TEN DEAD DEER
Lord make sure I never die in West Texas. The drive from Ft. Stockton is ugly as all hell. Nothing out there but those grey-walled towns and dirt. Beauty of it is though, all I have to do is hop on I-10 and it’ll get you out to hill country real quick. At least you got something to look at out there with the cottonwood trees and green, rolling mounds. Maybe not so green in the wintertime. Problem of it is though, once you get two hours out of Austin you got two things to worry about. Make sure you get the right exit and the god damned deer.
Fifty
Told Dakota that I’m trying to quit smoking. Well, I’ve been telling her that for a while now but when I’m out there on the rigs it’s one of the few things that keeps me from pulling my damn eyes out. One of the few things they let you do. Can’t drink, can’t go get some good grub when you’re out there in the middle of the fucking desert for ten days, working twelve hours a day. Made a deal though, with myself. At least to let her feel better, in my head. But I hit fifty, and I get to light up. Let me roll the window down.
Fifty-one
When you’re out here, there’s so many deer that get smacked by semis and get pushed unto the side of the highway. Broken necks and blood everywhere, just zipping by. You have to keep an eye out, especially when it gets dark out. Instead of chain-smoking the whole damn nine hours from Ft. Stockton to Austin, I’d only give myself one cigarette for every ten deer I’ve counted. I think it’s pretty slick. Smoking less and paying more attention. Double down on safety. That’s what the company man always tells us. When you think you’ve been safe enough, think again. Head on a swivel. Else you get an arm caught in a chain, get it yanked off. Seen it before. Been a roughneck too damn long, seen everything.
Fifty-two
It’s not the arm snapping that gets to me. Hard to ignore, though. It’s the shit you don’t see. Sulfur Dioxide. The silent killer. Well, it’s all kinds of gases. They got us wearing these little beepers on our chests that let us know when it’s in the air and you have about thirty seconds to buck and run or else you’ll bite it. We practice drills but I’ve had it happen for real a couple of times. The company man kicks your ass if you don’t have the damn thing dangling from you like a dog tag. We all get jumped up about it, but he’s the one to pay for the funeral if something happens. Last year two kids croaked about seventy miles out of Odessa. It was tough to hear about the kids, I think they were on their second or third job, but I liked that company man a lot. Gary. Gary Fitzgerald. You get kicked around so many sites but the good guys always stick out. Never got on my case too much and let me smoke in the mornings. I guess the mean ones don’t let kids die.
Fifty-three
It’s enough to drive you crazy. Just keep your head down and nothing should happen, but I’m around all these fucking kids and they don’t know how dangerous it is. I’m thinking about it all the time. Shit could blow up. The air could get all full and your monitor don’t go off in time and you can’t run quick enough. You could break something off. Even if it’s just a finger, is anything worth that? If you want to get rich quick or pay something off fast, I guess. Why were all here, anyway. Dollars are dollars. Dimes are dimes.
Fifty-four
My dad said he’d make me pay him back the money he gave me for school if I didn’t graduate or picked some fruity degree. So I dropped out. Look man, I wasn’t too big on photography or anything I just wanted to do whatever I wanted to do and it wasn’t supposed to be this big deal. Just mentioned it on the phone. He couldn’t get that. Just couldn’t. Life is too short to be poor, he told me. Just like that. I was twelve hours from finishing up too. Should have just done it. There’s nothing like a kid with something to prove to someone who doesn’t care. Hate being in debt to him. Mean motherfucker. Every dinner, every eye that looked me over. Never said anything, never let me forget it. Taught me everything I know, though. I guess I’m supposed to think that.
Fifty-five
He taught me how to treat a woman, how to take care of someone. Then she left and died in another country. All he taught me from that was how to stick around with someone even when the “leaving” is written all over it. Calls it loyalty. Loyalty didn’t work out too well for him. Stuck me to him, I suppose. And Dakota. Sweet thing, poor thing. She’s got no idea how much I just don’t like her.
Fifty-six
I got no reason to break it off. Ain’t got no reason to stay with her either. I guess that’s the worst part. Nothing is going nowhere. It’s been three years and I never think about her. Not the smell of her hair, not the color of her eyes. None of the conversations in the kitchen when we’re trying to figure out what to cook for dinner. Usually chicken something. I remember the first couple of dates and all that. Since then, I don’t know. Guess she loves me enough. Lord knows she puts up with all my shit. Then again.
