1Very Last Gig
(August 10-13, 2017)
14: Everybody's Lookin' for Something
As Mabel, Teek, Wendy, and Dipper struggled to get to sleep—an effort for a worried Mabel, a tense Teek, a wary Wendy, and a Dipper on an inadequate air mattress atop a hard wooden floor—elsewhere, other restless souls were having an equally hard time.
Wilmer, in his own unit of the shabby motel, lay under a threadbare blanket staring at the shadow pattern the blinds threw on the flyspecked wall. It looked like bars of black tilted out of the vertical.
Like iron bars. Like the ones in the jail in Seco, a small town in Texas. The bars that a prisoner who didn't do his share of work in 112-degree heat on the road gang—picking up trash from the highway verge, chopping weeds so dry they splintered to fragments when a sling blade hit them—the shirking prisoner could be handcuffed to the bars, denied supper, and kept spread-eagled in a human X from get-in to lights out. If he soiled or wet himself, he hung there regardless.
Out on the work detail the guards on horseback were the ones who decided whether you did your fair share or not. They based the decisions on whims.
Out on that highway at six AM after a meager breakfast. Work without a break until high noon. A dry bologna or liver-loaf stale white-bread sandwich and a cup of water. Back on the road shoulder until three, another scant cup of warm water. Work until six, then climb into the truck, if your legs had enough strength left to make the step up, and back to jail, hoping that you wouldn't be the lucky winner of the chain-him-up prize that night.
It didn't seem right. To get into this mess, Wilmer had boosted one can of soup, a small box of crackers, and a single beer from a convenience store, paying only for a small bottle of water because it cost $1.29 and all he had in his pockets were six quarters and a dime. Cop caught him just outside the store, clerk claimed (falsely) that Wilmer had implied he had a gun, thirty days in the local jail.
He'd never been heavy. In thirty days he'd lost nineteen pounds, down to one-oh-five. And once out of the Seco jail, he'd walked the hell out of Texas. Took him a month. He'd minded his behavior, had stopped and humbly asked to do odd jobs for food or a little money. Came close to being picked up for vagrancy three different times. He was let go each time with a warning to move along out of the county, and on the blue highways he hitchhiked and trudged his way. The days blurred into a heat-baked nightmare, thumb and walk and wait.
Closest he'd come to settling was with a kindly, elderly Mexican who owned a gas station in a godforsaken stretch of secondary road somewhere south of Perryton. Señor Delgado hired him on at first for some rough-and-ready carpentry—re-shingling a sun-struck roof, taking out a back door that had been damaged by would-be thieves and replacing the doorframe and splintered wood door with a steel one, that kind of thing. Then cleaning up, stocking the few shelves. And Señor Delgado had let Wilmer sleep in the back of the small store.
That job had lasted eight days. Long enough for Wilmer to earn fifty dollars. He kept thirty in his thin wallet all the time—usually having access to at least twenty in ready money kept you from being busted on a vagrancy charge—so temporarily having eighty was like being rich. And he got to eat supper and breakfast with the Delgado family, too, who lived in a crowded house about a mile from the gas station, grandmother and grandpop and two preteens, boy and girl. They had a garden patch out back and grew beans and corn. Mrs. Delgado cooked tortillas and huevos and this and that, simple Tex-Mex fare. She encouraged Wilmer to eat.
Then on the morning of the eighth day, Wilmer had gone to the restroom, which sat about thirty feet behind the gas station and was one bare step above an outhouse, and when he came out, he heard angry Texas voices yelling for someone to lie face-down and put his damn hands behind him.
Wilmer couldn't very well run for it. Around him Texas stretched out flat as a griddle. But he could hide.
He had re-shingled the restroom. He knew where he could swing up into the cramped space between ceiling and roof, where the temperature already approximated an oven set to "roast." He stretched out on a joist, acrid dust in his nose, and found a crack through which he could see the back of the gas station. Uniformed men, three of them, came around, two on one side, one on the other. He glimpsed a vehicle. He heard Mama Delgado wail, "Papa!" He heard the kids' despairing screams from inside a vehicle. He saw the kindly Señor Delgado, his face bloody, his shoulders hunched, his wrists manacled behind him, being shoved into the back of a medium-sized white van, a green stripe with cold white letters inside it.
