July 5, 1976, Las Vegas
TO GET TO WHERE I FIND MYSELF NOW, IT’S EASIEST TO PICK UP where I last left off.
After the fight with the bikers—the Fiends, they’re called—at Beaumont’s place, we buried the girl Jesse had wrapped in the blanket. I helped with the digging, the work a relief from worrying about what might be coming next. It struck me that it was the second grave I’d dug in less than a week.
Jesse said he and Edgar would be sharing my room with me. As he was pointing Czarnecki’s .45 at my head at the time, I didn’t argue. First, though, he had me park near a motel where he and his brother had been staying so he could pick up their belongings.
As soon as he was out of sight, Edgar started to talk. He’s slow somehow, retarded, and seemed to be saying any old thing that popped into his brain. He told me he hit a jackpot on a slot machine, was lucky that way. He said he wanted to go to Dallas because someone called Icky Twerp showed Popeye cartoons there. He asked if I had a CB radio and said I should get one and he’d show me how to use it.
When I could finally sneak a word in, I asked who the dead girl was. He said she was Jesse’s sweetheart and one of the Fiends had killed her. He said she was nice but dumb, and something about her stealing a baby. He was back on cartoons by the time Jesse returned and handed him a pillowcase with a cat in it. At that point nothing was strange to me.
The brothers started bickering before we’d even settled in my room. I bandaged the cut on my head, ate a sandwich, and took a shower to wash the blood off myself. The sun was up when I finally lay down with my Bible, but morning didn’t bring me back to life. I nodded off within minutes and slept for a long while.
I was sore when I woke—my head, my back—and still at a loss as to how to handle the situation I was in. I had a powerful urge to escape the room even if only for a few minutes. Jesse let me walk out to the pool.
The sun was a blazing arc in a bleached sky, and the only other people braving the hottest stretch of an ungodly hot day were a white couple on chaises in the shade of an overhang. They were drinking beer and watching their kids play in the water. I pulled a chair into another sliver of shade and sat facing the room, so if Jesse checked, there I’d be.
The children, a boy and a girl, took turns dunking each other, the drone of traffic drifted over from the Strip, and a maid’s radio hiccupped a Mexican song. I’d never felt so alone surrounded by so many people. A hot wind ruffled the water and rolled one of the couple’s empty beer cans across the deck. It ended up under my chair.
“Sorry about that,” the man, a freckle-faced redhead with permanent sunburn, called out. He brought over a full can of Coors and said, “Take this. You’re gonna cook in all those clothes.”
I thanked him.
He asked if I was winning big.
“I’m here on business,” I replied.
“We’re just passing through ourselves,” he said. “On our way to California. I start a job in Bakersfield next week.”
I tore the tab off the beer and raised the can. “Good luck to you,” I said.
“I expect it’ll be a big change from Oklahoma,” he said.
“For the better, I’m sure,” I said.
“You from there? California?” he asked.
“San Diego,” I said.
“I hear it’s nice there,” he said.
His wife, as redheaded and sunburned as him, shouted, “Rodney, haul the kids out. We’ve got to go.”
“Yes, hon,” he drawled and winked at me. “I hear divorces come easy in California too,” he said.
He rounded up the kids, his wife draped towels around them, and the family dashed across the parking lot to their room, the little boy crying, “Ouch, ouch, ouch,” with each step on the hot asphalt until his dad scooped him up.
Keep those babies close, I thought. Keep them safe.
I don’t believe any beer I’ve ever had tasted as good as that one. Probably because I thought it might be my last. I was fairly certain Jesse was rushing me to my doom, and I couldn’t see any way out of it that wouldn’t lead to something worse.
This feeling grew stronger when the door to the room flew open and Jesse appeared. Smoke rose off him as he stepped into the sun. He flung Edgar’s cat into the parking lot, where it screeched and turned to ash, then he and Edgar grappled on the threshold before he pulled his brother inside and slammed the door.
The wind whirled the cat’s ashes into a dust devil—all the maid saw when she poked her head out of the laundry room. I sipped my beer slowly, not wanting to return during a battle between the brothers.
Edgar was asleep when I got back, and Jesse was playing solitaire. I crawled into bed thinking I’d get more sleep, but it never came. Every tick of my watch was like a hammer on a railroad spike.
As soon as the sun went down, Jesse and I went out to the camper to talk to Beaumont. Jesse quickly got out of him where the Fiends were and told me we were going after them that night. I asked if he had a plan. He didn’t. More than ever it looked like a suicide mission.
Back in the room, Jesse laid out the guns. He loaded the shotgun and slid a fresh magazine into the .45.
“I hope you’re planning to let me carry something,” I said.
“You won’t be any use to me unarmed,” Jesse said.
He stowed the guns in Czarnecki’s duffel, all except the old man’s .45, which he stuck in his waistband like a liquor-store robber. He put on his jacket, I put on mine, and it was time to go.
We pulled Beaumont out of the box so he could steer us to the motel. The King of the Rovers, shaking in his soiled disco suit, was a pathetic sight. Jesse hustled him up to the cab and locked him to the bolt on the floor. I drove.
The Fourth was in full swing, fireworks going off everywhere. The loudest had me jumping like I was being stung by bees. We needed ammunition. Jesse directed me to a Kmart. He took the keys before going into the store and reminded me he had our address.
Beaumont began rocking and moaning behind his gag. He seemed to be in some distress. Worried that if anything happened to him Jesse would blame me, I slipped the bandana out of his mouth.
“Why are you helping this man?” he said.
“Why did you try to kill him?” I replied.
