The thin cloud cover present since early morning had burned off, leaving a heated layer of smoggy air blanketing the street. Something else was different too. I felt my skin tighten and knew it wasn’t from the change in temperature after Young’s cold office. I’ve always had that ability, even as a child, to spot trouble long before it becomes visible. One of my earliest memories involved a man robbing a liquor store, near the small central-Texas town where I was born. Our home at the time was a four-room shack on the ass-end of some property my father’s people owned in western McLennan County. That branch of my family was a dour lot, creased and dusty from the sun, the earth, and the fatalistic attitude that whatever waters they tried to fish, someone had long since been there and caught everything worth keeping. Still, that was where they threw their line.
One August afternoon, when the sun made the air shimmer and each breath felt like an oven blast in your lungs, Daddy and I stopped at a bottle shop after putting out a new salt lick for the cattle in the south field. I was probably three or four years old, and remember holding a pack of those candy cigarettes they had back then, waving them at my father in hopes that he would buy me a treat. He ignored my pleadings and stood there at the counter, talking to the owner of the store.
As I waited in front of the candy display, the cowbell hanging over the front door jangled and a young man entered. He was ordinary for the time and place, dirty jeans and a denim shirt with a greasy baseball cap. To this day I remember the way the bill of that cap had been creased and the name of the seeds advertised on the front. I’d like to say that the eyes gave him away but those too were unremarkable. I knew, though, as soon as his boots squeaked across the hardwood floor, he was there for trouble. My insides felt still and nervous at the same time, as butterflies fluttered across my stomach. The man walked to the rear of the store and grabbed a six-pack of beer. As he returned to the front I tottered my way to the other side of the candy rack, some portion of my cerebellum already wired to seek cover.
By the time he reached the counter, he had a firearm drawn, an old Colt .45, a John Wayne gun. After that, things moved slowly, like they were underwater. There were shouts and yelling and hard, strange movements from the adults. My father stepped back, looking for me but keeping his eye on the robber. The owner held his hands up as the man grabbed money from the register. Daddy dragged me to the rear of the store, away from the danger at the front. It became very quiet; the only sound I was aware of was our feet scuffling on the floor as we made our way down the aisle. I had a clear view of the man with the gun. The hammer cocking back sounded like a piece of dry kindling breaking on a cold morning. The sound of the gun firing was loud and soft at the same time, kind of like the feeling I had in my stomach when the man entered the store. There was no mistaking the thumb-size hole that appeared in the owner’s chest and the way he fell backward into the rack of cigarettes. After that, I don’t remember much.
My skin was clammy and those same butterflies skittered in my diaphragm when I walked out of Aaron Young’s office. The street felt different than when I had entered, only twenty minutes before. There were fewer people milling about. Those that were out weren’t smiling anymore. They kept their eyes down and hurried along. Before I could
reach the parking lot, Nolan pulled my truck up to the curb. She rolled down the passenger’s window. “Get in.”
I complied and she drove away. “Two Cadillacs been making the circuit for the last few minutes. Four people in each one. All the windows rolled down.” She had a revolver resting in her lap. “They’ve been checking out this truck.”
“When’s the last time they went by?” I pulled my Browning from its holster.
“About thirty seconds ago.” She stopped for a light. “There. In the next block. There’s one of them.” A ten-year-old Seville, dented and colored half gray and half rust, idled in front of a liquor store fifty yards ahead. The tires were new, bigger than normal for a car that size. Nolan put one hand on her gun and said, “How do want to do this?”
“I want to get the hell out of here is how I want to do this.”
“Okay then.” The light changed and she punched the accelerator. “Hang on.” We blew past the Cadillac at forty miles per hour. At fifty we hit a pothole and our heads banged the roof of the truck. The Seville followed on our tail, no more than two car lengths behind. The driver avoided the potholes that we seemed to hit. Nolan swerved to miss a battered Pontiac and almost collided with two small children crossing the street. “You want me to hit a side street, see if I can lose them?” She held on to the wheel with both hands. We were going sixty, as fast as we could on a narrow, cluttered roadway.
