Bill got out of his truck toting a pack of gear and four canteens strapped to the outside of it. We got out of the car, holding our guns. The man in the lawn chair didn’t seemed surprised by any of it. He sipped his beer. Bill nodded at him, and the man nodded back.
When we were gathered around the chair, the man crushed the empty can, tossed it on the ground, pulled back the lid on the Styrofoam chest, clawed another beer out of the icy water, closed up the chest and said, “You got the money?”
“We got the money,” I said.
He popped the tab on the can, drank from it, held out his free hand, palm up. I took two hundred and fifty out of my wallet and put it in his palm. He folded his fingers over it and the money disappeared inside his jacket faster than a teenager can stuff a fuck-zine into a sock drawer.
“We leave when it gets dark,” he said.
“Since that might be an hour or so,” Brett said, “why don’t you quit suckin’ them suds. I don’t want a drunk flyin’ me nowhere.”
“You can stay here, lady,” he said.
“Not hardly,” Brett said. “I’m the one financin’ this little shindig.”
“I keep the money, and I drink the beer,” the man said.
Leonard kicked the ice chest over, used his leg to sweep the chair out from under the man, who hit the ground, came up rolling, reaching inside his jacket. By then I was on him. I hit him with a backhand. It wasn’t a hard strike across the jaw, but it wasn’t gentle either. He went down on one knee and said, “Shit. I think you loosed a tooth.”
“What the fuck you doin’?” Bill said to him. “They all got guns.”
“I didn’t mean nothing,” the man said. “What’s everybody so jumpy for?”
“Too much coffee,” I said.
Leonard, who was carrying the shotgun, said, “You must have had one too many beers already, fuckin’ with a bunch of folks got guns.”
“I’ve had one beer,” the man said.
“Must be one too many,” Leonard said. “And it’s rude not to offer us some. Everybody get a beer.”
We did. We popped the tops and sucked on them. I didn’t drink beer much anymore, but I enjoyed this one.
Leonard said, “And keep your hand out of your jacket, asshole, or you’ll wake up with it in your ass.”
The man smiled. “All right. All right. You’re all tough guys. And one tough broad. Where’d you get the midget?”
“There they go again,” Red said.
“We bought him off a souvenir rack,” Leonard said. “But we lost the funny hat came with him.”
“That’s enough,” Herman said.
“And you got a giant to go with him,” the man said. He laughed and brushed the seat of his pants off, uprighted his chair, found a fresh beer on the ground and opened it.
“Where’s the plane?” Brett said.
“In the hangar,” the man said. “I’m not supposed to fly it. I’m not supposed to have it. I had my license taken away. I used to fly puddle jumpers for the U.S. Mail.”
“And why did you have your license taken away?” I asked.
“I crashed one,” he said. “Killed the motherfucker with me, which was no loss. I didn’t like him anyway. I don’t think that bothered them so much, but I lost a lot of mail. Burned up. ’Course, I kept some things and they found out, and I ended up nearly going to jail big-time. They didn’t want the scandal, so I gave back the courier packet.”
“What was in it?” Brett asked.
“Money,” he said. “By the way. They call me Irvin.”
The shotgun building was long and dark and hot. When Irvin hit the lights dust motes swam around like little sponges underwater and dust rose up from our feet in billows, and as our eyes adjusted we saw our ride. It looked like something you’d wind up with a rubber band and toss.
“Them wings glued on?” Leonard asked.
“It’s better than it looks,” Irvin said.
“I sure as hell hope so,” Brett said. “When’s the last time you flew it?”
“Not so long ago that you no longer recall how to fly, I presume?” Red said.
“Month ago,” Irvin said. “But it’s gassed and ready, and safe, long as you don’t make too long a flight or get in too big a hurry.”
“Or want to get airborne,” Leonard said.
“It’ll get up there,” Irvin said. “It just heats up some you fly too long. Unfortunately, it’s the engine heats, not the cabin. Not unless it catches on fire. Which, if we push too hard it could.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Brett said.
