by Noreen Ayres
Positioned now so I could see the orange Caltrans moving up the start of the dirt road, I asked, “Monty drive a white van?”
Simon just looked ahead. Wind gusted through the cab. It broke a tumbleweed the size of a beach ball free from a tilted surveyor’s post dabbed with red paint on the top. The weed danced across the road in front of us as though a ground squirrel raced intently within. I saw Simon’s glance flick to me, as it had more than once in our short ride, and I worried that he’d earlier seen me nosing in his truck. “You know why God made tumbleweeds, don’t ya?” Simon asked.
I said, “Don’t know that I’ve given it much thought.”
Flipping his cigarette butt out the window, he said, “Tell us which way the wind’s blowin’,” then rolled his eyes to me and grinned.
We dipped down a gully and cut around a windbreak of eucalyptus trees. I lost sight of the orange van as Simon stomped the gas. We bounced up onto a lip of asphalt where gravel pinged on the undercarriage, and I braced a hand on the gritty metal dash. “How do you think Dragonwick’s doing back there?”
“I don’t suppose she likes it. She’s got that stargazing disease, you know. It makes her head kink up, and she gets cranky.”
“Stargazing disease?”
“An infection. Makes her neck kink,” he said, rolling his own head on his shoulders.
“Did you bring her out to feed again?”
“No, they only eat ever-other week. I got one at home named Rosy, three feet long. A rosy boa. Brown spots on her, but they call ’em rosy, so that’s what I named her. Avalos brung her up to me from Mexico in a spare tire. Jest tucked ‘er in there. The dope dogs didn’t sniff her or nothin’. I sure hope Paulie ain’t brain-fried. He’s an idiot, but he’s a good guy.”
I asked, “Where the heck’s Monty?”
“Right ahead of us right there.” He nodded forward, but all I saw were cars moving crosswise on the main road we were teeing into. He made a turn in front of a woman with brown hair and dark-rimmed glasses who gripped the top of the steering wheel with both hands.
“What are you doing, Simon?”
“Oh, now don’t worry,” he said. “I bet I know where he’s going. You don’t see him up there? He just clipped the light.” Simon took the freeway on ramp going south. I looked back through the rear window as if checking on Dragonwick. The van with the two humorless deputies was not in sight. As Simon picked up speed, the snake bucket by my left leg vibrated.
Trying to be calm, I made small talk about the landmarks, hoping my road warriors were picking it all up: a new restaurant with a big sign; a banner announcing a town rodeo; how the traffic was still clogged going west on 91. At Sixth he got off and took a street called Hamner. He passed under the freeway, stepping hard on the gas at every opportunity. I convinced myself his hurry was just because he was a fast driver. He turned left on Magnolia and before long took a road with a sign that said it led to Temescal Canyon.
“Ever get out to Lake Matthews? Man, you can go up ‘long the bank of an evening, drop a line in the reeds, and haul up a load and a half o’ crappie,” he said. “You like catfish?” he asked over the sound of the Kentucky Headhunters on the radio.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Not ever body does. I use cat food, and if that don’t gag a gorilla I don’t know what would. You know what’s a good lure? Pork.”
“Really.” I was getting more and more nervous.
“You cut yourself a strip, make a little plastic skirt for it so the fish can see it good, pop on a hook. It floats along like a real live thing,” he said, waving his hand flat like a hula dancer.
“Where are you taking me, Simon?”
“Oh, ‘round about here,” he said, pulling off the road onto a denuded track running downhill between clumps of shrub called chaparral. Nearby lay a dry streambed where a bulldozer, now unmanned, had been busy making long sweeps in the light sand. A few dozen yards ahead was the white van I’d seen at Monty’s. The rear window was blacked out by plastic film.
Simon slowed near the small white boulders with foot-high blue dick blooming between. We stopped alongside a high sweep of limp-wristed pampas on the left.
“What would Monty be doing out here?”
“Well, let’s see. He ain’t exactly here.”
“Who’s in the truck, Simon?”
“Switchie tol’ me if you showed up I should stick to you like shit to a shovel. What you gone and done to get all these folks riled up? You seem nice enough to me.”
