2,000 Miles to Open Road (Barefield)

by Trey R. Barker

  Hal had gotten stabbed in the throat in that place but it had also been the place that had given him a name to put with the disk. He had gotten his best information in that Elk City dive.

  And Hanford would never have made it through the front door.

  "Doesn't matter if Hanford could have. Only reason I got it is to save my own ass."

  "True enough, but that's not the only person you are saving. Tyler?"

  Hal didn't give a shit about Tyler anymore, and maybe didn't care about any of it. Theresa was close and maybe he should just blow everything off to get to her. Hal waved his hand. "Just shut up about it all."

  "Are you uncomfortable with this?"

  "Stupid. Waste of time to sit around wondering about stuff like that. So what if it's true? So what if he couldn't have done what I did. Just proves his point."

  "Bullshit."

  "You think I could do what he does? An office? A suit and tie? Keeping things organized so a helluva lotta people can keep working? I could never do that. Ain't smart enough for that stuff."

  "You're worse than me, I can at least admit I've got a problem. But you, you have no idea."

  "What?"

  "You're a junkie, Hal, worse than me. You need the thought that you're not smart enough. I think you get off on the anger it breeds. You need that fix as badly as I need Horse. Your brother, and his opinion of you, is your addiction."

  "That's crap and it ain't even all that interesting crap."

  "But what about--"

  "Holy Christ watch it."

  His warning and the jackrabbit exploded at the same time. Blood and fur covered the front of car, bathing the windshield in viscera. The glass cracked and--

  "You killed me."

  Shawn yelled and slammed on the brakes. The tires locked up and the smear resolved into mesquite and cactus. Drivers going the other direction laid on their horns, stared at them goggle-eyed.

  The car began to fishtail.

  "Shitshitshit." Hal's heart stopped. Turning off a light. Snap, it was done.

  "You killed me."

  It wasn't a rabbit they'd hit. Speed shoved Hal into the windshield and Dear God it wasn't a rabbit, it was Missy. "You killed me." Was that a smile? Was that some perverse smile, some mocking smile?

  "Shitshitshit," Shawn said.

  The car sailed to the right, the rear-end crossing the white line to the shoulder. The steering wheel began a hard shimmy. The car sailed right, its back end hanging off the highway as Shawn moved toward the shoulder to compensate. Then it came back, moving toward the oncoming lane. Shawn jerked the wheel toward the slide, straightened the car out.

  Still the tires howled. Smoke poured from beneath them.

  Missy was lost in the smoke. Hanford's face came out of that same smoke. The rabbit's fur looking like his beard. His brother grinned at him and shook his head.

  "I always knew…."

  "Fuck you," Hal shouted, pushing his face away from the windshield as the car continued to slow, continued to slide. "You didn't know shit."

  It was over the shoulder line now, but flattening out as Shawn steered in the direction of the slide and after all, it was just a rabbit, its head torn off and smashing the driver's side rear view mirror. Both of them tumbled along the highway, moving nearly one hundred miles an hour, losing pieces as they rolled.

  It was all moving too fast now. Might have been slowing down but it was still moving too fast. And when she went from brake to accelerator, he nearly shit. The car shot forward, easily topping seventy-five.

  "The fuck is this? Slow down."

  "No, I want to kill him, Hal, I want--"

  "Stop the car."

  "Damnit, listen to me." Her voice wailed through the car, sending jagged ice bolts into his brain.

  "No. Stop this goddamned car."

  "Hal, please just--"

  Grinding his teeth, Hal jumped for the .45 and her .380 at the same time. He jammed both of them against her temple.

  "Are you a killer now, Hal?"

  "Day ain't so young anymore."

  Her foot came off the accelerator, gently applied the brake. The car slowed and eventually, Shawn pulled to the shoulder. Silence fell, broken only by the engine-tick.

  "Why are we stopped?"

  Hal licked his lips, bone dry as though he'd sandpapered them. "We're parting company."

  "What does that mean?" Her hands were still on the wheel, squeezing tight.

