Josh put the truck in gear and floored it. The lumbering beast pulled away. He felt the truck take another bullet, and then they were out of range.
In the mirror Josh watched one of their attackers fall under Guardsman fire and then they rounded a bend and were free.
“We’re losing water,” Jamal said, he watched the wet trail they left in the road in the rearview mirror. The wind blew hard in their faces and it was difficult to hear each other.
“Can’t help it,” Josh said.
“We have to stop,” Jamal said, “we have to stop now.”
Josh realized he was right, that the waste would haunt him, lives were pouring out the back of the truck. The emptier the truck became, the more meaningless the entire effort was.
“One more minute,” Josh said. He drove hard, dodging the same obstacles they’d already passed, and then skidded to a stop.
Jamal jumped out to look at the damage. Four holes sputtered out water in bullet-sized jets through neat, circular incisions. Jamal stripped off his shirt, tore it into pieces and screwed tight wads into each of the holes.
“Better than before,” he said. There was a dribble down each.
The road behind them was empty and quiet.
They drove again. But in a long straight stretch they could see they were being followed, the jeep’s outline distant but clear.
“See them?” Josh said.
“Fuck,” Jamal growled, “Guardsmen?”
“It would be a miracle,” Josh said.
Josh took the truck as fast as it would go, a vibrating, frightening pace, but he knew its speed would be no match for the jeep. He plowed over the top of obstacles he’d dodged before.
“We have to get off this road,” Jamal said.
“There’s no way we could hide this thing.” Josh thought about the thirty minutes it’d taken them to drive here—the jeep would pull even with them long before they hit town again. In the distance they spotted a green highway sign advertising an exit.
“Speed for that, man,” Jamal said.
“No way, it’ll slow us way down.”
“Do it. We’ll fake it from there.” Jamal placed his feet against the dashboard to brace himself against the vibration and made sure all was right with his gun. “Any idea how many of them died?”
“No.”
“And now they’ve got a jeep and serious weapons.”
“I know, Jamal. For fuck sake.”
“You coming apart, man?”
“No!” Josh said. The plan had come apart, he thought, not him, and now it was only a matter of time before it would be them. He kept trying to make a new plan, and then panic overwhelmed him and he’d have to start from scratch. “Our plan was shit. This is shit.”
“No,” Jamal said, “we have the truck. We’re in this game.”
“It was a shit plan!” Josh checked and rechecked the side mirror for the position of the jeep.
“The plan was good, Josh, but that was then. Take this exit, man. Take it!”
Josh jerked the wheel to the right and descended down an off ramp into what appeared to be a recreation area turn-off. The road went a short ways toward the river and ended in a parking lot.
“Fuck! What do I do? There’s no out.”
“You’re losing it,” Jamal said. “You want me to drive?”
“No!”
“The on ramp is hidden from the freeway. Go hide on that.”
Josh pulled onto the on ramp, which was in a natural depression. They idled the truck and waited. After another minute they heard the jeep pull off onto the exit.
“Go!”
Josh pulled onto the freeway, trying to keep the truck from roaring in its lower gears. They could not see the jeep and he gunned it to full speed.
After several minutes they could see the jeep trailing them again. It was markedly closer.
“I’ll watch the jeep,” Jamal said. “You keep your eyes on the road. There, look—” There was another exit ahead.
“It’s the old highway,” Josh said.
“Jump the lanes and go down the hill.”
“No. No way, we’ll roll.” Josh shook his head.
“Do it now,” Jamal yelled. When Josh hesitated Jamal yanked the wheel hard and steered them across their lanes and through a metal guardrail. They plunged down an embankment onto the old road, the truck rattling and bouncing violently.
Josh floored it. The road climbed into the hills, quickly entering into treed, semi-rural plots on the outskirts of the city. He drove hard, looking for a suitable driveway to pull into.
“You got to decide quick, man!”
Big ranch houses nestled deep among stands of tall dead trees. Josh picked a lane and pulled in. A brick house stood in a clearing in the center of a skeletal forest and he gunned toward that, aiming to hide the truck behind it. It was a long driveway. As they got closer they saw barbed wire tangled into a low barrier around the house.
“There’s someone here,” Jamal yelled. He saw a brief flicker in the curtain and then he heard a thump.
“Oh,” Josh sighed. It was an exhale of disappointment and disgust.
Jamal looked over and saw red blossoming across Josh’s shirt. Josh’s grip went weak on the steering wheel.
Jamal ducked below the windshield and felt the sudden impact of a bullet embed into the seat where his body had been. He yanked the steering wheel to the right toward a standing garage and killed the engine, coasting into a bumper-kiss with the garage wall.
“Goddamnit. Goddamnit, Josh,” he said. Jamal grabbed his arm and yanked him down and out of view.
