Ventura (Part Two click Here)
Ryan Glenn Smith
The Pontiac had been a project of mine for a while. I had taken out the original 307 motor, which had about 150,000 miles on it, and put in a 454 from the rusted-out Chevelle SS my stepdad left in the garage. He’d be pissed, but he’s also locked up for a while, so I wasn’t worried. The Ventura is basically the same car as a Chevy Nova, and mine was a ’71, mostly black except the hood still primer gray. I needed to finish painting it but I was broke from the transmission. Needed a new radio too, the AM/FM dial was lousy and wouldn’t pick up much of anything. But the car was fast with that big engine in there.
Reggie never was that good a friend of mine, but he knew I spent a lot of time working on the car. He had an apartment not far from where I lived with my mom. She’d been having a hard time with Dale locked up, and I was happy to stay with her and save rent. Reggie would come around the house every now and then wearing his backpack, looking like an overgrown school kid. He’d drop by to talk and bum cigarettes, probably because I smoke Winstons and he only had generics. He always asked me about the car, how fast it would go. He said he had a Camaro once but totaled it drag racing after a pint of Wild Turkey. He didn’t have his license anymore and he could never hold down a job. He’d work a couple of weeks doing construction, get paid in cash one day, wind up in jail that night.
But lately he’d been good. He cut his hair short and got a job at Jimbo’s doing oil changes. He’d been there six weeks I think, so I figured he’d reformed. Reggie came to me one day asking for a ride.
I was smoking on the porch when he walked up in his ratty jeans and bust-up sneakers. I knocked one out of my pack because I didn’t want to hear him ask again. “Thanks,” he said, scratching at his scruffy neck like a dog. “How’s the Ventura runnin today?”
“Just fine. I got the tranny shifting real smooth now. No slips.”
He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Bet you could get it up to a hundred real quick.”
“Racing ain’t my thing.”
“Well amigo, I got paid today. You mind runnin me to my bank?”
He shifted under his backpack, which was kind of slung over his right shoulder. I always figured Reggie to be the type of guy who’d cash a check at the liquor store. But I had the day off and nothing else to do. “Guess not,” I said. “What bank you use? First America?”
“Naw, I’m at Heritage, over there on Cheatham.”
“Well just let me get my wallet. I want to get a sandwich while we’re over there.”
“Hey that’s fine, buddy,” he said. “Tell you what, I’ll buy you lunch for the ride.”
I didn’t expect Reggie to be a generous guy either, but I wasn’t one to refuse a meal. We got in the car and I fired up the engine. “That’s got a good sound,” he said, pounding his fist on the dash. “Let’s see how fast we can get this thing goin!”
I kind of sped through the neighborhood but I didn’t go as fast as he probably wanted to. It was summer and there was kids running around. We hit the main strip and he kept pushing on me to gun the car faster and faster. And I did go fast, faster than I usually would, but I knew my car would do a lot better out on the highway. I should’ve been worried about getting a ticket, but something about Reggie made me feel like I could do anything I wanted and get away with it.
We got across town pretty quick. I started to pull into this barbeque shack, but Reggie asked me to take him to the bank first. Outside the bank Reggie said to just pull up by the door. “I’m just running in and out,” he said. “You can wait here.” He grabbed his backpack and left the door open. I turned on the radio and looked at my watch. It was 3:56, Friday afternoon.
It was goddamn hot in the vinyl seat and I had to squirm around to keep from sticking. I messed with the radio and found an Allman Brothers song, lit a cigarette and looked out at the road. There wasn’t too much traffic even at this hour. I was hungry. All I wanted was some pulled pork with slaw on it and a large sweet tea.
It really shouldn’t have surprised me to see Reggie run out the bank with a stuffed garbage bag in one hand and a bigass pistol clutched in the other. It really shouldn’t have surprised me at all, but goddamn it did.
“Are you fucking serious?” I yelled at him.
He jumped in the car. He was smiling the whole time. “Come on, Barry! We gotta go!”
“What the fuck, Reggie!”
“Ain’t no time for that, man,” he shouted. “Move your ass!”
I threw the car into drive and sped out into traffic. I could hear a cop siren already in the distance, so I gunned it into the country and soon there wasn’t much around us at all but the pines.