Before I could answer, the door to the van opened and the man in the light-colored hat got out, his arms away from his hips like a fast-draw artist. Switchie.
34
Look into the face of a killer and he looks like any other man.
“You’ll be an accomplice,” I said to Simon, hating the fact that I never collected the new carry gun I put a down payment on, a three-inch Smith with a shrouded hammer that wouldn’t hang up in your clothes. “Back up and take me out of here.” The male singer on the radio was suggesting warning labels for sad country songs.
“I wish I could do that,” Simon said, “I really do.” Behind him, the pampas swords held poised like green teeth in the mouth of a giant shark.
“Simon, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
But by now Switchie was standing a bit off my door. Despite the hat, the sun lit a band across Switchie’s face, transforming his eyebrows to bristly wheat awns. His eyelashes shone a bright, curled yellow, and his rather full lips looked scrubbed with Vaseline. “Well now,” he said, fixing his hard eyes on me. Pearlescent buttons ran down the front of his sea-green shirt. On his hip was a knife sheath stamped with gold letters reading RAVEN. “I guess you two are down for a picnic, that right?”
Anger topping fear, I said, “Fuck off, Switchie.”
“Now that’s real smart,” he said, staking his hands on his hips. “Get out.”
“I’m not going anywhere except out of here.” I said to Simon, “Back up,” but he only clutched the wheel as if ten thousand volts were running through it. I said, “This is a busted deal, Simon. Drive out of here.” But his pupils had shrunk to pinheads, as though the whole of him withdrew and shut the door.
I packed down my door-lock button and began rolling the window up, but because the handle stuck at a stubborn point in its rotation, I wasn’t fast enough. Switchie slapped eight fingers in the crack and with a mighty tug snapped the glass free. His feet lost purchase for a moment. Then he hurled the piece away.
I sailed over the blue snake bucket and skinny Simon, jerked up the door handle, and tumbled out, bringing us both to the ground in a pile of interlaced limbs. When I tried to unscramble, my knee hit Simon’s nose. A fan of blood poured between the spread fingers that flew to his face.
“Where are you?” I screamed into my mike. “He’s after me!” I tore open the top button and grabbed the mike. “He’s got a knife! Triple nine, triple nine!” I yelled, the call for a dummy in deep trouble. The mike and its wires dangling down my front I plunged between the close stands of pampas, their whipsaws slicing my bare arms. When I tried to clear the sandy bank, it crumbled beneath me. I heard myself sob, then got a foothold.
Switchie was through the blades in nothing flat, his hat still on, his wolf-bone jaws set hard. “God-damnit, help me,” I said, yelling into the mike as I scrambled higher. When I looked back, I looked into the terrifyingly calm, grinning face of Ralph “Switchie” D’Antonio just before he hitched up over the bank.
“You’re mine,” he said.
***
His words gave me a shot of power. I gained the crest of the hill when Switchie’s fingers dug so hard into my ankle I cried out. I grabbed dirt and a mound of stubborn weed, trying to keep from sliding back. He was winning.
Hoping for gravity’s advantage, I let go, flipping onto my back and coming down hard with my shoe heel, connecting on his forearm as I slid. Whack the ulna, didn’t the guy say? We plunged downw
ard, and Switchie started rolling. In the corner of my vision, his green shirt jumped like a barrel bounding down a hill.
When he braced himself, he went for the sheath at his thigh. He slapped his hip twice and glanced down, not believing the knife was gone. We both looked upward: On the hillside, Switchie’s hat rested as if a man was buried to his brows.
Simon was rocking from foot to foot near his truck, holding a yellow rag to his nose.
Now Switchie was on all fours on the incline, looking for the knife. I gave a furious yank on the mike and threw the mess away, then ran for the dozer, awash in fear and looking for any loose object I could use for defense. I felt my legs go weak, but forced myself up on the dozer’s push arm and then onto the tracks, scanning for any make-do weapon.
Switchie was on the way, walking slowly now. He didn’t have the knife in his hand, but he was removing his belt. Jesus, what is this?
