We kept that up for six months. We kept it up, and it was always the same way. We’d have a fight, and I’d reach for the bottle. What we had the fights about was going away. We couldn’t leave the state until the suspended sentence was up, but after that I meant we should blow. I didn’t tell her, but I wanted her a long way from Sackett. I was afraid if she got sore at me for something, she’d go off her nut and spill it like she had that other time, after the arraignment. I didn’t trust her for a minute. At first, she was all hot for going too, specially when I got talking about Hawaii and the South Seas, but then the money began to roll in. When we opened up, about a week after the funeral, people flocked out there to see what she looked like, and then they came back because they had a good time. And she got all excited about here was our chance to make some more money.
“Frank, all these roadside joints around here are lousy. They’re run by people that used to have a farm back in Kansas or somewhere, and got as much idea how to entertain people as a pig has. I believe if somebody came along that knew the business like I do, and tried to make it nice for them, they’d come and bring all their friends.”
“To hell with them. We’re selling out anyhow.”
“We could sell easier if we were making money.”
“We’re making money.”
“I mean good money. Listen, Frank. I’ve got an idea people would be glad of the chance to sit out under the trees. Think of that. All this nice weather in California, and what do they do with it? Bring people inside of a joint that’s set up ready-made by the Acme Lunch Room Fixture Company, and stinks so it makes you sick to your stomach, and feed them awful stuff that’s the same from Fresno down to the border, and never give them any chance to feel good at all.”
“Look. We’re selling out, aren’t we? Then the less we got to sell the quicker we get rid of it. Sure, they’d like to sit under the trees. Anybody but a California Bar-B-Q slinger would know that. But if we put them under the trees we’ve got to get tables, and wire up a lot of lights out there, and all that stuff, and maybe the next guy don’t want it that way at all.”
“We’ve got to stay six months. Whether we like it or not.”
“Then we use that six months finding a buyer.”
“I want to try it.”
“All right, then try it. But I’m telling you.”
“I could use some of our inside tables.”
“I said try it, didn’t I? Come on. We’ll have a drink.”
What we had the big blow-off over was the beer license, and then I tumbled to what she was really up to. She put the tables out under the trees, on a little platform she had built, with a striped awning over them and lanterns at night, and it went pretty good. She was right about it. Those people really enjoyed a chance to sit out under the trees for a half hour, and listen to a little radio music, before they got in their cars and went on. And then beer came back. She saw a chance to leave it just like it was, put beer in, and call it a beer garden.
“I don’t want any beer garden, I tell you. All I want is a guy that’ll buy the whole works and pay cash.”
“But it seems a shame.”
“Not to me it don’t.”
“But look, Frank. The license is only twelve dollars for six months. My goodness, we can afford twelve dollars, can’t we?”
“We get the license and then we’re in the beer business. We’re in the gasoline business already, and the hot dog business, and now we got to go in the beer business. The hell with it. I want to get out of it, not get in deeper.”
“Everybody’s got one.”
“And welcome, so far as I’m concerned.”
“People wanting to come, and the place all fixed up under the trees, and now I have to tell them we don’t have beer because we haven’t any license.”
“Why do you have to tell them anything?”
“All we’ve got to do is put in coils and then we can have draught beer. It’s better than bottled beer, and there’s more money in it. I saw some lovely glasses in Los Angeles the other day. Nice tall ones. The kind people like to drink beer out of.”
“So we got to get coils and glasses now, have we? I tell you I don’t want any beer garden.”
“Frank, don’t you ever want to be something?”
“Listen, get this. I want to get away from this place. I want to go somewhere else, where every time I look around I don’t see the ghost of a goddam Greek jumping out at me, and hear his echo in my dreams, and jump every time the radio comes out with a guitar. I’ve got to go away, do you hear me? I’ve got to get out of here, or I go nuts.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“Oh no, I’m not lying. I never meant anything more in my life.”
“You don’t see the ghost of any Greek, that’s not it. Somebody else might see it, but not Mr. Frank Chambers. No, you want to go away just because you’re a bum, that’s all. That’s what you were when you came here, and that’s what you are now. When we go away, and our money’s all gone, then what?”
