Badlands

by Peter Bowen

  Du Pré heard a car coming, fast. He turned around. It was one of the tan government sedans. The car raced up and the driver slammed on the brakes.

  Ripper.

  He jumped out. His eyes were wild.

  “Where is that little shit?” he screamed.

  Du Pré looked at him.

  “Pallas?” he said.

  Ripper saw Jacqueline up the street. He ran off, yelling.

  Harvey was sitting in the passenger seat. He had his face in his hands and he was laughing so hard he was choking.

  Du Pré walked round and he stood looking in the open window.

  Harvey leaned back, choking.

  “What she do?” said Du Pré.

  Harvey started to laugh again and he could not speak. Every time he would look at Du Pré he would dissolve again.

  Du Pré waited.

  Harvey gasped and he mopped his face with his handkerchief. He picked up a folded newspaper that sat on the seat beside him. He handed it to Du Pré.

  It was one of those rags you see in supermarkets, with headlines like “Six Hundred Pound Baby Born to Chinese Giants.”

  This one did not say that. It said, “FBI Agent to Wed Ten-Year-Old.”

  Du Pré went round and he got in the driver’s seat.

  “There is a bar in Cooper,” Du Pré said. “We go there now a while.”

  CHAPTER 36

  THE MINT SALOON IN Cooper was a dark and quiet place. The backbar was ornate, the walls covered in mouldering elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and deer heads and racks.

  Harvey came back from the bathroom where he had soaked his face in cold water.

  “The director loves headlines like those,” said Harvey.

  “He fire Ripper maybe,” said Du Pré.

  Harvey shook his head.

  “Only if Ripper did marry Pallas,” said Harvey.

  Du Pré shook his head.

  “Maybe he better, get it over with,” he said.

  “That kid,” said Harvey, “how the hell she managed that I do not know.”

  Du Pré sighed. He had a stiff gulp of his ditchwater highball.

  “OK,” he said, “so what is with the people out there?”

  “Nothing,” said Harvey. “We’re both waiting. No threats, no shots, no attempts by anyone to escape. We will have to sit there until they come out.”

  “What if they shoot?” said Du Pré.

  Harvey shook his head.

  “Even then,” he said, “we’ve had enough trouble. Short of them all charging us, we don’t do anything but wait.”

  Du Pré sighed.

  The door opened and a couple of burly ranchers came in. They were dusty and smeared. They were still wearing their roping gloves.

  The woman behind the bar looked up and she drew a couple beers.

  “How’s the buffalo business?” she said.

  “We got them sons of bitches stuck off in a box canyon,” said one rancher. “I think we’ll just shoot ’em.”

  “Lost four miles of fence my place,” said the other. “I’d about sue them kooks over there to the Eide place. Hard to do when they’re all surrounded by the feds.”

  “I’d like to find the peckerhead who started ’em runnin’,” said one.

  “No shit,” said the other.

  “String him up by his goddamned nuts,” said the one.

  The ranchers drank their beer and held out their glasses.

  “Oughta just go on in that damn cult’s antpile,” said the one.

  “Lot of children in there,” said the woman.

  “Them feds’ll screw it up,” said the one rancher.

  “They screw up anything they touch,” said the other.

  “Amen,” said Harvey.

  The ranchers gulped their beers and they went back out.

  Du Pré sighed.

  “Good thing they didn’t recognize you, Gabriel,” said the woman behind the bar. “Been too busy chasing them buffalo, watch TV that much.”

  “Yah,” said Du Pré, “well, Helen, I did not start that.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “No, it was not me,” said Du Pré. “I was chased, this bull buffalo.”

  “Well,” said the woman, “they’re raisin’ hell with the fences and all and folks around here were pretty fed up with them crazy assholes early on. Come around, they did, tried to buy up some of the ranches here.”

  “Anybody sell?” said Harvey.

  “Not that I know of,” said the woman. “Course, nobody’d known that the Eides had either.”

  Harvey looked at the pressed-tin ceiling. About a thousand fly-specked dollar bills hung from it.

