Presidio

by Randy Kennedy

  Except for the station wagon in Tahoka, where he’d had no choice, he had never stolen a car from a family. But he needed this one and he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about it. The only thing that nagged him was the make of the car, a Biscayne, a standard-issue police vehicle. The shape of the body alone—formed around a line starting at the trunk and mounting steadily until it crested the fender, giving the car a feral aspect, the look of something springing at you—put an itch in him to look around. But the motel was three-quarters empty and he knew it was the best he would get.

  He walked to the café and ordered three hamburgers, three bags of French fries, and three bottles of Coca-Cola from the counter and took them back to the room. The television was on inside and when he knocked Harlan turned down the volume and peered through a half-inch gap in the curtain before letting him in. He was watching some sort of nature program and Troy stood with the burgers in his hand, watching for a minute himself, trying to figure out what was happening on the tiny, grainy black-and-white screen, which seemed to show large, dark lumps of something scattered up and down an expanse of beach at sundown. It took him a while to figure out that the lumps were turtles, emerging from the sea to lay their eggs, using their awkward flippers in a mostly futile attempt to cover their eggs before vultures descended to eat them, as the announcer on the television explained.

  Harlan leaned forward and raised the volume and kept watching. Troy knocked on the adjoining door and when the girl parted it narrowly, he held out the bag of fries and the burger wrapped in wax paper. She took the Coca-Cola from his hand.

  “I don’t like hamburgers,” she said.

  He could barely make out her face in the curtained darkness of the room. He bent over and put the bag down at the threshold of the door and settled the wrapped burger on top of it.

  “Eat it or not,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me. But I’d get some sleep if I were you. We’re leaving here in the night, as soon as everything’s quiet.” Troy took the tip of his boot and scooted the bag past the doorframe into her room and closed the door.

  He went into the bathroom and took a shower. The water from the pipes smelled ancient, as if the taps hadn’t been turned on in years. He made the water as hot as he could stand and let it run over his head until it covered his ears in a waterfall roar, drowning out thought. When he came out he got completely dressed and filled two motel glasses with Coke and gave Harlan one and they ate their hamburgers and fries together on their respective beds. They sat unspeaking for a while and then Harlan got up and turned the television back on, to some kind of detective movie already in progress. From the way everyone in the scene was dressed, it seemed like a relatively recent show, though it was hard to tell because the picture was so bad. On the screen a man could be seen in a room, gagged and tied to a chair. Three tough-looking, paunchy men in Western-cut suits and cowboy hats stood around him. The one who seemed to be the chief cowboy addressed the man tied to the chair: “Now look, son, I don’t know you from a hole in the ground. I don’t know what you did do or didn’t do. Hell, in my book, this ain’t even about you. But I work for some serious people and when they ask me to do a job, there’s usually a good reason or they wouldn’t come to me to make sure it got done.”

  The man paused and sighed almost sympathetically on the screen. “I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is: This just ain’t your lucky day, hoss.” Then he turned casually to one of the other men in the room: “Benny, go over and make sure the door’s locked.”

  Troy got up and turned the channel knob. Harlan protested bitterly.

  “Hell, you didn’t give us a chance to figure out what it was about. Turn it back.”

  Troy ignored him. “I can’t watch something like that right now, Harlan. I need cartoons or something.” He kept turning the knob until he landed on a local news show with a white-haired weatherman standing in front of an oversize map of Texas covered with plastic numbers and plastic representations of suns and clouds. The weatherman talked for a long time about an unseasonable cold front moving into the Big Bend, and then the picture cut to an attractive young newswoman inside what seemed to be a supermarket. The woman was talking about Thanksgiving to a group of children standing around a card table, upon which sat an aluminum roasting pan and a trussed turkey the size of a suitcase.

  Troy took off his suit jacket and boots and put them on the floor close to the side of the bed, but before stretching out on top of the covers he went to the bathroom and filled his glass a half dozen times from the tap and drank as much water as he could hold—a trick known as the Indian alarm clock, to keep him from oversleeping in his exhaustion.

  Harlan took off his pants and shirt and in the light coming from the bathroom Troy looked at his brother’s body for the first time in years, his white legs so hairless they looked depilated, solid but somehow not big enough to keep his white briefs from hanging loose around the leg holes like curtains. His shoulders were still broad but his chest was soft, like Bill Ray’s had begun to look after he did less work with his hands. The tan on Harlan’s neck and forearms was the only color on his pale body. Troy watched as he placed his hat on the little nightstand and pulled the covers all the way down to inspect the sheets before getting in, settling himself on his back, drawing up the blanket, folding his hands across his chest, and falling to sleep before he had taken a dozen breaths.

  *

  After Troy pushed the food into her room, Martha waited until the door was closed and picked up the two oil-soaked bundles of paper and carried them to the tile counter next to the sink outside the bathroom. She had smelled the dull, meaty, mustardy smell rising from the food and had come close to throwing it into the trash can below. But her stomach had grabbed at her painfully and she tore the burger wrapper away and ripped the bun and meat into pieces with her hands and ate it and stuffed the fries into her mouth and leaned down to drink straight from the faucet.

