BAD TRIP SOUTH

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  “If you’re a cop, man, do something for me,” the dying man said. “I’m losing too much blood.”

  Daddy turned back to him and stooped nearby, playing the light over his midsection. I could see how the blood had coated his hands, the slimy blood dripping off his knuckles to the floor. I cringed and turned away my face. I couldn’t watch it anymore.

  Daddy said, “You’d die before anyone could get you to a doctor. It’s too late.”

  The man clenched his teeth and moaned even louder.

  “Shut up!” Heddy had finished tending to Crow and now she stood up and stalked over to where the man was on the floor. “I’ll put a bullet in your head if you want me to. You want me to?”

  “No! Don’t let her near me, don’t let her do it!”

  Then Heddy laughed and that was the weirdest thing to hear. There was the smell of blood everywhere and the lingering scent of the gun blasts. There was darkness except for the small pool from the flashlight that played over the man on the floor. Then Heddy’s crazy laughter took hold of the room and I thought this was probably what it was like in war when people had to kill; it made everything all wrong, all crazy. People laughed when they should cry, they bled and died and there was enough hate between them to raise the devil.

  I heard a gurgling sound and even though Mama held me tight, one arm around my neck, I turned my head and looked over. Daddy had the light on the man’s face. He was dead. His eyes were open, but he was dead. His whole face had relaxed and gone slack. I thought dead people had closed eyes. I couldn’t stop staring at the man’s unblinking open eyes.

  Mama hugged me to her and said softly, “Don’t look, don’t look, baby.” She was trembling and her teeth were chattering although it was a warm night.

  I heard Daddy say; “The problem remains. How are you going to get Crow across the border hurt like that?”

  “You’ll help him,” Heddy said. “He can lean on you.”

  “With that bloody shirt tied around his leg? The border guards aren’t blind, you know.”

  “You’re not leaving me behind,” Crow said.

  “Of course not!” Heddy went to him and checked the tied shirt. She looked up at Daddy. “We’ll buy some stuff at a drug store and bandage it right. I’ll get him new jeans. You’ll help him cross the bridge.”

  I didn’t hear Daddy answer, but I imagine that he nodded his head. He was part of this now. Like Crow, he did whatever Heddy said.

  #

  WHILE Frank Hawkins listened to what went on in the house on the outskirts of Brownsville that night, he remembered where he had been at the time. In a private plane with two FBI agents on their way to the border city.

  After picking up Craig Walker’s trail south, they could see they were headed for Matamoras to cross. Early in the morning after their arrival hysterical calls came into the city’s police department. There was gunfire at an abandoned house not far from a small subdivision at the edge of town. A patrol car was sent to investigate and didn’t see anything out of order. No cars, no lights, nothing. They drove on past on the road without turning in. Within two hours more calls came in reporting a second round of gunfire coming from the same house.

  This time Frank and the agents accompanied the locals in a car to check it out. They parked in the subdivision and went on foot across the pasture toward the house in the trees. Once close enough, they heard voices and knew the place needed to be staked out. They’d heard a child’s voice. They weren’t going to rush in during the middle of night, in the dark, and put her in harm’s way.

  This called for careful work. It meant they needed to regroup and think it over. Leaving a patrolman at the subdivision’s edge with a radio, they returned downtown and made plans. They needed men. They needed a negotiator. They’d have to call in some help.

  Before daybreak, they had it.

  #

  WITH dawn came the sound of a bullhorn commanding they come out with their hands raised.

  Crow must have slept a bit because at the noise he fairly leaped out of his skin as if roused by shouts from a monstrous dream. “What?”

  The others moved and came fully awake, everyone speaking at once.

  Jay didn’t even look as if he had slept. He hurried to one of the windows. “It’s the police.”

  “What the fuck..?” Heddy struggled up, licking her bottom lip and looking pale and hung over.

  The little girl said, “Daddy, will they shoot us?”

