—This is such a bad call, dude.
—Why? Tell me why? You can’t go to the cops. You can’t threaten my parents, because you can’t go anywhere near that town. The only thing you can do is kill me or hurt me, so why shouldn’t I just get away from you?
—Oh, dude! Threaten your parents? Like I would do that. That’s ill.
—Is that supposed to make me feel better? Is that supposed to reassure me? Oh, don’t worry, dude, I would never, like, hurt your folks. That shit is, like, totally out of bounds, duuuuuuude.
—Dude, you need to chill.
—Get out of the bus, Rolf.
—Dude.
—GETOUTOFTHEFUCKINGBUS!!!
Something changes outside. My eyes flick to the right. Sid’s light is off. I can’t see him. I can’t see where Sid is.
Rolf moves. He yanks the door handle and pushes backward, falling out of the bus.
My finger jerks on the trigger as Rolf, still in the line of fire, is dropping to the sand. Nothing happens. There is a thump as Rolf lands on the ground, out of view.
I look at the pistol. The safety is on.
The front passenger door opens right behind me. Sid! I fling myself to the floor between the front seats, twisting to land on my back, thumb groping for the safety. I land hard and my head whaps the driver’s seat and my vision rolls a couple times like a TV with the vertical hold out. Sid climbs into the passenger seat I’ve vacated, the stubby camping shovel in his right hand.
—Dude!
My thumb clicks the safety. I’m waving the pistol up and down like a conductor’s baton, trying to track Sid as he flips up my eyeballs over and over.
—Chill.
I pull the trigger and a bullet whangs through the roof of the bus, followed immediately by three or four more. Danny, the incredible asshole, has set the trigger weight at an insanely high sensitivity, and the pistol jumps in my hand, the recoil of each round triggering the next. The blips in my vision roll around once more, and stop as Sid pushes back, tumbling out the door like Rolf did. Time to go.
I crane my head around and reach for the steering wheel to pull myself up, and am just in time to see Rolf’s arm stretched through the open driver’s door, his hand snatching the keys from the ignition.
—No!
I grab at the keys, snag the cuff of his yellow shirt, and press the barrel of the gun against his wrist.
—I’ll blow your fucking hand off, Rolf. Drop the fucking keys.
The bus rocks. Sid again. I turn, bringing the gun around. Rolf pulls free, Sid brings the flat of his shovel down on my right foot and ducks back out of sight before I can get off another shot. This is not working. My little plan of kicking Rolf out of the bus and driving off is not working. I stay low and edge back until I hit the bench seat. The throbbing in my head and left thigh has been joined by one in my right foot.
I peek left and right through the open front doors. No sign of either of them.
—Rolf!
—Dude?
He’s still outside the driver’s side.
—Toss the keys in and then I want you both to walk over in front of the bus where I can see you.
—Dude, no fucking way.
—Rolf, I am going to come out there and just shoot you guys. Now throw in the keys and get where I can see you.
—Dude, you know we have a gun, right?
Uh?
—Like, Sid had to shoot that deputy with something, right, dude?
My stomach drops.
—Bullshit. Why didn’t he just shoot me?
—Dude, because I don’t want to.
Sid, still on the passenger side.
—Bullshit.
BANG!
I duck.
—That wasn’t at you, dude. Just to, like, prove it, you know.
Bad plan, Hank, very bad plan.
—So, dude, toss your piece out and we’ll all chill and get back with the program.
I get on my hands and knees and crawl around the bench seat, into the back of the bus. I find the Anaconda where I stashed it under a loose flap of carpet, and stick it in the pocket of my pullover.
—Dude?
I edge up onto the bed where I hid earlier, staying flat so I can’t be seen through the windows. I grab the handle that opens the rear window, push the little button at its center, and twist.
—Dude?
Is he a little closer? I shout.
—I need to think!
I push the window and it lifts up and out.
Sid calls.
—Brah, don’t do this, man, don’t fuck this up. You know, you so know how important this is to me. I’m all, I’m all . . . please, dude.
I let go of the window and springs draw it open. I lever myself up and over the window’s lip, roll out, and drop to the ground. The landing jars my squishy brain and blackness strobes at the edge of my vision, then recedes. I crawl the first few feet, the sand dragging at my clumsy limbs, then get into a low crouch, stumbling away from the bus, trying to keep it between me and them.
—DUUUUUDE!
