An excerpt from Harry Dreams of Jupiter, a book of 16 short stories
Copyright Patrick Dobson and
personally recommended press, 2003
1132 E. 65th St., Kansas
City, MO 64131, 816-333-7303
Gunther Hoffman, a muffler, and one sure thing
If
the muffler hadn't fallen off his Dodge, Gunther never would have knocked the
Phoenix police officer out cold on the burning shoulder of the Squaw Peak
Freeway.
Not
that he intended on hitting Owen Brazille when Brazille told him to step from
the Dodge. Brazille had pulled him over after running over his muffler in the
rush-hour traffic jam. The front tire of the patrol car had popped like a
balloon and the muffler lodged between the wheel and the fender. It wasn't hard
to pull Gunther over either. Traffic was at a standstill, or nearly so
Brazille
held his wrist against the doorframe, Gunther’s license in his fingers. He kept
his other hand on his pistol. A line of sweat formed around the bottom rims of
his sunglasses. "How long ya had this wreck, son?"
"About
ten years," Gunther said. He'd picked up the 1981 K car cheap from a
balding man who'd had enough heat and was selling his bungalow to move to
Minneapolis. "Everything. Fire sale," the balding man had said, and
took $350 for the car. Gunther had driven it ever since.
"Goddamn,
son,” Brazille said gruffly. He shifted his booted feet on the hot pavement.
“Ain'tya ever heard of a junkyard?"
"Things
been tough lately," Gunther said. "I been meaning to replace it, you
know. But it's been tough."
The
desert heat made this seem
like a dream. But that was Phoenix, Gunther thought. Heat like drums. Anger
boiled in desert sun. Hindrances to motion—divorces, deaths, car wrecks,
traffic jams—spun in eddies at the edges of the stream.
The wind turned and poofed a cloud of the Dodge’s oil-laden smoke into Brazille's face. "Turn it off, for Chrissake," he said. "And get out. If I gotta wait, you gotta wait. Get over here and sit on the curb while I get this ticket. Defective equipment and creating a traffic hazard. You're gonna hafta pay for the patrol car, too."
Gunther
sighed as he pushed open the
door, which crunked and squawked, and walked in front
of Brazille between his car and the black and white. The curb was frying-pan hot
when he sat down but soon diminished to a warm glow on his ass. He listened to
Brazille make a call for another car and watched traffic.
Gunther took a deep breath and rubbed his hands
into his salt-sandy forehead. The feeling of calm he had amused him. He
couldn’t raise a pang of panic, regret, or anger, and decided he was resigned
to defeat. He laughed softly into the heels of his hands when he figured he
just expected more beating. The steel yard had closed earlier in the year, and
there wasn't much call for steelmen in the region. His wife Kris had been
sleeping with Johnson McDaniel, his former union steward and his best pal. She
said it was off, but he knew better.
When
he looked up, traffic had hardly moved. Just before him, a woman sat drooped forward
in the driver’s seat of a station wagon. She was quiet, staring straight ahead,
hands on top of the wheel. A bevy of children screamed and yelled at each other
in the back seat. Once in a while the driver wiped her nose with the back of a
hand, which she returned slowly to the wheel. The windows were open and
everyone in the wagon was covered with an oily sheen. In front of the wagon,
silent behind glass, a woman with sunglasses in an SUV screamed into a cell
phone, pounding the wheel from time to time with a tiny, brown fist. Behind the
wagon, a man sat in an upscale import with earphones on. His lips moved but
nothing else. His suit was perfect. Gunther thought he looked as if the
mortician had just finished with him—except for the moving lips.
Gunther
rested his forearms on his knees and folded his hands. The sun burned the top
of his head. The people in the cars looked alone, fragile, as if all this was
all right, as long as traffic would move and they could go home. Damn the next
hot-ass rush-hour traffic jam, or the one after that.
He
thought of other things that made up a sort of background radiation of
low-level misery in his life. Two of the kids had cavities, and the free dental
clinic couldn't see them for another month. The other one, the oldest boy, had
broken his hand skateboarding, and the hospital had just sent the first notice
on the bill. The assistant manager job at the Dine Inn wasn’t going to happen
because they didn’t give those jobs to steelworkers who had once made their
livings measuring the temperature of molten metal. That the muffler fell off
the car—and a cop had hit it—was just another in a series of events that had
begun to seem natural and normal. Gunther Hoffman was a heel, and that was
that.
