Feast for Thieves

by Marcus Brotherton

  The first week of January 1947, Bobbie drove over to the parsonage early one morning and asked me to drive up to Rancho Springs with her to visit Cisco at the mental hospital. I was a mite worried about this, seeing as how Cisco had shot at me last time we met. But Bobbie stayed in constant contact with Augusta, and Augusta said Cisco was making real progress and wanted to see folks, even me. This time there’d be no guns.

  Bobbie didn’t want to use her jeep for the four-hour drive. The highway was too windy in a jeep, she insisted, even with the soft top put up. There was too much flapping and fussing, and it was hard to carry on talk. I checked the oil in Clay Cahoon’s old Chevy truck, filled up at Gummer’s filling station, and Bobbie and I headed out of town and up the highway. All was quiet for some time on the road. I kept glancing over at the girl, but she kept silent and looked out the window at the passing terrain. Finally about mile sixty she turned to me and asked a question.

  “You know anything about Creole?”

  “The language?” I checked the speedometer. The pickup rattled along at a cool 45.

  “I need to learn it before I can become a missionary in Haiti. Daddy and me talked it over, and the original plan was for me to head over to Dallas this spring to get situated before the language program begins at the university early in the summer. I need to take a full year of language study before heading to Haiti for the rest of my life. They call it a ‘compressed’ program due to its starting early. But there’s a big question in the mix now—everybody waiting until your trial is over to see what’s what. If you go to jail for any length of time, then the church will need to call a new minister, and that can take up to a year. Sometimes two. So I’ll fill in wherever needed until the new fella arrives. That may delay my studies some.”

  I needed to say something, so I offered, “It makes sense for the sake of the town,” and checked the rearview mirror. “But I didn’t know your daddy had thought this through already.”

  “My daddy didn’t. I did. I know the money’s here now for me to go right now, but I volunteered to stay on in Cut Eye as long as I’m needed. What I’m saying is I’m not going to Dallas just yet.”

  “Well, I guess they could call any ole fella over from the seminary for a spell. If I’m put in jail, then he could work as an interim if you still wanted to go right away.” I downshifted as a semitrailer passed us, and the wind from the truck’s wash shook our Chevy.

  “I guess they could.”

  “So why you want to stay here?”

  “Oh . .” Bobbie fiddled with the door handle. “There’s someone I want to get to know better before I leave Cut Eye for good. Just out of curiosity. Just in case.” The girl tossed her hair and looked out the window again.

  “Who’s that—Sunny? I appreciate all those toys you’ve made for her. I truly do.”

  The girl didn’t answer right away. She looked back out the window for a while in quietness. Then she said, “You’re fairly stupid, aren’t you.”

  A snort came out of my nose. “I don’t think so. And, no, I don’t appreciate you implying that I am. Not everybody can go to university like you.”

  “This has nothing to do with university, Rowdy.”

  “What then?”

  Bobbie started fiddling with her door handle again. “I got a call from my fiancé last week. He stayed with his folks in Houston over break, so we didn’t see each other at Christmastime. He’ll be finished with seminary at the end of May and said that would be a good time for us to hold the wedding.”

  “Oh. So you’re asking about the service, then. I’d do it, sure, but I’ll probably be in jail by then—remember.”

  “No, it’s not about that,” Bobbie said. “It’s about me asking my fiancé about what we would do after we got married. He said we’d go to China, of course, same as he has always been planning our futures. He didn’t ask my opinion of the matter, so do you know what I said to that?” She was looking at me now. Glancing at my hand on the gearshift.

  I shook my head.

  “I told him no.”

  “No?”

  “God’s calling me to Haiti, not China. I don’t want to go to China, and I’m not going to go, even if my fiancé does.”

  “So you’re prolonging the wedding plans then—is that what you mean by no?” I glanced over Bobbie’s direction. Her face was set like flint.

  “No. That’s not all. It means I don’t appreciate any man making plans for my life. Any man except God, that is.”

  The faintest twitch of a smile appeared on my lip. “So what’s this have to do with you calling me stupid?”