  “Oh god, they’ve surrounded the house,” Carrie said.

  “Take it easy, hold on,” Crow said. “Heddy, help me onto my feet. The rest of you move away from the door.”

  Outside the sun poured brilliant splashes of light through the trees. Beyond the overgrown weedy yard stood a line of patrol cars, lights blinking obscenely in the new sunshine. Crow leaned on Heddy’s shoulder. They could see some kind of tactical team dressed in riot gear--helmets, jackets, and high-powered rifles--a whole force of men peeking from behind fenders and hoods.

  Crow moved back and through the house, finding his way to the rear with Heddy’s help. The kitchen was in back and a bolted door to the outside. He peered through the dusty windows and didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there somewhere.

  “See anyone?” Heddy asked, a tremor in her voice.

  “Nah. Nobody. Stay cool now.”

  His mouth was dry and his stomach clenched into a knot. His leg burned like it was on fire. Every time he took a step, pain shot up into his groin.

  Someone had heard the shooting and called in the cops. Maybe their friends from St. Louis, the two men lying dead on the floor in the front room, had won after all. It wouldn’t, by God, surprise him to learn that’s how they were trapped--trying to save their lives they had forfeited them.

  He hurried to the front room again. Heddy let him lean against the wall near the window. She began nervously refilling her gun’s cartridge clip. She kept dropping shells and saying, “Oh shit, oh shit.”

  “What are we gonna do, Heddy?” It was as if his brain had skipped. There seemed to be two alternatives, give it up and walk out or take a stand, neither of which appeared to be actions he could indulge. Surrender his life into the state’s hands again? Or shoot it out with a squad that outnumbered them five to one? It was a fucking western, is what it was. It was high noon in Brownsville, Texas, the problem being he was no Gary Cooper.

  “I didn’t see anyone in the back,” she said.

  “No, but they might be hiding in the weeds or behind the trees out there.”

  “Okay, we tell them we have hostages. We have a kid in here.” She scowled at the girl. “We get them busy in the front and then we break for it out the back.”

  He hadn’t wanted her to say that. “Hell, Heddy...”

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?”

  Her shout shocked him enough to make him flinch and hunker his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t ever fucking know. Now take this gun and watch that window.” She pointed to the one right of the door. She moved quickly to the opposite window on the left.

  “Craig Walker! Harriet Arnold! You have five minutes to come out with your hands behind your head!” shouted the voice over the bullhorn.

  “Listen to them,” Jay said quietly. “I don’t see a way out of this.”

  Heddy whirled around. “You better find a way out of it or you’re going to be just as dead as we are.”

  “If you’ll let Carrie and Emily go out, I’ll help you,” he said.

  “No fucking way.” She turned back to the window and suddenly smashed out a lower pane of glass with the gun. To Crow she looked like someone gone mad. There was a darkness in her eyes that meant real business this time. He’d seen her this way just before they took the lab house and if she’d not been on his team, it would have scared him to death.

  “We’ve got three hostages in here!” she shouted. “There’s a family. The kid’s ten years old. You want to talk to me a
bout that, you want to negotiate this thing?”

  Heddy waited, glancing over at Crow, and once back to Jay. Crow hugged the wall near the window, gun in hand, afraid to look out there, afraid a marksman would have him in his scope dead on.

  “Send out the child,” the man with the bullhorn yelled.

  “You must think we’re idiots!” Heddy pointed the gun out the broken pane and pulled the trigger carefully.

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  #

  CROW never would have believed a tack team would open fire on a house filled with hostages. As the gunfire was returned when Heddy pulled the trigger, all he could think was that some hothead on the team got out of control and started off the shooting.

  Bullets riddled the walls so that they all had to hit the floor on their faces. Windows burst, shattering glass over them. Everyone was screaming, Heddy, Carrie, Emily. Even Jay was shouting furiously how they couldn’t do this, they weren’t supposed to do this!