  "What about 'get out' don't you understand?"

  "You don't need me for Huntsville, huh?"

  "Ain't going to Huntsville. Fuck Hanford. Let him think what he wants, I'm done." Hal wiped the blood from his mouth and tried to get the sound of dying priests out of his head.

  "Because of all this?"

  "Ain't this enough? I'm done with this. I'm going to Nueva Rosita to get Theresa."

  "And what about the murder warrant?"

  "She's from Mexico."

  "Ah," Shawn said. "A little emigration in your future."

  "Slip across the border, head down to the Yucatan, see what we can find." He sighed. "I'm tired'a people shooting at me."

  "They're shooting at me."

  "Bullets still coming my way, ain't they? No more talk. Get out, I'm leaving."

  She didn't move. "You can't leave me here, Hal. In the middle of the desert? There's not a town for miles."

  "Marfa's pretty close. Lotta people driving. Somebody will pick you up."

  "Didn't you do this once already? You dumped me out and then came back."

  "Won't happen again, Ms. Valley."

  Slowly, she frowned. "You're serious."

  Yeah, serious as an attack of conscience, he thought. He was an ass, knew it even as he pushed her out of the car, tossed her purse to her, but there it was. She had caused these problems, she had slowed him down. She hadn't'a been with him and this would all be over already.

  "Hal, you can't--"

  "Yeah, I can. I'm sorry, but that's the gig."

  Slamming the door, he gunned the motor. She stood on the highway, not screaming, not yelling, not even banging on the window. Her glare could have shattered diamonds, though.

  At the end, just before he drove off, something made him roll down the window. Something made him give her the .380. Maybe she'd shoot his ass here and now, but he didn't think so.

  She held the weapon heavily, a weight she didn't want, and stepped away from the car. "I hope you find whatever it is you want, Hal."

  "Me, too," he said, already screeching back onto the highway and leaving her in a blast of dust.

  459 Miles

  Three hours later, he blasted into Nueva Rosita.

  And that big ass albatross hanging from his neck, slowing him down even as the car had danced up around 80, was Shawn…staple-gunned to his neck. Every time his eyes caught the rear view mirror, she was there, looking at him the way she had when he'd pulled away.

  "Lemme alone," he said, turning down the rockabilly on the radio and letting the car slow to about 30. "Lemme the hell alone."

  Wasn't any point to try and dismiss her. He'd tried that for every single mile since he'd dumped her and he failed every single time. So now she was just always there, like a case of genital warts.

  Around him, the tiny town rose up slowly. Low-slung buildings, most of them adobe style, didn't reach out for him so much as let him come to them. Some were still open, advertising tanning beds or twenty cent per sheet copying or imported Mexican beer.

  "Ain't no tax stamp on that, sure as shit," he said.

  Maybe that was the racket. Get down to Mexico with Theresa and import--using that word loosely--American beer to the Mexican masses. Miller and Lone Star for just a few pesos. Bring in the really high dollar stuff--Bud and the Silver Bullet--and charge a bit more. Make out like a king.

  He passed the short business district and found himself quickly in what passed for a residential section. Here the houses were a mix of frame and adobe, but all were poor. Cars on blo
cks in the front yard, couches on porches, old refrigerators with their doors removed sitting idly against the sides of houses. For a split second, he could have been back in Alabama, rather than Texas.

  "Don't matter white brown black," he said. "Trash is trash."

  And trash makes bad decisions.

  An apparition of Hanford reared up in Hal's head, full and disdainful, as dust swirled around the car. Hanford and the Albatross. Hell, for that matter, Hanford, the Albatross, Missy, and Tyler. They were related.

  He rolled down the window, sucked in a breath of dusty air, trying to clear his head. Everything was for Theresa but he had gotten bogged down in a bunch of other crap. The disk, proving his innocence, proving to Hanford he wasn't a complete screw-up (which was the big lie considering what he'd done to Shawn and the dead priests on his bar tab).