Josh emitted what sounded like a sigh of acknowledgement, and then slowly slouched onto the seat. The truck went into a backwards roll and Jamal struggled to engage the emergency brake on the floor. His shoulder smeared with Josh’s blood and he wanted to fire his gun into that house until it collapsed. With the brake finally on he opened the passenger door, shielded by the garage, and carefully stepped down from the truck.
He swore and stood there a moment. Another shot hit the dirt close to him. “Wait!” he yelled toward the house. This is so not my territory, he thought, a shirtless black man in a white neighborhood, pursued by white ambushers. Behind him were trees, the remains of trees. He could make a run for it and live, but the distance home through hostile neighborhoods was great, and he’d lose everything they’d come for.
“Wait!” he yelled again. “You killed the driver. We’re being chased!”
“You got no reason here,” came a man’s voice from the house.
“We’re being chased,” Jamal repeated.
Jamal eyed the distance between the truck and the garage. About fifteen feet.
“Get in your truck and get out.”
He didn’t trust them not to shoot him, and did not want to be back on the road. “There’s no time.” He yelled back. He realized they hadn’t realized it was a water truck. He weighed his options. “This truck is full of water. Water thieves are coming.”
There was silence from the house.
Jamal sprinted for the cover of the garage. It was a large, two-car structure and in the window he saw a variety of standard garage trappings: dusty lawn mowers and bicycles and a car. He tried the door but it was locked.
“You steal the truck?” the voice said from the house.
“It’s for the Northeast neighborhood,” Jamal said. And then he yelled, “Maid Marian.”
A second later the jeep roared up the driveway. As with Josh, the first bullet from the house killed the driver instantly. The other two men jumped from the jeep while it was still moving and scrambled for cover behind the water truck.
“Motherfucker!” one of the men yelled.
“You got no rea
son here,” came the voice from the house.
Jamal hid on the far side of the garage, out of view of the house, and watched the men conference. They went to either end of the water truck and fired on the house with their stolen assault rifles, blowing the windows out and doing a tremendous amount of damage. They had not seen him.
One of the attackers opened the passenger door and Jamal aimed, holding his gun hand steady with his other hand. He fired a round into the man’s back, not twenty feet away. The man fell against the truck and onto the ground. He rolled facing the garage and Jamal hit him again in the chest and he went still. There was a code of honor about shooting a man in the back. He could feel that burn in him briefly, as if the ghosts of old Westerns shook their heads sadly at him, but in the end all he could feel was an exultant joy that it was not him, and that there was only one left. There was nothing honorable about any of this.
The other man paused firing and looked down the truck to see his partner fallen. He panicked and ran down the driveway. A shot from the house leveled him. He went from a dead run to dead and skidding face down in the dirt road.
Fucking marksman, Jamal thought. He didn’t know what to do now, but he felt sure he didn’t want to surprise them. After a few moments Jamal said, “I’m still here! They’re both dead.” And then, “I’m not your enemy!”
The house was silent.
“Don’t shoot,” Jamal said. He sprinted the short distance back to the truck and waited, unsure of what would happen next. He studied the dead man at his feet. A fine dust covered the man’s face and clothes. The dried-out topsoil that lifted into the air, weightless, as if they were on the moon, the gravity gone weak. His cheeks were hollow and there was a translucence to him. His lips were cracked and dark circles rimmed his eyes—dehydration. He wore a torn black concert shirt with “Giant Tim and the Tiny Turds” emblazoned on it above a futuristic-looking spaceship. Jamal soft-prodded him with his foot. His clothes were ragged and excessive for this time of year. He probably wore everything he owned.
“This is too much for you to keep,” Jamal yelled. “I’m bringing it to a whole neighborhood. Thousands.”
There was no word from the house. Jamal checked his gun again and wondered if he should pick up one of the assault rifles, and then remembered the marksman’s aim. He crouched down beside the truck and peeked around a tire toward the house, where he could see no movement.
“Well?” he yelled.
“Throw your guns into the roundabout in front of the house. All of them.”
Jamal tried to figure out which window the voice was coming from. “We are peaceful, we mean to help our neighborhood,” he said, thinking of Maid Marian, an edge of righteousness entering into his voice. He would bring the water back.
“The guns!”
Jamal thought he saw a curtain move in the house, now ragged with bullet holes. Unlike his father, Gregor, he’d always been mediocre with a gun and thought his chances of taking out even one person in the house minimal. He had no idea how many were holed up there.
“I can drain this tank right here,” Jamal said. “Ten gallons a second. By the time you’ve killed me it’d be gone in a wash over your driveway.”
There was quiet from the house and he realized there were several there, discussing the plan of action.
Finally they said, “Give us some.”
“A hundred gallons,” Jamal said, “in exchange for safe passage out of here, and the good will of the people of Northeast Portland.”