I hear them behind me, climbing into the bus. I drop flat on the ground, worming around so I’m facing the VW. I hold the pistol out, line up the sights with the open rear window of the bus. Rolf’s dreadlocked head appears in the window. I have a shot. I drop the sights and pull the trigger. The bullet dimples the body of the bus and Rolf disappears.
—Dude! No good, man.
—You guys fuck off right now. It’s over.
—Dude. It is not over.
—Rolf, I got more than a few rounds left. You want to rush me? Wait me out till daylight when anyone can see us? It’s over. Take the bus and get going.
—We had a fucking deal.
—Not anymore.
Silence. Then the front doors shut and the bus’s engine starts. The running lights blip on, the bus moves forward a couple feet, stops, and the passenger door opens. Sid steps out.
I draw a bead on him.
—Get back in, Sid.
He walks to the back of the bus.
—I’m gonna shoot, Sid.
He stops, stands there, bathed in red from the taillights.
—This is wrong, Henry. We should all be, like, working together. We can do things together. It’s no good being alone, dude.
—Get back in the bus or I’m gonna shoot you.
—Dude, so ill.
He turns and shuffles back through the sand, head hung low. He’s climbing back into the bus.
—Sid!
—Dude?
—Try not to hurt any more people. It’s wrong.
—Whatever.
He gets in and slams his door. The bus heads for the highway. At the edge of the blacktop it pauses, the headlights come on, a blinker blinks, signaling a merge onto the empty road, and the Westphalia pulls away, the sound of the Allman Brothers spilling from the open back window. “Whipping Post” trailing into the distance.
I stand there, alone in the desert with two guns.
JUST TWENTY miles to Vegas, and I may not be able to make it.
Walking through loose sand in the dark with a gunshot wound in your left leg, a swelling right ankle, and a concussion, is an ordeal. Thirty minutes into the hike I’m exhausted and I’ve smoked my last two cigarettes. I stumble into an embankment, falling into loose rock, and jarring my head. Again. I wait a moment for my vision to clear.
I remember Russ, remember dragging him around, his head getting knocked over and over after I had already smacked it with a baseball bat. The way his speech started to slur, the way he silently died. I need to stop falling down.
I crawl up the short embankment, and grab onto a steel rail. I’ve tripped over the tracks of the Union Pacific.
I pick my way over the tracks and down the opposite embankment and find a two-lane local road. I look in both directions. The road is long and straight and has a culvert running parallel to it. I walk along the edge of the road, making better time, the aches in my fo
ot and leg easing a bit. I pass a road sign. I’m on the County 6 East, six miles from Sloan. Great. Sloan. Not that I know what I’ll do when I get there.
I’m getting cold. I stuff my hands into the front pocket of the pullover along with the two cold hunks of steel. Then I hear a sound building behind me and look over my shoulder. No headlights, but it sounds like a diesel is back there. I edge down into the culvert and lie on my stomach. I can feel a vibration going through the ground. Oh. I flip over and see the headlight of the locomotive coming up the track. Train. I could hop a train. Do these tracks run into Vegas? Where else would they be going out here?
It’s hard to tell how far away the train is, but it must be pretty close for me to feel its vibrations. And it doesn’t look like it’s going all that fast. I climb out of the culvert, hustle as best I can to the tracks, and crouch there. Yeah, this should work. The light gets brighter. The train gets bigger and louder, taking its time, chugging closer. Bigger. Louder. Closer. Bigger. Bigger. Uh. A multiton, yellow and black monster of steel slams past at sixty, buffeting me in its diesel cloud, shaking the earth like a quake and leaving me clutching the rocks on the rail bed, in awe at my utter stupidity. I get to my feet, still shaking, and watch the train disappear in the night. Well, that was an interesting way to almost kill myself.
A mile later I come to a place called Erie, find the same train sitting on the siding, creep up to a car loaded with Nissans, and climb on. Sometimes, even I get lucky.
THE TRAIN pulls out five minutes later and I spend the next half hour huddled between the nose of one Pathfinder and the rear of another, and try to expose the least possible amount of my flesh to the wind of our passage. When I feel the landscape open up around me in the darkness, and the deafening thunder of the train rolls out across the desert, I stick my head out. Up ahead I can see the apocalyptic glow of Las Vegas, the spear of light from the top of the Luxor shooting into the underside of the cloud cover.
Soon, we are passing through the kind of gritty neighborhoods you expect to find bordering a rail line. I see street signs like Blue Diamond Road, West Warm Springs Road, West Sunset Road. None of them are on the very short list of Vegas place names I have in my head, most of which have been culled from Viva Las Vegas and the one trip I took out here when I was in college. Then it’s there, The Strip, a couple blocks off to the right. I can’t see much, but, even ten years after my only visit, I know that’s the place.