  He looked at Du Pré.

  Du Pré got up and went over to the bar.

  “You know somethin’,” he said. “It may be it is dangerous they got another place, no one knows.”

  Helen looked at him.

  “Just rumors,” she said, “the Lucas place. They’d been havin’ a lot of trouble, making the land payments. I dunno for sure, but … well, Lucases used to come in pretty regular and they ain’t been. It’s that way somebody sells out, you know, they get ashamed.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  Lucas place, couple ranches over from Hulmes, got the water right on Coffee Pot Creek.

  Du Pré went back to the table.

  “Well,” said Harvey, “I guess that we had better go on back. I got this siege to run.”

  They went out and got in the government sedan. They turned around and headed back toward Toussaint.

  “Wonder if they found the little monster yet?” said Harvey.

  Du Pré shook his head.

  “She won’t come out, it is dark,” he said. “Pallas is smart and she knows she is in big shit, this.”

  “I love that kid,” said Harvey, “and I thank all the gods she is somebody else’s.”

  Du Pré grinned at him.

  “She stir it up good,” he said, “ten years old. Me, I maybe live long enough, see her at twenty.”

  “The mind reels,” said Harvey.

  Toussaint was visible in the near distance.

  A TV helicopter was landing across the road from the saloon.

  Du Pré drove on.

  He pulled around in back of the saloon.

  “I think I’ll wait here,” said Harvey. “If you happen to see Ripper, tell him I stand ready to be his best man.”

  Du Pré nodded. He went in the back door of the saloon.

  Madelaine was still sitting on her stool behind the bar. Jacqueline and Ripper were down at one end, glowering. A few reporters were off at the tables, drinking and laughing.

  Madelaine looked up at Du Pré. She nodded.

  “You gutless fuck,” she said. She smiled.

  Du Pré shrugged.

  “These …” he said, jerking his head at the reporters.

  “Non,” said Madelaine. “Just bored, fly around, look at the buildings, there is nothing to see there. Crazy people. Those poor kids.”

  A cell phone chirred. One of the reporters flipped open the little black dingus. He put it to his ear.

  “Let’s go,” the reporter yelled.

  All the people at the tables ran out the door.

  Ripper got up and came to Du Pré.

  “Where’s Harvey?” he said. Du Pré jerked his head toward the back door. Ripper ran out.

  Tires squealing. The car roared off very fast.

  “Now something,” said Madelaine.

  Du Pré nodded.

  Jacqueline came down to join them. She looked tired.

  “Find her?” said Du Pré.

  “Non,” said Jacqueline, “she is layin’ real low. Smart kid.”

  “Others are all at my house,” said Madelaine, “filling sandbags.”

  “Ver’ funny,” said Jacqueline. “You know what that little shit did? She call that cheap newspaper tell them the story. They don’t believe her. She got this tape, Ripper, him talking our house where he is. She mess with the ta
pe, having him say things. You know, take a few words here, some there. She play it over the phone, those shits at that paper. Now they are curious. They come here, we don’t know it, get the story, everybody knows Pallas, she has decided she is marrying Ripper, a few years she is old enough. So people they say yes, of course, they think it is a big joke …”

  Du Pré nodded.

  Me, I give her that tape recorder she says she wants one, small and good, tape bird calls. I think she means rap music.

  Don’t bring it up now.

  Madelaine laughed.

  “Ripper, he is not so happy,” she said.

  “Me, either,” said Jacqueline. “Goddamned kid.”

  Benny Klein came in. He looked into the gloom and saw Du Pré.

  “They’re comin’ out,” said Benny.

  Du Pré whirled on his stool.

  “Yeah,” said Benny. “They’re comin’ out now, hands over their heads, and all.”

  Du Pré got up and went out to his cruiser. He started the engine.

  “Grandpère,” Pallas yelled. “I am in the trunk, you let me out!”

  Du Pré ignored her. He drove off fast.

