Susan's Debt

copyright©Jerry D. McDonnell, 2012
Published in Over the Transom #22, 2013

by 
Jerry D. McDonnell

She said that night that she loved me in a certain way.

Of course she told that to everybody.

3:00 A.M. Wednesday:

The night Convoy blew up the Madam’s car in front of her whorehouse in Tonopah, Nevada.

* * * * * *

7:30 P.M. Tuesday, the night before:

Franky said Convoy had requested we meet him at his bar stool office on our way back north to Tahoe.

* * * * * *

 Bill’s joint, we called it, was a dingy fully licensed bar with pool table, back bar mirror, weathered tables, a jute box and framed photos of a sand dusted Vegas of yore before the power company neoned it up like an colorful commode in the desert. Tucked away only yards and a couple of tourist steps too far off the tinsel neon bright lights of Freemont Street downtown Vegas it had more akin with the dumpster alley than the main drag. It was a bar of didn’t make it ball players, defrocked lawyers, expelled teachers and doctors, lost faith clergy, deaf truck drivers, maimed construction workers, and minor dope dealers, mostly all vets, some whole, some not, like Convoy who was a U.S. Air Force jet fighter pilot in Viet Nam with an honorable discharge . . . so he said. Most came and went. Some just went. Some never left. Some had jobs. Some did and then didn’t. Bill was the large soft-spoken lady bartender with muscles of iron, mother confessor, bouncer, and sometimes banker who may loan you a few bucks if she liked you. She also owned the joint.

* * * * * *

7:30 P.M. Tuesday, the night before:

 “It’s a job up in Tonopah,” Franky said. “ One night. Couple of hours. It’s on the way north. We could leave from Tonopah after the job.”

“And why should we . . .”

“He said it’s for Susan.” That had me. I loved Susan. Everyone did. She was stocky and weight lifter muscular with come-on curves and could enlighten a conversation with everyone from a peon to a prince due to her Bryn Mawr education and finishing school background that refused to abandon her. She was Convoy’s hooker.

* * * * * *

8:00 P.M. Tuesday, the night before:

Car gassed. Convoy on his stool. Susan at his side. Convoy wearing his seldom seen flight jacket. Susan not dressed in her working mini skirt and cleavage advertising blouse that offered her for-sale body. Tonight, her long red hair tucked under a baseball cap, she was wearing camouflage utility pants and a drab polyester jacket with patches displaying her alumni status of Oakland Roller Derby fame. Traveling clothes. Still, no matter how she dressed she had the bearing of an aristocrat. Susan and Convoy’s mutual but unrelated disgust of their country club gentrified parents had fashioned their bond of personalities but each had selected different routes to being disinherited and losing their trust fund to siblings. Deal in Convoy, Yale graduate engineer and man of unexpected talents and you had a pair to draw to.

I had to ask, “The job?”

“Simple,” Convoy said. “Lookout. Simple,” and seeing me registering Susan’s outfit, said, “Yes, she’s going along.”

Susan said to me, “A debt to pay . . . “

“Quiet!” Convoy cut her off. “If I want to tell him, I will.”

Dealing with Convoy was either an adventure or a “craps seven-out, new shooter.” If worry was in your deck prudence demanded not to ask questions until the opportune moment before the dice were thrown.

* * * * * * *

6:00 A.M. Wednesday:

The idea turned out not to be a good one. Still a bit shaken after a get-out-of-there ride many miles north of Tonopah, Franky and me had pealed off of highway 395 and onto 20 miles of dirt road to a spot we knew on the Walker River. The sun was rising over the distant Shoshone Mountains of the Toiyabe Range to the east. Sitting on the bank of the river, we were watching a small band of wild horses downstream. The stallion was disciplining one of his mares and had just fought off a rival. A covey of chukars—momma and a group of wee ones—were clucking through the sagebrush.

“Think anyone got hurt?” I asked, watching a brown trout rise in the water at our feet.

“Don’t think so. Seems no one was in that front room that went with the car.” Franky lit a joint, took a drag and passed it. “You know once Convoy found a TV set in the alley. A Zenith. Brought it in the bar. Fixed that thing. It was a bit snowy sometimes, usually when it rained.”

“Not much rain in Vegas.”

“Yeah, not much,” Franky said drawing two parallel lines in the sand between his feet.  

“Rain in Vegas is like winning a keno ticket.”

“Yeah. Like winning a Keno ticket.” He drew an X inside the parallel lines. “I thought Convoy knew what he . . . guess he’d been drinking too much. Man, it took out that whole car and that front room.” Franky said erasing the X and part of the parallel line with his hand. “No one was supposed to get hurt.”

“Yeah, like rain in Vegas,” I said, relishing how I had felt as I held Susan in my arms several hundred yards away when the explosion went off.

She was shaking. I held her tight. Kissed the top of her head. I wanted to take her north with me . . . us. Too soon Convoy found us and pulled her away from me. I started to protest, but Susan stopped me.

“What was the deal, Franky?”

“Something to do with Susan and the two Madams. Some kind of feud. A get even thing. That’s all Bill told me.”

“That’s fucked, man!” I said throwing a rock at the chukars.

“No man. That’s love.”

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