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Jesse, Teach Me to Play Cards

Jesse didnt mess with the wires no more. He picked an old red car with a nice back seat and a soft, red inside. The windows could roll all the way down. He pounded a screwdriver under the steering wheel and slid a steel bar through a hole in the handle to get him strong enough to start the car. The screwdriver got left stuck so we could stop for gas on Highway 25.

Jesse told me to roll down the window after we was on the highway. He always knew the right time the windows should roll down. It was hot but the air blowing through made it nice.

The shiny gun was on the seats between us. It was loaded with three-eights. You could load it with three-fifties too. Three-eights was good ‘cause they shot better than three-fifties. Three-fifties made Jesse talk louder and show his teeth more.

Jesse liked to touch and hold them bullets. Bullets turned people into playing-card houses for him to blow on. He told me that the cards was people that was too proud or too stupid to give him what was his. He saved the cards after he blew’em down. He says, “I never forget the face a somebody I shot in they’s face.” That was funny. We was card players.

I wondered if Jesse had the dream again. I wondered what the fishes looked like this time. They was always funny fish. Some had glasses. Some had noses and some was bloody with bandages torn and wiggling through the water. But they was all the biting fish. Piranhas. Jesse was a tiny fish the size a drop a water. The Piranhas chased Jesse all the way around the tank, sometimes all night long while Jesse’s sweat soaked the motel’s sheets. Little boys and girls pressed they’s smiling faces against the tank’s glass. They’s white teeth rippled real huge. Jesse couldnt stay asleep on them nights. He didnt remember that he still had the gun under his pillow so he was safe. His fingers got whiter when he squeezed the handle and he kept his finger away from trigger to avoid accidents. Things weren’t as good in the motels as in the cars.

The wind blew my hair. My hair was sweat-covered. Inside the mirror, I looked at the scar under my eye. It was an old scar from when Jesse hit me with the bottom of the gun. It felt like a bunch a bee stings when I yelled and when I cried. It bled but it stopped. The scar reminded me that the bus driver in New York City that looked like our dad and acted like our dad was not our dad. Our dad was in Seattle, maybe.

The orange sun got big and fell into the far off highway road. We stopped to piss and gas-up at an old gas station. The shop-lady behind the wooden counter looked like maybe she was inside a fort. The brown shelves had every candy bar. Skinny lights buzzed near a cardboard beautiful lady and see-through refrigerators had the drinks that made Jesse angry. I grabbed three packs a Twinkies.

Jesse walked out a the bathroom and a red door swung closed. He slapped a dirty twenty on the counter.

The brown-haired girl was pretty and a lot younger than us. Her nametag had letters that says ‘Janet.’ She stopped making noise with her chew gum to look at some blood still on our money and she held her breath and looked into Jesse’s eyes for too long.

Jesse grabbed behind his back and pointed the gun at her.

She made a scared, sad face and her big tears came out slow. She walked out from behind and Jesse grabbed out the stacks a money from the open money tray.

I dragged and dragged Janet by her shaky wrist to our car. She shook and cried like she was broken and she smelled like them hotdogs so I put her in the backseat.

She asked again and again what Jesse and me was doing to her. We laughed ‘cause we was the card players.

Jesse says, “LITTLE BITCH! You knew why the blood was on our twenty! You knew what we did! You saw it on TV or you heard on the radio. And you’d tell people.” He left his mouth open as he turned from her. The sweat ran over his skin with his veins pushing.