It’s pure Darwin out here in the bush. Only the fittest survive. That’s why we train and train and train until we get it right. That’s why I lived and others didn’t. My body and the training I’d lived with had taken over when my brain refused to believe I was still alive.
The myth that guns are the stuff of heroes and that they solve problems is stupid. Kids buy into that. They see it on the streets. They also see it in movies and on television, where the people who make films pass on a message that might makes right, that society is so violent only fools don’t carry guns. So the kids see the gangsters making the big bucks and they see their screen idols and rap stars carrying guns, and they conclude that they’re idiots if they don’t.
But carrying a gun does not make you Superman any more than it makes you invincible. Ask any of these armed young men who died along this dark Baja beach on this cold January night. There’s always someone out there who’s going to be luckier, or more trained, or deadlier than you. It’s a risk every time you pull a piece. When you use deadly force, it brings in a dimension most of us would just as soon leave alone. And it makes the odds ever greater each time you use it.
These young men were unlucky this time. They ran into me.
I wondered who would stand over me and watch me die on some cruel coast someday when my luck eventually ran out. Probably be a kid like one of these, no smarter or wiser or more practiced. Just luckier. I’d had a good run of luck in my life, and it still seemed to be running. And all I could do was run with it until it ran its course and came to an end.
Like all things.
41
The rest of the night was spent in hard labor, dressing the setting I wanted the police to find, and hiding the money I hoped they wouldn’t.
I found the body of the man I’d crushed with the truck, pausing only to confirm his death. It wasn’t a man, just another kid with a gun who’d watched too many movies. I wished I could have felt bad about his death. Maybe someday, when the shakes passed and the adrenaline charge faded, I’d think about him as a kid and not a target, and I might consider it. And maybe not.
He’d made his choices and taken his chances, heading toward this sandy death from the moment he’d come squalling into this world. My choices had also placed me here, but at least I’d had the experience and ability and the luck to choose my own path to this beach. The kid was a followed. I doubted he had done anything in his life but go along, only in the end making a stand, a stupid, futile one, but at least a stand.
You try, you fail. Sometimes they let you try again. It’s a tough world.
It took me some time to locate the gangster I’d knocked unconscious and rolled into a ditch. He was still out cold, but he was breathing. I cut the laces binding him and removed the gag, lightly slapping his face and rubbing his hands to arouse him. That, too, was part of my plan. Finding him, the authorities might be tempted to come to a conclusion that would shatter my construct.
“Wha … dónde … ?” He started coming around. I backed away, not wanting any more violence.
“Tienes inglés?”
“Solamente español,” he said. This one spoke only Spanish, if he could be believed.
I told him his companions were all dead, and outlined his choices. They were simple: Get up and get the hell out; remain here and I’d kill him.
I saw clarity come into his eyes. The boy was one of the lucky ones, and he clearly understood either my halting border Spanish or the tone of my voice, but he got up and only paused to look around to get his bearings before making a run for the beach.
I watched him go, jogging along the sand in laceless boots, heading north, toward Tijuana. Because he claimed only Spanish, the chances were good he had relatives there and could find shelter by morning. He might even avoid a connection to this whole affair. The road to Tijuana was a long one, but it was his country. He might have been a killer, might even have been one of the boys who shot de la Peña and Stevenson, but to me it didn’t matter.
Maybe he would return to the gangster world because that was the only thing he knew. And maybe he would think about this night, change his ways, enter school and become a teacher or a doctor.
And maybe pigs could fly.
I told myself I was getting soft and sentimental in my old age. Had this been war, his death would have been incidental and automatic, a detail to be stricken, a loose end to be cut. But my little war was over and the kid’s life was spared. He would probably take the low road, seeking, like water, his own level. But John Caine didn’t remove any chance of the better life. The boy lived to make his own choices, and better yet, he was no longer my responsibility.
When he disappeared, I paced the beach in measured strides, looking for the monuments that marked the buried money. Satisfied that we could still find the money, and convinced I’d left no trails leading to the site, I scrambled up the little mountain overlooking the lagoon and did not look back when I crested the peak and descended the other side.
The Range Rover sat like a faithful pony beneath the little tree. It started easily, the way her British engineers intended, and when I drove onto the Ensenada-Tijuana Highway, the engine accelerated beautifully. I felt bad about my plans for this car, but I didn’t think Claire would mind if it was her only loss and she got her money back.
Remembering from an old map in my head, I found the Ensenada-Tecate Highway, a two-lane road leading inland and north. I didn’t want to be found anywhere near Tijuana. If the police still looked for me, they would concentrate their search near San Diego. Tecate, about an hour east of the coast, seemed the better choice.
The sun rose over virgin mountains as I neared the border, its clear, clean light shining in my eyes. I found bottled water under the seat and drank a toast of Evian to the birth of a new day. It had been a close thing and I’d nearly been deprived of seeing this sunrise. Like the kid I’d set free, my life choices took me right out there onto the edge, sometimes dangling over it. Watching the sun brightening the tops of the pine trees, I wondered how long I could keep it up, how many more glorious sunsets and sunrises would come my way.