  She didn’t want to sit on the bed for fear of falling asleep, so she sat in the one chair the room provided, hard, with a green Naugahyde cover, and drank her Coke. Trying to keep her breathing shallow, she listened to the two men talking and then to the sound of the television, and finally, after what seemed like two hours, the television stopped and she could no longer hear anything, even when she pressed her ear to the wall.

  She waited to make sure of the silence and bent down and slipped off her shoes and walked in her socks to the bathroom and got a towel and folded it longways and pushed it carefully up against the crack beneath the adjoining door. She put the hunting coat around her and rolled the long sleeves off her hands and went to the front door. By the light coming from the bathroom, she slipped the chain off the door, moving as slowly as her hands would let her. She turned the doorknob to see if it made any noise and when she was sure it didn’t she turned it further, pressing her shoulder against the door to keep it from clicking when the catch came out. When she finally pulled the door, keeping the knob tightly turned, she was amazed at how silently it opened to let the night air wash across her face and flood into the room. It was much colder out than she had expected and she caught her breath and quickly stepped to the other side and allowed the knob to turn back and pushed the door closed without shutting it all the way. She hadn’t thought to inspect the porchway first to see if anyone was there, watching a young girl sneak from a motel room in the dead of night. But when she looked right and left and into the parking lot, she saw no one, heard no sounds, not even distant traffic—maybe people here went to bed as early as people did in Chihuahua, not because they needed to be up before dawn to farm but because they had no reason to stay awake any longer than necessary.

  The vacancy sign in the distance glowed pale blue but no other light shone from the office windows. Martha guessed which way to go and turned right and found the small breezeway between the motel’s two sides, the site of an ice machine, a cigarette machine, a candy machine, a Coke machine, a change machine, and, next to a plastic-windowed laundry
room door, a pay phone fixed to the wall. She looked around again and listened hard and lifted the receiver off the cradle. For several seconds there was only silence and she felt a plunge in her stomach but then she heard a click and the dial tone droned loudly into her ear and she reached up and dialed zero and gave the operator her name and a Juárez, Mexico, number that she had never called before but had not forgotten. It took a while for the international exchange and the line rang nine times before a woman’s voice answered sleepily in English and fell silent and then accepted the charges.

  Shivering, Martha cupped a hand over the phone and whispered in Spanish. The woman, after a silence that went on for a long time, asked her, in Plautdietsch, where she was calling from. Martha wondered if she had heard what had happened in Tahoka. If so, she didn’t think to ask whether Martha was okay.

  “No puedo hablar,” she whispered. “Me van a escuchar.”

  She looked up and down the breezeway, feeling as if everyone in the motel could hear her now. “Puedes decirme dónde llamarlo?” She waited. “Por favor. Por favor.”

  The woman on the other end was quiet again, for so long that Martha thought the connection had been lost. But then, still speaking in German, she gave Martha another Juárez phone number. Martha closed her eyes and repeated the number slowly and the woman said yes and when the woman started to say something else Martha reached up and pushed down the metal hook switch.

  Her hands were shaking now. She dialed zero and asked for a collect call and said her name and repeated the number to the operator.

  It rang just once before it was picked up and Aron’s voice, a voice she almost didn’t recognize, a voice that sounded far older than she remembered, said: “Bueno?”

  SEVEN

  Nov. 10, 1972

  As I walked by the open motel door I saw the man—more of a boy, really—with a guitar on his lap, sitting on the bed shirtless, facing the parking lot. If I could keep from it I never talked to fellow lodgers in the motels where I stayed. But the place was dead silent and I was on my way to my room and I heard a song being played so I stopped. The guitar was beautiful, a Fender Stratocaster with a sunburst finish and chrome hardware, polished up, maybe brand new. He didn’t have it plugged in or even seem to have an amplifier anywhere.

  He was playing an old country song whose name I couldn’t bring to mind, and he either didn’t know the words or wasn’t the kind who liked to sing. He was concentrating hard as he played and when he saw me he just nodded and kept on. He was strumming with a playing card torn in two and doubled over. It was this detail and the lack of an amplifier that made me fairly sure the guitar wasn’t his, that he had probably stolen it from someone recently. I glanced behind him into the room and saw only the guitar case and some clothes scattered around. A bottle of whiskey a third full sat on the floor near his boots.

  After a minute he stopped playing and lit a cigarette and took a swig from the bottle and offered it to me and I stepped forward and took a drink.

  “That’s sure a guitar,” I said.

  “You wanna buy it?” he said. “I don’t need it. I’m no damned good at it.”

  “I couldn’t afford it.”

  “I’ll make you a deal.”

  “I don’t play.”

  “Hell, you could turn around and sell it to somebody for three times the price I’d give you. I just need a little to get me out of town. Here, listen to this.”

  He strummed again and the un-electrified strings made a soft, faraway sound, like a guitar being played in another motel, another city. He sang this time, under his breath:

  I can’t believe it’s really me

  Hurting like I do

  Just because you left me

  All alone

  I’ve seen it happen many times

  To other guys you knew

  Surely I must be somebody else you’ve known.

