Getting out of the house wasn’t enough. I had to get out of the country and fast. The car I’d driven into Mexico was gone. I still had the Chevy. The problem was that it wasn’t fitted with the compartments my car had been. Those weren’t perfect for heading into the States, but they would have been better than nothing. My usual trips were south carrying cash. I didn’t move drugs and rarely went armed. I got almost no attention going either way. Driving the Chevy, a vehicle with Mexican tags and a ragged-looking Anglo at the wheel, I would get a look. If I had the cash in the car, I’d get a long, hard look in a small room with too much light and too little air. That was why I had grabbed the grass.
At an all-night stop, I bought a gas station sandwich, some water, and a jar of pickles. Walking back to the car, I lifted the spray bottle of window cleaner that hung by the pumps. It took less than a minute to eat the sandwich. Then I got to work.
First, I emptied the window cleaner from the spray bottle and refilled it halfway with water. After that, I opened the package of dried and compacted weed. Tearing off two big clumps, I crushed them on the concrete to release the oils. That was something I had learned from cooking shows. The ground-down pile I scooped into the spray bottle. My weed-water mix got a good shake, and then I washed my hands in the pickle juice. I was still hungry enough to eat one of the dills before I got back into the Chevy.
The sun was up. Another day had begun for me and a couple thousand day laborers and domestics getting into line to cross the border into Texas. I didn’t go straight in. I drove around slowly, and every car I passed that was going toward the border, I sprayed with the marijuana-infused water. When the traffic got to its thickest, I finally eased in with the flow. After a half hour or so, the Chevy was about a dozen cars from the checkpoint, and traffic was dead. Dogs were alerting on cars I’d sprayed. Those were pulled to the side and getting a good going-over.
A lot of people were out of their vehicles and milling around with street vendors and panhandlers. No one paid attention as I strolled out into the stalled traffic, giving everything around me a good but surreptitious spray. Lines started moving again. I screwed the nozzle off and dumped the bottle in the back of a truck.
Dogs were going crazy signaling at sprayed cars. Border Patrol agents had almost twenty cars pulled aside getting hard searches. It had to be frustrating. At least I hoped so.
The truck I’d tossed the bottle into provoked a huge response. It was big enough to hide a huge cache of drugs. It helped that the angry landscape workers were putting up just enough of a fight to make the edgy agents downright certain of their guilt.
When things are like that, the gringo heading home gets the once-over. Thankfully they didn’t even bother to look under the seats once the dog sniffed the car and my pickle-scented hands and then lost interest.
* * * *
“What’s the problem now?” It was my half-brother asking. He was older than me by a year, and we had different mothers. The man who named me Longview had named his first son Paris. Our father’s name was Buick. Names were apparently a familial curse.
Both Paris and I took after Buick and had an uncanny resemblance for half-brothers. Paris was a bit trimmer and well kempt. His hair was darker and shorter. Mine was sun bleached and hanging past my collar.
Paris had the home, the mostly full-time dad, and the Tindall name. The only thing I got from Buick was a face I had to share.
The old man was a bastard in so many ways. That’s ignoring the fact that I was the literal bastard of the family. My mother moved us to the east side of Trinity Bay outside of Houston to be closer to Buick. He showed his appreciation by keeping us housed and a little food on the table. Dependency was a trap that my mother either didn’t understand or didn’t choose to challenge. Poverty can be like a toilet: smooth walls and a strong current pulling you down. That’s where we were, in the middle of the swirl, while Buick watched us go around. We were not the dirty secret you would think. That’s to say we weren’t secret at all.
Buick Tindall was a Texas Ranger. Paris Tindall was a Texas Ranger. Longview Moody was a career criminal with a history of violence. Sometimes I can almost see a pattern in my life. There is one definite pattern. When I get in trouble, I call the one cop I know I can trust.
“I was set up,” I told him, passing the phone to the other ear. My right one still had the creepy feeling of that bullet whizzing by and tickling the short hairs.
“Where are you?” he asked. Paris didn’t sound happy to hear from me. I couldn’t blame him.
“I’m at a motel in El Paso. I need to sleep before heading home.”
“I don’t know how much help I can be this time. There are some things going on. I’ve got a new job.”
“A new job? What?” That was hard to believe. Paris loved being a Ranger, and as much as I hated to admit it, he was one of the good ones. In our family, the apples fell far from the tree and then rolled down hill.
“I’m going to be the new chief of police in Lansdale.”
“The hell you say.”