  All of that was just a path to an end and the end was Theresa, and he shoulda skipped the middleman bullshit and gotten his ass to his girl.

  At the end of a ragged street, he pulled into a ragged parking lot. It was potholed and overgrown with weeds around the edges. Two cars sat near the convenience store's front door and two older women, both wearing tight running pants in spite of their ample asses, stood between the cars, their jaws flapping faster than he'd been driving.

  They never even glanced at him and that was fine and dandy, he thought. Don't even notice me. I ain't nothing but a breeze from the highway. I'll be gone soon enough.

  Digging a couple quarters from his pocket, he shoved them rudely into the slot on the pay phone and pressed the buttons.

  This time, the phone answered quick.

  "This is Natalie."

  God, was he close enough she could sound this clear? No static, no distance, nothing but clear sound. Was he really that close?

  "I'm not going to be snippy, Natalie, I just want to talk to my brother." He said it softly, almost quietly. Please, he thought, just let me talk to him this one time.

  "Mr. Turnbull." She sounded vaguely surprised. "We've not heard from you for a few days."

  "I was otherwise occupied."

  "I'm sure."

  "Please, Natalie, I just need to talk to him."

  "Mr. Turnbull is in a meeting. Can I assume there is no contact number?"

  Did St. Peter, welcoming the dead, take as many friggin' meetings as Hal's brother seemed to? Not bloody likely.

  "No contact number, Natalie, but will you give him a message?"

  "Certainly." Bored, hard, flat.

  "I ain't coming."

  "Excuse me?"

  Hal took a deep breath. Damn sight harder to say these things than he'd thought it'd be. "I ain't coming to see him. I'll mail the disk, but I ain't coming. Can you just tell him that? And tell him--"

  The words dried up, as dry as the two old bags in running pants now staring at him. Why couldn't they ignore him? He raised a finger, intent on giving them a little afternoon shock. But then he stopped. Instead, he waved. One waved back, the other frowned.

  "Tell him what, Mr. Turnbull?"

  "Tell him I ain't what he thinks. I ain't a murderer. And I love him and I'm sorry for everything."

  "You're going to end up in jail, Hal."

  Not this time, he thought. This time, I'm getting the hell out before it gets any worse.

  "Uh…." She sounded different this time. As though some tiny bit of compassion had gotten inside her, infected her. "Certainly, sir, I'll tell him."

  "Thanks."

  A click and he had a dial tone again. Another quarter and some more numbers and the phone was ringing. Closer this time. Much closer.

  "Hola?"

  "Hey, Gloria. I'm at Sabina's. The pay phone."

  "Welcome home, chico. Don't leave, she'll call you."

  "Don't have her call me, they're probably tapping the phones."

  "Do you think we're stupid, hombre? My son took her the cordless phone from my bedroom."

  "You're a beautiful woman."

  The phone clicked and went dial tone. He hung up and answered quickly two minutes later.

  "Is this too soon?" he asked.

  "Hal."

  Her voice showered him, washed the dirt and filth, the blood, from him. He stood clean in the purity of her voice.

  "You are home."

  "Yeah."

  She breathed audibly. "You can't come to me, those two Rangers are watching the house."

  "Can you come to me, then?"

  In the silence, he knew she would. In the silence, he knew she wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see her. Upon that silence he would build the rest of their lives.

  "Do you know Hilda's house?"

  "North side. Frame house, brown and blue. Front window broken out."

  "You remember all that? You've only been here twice."

  "I remember it being the ugliest house in town." During both of his visits, they had walked beneath shimmering moonlight and laughed about how ugly her house was. "Her Christmas lights still up?"

  "It's only August…of course they are." Then she laughed. A loose-fitting laugh.

  "When?"

  "I'll be there at 6:15."

  It was 4:28 by his watch. An hour and forty-five minutes was a helluva lot of time in a small town hiding at least a couple of Texas Rangers.

  "Use the front door," she said. "Go up like you own the place."

  "How is this gonna work?"

  "Hal?"

  He licked his lips. "Yes?"

  "Trust me."

