Chaingang

“In the morning.” The serious black eyes stared at him from under the oily Presley-colored hair. He met the gaze, letting his eyebrows come up a little as if to say—yeah? Any problem? A long couple of seconds ticked by.

“Whatever makes everybody happy,” Happy said, smiling. “Let's catch a buzz.” He turned away, and Royce tried not to take a deep breath.

Brown Slot Motion Two Jet had looked a little raggedy from the sidelines, but this time the big guy was ruling it a completion.

20

JACKSON'S GROVE

The night brought a hard, cold blanket of rain. From where he stood, in a copse of trees at the edge of Jackson's Grove some fifteen miles to the east of Waterton, the tiny farmhouses in the distance looked like frightened survivors huddled against the weather, and whatever else might be lurking out there in the cold rain. He smiled his parody of a huge grin at the thought, thinking of himself as the “whatever else.” It always amused him that the worst thing out in the darkness, or the fog, or the great unknown—was him.

Distant fires smoldered on open hearths in sharecropper shacks and small frame, tar-papered rural dwellings. The monkey people were at their most vulnerable at night, but on a morning such as this, he always thought of them as a stupid, terrorized herd, absurdly easy to manipulate and destroy.

The curtain of rain enveloped everything in a stinking veil of wormy fish odor that he did not find unpleasant. The wet stench and the smell of his own scent in his nostrils accentuated the desolate look of these flatlands, broken only by occasional clots of woods and turnrow tree lines, and the little Monopoly-board houses of potential victims. It was his kind of morning.

Near the distant river there were rocks, willows, and a long ribbon of blacktop that fringed the man-made river levee. He thought about the woman and hardened, breathing slowly, savoring the memory of her look. He would have to get a live one next time. That was how he thought of it—a live one. Somewhere at the end of the blacktop, perhaps, she waited for the taking.

The rain increased in intensity, painting the landscape in a misty silver haze, and he gathered the huge tarp around his face and stomped out of the woods to the used Oldsmobile.

Chaingang Bunkowski could not waddle in off the street, reeking of subterranean sewers and dank drainage culverts, and ask to test-drive a new Peugot. He could, but it would be to create an unforgettable and altogether remarkable image. Nor could he wander into his friendly neighborhood BMW dealer's showroom without arousing considerable suspicions. So that was always the initial consideration when he interfaced with the monkeys: his predetermination of which places might allow him to effectively “blend in” and operate in the persona of a more or less “normal” consumer.

The buying of a used car was typical of such acts, and needed to be handled in the most surreptitious manner, with special care toward the selection of dealers. Williams Auto Mart, a lonesome strip of previously owned chrome, iron, and fiberglass just inside the twenty-five-mile barrier reef of so-called safety, looked appropriate.

Handling the prelims via telephone, delineating parameters, testing resistance quotients, probing the acceptable behavior tolerances, assessing risk factors, preselecting product possibilities, he further narrowed his field of choices.

There was a 1982 Cutlass, an “extremely clean” four-door Buick Century. The salesman, Mr. Williams, thought it was a ‘79. And there was the ‘81 Delta, which he ended up taking for pocket change. It didn't look like much, but it ran just fine.

The pink slip and appropriate DMV paperwork, replete with sanitized history and photo-correct laminated rectangle to match his tags (almost certain not to jar any wants-and-warrants priors) all made him as close to street-legal as he could reasonably get.

These formalities additionally paved the way for certain creature comforts like a place of inexpensive lodging, even a rental property, and—if he wanted to push it—financial respectability at the thrift institution of his choice.

It was, to be sure, a world of cars. Cars, trucks, RVs, and bikes were the core of civilized society. If you had a driver's license and a paid-for pink slip, you couldn't be all bad, so the inference seemed to be. And with that magic talisman, matching registration papers, and an engine block with original numbers—you had what it took to earn the Man's theoretical blessing.

Open the correct door, say the secret words, and you could then open checking accounts, apply for credit cards, hold your head up high, and walk tall and straight as any other lawful taxpayer.

“C. Woodruff” was a GM man, by golly, and he'd drive this old Delta till the bottom rusted out of it. And if Chaingang Bunkowski slammed his nearly 500 pounds into it too many times, the process might be accelerated, but it made a convenient and affordable throwaway.