Parrot Motel?' he said.
He saw the recognition in my face.
'Yeah, that's right,' he said. 'The place where
Garland Moon is working. Except I didn't know that and I didn't know
what he looked like, either.'
'Oh man,' I said.
'He gets my car up on a jack and drains the oil and
takes the pan off and welds it and sticks it back on, and I ask how
much I owe him.
'"Hunnerd-twenty-five," he says.
'I go, "My ass. That job ain't worth one nickel more
than seventy-five dollars."
'He says, "Then it looks like I got me a fishing
car."
'I give him eighty dollars cash and take out my
MasterCard for the rest of it. He looks at the name and says, "Vernon
Smothers… Vernon Smothers… Is that little jailhouse
bitch your son? Why, you're bird-dogging me, ain't you?"
'I told him I'd never laid eyes on him and didn't
want to and didn't have no plan on seeing him again… He never
said a word. He just smiled and wrote out my charge slip and handed it
to me… I seen eyes like that on one other man in my life. He
was a door gunner. If he caught them in a rice field or a hooch or
coming out of a wedding party, it didn't make no difference.'
'Forget it,' I said.
'I think he's going to hurt my boy.'
'We won't let that happen, Vernon.' He cupped his
fingers over his mouth. His skin made a dry, rasping sound against his
fingers.
The social circle of Darl Vanzandt
wasn't a
difficult one to track. They were rich and lived in the East End; they
had flunked out of the University of Texas or they commuted to a
community college or they held token jobs in the businesses they would
inherit. But it was a strange solipsistic attitude toward others that
truly defined them. They were animated and loud and unseeing in public,
indifferent to the injury their words might cause anyone outside their
perimeter. They drove too fast, running stop signs and caution lights,
never making a connection between their recklessness and the jeopardy
they arbitrarily brought into the lives of others.
Their accents were regional, but they had skied in
Colorado and surfed in California, and they played golf and tennis at a
country club where blacks and Mexicans picked up their litter from the
greens and their sweaty towels from the court, as though that was the
natural function of the poor. Their insensitivity was almost a form of
innocence. Had they ever been brought to task for their behavior, they
probably would not have understood the complaint against them.
But one member of this group was an exception. Bunny
Vogel came from a family of shiftless mill workers whose front yard was
always decorated with rusted washing machines and automobile parts. But
Bunny'd had a talent. As a high school running back he had crashed
holes through the enemy line like a tank through a hedge row. Then he
had played two years on a no-cut athletic scholarship at Texas
A&M, with every expectation of graduating and going to the
pros. That was before he got caught paying off a grader and fellow
athlete to change an exam score for a freshman named Darl Vanzandt.
After he was expelled, he turned his motorcycle on
its side and ground a strip of metal, leather, and bone a hundred feet
long on the highway to Austin.
I found him at his job out at the skeet club. He
could have been a Visigoth, with his grained, ruddy face, his long
bronze-colored hair tangled on his shoulders, a deep pink scar, with
stitch holes, along one jaw. Bunny was deferential and soft-spoken,
even likable, but I always felt that behind his smile a clock was
ticking as he waited for that moment when he would be free of older
people and the sanction and approval they could arbitrarily withdraw if
he displeased them.
Shotguns popped in the warm breeze behind him, and
beyond the row of oblong green traps, clay pigeons exploded in puffs of
colored smoke against the sky.
'I'd like to hep you, Mr Holland, but far as I know
the only guy mixed up with Roseanne Hazlitt was ole Lucas. Sorry,' he
said.
'Were you out at
He saw the recognition in my face.
'Yeah, that's right,' he said. 'The place where
Garland Moon is working. Except I didn't know that and I didn't know
what he looked like, either.'
'Oh man,' I said.
'He gets my car up on a jack and drains the oil and
takes the pan off and welds it and sticks it back on, and I ask how
much I owe him.
'"Hunnerd-twenty-five," he says.
'I go, "My ass. That job ain't worth one nickel more
than seventy-five dollars."
'He says, "Then it looks like I got me a fishing
car."
'I give him eighty dollars cash and take out my
MasterCard for the rest of it. He looks at the name and says, "Vernon
Smothers… Vernon Smothers… Is that little jailhouse
bitch your son? Why, you're bird-dogging me, ain't you?"
'I told him I'd never laid eyes on him and didn't
want to and didn't have no plan on seeing him again… He never
said a word. He just smiled and wrote out my charge slip and handed it
to me… I seen eyes like that on one other man in my life. He
was a door gunner. If he caught them in a rice field or a hooch or
coming out of a wedding party, it didn't make no difference.'
'Forget it,' I said.
'I think he's going to hurt my boy.'
'We won't let that happen, Vernon.' He cupped his
fingers over his mouth. His skin made a dry, rasping sound against his
fingers.
The social circle of Darl Vanzandt
wasn't a
difficult one to track. They were rich and lived in the East End; they
had flunked out of the University of Texas or they commuted to a
community college or they held token jobs in the businesses they would
inherit. But it was a strange solipsistic attitude toward others that
truly defined them. They were animated and loud and unseeing in public,
indifferent to the injury their words might cause anyone outside their
perimeter. They drove too fast, running stop signs and caution lights,
never making a connection between their recklessness and the jeopardy
they arbitrarily brought into the lives of others.
Their accents were regional, but they had skied in
Colorado and surfed in California, and they played golf and tennis at a
country club where blacks and Mexicans picked up their litter from the
greens and their sweaty towels from the court, as though that was the
natural function of the poor. Their insensitivity was almost a form of
innocence. Had they ever been brought to task for their behavior, they
probably would not have understood the complaint against them.
But one member of this group was an exception. Bunny
Vogel came from a family of shiftless mill workers whose front yard was
always decorated with rusted washing machines and automobile parts. But
Bunny'd had a talent. As a high school running back he had crashed
holes through the enemy line like a tank through a hedge row. Then he
had played two years on a no-cut athletic scholarship at Texas
A&M, with every expectation of graduating and going to the
pros. That was before he got caught paying off a grader and fellow
athlete to change an exam score for a freshman named Darl Vanzandt.
After he was expelled, he turned his motorcycle on
its side and ground a strip of metal, leather, and bone a hundred feet
long on the highway to Austin.
I found him at his job out at the skeet club. He
could have been a Visigoth, with his grained, ruddy face, his long
bronze-colored hair tangled on his shoulders, a deep pink scar, with
stitch holes, along one jaw. Bunny was deferential and soft-spoken,
even likable, but I always felt that behind his smile a clock was
ticking as he waited for that moment when he would be free of older
people and the sanction and approval they could arbitrarily withdraw if
he displeased them.
Shotguns popped in the warm breeze behind him, and
beyond the row of oblong green traps, clay pigeons exploded in puffs of
colored smoke against the sky.
'I'd like to hep you, Mr Holland, but far as I know
the only guy mixed up with Roseanne Hazlitt was ole Lucas. Sorry,' he
said.
'Were you out at
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