Wee Hours

One Saturday night in late April I was driving an old U-Haul down the highway in western Missouri thinking about the years I had spent in a small town down there, before Micky and our band made it big and moved up to Kansas City. Those were rough times, down in that town, and we played on the road a lot, played in Jimmy's Tap, where the Rogue Warriors motorcycle gang spent a lot of time, and in general we relied on the good graces of small-town folk to get us through the lean times. The people I was closest to, though, were Micky and the band, and we had all moved together, left a whole house of furniture in a storage unit, and it was my job, my turn, to come and get it. It was a rare weekend when a gig had cancelled out; my original plan was to get someone to help me, especially with the couch and the table, and get someone to stay with overnight in the town, but it was so hard getting the truck and getting out of there, that I was beginning to think more of plan B. Plan B was to simply load it myself, into the wee hours of the night, then take a little nap in the truck before heading back north with the furniture.

The old truck had a well-worn feel to it, an old radio with a familiar station on, but it was hard to maneuver around. I couldn't drop in at Jimmy's Tap, for example, because the streets in town were narrow and it would be difficult to park. I could probably park a few blocks away and walk, but then, that would leave me a little tipsy when I loaded the furniture, so I canned that idea too. As I drove through the town, I noticed that it hadn't changed much: same old brick buildings, run-down neighborhoods, quiet streets. I rolled into the U-Store-It storage alleys, with their rows of little boxed units, got out of the truck, found the key to our unit, number 71, and opened it; all the stuff was there waiting for me, upturned couch, boxes of old music charts and books, stuff that various band members wanted to keep but couldn't move to Kansas City right away. I rested on the back edge of the opened truck for a minute, planning out how to load the stuff, and eyeing the couch. It was the biggest thing, but it should probably go in there first. I set to it, but just as I started, a motorcyclist came by, shot a nasty look at me, circled around the U-Store-It alleys, and left. I recognized the insignia of the Rogue Warriors on the guy's leather jacket, but didn't recognize the guy himself; after all, it had been a couple of years since I'd even seen any of them. It was a nasty look, though; it kind of unsettled me.

The leader of that gang, Turk Gray, was one mean and ugly guy. He'd been charged with murder while I lived there; it seemed he might have murdered a mild-mannered disk jockey, killed him with a blunt object, possibly over a woman, Marie Towson. I'd taught Marie's son Joe guitar lessons, so I knew her vaguely, but didn't know the disk jockey, who was probably the boy's father, and only knew what I'd heard: that Turk had his gang intimidate the jurors and the witnesses, so that, when the trial was over, there wasn't enough evidence to convict him. I'd also heard that it wasn't the first time it had happened, either, though what did I know? I was from Chicago and was in Chicago when I met Micky; I'd only moved to this town about seven years back, so I'd only lived there for about five when we finally moved to Kansas City. And half of that time, we'd been on the road. I didn't know the place as well as some folks, who knew not only everyone who lived there, but also their parents and grandparents, and the history of why they acted the way they did, and who had ever wronged who, and what they'd done about it. You could go to the convenience store or the local well-known retail outlet with the big blue sign out front, run into one of these people, and hear great stories for hours, if you had the time, which I sometimes did when I was unemployed. But there were some things about this gang, the Rogue Warriors, that I really didn't want to know.

The boy, Joe, worked at that local retail outlet for years after the murder, and was one of the few people around that I cared about, if only because it seemed like a terrible thing, having your father murdered by local gang leader with a blunt object, and being unable to do anything about it. He would be about nineteen now, I figured, barely out of high school, but of course I hadn't heard from him, and didn't even know if he was still around. For the guitar lessons we'd meet in the soundproofed back room of a local music store, with guitars and instruments hanging from the ceiling of the front room, and a comfortable feel to the place, since it was owned by a friend of Micky's- it was the one place I really liked in this town, but then, I was kind of a loner, outside of the church crowds and the other social scenes. I guess in that respect, Joe and I were kind of similar, because I think his mother Marie was hoping that he'd find something in the guitar that he could relate to, that he could use to find his way through those lonely years of high school. The kid must have a rage inside him for Turk, though, I figured, especially if he knew he was guilty, but I never asked- didn't know, didn't find out, didn't really catch any clues. I just taught him guitar, and he was fairly good at it, too.

I took a break from loading, about halfway through, when I got to the table, and sat on the open back bumper of the U-Haul again while I smoked a cigarette. Stars were out; it was cool, but nice out. One could hear noises from the downtown area, about six blocks away; I'm sure I could have walked there, left my truck at the U-Store-It for a while. But, the more I thought about the town, the less I felt like talking about it with anyone, reliving those years, catching up on what few people I knew, telling about the band and our success in the city. Half the time we lived in this town, we'd play at Jimmy's Tap, and Micky would invite the entire bar over to our house at closing time, and then we'd have these crowds of drunken people, putting out their cigarettes in our plants, spilling beer on the carpet, finally leaving at about eight in the morning or later, leaving beer cans in the yard or knocking over the mailbox on their way out. Micky did the necessary fence-mending with the neighbors and the police, but I think we were all grateful to be able to move off to a big city, where you get a little more privacy and folks aren't always talking about all the noise somebody made last Saturday night. The problem is, as I've said, these towns are so small, nobody forgets anything, nobody has anything better to do than hang around talking about it and holding it against you.