ICE.
The Delgados did not rat him out. He stayed put, sweating and even praying.
Later, after the enforcement vehicles had left, Wilmer swung down from his hidey hole. The agents hadn't even locked up the station. He staggered inside and drank two liters of water. Then he grabbed some canned meat, crackers, more water, and shoved them into a burlap bag still aromatic from the bulk coffee beans it had once contained. Before he left, Wilmer carefully placed a twenty-dollar bill beneath the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny dish.
He would not steal from the Delgados.
Even after a month of walking, he was still fifty-eight miles deep into Texas. He plodded north without stopping except to drink water, eat a little, or relieve himself. He did not hitchhike. Sometimes he waved cheerily to cars passing southbound. Howdy, how are ya, good day for a walk, ain't it? Here I am with my sixty dollars and my luggage, see? No reason to call the cops.
He walked until can't-see and even then did not stop. He walked under the Texas stars until he began to step over rattlesnakes that weren't really there. He walked for thirty-odd hours without stopping or resting, aside from ten-minute breaks for food or biological necessity.
He nearly fell on his knees when he saw the sign ahead: NOW ENTERING OKLAHOMA.
Ironically, in the town of Guymon he was rolled not long afterward and wound up with bruises on his face, no money in his pocket, and another short jail sentence, but in a better facility, and he was kindly let off outside work detail because of the grisly state of his feet. The county doctor warned the sheriff that much more of this and Wilmer would have to have a double amputation because gangrene would set in.
And either through pity or just to get rid of him, when they set him free the jailor presented him with a pair of sneakers that fit. On his way through the Oklahoma panhandle, Wilmer did odd jobs again, accumulated his precious twenty-dollar get out of jail amount, and walked and hitched, with no destination in mind or sight. And somehow eventually he wound up in California. He was resting under a tree, watching some guys erect a temporary stage for some show or other. A foreman saw him and yelled, "Hey, dude! You wanna work?"
He'd picked up a hammer.
That weekend, he met Ergman Bratsman. Bratsman couldn't keep help, not with his disposition, and so he'd hire anybody. That's how Wilmer became a roadie, working for that minimum wage. And when Bratsman himself had gone into the slammer, he'd followed, living close to the prison, finding work where he could, scraping by, always twenty dollars ahead of homelessness. He'd been loyal.
But now—
"I gotta get out," he told himself.
Bratsman, in the next room, grumbled to himself, a habit he'd picked up early in life and had never broken.
"I'll show her. Wait until I get finished. Can't get any damn help, that's the trouble. Made a deal, though. Get my boys back, be on top again. Maybe go to Canada. Make some money. That girl. She's gonna be sorry. Just wait. But then Mammonus. Worry about that later. Get out of the contract. I've broken contracts before, hah! All my equipment gone. Damn it, Rotwang died on me. I could run the cloning equipment, but I couldn't fix it or even understand it. Crazy Kraut scientist. Going to rewire his DNA, live forever, and trying to do it killed the idiot. Never get that damn equipment back. No more back-up clones. These five guys, my last chance. Get another five, six years out of 'em, then to hell with them. Contract. Why'd I sign that damn contract? Gotta get out. I gotta get out."
"Can you get out?" Love God asked.
"Of the contract?" Mammonus asked, rubbing his forehead. "You're not joking, are you?"
"No, I'm being serious." They were back on the grassy hill, reclining on lawn chairs under the moon. The lights of Gravity Falls showed far and bright, like a messy constellation. The amphitheater near the town—at least from this perspective—had only sodium-yellow security lights showing, the seats empty, the stage bare, the spotlights dark. "Come on," Love God said. "Your bunch knows all there is to know about loopholes."
"We've also got the worst lawyers," growled Mammonus. "By which I mean the most skilled with the least scruples."
"Could I take a look?"
"Be my guest." Mammonus handed over the parchment.
"Thank you. Let there be a little light, please." The parchment glowed. "This is really fine print," said Love God.
"You should see the sub-paragraphs, only you can't without a microscope or a small miracle."
For a few minutes, the cherub studied the document. "Looks pretty tight," he said.
