“Anything to drink?” Chief asked, and Simon just stared at the little man’s stubby hands in amazement as he handed the change to him.
“Two beers,” Mitch said.
Simon carried his change to the vending machine.
“Two?” Chief asked.
“Yeah.” Mitch cleared his throat. “I’m enlisting tomorrow. I’m going to Nam. Maybe this is the only time I’ll ever be able to have a beer with my little brother. You understand, man.”
Chief just shrugged and began pouring the beers. It was the middle of the week. There was no one in there except for the three of them.
(jonah)
don quixote
I watched the door close behind them.
And I wondered if my brother would ever come out.
I almost wished they’d both just vanish.
So we sat in the back of the Lincoln in silence for the longest time, me just staring at that peeling green door, trying to find what to say first, afraid that as soon as I said anything, Mitch and Simon would come back out again.
“I’m sorry, Lilly.”
Lilly leaned forward, so that she could see me there on the other side of the metal man.
“What for?”
“I don’t know. For what I did last night, I guess.” I sighed. “Simon’s right, you know. I am so stupid.”
Lilly slid her hand back across the seat and put it on my leg.
“I like you, Jonah. Stop being so hard on yourself. You just make it easier for Simon to pick on you like that.”
“Yeah,” I said, almost choking on that one syllable. “I need to ask you some things, Lilly, but I don’t know how to say it.”
“You can ask me anything, Jonah.” She smiled. She looked so sincere.
“I’m embarrassed about what I did last night,” I said, and looked down at my feet, at the floor still wet with rainwater puddles.
“You don’t have to be,” she said. “I’m not.”
“I thought I was going to pass out from holding my breath so much,” I said, and I tried to smile, now turning my eyes to her.
Lilly giggled.
“You were trembling. You were shaking so hard.”
“I was scared.”
“Are you now?”
“Yes.” And I looked away from her for a moment and said, “Who’s the father?”
When I asked it, I could feel her tensing up, as though she would pull her hand away. Then I heard her breathe and she said, “Some old man.”
“From where you live?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he nice?”
“He’s not like you.”
“Oh.” I cleared my throat. “Me and Simon need to get away from Mitch. He’s not giving us the chance to. You know we got to get away from him.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you and Mitch do? Tell me the truth.”
Lilly pulled her hand away from my lap and sat back in the seat so that I couldn’t see her face. When she spoke, it was almost as though the words she spoke were coming from Don Quixote.
“I known Mitch since I was maybe twelve. He lived by me. He knew I was pregnant, and he wanted to help. I guess in his own way, he always thought there was something between us, but I never liked him back. Maybe I tease too much, I don’t know. He wanted some money from his daddy so he could take me to California, you know? I guess he thought he was saving me somehow. In California, a girl can . . . you know. You can get rid of a baby if you need to. Mitch was on speed. He got into a fight with his daddy, and his daddy was going to throw Mitch out of the house. He’s nineteen, Mitch is. And he killed his own daddy over it. Then he came and got me, and he told me what he did. I guess we were just bored of Texas, I don’t know. That was only about a week ago. No one knows. They lived alone. No one’s going to find out for a long time. And I guess I was so desperate that I’d do anything to get away from where I was heading, even if it meant riding along with Mitch and him drooling all over me all the time and trying to get me into bed with him. I guess I was pretty stupid last night, too, ’cause who knows what he’s thinking now? But it’s my fault, Jonah. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It’s not your fault, Lilly.”
I closed my eyes, resting my head back so the sun made me see red through my eyelids.
Lilly said, “And Mitch took everything he could find at the house, and the keys to this Lincoln, and we loaded it up and locked the doors when we left, just like we were leaving on a family trip or something. His daddy kept a lot of money in the house. I seen Mitch counting it once, and he just acted like a dog trying to protect a scrap of meat, so I never said anything about it again. We went to Mexico. I didn’t trust the doctors there and I begged Mitch to take me away. And he got mad at me one morning and he stopped at a place and shot a man right in front of me. He made me watch him do it. Then he took this statue from the dead man and we left Mexico. A couple days after that we saw you and Simon on the road and I pleaded with him to stop.”
“You saw him kill someone?”
I heard her sigh. “I told you. There’s nothing I can do. I got in the car with him, just like you and Simon. I need him to get me to California. Then I can get away from him.”
I rubbed my eyes and leaned forward. Then I sat back again and grabbed the statue of Don Quixote and angrily shoved him forward, pushing the front seat into the steering wheel, the metal man falling until his tin plate hat came to rest just in front of the rearview mirror.
We heard what sounded like a door slamming from around the back of Chief’s Roadhouse. I had seen an outhouse there when we pulled up.
“Are you just trying to make him jealous? Mitch?” I asked.
“Sometimes. I didn’t think he’d care,” Lilly said. “It’s stupid, really. I never thought about Mitch like that. Ever. I didn’t think he’d care what I did.”
“It would make me crazy if I was him. Will you help us get away from him?” I asked. “Maybe you could just tell Mitch. I think he’d do what you ask.”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you come with me? With us?”
