JAKE’S NO JOKE
When Jake
called me into the barn to poke around for a raccoon, I knew for sure that this
was the end. And I owe Jake this: at that moment, I knew for sure I didn’t want
to die. Mebbe I didn’t know yet what I did want, but dying wasn’t it.
He had me bend over way close to the ground, on my
hands and knees as it was, poking around in that old hole for Mr. Rocky
Raccoon. I ain’t no country boy, but I tell you, Mister, we got raccoons in the
city too and you don’t find them by poking around no hole with a broomstick.
There was Jake, standing over me with that shotgun and I says to myself, says
I, “Listen, Tone, don’t take your eye off him ‘cause the minute you do that ole
shotgun is coming up to his shoulder and your head’s gonna be rolling around
the barn like a hardboiled egg.”
Then, and I tell you, Sir, this is about the oldest
trick in the book, but I fell for it, he says to me, “What’s that over in the
far corner?” and I looked, just for a second, and I look back and he’s got that
shotgun raised. Well, Sir, I pushed him over on his ass and hightailed it out
of there, and didn’t stop running at the state line, no, Sir, I was heading
straight to Washington state. They got winters there, but they don’t got Jake.
Don’t know why this old life got so valuable to me all
of a sudden. You look at me and see a washed up old drunk, man who’s been
homeless since you was wet behind the ears, which you still are. But listen
here, Sir, I been clean a month now, and I think this time it’s gonna stick.
In don’t make friends easy, never did. Oh, you get
some people, they give you hooch when they come into some cash, ‘cause they
know you do the same for them. But they ain’t real friends, they come and go.
In Benin, that’s Ben—Eeen, you write that
down, people drift along even faster. Ain’t real services in Benin, you know
what I mean? Not like some cities, got shelters all year round and I hear tell
some places you can even get dental insurance. I only got two teeth left, but
thank the lord they hits. Just kidding. That’s something my mom used to say,
one of her jokes. My teeth, they’re all right.
I’d been living in Benin more ‘n a short while, had a
few hidey holes here and there. Nope, I ‘m not telling you where they were. I’11
just say some of them was pretty weather—tight and some of them wasn’t. I went
to Jesus’ Soup Kitchen pretty regular, ‘cause they didn’t get
all cozy and want to make friends and mind my business. That, and they always
had enough chairs.
Now, like I said, I ain’t the sort that makes friends
or nothin’ but I’d been around town and I’d got to know the scene.
And I noticed that some of the boys left when you wasn’t
expecting it. Course at first I didn’t think nothing of it; sometimes you get
the wandering urge so bad you just can’t stay put another day, or sometimes you
hear things are better up north or down south or just plain somewhere else, and
you don ‘t see no call to say goodbye. Plus which, we all get our secrets, I
guess you know that.
Usually though, when you know a
fellow you get a feeling when he’s about to break. Not when the law’s on him,
necessarily, but the other times for sure——the restlessness, they don’t want 
to look you in the eye for a
while and they get extra stingy or extra generous with their cash. I started
noticing, a lot of fellows, they weren’t like this pattern at all. Maybe they’d
be talking about getting things together, making some money, or starting a
program, but hell, we all talk about that and we all do it sometimes. And then
they’d just pop out of sight.
There was
one fellow in particular, a Spanish man named Jose. I don’t say that to be
racial, I just mean the man was Spanish.
He called himself Jose anyway.
Jose was something. He’d been
straight for as long as I’d known him, and he wasn’t real preachy about it like
some are either. I always kind of noticed him because he kept himself together pretty
good; he was one of them that hung out at the public library, and account of
that he always had a book tucked under his arm, and a real nice face too. He
had a friend, Mattie he was called, who was much the same, only he wasn’t Spanish.
I’m not saying they was faggots or anything, not thatI judge a man by that, but
they stuck by each other, if you know what I mean. They both seemed like nice boys.
I kinda wondered what they was doing in this mess, but I ain’t no social
worker, I don’t ask. Both of them seemed like the type that would help you out
in a pinch and not rub your nose in it later.
I was going through a sober streak.
I tell you the truth, I been drinking my whole life since I was twelve, but it
ain’t no way to live. Problem is, that one day at a time shit, that ain’t for
me. I think about getting me a nice woman, and a home, them white picket fence
dreams. That’s why I can never stick for long. But I was giving it another
shot, going to meetings regular and everything. I’d been clean for a little
while, not long enough to get cocky, but I wasn’t puking and shaking no more.
That’s when I bumped into Mattie on Emerson Avenue. He
come up to me, and he don’t look so good. So I try to cheer him up, but he
stops me. “Tone,” he goes, “Jose’s gone.”
Of course I ‘m surprised. That don’t seem like Jose. I
tell Mattie that. But then I say, “But you never do know a man for sure. “
Oh boy, wrong thing to say. Mattie grabs me by the
arms and starts shaking me. “No, “ he goes. “He’s gone, I tell you, they did
something to him. “
Mattie’s real upset, he’s crying even, not that I
think less of him for that. Mattie says Jose took a job with some rancher who
comes around to Jesus’s Soup Kitchen, gonna get good money and some food to
boot, and then he just disappeared.
“I know the guy, “ I say. “Jake.
He’s always coming around and shaking my hand and trying to give me a
job. Reckon he’ 11 be around again – hell, he’s always snooping around Jesus’s,
gladhanding and all.” So I take Mattie over to Jesus’s Soup Kitchen, and Jake
don’t come by that day, or the next. But the 
third day, there he is.
