by Johnny Shaw
“Shouldn’t take long. Once he passes out, we’ll stroll right by him.”
Three hours later, the guy was still driving in circles and shooting out the window. He had made a leap from Metallica to Pat Benatar, but other than that, very little had changed.
He stopped the vehicle once. But the men’s optimism was immediately shattered.
The three men watched the soldier exit the driver’s side with a bottle in one hand, pistol in the other. He holstered the gun, unzipped his pants, and like a human funnel, attempted to pour alcohol through his body. He put the bottle to his mouth, lifted it vertically, and chugged as he pissed. He finished the bottle long before the piss. In fact, he made it all the way through “Hell Is for Children” and the very beginning of “Heartbreaker” with a steady stream. Upon completing his micturition, he gave the bottle a long stare and threw it down into the evaporating puddle of urine. Then with great ceremony, he saluted, withdrew his pistol, and executed the bottle at his feet.
He returned to his vehicle with the slow gait of a man who had murdered his best friend.
Then it was back to driving like a maniac and shooting willy-nilly, the somberness of the moment having passed in the moment it took to start the engine.
The three men watching on the hill were sunburned, sweating, and an hour past irritable. The ground felt like a griddle. Small flies stuck to the sweat on their arms and made them scratch uncontrollably. The water they drank to stay alive was excruciatingly painful on their cracked lips.
Harry strategized. “Screw this guy. Let’s go. He says a word, one word, we mess him up. I don’t give a dog turd he’s got a gun. I will kick me some butt.”
“He’s got to run out of gas eventually. Gas and ammo,” Ricky said.
“Those beasts got massive gas tanks and better mileage than you think. And the US Army ain’t never had no shortage of ammunition,” Harry said.
“We ain’t got a choice,” Frank said. “We try to go around, who knows if there’s even a way. And the last thing we need is a confrontation. Remember what happened with your buddy Cooker. We got to stay on the trail. Go down into the valley and then back up through there.” He pointed across the valley at a cut in the hills that looked like a natural switchback.
“How long we going to wait?” Harry said.
“Long as it takes. Impatience will always screw you. I’m the oldest, wisest, and least healthiest. If I can take it, you young ’uns can, too.”
It ended up taking another forty-five minutes. The Humvee rolled to a stop, the engine dying. Nothing for five minutes, and then the soldier got out, kicked one of the tires for about a minute straight, and shot six holes in the front windshield. He stared at the vehicle like it didn’t make sense, took off his boots, shirt, pants, and underwear, and fell into a fetal position in the shade of the Humvee.
“Get the burros,” Frank said.
The three men’s eyes never left the sleeping, naked soldier as they led the burros down the hill. They moved tentatively, ill at ease. The trail came out onto the valley floor about fifty yards from the dead Humvee. In single file, they made their way across the wash.
One of the burros brayed loudly. The men stopped, but the soldier didn’t move. When their hearts slowed to a reasonable rate, they continued.
Everything was hunky-dory until they reached the middle of the valley. Halfway between the two groups of hills, fully exposed and out in the open, the soldier rolled over.
Ricky, Harry, and Frank froze. They held the reins of the burros tight, pulling the beasts to them, brushing them lightly to calm them. Time stopped. It wasn’t the movement that spooked them most. It was the soldier’s face.
His eyes were open. He stared right at them. Unblinking, unmoving, and intense. Ricky felt like the soldier’s eyes were boring into him.
“What do we do?” Ricky whispered. “He’s looking right at me.”
“Nothing,” Frank said. “He ain’t looking at nothing but whatever he’s dreaming. His eyes just opened. He’s out.”
Harry leaned down, whispering. “We better hurry. In this heat, his eyes are going to dry out or a fly’s going to land on his eyeball, and it’s going to wake him up. We don’t want our mule train to be the first thing he sees.”
They picked up their pace and walked the burros the rest of the way. When they reached the switchback, they looked back at the sleeping soldier. He was in the same position. His eyes were still staring at the nothingness of the valley. But if you asked Ricky, he would have sworn that he had seen a smirk on the man’s face that hadn’t been there before.
