Mr. Good(3)

Son

I wont you to have this a fine instrumint i bought it new in 1965. Maybe somday we can play together i can teech you some Bob wills. The only thing about it is i got no idee how the writing got on the back i woke up in a motel in oddessa tex 8 yeer ago and it was almost nite and their it was this is stil a good guitar.

Dad

I hadn’t heard from him since. If he was alive he’d be sixty-three, and the older I got the more I wished I could see him. We’d have something to talk about now that I’d made every mistake he had.

Once I was living with a psychologist and she started ribbing me after she saw how I took such good care of the Gibson. Better take Mr. Good to soccer practice, she’d say, or Mr. Good says he wants to order Chinese. If she hadn’t been so good-looking I wouldn’t have put up with her—she’d come home after counseling all day and make astrology charts on her clients and smoke pot. She finally drank enough coffee one morning to think to ask how I got the guitar. I told her the story about my dad.

"That’s cute," she said.

I just stared at her.

"What is it?" she said.

I shook my head.

"No, what is it?" she asked, almost hysterical.

"Nothing," I said. "Just looking at your hair."

* * *

It was cold. I was in Purcell’s lot, smoking, drinking coffee, half-listening to the Spanish talk all around me. I had seven hundred dollars in my socks—after getting paid today I’d have enough to get the Gibson back, and after Monday and Tuesday I’d have enough to go back to Dallas—and then suddenly an angry shout came from behind the trailer, then another. The lot quickly fell silent. Then the Spanish started up again and most of the men walked over and looked behind the trailer but as soon they did they started leaving, some running, and in about two minutes the place was deserted except for me.

I kept watching the trailer, about fifteen yards away. Nothing. I couldn’t hear anything either but the hum of the arc lights. I didn’t know what to do. I was kind of scared, but I had to try to work that day, no matter what, so I decided to stay where I was and wait for Purcell to show up. I started to light another cigarette, then footsteps sounded on the gravel and a man staggered around the side of the trailer. He was clutching his side and when he saw me he said something in Spanish. He was big, at least three hundred pounds, and looked like a bear coming toward me. Then he just stopped and stood there. I could hear his breathing. He sank to his knees like a camel sitting down and fell over.

For about a hundred and fifty dollars I would’ve left. But there weren’t any philanthropists in the vicinity. I went over to him. He had rolled onto his back and when he saw me standing over him he started talking in Spanish. He had a rip in the side of his thin jacket and there were dark stains around it. I took off my denim coat and kneeled down, and when he saw what I was doing he moved his hands and let me use the coat as a compress. Some warm blood soaked into the denim, but not much. He seemed more panicked than anything. He just kept on jabbering.