“Hey Barry,” Reggie started, ass-up and looking through the rear window even though there was nothing to see. “I’m like Butch Cassidy, and you’re the Sundance Kid!”
“What the hell you thinking, Reggie? Getting me mixed up in this?”
“You got the car, man. What else you need this fast-ass car for?”
“How about getting to work?”
“We won’t have to work one day more after this.”
“You didn’t shoot nobody, did you?”
He sat back down and lit up one of his generics. “Course not, man. It’s just to scare em, is all. It’s all old-timey, see, but it still works. You want me to shoot it?”
“Fuck no. Where’d you get that?”
“Got a buddy at work.” Reggie set the gun down on floorboard and opened the bag. There was a lot of money. I had no idea how much and I don’t think Reggie did either. I’d always figured he’d go down for robbing a convenience store over sixty bucks or something. Not something like this.
“They get all the deposits from restaurants and businesses and shit like that. Over there at the Heritage Bank.”
“Christ, Reggie…”
“I knew they was about to get all their cash out for the truck. I’d cased the place, you know, I took this real serious. I’d checked it out and knew if I got there right then I’d just have to walk in looking all tough and shit and tell them what to do.”
I listened to him go on about how goddamn smart he was for twenty minutes, speeding through the countryside and passing the two or three cars that wound up in front of me. I thought about how I’d get arrested and wind up in prison, right next to my stepdad, how he’d yell at me through the bars and give me all kinds of hell about the Chevelle SS. I thought about my mom all alone. I thought about turning us in, turning Reggie in.
“We gotta get rid of that money, Reggie. What if it’s got one of those paint-bombs in it or something?”
“Naw,” he said. “I was watching them when they put the money in there. I saw em try it with some kind of dye thing like you’re talkin about. But I told her if she put that shit in there, I’d come back and rape her and kill her.”
He was probably serious, I thought. I mean—I’m sure he said it, but now I wondered if he really meant it, because I couldn’t put nothing past him anymore. I didn’t say anything for at least thirty or forty more miles. It was too loud in the car anyway with hot wind blowing through the open windows. I just watched the needle vibrate around a hundred, watched the afternoon flicker in and out of the trees. If I had been alone or with anybody else, I might have actually enjoyed myself.
We came up on a little unincorporated town. I slowed down when the signs dropped the speed limit in steps from fifty-five to thirty. There was a diner and a motel there—one of those empty, family-run, small-town joints. I told Reggie I was hungry even though it was a lie. My stomach was all knotted up. “How about you buy me some lunch now?”
There were two semis parked at the side of the diner near the motel. The motel parking lot was empty except for those big rigs and my Ventura. I started to park the car away from the buildings so I could take off at high speed if I needed to. Then I thought, I ain’t making no goddamn getaway; I’ll come out hands-up if I have to. I parked nose-in right against the window. “You think they’re gonna know it’s us in there, Reggie? You think they’ll know it was that you?”
“These folks don’t know shit,” he said. “Probably one cop in this whole town. Barney-fuckin-Fife with his one bullet in his shirt pocket.” He put the pistol under the seat and left the car carrying the bag of money. “Open up the trunk for me,” he said, pounding on the metal. I’d taken the all locks off when I was painting and I told him so. He tossed in the bag and slammed the trunk shut. “Guess we’ll just have to watch it out the window. C’mon, let’s eat.”
There were two truckers smoking cigarettes in a booth in the corner but they didn’t seem to notice us. The place smelled thick with bacon grease and it kind of made me hungry and made me kind of want to puke. A girl sat behind the counter reading newspaper comics and chewing gum. Reggie and I went to the other end of the restaurant. The girl got up and strolled over like we were just a couple of nobodies, which I guess we really were.
“What y’all want to drink?” She kept chewing her gum. She was a pretty girl even without makeup. She had a few freckles.
“Cherry Coke,” Reggie said, with that big, dumb smile on his face. “And what’s your name, darlin?”
“Stacy. You know what you want to eat?” She smacked the gum in her mouth.
“Yes I do, darlin. I’d like a T-bone steak and eggs. Over easy. You get them make the eggs nice and runny for me. You got some onions and cheese to put on em? And some hot sauce?”
