Crosshairs

by Harry Hunsicker

  “He was wrong. None of us will be okay if we stay around here.”

  She sat down in the lawn chair and sobbed.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bria.” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “Bria Toogoode.”

  “You know Petey?”

  “Yeah. Black Petey Gorman. He’s my cousin.”

  “Petey brought me to this place to help Collin. I failed, but the least I can do is get you out of here.”

  “I can’t.” She shook her head. “You’re an outsider; it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Whatever is going on is liable to get worse before it gets better.” I pointed to the burning trailers and black smoke.

  She turned and opened the door. “C’mon in.”

  The inside was decorated like a typical motor home, which, come to think of it, was not that far from how the gaudy house in White Settlement had been furnished: lots of shag carpets, loud colors, laminated wood, and smoked glass.

  Three other people were sitting in the main living area on a white leather sectional sofa.

  The young girl, Mary, who’d just been outside.

  A grandmother type, somewhere in that indeterminate age between ninety and a hundred and fifty, her hair as white as paint on a funeral home, eyes cloudy.

  And a woman about Bria’s age. She had bright green eyes and dirty blond hair and wore jeans so tight they appeared to be painted on and a sleeveless black blouse. By anybody’s definition, she was gorgeous, carrying herself with a certain haughty sexuality I’d seen during a thousand lost nights in bars the world over.

  Without thinking about it, I sucked in my stomach a little and ran a couple of fingers through my hair.

  She stood up. Looked at me and then at Bria. “What’s going on?”

  Bria waved her away and sat down on a chair by the door, fresh tears staining her cheeks.

  The second Traveler woman looked back at me, growled, and lunged, nails splayed, knees and elbows looking for soft spots.

  We went down on the shag carpet, me pressing my legs together and ducking my head, her screaming.

  “Let me explain.” I tried to grasp at least one limb to stem the attack.

  Slap. Scratch. Kick.

  “I’m trying to help.” I got hold of an elbow, squeezed right above the joint. The woman moaned and tried to wriggle free. I was behind her now, one hand maintaining pressure on the sensitive nerves of her arm, the other going for a bear hug.

  “Let me go.” She went for my shins with her heels.

  I squeezed harder on her arm.

  She stopped fighting, and we lay on the floor spooning in a lovers’ embrace. I could smell the shampoo she’d used that morning, the faint soapy odor mixing with perfume and sweat.

  “I’m gonna let you go,” I said, “and you’re not gonna fight anymore, okay?”

  She didn’t say anything, breathing shallow and rapid.

  I pressed harder still on the elbow.

  “All right, all right.” She nodded.

  I let go and pushed her away.

  She jumped up and ran over to the sofa.

  I stood, wobbly, feeling for additional contusions.

  The old woman and the girl hadn’t moved.

  “Who knows how to drive this thing?” I said.

  “I do,” Bria said.

  The room was quiet for a few moments.

  Finally the woman on the sofa said, “You’re a traitor, Bria. Bringing him in here like this.”

  “He’s not one of those who was shooting at us.” Bria moved to the window and peered out before jumping back suddenly. “And it looks like they’re back.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The window disappeared in a shower of safety glass as a boom blasted through the interior of the RV, followed by wind and smoke from the fires. Somebody was using a shotgun at close range, and I bet it wasn’t Petey.

  Bria fell to the floor, screaming.

  Her daughter hugged the grandmother and whimpered.

  The woman who had attacked me slid off the sofa onto the floor and belly-crawled toward the front of the RV. When she was even with where I lay, she pointed to the shotgun on my shoulder. “You know how to use that thing?”

  I nodded and crawled to the window. Popped the safety off. Swung the barrel out.

  Two guys I’d never seen before were about twenty yards away, each holding a weapon. The Backup was here.

  I fired twice, pulling the trigger on the Benelli so quickly that the reports sounded like one long blast. I thought one of the men dropped, but it was hard to tell because the Winnebago lurched forward as the echo from the second shot died, and the awning tore away, blocking my view.