  I tried to figure out how old he was—maybe twenty, no more than twenty-five. He was thin and frail-looking, his naked torso pale and almost hairless. He seemed to have some kind of birth defect, a deep hollow right in the middle of the bones of his chest, sunk far in, as if someone had hit him there with a gigantic hammer.

  He finished the song and offered me another drink. He said he was from Columbus, Ohio, and this was his first time through Texas. He couldn’t believe how big it was.

  “You heard the one about the guy from the city who moved out to the frontier?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “The guy’s so damned lonely out in the country he’s about to pack it in. All of a sudden there’s a knock at the door. ‘Howdy, neighbor,’ says a fellow standing there. ‘I just come over to introduce myself, welcome you to the territory. There’s a party at my place tonight, and you’re invited. It’s gonna be a humdinger—dancin’ and drinkin’ and fightin’ and fuckin’! Come on over!’

  “The city man thinks, ‘Hell, maybe I misjudged this place!’ He says to the neighbor, ‘I’ll be there!’ Then he calls out after him: ‘Listen, how fancy’s this party gonna be? Should I wear my good suit?’

  “The neighbor turns around and says, ‘Oh, it don’t matter none. It’s just gonna be me and you.’ ”

  The boy slapped the side of the guitar and hooted. Then he stretched out on the bed with the guitar beside him as if it was a person.

  “You have any money at all?” he said, looking at me and grinning a boyish grin. “You could stay the night.”

  I looked at him. “I’ve got a little money. But I’ve got my own room.” I reached into my coat pocket and took out some bills and stepped into his room and put a fifty on the nightstand and stepped back out onto the porchway.

  “You know, you really ought to keep that guitar. It might be the prettiest thing you’ll ever own.”

  *

  Martha woke to a knock on the inside door, soft, like someone knocking with the palm of a hand. She had left the bathroom light on but had fallen asleep anyway, sitting up in the chair. She looked at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed and it said eight-fifteen but she followed the path of its frayed cord and saw that it ended with no plug, dangling above the carpet. The door to the adjoining room opened and the larger brother put his head in without looking at her, making a point of staring up at the ceiling.

  “We’re fixin’ to go,” he whispered. “Can you get yourself ready?”

  Martha stood up from the chair and slipped into the hunting jacket.

  “I’m ready.”

  The adjoining room smelled like men even though the two brothers had been in it only half a night. It was almost completely dark, except for a light near the sink, by which Martha saw Troy, in his suit and jacket, at the mirror, washing his face. He looked like he hadn’t slept, hadn’t even sat down, since she saw him last. He combed his hair and told Harlan to wait until he heard the engine. Then he opened the front door slowly and walked out into the night in his sock feet. A couple of minutes later the sound of a car rumbled low outside the window and Harlan put Troy’s suitcase under his arm and picked up his own with the same hand while grabbing Troy’s boots with the other. He told Martha to wait. He opened the door and stepped out, then motioned back and she covered the half dozen steps from the room to the open back door of the car as quickly as she could, feeling cold drops of rain on her face in the dark. Troy told her and Harlan to hold on to their doors but not to shut them. He idled slowly out of the parking lot and onto the darkened road, which seemed to lie beyond the boundary of the city’s utilities. When they came to an intersection Troy closed his door and Harlan jumped out and closed Martha’s and got in and closed his and they drove on.

  It was colder in the car than it was outside, a metallic cold, but Martha could feel the heater starting to work. The windshield wipers pushed against the rain and the water coming down the windows obscured the town, leaving only smears of streetlights and store signs as they passed through and out. Martha wrapped herself in her coat and lay down across the backseat and drew
her legs up against her and in a minute the inside of the car was so dark again she couldn’t see anything.

  There was some talk of how to go and Troy said they had no choice but to take 17, the main road, because no farm roads ran through the Davis Mountains, as low as they were, mountains only in a Texas sense. But it was safe enough this time of morning because there was essentially no habitation along the road between Toyahvale and Fort Davis.

  Harlan seemed to have some knowledge about where they were, and as Martha drifted in and out of sleep she heard him tell his brother a long, meandering story about a band of Apaches who had robbed a mail coach on its way from San Antonio to El Paso, bound from there for California, heading through a notch in these mountains with the musical name of Wild Rose Pass. The Apaches had slaughtered the driver and guard. Then they took the sacks of mail and opened them and, while marveling at the pictures in the illustrated magazines they had found, they became so spellbound they allowed themselves to be ambushed. The ones who escaped with their lives spread the word that pictures were bad luck, a bad idea, to be avoided at all costs. Troy didn’t respond to the story or even acknowledge that one had been told, and Martha thought maybe she had dreamed it, though she had never dreamed about Apaches or stagecoaches before.

  When she opened her eyes again the rain had stopped and weak daylight filtered into the car. She raised herself on her elbow and saw that they were in flat land once again, though not as flat as that of the Panhandle. Fenced yellow-brown pastureland stretched out on either side of the road as far as the eye could see and in the distance low mountains crossed the horizon, different mountains than before. Small houses and low metal barns passed and she waited to see if they were approaching a town or leaving one. When the frequency of the buildings increased she kept her eye out for a city limits.