Chapter 6
I MISS YA'LL
“I’m stopping here,” Johnny said. “I’ll go in and pay for the gas and take a leak, you pump it, then I’ll come out and you can go in.” The bump of the van onto the shoulder of the highway shook Cal in the back. He woke up fully when Johnny came to a stop at the gas pump. “What’re we doing?” he said, still groggy.
“I gotta get gas, and we both have to use the men’s room,” Johnny replied.
Butch turned back to face Cal. “Why don’t you start pumpin’ and we’ll get the inside stuff done and get some beer and something to eat; then you can go.”
Butch and Johnny got out of the van and walked across the small parking lot to the Stuckey’s. Johnny gave the attendant a ten-dollar bill. “For that van out there, as much as that will buy.” He looked out at Cal at the gas pump and gave him the thumbs up. Cal started pumping the gas, and Johnny walked to the restroom and caught up with Butch at side-by-side urinals. The restroom was dirty. There was toilet paper all over the floor and a broken air dryer on the wall.
“Those things never work,” Butch offered, “so people all wipe their hands with toilet paper and trash up the men’s room. If they put paper towels in here, they’d save a lot of labor cleaning the place up.”
“What are you, an efficiency expert?” Johnny replied. “Why don’t you think of an efficient way to get rid of that crazy bastard with the gun who wants to rob a goddamn bank while you’re at it?”
Butch looked over at Johnny and then down at the urinal. The smell of road and beer and piss and vomit overwhelmed the restroom. “Stinks in here.”
“Really?” Johnny said as sarcastically as he could. He exhaled an exasperated sigh and said,
“Butch, you can get us into some real jams.”
“Shit, let’s just leave the skinny bastard when we trade off,” Butch said. “Let’s just drive off and leave him.”
The restroom door banged open, smashing into the opposite wall and startling Butch and Johnny. “I’m already done,” Cal said as he surveyed the mess inside the restroom. “Ten bucks didn’t fill it up even. Goddamn, this place stinks.”
“That’s what we’ve been saying,” Butch replied, “and if they put some paper in here to dry your hands, the place wouldn’t be so messy. People get pissed off and wipe their hands with the toilet paper, and that’s what makes the mess.”
“Please,” Johnny said with a disgusted shrug. “Sorry, Cal, I’ve heard this speech already,” and he turned to walk out of the men’s room.
“I’ll be right out, guys. Butch, get some beer,” Cal said.
Butch was right behind Johnny as the restroom door closed.
“Let’s hustle, asshole,” Johnny said back over his shoulder to Butch.
“Wait, I want some beer,” Butch said.
“Beer? You better get your ass in that van right now.”
Butch and Johnny got to the van door just as Cal was coming out of the restroom. He heard the crank of the engine and realized that he was about to be left. He started a clumsy run toward the gas pumps.
“Don’t leave me, Butch, you son of a bitch!” he shouted. “Don’t leave without me.”
Johnny was panicked trying to get the van started. It finally cranked just as Cal made it to the front door of Stuckey’s. He floored it and was heading straight for Cal when he made a sharp left and wheeled the van back toward the road. Butch was leaned over the seat laughing convulsively and rummaging through Cal’s duffel. “Hurry up, John Raymond, the little sumbitch is gaining on us.” The more Johnny struggled to get the van back on the highway, the harder Butch laughed. Meanwhile Cal was close enough to Butch’s door that he could almost get a hand on it. Finally the van started to put some distance between Cal and them. Cal was shouting: “Butch, you no-good son of a bitch! You asshole, Johnny!” He was spitting and gasping for breath. Butch rolled down the window and tossed Cal’s bag out onto the shoulder just as the big yellow van lumbered onto the highway.
“See you down the road, big boy,” Butch shouted out the window. Cal caught up to his duffel, quickly unzipped it, and pulled out the .357. He took aim at the van’s back windows. Click, click, the revolver barrel rolled through the chamber.
“You sorry son of a bitch, Butch,” he shouted at the receding van.
“Laugh, asshole, laugh away,” Johnny said. “Another one of your asshole adventures.”
“Aw, John Raymond, that wasn’t so bad. Besides he was nice to me when we were stuck in Van Horn.” Butch let the .357 cartridges slip from his right hand to his left and back again like a Slinky toy. “We’ve been in a lot tighter spots.”
“Man,” Johnny said in exasperation. “Man.”
They didn’t say much between Houston and Lake Charles. Just driving and watching the sprawl of refineries, careening tanker trucks, and the countryside change from barren and wide-open West Texas to wet and swampy East Texas and Louisiana. Going over the bridge from Westlake to Lake Charles, Butch looked over at Johnny. “I’m not going back, man. I’m not going back to L.A. I’m gonna stay in Louisiana.”
“What about trying to get a demo budget or acting or anything else that you said you wanted to do?”
“I’m just going to do it from down here. I don’t like L.A. anymore.”
“Whatever, but there’s no music business down here. If you want to be in that business, you have to be in L.A.”
“Well, Hank Williams and Elvis did it, so maybe I can too.”
“Excuse me,” Johnny jumped in quickly, “let’s don’t compare you to Hank Williams and Elvis.
“I wasn’t. I was just saying . . . it’s not impossible.”
He looked over at Butch and saw a wet and disheveled, sleep-deprived man-child with a three- or four-days’ growth of beard, jet-black hair matted in clumps to his head, and a facial expression that said, Why not?
“Whatever,” he said.
