Planet Willie Read Online Free PDF Page A

course, but I
think about that sometimes when I die my little deaths. You’ve got to make it
real in your mind, or else you won’t enjoy the benefits.
    In any case,
my little meditation does get me feeling especially good to be alive.
Refreshed, is how I feel. I have a big breakfast, getting my fill of some
earthly bacon, and head for the car park up the highway that’s got this shuttle
bus over to the terminal. Long-Term Parking, they call it, but what I’m
intending here is long-term in the extreme sense of the word, a sense of which
I unfortunately have some knowledge. Yes, I mean Eternal Parking, as much as it
hurts me to say it. I mean parking forever for the trucks you’ve loved the
most. I’m driving up the highway trying to get up the nerve, and isn’t that
always when you start noticing the little things, the ones you’ll miss? I mean
for the first time in a while, I’m paying attention to the sound of her motor,
the pull of her wheel. I’m also noticing a tendency on her part to shut off
entirely if she gets to pushing thirty, and it pains me to see her hurting this
way. She’s finished, and I know I have to do it, but by the time I’ve spiraled
up the deck to a free spot with a view, I also know I can’t do it this way.
Sentimental I’m not, but you leave your truck to die in a place like this, you
get to thinking about your own death again, and I’ve done more than enough of
that. You never want it to come – believe me – but you really don’t want it to
come this way, lined up with the others like in a nursing home. You wait every
day for something to come and set you free, but it’s never going to come. You
wouldn’t want that for anyone, much less a beloved truck.
    So I just
spiral right back down. Drive back on up the access road a half mile or so
until I find what I’m looking for, a little dirt road running back into what
must have once been farm country. Jumbo planes ease down over brown fields and
telephone wires. I turn off into a field, kill the engine, and take the
thirty-eight around to the front of her. Step a few paces back from the grill,
steady my legs, and lift the gun. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord
my soul to keep. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I pull the trigger, then pull
again, six shots as regular as heartbeats. Then it all goes quiet, and though
you want to make it a sad story, the truth is it’s so good I reload and step in
a bit closer for another round. Six like lightning, blam blam Willie the Kid.
And I want her to explode for me, but mister she just sighs. What the hell,
rest in peace. From there it’s not a long walk to New York City.

3
    The address
Shore’s given me for Fernanda’s gallery is in Soho, not far from a little roof
apartment where I once stayed a month or so with a girl who played tambourine
in an up-and-coming rock band. Great American hope on the tambourine, this
girl, and mister did she practice. I’d wake at eight in the morning with the
sun blazing down on the corrugated tin roof the owner hadn’t bothered to
insulate, and man she’d just be beating time. You’d worry about the mental
capacities of such a girl, and you’d be right. Personality like a metronome.
Eight-fifteen and I’m out on the streets. Don’t need coffee, need a briefcase
of horse tranquilizers. Ended up spending whole days in the Public Library
trying to get cool and flipping through the pages of books I never read. It
took a few more years out on the road to make a bookworm out of Mister Willie
B. Lee, the B as in I don’t have to tell you.
    I take a taxi
into the city, which must still be one of the greatest rides on the planet. The
Empire State Building comes into view, and you can’t help but get that little
lift. We work through traffic down to Soho, where a lot’s changed since I last
visited. Back in the day, Soho was where regular people still lived. Now even
the diners have bouncers and stores are selling thousand-dollar tennis shoes.