The answer was, and I thought it the proper one: I don’t know. All I could do was strive, and thoroughly appreciate each day until I’d used up my allotment and they didn’t give me any more.
Morning brought new danger, the Range Rover a bright, shiny target. I wanted to drive as close to the border as possible, abandon the car, and hotfoot it across the mountains into the United States. Thousands of people did it every day in this part of the world. My idea was to join up with a group heading north, tag along, watch what they did, and follow.
Of course, I was more than a foot taller than most of the pollos, the name given to the emigrants by the border dwellers, and the fact that I resembled them not at all might be a small handicap. But I could be charming when I chose, and nobody ever heard of norteamericano immigration on this side of the border. It just wasn’t part of the game.
It was more difficult than I thought.
Finding the road north was not hard. Groups of people carrying knapsacks and shopping bags strolled along the road, seeming to converge on the mouth of a wide gulch. I passed it twice, and when I discovered groups traveling the opposite direction, back toward that same canyon, I turned around, parked the Range Rover, and slung the Uzi under my jacket. I grabbed the Evian, took one last look at Paul Peters’s car, and followed.
The arroyo had no paved road, only a small footpath worn smooth by thousands of pairs of shoes, sandals, and bare feet. The path was lined with trash, the leavings of a civilization on the move. This little path, no greater than three or four feet at its widest, was a main emigration thoroughfare for an entire people. Whatever caused the migration was not my concern, but the effects and its detritus were everywhere. Families, couples, and singles joined the parade, but I was not welcome.
When I tried to follow, they stopped and squatted, watching me from beneath the brims of straw cowboy hats, black eyes avoi
ding the gaze of the big Yanqui with the bulge beneath his leather jacket. They wouldn’t move until I was out of sight. Wherever I approached, each group would repeat the action, squatting and staring at the dirt at their feet until I no longer violated their space.
I continued north. The path got steeper and the sides of the canyon more sharply defined. The air turned colder and thinner as we rose into the mountains. Patches of snow clung to shaded areas. A little stream now trickled through the bottom of the gulch, surrounded by pale green brush. I came upon several campsites. The occupants studiously avoided my presence until I was out of sight.
Sometime after noon the path divided, both forks heading north. I took the one angling east. The country looked rougher in that direction, a less likely place to encounter law enforcement.
I hiked without incident for two more hours, enjoying the scenery and wondering how far I was from the border, when I heard shouting ahead. I eased off the path and jogged parallel to it, moving carefully from bush to tree to bush, edging toward the sounds.
Clouds drifted in from the south, low and threatening. The temperature, already chilly because of the elevation, dropped another five degrees without the sun. I shivered when I removed my jacket to get at the Uzi, grateful I had a jacket, even if it was still sodden. Many of the emigrants I’d encountered on the path wore nothing heavier than thin flannel. If it rained or snowed, the wet cotton would not protect them from the cold.
I crept to the edge of a clearing, keeping low, inside the brush line. A line of ragged pollos faced a man wearing a filthy white ski mask with red piping around the mouth and eye holes. He pointed a blue-steel revolver, his arm extended like a classic marksman’s, and he shouted orders, his words accentuated by the barrel of the gun. My Spanish isn’t fluent, but I made out most of his words. He was an old-fashioned highwayman, and this was an old-fashioned robbery.
The bandit seemed to be alone. Lying still, I searched for an accomplice. Nobody moved within the clearing other than the participants. Nothing stirred around the edges except me.
I concentrated on the revolver, a small-frame pistol, most likely a .22. No fun to catch one of those, but it’s not in the same league as the 9mm I carried. And he only had six rounds. Fully charged, each of my magazines held thirty.
But I didn’t want any shooting. Looking around, searching the clearing, I soon found what I wanted. I backed off and silently made my way around the group until I lay behind them in a clump of weeds, facing the gunman.
The men and women had emptied their pockets and were now shedding their clothing. Something about it seemed strange, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. When they removed their pants, they revealed another pair underneath. They didn’t carry many possessions. They were so poor they wore everything they owned.
When they tossed the clothing into a pile, the bandit went through the pockets and checked the lining. Several times he presented his back to his victims and they didn’t move. Their passivity angered me. Had I been there, I’d have taken his head off the first time he turned away.
But I was here, and I couldn’t let this pass.
When he turned again, I crawled forward, finding a position behind a granite boulder, six feet from the line of pol/os. I watched him, and the next time he looked down at his feet, I was there, Uzi under his chin, lifting him off the ground with the gun’s muzzle.
“Lo siento!”
“I’ll bet you’re sorry, pal,” I said. “Arriba las manos!” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, having learned it from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but I thought I’d ordered him to raise his hands. He did, dropping the pistol, his hands shaking. I risked a glance at the pollos. Their hands were raised, too. They hadn’t moved.
It started raining, a cold drizzle.
Keeping the Uzi pressed against the bandit’s throat, I gestured with my free hand toward the pile of clothing. Not knowing how to say what I wanted to say was frustrating, but a couple of the men figured it out, looked meaningfully at each other, and bent down to sort out their belongings.
