by Jada M Davis
“Listen, Ree,” Wesley said. “I’ll split with you. We’ll go along just as we planned and I’ll forget about your record and about tonight.” He coughed a little. “I can get a doc in to patch me up and I can stay in my room a week or so until I look okay again.”
Willa Ree turned right, away from town, away from lights.
“What say, Ree? I did wrong. I know it! We’ll split and go on just as we’d planned, see. What say, Ree?”
“O.K. Where’s the dough?”
“Pull up.”
“Wait a minute. Too crowded here.”
He passed the city limit sign, stepped on the gas, and passed the last service station. He passed the cemetery, found a gravel road, pulled down it and stopped the car. Wesley leaned forward and fumbled beneath the dash.
Ree saw the racked gun concealed there.
“Can you turn on the dome light?” Wesley asked.
“Not a chance. The dash light’ll have to do. And I see that gun.”
“I know you see the gun!”
“Well, just don’t try to pull anything.” He snatched the gun.
Wesley fumbled with a paper-wrapped package, hands trembling, head bobbing forward in eagerness.
“It’s all here, Ree! Just like you put it in the water box! You take half and we’ll go ahead like we planned! You’ll need help and there’s no one else you can trust! Why, you don’t even know anybody else that’d work with you and I can do you a lot of good! I know the town, see, and I know where the money is! We can clean up....” His voice faded.
Ree took a cigarette and pushed in the dash lighter. “Smoke a fag, Wesley. Slow down and take a cigarette. It’ll settle your nerves.”
“Thanks.”
Wesley sucked in smoke. He let the package fall in his lap.
“You’re going to take it all, Ree.” Wesley knew; it was a statement.
Willa Ree inhaled.
“You plan to bump me.”
“I can’t trust you, Wesley.”
Wesley’s voice was tired. “Who can you trust?”
Willa Ree stared at the cigarette, turning it and twisting it, watching smoke rise and fade into the darkness.
“You’d burn for it, Ree. There’s the girl. She’ll talk.”
“She won’t talk!”
“She’ll talk.”
“I said she won’t!”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Maybe she won’t be around.”
Wesley coughed, cleared his throat. “She’ll be around, Ree. I think you’ve got her in your blood.”
“She won’t talk.”
Wesley sucked at his cigarette. “I know you’re going to kill me and I just sit here. I could try for the gun. I could open the door and start running. I could fight you.”
“I’d get you.”
“I know it.”
“You shouldn’t have crossed me, Wesley. You should have left that money where you found it.”
“I know it.”
“You should have known what would happen. I killed one man....”
“I know. And I just sit here. Know something, Ree? Know what scares me more than death?”
“What?”
“Being left out in a pasture where they won’t find me. Or under a bridge. Where they won’t find me.”
“Want another cigarette?”
“Thanks.”
Ree drove down the narrow road. The headlights sent a wide swath of white light over the fence posts and skitteringly across clumps of sage and grass and sand.
Ahead was the railroad.
Beside the tracks, on the right, in the pasture, was an abandoned well. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there.
It was a covered well. The railroad people had built a conical roof over it and enclosed the sides, from bottom of roof to the ground, with net wire so that bums and drunks and kids and dogs wouldn’t fall in.
He stopped at the side of the road and listened to the motor sigh to a stop. He cut the lights.
“Don’t do it, Ree,” Wesley screamed. “Don’t do it!”
“Shut up.”
“You’ll regret it all your life!”
“Maybe I will, but shut up!”
“Ree, please—”
“I’m going to do it and shut up!”
Wesley began to cry. Softly, helplessly, his chest and shoulders heaving.
“Get out.”
“Don’t do it, Ree. Take all the money.” Wesley’s tone was pleading, whispery and violent and pleading. “I’ll leave the country and do anything you want! But, don’t oh please for goodness’ sake don’t do it Ree I beg you don’t do it!”
“Get out.”
