Small Change

The next morning, Tom was up before the sun.

He didn't sleep anymore. He couldn't. There was just too much in the night. The dark was too thick and held too much of the unknown. So at 4:30 in the morning he was up in the kitchenette of the ratty motel he was staying in, brewing coffee on a hotplate.

When the coffee started bubbling up like tar, he snatched it off the eye and poured it into a mug without a handle and gulped it down like it was the last cup of coffee he'd ever drink.

Some days, he hoped it was his last.

He had considered suicide. He had almost tried it one night, when he hadn't slept in a week and his eyes had been burning and every time he tried to close them he saw Jim, laying there in the street.

But committing suicide wasn't gonna work for him. He was too much of a coward. He couldn't do it, just couldn't put that blade to his wrist or the barrel of his .38 into his mouth or the rope around his neck.

He couldn't do it.

Sometimes he thought that he should just turn himself in, give it up. Maybe he'd get lucky and they'd give him the electric chair, put him out of his misery.

But there was also a chance that they'd just put him in jail 'til he rotted away, and he'd be left to think about what he did for the rest of his life. He didn't like the idea of jail. It gave him the feeling that he'd gotten when his mother had put him in time out; this strange sense that he'd gotten less than he deserved but more than he could handle, sitting there and just thinking about what he'd done.

He didn't want to go to jail.

Sighing, he downed the rest of his coffee and pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his pants pocket and lit it up, puffing away.

Coffee and a cigarette. Breakfast of champions.

The smoke swirled through his nostrils and he rolled the cigarette around from one side of his mouth to the other.

Cigarettes were really the only thing that calmed him down. But that was nothing new.

He wondered if you could get cigarettes in jail. He thought so. At least, all the men in jail in the movies got cigarettes.

But he didn't want to go to jail.

And he didn't want to go to work, either.

Tom had gotten a job in a shady market, helping sell odds and ends to tourists. He had the upper hand because he spoke English. It was nice to work, really. It got his mind off of things for a few hours every day.

He took another drag off his cigarette and flicked on the radio, listening to Little Richard on the one radio station that he could pick up.

Good golly, Miss Molly, sure like to ball! When you’re rocking and rolling can hear your mama call!

With a sigh, he flicked off the radio and ground his cigarette butt into the linoleum floor. He didn't want to listen to Little Richard this early in the morning.

What sane person did?

He lit up another cigarette and puffed away, looking out the window and watching the sunrise. After a while, he thought it was okay to go to work.

Grabbing his coat, he snatched his keys off the counter and looked into the mirror, combing down his dark wiry hair as much as he could. He turned this way and that, looking at himself. His dark eyes were bloodshot and his skin looked pale, not only from a lack of sleep and good food but from comparing himself to all of his neighbors. His jaw jutted out from under his skin and he looked haggard. Haunted.

Like he'd seen a ghost.

Clenching his jaw, he picked up the mirror and set it on the floor and stalked out of the door, walking down the sidewalk to his ratty job.

"Blankets, Tequila, stamps and postcards! Only a dollar!" he called out, waving to a group of Hawaiian shirt clad tourists clutching pamphlets and looking wide eyed at the perfect little Mexican village around them. They ran up, running their hands all over the Mexican straw dolls and beads and little clutches made by single mothers in back rooms of hotels.

Tom hated it here.

He suffered through the rest of the day, taking dollars and turning them into pesos and taking pesos and turning them into dollars and sweating in the sun.

He really hated it here.

He thought about a friend of his from back home. A man by the name of Steve. Steve was nice. Quiet. Came out to the track and always talked to Tom when the bets were good.

He had told him once, --jokingly, Tom thought-- that if he ever got in trouble, he should go to New Orleans.

Tom had thought good and long and hard about that.

New Orleans would be a lot nicer than here. New Orleans would be different. And it was far enough away from Cali that maybe he wouldn't get caught.

As he made change for another fat tourist, he decided that tomorrow, he would leave for New Orleans.

Setting his jaw and watching another group of cruise passengers roll up, he put on a brittle smile and started hawking goods once more.

"Step right up! We got all kinds of trinkets right here, folks!"

Buy 'em from a murderer! You, sir, over there, with the pretty teenage daughter and the chubby wife! Come, use your hard earned money to buy a straw doll that'll fall apart as soon as you walk out of here! Yes, rest assured that your money will go to a good cause. Putting food in a murderer's belly and gas in his tank! It's going to a worthy cause! But don't worry too much, it was only an accident! A drunken fight! Yes, old veteran, pat me on the back and wink and ask if a Yankee like me is enjoying his stay in Mexico. It's wonderful, really, Tom thought bitterly.

Yeah, he needed to get out of here.

And New Orleans was probably the best place he could be.