“Hey,”
Gunther called up at Brazille when the officer came around the fender of the
patrol car. "Maybe I can change that tire for you...It'll be just a minute
and I'll pay for the new one and what it is to put it on the rim.”
“I
don’t know, kid.”
“I tole ya, things been tough. Just give me that
much of a break. Whaddya think?"
"Dammit,
son," Brazille said. He looked at the flat. White lines from where the
patrol car’s wheel rim had scraped the pavement went back about a hundred feet.
Gunther looked like a guy who had experience with cars. Jesus, he had to,
Brazille thought, look at this fuckin’ Dodge. But it was hot, goddammit. Real
hot, even for Phoenix, and he was sore about the whole mess. He looked at
Gunther and saw a guy who seemed like he was trying.
"Sure,” Brazille said after a while. “It’s
against procedure, but it might save us all a little headache. Let's see what
we can do while we're waiting for backup."
Brazille
kept an eye on Gunther and went to open the trunk. Gunther got down on one knee
and wiggled the muffler up and down. It was wedged about halfway up the wheel
well but seemed to Gunther to move all right. It wouldn't need much to come
loose. The officer brought up the jack and crowbar, hand fixed on his
automatic. Gunther placed the jack and raised the car. He began to work the
muffler out of the gap between the tire and the fender, careful not to scratch
the paint or dent the wheel well.
Brazille
knelt in behind him. “What about loosening the tire first?”
“Well,”
Gunther said, stopping a moment and looking Brazille in the sunglasses. “I
don’t want to ruin the thread on the studs. When I loosen the lugs, the rim
will work back and forth on the studs because the muffler wedged in there
pretty tight. We couldn’t pull the wheel off because the rim will score the side
of the threads the pressure’s against. If we do, we might have a problem
getting the tire back on.”
“I
see,” Brazille said. He didn’t.
“So,
right now, I figured I’d just work this loose. Maybe we might get lucky.”
“Sure,
kid. That’d be fine.”
Luck.
Now that Gunther thought about it, the last thing he needed was luck. Luck was
a come-and-go sort of thing, and what he needed was something sure. A million
bucks. That was sure. An oil well in Oklahoma, just one. Or a little stake in
Utah with opal on it. A little something he could extract and sell, a way to
make money from a little back work and some good sense. He’d pay his taxes
because he’d be making money. He wouldn’t need a pool and a fancy car. Just a
house with a decent air conditioner and a good, reliable car that didn’t smoke
and wasn’t loud. Some fillings for the kids, a little comfort and a clean break
from Kris and that bastard McDaniel. A chunk of land and some wind mills and
solar panels. People would always need oil. They liked precious stones. The sun
always shined and the wind always blew.
“Ya
almost got it, son,” Brazille said. Gunther had worked the muffler out to the
end, and a flange there kept it stuck between the tire and the wheel well. He
knew traffic had not moved. The station-wagon kids were still screaming behind
his right shoulder. One last pull. That would do it.
Gunther
took a deep breath and pulled straight out with everything he had. The toe of
his booth was set against the tire and his back was bowed. His biceps burned. His
hands became numb clenched around the flange at the free end of the muffler.
His legs shook. This was sure. He felt the weight of the car, the stiffness of
the deflated rubber. The muffler was solid. With cavities and adultery and
fixing cop cars, this weight, this resistance was something he could depend on.
When
the muffler came loose, Gunther’s elbows sprung out and back. He fell backward.
His line of sight shot from the shaded recesses of the wheel and wheel well
into the heavens. He instinctively pushed an arm out behind to catch himself,
but his legs straightened like loosed springs and his shoulders and elbows
ground the pavement. It’s funny, he thought, how things that speed up suddenly
seem to move in slow motion.
He
sat up and shook himself. The bare backs of his arms stung where they had
scraped pavement. He put one hand up and felt the grit that had stuck in the
wounds. When he stood, he looked around. Officer Owen Brazille was sprawled out
on the pavement like he was going to make a snow angel in the gravel. His head
was nearly at the door of the station wagon. He didn’t move.