Lilly trembled. “I’m scared Mitch would kill you.”
I said, “Why do you stay with him?”
“I thought he could help me get away. I can’t go home, anyway. There’s only one direction I can go, even if I don’t make it. But every time I turn around, it seems like I haven’t gotten anywhere closer to where I want to be. I know I mess with Mitch too much. It’s ’cause I’m mad. So he gets mad, too. I know I should stop. And now I’m afraid of him, I guess.”
“I want you to come with me, Lilly.”
I grabbed Lilly and pulled her over to me, covering her mouth with mine.
The door around back slammed twice more.
I couldn’t stop it, even if I knew I had to. She was going to get us killed.
(simon)
chief
Chief watched them as they smoked and drank their beers, Simon, already beginning to giggle to himself at how froglike the little man seemed, his big dark eyes just clearing the surface of the bar.
“Is he really your brother?” Chief asked.
“Yeah,” Mitch said. “Give me some whiskey, too.”
Chief spun around and climbed up on the shelf where the bottles were.
“The reason I asked,” Chief said, “is ’cause I don’t have a problem with a man buying a beer for his own brother. My brother did it for me when I was a kid, too.”
“He’s hurting today,” Mitch said. “He just caught the girl he’s in love with in bed with our middle brother.”
“Is that how you got that black eye?” the bartender asked.
Simon didn’t say anything.
“Brothers shouldn’t do that kind of stuff,” Chief said, sympathetically, as he climbed down with the whiskey bottle. “You jealous, kid?”
“He’s a bastard,” Simon said.
Simon began fidgeting on the barstool. He finished his beer and lit another
cigarette.
Chief poured out a shot of whiskey for Mitch and another for himself.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Chief said, and raised his shot glass, “cheers,” before tipping his head and pouring the whiskey straight back into his throat.
“Does the kid want another beer?” Chief asked.
Simon fidgeted. “I really need to pee,” he said. “But, yeah, I’ll have another one.”
Chief began refilling Simon’s glass, saying, “Go out that back screen door and turn left. The toilet’s the first door there. Or you can just piss in the dirt. Not like it hasn’t happened already today.”
Simon jumped down from the barstool and practically ran for the door, which slammed loudly behind him.
(mitch)
piss-kid
Chief laughs.
He turns around to replace the whiskey bottle.
“Heh heh,” he says. “The boy needs a little more drinking practice if he’s gotta piss that bad.”
He turns around, smiling.
Mitch shoots him in the center of the forehead with the pistol he’s been hiding in the Lincoln’s glove box.
Smoke and grit spout from the back of Chief’s head, through his greasy black hair.
At first, he looks startled, like he’s about to bust out laughing when the bullet smashes the same bottle he’s just taken his final drink from.
Mitch puts the gun into his jeans and hangs his shirttail over it.
He takes a drag from his cigarette and listens to the sound of the whiskey dripping down onto the floor, the fluttering of Chief’s hands on the wet tiles.
He stands so he can look over the bar.
He’s a dead fish in the pool of whiskey and blood, the jagged shards of glass that look cool like ice. He moves his mouth just once, and a snotty bubble of blood inflates and pops on his lips.
He dies like that.
Mitch inhales. He likes the smell: whiskey, gunpowder, blood, the cigarette, the way that bars like this always reek of piss no matter how far out they put the toilets.
The door slams again. The little Piss-kid is back.
(simon)
cool
Simon sat down on the stool beside Mitch and grabbed his beer.
“Do you feel better?” Mitch asked, smiling.
“Yeah.”
“So do I, man. A lot better.”
Mitch finished his beer. “I just noticed you can’t hear your feet in those moccasins.”
“Yeah,” Simon beamed. “I dig them.”
Simon looked around. “Where’d the little guy go?”
“He said he’d be back in a bit,” Mitch said calmly. “Are you ready to go?”
Simon drained the last of his beer, and nearly fell down when he stepped off the barstool, laughing, “Yeah.”
“Hey. Get a load of this,” Mitch whispered, holding an index finger in front of his mouth so Simon would be quiet.
Mitch boosted himself up onto the bar, seated, so he was facing Simon. He reached around the cash register and pressed down the “No Sale” key and the drawer slid open with a bell.
“Shhh . . . Come here,” Mitch said, keeping a finger straightened under his nose.
Simon was intrigued. Mitch leaned quietly over the bar and tugged all the bills from the cash drawer. He folded them once, then handed them to Simon.
“Put that in your pocket. And don’t say nothing to Jonah or Lilly.”
“Jonah’s a stupid pig,” Simon said.
“Hang on,” Mitch said, and scooped a handful of quarters from the till. “Get as many packs of smokes as you can carry.”
“Cool!”
“And let’s get out of here.”
(jonah)
cruces
“You feel so nice,” she said.
“I never did kiss a girl before yesterday.”
“I know that.”
“Oh. Sorry,” I said.
I pulled Lilly’s scarf away and raked my fingers into her hair. She unfastened the top button on my shirt. She slid her hand onto my chest. I thought about her unbuttoning that same shirt as I lay in bed the night before.