  Then the line was dead, as though she had been snatched away. Slowly, eyeing the lot and the surrounding streets, he hung up and climbed back into the car.

  He drove from the lot slowly, like Nueva Rositans did. They were an old lot. They drove slow and ate supper in the middle of the afternoon. It still cracked him up. If Theresa's grandmother wasn't eating by four, she was pissed the rest of the night. Drinking beer and bitching about how her family was trying to starve her to get her money. She was worth about a buck.

  Resisting an impulse to wave at the big-butted women again, he drove slowly along the back streets. The main street, called Zapata, was two blocks left. Hilda's house was three blocks right.

  He headed left.

  A quick ride through Nueva Rosita. See what he could see. Yeah, some people knew him and knew the trouble, but inside a car and with several days' worth of beard, no one would recognize him, least of all the Rangers. And this way, he'd maybe have a better idea of where they were. Not that he was planning on testing them at all. He knew about the Rangers, knew them up close and personal. Fuck the myth and legend, that only softened up the real picture. Those Ranger boys were hardcore.

  And they never spoke.

  Drove him insane when they'd busted him before. Stamping feet, racking slides, flashing badges, and never saying dick. One guy had said "You're busted." From then, there was nothing until his rights and then nothing until he hit the Harris County Jail.

  "You gonna beat my ass, the least you can do is talk to me," he had said.

  The car held steady at twenty miles per. The buildings on either side of the street were exactly as he remembered. They were tired and dilapidated, boarded up and broken into. Somehow, they reminded him of the trip through the seamier side of Las Vegas.

  Which reminded him of the casino.

  Which reminded him of Officer--now dead Officer--Douglas.

  Which reminded him of the body in Arizona and the café and the priests and blah blah blah. All of it led him back to Shawn. Standing by the side of the road, a devastated look on her face, while he drove away, easy as you please.

  "You been a bad boy, Hal."

  Telling lies and hitting people and threatening them with knives and shooting guns at them was one thing--a bad thing, yeah--but not as bad as leaving a woman at the side of the road. That was a whole new degree of shitty.

  And there wasn't anything that was going to take that away from him. That was his, he owned it through and through. One hundred years fro
m now, should he still be alive, he'd still be beating himself up over it.

  Behind him, a horn peeped.

  "Piss," he said, letting off the brake and driving through the green light.

  Near the school, he turned off the main drag. Two more turns and Theresa's house slipped into view. It sat across the street from the elementary school, on a north-south street. The trees, what few there were, were limp and brown, burned by the south Texas heat. At her place, a small tree stood valiantly against the heat but it would lose quick enough.

  Two kids played in a car on cinder blocks while a third yelled at them from a porch. A dog lolled in the shade and an old man sat in a lawn chair, his shirt off and his tits bigger than Theresa's.

  And right in front of her house, the Rangers.

  Hal frowned. The Rangers were brilliant at undercover. No clothes slightly out of date, no street slang that was old and tired, no institutional cars or dark colored Dodge Intrepids or Chevy Impalas with government plates. The real Rangers' cars would be random, a grandmother's Buick or something, with regular plates.

  The black SUV sitting at the curb was about as far from random as you could get.

  "Who the hell is you, then?" Hal asked.

  He slowed down, tried to keep his gaze straight ahead as he passed them.

  The two men inside were low-rent at best. One wore a bad suit--in this heat?--and the second wore a green knit shirt that looked straight off the Salvation Army rack. Suit Man pulled a big ass gun from a shoulder rig. He held it up and racked the slide bright and obvious, exactly where Hal could see it.

  They know you, his head screamed.

  Hal's insides tightened up like a guitar string tuned an octave too high. Sweat broke profusely on his forehead. He jerked his gaze back to the road and kept moving, turning down a side street. He drove two blocks and headed left on another road. A block and right, then left and left and a long straight shot, then right and another long straight shot. Random turns, odd directions, just to keep them off his tail if they were following.

  Quick enough, he was on the far side of Nueva Rosita but still not far enough away.