“It’s warm now, but come nightfall, up there, you best have some long jammies on under your clothes. It’ll freeze your balls off. And in your case, lady, whatever’s hangin’.”
I turned to Bill. “This is it?”
Bill shrugged, “I didn’t say I could offer you Air Force One.”
“This is Negative One,” Brett said.
When night came it turned cold as Irvin predicted. We helped push the plane out of the hangar, then boarded. It was crowded in there, us with our guns, and Red ended up sitting on the floor.
The plane’s outside lights were dim, the inside control panel lights a sickly green. The motor sounded as if it would really rather not do this. The runway was bumpy. We left out of there with a bang and clatter and a sickening lurch.
We bobbed into the night sky and the engine coughed and sputtered and the propeller on the left wing stopped and started, eventually caught as it cast the remnants of a wasp nest away. Directly below us there was nothing but the dark land, and way to the left were lights, clean and clear and bright, like fallen stars. I assumed they were the lights of sleepy Echo.
We rose higher, but never really gained much altitude. The night grew darker, and Irvin was right, the plane was cold. It bit through our clothes and filled our socks and shoes and circled about us like a wraith.
Red said, “This is most unpleasant.”
“Can we drop you somewhere?” Leonard said.
“Quite amusing,” Red said.
“Yeah,” Leonard said, “well I’d like to hear you laugh on the way down.”
“Leave him alone,” Herman said.
“All of you shut up,” Irvin said. “Let me concentrate. Mexican Border Patrol, they spot us, they’ll take a shot at us. Had a bullet come through this ole rotten floor once, ran up my trouser leg, come out through the skin on my knee. Close call. Didn’t need any more than a Band-Aid. I got an iron plate under the seat here now, don’t want to catch one in the balls or up the ass.”
“How are the other seats fixed?” Leonard asked.
“Just cushions,” Irvin said.
“Hell,” I said to Leonard, “your balls are iron anyway, aren’t they?”
“You know, you’re right,” Leonard said.
We continued to fly low, trying to stay under radar, if there was any, trying to take a straight line to where we were going, which, according to Herman and Bill, was on the edge of the Great Plateau and the Western Lands, some of the most inhospitable terrain in all of Mexico.
We flew for some time. How long I can’t say. Couple hours at least. I nodded off to the hum of the motor, Brett and I falling together for warmth. When I awoke it was to a coughing engine.
“Is the engine playing out?” I said.
“No,” Irvin said. “I’m lowering us. I make a change up, down, or sideways, the engine farts. I got to get some work done on it one of these days. Everybody grab your asses, we’re going down.”
Irvin cranked the plane into a steep turn, and down we went at an angle so tight we were temporarily lying on the side of the plane, then suddenly we were straight, being tossed about the cabin like jumping beans. Next thing we knew, the ground was coming up fast. I took hold of Brett and tried to remember my plan about going out between her legs, but there was no time for that.
The plane sputtered and spat and leveled out. We came in hot as a flaming hard-on, the nose down a little too much. At
the last moment Irvin righted us and we smoothed out and the wheels hit and the plane hopped a few times and came to a jerky stop.
We got off, pronto. I bent over and lost what I had last eaten, which only reminded me I was hungry. Or maybe what I felt gnawing in my stomach was fear.
Leonard gave me some water from one of the canteens Bill had brought. I rinsed my mouth, then drank a sip. I looked around. There was nothing. Just a flat expanse of land, some rolling night-shadowed dirt, some brush clumps here and there.
Bill came over, said, “What you do is, you walk five miles that way.” He was pointing to the west.
“Five miles?” Brett said. “Why the fuck not ten? Shit, you could have gotten closer.”
“They’d have seen us come in,” Irvin said. “May have already. I’ve run some stuff for them, and I don’t want to lose jobs in the future. More than that, I don’t want them to find me. I want to keep my balls, they give me ballast. You walk that five miles and you’ll come to a place where there are lots of things growing. That means you are nearing water. Next you will come to an oasis. At the oasis is The Farm. You can’t miss it.”