“Don’t you have any feeling for crying out loud Ree don’t you have any feeling aren’t you too smart to kill a man in cold blood and don’t you know you can’t get away with it you’ll burn, so help me I’ll rot in hell, Ree, but you’ll burn Ree don’t you know you’ll burn don’t you know they’ll catch up with you—”
“Get out.”
Wesley’s scream was spluttery, and his saliva hit Ree in the face.
“Dammit, get out!”
“No... ooo... ooo!” Wesley shrilled, his voice burbling as the high pitched scream trailed off.
Ree pulled the gun with his left hand and half turned. He caught Wesley’s shoulder with his right hand.
“Come on and get out, Wesley, and we’ll talk it over.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m just going to get out and let you kill me in cold blood without even making a try to save myself you crazy fool you—crazy—crazy—crazy fool bastard to think I’ll just step out as nice as you please and let you knock me off without even making a fight for it....” He never knew what hit him.
The gun barrel made a sodden thump as it landed.
Wesley slumped and the package fell to the floor of the car and Ree picked it up. He tore off a corner of the wrapping. Stooping, he struck a match. He held the package below the dash level and examined the bills. O.K.
He buttoned the package under his shirt, opened the car door, got out and walked around to open the door on Wesley’s side.
He first tried to get his right arm under Wesley’s knees, his left under the back. No soap. The man was limp as a dish rag, heavy as lead, stubbornly and passively resistant. He slid and sagged. Minutes passed.
Sweat ran down Willa Ree’s face, into his eyes, into his mouth so that he tasted it. The droplets trickled down his back, ticklingly. A breeze came and the sweat was cold.
He grabbed Wesley by the arm and pulled. He grunted when the inert body slid out of the car head first. Wesley was heavy. He grunted from the strain, felt his knees buckle under the weight. There was a fence and barbs stuck and cut and tore. He cursed, half sobbed, staggered back and gathered his strength to lift Wesley higher.
Half tossed, half dropped, the man went over the fence.
The body thwacked to the ground and lay still.
He stumbled back to the car and fumbled with keys, found the right one, unlocked the trunk. He risked a match. There were pliers and he slipped them into his pocket. Leaving the trunk lid open he felt his way back to the fence and climbed through. He stumbled over Wesley, toe digging deep into taut flesh, and fell to his knees. Curious, breath suckingly serious, suddenly, he felt with his hands until he found Wesley’s arm. His fingers slid down the arm to the wrist. Pulse weak.
Once more he slid an arm under the unconscious man’s knees, the other under the back. Stumbling, staggering, he moved across the pasture. Weeds tangled around his legs. Thorny mesquite branches stabbed and ripped.
Ree thought, Should have gone down the railroad tracks....
A second fence stopped him and Wesley got the barbs. Again he lifted, heaved, tossed, dropped, and heard the body thump to the ground.
There, across the fence, on the railroad right-of-way, was the well, its conical roof silhouetted against a distant oil flare. He stood staring at it, waiting for muscles to st
op trembling. In the distance were dim lights of town.
What to do with the car?
Too early to worry about that now. First things first—and maybe last.
He climbed through the fence, staggering across a shallow ditch and walked on shale up the incline leading to the rails.
The well was as he remembered it. He’d seen it but once, and then it was just a well. He’d been with Wesley that day, routine day patrol, and Wesley had pointed it out.
Net wire made a wall at ground level, leading up to the roof’s bottom edge. Three feet from ground to roof, plenty of room.
He used the pliers to pull staples from a post, careful not to lose the staples. It was slow work, and once the pliers slipped and he raked his knuckles across the wire.
Removing staples from one post wasn’t enough, not enough slack to pull the wire down out of the way, or up. Something held the wire at the bottom. Probably a beam, sunk into the earth.
Ree fumbled in panic, trembling panic, and he forced himself to pause.
Minutes ticked away as he worked at the top of the wire. The staples were hard to grasp, and the pliers slipped loose time after time.