I ordered a BLT and some water and she walked away. “Nice little piece of ass there,” Reggie said. “Give me a cigarette, man.” I lit one for myself as well. Reggie smoked and stared across the diner at the girl. “Maybe we should get us a room here at the motel,” he said. “This’d be a good spot to lay low.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” I said. “You think this is fun or something?”
“Kinda, man. C’mon, we’re gonna be livin large real soon. Steak and eggs, Barry. And hell, with your share—”
“So how much is my share?”
“Shit, I ain’t even counted it yet.”
“What percent?”
Reggie looked at me through the smoke. “How about twenty?”
“How about half.”
“You know I did all the work,” he said. “I had another buddy backed out last minute and he only said thirty percent. Hell, he helped me plan the whole thing.”
“You never even asked me about all this.”
“Shit, man, I asked you for a ride.” Somehow Reggie made it seem like it was my fault I was in all this, and I suppose it was. Reggie was a goddamn liar and nothing was going to change that. He didn’t have any friends, either. He probably stole that gun from the flea market. “I’ll take forty, then. I drove the car.”
“Look man, I don’t want to jew around no more. I don’t even know how much is in that bag.”
“I want my fair share,” I told him, “Or you’re gonna find yourself in some serious legal shit.”
“What you tryin to say?”
“I’m saying they’ll go easy on me if I turn you in.”
Reggie put the cigarette down. “You listen here,” he said. “We been friends a long time, Barry. But if you ever even think about goin to the police I will blow your goddamn head clean off.”
“What, with your old cowboy gun?”
Right then the girl came back with our food. Reggie’s plate had a thin brown slab of meat and two bright yellow eggs. He stubbed out the cigarette and smiled at his plate like a little birthday boy. “You are sweet as pecan pie,” he said to the girl, looking her up and down.
She seemed to like that, blushing a little as she walked away. Reggie picked up the steak knife and broke open one of his yolks. “Thirty-five,” he said. “And that’s all we’re gonna talk about it. After we eat, I’ll go get us a room.”
The motel room was cheap but clean, cable television, two beds, and blurry pastel pictures on the walls. The air conditioner was loud and pretty cold if you stood right by it. I took off my shirt, which was soaked through with sweat, and tossed it over the vent. Reggie claimed the bed right up next to the window and A/C. He picked up the remote control and pointed it at the television. “I wonder they got porno on here like they do some places.”
“Let’s just watch the news, Reggie. They’ll mention the bank no doubt. They might know it was us.”
“Shit yeah, good thinkin,” he said, “let me know what they say.” He went into the bathroom and I turned the volume up but it was just the weather report. Sunny and hot for the next few days, with afternoon thunderstorms. Sometimes in the summer, it would rain every afternoon without cooling anything off, just turn the place into a steam bath. I was glad it hadn’t rained today. My tires were near bald and I probably would’ve driven the car right off the road.
Reggie came back from the bathroom and asked for my keys. “I want to get some beer.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Naw, I’m just going to run to that store we passed. You stay and watch the news, here in the cool.” He had his hand out and a hangdog face. “Please, man. I’ll be back in no time, swear it.”
Of course I didn’t trust him, but I was kind of counting on that. If he did take off, the Ventura was enough price to pay to just get away from him. I didn’t care much about the money anymore. I’d have been fine taking a bus back to town, starting up on the Chevelle SS, even though I already took out the only part that was worth a damn. Or even better, maybe Reggie would get busted. Maybe he’d go down hard. “Yeah sure,” I said, “here you go.”
I watched the news a while. It was mostly boring stuff about some church helping out crippled kids and a city councilwoman busted for shoplifting. They recapped the robbery but just said it was two white dudes, the gunman and the driver. They also said cops thought the getaway car was green, a 90’s Ford or Mercury four-door. That made me feel pretty good but also kind of sick, knowing that Reggie just might get away, and there was a pretty good chance I was never going to see my car or any of that money again.
I woke up to the sound of gunshots and people yelling. It was some action movie on TV. The door opened up and there was Reggie with a case of Bud and a carton of cigarettes. I was surprised to see him, even more to see the girl following him. “Hey Barry, wake up,” he said. “You remember Stacy, the gal that waited on us? She’s come by to have a beer.”