Fifty-seven
I’m always getting these invitations from the boys on the rigs out to Austin and Houston and San Antonio. Never Dallas because they want their money to go far. They paint the town red, talk all kinds of big game about that cowboy shit. These fucking kids, don’t have any idea how much danger they’re in. All they ever talk about is how much tail they got. Sounds fun, but I’m listening to them over the sounds of the drill making its way deep. They could die, then it would all be over. For a couple thousand dollars a year. For laughs and good times and those Sixth Street girls and then gone. Worse yet, wake up thirty years later without an arm or someone to love them. How did this happen? What’s it for? Am I the only one trapped in this body?
Fifty-eight
Sometimes I wake up and for five minutes I don’t know I’m in my body. It’s never when I’m sleeping on-site because we have to get the fuck up, chow, and hit the floor. It’s not when I’m next to Dakota because I know it’s her and I know it’s me and I can feel a little pit like worry getting big in my stomach. It’s in hotel rooms between jobs, usually. When you wake up in a hotel room, you can be anywhere in the world. Could be in Mexico. Could have driven sixteen hours the other way and be getting ready to walk out in the big kind of sun. Or better, I could be anybody else. Some businessman on their way to a big deal, or a musician. To be honest it’s even weirder than that. It’s like I’m connected to everyone, while my brain is off it’s like I’m every person in the whole world and I don’t know who the hell Leo is. Never met a Leonard in my life, feels like. Then I hear a semi or a siren on the other side of the motel curtains and it’s like someone falls inside my chest.
Fifty-nine.
I can’t stand it. I have to tell Dakota something but then it’ll be over and who will I have then? And my old man said it wouldn’t be a thing just to pay him back eventually but it’s like he’s always with me in this truck or on the rigs because a quarter out of every dollar goes right on back to him. Too easy to feel I owe everyone everything when I could die on the rig. I wonder if anyone else knows what it’s like when nothing is wrong, but everything is wrong. It’s all wrong because I did it to me.
Sixty.
Shit, empty pack.
I see a Love’s up there. They got cleaner shitters anyway and I like the green and red signs. Sun’s on its way out so I should make it quick. Damn beautiful though, hill country. The trees look like they’re on fire.
“Can I get thirty on,” I look through the window behind the cashier, “six.” I see my Dunhills and those Texas Loteria scratchers. I love those. They remind me of my aunts, they used to put scratchers in my stockings for Christmas and we’d play Loteria the afternoon of. All that mexa shit I used to love from my mom’s side. Been a while now.
“That’ll be it, hun?” the cashier asks. People are nice in this part of Texas, call each other hun. She’s a bit old though, ain’t she. How’d she end up here.
“Actually if you don’t mind, can you throw in a pack of Dunhills shorts and a twenty-three.” I point at the ten-dollar Texas Mega Loteria. Why not, fifty buck winner might cheer me up. Shit, I’ve won two hundred on these.
“Thank you, ma’am.” I pay and leave.
Looks like those billboards on the highway for those weird sideshows. It’s got these big ole letters and all that, and it’s got the little colorful pictures on it. The Bluebonnet, the Cowboy, the Mockingbird. Hardly want to scratch em off, they’re a strange kind of beautiful. Isn’t everything. The instructions say if I scratch off four winners in a row I win. Gotta use the “Calling Cards.” My mom gave me a half-dollar that I still have in my wallet. It’s supposed to be good luck, but I never got why. Didn’t they kill JFK in Dallas? That’s a tough place to go. Bet he wouldn’t have picked it himself.
The Boar. The Maracas. The Spurs. The Football.
They try to tease you with getting a few on the three million winner. I’m just trying to get some gas money, I guess.
The Cardinal. The Bat. The Jack Rabbit. The Pecan Tree. The Ferris Wheel.
This is the best and worst of it. Getting your hopes up. I mean, I should be happy with breaking even right? I’m paying to get my heartbeat up and all that. No use in banking on something like this. But you can’t help but feel disappointed, even when you tell your brain a thousand times it’s not worth it. It’s like when your friends try to tell you something is no good for you, and you do it anyway.
The Butterfly. The Oil Rig.
Oh shit. The Cactus. No three million. Let me double-check.
“Ten thousand dollars, motherfuckers!” Can barely hear myself over the sound of my heart beating. Well, I’ll be damned. Those payments just got a lot easier, didn’t they? I might be able to buy Dakota something nice. Get her off my ass. I can put some of it away and pay my dad off nice and slow while I put another chunk of this money into a savings. A buddy of mine rents out rigs to drivers from Odessa. You can buy a rig for twenty k. Shit, five ain’t a bad place to start. Alright, let me double-check this, just so I don’t look like an ass being all excited. Forgot about the multipliers. Sometimes you can get a 2X or something like that.
Ace. Ace. Crown. Money Bag. Ace.