We’ll play Ring-Around-a-Dozer. Simon still stood rooted, as though deciding if he should hike down the road to the nearest Texaco for a gallon of startup gas. Switchie startled me by smacking the belt on the crawler’s fender. I’d already checked the ignition for dangling keys, but of course there were none and I really wouldn’t know what to do with such a beast if I did get it started. Switchie hinked up on the dozer track and twanged the belt on whatever metal box or tank or canopy leg he found within striking distance, enjoying this.
Calling to Simon again, I used the words I didn’t mean to utter, words I’d previously told myself I’d never use if I were being assaulted because it might set an assailant to irreversible purpose: “He’ll kill me,” I said. But Simon just stood in front of his truck, his thin hair lifting in the breeze.
“Now, this is a fun little game,” Switchie said, bending toward me on the other side of the cab.
I began to shake. “Switchie, they know. If you had nothing to do with it, you’ll have a chance—”
“You’re a snitch. Rats have a short lifespan.” He shifted his weight, and I thought he was going to pop me with the belt. My eyes were glued to the right hand when the left fist sent me flying out of the cab. It made the sky go white as paper and all sound disappear save a high ringing. When I hit, a hundred needles drove down my tailbone. The battery rig at the small of my back had squared off on a rock, driving its hard punch home. Overhead, on the slopes, tree branches shifted their leafy loads like silent, synchronized cheerleaders. I made out two black beefy watchers on the limbs. I tasted blood and felt my tongue swelling on one side.
Before I could rise, Switchie was squatting on his heels near my shoulder, his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands dangling between his knees. “You stupid bitch. You messed way out of your league.” On the plane under his chin was a perfect mole.
I rose on one elbow as Simon came to stand at the rear of the dozer. Switchie looked over. “I’ve got an idea for her,” he said. And as he did, I grabbed his hand and bit down so hard I felt a knuckle slip free even above the scream. I rolled away, a torrent of pain flooding my spine, and scrambled to my feet.
He came at me with the belt, the buckle end cutting through the air like a singing discus. The metal hit me in the upper arm, creating a bottomless ache. The next swing caught me along the ear. I thought he’d sheared it off. I felt the blood leak down my neck, and ran, knowing I didn’t have a chance.
When he was close behind me, I dropped and rolled, wincing from the battery back, and counting on the greater strength in my legs for fending him off. I kicked, and every time he stepped closer to my upper body, I spun on my fulcrum of battery pack.
I was down, I was prey, I was gone, as he said. The look on his face was that of a satisfied winner. His left hand stood out from his side, the first finger solid purple where I’d chomped—purple as Joe Sanders’s after he caught it under his barbell. And the thought of Joe, his wonderful, quiet humor shining in his eyes, his good soul, his professional patience; how hurt he would be at this. My eyes stung and I felt the rage coming back. I flipped on my side and grabbed a stone the size of a paperweight and hurled it. It landed near Simon, standing there like he was watching a calf roping. Switchie jumped aside and laughed.
“They’ll get you,” I said thickly.
“I don’t think so.” He laughed and drew the belt’s length through his palm.
“Rollie Pierson. They’ll get you for that.”
“Oh-h-hh, that! What’d Angel do? You two girls have a good gab session? She’s a tricky one, she is.”
Now he picked up a rock and, just for fun, pitched it hard at me. I scooted, it bounced, but it hit me on the thigh on the rebound. He plucked another and took a pitcher’s stance, the rock in his left hand, the belt drooling from his right. Simon was on his heels in the streambed, facing away, one hand on the ground, his head bent so low between his shoulders it looked gone.
“Switchie, Switchie, listen to me,” I begged. “I’ll intercede for you. I will.”
He underhanded the rock at me, and it whisked by my leg, but there was no force to it, and I thought I’d won. I said, “Do you think Monty’s going down for any of this? Not if he can get you to. Come on, you’re smart enough to know that.”
He hoisted the belt and dug at the buckle, smiling. He said, “Isn’t that nice, you got that all figured out? You must think I’m a born-again fool.”
He untwined a thin wire from inside the belt buckle. A Gigli saw.
“Stop!” Simon called. His nose was twice the size it was before, and there was a sickened look on his face. I had hope. But then he turned and walked away.