“Two hundred, and we keep the jeep and the guns.”
“For two hundred I keep the guns, you get the jeep.”
“Give us one of the assault rifles.”
He wondered if this were a means to lure him into the open.
“Throw your guns into the roundabout and show yourself.”
“It’s a deal. Is it a deal?” Jamal didn’t know if they had seen him, and he worried at the reception and instantaneous discarding of plans that the appearance of his skin might bring, a savage here among the righteous. Shirtless and brown. He sat back against the tire and breathed deeply, trying to calm his heart.
Then he had an idea. He stood up and took a deep breath. “I will bring you water,” Jamal said. “I will bring you water.” His voice came out like a river of black tar, smooth and confident and unstoppable, and the rest of him tried to catch up.
He tucked his gun visibly into the front of his pants. He opened the passenger door to the truck and retrieved a couple of unregistered unit gallon containers. The trucks kept several dozen spare to replace those that had broken. His hands were shaking.
He went to the back of the truck and filled them from the spigot—still out of view of the house. And then, taking a deep breath, he turned slowly, holding the full jugs of water before him, his body exposed. “I will bring you water to seal the deal,” he said.
“Drop your gun!” the voice shouted, but he felt he heard an uncertainty in it now.
“No one will drop their guns,” Jamal said, “I am bringing you water. I will leave two hundred gallons. We will trust each other.”
When he’d made it to within twenty feet of the house he heard another voice say, “You’re black.” Had they only now figured it out, he wondered, or was it impossible not to make such an obvious statement in the face of things?
“I am bringing water to share,” he said. “I will leave two hundred gallons. We will trust each other.” He wasn’t sure what he was doing any more, but he could feel his father’s tea ceremony rising in him like some mantra, felt he could understand how the ceremony took control, how the routine of it, of sharing water, could dominate an exchange.
“Don’t come any closer!”
“I am bringing water to share. Bring glasses out and we will drink to sharing water. We will trust each other.”
From the house he heard someone’s voice say “don’t you dare” and understood that they were talking among themselves, arguing over the outcome. He got to within twenty feet of the front door, to the edge of the barbed wire, and sat down cross-legged on the walkway which had once been surrounded by a well-kept lawn but was now a scarred dust scrub. He put the gallons in front of him and waited.
“I have brought you water to share,” he said. “We will trust each other. We will drink to trust.”
They buried Josh in the backyard in a quick, quiet ceremony. Chris and Renee and Jamal dug the hole together and Renee wielded the shovel like a weapon, punishing the ground with it. After they filled the hole back up, over the top of his long, handsome body, she swayed in the heat as Julia said a few words. After she was done no one said anything, and no one moved.
Renee was the first to break the circle they made around the grave. She gave Jamal a hug and told him she was glad he was safe, and then she walked in a straight line away from headquarters, away from the house on Going Street, down the block and into the next. At some point she became vaguely aware of Bea yelling at her, pleading with her to return, but she could not stop.
She did not care. Were it to come by gunfire or knife or some other means, it was all the same to her. She willed it on herself, even, wanted the taste of her own blood in her mouth, wanted as much of hers spilled as Josh had lost, some retribution for her own ambition. She walked numbly down the middle of the road, past barrel fires and local conflicts, past kids playing, past people who taunted her. She walked as long as she could, blocks upon blocks, looking straight ahead, wishing to walk off the end of the earth. She walked until she reached the bluff’s edge of the defunct river and she sat down there, her legs dangling over the edge as the sun dropped below the far hill.
She felt lonely for Josh, alone in his grave, and for the struggle she had in front of her with him gone. She was tired of being hunted. She stared up the river toward the city center.
She didn�
�t know where to go next, but every time she turned back toward the house she felt deflected, the guilt a barrier that warded her away.
In the end she found herself at the water tower. She stood at the edge of its grounds and thought about walking to his building, three or so miles away. She paced there in front of the tower considering it, knowing that to walk to his place meant a defeat, that she would not leave again once she got there. She was between things now, in a hellish limbo, the stakes of the game she played unbelievably higher. She dug in her pockets and was relieved to find the green laser.
From atop the playground equipment she traced out his name, but realized it was far too late in the evening for him to expect her. Then she began to write, a sloppy cursive she wasn’t sure he’d be able to comprehend anyway, and in that she poured everything: Josh’s death, the incredible wealth that’d come under her power, the feeling that she was at the end of it all, on the verge of Josh’s fate herself.
She wrote until she exhausted herself with the piteous outpouring. She hoped he hadn’t recorded it. Idly, and she supposed to punish herself, she wondered if Zach had found somebody else. She lay down on the top of the playground equipment and gave in to her exhaustion.
Sherwood Nation: a novel Page 14