Lansdale, Texas, was a dead end on a road no one traveled, tucked into a bend in the border. Remember that movie Lonesome Dove? The town of Lonesome Dove was what Lansdale aspired to become when it had been founded by the grace of a horse dying and stranding its rider in 1897. It had grown but not well; a bigger hell is not necessarily a better hell. “Why?”
“Things,” he answered. Paris was always good with words. “What about you? Need money?” There was the reason I could always forgive him. My brother never liked the way I lived. In fact, he could be outright judgmental and harsh about it. But that never stopped him from offering help.
“No. I need to tell you—”
“I have to go,” he said. “Meet me at your place.”
He hung up.
“Damn it,” I said into the dead phone. Then: “Screw it.” I went to sleep.
My dreams were of the underground. Darkness both surrounded and filled me. The organic taste of rot filled my mouth. It wasn’t like the desert soil, dry dust. What fell into my mouth as I tried to scream was moist and rich. It was the soil of a forest floor, old leaves, and chewing worms. Then came the lightning. It came not in bolts but in sprays of light. Gunshot bursts of electricity expelled in barking thunderclaps. Some were small. Or they were distant; I wasn’t sure. The sound came instantly in either case. Some of the flashing bursts were larger, concussive blasts of light and pressure like a shotgun in a coffin.
I wished I had a coffin.
When I woke, the sun was almost gone from the sky, replaced by thunderheads and a sweeping storm. Lightning fingers pointed south, accusing and betraying me at the same time. I tried calling Paris again. It went to voice mail. There was no point in leaving a message.
Before getting back onto the road, I showered again. It was the second time I had washed off the feeling of the grave since coming to this little motel. I left the key on the sweat-soaked bed and then walked out into the rain. A third wash.
* * * *
“What are you escaping from, prison?” the cashier asked.
I looked around to see if she was talking to someone else. She wasn’t. “What do you mean?” I tried not to sound too concerned.
I had gone straight to a truck stop from the motel. It was a big one with showers and stacks of trucker caps. This one sold boots and had a rack of jeans. I picked up clean pants; a fresh shirt, the kind with pearl-snap buttons; and a burner phone.
The woman whose name tag read Rochelle pointed at what I’d laid on the counter. Looking at my little pile of purchases, I supposed it couldn’t have looked more suspicious if I’d added a bottle of whiskey and a new pistol.
“Oh,” I said, laughing a little I-just-got-it laugh. “Yeah, I am in a way.” Then I leaned over the counter toward her, just enough to look down her cleavage and smell the powder she used on her skin. “My wife kicked me out.”
She flushed a little red. I wasn’t sure if it was because of what I’d said or what she imagined I was thinking. She was pretty, and it made me wish. I wished I wasn’t headed home right away, and I wished I hadn’t had the night just past.
“That’s a shame,” she said, and she meant it. “That’s sixty-four eighty-seven. Where will you be landing?”
It was a casual question. I read more into it than was there probably because I was feeling like an untied string. “You know, Rochelle…you smell prettier than a Sunday morning.” I looked at her face again. “I won’t be landing for a while, but I’ll think of you while I fly.” I pulled two hundreds from the roll I was carrying. “You keep this and have a little fun tonight. Maybe you’ll think of me.”
I changed in the shower room. When I left wearing my new things, Rochelle blew me a kiss. I felt almost human. Only almost. I was about an hour outside of El Paso when I started crying. I don’t like it, but it happens after a fight. It happened in the army, and it happens now. Don’t mistake it for weakness. It’s not even guilt. I don’t know what it is other than stress, but it’s part of my routine. How sad is it that I have a routine for dealing with death and killing?
Once that was over and the new phone was charged, I pulled over and set it up, and then I called Paris again.
“What?” he asked, sounding even more rushed and annoyed than before when he knew who was calling.
“It’s me,” I said.
“I thought you were going to your place.”
“I am,” I told him, in my best explaining-calmly voice. “I was in El Paso, remember?”
“What were you doing there?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I don’t want to know in an official capacity?” he asked.
I hated the smug sound of righteousness that crept into his voice. It wasn’t a surprise. He and I had stopped surprising each other a long time ago. As a matter of fact, it was probably the predictability of each of us for the other that was the hardest part of our relationship.
“You don’t want to know in any capacity,” I said. “And before you ask again, I don’t need money.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” There was an edge of disbelief in his voice.
I wondered if Paris liked being the guy who kicked his brother a few bucks when I got into trouble. I didn’t ask about it. Instead I asked, “What’s going on with the official thing? Why are you taking this job?”