  CHAPTER 37

  DU PRÉ PARKED BACK away from the police cars and the National Guard carriers.

  “Grandpère!” said Pallas.

  “You!” said Du Pré, “you be quiet You stay there I maybe be an hour, more. You are in deep shit.”

  “OK, Grandpère,” said Pallas, in a very small voice.

  Du Pré got out. It was cloudy, so Pallas wouldn’t bake too badly in the trunk. He walked up toward the searchlights banked on either side of the gate. Harvey and Ripper were there. The armed and armored men around the perimeter were all standing and looking on.

  The Host of Yahweh was filing out of the big metal buildings. They blinked in the light. Small children were wailing. The men wore the odd billowy shirts, the women long gray dresses and bonnets. They marched four abreast toward the gate.

  Du Pré watched as they walked past, led by cops. The people were directed to an open meadow and asked to sit.

  Du Pré walked up to Harvey and Ripper. Another agent was filming the Host marching out of their compound. Du Pré stared hard at the faces of the men, but he didn’t see any he knew.

  Some were older, some younger, some of the women had white hair and glasses, some of the men were bald, well into their sixties. Some of them were quite young. All of them were silent.

  They filed past in fours, or in families, fathers and mothers carrying little ones or keeping older children in line. The TV cameras were rolling. There was a bank of thirty of them, all with their technicians glued to the eyepieces and sound gauges.

  “It would help,” said Harvey, in a low voice, “if we had any idea just who we were looking for.”

  The crowd walked fairly swiftly. The last few people passed, and then the cops began to rush the metal buildings.

  “I don’t see that guy,” said Ripper, “that smoothie who was cutting us up so bad on the tube.”

  Harvey nodded.

  The cops got to the buildings. They had drawn weapons. One opened the door and the others rushed in.

  A few minutes passed.

  The big sliding doors on the side of one of the buildings were pushed open.

  “Search every box bigger’n one for shoes,” said Harvey, “for people. After that, search ’em all. Tapes, discs, what-have-you.”

  A small black dog ran out through the open sliding doors.

  Harvey looked at a computer in his hand. He walked over to Du Pré. Faces appeared on the screen. The doctor who had been so eloquent after the woman had killed herself.

  Tate.

  The avuncular man with the long brown hair who had said that the Host of Yahweh had nothing to hide.

  “None of them, at least that I saw,” said Harvey.

  “Parker?” said Du Pré.

  Harvey shook his head.

  Du Pré hadn’t seen her, either.

  Harvey sighed.

  “This,” he said, “is a fucking mess. We have to bus all these people somewhere and interview all of them.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  “We look like your friendly jackbooted persecutors,” said Harvey.

  Du Pré nodded.

  “This isn’t right. Something isn’t right,” said Harvey.

  Du Pré looked at all of the modular homes and trailers. They seemed lifeless. The Host of Yahweh had stayed out of sight in the big metal buildings. Search teams began to go through the homes and the long white double-wides.

  Harvey slapped his thigh with his hand.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Here I sit, waiting for one of them to tell me they’ve found a dead cop.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  An ambulance started up its sirens and it came roaring up the road and shot down to the compound. The attendants jumped out and grabbed a wheeled stretcher and then went in the sliding doors.

  Harvey listened to his radio, the earpiece in.

  He frowned.

  “Found Parker,” he said, “unconscious. Otherwise all right. Jesus Christ.”

  A medevac helicopter came over low and landed near the metal building. The ambulance attendants wheeled the stretcher out and lifted it into the helicopter. The blades began to swirl faster and the machine lifted up. When it was five hundred feet up, the pilot kicked in the jet engines and soon it was a speck on the horizon.

  Du Pré looked over at the houses. Men were dashing in and out of them, bursting in a door and then appearing on the far side headed for another.

  “Maybe they got out,” said Du Pré.

  Harvey nodded.

  “Thing about electronic gear,” he said, “is that electronic gear can make it do things it ought not to.”

  “I will be at Madelaine’s,” said Du Pré, “or the saloon,”

  Harvey nodded.