“He was responsible for the death of a woman I loved.”
“And now you’re responsible for the death of a woman he loved.”
“He lies,” Beaumont said. “Don’t listen to him.”
“Should I listen to you?” I said.
He lifted his shackled hands, showing them to me. “In your heart, you know that you and I, even with our differences, are more alike than you and he. We have the same blood. We’ve known the same hatred, the same fear, the same humiliation.”
“You might have once been like me, but you’re not anymore,” I said. “You’re a viper now, from the same nest as the rest of these monsters. I’ve got nothing in common with any of you.”
“Help me escape and I’ll make you rich,” Beaumont went on. He negotiated like a man still in power, still in control. He has no idea how much his situation has changed. There’ll be no more fancy houses, fancy clothes, fancy cars. No more respect or obedience. As Sally’s replacement, he’ll be imprisoned in that box day and night except for the few hours when I pull him out to finger his own kind for extermination.
Some might get a kick out of seeing the tables turned on a beast like him, might revel in holding the future of such a devil in their hands. I don’t. It’s just another burden added to my load.
“You’re wasting your breath,” I said. “Money can’t buy anything I need now.”
“Jesse is using you. He has no loyalty to you.”
“And you do? You won’t betray me like you betrayed him?”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Too late for that,” I said and put the gag back in his mouth.
When Jesse returned he loaded the revolver and the automatic with the bullets he’d bought. The click of the cartridges sliding into place sent a chill through me. He put the automatic to Beaumont’s head and pulled the bandana down.
“Which way?” he said.
“East toward the lake,” Beaumont said. “On the old highway.”
We were soon rolling through open desert. One star lit another, and the sky filled quickly. We saw only one other vehicle, a car going the opposite direction. Now and then we passed the ruins of a gas station or motel.
“This man tried to enlist me to help him kill you,” Beaumont said out of nowhere, addressing Jesse.
I clutched the wheel tighter but didn’t speak.
“He’s going to dust you and your brother at his first opportunity.”
“What do you have to say to that?” Jesse asked me.
Inwardly, I was panicking, but my voice was calm. “I told you I’d never do anything to put my wife in danger,” I said.
“Such a touching lie,” Beaumont said.
“Which of us is more desperate?” I said.
Beaumont hissed when Jesse smacked him with the gun. He replaced the gag and told him to grunt when we got to where we were supposed to be. We drove in silence until a red arrow appeared ahead of us, part of an old motel sign. Beaumont made a noise and pointed with his chin.
“Keep going,” Jesse said to me. “Don’t slow down and don’t look over.”
As I sped past the motel, I glimpsed a cluster of cabins and a gravel parking lot. Half a mile down the road Jesse told me to kill the lights and take my foot off the gas. The truck slowed without me using the brakes, and I steered onto the shoulder.
Jesse released Beaumont from the bolt in the floor while I unlocked the camper. The wind had died, and the night was hot and still.
“You sure you want to take this sonofabitch with you afterward?” Jesse asked me when he brought Beaumont back. “We’re done with him, can dust him right now.”
“I don’t want any of this,” I said. “But I need him.”
Edgar was sitting at the table in the camper. We locked Beaumont in the crate, and Jesse pulled the guns out of the duffel bag. He handed me Czarnecki’s .45 and the holster.
“You seem to know how to use this,” he said.
He gave me the revolver from Beaumont’s, too, and took the shotgun and automatic for himself. I strapped on the holster and buckled the knife to my shin. The revolver and extra rounds went into the pocket of my jacket. I grabbed an ice pick and tossed another to Jesse.
“Do you need to pray?” he asked.
I told him I guessed it was too late for that.
We climbed out of the camper. Jesse locked the door and kept the keys.
“I’ll come from the front,” he said. “You go around back and set yourself up to catch anyone who tries to run when the shooting starts.”
He took off down the road, sticking to the brush on the shoulder. I walked a hundred yards into the desert before turning toward the motel. The moon and stars gave enough light to navigate by, and the neon arrow served as a beacon. I drew the .45 and felt less scared with it in my hand.
The motel was dark when I got close. I paused every few steps to listen for anybody moving around. A burned-out trailer sat at the rear of the property and seemed a perfect spot to take cover. Whatever it was that scurried across the floor when I stepped inside stopped me for a second, but I made my way to an empty window frame with a view of the back doors of the cabins and the three motorcycles parked behind them.
My heart banged against my ribs, and fear gummed my mouth so that it was hard to swallow. I rested the elbow of my gun arm on the sill to brace it. Squinting down the barrel of the .45, I swung it from cabin to cabin, alert for any movement. It was like waiting for a bomb to go off.
The first shot made me jump. The fusillade that followed, coming from the front of the motel, had me holding my breath. The back door of one of the cabins opened, and a fat man I hadn’t seen at Beaumont’s ran out. My orders were to gun down anyone trying to escape, so I pointed the .45 and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the fat man in the leg, and he screamed and went down. I shot two more times. He stopped screaming.
More gunfire clattered, and the door to another cabin opened. Jesse backed out, shooting his pistol, the muzzle flashes a bright tongue flicking. The gun ran out of ammo, and Jesse tossed it aside and pulled a knife. A biker pointing a shotgun limped out of the cabin. I fired, hit him, and he dropped the shotgun as he fell.
Suddenly, I was under attack. Bullets punched through the aluminum skin of the trailer and whizzed past me. A round tore the .45 from my hand. A second bullet slammed into my thigh. The gust of pain knocked me off a cliff and set me adrift on a sea of fire.