  The RV hit a hole or something. My head whammed into the window frame, embedding three or four chunks of glass in my temple as well as disorienting me for a few seconds.

  More bumps. Women yelling. Swearing.

  I got up and grabbed the back of a captain’s chair bolted to the floor.

  Bria was holding her daughter now, both crying.

  I staggered to the front and fell into the passenger’s seat.

  The woman swore and yanked the wheel to the left. It was hard to see what she was trying to miss, as the view was all but completely obscured by smoke.

  “Damn you, yonks.” She jerked the wheel to the right.

  “Where are you going?” I braced myself as we hit another chuckhole.

  She didn’t say anything, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, lips tight across her teeth, eyes unblinking.

  The smoke cleared, and I realized what she was doing. Immediately in front of us were the two men, one obviously wounded, leaning on the other.

  “Ayeee.” She pressed down on the accelerator.

  I didn’t have time to react.

  Thump-thump.

  Like two bags of flour dropped on pavement, one right after the other. The big RV slowed for an instant but kept on going. A tiny spray of blood dotted the bottom of the windshield.

  She eased off the gas and turned the big rig in a wide arc, heading back to where it had been parked originally. After getting the nose pointed that way, she brought the RV to a stop and put the transmission into park.

  She slumped in the seat, shoulders and arms shaking. After a few moments she turned and faced me, a few strands of hair dangling in front of impossibly green eyes. “What do you think of that, boyo?”

  “Are you free this weekend?” I tried not to look at her cleavage. “Know a great Italian place in Dallas.”

  “Men. All the same.” She pointed to my head. “Hey, you’re bleeding.” I touched my temple and felt warm liquid oozing down my scalp.

  “Here.” She tossed me a paper napkin from Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “Thanks. What’s your name?”

  “What’s it matter to you?”

  “What do I call you?”

  She sighed. “You won’t be around long enough for that to be an issue, now, willya?”

  Bria stuck her head into the driver’s area, one hand on the back of each seat. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Gonna run again, are we?” the woman sitting next to me said.

  “Shit, Colleen.” Bria slapped the back of the driver’s seat. “Patrick and Collin are both dead and there’s blood on my baby.”

  “B-both of them are dead?” The woman sat upright in the driver’s seat.

  Bria pointed to me. “This one told me so.”

  “P-P-Patrick and Collin were my brothers.” Colleen turned to me. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t cry.

  “I’m sorry.” I almost sounded like I meant it.

  “I never trust you country folk.”

  “C’mon now.” I tried for a little levity. “We’re not all that bad.”

  “Really?” She pointed outside. “Then where are the police? Or the fire department?”

  I didn’t reply. She had a point. A firefight had just occurred on the outskirts of a midsized Americ
an city. Yet no sirens sounded in the distance. No helicopters from the local news team.

  “It’s true.” Bria nodded. “Nobody looks after the Travelers but other Travelers.”

  Both women looked at me for a long few seconds. Finally, Colleen said, “And why exactly are you here?”

  I told her what I had told Petey, which was the truth. A man was terrorizing a woman in Plano. Collin Toogoode was the one person who might ID him.

  But he was dead, which meant I was back where I started. If you didn’t count being stranded in a Winnebago with an ultra-hot, eminently doable Irish babe intent on ripping off my private parts while a crew of Fort Worth wiseguys were trying to kill us all.

  I wished I hadn’t smarted off to Felix and lost my job at the bar.

  I wished I’d never met Olson.

  I wished I’d paid attention in school so I could have gotten a real job.

  “Look.” Bria pointed to the front window. “It’s Petey.”

  “Well, I’ll be.” Colleen tapped the horn twice. “And here I was thinking that he was really gonna leave this time.”

  Petey looked like he’d gone a couple of rounds with a methed-up bobcat. Or Colleen. His silk shirt was in tatters, there was a rip in the knee of his jeans, scratches on his face. Shoulders slumped, he carried the shotgun by the barrel with the butt dragging in the dirt.

