Mules:: A Novel

by Jarred Martin

  The man leaned into the cab and watched her swallow the pills. “Better eat all them or throw em out before we go across, you hear?”

  Eliana nodded, not looking at him.

  He turned to Els. “Your turn, little hard ass. You sit right in the middle here. They told me to watch out for you. You’re gonna sit right next to me. You’re gonna be my little road buddy. How’s that sound?”

  Els moved to get in, but the man put a hand high on her chest to stop her.

  “Hold up a second,” he said, reaching into the bed of the truck. He pulled out a pair of cheap flip flops and her passport and handed them to Els. “Thems the kind of shoes they give you in prison,” he said, wiping at his mouth again. “You ever been to prison?”

  “No,” said Els, the single word echoing through the cell she had made in her mind.

  “Give em to you so you can’t run nowhere. Trying to run away in them shoes is worse than being barefoot.”

  Els put the sandals on and climbed into the truck. She leaned back against the seat, feeling the angry throb deep within her breasts.

  He climbed in after and shut the door. The garage filled with the smell of exhaust as he turned the key and one of the men outside hit the garage door opener mounted on the wall. They waited for the door to rise.

  The man behind the steering wheel turned to the girls. “Spears is what they call me. Don’t bother introducing yourselves, because I already know who you are, Elizabeth St.Claire and Eliana Leon. I’m running this show. I don’t play no games and I don’t take no shit. You got a pocket full of dope, I saw. That’s fine till we get close to the border, then everything goes. See ya later, out the fucking window. Anything that might get us tripped up. Either of you gives me any trouble,” he pulled a gun out from the back of his pants, a .45 revolver, Els couldn’t see the make, wasn’t that interested. “I’ll kill you. Don’t think I fucking won’t because of whose drugs you got. I’ll kill you easy. I ain’t scared of what they’d do to me, they can’t do nothing worse than things have been done to me. I ain't afraid to die, either. I ain't afraid of nothing. Shit, I’d kill myself if I thought it was a point worth proving, you best believe that. A man like that, he needs to be listened to if you want to get along. You need to listen like what he’s got to say is the word of God.”

  “I don’t believe in God,” Eliana said quietly.

  “Well you ought to, sugar, cause you’re talking directly to him. And right now God says, let there be silence,” and that’s gospel.

  Spears reached across the girls and opened the glove compartment. Among the registration, insurance and other papers there were some cassette tapes. Spears found one and put it in the deck and the voice of George Jones filled the cab through blown speakers, hissing bass, and tinny sounding.

  Spears wiped his mouth and backed out of the garage, down the drive and out the gate.

  “Buckle up, girls. We’re going back home to Texas.”

  THIRTY SEVEN

  The little white truck rolled on through the country. Spears drove fearlessly and liked the gas a lot more than the brake. They trailed dust behind them that didn’t settle until they were miles past.

  Els didn’t know how long they had been driving, the little digital clock mounted on the dashboard kept blinking 12:00 displayed in little green numerals. It had been hours, she guessed, though it was still morning. Besides the sun, she could judge time passing by how many times they had heard both sides of the George Jones cassette. It was four, and Spears was showing no signs of tiring of it. She now knew all the words to The Old Man No One Loves. The lyrics had confused her the first few times she heard it- she wondered why no one at the bar would believe the old man when he made completely-believable claims that he once had a wife that died and he had kids that didn’t visit him anymore. What was so outrageous about that? There must be information that is left out of the song, she decided.