“Hey,” I said.
Reggie set the groceries on the dresser. He got three cans and passed them around. He opened Stacy’s for her. He looked at me. “How was the news, buddy? Anything goin on in the world today?”
“No,” I said. “Everything’s just like it was before, I guess.”
“See, Barry here is a news buff. He’s always watchin that shit. This guy’s a real sharp guy.”
“You must be pretty smart,” she said, still not very interested. She wasn’t chewing gum anymore. I wondered if she was old enough to be drinking beer.
Reggie flopped onto the bed, pulled a bag of weed from his pocket and rolled a joint. Stacy sat down at the table. We all sat there without saying much, listening to the explosions and Schwarzenegger grunts from the movie. Everyone had a cigarette. Stacy finally asked, “What are y’all doin here anyway? Watchin this movie? What is this, The Terminator?”
“Naw, stupid,” Reggie said. “Just because that’s Arnold don’t make this The Terminator.”
“Don’t call her stupid, Reggie.”
“Oh c’mon, I didn’t mean it.”
He got up to get her another beer. She turned to me. “Don’t you got any bags or clothes or anything?”
“Sure we do,” Reggie said. “They’re out in the car. We just ain’t brought em in. Matter of fact, I think I’ll go get our stuff.” Reggie winked at me and left with the keys. Stacy and I just sat there drinking. He came back with the trash bag and threw it on the floor under the sink.
“That’s y’alls clothes?” She had her thin little eyebrows cocked like she was disgusted. “Y’all keep your clothes in a garbage sack?”
“Our luggage was stolen,” Reggie said. “We better buy us a suitcase, Barry.”
“Well it’s hot in here,” Stacy said, “y’all bring any swim trunks? There’s a pool here and I got a suit in my bag at the diner.”
“Shit yeah,” said Reggie, “ we don’t got trunks, but we can go in our drawers, right, Barry? It’s almost dark and there ain’t no one around. What do you say?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“We’ll take the beers down there, get drunk and have a good time. Let’s do this real quick, and we’ll go down to the pool.” He lit the joint and we all got high. We stayed there watching the movie for probably another hour before anybody remembered to go swimming. By then we had half a case of beer left and took it down with us.
Down by the pool we all got pretty drunk. I was content to kind of float around on my back, listening to the sound of cicada coming and going as my ears dipped in and out of the water. Stacy wore a little blue bikini, and I remember thinking how I had no right to be so high and have her to look at. She was real skinny but pretty, the way her blonde hair got slicked back and dark when it was wet. She probably saw me looking at her; she smiled and dove under the water. She swam like a bluegill.
Reggie was in the water next to me, resting against the wall of the shallow end with his arms spread over the edge. He clicked his tongue and watched her too. “You ain’t getting no percentage of that,” he said. Stacy popped out of the water next to the beers and Reggie whistled at her. She grabbed three more and waded through the water back to us.
“What are you boys really doin out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Reggie just chuckled, stoned and drunk and his eyes poring over her body.
“We told you. We’re just on a little road trip,” I said.
“Where y’all goin, then?”
“Shit, we’re just goin down the road.” Reggie skimmed his hand in an arc across the surface of the water.
“Y’all just packed up and left without any plans or anything?”
“Didn’t even pack up,” he said. “What about you, girlie? You do anything besides sling fried eggs and patty melts?”
“I’m on a summer break. I’m in nursing school.”
Reggie clicked his tongue one more time. “I bet you’d be real fine in one of them nurse’s outfits.”
She grinned and then looked away, maybe at the sky, but somewhere past us, anyway. “I wish I could just pack up and leave like that.” She looked like some kind of starlet.
Reggie paid no attention. “Girl, I could play doctor with you all night.”
I floated off when Reggie started to chase her around the shallow end. She was laughing and squealing and being coy, then she got out of the pool and said she was going back to the room. Reggie cam and told me if I wanted to I could wait a ten minutes and come up to watch if I was quiet. I didn’t say a word back to him.
“Well,” he said, “just remember to bring the beer when you come back up.”