  Du Pré walked back down to his cruiser. He opened the trunk.

  Pallas blinked at the light.

  “You,” said Du Pré, “maybe I just shoot you, dump you in a coyote den, let them eat you. Your mama, she get hold of you, she skin you.”

  Pallas sat up.

  “Maybe,” she said, “I hide out a while, Madelaine’s.”

  “Madelaine mad at you, too,” said Du Pré.

  Pallas thought about that.

  “I am thirsty,” she said.

  Du Pré lifted her out.

  “OK,” he said, “I got some water. Maybe we take you, Benetsee’s. You be safe there.”

  Pallas stumbled a little. Her leg had gone to sleep.

  “Hot in there,” she said.

  Du Pré lifted her up and put her in the front seat. He got the water jug from behind the driver’s seat and gave it to her. He got in and started the cruiser and turned it around and drove on back toward the road, the blacktop.

  “You are some trouble,” said Du Pré. “You make trouble for Ripper, you make trouble, your mother.”

  Pallas drank water and stayed silent.

  She put the cap back on the jug and set it on the floor.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me, I did not think they would buy it.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  “Me,” he said, “I never see your mother so mad.”

  “She get plenty mad,” said Pallas. “You are not around her then.”

  “I am around her now,” said Du Pré. “She bite your head off, piss down your throat she is mad.”

  Pallas began to cry. She blubbered.

  “You,” said Du Pré, “quit that shit. I know you. You are not sorry one bit. You got Ripper half crazy, you set him up good.”

  Pallas quit snuffling. Du Pré turned off on the bench road that led to Benetsee’s. Pallas stayed quiet.

  “Maybe,” said Du Pré, “you leave Montana, maybe you grow a mustache, wear glasses, get a job.”

  “Where?” said Pallas, weakly.

  “Bolivia,” said Du Pré. “It is a good place you are Butch
Cassidy the Sundance Kid.”

  Pallas laughed.

  “Pret’ good movie,” she said.

  “Yah,” said Du Pré. “Remember they get shot to shit the end.”

  “Yah,” said Pallas, “so what I do.”

  “Hide out, Benetsee’s,” said Du Pré. “I come get you when Jacqueline she is more worried than she is mad.”

  “OK,” said Pallas.

  Du Pré got the cruiser up to speed.

  “You!” he yelled.

  Pallas looked up at him.

  “I am a ver’ proud grandpère!” yelled Du Pré.

  They laughed and rolled along the dirt road.

  CHAPTER 38

  “YOU TAKE THAT LITTLE shit to Benetsee?” said Madelaine. She was sitting in her kitchen, drinking chamomile tea.

  Du Pré looked at the ceiling.

  “I don’t rat her out,” said Madelaine. “Jacqueline get a good grip on your nuts you will sing like a capon you don’t talk fast.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  “I think,” said Madelaine, “maybe I got this idea.”

  Du Pré looked at her.

  “She is like them other kids some, but she got something else, too,” said Madelaine. “I talk, her teacher, the school. They got the computers there. Other kids they are doing kid stuff, ten, you know. Learning about science, a little …”

  Du Pré rolled a smoke.

  “Pallas, she is liking math,” said Madelaine.

  Du Pré nodded.

  “You don’t got a checking account, Du Pré,” said Madelaine.

  Du Pré shook his head.

  “Now,” said Madelaine, “here is this thing, you tell me what it is.”

  She pushed a sheet of paper over to Du Pré. Du Pré looked at it.

  “Them two bars there,” he said, nodding, “they are that equal sign.”

  “Yah,” said Madelaine, “so what is the rest of it there?”

  Du Pré looked at it.

  “Alphabet,” said Du Pré.

  “Yah,” said Madelaine, “what alphabet?”

  Du Pré shrugged.

  “How many languages you got?” said Madelaine.

  Du Pré laughed.

  “English, Coyote French,” said Du Pré.

  “Yah,” said Madelaine, “me, too. This is another language, though, Du Pré. What is it?”