  “It means—” Bobbie grinned and glanced up from my hand to my face and back down. “I broke off the engagement.”

  The tile in the entryway of the hospital was colored green and beige, and I found myself staring at my feet while Bobbie talked to the receptionist. A buzz sounded from behind the glass partition, and a locked door opened to our left as if on command. Bobbie and I walked through the door and down the long hallway, heading for the room that the receptionist said was Cisco’s.

  For a state mental ward everything looked sane to me—no bars on the windows or nothing. It just looked like the inside of a hospital building with rooms and nurses. Off to our right lay a commons area with a sign that read, “Activity Room.” As we walked by I glanced through the windows. Most folks were in their bathrobes. A few were muttering to themselves and a few others were pacing up and down. Two fellas in the corner played ping-pong. Everybody had real messy hair.

  We kept walking. Cisco’s room lay at the end of the hallway on the right. Bobbie knocked on the door and Augusta opened it for us. She gave us both long hugs and thanked us for coming. Cisco was doing real well, she said, and invited us into the room.

  It looked like a regular hospital room, similar to where I’d stayed when I’d been shot in Holland. There was a bed and some machines with red lights, and on the wall was a painting of a sailing ship.

  Cisco was dressed in everyday clothes and sat in a chair by the window. The big man was reading and he looked up when we approached.

  “Hey y’all,” he said.

  “Hey yourself,” we said. Bobbie gave him a hug, and I shook his hand.

  Augusta pulled over a chair and offered it to one of us, but it was clear by the knitted afghan on it that it was her chair and she’d spent a lot of time in it these past months while caring for her husband, so we declined and both sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I’ll get right to it,” Cisco said. “They’re letting me out next week. I’m coming home to Cut Eye and the café. But before I come home I wanted to apologize for taking a shot at you, Rowdy.”

  “Don’t give it another thought,” I said. “You were hurting in a powerful way.”

  “I was out of my mind, that’s what,” Cisco said. “I’ve got some pills now, and the folks here have been awful good about talking to me about things. Helping me to see things in new ways, I mean.”

  Augusta beamed. “He’s doing real well, real well indeed.” She looked at me. “How’s the food at the café been while I been gone?”

  “Nothing’s the same.” I rubbed my belly. “We can’t wait ’til you both get back.”

  They both smiled. We was all being polite, we was.

  “Mr. Wayman?” Bobbie said. “I wonder if I could ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Looks like you’ve been doing a lot of reading since you’ve been here. Did you come to any answers?”

  “Answers?”

  “About God being responsible for Danny’s death.”

  I glanced at Cisco but his face showed no expression. Boy, that Bobbie could sure drive straight to the heart of the matter when she wanted. There was a long pause. Augusta squirmed in her chair.

  “No,” Cisco said.

  “Nothing at all?” Bobbie asked.

  “I’ve been doing a heap of reading, that’s for sure,” Cisco said. “And I can give you a lot of ans
wers that come out of books, that’s probably right. God’s not the author of sin; he didn’t dream it up, I know that. He allows things to happen for reasons we don’t understand, I get that. We need to have faith—of that I’m sure. But the answer is still no.”

  “I think that’s an okay answer to arrive at,” Bobbie said.

  Cisco sighed. “You know, me asking the question I asked of Rowdy just before I shot at him—the inquiry into why didn’t God do something to stop my son dying—there was nothing crazy about me asking that question. The only crazy thing was me shooting at Rowdy after I asked it.”

  We all chuckled at that, but Cisco stopped chuckling quickly, so we all stopped too.

  “I spent a lot of time reading the book of Job,” Cisco said. “There’s a fella who starts with everything and ends with nothing, and in the end God doesn’t give him an answer why it happened. So that’s the only sensible answer I came up with. I don’t know why God allowed my son to die, and I may never know the answer, and I’m not okay with that. I’m truly not. When I think of Danny, my gut aches deep within me, and I believe it always will. But God is God and I’m not God, and that’s the only answer a man is given.”