Morning hit me pretty hard. I woke up having to piss and the little crack of light between the curtains hit right in my eyes. Reggie and Stacy were still asleep, all of them covered up under the sheets, which was kind of a mixed blessing. I watched the two of them there and thought about what I was going to do that day, what was next. I wondered how long I would have to put up with this dirtbag. Reggie was nice, I guess, but he was a plain loser, unshaven and disgusting, and I wondered how he could ever pull off a bank robbery and wind up eating steak for breakfast and sleeping with a hotass girl. He was a loser all right, but he had pulled it off and he had got the girl, which meant he had something I didn’t.
I looked over at the bag full of money, all lumpy there on the floor next to the sink. I thought of taking it and taking off, but Reggie had proven himself a psycho and he knew where my mother and I live. I looked at the money sitting there and I thought—Reggie is exactly the kind of guy who would keep his clothes in a garbage sack.
I rolled out of bed, walked on my tiptoes around the room gathering up my shirt and shoes. I still needed my car keys which were still in Reggie’s jeans. I crept over real slow and quiet to where the two of them were just a lump of covers and muffled snoring. I picked up his pants and Stacy stirred a little under the sheets, mumbled something and came to rest again. Then I figured, what the hell. I picked Reggie’s jeans up off the floor and left the room with them in my hand.
I kind of hated stealing a man’s pants away from him, but I figured he could afford another pair now. It was the only thing I could do to him anyway. He had the girl after all, and he could just tell her he robbed a bank and she’d probably fall in love with him, and they’d buy another car and hit the road together and have sex all across the country.
That morning was warm and humid. From the balcony I saw the sun poke through the trees and I knew it was going to be another hot day. I almost wanted to get back in the pool. I put on my shoes outside the door and went around the building to piss in the bushes. I took my keys out of his pocket and left his jeans there by the building, but not right in the piss, because I thought that would just be wrong.
It was only about fifty miles back to town. I was still sleepy and kind of dizzy and needing a cup of coffee and a donut. I ran into the diner and bought one from a much older woman working the counter who was ugly and wore too much makeup.
In the car I cranked up the engine and it made a low rumbling sound that sounded good even if it was loud enough to hear from the room. I gripped the wheel, glad to be in the driver’s seat and headed home. I looked in the rearview mirror to back out but nearly jumped through the windshield and spilled my coffee all over the place. There in the backseat was Stacy, smiling at me.
“Is your name really Barry?” she asked.
“What the hell are you doin in my car?”
“Reggie told me what y’all did.”
“Motherfuck.”
“A bag of money don’t look nothin like a bag of clothes, hun.” She put her hand on the sack next to her on the seat. Her bikini was draped over it and it all looked sexy and beautiful.
“That son of a bitch up there is real dumb, isn’t he?” she asked, still grinning. “I don’t know about you, though. First I thought, why would he just walk away from all this cash? But it ain’t because you’re dumb. It’s because you’re actually a good person. And I kind of admire that about you.”
I just sat there. I probably looked pretty stupid.
“I knew you were gonna leave. I could tell that. That Reggie’s an idiot. We should get out of here together. We could go down to Tunica and get a room, have a real nice time. There’s a ton of cash here.”
She was right, there was a ton of cash and her right next to it—right in my backseat there was everything that I could’ve ever asked for and slim chance that I’d have to own up for any of it. I thought that maybe I deserved this, that the situation had straightened out and I was finally given what Reggie never deserved in all his life. It was like I had robbed that bank, and now I was offered the girl and the money and the chance to get away with it. And it was all right there waiting for me to say yes, but I still knew I’d never have the balls to take it.
“You were right about me,” I said. “I’m a good person. I just want to go home.”
She got a little pouty then, very sexy, but only for a second. “Then get the fuck out of the car,” she said. I heard a little noise come from the seat behind me, sounded just like Reggie’s tongue clicked against his teeth, but I was sure it wasn’t.
(Click Horns to Comment)
When he was a soldier, Ryan Glenn Smith published dozens of articles for the United States Army about what a bang-up job we're doing in Iraq. But this is the first published piece of fiction that he really enjoyed writing. He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, a city with excellent tap water.
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