Jake looks pretty harmless if you ask me. He’s an old
pink man with yellowish teeth and aways bald, and he don’t see too good and he
wears a hearing aid. So I take Mattie right up to him and I go, “Scuse me,
Jake, this here’s my friend, and he wants to ask you something.”
Jake turns to Mattie, kind of squinting at him, and he
goes, “Yes?” real upper class like with kind of I-look-down-my-nose-at-you
coming out of him. And Mattie kind of stammers but he finally looks Jake in the
eye and asks after Jose. And Jake goes, real smooth, “Jose Villanueva, you
mean? Sure, I paid him his wages and dropped him off at the Greyhound station
last week, just like he asked.” Jake don’t stick around then to answer more
questions, he just looks at his watch and walks out.
Mattie was like an ember in a fire
getting cold. He turned from orange to gray right before my eyes. There wasn’t
nothing I could say to him, so I just left him be. He took off sometime after
that, unless he went to work for Jake and I didn’t know it.
A bit of time went by, and I was
yearning for a drink pretty bad and didn’t think I’d last much longer. I was
trying to stick it out, though, thinking about heading to California and
looking at the Pacific ocean clean cold sober and watching a sunset and having
it out with God.
It was starting to turn cold, and I
was thinking that now was the time to make some money and head west. Just as I’m
saying that to myself, I look up and see Jake trying to recruit some punk. I go
up to him and I tell him I’m his man. He looks at me with a glint in his eye a
ways colder than the weather, and gives a little twist of his head and says, “Let’s
get in the truck, then.” I tell you, I feel a shiver pass through me, and I
think about Jose and them others, and I tell myself I’m crazy, and I get in the
truck.
We head out to Wayton, a little
village maybe thirty miles from the city, through country that makes you think
you’re walking in a western movie. Scrawny cattle grazing on the thinnest grass
you ever seen, dust blowing all around, and, I kid you not, actual tumbleweeds
like in the cartoons rolling around the fields and the roads. Jake don’t talk
to me and I don’t talk to him.
We get to Wayton, and first thing
he does is stop by the post office and go in and rent me a post office box.
Naturally I think this is aways strange, but I ain’t one to contradict the
boss. Then we head to the bank next door and Jake tells me to open up an
account. Now, I ain’t been in a bank except to get out of the cold in any
number of years, but he has me sit right down at one of them desks with the
real pretty girls with their hair all done up, and he tells the girl he wants a
checking account for me, and he’ 11 put some money in to get it started, and my
address is that PO Box right next door. The girl tries to talk to me at first,
you know, engage me in conversation, but I guess I don’t look too good nor
smell too good, nor have much to say, so she 
just pays attention to Jake
after a while. It’s like a welfare office, I sign where they tell me to and
mind my own business. The girl gives me a bunch of papers and a checkbook too.
I say thank you and Jake says thank you and we stand and are on our way.
In the truck he says to me, “Cattle auction tomorrow.
You bring that checkbook with you and buy us some cattle.”
“Yes sir, “ says I.
His ranch is a few miles from town,
just a dusty little affair, I reckon no different from any other. Jake shows me
a 
little room with a cot and a
dresser in it, and says I sleep there, and I can wash up if I want. So I make
some attempt at it.
It never occurred
to me that Jake had a wife, and he practica1Iy don’t. I come out and it’s about
dinner timer and she’s coking in the kitchen real quiet, like she don’t want to
make no noise. She’s about the whitest looking human being I ever seen. White
hair, naturally, since she’s old, and white, white skin, and her eyes are pale
blue and her lips pale pink. Jake don’t introduce us and 1 don’t say nothing,
but when she sees me she gives a little start and says “Oh” real quiet—like and
goes back to cooking. “Auction tomorrow, “ Jake says to her, and she don’t say
anything.
I don’t sleep real well that night. I been staying with some other fellows
lately, and I can’t hear them snoring, and I get nervous. And I think some more
about Jose and some of them others, and I’m wanting a drink bad, but truth to
tell I’m too scared to go look for one. Finally I drift off.
Next day first thing Jake takes us
off to the auction. He’s got a stock trailer attached to his truck. It’s mebbe forty miles to the auction, and when
we get there we do it just like Jake says. He tells 
me what to bid on and I bid and
buy myself twenty head of cattle. Jake hangs back when I go pay the man. Now I
know perfectly well that there ain’t enough money in the checking account to
cover the check I write out, but Jake says he’ll add money to it first thing
tomorrow, and, hell, kiting a check ain’t
the worst ting I ever done, not by far.
The cowboys load the cattle, scrawny desert things, no
prime rib here, and I’m hanging back and wondering what it is Jake hired me for
since I sure ain’t needed to load them cows. Back on his own land, though, I
help unload, which ain’t no task, just smacking ‘em a bit with a two by four.
It’s while I’m hitting the beasts that I
look and see Jake looking at me with eyes real narrow. Next thing he calls me in to look for that
raccoon that don’t exist no more than a cold day in Mexico.
I know you think I’m crazy, but I’ll
tell you something. 
When I was unloading them cows,
I saw a human skull and a thighbone out there in the field, white as white can
be. You take your boys and you go look for them. I tell you this, I didn’t have
to come in here. I told you before, I’m heading straight to Washington. But
that Jose, he was a good kid. Maybe he had no future, no more ‘n me, but maybe
I do got a future and maybe he did too. You go check out that farm. And you go
to Jesus’s Soup Kitchen, and you tell them boys to stay away from Jake.