“What do I care? We go away, don’t we?”
“That’s it, you don’t care. We could stay here—”
“I knew it. That’s what you really mean. That’s what you’ve meant all along. That we stay here.”
“And why not? We’ve got it good. Why wouldn’t we stay here? Listen, Frank. You’ve been trying to make a bum out of me ever since you’ve known me, but you’re not going to do it. I told you, I’m not a bum. I want to be something. We stay here. We’re not going away. We take out the beer license. We amount to something.”
It was late at night, and we were upstairs, half undressed. She was walking around like she had that time after the arraignment, and talking in the same funny jerks.
“Sure we stay. We do whatever you say, Cora. Here, have a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink.”
“Sure you want a drink. We got to laugh some more about getting the money, haven’t we?”
“We already laughed about it.”
“But we’re going to make more money, aren’t we? On the beer garden? We got to put down a couple on that, just for luck.”
“You nut. All right. Just for luck.”
That’s the way it went, two or three times a week. And the tip-off was that every time I would come out of a hangover, I would be having those dreams. I would be falling, and that crack would be in my ears.
Right after the sentence ran out, she got the telegram her mother was sick. She got some clothes in a hurry, and I put her on the train, and going back to the parking lot I felt funny, like I was made of gas and would float off somewhere. I felt free. For a week, anyway, I wouldn’t have to wrangle, or fight off dreams, or nurse a woman back to a good humor with a bottle of liquor.
On the parking lot a girl was trying to start her car. It wouldn’t do anything. She stepped on everything and it was just plain dead.
“What’s the matter? Won’t it go?”
“They left the ignition on when they parked it, and now the battery’s run out.”
“Then it’s up to them. They’ve got to charge it for you.”
“Yes, but I’ve got to get home.”
“I’ll take you home.”
“You’re awfully friendly.”
“I’m the friendliest guy in the world.”
“You don’t even know where I live.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s pretty far. It’s in the country.”
“The further the better. Wherever it is, it’s right on my way.”
“You make it hard for a nice girl to say no.”
“Well then, if it’s so hard, don’t say it.”
She was a light-haired girl, maybe a little older than I was, and not bad on looks. But what got me was how friendly she was, and how she wasn’t any more afraid of what I might do to her than if I was a kid or something. She knew her way around all right, you could see that. And what finished it was when I found out she didn’t know who I was. We told our names on the way out, and to her mine didn’t mean a thing. Boy oh boy what a relief that was. One person in the world that wasn’t asking me to sit down to the table a minute, and then telling me to give them the lowdown on that case where they said the Greek was murdered. I looked at her, and I felt the same way I had walking away from the train, like I was made of gas, and would float out from behind the wheel.
“So your name is Madge Allen, hey?”
“Well, it’s really Kramer, but I took my own name again after my husband died.”
“Well listen Madge Allen, or Kramer, or whatever you want to call it, I’ve got a little proposition to make you.”
“Yes?”
“What do you say we turn this thing around, point her south, and you and me take a little trip for about a week?”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that?”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I just couldn’t, that’s all.”
“You like me?”
“Sure I like you.”
“Well, I like you. What’s stopping us?”
She started to say something, didn’t say it, and then laughed. “I own up. I’d like to, all right. And if it’s something I’m supposed not to do, why that don’t mean a thing to me. But I can’t. It’s on account of the cats.”
“Cats?”
“We’ve got a lot of cats. And I’m the one that takes care of them. That’s why I had to get home.”
“Well, they got pet farms, haven’t they? We’ll call one up, and tell them to come over and get them.”
That struck her funny. “I’d like to see a pet farm’s face when it saw them. They’re not that kind.”
“Cats are cats, ain’t they?”
“Not exactly. Some are big and some are little. Mine are big. I don’t think a pet farm would do very well with that lion we’ve got. Or the tigers. Or the puma. Or the three jaguars. They’re the worst. A jaguar is an awful cat.”