They climbed the switchback and hiked into the far hills until they were out of sight and safe. As safe as one can be in the middle of an artillery range.
Darkness came a lot quicker than they had expected. They had lost most of the day waiting. To compensate and make up time, they tried to hike by the light of dusk. But after the third time Frank slipped on a rock, they quit for the day. They stopped in a flat but rocky area. They hadn’t passed cover in a while and would have to hope for no air patrols.
They kept the banter to a minimum and did their best to sleep, but the barrage of artillery fire started up again and continued through the night. Louder, closer, and more imminent. The ground shook and flashes of light appeared in their peripheral vision. The men slept in ten-minute increments. A reminder that the challenges that they had faced were nothing compared to the ones on the trail ahead.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The small, leaky rowboat landed on the Arizona side of the Colorado River. The first light of morning gilt the ridges of the Chocolate Mountains with a faint orange glow.
It was Cooker’s third trip over the river, and he couldn’t feel his arms from the shoulders down. Between the current and the quantity of shit the two braves and the squat squaw packed into the boat, it was a wonder they hadn’t sunk. The rim of the boat never seemed to get more than an inch above the water level. For all his rowing, the boat only crept inches at a time. The shoveling that he had done on the moat had toned his arms, but this was still brutal.
Cooker dragged the boat to the shore and looked at all the crap—not including the three heavy-ass Indians—that he had hauled over the water. Packed into backpacks, plastic bags, and canvas satchels, there was camping gear, canteens and bottles of water, a small amount of food, a coil of rope, some flashlights, assorted tools, toilet paper, and a couple of rifles.
Cooker sat on the ground and lit a cigarette. It almost made him puke, but after he caught his breath the light-headedness turned pleasant. He reached for a bottle of water, but the linebacker lady who he’d learned was named Mercedes kicked his hand. He shrugged, accustomed to the abuse. He watched the Indians do a shoddy job of covering the rowboat in brush.
“We brought too much, Mother,” Bernardo said. “We cannot carry all this without burros.”
“We have a burro.” Mercedes pointed to Cooker. The smile on her face brought back the fear she had induced back at the compound. “We each carry a backpack. Tie the rest to his body.”
“Worky is surprisingly strong,” Ramón noted.
“Oh, fuck that,” Cooker said. “I can hear you, you know. I ain’t hauling all this shit nowhere.”
“You are our prisoner. You must do what we say. It is the rules,” Ramón said.
“I have to do jack shit. I have to sit right here is what. Smoke cigarettes and count the grains of sand. I rowed your fucking boat. I showed you the way on the map. I’m done.”
“We made a promise to Papa Frank that we would watch you.”
“That don’t mean I got to carry everything. You guys are like three times my size and ten times stronger. Why do I got to be the one?”
Bernardo and Ramón looked at each other and shrugged. “I do not know. You just are. You are Worky. You work.”
Mercedes walked to Cooker and knocked the cigarette from his mouth with a hard slap. “Enough sass. Or do you need me to repeat all the possible—yet equal
ly painful—fates for your testicles?”
Cooker picked up the cigarette, took a deep drag, chucked it back on the ground, and stood. “Load me up, you fucking savages.”
After forty-five minutes, they had made little progress. Cooker’s body was so Beverly Hillbillies-ed with gear that only his face and the bottom half of his legs were visible. He trudged along the rocky flatland, driven by will and Mercedes’s goads.
“I have to rest,” Cooker said through raspy breaths. His stride moved as much to the side as forward, the Walmart waddle of a four-hundred-pounder.
Bernardo looked behind him. “I can still see the river. I can see the boat. We have traveled nowhere.”
Mercedes hit Cooker in the legs with a switch she had fashioned from some chaparral. “If we’re going to catch up, we can’t slow down. We need to speed it up.”
Cooker’s wordless answer came in the form of collapsing onto the ground. His hands never rose to break his fall, his face handling that job. Luckily for him, he had passed out before the impact occurred.