“I didn’t mean to force you, Jonah. I just wanted to see what it felt like to be the one who was getting what they wanted for a change. I just wanted to see what it would be like to be with someone who was nice to me for a change.”
“What did it feel like?”
“A different world,” she said. “A perfect world.”
I wanted to believe her. I thought I could. But I could almost hear Simon telling me she was just playing, and I didn’t want to listen to it. She played with Simon, too; and maybe it was her way of asking one of us to save her. But her voice sounded so nice and I wanted to take her away so bad.
And I put my mouth to her ear and whispered, “We have to be invisible.”
Then the dark green door opened and Simon stepped out, squinting in the brightness of the day. Mitch was behind him, with his hand on Simon’s shoulder.
“What the hell, Jonah?” Simon said.
But Lilly and I didn’t say anything, and we didn’t make any attempt to separate as she rested beside me with my arm around her shoulders, her legs stretched out across the white seat of the Lincoln.
“No sale!” Mitch said. “You two need to keep your hands off!”
“You just told us to keep our clothes on, Mitch,” Lilly said, pushing away from me. “And we did. This time.”
I put my mouth to her ear. I whispered, “Stop it, Lilly.”
Mitch put his hands on the top of the driver’s door, and stared at the toppled statue leaning down against the dashboard.
I could smell the booze and cigarettes on both of them.
Simon, drunk, took a swing at my head, but I easily got out of the way of the punch, tucking my face against the seat back.
“You stupid bastard!” Simon growled. “I told you to stay away from her.”
“Leave us alone, Simon,” I said.
“Oh . . . so the mute boy finally speaks,” Mitch said.
Simon pushed past Mitch, and, reaching into the car, lifted up the meteorite in his fist as though he were going to crush it against my head.
Lilly put her hand up in front of my brother. “Now just stop it, Simon!”
Simon raised the rock again, then he let his arm fall limp to his side and walked around the back of the car and opened his door.
“That’s better, sweetie,” Lilly said, and she leaned over the front seat and kissed Simon on the ear and brushed his hair back with her hand. He stunk like beer and sweat.
I guess I never figured we’d eventually have to wash the clothes we left home in.
Mitch started to straighten out the statue, and Lilly said to him, so sweetly, “Mitch, baby, can I trade places with Don so I can sit next to Jonah?”
Mitch looked at her with cold, unblinking eyes and a perfectly straight face, and said, “Don’t ever ask me that again, Lilly.”
And Lilly gave me a look that told me I was wrong, that Mitch wouldn’t do something just because she’d asked for it.
As soon as we were back on the road, Mitch started talking to himself again.
Simon put his head down against the door and went to sleep.
I slid a foot out of one shoe and moved it over and rubbed against Lilly’s foot under the seat. I tried to make myself be brave, even if I didn’t know what that was.
“Mitch, honey,” Lilly finally said. “Don says he thinks you should pull over and smoke a reefer.”
Mitch, startled, snapped out of his chat and said, over his shoulder, “Far out.”
At a graveled turnout across the opposite lane of the road, Mitch wheeled the Lincoln to a stop alongside a bent and shotgun-peppered green-and-white road sign marked RÍO CRUCES. And I wondered why anyone out here in the middle of absolute nothingness, at least nothing that had any name on it, would care at all what this river was called.
And I had a feeling Mitch decided this would be the place; that
he’d try to kill me there by that river today.
Today.
Simon straightened his head up. He may have sensed the car coming to a stop, but I could tell by his eyes he was completely drunk. I’d seen that same look enough times on our father, when he was at home.
I slipped my foot back into my shoe and let go of Lilly’s hand where I held it concealed behind the Spanish knight, and the four of us climbed out from the car, Simon practically stumbling. There was a narrow, sloping path down to the river. Small white, bubbling waves streaked over the water’s surface where it ran above rocks. To our right, the river bent ahead of us, connecting dirt roads on either side where a sagging wooden bridge stretched. It had been built between crooked telephone poles that jutted up from the banks, drilled through to thread thick and rusted metal cables that shaped the cupping of the bridge’s splintered surface.
I stretched my legs out; the gun in my jeans was hurting me again.
“This is a real pretty spot,” Lilly said.
“I’m thirsty. Can I have my canteen, please, Mitch?” I asked. I didn’t want to set Mitch off, and I knew Lilly couldn’t stop herself from pushing at him.
Mitch didn’t say anything. He looked at me once, his mouth turned down in a sour grimace. He went to the back of the Lincoln to open the trunk.
A few minutes later, Mitch sat, alone, at the edge of the river and rolled his joint. I watched him from the bank, could hear that lighter opening and shutting. I took out my map and added in the stretch of road we had covered since leaving the Palms, drawing a place I marked “Chief’s” and the spot with the sagging bridge crossing the river.
Simon began tripping down the trail toward Mitch.
“Simon!” I called out, already able to smell the oily smoke of the joint from where I sat beside the car.
Simon just kept going until he dropped down beside Mitch.