“And if we walk five miles and there’s nothing?” Leonard said. “We’re in the middle of the desert and you’ve got our money, and come morning our asses are burnt crackers. I don’t think I like this plan.”
Herman and Red came over. Herman looked very big in the moonlight. Red seemed oddly smaller than ever.
“Bill’s right,” Herman said. “This is the area. We go in, we get the woman, we go out.”
“You head southeast,” Irvin said. “You meet the plane there.”
“Seems to me it would still be easier to come back here,” Leonard said.
“It would be easier, but it will be easier for them as well,” Irvin said. “And like I said. They know this plane. I’m not putting myself or money I might make in the future on the line with these guys for your lousy money or your lousy asses. Though, lady, I must admit, you got an ass worth lining up for.”
“That’s enough of that,” I said.
Irvin held up his hands. “Hey! Peace.”
“This is rough country,” Leonard said. “How we gonna know we’re going the right way to meet you? What if they follow us? They’re gonna see your plane then, aren’t they?”
“They follow you that far then my ass is dead,” Irvin said. “But truth is, you’ll be lucky to make it that far. You’d be lucky to make it to the plane if I kept it where it’s sitting. You’ll be lucky you bring your asses out at all. I’m not sending you in there. You want to do it. It’s your problem, and it’s my rules for flying you back.”
“Bill knows his way around?” Brett asked.
“Hey,” Bill said, dropping one of the canteens and a small pack over my shoulder. “I’m not going. Me and Irvin will be waiting on you. I don’t owe you a fuckin’ thing. We’ll give you till tomorrow night, late, then we fly back to Texas. You don’t show up, may I now extend my best hopes and wishes that it all ends quickly.”
“I know the country,” Herman said. “I can lead you through it. I know where Irvin wants us to meet. It’s maybe ten miles on foot.”
“Ten miles!” Leonard said. “I say the goddamn plane waits for us here.”
“If you can find transportation, take it,” Bill said. “You people have a change of heart, I’ll take you back. Now. But no refunds.”
“I just want to get Tillie,” Brett said.
“That’s what we do, then,” I said.
“Red stays with the plane,” Herman said.
“Capital idea,” Red said.
I looked at Leonard and he shrugged.
I looked at Brett. “Whatever,” she said.
“Good,” Irvin said. “It’s decided. Good luck and all that.”
Bill said, “There’s some food in the pack, some blankets to put around you if you get cold. A knife. Matches. Some odds and ends. Light stuff. Don’t worry about returning it.”
Bill and Irvin started back to the plane.
Red said, “Take care of yourself, Herman. If it is you or these people, make it you. I think you and I can start our own business when you come out of this. To hell with Big Jim. We both have the experience. What do you say?”
“I say we talk later,” Herman said.
Red shook hands, hugged his brother, and went back to the plane.
Herman pulled the pack off my shoulder. “We’ll take turns with this.”
Herman started out across the wasteland.
We followed, carrying our guns.
24
We hadn’t gone very far when we heard the plane lift off. We looked back and saw it make a half circle and head south, a great shadow against the night sky, a couple of weak red lights burning.
“We won’t see them again, will we?” Brett said.
“Probably not,” I said. “We just got to do this as best we can.”
“Bill will make Irvin wait the allotted time,” Herman said.
“Your brother?” Leonard asked. “He going to make him wait?”
“Red … I can’t say,” Herman said. “Red has feelings for me when I’m present, but I suspicion out of sight out of mind to some extent.”
We walked for a long time, eventually began to notice there was more foliage. It was sparse at first, like a few pimples on a teenager’s face, then it became thick as acne, dark and full in the moonlight. Finally there were scrubby trees. We came to a slight rise, and just before topping it, I took the pack and canteen from Leonard, who had been carrying it, and we all shared water. Satisfied, we started over the rise and stopped suddenly.