"Adamant-clad," said Mammonus. "He's guaranteed to gain control of Sev'ral Timez, and he's guaranteed to do it by coercing Mabel Pines. And there must be a sacrifice."
"I see death is required," said Love God. "Really, I'm surprised at you. Invalidating free will? That's about the most serious violation there is."
"What are they going to do? Send me to hell?" Mammonus snarled. Then he sighed. "You're right, Eros. I screwed up. Not in practice any longer, that's the problem."
"You called me 'Eros,'" Love God said.
"Mm? Sorry, not focused. Cupid, I meant."
"No, it's all right. It's one of my names. Like one of yours is Plutus."
"I hated that. Don't like Mammonus much. Thinking of changing it. What do you think of 'Avarus?'"
"Doesn't do anything for me."
"Not my best idea. Do you ever get tired of all this?"
For long seconds, the only answer came from crickets, which curiously to Mammonus's ears seemed to be chirping "every day," and from the woods downslope drifted the forlorn lament of an old owl howling around.
Then at last Love God said, "I see your point. I hardly ever do my job nowadays. The Internet does most of it. So—I took up a hobby."
"The music."
"Yes. The music."
Querulously, Mammonus asked, "Why do you even do it? There's no money in it for you."
Love God glanced at his old frenemy, just visible in moonlight. "Money is not the point."
"Ouch. That really hurts," Mammonus drawled.
"Being up on that stage, giving your all—making those people happy for a while. I don't know. Hard to explain, but I know what I like, and it gives me a rush."
"Maybe I'll take up embroidery," said Mammonus, accepting the contract back from Love God. "No loopholes?"
"I didn't find any. But I'm not a lawyer."
"I knew there was some reason to have a sneaking respect for you."
"Yeah, buddy, I love you, too," said Love God. He exhaled, puffing out his chubby cheeks. "I guess there's nothing else for it. We're trapped like a fool in a cage."
"Just let the whole scenario play out, you mean?" Mammonus cursed softly but creatively. "This is sick. Say we do, say Bratsman gets his wish and Mabel's sacrificed so he can get his boy band back. What happens then?"
"I can't foresee the future. I'm not Madame Ruth."
"Come again?"
"She's a gypsy. Gold-capped tooth. I taught her to make love potions once."
Mammonus didn't respond right away. Then, slowly, he said, "The contract could be honored to the letter . . . there's not a clause about . . . but that would devastate . . . still . . .."
"Any time you want to start making sense," Love God said.
"Trying to figure this out," Mammonus murmured. "Maybe. But time is—"
"It's short," Love God said. "And it keeps on slipping."
"You're right there. Every time I step out of Eternity and into Time, I'm amazed by that," said Mammonus. "It's funny how time slips away."
Love God chuckled. "There. See? You've got music in you."
"What?"
"Let the music heal your soul," said Love God.
"Who's not making sense here?" demanded Mammonus.
"Never mind. Never . . . mind. You know something, Mam? If you don't try to think this out—if we just somehow feel it out—"
"Let the heart rule the head?"
"Not just the heart. Heart and soul," said the cherub. He started to hum a maddeningly simple, incredibly catchy tune.
"Stop that," grumbled Mammonus. "All right. Tell me what your heart tells you, you're so smart."
"Heart smart," said Cupid. He sort of half-sang, "Play that song. . .."
"Why don't you do something to help me?" asked Mammonus.
"You can't get out of it on your own, that's for sure," agreed Cupid. "I have to say, this is a nice mess you've got us into."
"Mea freaking culpa," snapped Mammonus. "Come on, tell me what's on your mind. I can see you've got some kind of idea."
"Play by the absolute rules," Cupid said. "But under the rules, let every party to the agreement have a say. I think—I can't see the future, mind, but I think there's a chance, if I know my mortals. And I think because there's a bare chance, there just might be a loophole at that. But I'll have to check with my people."
"Oh, fine. Only leave my name out of it," said Mammonus. "If this goes right, I'm going to catch hell for it."
"Not necessarily. But it's not much of a chance. But it is a chance."
"I give up," said Mammonus, rising and vanishing his lawn chair. "I'll check with you later. Right now, I've got to get out of this place."
He snapped his fingers and went.