  “Hush, Colleen.” Bria made a shushing sound. “Don’t talk that way about your husband.”

  I looked at the blond woman. “Petey is your husband?”

  She nodded. “Unfortunately so. For almost fifteen years.”

  “That’s awfully young.” I did some quick arithmetic. She couldn’t have been over thirty, maybe thirty-two or-three tops.

  “It was a good match, between our two families.” Colleen crossed her arms. “And my father was a wealthy man. I came with a good dowry.”

  “This is true.” Bria nodded, a knowing look on her face.

  Petey had stopped about twenty feet in front of the Winnebago.

  “A dowry?” I tried not to sound incredulous. “You two are aware that we’re no longer living in the Middle Ages, right?”

  Neither woman replied. The girl in the rear began to cry, and Bria turned and went back there.

  Petey waved at us.

  I motioned for him to come inside.

  “What are you doing?” Colleen said.

  “Trying to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  I heard the door open, so I got up and went to the back. Petey stood by the entrance. He was sweaty and dirty.

  “What happened?” I said.

  He shook his head but didn’t reply, eyes wide and unblinking.

  “Petey?” I took a step closer. “You okay?”

  “He’s probably drunk.” Colleen appeared beside me.

  “I killed him.” Petey’s voice was a whisper.

  “Who?” I said.

  “The man.” He blinked several times. “The one who followed me.”

  “Troy Aikman?”

  He nodded.

  “Oh, for the love of God.” Colleen stepped forward, blood rushing to her face. “You killed a fookin’ football hero. There’ll be no rest for any Traveler. They’ll hunt us down like dogs.”

  Petey cowered like a man about to be hit. Based on the length of time I had known his wife, about seven minutes now, I could understand his trepidation.

  “The guy was wearing a Troy Aikman jersey.” I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from Petey. “It wasn’t really him.”

  The RV was silent for a few moments. I looked at the leather sofa. Bria, her daughter, and the old woman were sitting there, huddled together. Bria stared at me, as if trying to say something with her eyes.

  Petey broke the silence. “What about Collin?”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  Bria wiped her eyes.

  “We need to leave here,” I said.

  “We?” Colleen looked at me.

  “Okay, you, then.” I shrugged. “I’ll get my car and leave you all to—”

  “No, you’re coming with us,” Petey said. “You’re not like the others.”

  “No country folk’s riding in this trailer.” Colleen crossed her arms.

  “Yes, he is,” Petey said quietly. His voice was an octave lower.

  The air in the trailer seemed to get chilly as everyone quit speaking. Even the child stopped crying and looked at the man and woman facing each other. I wondered about the chapters in their book up to this point. I wondered what it was like to live such a cloistered existence, keeping totally to yourself and your own, never trusting anyone but members of the clan. I wondered what it was like to have a clan.

  “Look who’s growing a set.” Colleen smiled tightly. “All right, then, let’s go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Petey sat by his wife while she drove. Colleen said that there was a back way out of the compound and we’d leave through that exit, less chance of running into the bad guys. We’d get my borrowed VW later. If it was still there.

  I plopped down on the captain’s chair in the living area and stared at Bria and her daughter and the old woman.

  The shadows were long across the fields of the Traveler compound as we motored toward the back of the acreage. We entered another small grove of live oaks, and the failing sunlight flashed across the inside of the Winnebago.

  The burning RVs had begun to smolder now, the combustible material exhausted. I looked at my watch: 6:47 P.M. I was missing The Simpsons, yet another reason to detest my return to the life.

  The little girl stared at me for a long time before speaking. “Where’s my daddy?”

  Bria made a tsking sound and smoothed her hair, a gesture identical to that of Anita Nazari as she had touched her daughter the day before.

  I shook my head slowly, at a loss for what to say.

