the way to Santa Monica. He dropped me at PCH and turned north toward Rincon. I walked across Coast Highway and pointed my thumb south. A Hare Krishna smoking hash out of a modified toilet paper roll, driving a VW Micro Bus with a psychedelic paint job, pulled over and gave me a ride down to Venice. I got out at Washington Street and walked over to Vince’s place. He wasn’t home, but my truck was in the driveway. I figured it would be. I’d lent it to him a week before my arrest, and Vince was the kind of guy who just kind of held onto things.
The driver’s door on my ’41 Studebaker didn’t lock, and the key was under the seat, as usual. When I cranked it over, the gas gauge was pegged on E. I only had a few pennies for gas, but I found three cases of coke bottles on the side of Vince’s apartment.
At the local liquor store, I turned the bottles into two bucks and change. I bought a Hostess Cherry Pie and a Royal Crown Cola, then went across the street and put the rest in the gas tank.
When I got back to my place in San Pedro, there were two notes on the door. One from the phone company, and one from the landlord, who’d stopped by for the rent. My house key was on my other key ring, and was probably still in the ignition of my brother’s truck, so I broke in through a back window.
The only thing in the refrigerator was some sour milk and a couple of frozen Snickers Bars. I shoved a Snickers Bar in my mouth and jumped in the shower. As I melted in the steam, thick nougat drool oozed from the side of my mouth.
I barely dried off before I fell in bed and passed out. I woke up in a panic. For a second, I didn’t know where I was. I took a deep breath, and the salty air reassured me I was back home in San Pedro. I looked for my alarm clock and found it dead on the floor. What time is it?
I grabbed my last Snickers Bar out of the freezer, sat down on an aluminum lawn chair in the living room, and flipped on our second-hand B&W TV. The eleven o’clock news was on. The Dodgers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals 2 to 1, Kekich pitched.
“Oh well, we’ll get ‘em tomorrow. Osteen’s pitching.”
I fell asleep with the TV on, and woke to the buzz of the Indian Head Test Pattern. I need to get going. I stood up and headed for the bathroom. I was going to splash some water on my face, but I missed the bathroom, and drifted into my bedroom.
When I woke up, I checked my alarm clock. It still wasn’t working, so I threw it against the wall as hard as I could. I shoved all the junk off the top of my dresser, and my body shook with pent-up rage. I stalked into the living room and kicked one of the lawn chairs about six feet in the air. “Fuck!”
The early birds started talking, and the sky through the front window turned from black to dark gray. I went back in the kitchen, dug through the cupboards, and found a stale box of Sugar Frosted Flakes. I walked around the house in a daze wearing my boxer shorts eating dry cereal out of the box.
How am I going to get to Arizona? I don’t have enough gas to get out of L.A. And I need to find Harper. First thing I need to do is get some money for gas. Then I need to talk to Morgan. Then I can go look for Harper. After that I can meet Lawson at the Iguana. This day is gong to be fucked.
“I’m not old enough to be in this much trouble.” I dropped the box of cereal. “The rent.”
I tossed Morgan’s bedroom and found two hundred bucks tucked away in the Centerfold of a Playboy magazine. I pulled myself together and left the house. After I filled up the truck with gas, I bought a family-size bag of chocolate chip cookies, and hit the road.
I blew a tire in Pomona, and it took me four hours to get it fixed. When I was putting the wheel back on, the tire iron slipped off the lug nut and the side of my face smashed against the fender. “Fuuuuuuck.”
By the time I got going again, I was out of time. I didn’t have time to go see my brother or look for Harper. I needed to check in with Lawson. The guy was a mental case as far as I was concerned, and if he got out of control, he might take it out on Morgan. I’ll calm him down first, and then I’ll go look for the money.
I gunned it the whole way to Arizona, backed off a little around Kingman, and then punched it again on my way north to meet Lawson.
Down a washboard gravel road, the Scorched Iguana Bar was a sandblasted adobe shack at the base of the black mountains in northern Arizona. A weathered old woman stood behind the bar, and Hank Williams cried from the jukebox. I ordered a beer and flopped on a bench in a dark corner behind the pool tables.