“There are some things I need to do. I was just bailing water as a Ranger. Maybe down in Lansdale I can pull some people to shore.”
“What people?”
He didn’t answer, and the cheap phone creeped with static when there was no sound coming in.
“Paris?”
“What are you running from this time?” He always had a way of cutting right through to it.
That time it was my turn to hold back an answer.
“You can stop,” he said. “Running. Everything.”
“And do what?”
“Come help me.”
“I can’t be a cop. Forget the joke of the situation. I have a record.”
“People with parking tickets have records. You’re a felon with a jacket.”
“Is that how cops talk?” I passed a slow-going SUV and stayed in the left lane to go by a couple of semis.
“You’re a big-stripe con with a stretch in Angola. That could help me.”
“I’m glad it helps you.”
“It can help you too,” he said. “In the long run.”
“The longest.” I think I did a good job putting bitterness into my voice.
“I talked to Daddy the other day,” he said. The change and the subject both brought me up short. I cut the wheel quickly and crossed into the right-hand lane just ahead of a truck. No horn, but I could see him flipping me off in the mirror.
Funny thing about us southern boys. We may get to be ninety, but we’ll still refer to our fathers as Daddy. When we’re not calling them sons of bitches.
“You’re not going to even ask about him?” he had the balls to ask me.
I ignored his question and the judgment in it. Instead I told him, “I killed about a dozen men in Old Mex last night.” It was a blunt and shocking statement. I knew that. I knew also that he would have to deal with the image and the knowledge of the kind of man I’d become. I didn’t care. It was self-serving to impose the reality of my life on him with the unmistakable accusation that if our daddy had been a father to me, I might be where he was. I still didn’t care. But I said, “Sorry.”
“So am I,” he said. I could tell he meant it. “Do you want to talk—”
“No.”
“Got it.”
“Are you all right?”
That question was not what I expected. I had to think about it.
“You still there?” he asked after a long moment of noisy silence. Then: “Are you doing okay?” His voice was different that time. The question was different too. “Are you all right” meant “Did you get hurt?” But “Are you okay” meant something else.
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t know the truth of that until I said it.
“Do you need me to—”
“No,” I said again quickly. Then: “So tell me about this thing in Lansdale. How I can help?”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know. How can I? You won’t tell me what’s going on.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, letting my annoyance show. “I just told you about—”
“Long,” he said, speaking with quiet emphasis. “You didn’t tell me anything. You said something, and you said I didn’t want to know. Maybe I do; maybe I don’t. But this—this thing I have going on. I don’t know—I don’t know. So I can’t tell. It’s important, though.”
That was my brother. Things to him were important. He had a conscience and a sense of responsibility, and he kept them close. People like me, we can lay such things aside. It made him someone I could trust and need. I’ve never felt like he needed me before.
“Is there money in it?” I asked.
“Doubt it,” he answered right away.
“You’re hiding something,”
“Could be.”
“How is it a guy like me can help a guy like you? And mind you I’m asking how, not what.”
“Let’s just say I have a lot of latitude.”
“I don’t buy it,” I said, thinking things over. “Towns like that want a button-down chief who shows up to breakfast with the Rotarians and the Lion’s Club. A city council doesn’t give latitude.”
“I wasn’t hired by the city council. I’ve been brought on by the Justice Department.”
“You’re going in as a fed? That means someone is bad. And that means attention. You don’t want me there.”
“You can help.”
“How?”
“I can’t say right now.”
“Can’t?” I asked, making sure he knew I didn’t believe him.
“I don’t want to. There are things about this you can help me with.”
“Things about being a fed—pretending to be a chief of police—that your brother with a record can help you with. Sounds like you’re already in trouble.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re just walking in and taking over?”
“More or less.”
“Good luck with that.”
“We can talk about it when you get here,” he said. “When will that be?”
I could picture him looking at his watch. He was a grown man, a cop, and he still wore a Star Trek watch.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “At least another eight or nine hours if I drive straight through. I doubt I can do that.”
“Tired?”
“Exhausted.”
“It’s not just fatigue,” he said. I knew what he was doing—trying to get me to tell him more about the night before.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s not.” I left it at that, and he was quiet on the other end.
When he finally did speak, he surprised me again. “Secrets aren’t good things to have, little brother.”
“Go peddle your papers someplace else, John Smith,” I said.
“We’ll talk when you get here.” He said that like he meant it. I began to think that I never really knew what our conversation had been about. “I’ll be waiting.”