“Is Worky dead?” Ramón asked.
Mercedes gave him a kick to the calf. His body bucked a little.
“We should turn him over. Could drown in the dirt.”
Bernardo rolled him onto his back. Or rather, he rolled him onto the stack of backpacks and gear tied to his back. He looked like an overturned turtle with his arms, legs, and head suspended above the ground. Blood ran down his cheeks from what looked like a broken nose. Pebbles stuck to his face.
Ramón snapped his fingers in front of Cooker’s face. Bernardo poured some water in his mouth. Cooker woke up, choking and swearing.
“Worky lives,” Ramón said.
“Okay, we’ll each take a few packs. At least until he gets some energy back,” Mercedes said. “Men are always weaker than you want them to be.”
“I worry that Statler and Waldorf are frightened. They have never been on their own,” Ramón said to his brother.
They had redistributed all the gear and were making good progress. They had crossed the cheap fence and entered into the military complex. Mercedes mumbled something that sounded like, “None of this their land. Every right to go where we want.”
“I am sure they are okay,” Bernardo said.
“I love them,” Ramón said.
“I know, Ramón. I do, too.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Mercedes said, “they are donkeys. You two need to meet some girls. Find wives.”
Bernardo and Ramón looked at each other and shook their heads in the same way a teenager does when their parent uses the phrase “the bomb” (as in, “Was band practice the bomb?”).
The distinctive thump of helicopter blades rose in the distance.
“Lie down. Everyone. On the ground,” Bernardo yelled.
Ramón reached into his backpack and pulled out a huge tan tarp that was painted to look like the rocky terrain of the desert. Cooker and Mercedes were on their knees, Bernardo joining them. Ramón shook out the tarp like a laundered sheet and threw it over them. Bernardo and Mercedes each grabbed a corner, pulling it taut.
The four of them stayed facedown on the ground and listened until the sound of the helicopter receded into the distance.
Mercedes smiled and nodded. “You learned things growing that ditch weed.”
“We do not grow ditch weed. We grow quality,” Bernardo said.
“I’ll be the judge. Torch some up. Might take some of the ache out of these bones,” Mercedes said.
Bernardo and Ramón looked at their mother, at each other, and back at their mother.
“Don’t act so surprised. I was a radical. It’s part of our culture. Are you holding or not?”
Ramón nodded and pulled a big blunt out of his front shirt pocket. “I never knew you were radical.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“You boys lost?”
Ricky, Harry, and Frank looked up at the silhouette standing over them, the morning sun at the man’s back. The glare of the light didn’t allow for details, but the outline of the pistol in his hand was unmistakable. It gave focus to the situation.
The man didn’t wait for an answer. “Sorry to wake y’all. Don’t like it myself when someone disturbs my slumber. No nodding back off though. I ain’t a snooze button. Not going to get your asses back up in seven minutes. I got a gun. Alarm enough. It’s time to wake the fuck up.”
The men sat up, alertness coming quickly. An armed man will do that.
“You best stay put. If you got to move, scratch your balls, stretch, I’d suggest doing it on the slow side.”
Harry said. “We’re hikers. Hiking the Cargo Muchacho Trail.”
The man squatted down on his haunches, the pistol draped casually over one leg. With the sun at a fresh angle, the man became immediately recognizable. His face was blistered and burned red, but it was the drunk driver/shooter/soldier from the day before. His face was lean, his cheeks hollow. His eyes were bloodshot, deep-set in their sockets. His all-purpose redneck accent gave him away as a hillbilly of sorts, from the South or maybe the Ozarks.
The soldier laughed. “That right? Never heard nothing about a Muchacho Trail. Cargo Muchachos, the mountains, heard of them. They’re in California. You’re in Arizona. On Army land. You’re lost as shit, trespassing, and in all kinds of trouble.”
Harry tried to bolster his lie. “That’s impossible. We followed the maps. Maybe you’re the lost one.”
“I might be lost, but I know where I’m at. You boys have seriously shit the bed.”
“We got GPS.”
“Then it’s broke.”