  Crow saw Jay crawl over to the window where Heddy lay. “Give me a gun,” he yelled. She brought out a gun one of the two men had been packing who caught them sleeping earlier.

  Jay got to his knees to peek out the window. He said, “Carrie, Em, stay down.”

  He said to Heddy, “C’mon, you wanted a fight, you’ve got one.”

  She looked up at him as she might look at a hero and got to her knees, then to her feet. “Let’s do it,” she said. “Fuck it.”

  Crow moved back to his own window and, trembling like a man with palsy, raised his gun to the frame.

  #

  IN the first barrage of gunfire I think I realized if I stayed in the house, I’d die. Oh, well, don’t apologize for those men, it wouldn’t have mattered what they did at that house, it was all going sour the minute they showed up. I guess I should say it all went bad when we stopped in at the Long Horn Caverns and got hooked up with Heddy and Crow.

  “It got out of hand,” Mr. Hawkins said sadly. “The hostage negotiator was on his way from Houston. Orders were not to fire because they knew you were in there, they knew there were hostages. But once Heddy starting firing, it was all over. A hothead riot cop who hadn’t been in the unit but two weeks lost it and started the whole thing.”

  Well, I said, it was a terrible thing, but Heddy wouldn’t have let us come out without a fight. During the next session of gunfire, Mama was hit. We were holding one another, trying to stay down. I don’t know where the bullet came from or how it found her, but it did. I had my arms around her waist, my head buried in her lap when she was struck. She fell back, letting me go, trying to catch herself. She must have cried out, but with all the noise I didn’t hear her.

  I felt her arms come away from me and I started to sit up to see what was wrong. There was a blank look on her face. I screamed, “Mama!” as she topped onto the floor on her side. I tried to turn her over to see where she’d been hit. No one even knew about it except me. Daddy was busy at the window being an outlaw, helping his new partners.

  There was blood on Mama’s chest and although her eyes were still open and blinking, I knew she was probably going to die. I leaped up and ran for the door. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. I pulled the door back and I heard Daddy yell at me to stop, wait, but I was already outside on the little porch and flying down the steps, and then I was crossing the yard while all around me everyone was shooting at everyone else. I had my arms up in the sky and I was crying, “My mama, my mama’s hurt!”

  I know now it was a really dumb thing I did. I could have been killed easy. I wasn’t thinking, I wasn’t even afraid. I had to get help for her, that’s all I could think about, I had to get out of the house and get help or she’d die.

  Mr. Hawkins lit up a new cigarette. He inhaled before saying, “You’re a brave little girl, Emily.”

  I wanted to tell him bravery had nothing to do with it. He didn’t understand. My mother was all I had left. If I lost her, I’d have nobody.

  #

  JAY stopped firing when he saw his daughter racing across the ground between the house and the police cars. He felt his heart surge up to the roof of his mouth as he raised the barrel of the gun to the ceiling and watched, horrified and breathless, as Emily shot across the firing range. When she made it without being killed, when she was grabbed by one of the officers in charge who had been taking cover behind the back fender of one of the cars, and when she was dragged behind the car to cover and safety, he let out his breath. It had happened so fast that he still couldn’t believe he’d seen it.

  “That little bitch!” Heddy screamed. “Goddamn it!”

  Jay turned from the window to find out where his wife was. Was she too going to follow Em out the door into the hail of bullets? A second shock traveled through his system as he took in her prone position on the floor and the blood that covered the front of her blouse. “Shit,” he mumbled, going down to his hands and knees to crawl over to her.

  “Jay? Jay, get back over here!”

  He ignored Heddy’s command. Carrie had been hit. Maybe she was dead.

  “Jay!”

  Heddy’s scream finally got through to him and he halted halfway across the floor and turned back. He had made his pact with the woman. With the devil. He had made his pact with the devil and there was no going back now.

  He reclaimed his spot at the window in time to see Crow crawl across the floor toward Carrie. He looked away. Let Heddy handle him, the betraying son of a bitch.