  But now as the tape cycled through again and the sound of the twangy lead started for the fifth time, her mind was elsewhere. To one side of her was Spears, gripping the wheel lazily with his right hand at six-o-clock and the other hanging out the window. Els though of how easy it would be to sling the side of her hand into his adam’s apple, crushing his trachea. It was a bone, and Els knew it wouldn’t take that much to break it. But they were driving over seventy miles an hour and she also knew that it wouldn’t take much to wreck the truck and if not outright kill them all, then leave them severely injured in the middle of nowhere. It would be bad for her, worse for Neesha. She looked over at Eliana, staring out the window with stoned, glassy-eyed disinterest. Every few minutes her hand would feel along the bulge where the package was sewn into her side and she would trace the seam of stitches absently with her fingertips. Els understood how it felt having something foreign and painful inside of her, reminding her every second that it shouldn’t be there.

  Els leaned back, feeling a new twinge of discomfort every time they drove over the rougher parts of the road.

  She was in the cage now, in the black place. She turned from the bars and looked back into the darkness. She could not go forward, she could not escape, but she could go back, for the cage was endless.

  She walked back and let the dimness swallow her.

  Soon she was walking through the woods in Montana on a bright day in early summer. The ground was soft with dead leaves and pine needles, she could smell the earthen scent rising up from the floor. There were patterns rendered in the barks of trees and she followed them up like winding labyrinths until they were lost, indistinguishable among the branches. Birds sang high overhead, perched on limbs in the whirling motes of dust in the sunlight leaking in between the leaves.

  It was a beautiful day, but Els was uneasy. There was something nagging at her, something dangerous she had forgotten. Something was lost and she couldn’t remember what it was to look for it.

  Something had gotten away.

  Something had gotten away.

  Someone had run away.

  The old Indian man with the tan leathery skin and long white hair that daddy had seen walking on their land. She remembered now. Daddy had beaten him and locked him in the shed, but he was gone now and Els was searching for him.

  She came to a clearing and saw her father. He was looking up, up into the trees. Els looked up too and saw the Indian man. He was hanging from a high branch with a rope around his neck. Els looked at his face and his white hair hanging down in strings. She thought about how her thumb turned purple when she wrapped a string around it. The Indian man’s face was like that too, only the purple was so deep it was nearly black. He looked eternally surprised with his eyes bulging out, eternally thirsty with his dead swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth like a panting dog.

  He dangled from the tree, turning a little one way and then back the other, patches of dried blood sticking to his clothes.

  She looked away, down toward her father. He was looking up, his neck craned, flexing his rope-burned hands. Els didn’t know if he saw her or not. And then he spoke.

  “Come here, Elizabeth.”

  She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be near him, near his madness. She could smell it coming off of him like the stink from a gangrenous sore. But she had to go to him because it would be worse to disobey.

  “You don’t like what I’ve done, do you?”

  “No, daddy.”

  “You probably want to know why I did it, don’t you?”

  She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to hear whatever justification his diseased mind had for what he had done, she just wished he hadn’t done it.

  “A man keeps what he loves, Elizabeth. Whatever he has, whatever he cherishes, it’s his right to preserve it. This man tried to take that away from me. Some people can’t stand it, they can’t stand for a man to be alone so they want to watch him, to spy on him. They have to know what he’s doing. It’s the ultimate transgression to steal what a man loves. That’s why he had to die. It’s not enough fo
r him to die, he must be an example. He’ll stay there as a warning. And the others will know. There is no greater wrong than thievery, to take what a man loves most. What do you love, Elizabeth?”

  “I don’t know, daddy.”

  “Well someday you will know. And you’ll know it’s love because you’ll kill to keep someone from taking it away from you.”

  “Daddy, I’m afraid for you. I think the things in your mind seem alright to you, but you don’t realize how wrong they really are.”

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  “I don’t think you’re anything, daddy.”

  “Maybe I am. But if I’m crazy then that’s my legacy, and I’ll pass it down to you.”

  In the trees the leaves blackened and fell. The old Indian man stayed swinging in the branches, but the black leaves rained down and soon there was no light. There was no dead man. There was no daddy. There was only black.

  Els opened her eyes and looked out the windshield at the road ahead.

  There is no greater wrong than thievery, to take what a man loves, her father’s words echoed in her mind, drowning out George Jones’ voice. What do you love, Elizabeth?