A match, the light from just one match—too risky.
At last there was slack in the wire. In the middle it sagged. Not all the way, but enough.
His hands burned. They were sticky with blood, and sweat stung open wounds. His head throbbed and his mouth was fuzzy dry. He longed for a smoke.
Gravel clattered as he hurried down the embankment, but he didn’t care. Who could hear? It was almost finished, almost done, and the bundle of money was inside his shirt.
Barbed wire hit his chest, the barbs digging in. He backed away, stooping to feel along the ground.
There—no. Gone—?
He turned to look at the bulk of the well roof, and then he fought the sudden panic that knotted his insides.
This is the place—the very place—right here—on this spot, he thought. But Wesley was gone.
So the guy had been playing possum all the time. He wasn’t even out. Smart. Playing possum and getting carried around like a babe in arms. Smart.
Panicky hands dived into his pockets, and then he smiled at his panic. The keys were there, safe and snug. Well, the smart aleck can’t ride. And he can’t go far.
Ree tried to think. It was hard to do, because he was scared. Think now—Wesley’s hurt, bad hurt, weak and dizzy and scared. What would he do? He knows you can’t make a light, and he knows you’ve got the car keys. So what would he do? Drag himself off and lie low. That’s it.
Loose gravel clattered and Ree strained to hear footsteps.
So it’s O.K. Just take a little longer, that’s all. His foot touched something on the ground. He recoiled and backed away and stood still, mentally blacked out, tired, exhausted.
If I could just take my brain out and rub it, he thought.
His foot went out and touched something—a rock. Moving slowly, on tiptoe, he advanced. Across the shallow ditch, up the incline, he walked. Once he stopped to listen but the sound of clattering gravel was not repeated.
Could have been a rabbit, he thought. Or a coyote. A dog, maybe. Or Wesley.
When it came, out of the dark, he didn’t know what had happened. Not at first. One second he was walking along—and then the world caved in. He was on his back, looking at stars. The right side of his face felt numb, crushed, broken.
Must have been a rock.
The fool had thrown a rock.
It seemed he was down for minutes, staring at stars and fighting the creeping darkness that wanted to pull down the curtain behind his eyes. And all the time he knew that Wesley might be moving in, with another rock, maybe. Somehow, somehow it didn’t seem important.
Got to move, he thought. The fool’s dangerous.
His right arm seemed numb. He thought of the gun and tried to get it, but the right arm seemed numb. Odd. He was lying on it, and stifled a desire to laugh.
Rolling over, off the arm, he got the gun. It came to him then that it would be safer to lie still than to get up. Wesley was on the ground, flat on the ground, and could see him against the sky line if he stood up.
Wesley played possum, so two would be playing the game.
It seemed unreal. Flat on his back, a gun in his hand, everything still and quiet—unreal. Again he had the silly desire to laugh. It bubbled in his chest and moved on up to his throat, but he choked it down.
Wesley wouldn’t be feeling like laughing.
You could make book on that.
He heard nothing except the sound of his own breathing and the soft sound of the night wind. Stars were pale in the sky, far off and flickering pale, and even the moon was a fragment of moon, dim and almost transparent.
What am I waiting for?
I’ve got a gun.
The gun hung heavy in his hand, heavy, heavy, when he rocked to his knees. He surged to his feet and ran in a crouch to the right. He stopped, still in a crouch, and listened. His eyes burned as he scoured the darkness.
There was a swishing noise past his nose. Wesley had thrown and missed. But it would have been too bad if that rock had been an inch to the right—too bad.
He stepped back and stooped lower.
Even as Wesley’s shoulder hit his knees, and even as he pitched backward through air, he was glad. The waiting was over, the strain gone, and now it would end.
And Wesley was fighting for his life instead of dying like a mouse in a trap. Now it would end.
His head banged against the gravel and pain thundered and flashed, but he twisted as he fell and kicked out with both legs.