  #

  CROW reached her body and grabbed hold of the front of her bloody shirt, ripping it open. The wound pumped blood from just below the bra line under her left breast. Lung, he thought. He saw her chest heaving and saw that her mouth was wide open. She was trying to suck in enough air to stay alive.

  He twisted and shouted, “Carrie’s hit! She’s going to die if we don’t get her out of here.”

  “Fuck her,” Heddy said. She jerked around the window frame and fired off two shots before hiding again.

  “Let’s try going out the back while they have the kid,” Crow said. “We gotta get outta here, Heddy. Now!”

  Heddy looked at him and the oddest look came over her face. It was as if she only now really saw him near Carrie’s body and the sight sickened her. She ducked and crab-walked to where he kneeled. “C’mon, we’re going.”

  Crow glanced down at Carrie; his gaze riveted on her struggling face.

  “Okay,” he said finally, moving away from the bleeding woman.

  “I’m telling you one last time, Jay,” Heddy called to Jay where he crouched at the window. “We’re leaving. It’s our only chance. You coming?”

  Jay dropped suddenly to the floor and crawled over to join them. “Yeah, I’m coming,” he said, avoiding looking at his wounded wife.

  Heddy gestured to Crow and they made for the kitchen and the back door there.

  The gunfire still came from the front of the house, no one there realizing the people trapped in the house were on their way out.

  #

  CROW thought he knew the future when he saw the kid run out the door into the gunfire. They’d all be dead before the sun ever got up to the middle of the sky that day. A premonition? No, it was simple enough to realize what was coming for him.

  When Carrie went down, Crow knew then that the whole thing was falling apart. His suggestion that he and Heddy go out the back was a last desperate attempt to sidestep what he knew was going to happen. They were not going to be able to hold off a whole squad of cops in riot gear. They’d already emptied three of the guns. He didn’t tell Heddy, but his own gun was hitting on an empty clip.

  And what good was Jay? He was like some stoned motherfucking chimpanzee walking around dazed or something. He did what Heddy said, but he didn’t seem to have anything left behind his eyes, like he was dead already and he knew it.

  Crow also didn’t really believe the cops didn’t have the back covered. They had to be out there, waiting, biding their time. Sharpshooters, no d
oubt, stationed behind the trees or lying in cover in the swaying tall, dead grass of the field.

  When up against the wall all he knew to do was what he had to do. His whole damn life it was like that, doing what he had to do, going where he had to go, taking down who he had to take down. And now he would die, he was sure of it, the way he had to die. No return to Leavenworth for him. No more cells, guards, and self-serving bastard cons. It was no kind of life, prison, death being preferable. Besides, this time they’d ask for the death sentence and they’d get it. He was in by god Texas where they whacked a dozen death row inmates a month with lethal injections. By god Texas loved death row. They loved whacking out the killers littering their state. What was the goddamn difference if he died today or a year from today? He’d hate to see by god Texas have the privilege when he could handle it himself, today, right now.

  At the back door, just before Heddy went ahead of him through it, he drew her back and into the circle of his arms. She smelled of fear-sweat. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, rubbing his face against her skin, taking her sweat onto him. He remembered briefly that it was at the back door of another house a lifetime in the past and a world away when he met her and they’d joined their fates. If he’d known it would have led him here, would he have taken her home that night?

  Yeah, he expected he would have.

  “We have to go,” she said, pushing him away.

  The gunfire had stopped and a solemn waiting silence had settled over the house. Suddenly they both flinched as they heard the voice on the bullhorn say, “Come out. No one will shoot. Surrender now and send out the hostages first.”

  Crow rummaged in his leather bag, digging deep beneath the manila envelope of money. He brought out the last of his speed, ripped over the foil and stuffed the crystals in his mouth. He tongued it from behind his molars, pushing all of it underneath his tongue where it bulged out his lower lip. It was the only time in his life he wished he had a way to shoot it straight into his veins.