“Okay.”
“It’ll be good to see you,” he said. And, again, it sounded like he meant it, and that was weird. He broke the connection before I could say anything more.
I dropped the phone and pressed the gas at the same time.
It had been a strange talk. I thought about it and decided both of the calls had been strange. I hadn’t picked up on the vibe of the first one because I had been tired and feeling dragged through the mud. Vibe was the thing all right. All the words had worked. They just hadn’t felt correct. Paris and I had always talked and cursed and laughed openly without being open. It was a guy thing. It was a half-brother thing too. But it wasn’t good for actual communication. Reading between lines becomes part of some relationships. For some reason, though, Paris seemed like he was writing his lines in a different language.
Nothing I could do about it from the highway. I turned on the radio and tuned out my thoughts.
After four more hours, I was weaving and barely keeping my eyes open. I pulled off into a rest area and tried to sleep in the car. It worked for a while. Eventually the noise got to be too much. Rain had moved north, and the sky opened just as the sun slunk down into night. A bunch of bikers pulled into the stop to wind their engines up and shout at each other.
After another hour of driving, I faded out again. I pulled off into the gravel lot of a cinder block bar. The building was long and low, dark as hell, but glowing with the same neon-red beer-sign light I expect to spend my eternity in. There were a couple of military guys in uniform eating burgers at the bar. I took a table and joined them in choosing the big burger. Some guys when they get out crave reconnection with the military. Some of us don’t.
I had been good at soldiering. Truth be told, I was an idiot to have gotten out, but the grass s always greener anyplace but Afghanistan. At least the parts I was in. I was only out a year when I ended up in Angola prison for two. It was like the army was a vacation from the life I had been forging since I began setting the world on fire at thirteen. The army was where I got my high school degree and where I read books without pictures for the first time. It was also where I learned to kill. I guess it wasn’t that different from the life I ended up with.
One of the women working tables dropped a few coins in the jukebox and then punched buttons. Even before she walked away, there was a hiss and a pop of contact. The jukebox had actual records, 45-rpm memories of a lost world. I finished my burger, sopping up ketchup and grease with my last fries while listening to Conway Twitty sing “I See the Want to in Your Eyes.” Even though I was exhausted and had a long way left to drive, I ordered a beer. The next song was another old one called “Country Bumpkin.” Before it was over, I had gone through half the beer, and I was crying again. I put my face behind my hand and leaned my elbow on the table. There wasn’t a lot of point in trying to be silent. I wasn’t the first one to cry over his beer in that joint. I tried not to blubber, at least. Things got worse when B. J. Thomas started singing “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” I ended up the only customer in the place. The waitresses gave me a wide berth and sad eyes. I couldn’t get out of there until the jukebox started playing “Convoy.” I was glad I still had a lot of road to go.
It was in that sparkling, clear dead zone of darkness and star-light between nighttime and morning that I approached home. Grave-digging time: I’ll always think of it that way. I pulled off the highway and cruised, looking for just the right spot. I found it not far from the mobile home park where home was waiting.
First I stopped at a liquor store and bought two six-packs of beer, cheap stuff. Along with that I got a disposable lighter and a red tote with a huge beer brand printed on it. I put the cash and gun in the bag. Next, I stopped at a gas station, bought a gas can, and filled it.
With all my purchases, I drove to an industrial area I had picked out earlier. I parked in the shadows about fifty feet from a bunch of kids. They were hanging out, breaking bottles, and smoking by the dock doors. The kids watched me hard as I got out of the car. I walked away with my big red bag, leaving the car door open and the engine running. The beer, the gas, and the lighter were on the seat. I figured about dawn, the Chevy would be burning down to its tires someplace far from my trailer.
“Paris,” I said as I opened the door. I didn’t shout, but I wasn’t quiet. I assumed he was sleeping, but you don’t walk in on an armed man without announcing yourself. All the lights were off. I wanted nothing more than to go straight to my bedroom and collapse on the bed. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of dropping on top of Paris. Since he hadn’t answered me, I assumed he wasn’t on the couch.
I flipped the switch, and the overhead light sparked. Of the two bulbs, one came on. It flickered three times before it held. The shade was broken. The entire fixture was dangling from wires. Only after the flickering stopped did I have the sense in my head to look down. Paris was on the floor, his hand inches from the toe of my boot.
He was dead. There was no hope, no crouching to touch his neck in search of a pulse. There was too much blood for that.