Something squished against his nose.
Wesley’s fist. With a rock in it, maybe.
Blood flowed and tasted warm and salty in his mouth. He couldn’t see, but he continued to squirm and kick. One of his kicks landed and Wesley cried out.
The guy can’t take it. Only he’s taken a lot. He’s weak.
Wesley’s hands were on him, clawing and gouging, but he kicked out again with both feet and both feet landed. The weight of Wesley was gone.
Ree was on his knees, on his feet, and the gun was pointed at the twisting dark blur on the ground, the threshing twisting half seen dark blur on the ground.
He squeezed, one, two, three, four, five times. He missed five times. And Wesley was gone.
Ree was half deafened by the gun’s blasts. His ears rang, but still he heard the clattering of Wesley’s feet across the gravel along the tracks.
And a train was coming. Its light was an eye, a dim eye that grew brighter and brighter.
And, oddly, there was another light now, a small dim eye of light, directly across the tracks. There was a house over there.
Someone had heard the shots.
Wesley was far down the tracks, a small dark figure impaled in the glare of the train engine’s one-eyed light.
The bastard.
Ree stood, safe in darkness, as the train clattered by. He heard a yell, a thin and high pitched and almost unheard yell.
Wesley had swung aboard that freight!
But he’d be back. Wesley would be back, bringing trouble.
He went to the car and got in, relaxed against the cushions and conscious of the pain in his head, his bruised arms and legs and hands.
A cigarette and a drink would taste good, he thought, damned good. There had to be a bottle in the glove compartment—and who keeps gloves in glove compartments and trunks in trunk compartments—and he willed a bottle to be in the glove compartment and there was. He swallowed some of the stuff and laughed because it burned his throat. He held the lighter in the plug and stuck its glowing end to a cigarette.
Screaming nerves became still.
This, he thought, is more like it. But gotta stay cool, stay cool all the time and think. The thing to do is think and use the old brains. Because that’s what they’re for, to use. Think all the time, all the way, and leave nothing to chance.
; Wesley’ll be back, so you’ve gotta think fast.
Are you staying or are you leaving?
He wondered what he should do with the car.
If he knew where Wesley lived he could take the car there. No.
Leave it where it was? Take it to town and park it? No. Blood on the cushions. Undoubtedly, blood on the cushions. With Wesley gone, someone would ask questions. So burn the damned thing.
He had another drink and chased it with smoke. This time the whisky burned his lip, and he felt with his tongue. Split lip. Bet my face is a mess.
He replaced the bottle in the glove compartment. His hand touched paper. It felt like an envelope. He picked it up and stuck it in his hip pocket.
Everything, for some reason, had gone wrong.
Plans whirled in Ree’s head, faster and faster. Too fast they came and went, neatly, but too fast. Fear came. He fought it.
He decided it would be silly to burn the car. He’d leave it.
There’d be questions, but he’d leave it.
With a cloth he found in the car pocket he wiped the steering wheel, the door handles, and the car keys and dash. He even wiped the gear shift and cigarette lighter knob. That ought to do it.
He left the car and crossed the fence, stumbled across the pasture, and decided it was impossible to make it in the darkness.
Too many fences, too much sand, too many mesquites and sage clumps and hillocks.
He angled back toward the road, stumbling. There was sand in his shoes. Thorny bushes clutched at his clothing, stabbed at his legs.
Oh, for a cup of coffee! he thought. A cigarette would help, but he had no match.
At the road, exhausted, he sat down to dump the sand from his shoes.
Tired, tired, brain tired and body tired and aching.
His fingers were slow to lace the shoes, and he forced himself to concentrate on the task. Finished, he got up and began to limp toward town.
That damned girl!
Three miles can be a hundred miles, or three steps, or three times the distance to nowhere. Some spooners were parked beside the road, and he had to climb the fence and circle around. Again his shoes filled with sand, and again he had to stop and empty them.
Blisters on his heels, one broken.