Which is why, minutes later, when another Rogue Warrior came driving by, giving me a dirty look, he actually circled around, stopped his cycle, and came over to shoot the breeze for a little while. I vaguely knew this guy, Jessie something-or-other, from those nights at Jimmy's, and he was not a bad guy, a little on the outside of the law, as they all were, but not the kind of guy I was afraid of, like Turk Gray. We sat there and smoked a couple more cigarettes, and he filled me in a little. Turk, apparently, was missing; he was last seen going to this very storage alley the previous night. This made certain members of the gang very nervous for reasons Jessie was not forthcoming about. It was clear that everyone was afraid of Turk and uncertain how to do business when he was missing- it wouldn't be good to just assume he was dead, yet it wasn't like him to just disappear, either. They halfway suspected he was locked up in one of these units, but what could they do but come down here every once in a while, looking around? As he talked, Jessie looked around nervously, eyeing the other units, looking for clues.

Turk had come down here, he said, to do a favor for Marie, who he, Turk, was still involved with. That made my blood boil, a little, but I kept my mouth shut. If Turk and Marie were seeing each other, was that because she liked him, or was it because she was afraid of him, like everyone else? In any case, I asked about Joe, while he was on the subject. Joe had joined the Army, he said, about a week and a half ago, moved off to Fort Leonard Wood, or some such place. It was something to do with that, maybe, that Marie had rented a place here at the U-Store-It, he figured. This town was too small for Joe, Jessie said, and I can sure understand. It's what a lot of these kids did, join the Army in order to get out of a place like this.

Jessie spit on the ground behind the truck as he told of life in the town since we'd left- it seemed to them like endless harassment by the police, who were convinced, apparently, that Turk had been guilty, and had begun to focus on running the whole gang out of town. Cigarette ash got stuck in his long beard, and the off-color street lamps caught his leather jacket in a sickly way; I realized how unhealthy it was, hanging around Jimmy's Tap drinking and making surly threats, and trying to make sure the police didn't catch you pulling out of the parking lot drunk. He was jealous of my stories of Kansas City- guys like Jessie often just want a way out, some kind of choice. He said he thought we had a lot of talent; he and Micky went way back; he, unlike Micky, was stuck here in a dead-end job and not much else, except maybe that Harley, which shone bright and polished over on the other side of the truck. And, after a few more words, he left, asking me to keep my eye on the storage alley for him, let him know if I saw anything, a lot of people were wondering. With the roar only a motorcycle can make, he kicked up and shot out into the night, gravel from the alley kicking up and bouncing off the doors of some other units.

All this made me nervous, and I was motivated to finish my moving and get out of that U-Store-It. There wasn't another sound anywhere in the storage place; it was now past one in the morning. After a little more loading I could hear the bars let out uptown, and figured maybe I'd see one more Warrior cruising by, but I didn't. Shortly after two thirty I got the last of the furniture, closed the back of the truck, and latched it; I dropped the key to unit 71 in the little box at the manager's place, glad to be rid of it. I started up the truck, and planned my next move. I was wide awake, covered with sweat, but it was the middle of the night, a bad time to drive around; out in the middle of western Missouri, surely I'd fall asleep and run the whole truck off into the ditch if I tried. No, it was better to park in the vast parking lot of the retail chain, out on the edge of town, where you could see trucks and motor homes occasionally. Unlike some of these retail stores, this particular place was actually closed in the wee hours of the night, a sign of how small this town actually was, but it was the kind of place with such a big parking lot that nobody would be surprised if a person parked a truck there in the night, and snoozed a little. And that's what I did. I pulled the U-Haul out to the edge of the parking lot, out there beyond the edge of the building, where I could see a little bit around back, but mostly I was facing an old field and some trees, and the farmland beyond the town's edge. I moved around in the truck, fitting into its soft old seats, turned off the radio, smoked my last cigarette, until I was comfortable, and laid down to snooze a little, before the sun came up and I had to drive back north. I'm a musician, I thought; these are our hours, when we're finally free, when we're done working, and the rest of the world sleeps. But I myself, exhausted, was asleep in a matter of minutes.

In the middle of the night I heard some clanging noises, and peeked over the driver's window, back toward the dumpster, where I saw a guy lifting a big dark lump, like a body, over the edge of the dumpster and into it. Although it was very dark outside, and the guy was dressed in dark clothes, with gloves and hat covering every inch, I could clearly see that it was Joe. He was two years older than when I'd seen him last, but I knew him well enough to know that it was him. A little car was nearby; somebody else was driving it, but I couldn't see who it was. When he was finished, he got back in the car and it drove off; the night became eerily silent again. Now I was spooked again, but I was so tired, I fell back into the seat and fell asleep again. In my drowsy haze, I didn't really think that much about it, until about nine, when a policeman's flashlight pounded on my window.

The policeman wanted a look at my ID, and then my furniture, which I gave him, and when he heard that I'd been at the very same U-Store-It that was the subject of his investigation, he was very interested, and wanted to know if I'd seen anything suspicious. I told him that I had seen absolutely nothing at the storage place except an old friend. Well, a body's been found here in the dumpster, he said, and it's Turk Gray; he was killed with a blunt object, and it looks like he was just put there recently. I saw nothing, I said again, and I was very vague about the time I had actually gotten there, and what I remembered. And that much was true: I was in a kind of haze, and didn't remember much, didn't remember clearly; it was the middle of the night, I didn't want to drive because I was too tired. The officer, who had been in this town all his life, knew the band, knew Micky, and even knew me a little, and finally let me go, telling me to say hello to Micky when I got back up there. I went inside the store to get a large cup of bad coffee for the long ride north. A lot of cops, forensic guys, the media, were hanging around the dumpster when I got back to the truck. Good riddance, I said to myself, as I started the truck, backed out of my space, and got out of the lot, going toward the highway.

4-07