Down below in a place not deep enough to be a valley, but lower than the land we had crossed, there was a very green expanse and there was a log cabin built ranch style. The logs had obviously been hauled in. There wasn’t a tree anywhere big enough to hollow out into a canoe, let alone build a house.
The cabin was brightly lit and there was a lot of activity inside. We could hear someone singing. Badly. And there was laughter and loud talk.
Off to the right of the cabin was a great pool of water and in the middle of the pool was a huge water pump under an open shed. There was a bridge that ran from the shed to the cabin. The water looked like ink in the moonlight. To the left of the cabin was a corral, and in it were horses and mules; the mules easily distinguished by their tall ears.
Further left was a huge tank, heating fuel most likely, and beyond that a satellite dish, and further left a barn like you would expect to find somewhere in Iowa. There were two jeeps parked out front.
To prevent being outlined in the moonlight, we all hit the dirt and lay on top of the rise. Leonard said, “This has to be it.”
“This is it,” Herman said. “I’ve been here. I came by plane and was driven in by jeep by a slightly different route. I remember it well. It’s kind of a country club, if what you like to do instead of golf is drink, pill, and screw. You’d be amazed how well equipped it is. Television. Movies. Horseback riding.”
“We put one of the vehicles out of commission, take the other,” Leonard said.
“What we do first,” Herman said, “is slide down there and see what’s happening. Try and locate Tillie. There’s a chance she might not even be here. If she isn’t, we slide right on back, head to the plane on foot, and they never know we’ve been here.”
“He has a point,” I said.
“I’ll snoop down there, see if I can locate Tillie,” Leonard said. “I see her, I’ll come back and report. Then you disable one of the rides, Herman, hot-wire the other. Being a former career criminal, I assume you know how to do that.”
“I can manage,” Herman said.
“Then it’s you and me, Hap,” Leonard said. “We go down there and open up a can of blazing whup ass with a lava chaser.”
“You and Hap and me,” Brett said.
“If you insist on being modern,” Leonard said. “Me and Hap and you. One thing though, I go down there and yo
u hear gunfire, don’t think I want to do the noble thing. You know, like have you leave my ass so you can escape. You come down there with guns blazing.”
“They’ll think it’s the Battle of the Bulge,” I said.
“I’ll take the honky spreader,” Leonard said.
I had been carrying it. I traded it for the standard pump shotgun. Brett was carrying one of the modified Winchesters. We had given Herman the other one. With some reluctance I gave him ammunition to put in it. I gave Leonard shotgun shells, fixed me and Brett up with loads.
“I’m so goddamn scared I’m shaking,” I said.
“I get scared,” Leonard said, “my dick gets hard.”
Leonard slipped the strap of the shotgun over his shoulder, went quietly and quickly over the rise on his stomach and began to crawl toward the ranch house.
Herman said, “I hope he knows what he’s doing.”
“Trust me,” I said. “He did this in Vietnam. He’s got a houseful of medals to prove it. He’s forgot more about stalking than you and me and Natty Bumppo ever knew.”
“Yeah, well,” Herman said, “let’s hope the stuff he’s forgotten isn’t the important stuff.”
The ground was pretty flat, but the brush grew thick now and was full of shadow. Leonard used this as his protection, crawling close to the ground.
I was starting to get giddy. Perhaps I needed a nap. A long vacation. Maybe Tillie was better off where she was and I was better off back at the house with Brett. I began to hanker for my bouncing job. I began to view working in the rose fields as a good time. I tried not to think too much about what I was doing. I didn’t want to shoot anybody, but I didn’t want to get Brett, Leonard, or myself killed by not shooting anyone.
I tried not to think about it. Trying not to think about it turned out to be a lot like thinking about it. I looked at Brett. She was peeking over the rise, watching Leonard slither down there. The moonlight fell across her face, and normally moonlight softened it, but now, without makeup, it looked hard and harsh, almost corpse pale. Her eyes were narrowed and her mouth, normally full and inviting, was a thin line. Her hair was bound back severely with a black ribbon. She held the Winchester like someone who wanted to use it and might be disappointed if she didn’t get to.
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