  She knew now. She understood. She thought of Neesha.

  THIRTY EIGHT

  Sleep deprivation. That’s what they do to prisoners in Guantanamo, thought Neesha. That’s what he’s doing to me right now, but he’s going through the same thing I am.

  They were still at the card table. Neesha didn’t know how many times the sun had risen and set outside the window, but she had watched each time the Earth circled around to meet it like she was frozen and time was moving outside of her.

  They were playing Battleship. Stratego had been put aside days ago. Gusano’s outburst had ignited a fear in her that burned away everything but the game. And since then she been playing for her life and she was starting to win. She was a challenge to him, and Gusano knew it and he relished the competition. He was eager for it and the games had become a marathon contest. Neither of them had slept in days. They both stunk and Neesha’s underwear felt stiff and grimy and she expected a sound like peeling Velcro when she finally took them off. Gusano was becoming manic, keeping score over several pages of a notebook. He wouldn’t let her near the game boards when he had to get up to use the bathroom so they went together every few hours.

  He studied the configuration of pegs and little plastic ships on his board. She had taken out his destroyer and submarine, and his carrier had two hits. It would sink soon. He looked over the partition at her with a bleary, red-eyed gaze.

  “You’re slipping, I think. You’re not going to see this one through. It’s too much for you. You’re cracking under the pressure. I can see it all over your face.”

  Gusano, it turned out, was an egregious shit-talker.

  Neesha, who could easily keep up with him verbally, wisely chose not to engage him. She let her playing speak for itself, winning or losing with the same grim determination scrawled across her face.

  “B-9.” She said, her fingers already reaching into the bin of red pegs.

  “Hit,” muttered Gusano. Another direct hit to his carrier. “Carriers are easy to hit, they’re so big. It would be more surprising if you missed it.”

  Neesha nodded her head slightly, not taking her eyes off her own game board.

  “My patrol boat, that’s the one you’ll never find. I’ve placed it quite cunningly. It is going to win the game for me.”

  He was content for now. She was giving him a challenge. He sat silent, contemplating his next move. He didn’t make his decisions lightly and sometimes as much as half-an-hour would pass before he called out his next position. Neesha didn’t mind the wait, he could take as long as he needed. She hoped the game would not grow old for him, the stacks of games were diminishing and he didn’t seem to repeat them. She didn’t want to think about what would happen when the games were done. What new games he would want to play.

  THIRTY NINE

  Spears pulled the truck over to the side of a dirt road while George Jones was singing I’m a Long Gone Daddy, a song about a man walking out on a woman because she talked too much.

  They sat there a moment and let the dust catch up with them and then finally blow past. Past the windshield the sky was a deep unbroken blue and the land below it was flat dirt save for a distant sprawl of hills to the East.

  Els wondered if the man was waiting for curiosity to overcome her so she could ask why they had stopped. Although she wanted to know, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking.

  It turned out she didn’t need to ask, Spears volunteered the information. “That’s lunch,” he said and got out of the truck. He went around the side, to the bed and pulled out a cooler. He set it on the seat beside Els and opened it.

  “Go on. Reach in there an getcha a sandwich, hurry up, this ain't no goddamn buffet line.”

  Els peered into the cooler. There were maybe half a dozen white bread sandwiches in plastic bags and some juice boxes that a child would drink, with little white straws glued to the side.

  Els took a sandwich and a juice box. Though she hadn’t eaten in days, she wasn’t particularly hungry, but she was dying for a drink and the juice was cold in her hand and there were little beads of condensation on the cardboard.

  “Better give your friend one, too,” Said Spears, motioning to Eliana.

  Eliana could barely muster the energy to raise her head from the passenger window. She looked pale and her face was slick with sweat. She reached out to pull the door handle. With the door open she took the remaining pills out of her jeans pocket and dropped them into the dirt. There were only five of them left. She pulled the door shut and rested her head on the glass again.