  We all stayed silent for a long time after that, even Bobbie. I was okay with Cisco’s answer—that in the end he didn’t have an answer.

  Augusta asked us to pray with him, and Bobbie asked Cisco if that would be okay, and Cisco said yeah, he never minded anybody praying for him. So we did. We joined hands, and Bobbie prayed for strength and peace for Cisco and Augusta Wayman. She thanked God for the blessing they were to our community. And she prayed that God would restore in some way everything that was ever taken from them, perhaps one day far in the future when God would set all things right again. I prayed too, but not nearly as long, and not nearly with so many poetic words.

  After we said amen we hugged again, all of us. Augusta promised she’d be back at the café soon. She patted my stomach and said she was worried I was getting thin.

  So, that was our trip.

  Bobbie and I walked out of the hospital room and down the long corridor and stopped only to thank the receptionist on the way out. When we came to the old Chevy truck I opened the passenger side door for Bobbie to climb up and into, then I walked around the back of the truck and got inside the driver’s seat. We sat in the parking lot of the state mental hospital, and I didn’t start the engine right away. I stared straight ahead for a while, and then I reached over and took Bobbie’s hand. Her hand felt small and soft and yet powerful and determined—all those things all at the same time, and I wished I could tell her more things about what I was thinking. Oh, I did. But I couldn’t right then, I couldn’t at all.

  She didn’t take her hand away, and we sat like that in silence for at least half an hour. Then, only because it was getting dark soon and we had a long way to go, I removed my hand from hers, started the truck, and drove out of the parking lot, headed back for Cut Eye.

  When we reached Highway 2, dusk fell and I switched the headlights on. The Texas sky was cloudy and darkened, and a twinge of apprehension ran down my spine. Sure, I wanted something I could never get. But the fear was more pronounced than the possibility of what might be transpiring between Bobbie and me, which I knew was an impossibility. Call it a premonition, perhaps, a feeling of dread. If I had any sense in me, we would never have started down that road at all.

  For the first stretch of highway heading south, Highway 2 is flat and straight, and you can see for miles in either direction. Our Chevy was the lone vehicle out. Once or twice a trucker passed, but that was it.

  Around mile sixty out of Rancho Springs we hit those hills and curves and the road grew darker. The Chevy hummed along at a steady 45. We came out of the hills just fine. The highway straightened out again and we were sailing back to town.

  But about a mile out of the hills, I noticed far in my rearview mirror the tiny yellow gleams of a set of headlights. The headlights flickered off for a moment. Or maybe I had just imagined them. No, those strange lights were there all right.

  There came that premonition again. That tingle down my spine. I felt the same way before we jumped into Holland for Operation Market Garden, a series of battles that didn’t go as well as we hoped they would. Back then I had every available weapon at my disposal—an M1 and enough ammunition clips to last for weeks. A sidearm and a trench knife and a musette bag full of supplies. But this dark night I was weaponless.

  I shifted the truck into high gear and pushed the pedal as far into the floorboards as it would go.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  What’s wrong?” Bobbie asked. “Doesn’t that driver behind us realize his high beams are on?”

  “He knows.” I kept my voice low, not wanting to alarm the girl.

  “How long ’til we get back to Cut Eye anyway?”

  “About three hours.”

  “Pull over and let him pass then.” Bobbie fidgeted in her seat. “He seems in an awful hurry.”

  “He’d pass us if he wanted to.” I kept my speed even.

  Bobbie craned her head around and looked again. “He’s about an inch from our bumper now. That fool could kill us. Please stop, Rowdy. Pull over and see what he wants. Maybe he’s in trouble.”

  “No, he’s not in trouble.” My voice stayed low.

  The first high-speed bump from behind felt like a little tap. Our Chevy twisted slightly, like it was pushed on the pavement. The second bump came harder. Like momentum was building and the car behind us planned to ram us if he hit us again.

  “Rowdy!” Bobbie yelled. “I’m scared. Real scared.”

