The Motel Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

wood stove burning in the center of the room, and there were deer heads on the wall, and a stuffed rattlesnake curled with its head raised and its fangs out resting on top of the cigarette machine.
    I sat at the counter and kept looking out the window expecting to see Jerry Lee, but each time I looked back there was nothing, just the falling snow and the street lights in the distance.
    The waitress poured me coffee and gave me a menu. She was smiling and talking to the other people at the counter. She wore anold metal brace on her right leg, which made her limp. I could see the cook: he was an older man, overweight, smoking cigarettes in the back. After she gave me coffee I looked in my wallet and saw I had only sixty-seven dollars left.
    I asked her if they had a bus that went through. She coughed and said there was a bus, Greyhound, but that it wouldn’t be coming through town until tomorrow afternoon.
    ‘That is if it can make it,’ she said. ‘This snow doesn’t look like it’ll let up. Maybe, but maybe not. You never can tell. I don’t trust forecasts anymore. They plow, but you’ll just have to see.’
    ‘Where do I pick it up?’
    ‘Right here when it comes. We open at seven. The bus, if it shows, will be here anywhere from two on.’
    ‘You know how much it is?’
    ‘It’s twenty-two dollars fifty to Boise, anywhere else I don’t know. You can call them from the payphone in the back. It’s next to the bathroom.’
    I got up and went to the phone and looked up the number for Greyhound and called them. The fare to Reno was sixty-one dollars seventy-five. That only left me with around seven dollars.
    I ordered toast and milk to help my stomach, and listened to the radio they had playing until the restaurant closed two hours later.
    When I left I began walking around the small town, but there wasn’t much to see and my feet began to freeze, so I picked up my things and looked for somewhere to sleep.
    I found a small grocery store that was closed down. There was a For Sale sign in the window. It had once been a filling stationand had a huge overhang, and I stopped underneath that, got in my sleeping bag, and waited for morning.
    The snow stopped during the night. I got up once to take a leak and I checked the road and it didn’t look too bad. I went back to sleep and when I woke the next time, there were no clouds and the sun was coming up. I got out of my sleeping bag, got dressed, and began walking around to warm up.
    The same lady who closed the restaurant drove up in an old white Ford pick-up. She opened the restaurant, and let me in.
    ‘You been walking around all night?’
    ‘Kind of. I had a sleeping bag.’
    ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t freeze,’ she said. ‘You know how to start a fire?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said.
    ‘Well, you get the wood stove burning, bring in some wood from the back, and I’ll cook you breakfast.’
    I thanked her and followed her in.
    I got the fire going okay and when I stacked enough wood she cooked me a ham and cheese omelet, hash browns, and toast. The food tasted better than any I could remember. The morning customers began arriving, and I sat at the end of the counter and ate by myself. When I was done I drank hot chocolate and waited. Every time the waitress would pass by I thanked her and pretty soon she made a joke of it that I did. I got her address and told myself I’d pay her back when I had the dough. Maybe I’d get her some sort of gift or at least send her a postcard.
    Once in a while I’d look out the window for the Dodge and Jerry Lee, but each time I saw a car go by, or a customer arrive, my heart fell as it was never him.
    My mind started to drift and I began thinking about Annie James, which I hated, but they just kind of fell on me, my memories of her did. She was the only girlfriend I’d ever had, and the only girl besides a prostitute I’d been with. For a while she and her mom lived three doors down from me and Jerry Lee at the Sutro Motel