Gunther still held the muffler and looked at it,
turning it in his hands. The backup car Brazille had called skidded to a halt on
the shoulder in front of the Dodge, and Gunther jumped to his feet. The doors
of the cruiser sprang and the two officers tumbled out and crouched behind
them. When the officers clicked the pistols’ safeties, it sounded to Gunther
like shots.
“Get
down,” one of the officers screamed. “Get on the ground and put your hands on
your head.” At the same time, the other officer yelled, “Officer down! Officer
down!”
Gunther
didn’t move. The muffler felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. He looked at
it. One jerk and there wouldn’t be any steelman looking for work at a greasy
spoon. No more cavities. No more thinking of McDaniel, his one-time best pal,
making love to Kris. No more doctor bills. No fines. No criminal charges. No
moving violations. No nothing.
“I
said, get down. Put your hands on your head and get down.”
Gunther
looked at the officers behind the doors. Brazille was an older cop, about
forty-five or so. But these two were babies. They didn’t look much older than
high school juniors with guns. Both of them were frightened, Gunther could see
it in their eyes. The pistols were shaking. The kids in the wagon had stopped
screaming. The lips of the man in the perfect suit quit moving.
Gunther
was going to call this one. “What happens if I don’t wanna get down?” he said.
His voice was calm, just firm enough to be heard over the rattle of the wagon’s
engine.
“Get
down or we’ll fire!”
“In
front of the kids?” He looked over at the wagon. So did the cops. The woman on
the cell phone in the SUV turned and realized what was happening. She ducked
beneath the window.
“I’m gonna put this muffler down now and get
onna ground,” Gunther said. “But before you rough me up, I want you to talk to
this cop here and find out what happened. He’s out now. But I didn’t mean to
hit him.”
Gunther
set the muffler on the ground and put his hands to the pavement. When he hit
his knees, the woman in the station wagon spoke up in a lazy, disinterested
voice. “It’s like he says, boys.” Gunther stayed on his hands and knees,
looking at the ground. “He’s pullin’ that metal thing out from the tire and it
come loose alla sudden. This here cop got it with an elbow and cracked his head
on the shoulder here. Don’t ask me to sign nuthin cause I ain’t.”
The
officers eased up from where they were crouched, pistols trained on Gunther,
who had gotten to the ground and put his hands on his head. He felt one of the
boy’s knees in his back and a pistol in his ear. The hand that grasped his
wrist and twisted it in behind his back was cold. The pavement burned his
cheek.
The cops rifled his pockets and came up with his
wallet, empty but for a driver’s license and sixty dollars. They stood beside
him, guns trained until a paddy wagon and an ambulance pulled up on the
shoulder. Brazille came to before the EMTs lifted him to the gurney. He told
the boys to take it easy on Gunther.
“Good luck to you, kid,” Brazille had told him
as the EMTs folded the gurney into the back of the ambulance.
Gunther
made bail on what was in his pocket only because Brazille called the desk
sergeant from the emergency room and told him what had happened. With tickets
for faulty equipment and creating a traffic hazard, and impound lot and bail
receipts in hand, Gunther sat on a bench in front of the station and waited for
Kris, whom he really didn’t want to see. His financial responsibilities had
increased again: a tire for the patrol car and the cost of the change, the
price of an ambulance ride and first aid for Brazille, the tickets and a fine
for hitting an officer.
But
night was falling and it had been a long, long day. Even in the heart of the
city, he could feel the heat ease and the cool of the dark desert take over.
When he got home, he decided, he’d ignore Kris. She wouldn’t have anything to
say that meant much anyway, at least not until she stopped fucking McDaniel.
No. He’d skip all that and walk up the bluff by the highway to look at the
city. It wouldn’t matter, none of it, in the cool wind and light shimmer.
Kris
picked him up at the station, and he didn’t hear a word she or the kids said
all the way home. He closed the door of the car and walked into the night, up
the road to the bluff, where he sat in the mesquite and watched the city glow.
It was as sure a thing as he ever knew.