Switchie said, “Let’s see now. We could do it this way. Or we could do it thataway.” He levered his bit finger out toward the bulldozer. “‘Member them cowboy movies where the Indians stand somebody up in a hole and run over him with horses? Wonder what a dozer blade would do to a cop-lovin’ bitch like you.”
I tried one last thing: “You murdered a man at the Avalos farm, Switchie. The cops know about that.” Slowly I stood up.
“See, that’s what I mean about snitches. Jesus, I hate ’em.” He looked away toward the sun and then brought his face back, smiling. “And he’s in the hospital now, just waitin’ there for his pal Switchie come visit him. Paulie worries. He fusses. He gets snockered. He blabs.”
I’d have to make a break for Simon’s truck. I’d have to hope he was so emotionally immobilized that I could just jump in and gun out of there. “Listen,” I said, trying one more thing. “I’m walking on up the road. Gone. Out of your hair. Good-bye. You go your way, I go mine,” and I eased back a step or two.
“You don’t get to call these shots,” he said.
From somewhere in the distance I heard the clipped bark of a dog. I thought of beautiful, red Farmer with his tongue lolled out and his ears back, bounding across the shell-littered plank on the north bluff of the bay, and I flashed on Mrs. Langston in her pastel jogging suit, holding the cane she was going to bonk Monty Blackman with if he wasn’t a legit visitor to my home. Where were you now, brave lady? I heard the dog again, and through the ache of my body and the feverish burn at the side of my head, I felt a renewal, like a second wind. “Come and get me, asshole,” I said.
Don’t wait for the attacker to come to you. That’s what one of the men in the café had said. You go to him. But I could not move. My head low, my teeth clenched, I merely growled; and as I did, a squawking came from the area of Simon’s truck, metal on metal, and I figured it was the driver’s door and that he was going away, Simon to his thing, me to mine, whatever fate would bring.
Switchie, smiling, faking me out, danced from one side to the other. “Run!” he whispered. “Run!” The Gigli saw, held through its ring by his good finger, bounced in its springy energy.
Just as he advanced on me, I heard Simon’s voice. “Let her go, man.”
Softly, without turning around, Switchie said, “Fuck yourself, joe. You don’t like it, leave.” Switchie moved left, unblocking my view, and then we both saw at the
same time little Simon with his big boa draped across his shoulders.
Dragonwick’s forward length dipped off the right shoulder but rose again, stargazing, as he earlier described. The boa’s head balanced above Simon’s own and traveled side by side like an East Indian dancer’s. Flick, the tongue. Then Simon lifted the snake like a set of flexible barbells and heaved it at Switchie.
In a flash, the thing wrapped itself around Switchie like nothing I’d ever seen. His arm that held the wire stuck out, the ring still looped on his finger. He fell completely to his knees from the weight and the surprise, and in a moment seemed clothed in a pale-green dressing gown. He’d become a snake totem, his face not even visible, so snake-embraced was he. I stood with my mouth open, and then the thing toppled over. The snake uncovered a golden patch of hair and with it a strangled scream. Switchie’s eyes bulged. Then the boa’s head rose, back, back, and struck forward like a fist. It came back again, its jaws open wide like a catcher’s mitt, and in an instant fangs clamped across Switchie’s face.
Switchie’s free hand, which still clung to the wire whip, flailed wildly. Each time the wire struck and retreated it ripped across the snake. Simon was yelling, “Stop! Stop struggling. I’ll get her,” but the beast spasmed smaller and tighter before our eyes. Simon the Dragonmeister stood in horror. His eyes were riveted to the hand that tore at his pet’s green carpet of scales.
“God, get it off him!” I yelled.
Simon moved forward and chopped karatelike at his pet just at the base of its blunt head. The snake released, reared, and bit again. The fangs tore through Switchie’s cheeks and across his mouth, losing their grip and leeching onto the side of his head. Then the snake snuggled, until a small stream of red eased from Switchie’s stoppered throat. He had ceased any sound. I don’t know if his eyes’ last light admitted the sheen of a helicopter belly as it crested the tops of the swirling eucalyptus, or if they saw a brighter light.