“Holy smoke. What do you do with those things?”
“Oh, work them in movies. Sell the cubs. People have private zoos. Keep them around. They draw trade.”
“They wouldn’t draw my trade.”
“We’ve got a restaurant. People look at them.”
“Restaurant, hey. That’s what I’ve got. Whole goddam country lives selling hot dogs to each other.”
“Well, anyway, I couldn’t walk out on my cats. They’ve got to eat.”
“The hell we can’t. We’ll call up Goebel and tell him to come get them. He’ll board the whole bunch while we’re gone for a hundred bucks.”
“Is it worth a hundred bucks to you to take a trip with me?”
“It’s worth exactly a hundred bucks.”
“Oh my. I can’t say no to that. I guess you better call up Goebel.”
I dropped her off at her place, found a pay station, called up Goebel, went back home, and closed up. Then I went back after her. It was about dark. Goebel had sent a truck over, and I met it coming back, full of stripes and spots. I parked about a hundred yards down the road, and in a minute she showed up with a little grip, and I helped her in, and we started off.
“You like it?”
“I love it.”
We went down to Caliente, and next day we kept on down the line to Ensenada, a little Mexican town about seventy miles down the coast. We went to a little hotel there, and spent three or four days. It was pretty nice. Ensenada is all Mex, and you feel like you left the U. S. A. a million miles away. Our room had a little balcony in front of it, and in the afternoon we would just lay out there, look at the sea, and let the time go by.
“Cats, hey. What do you do, train them?”
“Not the stuff we’ve got. They’re no good. All but the tigers are outlaws. But I do train them.”
“You like it?”
“Not much, the real big ones. But I like pumas. I’m going to get an act together with them some time. But I’ll need a lot of them. Jungle pumas. Not these outlaws you see in the zoos.”
“What’s an outlaw?”
“He’d kill you.”
“Wouldn’t they all?”
“They might, but an outlaw does anyhow. If it was people, he would be a crazy person. It comes from being bred in captivity. These cats you see, they look like cats, but they’re really cat lunatics.”
“How can you tell it’s a jungle cat?”
“I catch him in a jungle.”
“You mean you catch them alive?”
“Sure. They’re no good to me dead.”
“Holy smoke. How do you do that?”
“Well, first I get on a boat and go down to Nicaragua. All the really fine pumas come from Nicaragua. These California and Mexican things are just scrubs compared to them. Then I hire me some Indian boys and go up in the mountains. Then I catch my pumas. Then I bring them back. But this time, I stay down there with them a while, to train them. Goat meat is cheaper there than horse meat is here.”
“You sound like you’re all ready to start.”
“I am.”
She squirted a little wine in her mouth, and gave me a long look. They give it to you in a bottle with a long thin spout on it, and you squirt it in your mouth with the spout. That’s to cool it. She did that two or three times, and every time she did it she would look at me.
“I am if you are.”
“What the hell? You think I’m going with you to catch them goddam things?”
“Frank, I brought quite a lot of money with me. Let’s let Goebel keep those bughouse cats for their board, sell your car for whatever we can get, and hunt cats.”
“You’re on.”
“You mean you will?”
“When do we start?”
“There’s a freight boat out of here tomorrow and it puts in at Balboa. We’ll wire Goebel from there. And we can leave your car with the hotel here. They’ll sell it and send us whatever they get. That’s one thing about a Mexican. He’s slow, but he’s honest.”
“O.K.”
“Gee I’m glad.”
“Me too. I’m so sick of hot dogs and beer and apple pie with cheese on the side I could heave it all in the river.”
“You’ll love it, Frank. We’ll get a place up in the mountains, where it’s cool, and then, after I get my act ready, we can go all over the world with it. Go as we please, do as we please, and have plenty of money to spend. Have you got a little bit of gypsy in you?”
“Gypsy? I had rings in my ears when I was born.”
I didn’t sleep so good that night. When it was beginning to get light, I opened my eyes, wide awake. It came to me, then, that Nicaragua wouldn’t be quite far enough.