“Secondhand, maybe. But it works fine,” Harry said.
Frank cut in. “We never passed any signs or fences. Are we really on a military base?”
“Not so much a base, but US Army property. Yep, you’re there.”
“You’re sure?” Frank said.
“Positive, sir. You want to know why?” The soldier smiled. His smile was villainous. The kind of smile a circus clown would have, if the clown was a serial killer preparing to castrate you. He held the smile, and then repeated the question. “You want to know why?”
“I’ll give. Why?” Frank said, waiting for the inevitable bad news.
“You boys didn’t just make your camp in the middle of the Proving Ground. You made your camp in the middle of a motherfucking minefield.”
Harry, Frank, and Ricky quickly looked around at the rocky ground surrounding them, their eyes frantically looking for some evidence to support the soldier’s claim. But for all their concentrating and squinting, they couldn’t see anything.
The soldier picked up some rocks off the ground. One at a time with delicate precision, he would lift a stone in front of his feet and set it to the left of his knee. Slowly and precisely. The clacking of the stones the only sound. With each stone, the pile beside him grew a little larger. When he had cleared the area, four small metal spikes were visible sticking out of the ground.
“Seriously?” Harry said. “Those things are all around us?”
“Is that thing live?” Frank asked.
“Only one way to find out.” The soldier smiled that smile.
“Why is there a minefield with live mines?” Harry said. “They let soldiers train near live explosives?”
The soldier shrugged. “Maybe ’cause it was dark or y’all are stupid, but the sign that you walked past, it says, ‘Danger, Live Ordnance, Mine Testing Range.’ They ain’t training no soldiers, they’re testing different kinds of land mines. Blast mines, fragmentation, flame mines, bounding ones, chemical mines, the whole megillah. Trying to discover all the different ways to blow up the enemy. You and your mules just made yourselves the enemy. Don’t know how you made it smack-dab to the middle without exploding yourselves up, but I wouldn’t bet on that kind of luck getting out.”
Ricky spoke for the first time. “You made it to us. You walked through the minefield without getting blown up. You must know where the mines are.”
<
br /> “I’m US Army trained, son. I can get you out of here the way you came.”
“You followed our tracks,” Frank said.
“What if we don’t want to go back that way?” Harry said.
The soldier picked at a flaky piece of sunburned skin on the side of his nose. “Now why wouldn’t you want to go back the way you came? Seems like a group of lost hikers would want to get themselves unlost.”
“Can you get us to the east edge of the minefield?” Harry said.
“Our friend has been in the sun too long,” Frank cut in. “We’ll go back the way we came.”
The soldier held up his hand. “Might be time for me to call the MPs. Let them work out this situation.”
“You ain’t going to do that,” Harry said.
“I ain’t?”
“What’re you doing, Harry?” Ricky said.
“You’re not,” Harry said, and then mimicked the man’s accent. “You want to know why?”
The soldier looked at his pistol, then back at Harry, waiting for the answer.
“Because you’re like us. Not where you’re supposed to be. Because, I’m guessing, your orders weren’t to get drunk and shoot at bottles and demons. Because you’re just another fuck-up. Join the club. And because—like every other son of a bitch on the planet—you like gold.”
The soldier studied Harry’s face. His expression made it look like thinking hurt.
After what felt like forever, the soldier stood, saluted, and announced, “Specialist Third Class Clement Harwood. Call me Wood. I’ll listen to what you got to say.”
Wood turned out to be a good guy. A crazy son of a bitch, kind of scary, definitely on the edge of cracking, but who wasn’t when it came down to it. His demeanor was even more off-putting. His crazy didn’t manifest itself in twitches and nervous tics, but in an unnatural calmness that felt cold and passionless.
Harry gave him the spiel, a kinda-sorta version of the truth. The short version he told Wood was that they had discovered a map to a gold mine. None of them had anything to lose, so there was no point in trying to stop them. If Wood let them on their way, Harry promised to make it worth his while. Or if he was so inclined, Wood was welcome to join their excursion, offering a full share.