I looked back at the pursuing car. “This is their turf, we’d be goners on the back streets.” So far the occupants of the Seville hadn’t flashed any artillery, just given chase. We entered a stretch of Second Avenue where there was nothing, just vacant land pockmarked every few hundred yards with the occasional abandoned building. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Maybe they’re just trying to run us out of their neighborhood.” I didn’t believe that even as I said it.
“I think we’re gonna need a new option.” Nolan’s voice made me
turn back around, just in time to see the front windshield star-burst from a bullet. The second Cadillac, an early eighties Coupe deVille, blocked the road ahead. I could just make out a figure in the backseat, poking a handgun out the window. I saw a flash and heard a pop but the bullet went wild.
“Hold tight,” Nolan said, her teeth clenched. Before I could respond or grab anything, she stood on the brakes and jerked the wheel around. Pickups aren’t Porsches and balk at moves like that. Mine was no exception. We went up on two wheels before plopping back down. The force of the impact knocked me into Nolan so that my head was in her lap. I figured that was what saved my life because the next shot from the Coupe hit the rear windshield, right where my skull would have been.
“Hope you don’t mind if I stay down for a while. It’s a little dicey up top.”
A horn sounded and Nolan wrenched the steering wheel. Her elbow hit me in the ear. “How about you get up here and do something constructive, like shoot back.”
“How am I supposed to aim, with you driving like this?” I sat up and punched out the rest of the rear window. Wind whipped through the cab of the truck as the two Caddies raced behind us. We were about to be out of the deserted section of Second Avenue and back where we started. The Seville led and a hand holding a pistol snaked out of the passenger-side window. Two flashes but both shots missed. I steadied my right arm as best possible and let loose four rounds in quick succession, aiming for the radiator. Good luck shined upon us because a cloud of steam billowed from the front of the car. The engine seized and they pulled to the side. “That’s one down.”
With a screech of the tires, we were on two wheels again, turning left onto a side street. I slammed into the passenger’s door, where my bruised cheek connected with the glass.
“Traffic up ahead. Didn’t have a choice,” Nolan said. The street was
narrower than Second Avenue, lined now with small houses. Cars and trees speckled both sides of the road. Nolan slowed down to about fifty, still way too fast. It was a matter of time before we wrecked. The Cadillac followed but not as closely. We blew past a sky blue house on a corner, the trim a fresh white. A thirty-year-old Chevy sat in the driveway with an old man behind the wheel, adjusting his seat belt before driving off. As we passed, he eased the antique into the street. The Seville hit the gas and tried to make it, but got clipped by the Chevy. It wobbled, sideswiping the cars on either side of the street. We gained ground, rounded a curve, and were out of sight of the car.
“Make a turn,” I said. “Let’s lose ’em.”
Nolan hung a right, then immediately another right. I was looking out the rear window so I didn’t understand why she had stopped. “Why are you—” I turned around and saw the dead end.
We were on a half street, only five homes long. The road ended in a tangled mass of trees and bamboo. The houses appeared to be vacant. We sat silent for a few seconds until we heard the squealing tires.
I opened the door and said, “Out of the car.” I grabbed my cell phone and we ran to the second house from the end, on the left. It was the most overgrown. Ten years’ worth of unkempt hedges hid the front of the house. We melted into the vegetation and rotted wood at one end of the porch, trying to be still. We waited. It didn’t take long.
I’d barely pushed the safety off my Browning when the Seville eased around the corner. It stopped at the end of the street and a lone figure hopped out. He slipped behind a tree and pointed a rifle at the truck. Another figure exited from the other side of the car and took up a position on the opposite side of the street, rifle in hand. They signaled each other and opened fire on the truck. I recognized the distinctive chatter of the AK-47. The shooters were well trained, and concentrated on the cab of the truck, a careful and controlled barrage of bullets that destroyed where we’d been sitting moments before.
The shots ceased and they approached the remains of the truck. The
man on the left was the first to reach it. He whistled and waved his hand when he saw the empty cab. Two more figures got out of the car and the four of them spread out. They were preparing to search the surrounding houses.
“Ready or not, here they come.” I gripped the pistol tighter.