Wade Garret is calm. Cool. Collected. Most importantly, clothed. After the events of the past two days he’s ready to blow this popsicle stand (whether or not Brad Wesley brought the Good Humor Man to Jasper is unknown) and head on down the road. He wants his amigo, his mijo, to come with him. “You don’t need this,” he says, referring to Brad Wesley, to Jasper, to blown-up auto parts stores and run-over auto dealerships and aggressive stripteases.
“Don’t tell me what I need!” Dalton growls as he hits the heavy bag like a man possessed. “If you wanna go, go, get the fuck out of here and leave me alone!”
There’s a juvenile growl that creeps into his voice in that last phrase. The sound of a child desperately telling a bully to cut it out, a teenager yelling at his mom to get out of his room, Karen from GoodFellas reverting to girlhood and shouting “You don’t know how I feel!” at her mother when she complains about Henry Hill’s late-night gallivanting. Dalton, too, reverts to childhood around his mentor.
If Wade were thinking more clearly he’d know that this would happen, he’d know that telling Dalton what to do when he’s like this all but guarantees the opposite outcome. But I think it’s less naïveté that animates Wade’s words and more a grim premonition of the future should he and Dalton stick around. Horny Marines and drunken yokels they can handle. Brad Wesley and his goon army have proven themselves to be a whole new order of trouble. Faced with overwhelming firepower, the Way of Wade Garrett is to walk away, before it’s too late.
Alas.
Tags: dalton, road house, wade garrett