I gestured to the bandit’s pants. Fumbling, he undid them, letting them drop to the ground. Unlike the pollos, he wore neither spare trousers nor underclothing. Standing there, his pants pooled around his ankles, white skinny legs already starting to pucker in the rain, and without his gun, he didn’t look as fierce as before, and a nervous laugh bubbled from one of the pollos. It was funny, and it gave me an idea.
The immigrants joined in, pointing and laughing.
I backed away, pointing the gun barrel at his shirt, making signs to remove it. He complied, his hands shaking. Whether they shook from rage or fright or cold, I didn’t know and didn’t care. This man had been willing to rob a dozen people, to bully them with a gun, threatening them with deadly force. Would he have killed them? I didn’t know that, either. It didn’t matter, his intent made manifest by the aiming of the weapon.
When he had completely disrobed, he huddled naked in the clearing, facing the mocking group of men and women, his intended victims, trying to cover his shriveled penis and maintain his dignity. That’s difficult to do when you’re shivering so hard your knees knock. With the ski mask, he had seemed sinister. Without it, he was just another unshaven criminal, another pitiful example of the human condition. I wished my Spanish was good enough to force him to apologize, but I lacked the verbs. It wasn’t important, anyway. Their laughter was enough.
“Ándale, cabrón!” I shouted, pointing his way down the mountain with the Uzi’s barrel. Relief and disbelief flashed across his face in rapid sequence. He’d thought he was a dead man. That’s what he would have done, had our roles been reversed. He’d have killed me.
But then, I was having a streak of soft lately.
The bandit gingerly stepped across the clearing toward the trail, carefully placing his feet on the cold, rocky ground. He walked slowly, hands cupping his sensitive parts, shoulders hunched and quivering. At the edge of the clearing he stopped, turned, and looked at me. It was brief. For an instant our eyes met. I don’t know what he saw, but I saw only surrender. He was finished as a bandit. He might have been finished as a man.
Not my problem.
The immigrants were still too wary to approach me. I smiled at them, giving it my most ingratiating effort. They smiled back, as you would at a savage dog, or at a tiger you’d just seen slip out of its cage.
I realized the gun was still in my hand and put it under my jacket.
We stood facing each other, the pollos and me, but there was nothing to say and little means to say it. I waved and started up the trail toward the high country, toward the United States, where I belonged. They hesitated, unwilling to commit, and finally they followed, unsure of the man who had saved them, unsure if he was a good man or bad, unsure if they should follow him to an uncertain destination.
I didn’t blame them. I knew the guy well and I still had those same doubts.
42
Texaco materialized through the tops of snow-frosted pine trees, the first sign of civilization that assured me I was back on American soil. It told me that my thirty hours of hiding, dodging Mexican police and United States Border Patrol agents, had ended.
I tried to brush some of the filth and snow from my clothes before entering the little redwood-sided café that stood in the clearing next to the gas station. A third building, a private home, was the only other visible structure. After a day and a half of cross-country scrambling through thick brush and forest, the little settlement looked familiar and comforting. Satisfied that I’d cleaned up the best I could, I went inside, sat at the end of the Formica counter and picked up a menu. Three other people sat at the counter. Nobody occupied a table.
The waitress, a plump, worn woman in her mid-fifties, leaned against the counter, talking to a slim, weathered man about her age wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a plaid duffel coat. A white Stetson lay next to his elbow. Both had stopped their conversation and watched me when I came in the
door. The café was warm, and the smell of coffee and hot grease enveloped me like a comfortable old friend.
The waitress picked up a small pad and a pencil and edged over to my place at the counter. “Coffee?” She sniffed. I probably smelled as bad as I looked.
“Please,” I said. “Do you have steak and eggs?”
“Six ninety-five.” Her voice was flat, unfriendly.
“And orange juice?”
“One ninety-five.”
“Biscuits and gravy?”
“Comes with the steak.”
“Can I use your rest room?”
She hesitated. “Over there,” she said, pointing to a narrow corridor near the window that overlooked the gas station. “How do you want your steak?”
“Medium rare. Eggs over medium.”
She stood still as I got up, rooted to her place behind the counter, waiting.
I took a fifty-dollar bill from my wallet and laid it on the counter.
“Been camping?” she asked as I went to the rest room.
“Something like that.”
Inside the bathroom, I took off my jacket and shirt and hung them on the doorknob. The waitress’s hesitation was probably justified. The man in the mirror didn’t look like he could afford steak and eggs. He had a battered, dirty face, with enough scabs and bruises to have gone six rounds with Mike Tyson. The money changed my image. It established an ability to pay. Suddenly, I was a camper, not a homeless freeloader.
Using paper towels and the astringent liquid soap from the wall-mounted dispenser, I washed my face and hair and beard. The water in the sink ran gray for five minutes. It wasn’t a shower, and I wished I had a toothbrush, but I felt better. At least I no longer resembled the Unabomber. Well, I thought, looking at the haggard, bearded stranger in the mirror, still ragged, but clean.
Coffee would work wonders.
Steak would be better.
Sand Dollars Page 24