  The old woman said something in the strange language and patted the girl on her shoulder. I assumed that the grandmother was blind or nearly, her eyes opaque like watery milk.

  “Did Collin tell you anything before they got here?” I said to Bria.

  “Not much. He was a mess, drunk and scared out of his wits,” she said. “Couldn’t say anything except how we were right, me and Patrick.” She teared up again.

  “What do you mean?” I sat forward. “‘We were right,’ how?”

  “Getting out of the traveling lif—”

  The grandmother barked at the younger woman.

  “Never mind.” Bria shook her head. “I’ve said too much already.”

  The RV rattled over a cattle guard, disturbing a flock of grackles roosting in the trees. They took flight, a black sheet sluicing across the purple sky.

  I looked at the three generations of Traveler women, huddled together on a tacky white sofa in a tricked-out recreational vehicle that cost more than most houses. Strangers in their own land was a cliché that didn’t come close to properly describing them.

  They lived here and had put down roots, evidenced by their property, but they didn’t claim this place as their own. The road was home, wanderlust their curse or blessing, depending on your point of view.

  I thought of arranged marriages in the age of Internet dating and what it must have been like to have the world at your fingertips yet not be able to partake of anything it had to offer. To be able to travel anywhere you wanted yet never be able to leave.

  “You and your husband wanted out, didn’t you?” I said to Bria.

  She didn’t reply, just stared at her lap, lips pursed.

  “Nothing but trouble, you are.” The old woman stood up, holding on to the side of the sofa for support, her milky eyes angry now. She pointed a bony finger at me. “Nothing comes from country folk but heartache and misery.”

  “What’s going on back here?” Petey stumbled in from the cockpit area, bracing himself against the wall.

  “’Tis nothing at all, Petey.” I put on my best Irish brogue. “Just talking to pass away the time.”
/>
  He shot us a look, then retreated to the passenger’s seat in the front. The old woman sat back down, muttering to herself. Bria scooped up her daughter and headed toward the back, where I assumed there was a bedroom. The RV rattled over another cattle guard and then onto asphalt, a two-lane farm-to-market road.

  By the angle of the sun I could tell we were headed west and south, away from Weatherford, maybe toward Stephenville, or maybe just into the vastness of the middle part of Texas, narrow roads and small towns and endless miles of rocky soil and prickly hills trying hard to be mountains.

  The Winnebago picked up speed. The ride evened out and became smoother. Petey appeared for a moment on his way to the rear of the trailer. He returned a few moments later with a chunk of corrugated cardboard and some duct tape. The wind whistling through the interior of the RV stopped as he covered the shattered window before going back to the front.

  The old woman pointed her finger at me, motioning that I should join her on the sofa. I got up warily and walked over, sitting down a few feet from her.

  She leaned toward me. “Collin told me something.”

  “What?”

  “The man following him, he was the devil in the flesh.” She crossed herself.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “He had the eyes of Satan.”

  I frowned, trying to understand. The old woman sat back and crossed her arms, nodding slowly as if she had just imparted the wisdom of the ages to me.

  Bria came back into the living area, holding her daughter’s hand. “Grandma Patty, leave Mr. Oswald alone now.”

  “I’ll leave him alone when he tells me when my Sean is coming back.” Patty banged the top of the sofa with one hand.

  Sean? I moved back to the captain’s chair. Who the hell was Sean?

  “Oh, Grandma.” Bria sat down beside the old woman and patted her hand. “You know that Grandpa Sean died ten years ago this past February.”

  “My Sean is dead?” The woman covered her mouth and began to weep.

  Bria gave me a wan smile and rolled her eyes, a thanks-for-putting-up-with-my-senile-relative look. We drove on in silence, the twilight deepening. After another half hour the rig slowed and turned into the gravel parking lot of the Happy Cow Steakhouse, a worn-at-the-heels dump with wagon wheels lining the roof and a fake hitchin’ post in front. The parking lot was full, pickups and big American four-door sedans, not a foreign car in sight.