American Outlaw - Jesse James [13]
“I have school, Dad. Tomorrow’s Friday, remember?”
“Then you’re just gonna have to be sick. I’m going to Pasadena for a big job, and I need you to help me out.” He grinned at me. “Your old dad’s getting feeble. He needs the young blood to step up and do its part.”
I flushed with pride. “Hell yeah.” It didn’t matter to me that I had a test the next day in algebra.
The next day we both woke up at six and ate breakfast together. “You want coffee, Jess?”
“No, thanks.”
He laughed. “Come on, kid. Live a little. Try coffee the way I do it: plenty of sugar and plenty of cream. A coffee made the right way can be a whole meal. Give you vitamins you need for the rest of the day!”
I grinned. “Okay. Just a little bit.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” my dad bellowed. He reached out and pounded me in the chest twice. “My son is a walking beast, goddammit!”
In his better moments, my dad seemed to me like the perfect combination of Redd Foxx and George Carlin. He could make me laugh without even trying. I remember literally crying, tears running down my face, listening to swap-meet stories of his that I’d heard a million times before.
I loaded up his trucks like a madman. I tossed mattresses every which way, stacking boxes of books and antique tables next to refrigerators next to dinettes next to racks of chairs.
“Careful, careful!” my dad warned. “You’re wasting room, Jess! No, no fucking way! Let’s start this over. Don’t half-ass it. Unpack the whole thing. Start over from scratch.”
Turning around on a dime, I started unloading the truck. Just like on the football field, I attacked any physical task with enthusiasm and a kind of animal rage. I was going to be the best in the world at packing up junk trucks. No one would do it faster or better or meaner than me.
My dad just watched, a bemused look on his face.
“Much better. Fuck, kid,” he said, laughing, “I should keep you out of school every day. My life just got ten times easier.”
The swap meets became my home away from home, and molded me into an even weirder teenager than I already was. Besides Bobby, I just didn’t have that many friends my own age. My peer group wasn’t really kids, they were my dad’s friends, Rick and Joey and Paul and Ronnie, sleazy pimplike dudes who were constantly running game, smoking cigarettes, and cutting deals, wearing three-quarter-length leather trench coats with floppy denim hats and loving every minute of it.
“Look at the milkers on that one,” Joey would say, motioning toward a young blond California mom pushing a stroller.
“Watch the mouth, Joe,” Rick would go, laughing and motioning to me. “The kid isn’t used to that kind of language.”
“Hell he isn’t! He’s seen a pair of tits before. You know what a good rack looks like, dontcha, Jess?”
“Sure do,” I bluffed, puffed up with my own newfound machismo.
“Yeah, but do you know what to do with ’em? Jesse, tell you what, how about you go over there and put those in your mouth, huh, kid?” He made a sucking sound with his lips and teeth. “Milk ’em, is what I say!”
They were good-time guys, the original dirty rotten scoundrels. Fun for them was breaking a jar of mayonnaise on the supermarket floor. One well-timed slip-and-fall later, and they were suing the store for negligence. They fascinated me and made me feel sick to my stomach at the same time. I remember going out to find Joey in the parking lot one time, because he had an interested buyer for a lamp of his. He hadn’t been near his booth for about half an hour.
I craned my neck, looking for his green Thunderbird in the vast parking lot.
“Hey, Joey! Where you at?” I stretched my neck in vain. “Joey!”
Finally I located his car. I saw him sitting behind the driver’s seat and ran up to the window, knocking on it with my knuckles.
“Hey, Joey, someone’s looking . . . oh, sorry!”
A woman’s blond head was moving over his lap with a rhythmic tempo.
He glanced up and gave me a triumphant grin. “Little busy right now, kid.” His right palm rested lazily atop her crown of mussed golden hair. “Gimme five minutes.”
They were shitheads,