  “I don’t think she’s hungry,” said Els.

  Spears tore into a sandwich. With nothing covering his mouth Els had an unwanted look at the digestive process in action. “I guess she ain’t. Looks like she took a few too many goofballs. She’ll be alright though, wontcha?”

  Eliana let out a low moan.

  “I usta know a girl who took all kind of pills. She lived with me, a’course I was a much more handsome man in those days, having a nose and lips. She’d take em and pass out in bed next to me every night. She said she had to quit takin em, though. Said they made her asshole hurt when she woke up the next morning.” Spears laughed.

  Els was worried about Eliana, she looked incredibly sick. How were they going to get through the border security if she could barely maintain consciousness? What if they got caught? What would it mean for Neesha? She thought she knew.

  Spears tilted his head back and drank. He had a plastic sports bottle with a nozzle that he squeezed and blasted a stream of water at the back of his throat and he made wet, gurgling sounds like he was drowning when he swallowed.

  Els peeled the bread back from her sandwich and looked at the little circle of bologna mortared to the other slice with a layer of mustard that looked almost neon in the bright daylight. She bit into one corner and forced herself to swallow.

  When Spears was done eating he dropped the plastic bag out the window and wiped his hands on his pants. “Alright, it probably feels nice to have something inside of you that nobody had to cut you open to put there. Lets put this ol engine back on the track.”

  He started the truck and pulled it back onto the road. The motor whined when he put his foot down on the gas and they were off once more, bouncing along a dirt road to Texas. Not long after they had taken off again, Spears punched the play button on the tape deck and George Jones’ voice started blaring from the speakers.

  “Do you have another cassette you could put in?” Els asked.

  “Yes I do,” said Spears “but you aint gonna hear em. This is the one I want to listen to and I’ll do it til smoke comes out the damn radio if I want to.”

  They rode over a deep pit in the road and it jostled them in the cab. Eliana moaned sickeningly as her head banged against the glass.

  “Ho
w long until we get to the border?” Els asked, nearly shouting over the music.

  Spears pointed to the blinking dash-mounted clock. “If the clock says it’s twelve now, then I think we’ll get there by twelve.”

  “Which part of the border are we going to be crossing at?”

  Spears turned down the music and took his eyes off the road to give Els a hard look. “You must think I’m your buddy or somethin cause I gave you somethin to eat, somethin to drink, but I aint. You aint got no friends here. You’re just the fuckin cargo. Cargo don’t get to ask questions about where its going. You just strap in and shut up. If you feel like saying anything else to me when I aint talkin to you, as soon as we get across to Texas, and I mean just as soon, I’m going to break your fuckin jaw. Won’t nobody care if I do, either. So just think about that the next time you want to speak up. Besides, if I was you I wouldn’t be in no big hurry to get across. I’d be praying to God that we don’t get there.”

  Els didn’t say anything again for a long time. She looked at Eliana, sweating and pale. Els tried to take her hand but she pulled it away feebly.

  Unknown hours and endless repetitions of the George Jones album later, Spears came to a small bridge and parked on it.

  He rolled his window down and reached behind his back where the gun was tucked into his pants. He pulled it out and used his jacket to wipe it down before throwing it out the window, over the side of the bridge and splashing down into the shallow water below.

  He turned his awful, butchered face to his passengers. “Empty them pockets,” he said to Els. “Your friend, too. Everything you got that aint picture Id, anything at all. It aint essential and I don’t want it in my truck no more, so say goodbye to it.”

  Els checked her pockets. They were empty. She looked at Eliana. “Is there anything in your pockets?” She didn’t respond. Eliana had gotten progressively worse as the hours had passed. She no longer looked merely sick; now she looked on the verge of death. Her hair was plastered to her head with sweat and her breathing was shallow. Her eyes were hazy and refused to focus, pupils dilated.