That’s 50X that adds up to that’s hold on let me do the math alright hold on that’s five hundred thousand dollars. Five hundred thousand dollars. No, no that’s not. How. Sweet lord. Let me check again.
The Maracas. The Oil Rig. The Ferris Wheel. The Jack Rabbit. Ten thousand.
Ace. Ace. Ace. Fifty times multiplier. Jesus Christ. The longer I stare at it, the brighter the colors are getting. It’s the most beautiful yellow I’ve ever seen.
I want to call Dakota. More than anything I need to talk to someone about how exciting this is, that’s it not just me in this car screaming at the top of my lungs. But, then I don’t want to call Dakota. Imagine. Could get on out, get the hell out, find someone else, find it all out there. Always wanted to head out somewhere, tired of these deserts and scraggly trees and the back-broken deer piling up all around. It’s just deathly. Could go out to a beach, maybe even Baja. Still got some of my mom’s family out there. Be by a beach somewhere. Don’t have anybody I want to come back for, my old man would barely miss me.
I want to call my old man and tell him to fuck off, for once and all time. Then he’d tell me about how I didn’t earn it. Only bums buy scratch-offs. That ain’t no way to get rich. Plus, I’d have to pay half of it in taxes. Only about two hundred and fifty thou. Not even enough to pay for a house in cash, especially if I want to pay off my dad and all that. I can hear him walking me through it, I can hear him saying it all before I even get the chance to be happy. Wouldn’t have to pay taxes in Mexico. Wouldn’t have to tell anybody I left. It’s getting dark and I got some time to plan this out. Let me hit the highway.
The 290 works. I’ll take it slow, tell Dakota that I was being safe because of the deer and all that. I’m always seeing wrecks out here. Sure enough.
Sixty-one.
Barely saw that one. It’s misty as all hell out here. I mean, sure an accident could happen out here. Car hits a deer, goes in the river. Something like that. Never find a body, never find me. I got my passport on me right now and I’d rent a car, I’ve done that before when I went to my uncle’s funeral down there in Ensenada.
Sixty-two
No. I mean, I can’t do that, right? Poor Dakota. Poor thing. She’d be all fucked up about it. But that wouldn’t be my problem, I guess. She’d get along fine. Hell, maybe I even send her a postcard with a chunk of change. Kind of like how they do that in Shawshank Redemption, right. Let her know I’m alright, no name on it or nothing just some cash. Maybe she comes down. Maybe it’ll get lonely, down there, I’ve never been Mexican enough for Mexico anyway. My Spanish hasn’t been the same since my mom went out. Or maybe I meet some nice piece of tail down there and don’t think twice.
Sixty-three
This fucking semi is taking ages man. Can’t hardly see shit with it right in front of me. Let me look around the left side. Nah, too risky to jump around it. But I’ll be here all night. More time to think, I guess. I’m still heading towards Austin. I’m still going that way. Why? It wouldn’t be so bad to make it with Dakota, right? She’s been good to me. She wouldn’t change with the money. I could help her with that yoga studio she wants to open up. Well it’s some other type of fitness, I didn’t fully understand it. This is my one chance, though y’know? My one time to get out of it. My old man always says that if it’s a maybe, it’s a no. Wish we all had more time to figure out the maybes.
Sixty-four
I should cash this out just in case. Maybe I won’t make it to Austin. Let me look at my phone. Says it’s seventeen minutes to a Valero in Harper County. Get my check there, then I got time to think before Fredericksburg. This ticket is burning a hole in my hand, can’t let go of it. Scared of it flying away. Should wait a while for another cig. Haven’t even had the radio on. I could go for some Waylon. I’ve never been to Spain either. That would be nice. That’s what I always like about Waylon, he knows how to make things bigger than you, but that includes you. This shit feels like a country song, doesn’t it? It’s always the ones about money that go wrong. The ones about the bandits and the cowboys getting along. Wonder why that is. I got to get around this semi, it’s driving me wild.
Sixty-five.
Gotta gun it. Up the left side. No one coming this way. Hold your breath.
Sixty-six, sixty-seven.
Shit, they ain’t dead. Shit. Headlights. Grip the wheel. Where’d the ticket go, shit. Fuck.
Sweet lord. I can feel glass all the way up inside me. Can’t find the ticket. I’d make sure Dakota’d get it. Keep it away from my old man. Shit, he’d claim it his. Fuck that. Can’t do much about it. Maybe light one more cig. Got the lighter right here. I can see deer snapped necks and the blood and gas spilling out from the rig and feel it all slipping kind of like when I wake up in those hotel rooms and I feel I’m connected to it all like I could fall right back asleep and wake up somewhere else. I just might. Never no Leonard at all. Never no body. Maybe I light this all up. Maybe.