  The car in back zoomed up behind us again, looked to come close enough to crash into us, then at the last minute veered over into the left-hand lane. The car switched off its lights and accelerated ahead. I tried to make out the type of car it was as it passed by. The night was too dark to tell, although I caught a flash of the paint job. The sides and doors of the coupe were white. The trunk and hood were a darker color. It looked like a brand-new 1946 Ford Super Deluxe Tudor sedan, although I wasn’t certain. I’d seen one of those back when I was drifting through Oakland. The police in that city used them as squad cars.

  Ahead of us, the car’s headlights came on again, and with it, the driver applied the brakes. We swerved to the side trying to get around him, but he swerved too and wouldn’t let us through, then he slowed to a stop right in the middle of the highway. We slowed and stopped behind him. I decided to see what the matter was, once and for all. He sat directly in front of us with the motor running. We sat directly behind him. Neither of us moved. I switched the headlights on bright to get a better look.

  A bullhorn showed at the driver’s window. The horn was pointed back at us. It crackled, and a loud voice boomed through the night air, though the voice sounded a bit garbled.

  “Driver and passenger, step out of the truck!”

  “That’s a police car, Rowdy,” Bobbie said. “I think it’s the sheriff from Rancho Springs. That’s okay, he knows my daddy real well.”

  “Stay in the car,” I said. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  “Driver and passenger,” came the bullhorn again. “Step out of the truck!”

  “Show yourself!” I yelled out the driver’s side window.

  The door opened and a figure stepped out. He wore a sheriff’s uniform and had his pistol drawn and pointed our direction, although his hat was pulled low over his face. He stood at his car and didn’t advance further. “Rancho Springs Sheriff’s Department,” the figure called out. “Both of you—get out of the vehicle.”

  “Were we speeding, Rowdy?” Bobbie said. “I didn’t think we were going that fast.”

  “No, this ain’t about speeding,” I said.

  The bullhorn crackled again. “On the count of three, driver and passenger step out of the vehicle. This is your final warning. If you don’t come out, martial action will be taken. One … two …”

  “He sounds serious, Rowdy. Let’s g
et out.”

  “Three!”

  I opened my door. Bobbie did the same with hers.

  “Driver, get down on the pavement with your hands behind your back,” the bullhorn said. The voice was distorted through the horn. “Passenger, step to the rear of the vehicle and place your hands on the bed of the truck.”

  Slowly I crouched to my knees.

  “Driver lay flat,” came the voice over the bullhorn.

  I could see by the light of my headlights that the man held a Smith & Wesson square-butt military and police revolver. That meant he had six shots to my none. I lay flat on the pavement and tried to keep an eye his direction. Bobbie went behind the pickup truck. The man walked over and snapped handcuffs on my wrists—that much I expected. But when he snapped them on my ankles too, I grew more than a mite alarmed. In a flash I rolled over, trying to sit up. He was already behind the truck, snapping a third set on Bobbie.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled. “Hey—where are you going with her?”

  Wordlessly, the figure pushed Bobbie up the blacktop. They passed on the shoulder side of the roadway, on the dark side from me. He was pushing her by the back of her shoulders and speaking low behind her ear. I doubted if she had seen his face yet. He put her in front seat of the Chevy truck and shut the door, then walked up to his patrol car, got in, and backed it up in a lurch so it was positioned behind the truck, although off to the shoulder. He got out and walked back over to where I lay, pulled out his revolver and shot twice over my head toward his own car. The patrol car’s headlights shattered. Again I tried to roll into a sitting position. I couldn’t see what he was doing now, and the cuffs held me fast.

  He walked back to his patrol car. The Ford’s grill was smoking, and the night was pitch-black. I heard him opening his trunk. A rattling sound came my direction. He walked up toward our Chevy truck and chained something fast around my bumper. Then he stood next to me. I moved to head-butt him, but he easily sidestepped me. Again he moved toward me, a chain in his hands, and I moved to swing into him, maybe take him down. A boot came into my ribs and I sucked in air. I felt his hands over my hands. Hot. Clammy. He drug me backward to the bumper of the Chevy truck and linked a chain around my handcuffs—the same chain that was tied to the bumper of the truck.