We pull into the Vegas rail yard. The train is slowing now, but not much. Doesn’t matter, I have to get off before I find myself in a locked yard patrolled by Union Pacific security.
The train can’t be moving faster than twenty as it pulls in to the yard and I fling myself from the edge of the railcar. I hit, bounce, flop to the ground, and roll over and over in the rocks, praying that the loaded guns in my pocket don’t go off. They don’t.
I sprawl on my back, watching the strange oyster glow of the sky swim around, wishing desperately that I could stay here until someone comes along from UP maintenance to scoop me up with a shovel and toss me into the bed of a truck with the rest of the rail-kill. But I have things to do. I creak to my feet, and limp away from the tracks and around the corner of the wall that surrounds the yard. The signs at the corner tell me I’m at East Charleston and Commerce Street. I close my eyes and collect my thoughts one by one and stack them up where I can look at them.
I need to get the money to keep Mom and Dad safe. I gave the money to Tim. Tim has gone missing. But I do know Tim’s address. Hey! I know Tim’s address! It hasn’t been beaned out of my brain. I can go to Tim’s and . . . do something! Great! OK. I need a map. I walk into the middle of the empty intersection and look up and down the streets, and see, several blocks away on Commerce, the bright sign of an ampm.
I LOOK like shit. I do not need to see myself to know this, but I take a look in the wing mirror of a parked car just to be sure. I have a cut over my right eye, sticky with clotted blood, my hair is matted with sand and soot, my clothes are torn and filthy, and my hands are scraped and black with the greasy dirt of the train. Wait a minute, what am I worried about? An ampm? In this neighborhood? I am far from the worst case they’ve ever seen in there. Hell, they’ve probably had worse tonight alone.
I walk into a land of fluorescent light and Muzak Christmas carols. The pimply kid behind the counter looks up from his comic book. He looks at me hard. Maybe I look even worse than I thought. Oh, fuck, Hank, you don’t care what you look like, you care about people recognizing you. How did I forget that? Oh, yeah, brain hurt bad. The zitty kid is still looking at me.
—Yeah?
I gape at him.
—You can’t use the bathroom. For customers only.
I don’t need the bathroom. I need. Oh, crap, what do I need? I look around the store. What did I want? No clue. I reach in my pocket and feel around. Guns: two. Check. Cigarettes: none. Check. Cigarettes! I need cigarettes. I take the empty Benson & Hedges box from my pocket, walk to the counter, and show it to the kid. He finishes the page he’s reading, puts down his comic, and looks at the crushed box.
—Benson & Hedges?
I hold up two fingers, and he reaches up to the rack above the counter, grabs two packs.
—Seven even.
I hand him a hundred. He takes it and holds it up to the light, then rings in the sale. I take my smokes and the change and he picks up his comic.
Cool, I’ve achieved something. He lowers his comic a bit and looks at me still standing there.
—What?
Huh?
—You need something else, hombre?
Uh?
—Yes? No?
I shrug.
—So get lost then.
Lost! I look around the store again, and see the maps on the magazine rack. I grab one of Vegas and hand it to the kid. He slaps his comic down on the counter.
—Fucking A. Three ninety-five.
I walk out of the store, map in one hand, cigarettes in the other, and get blinded by the headlights of a car as it pulls up to the pumps. I head for the light cast by a street lamp, and sit down on the curb. I open the map and run down the lists of street names, looking for Commerce. I find it and trace it until it runs into the intersection with West California where the gas station sits. OK, this is a start, I know where I am. I smudge some grease from my finger onto the spot so I won’t lose it. Now, what is Tim’s address? Shit! I had it before. I know where Tim lives, and his address is? Oh, fuck me!
I’m cold and tired and lost and I’ve had enough and I want, I want, I want to call home. I’ve got a phone. But I can’t call home. I can’t do that to them.
Sitting still isn’t good. It’s too easy to feel the pain. Pain spiking my head, throbbing in my thigh, and scratching at a hundred nicks and bruises. My head drops forward, my arms flop at my sides, the map held limply. I’m in bad shape. I know I’m in bad shape. I gotta get out of here, I gotta get up off the ground and go somewhere and get some sleep. I’ll be so much better if I can just get some sleep, give my brain a chance to shut down. Where? Where am I gonna go? What am I gonna do?
I dig a cigarette out of one of my fresh packs.
Where are my matches? I paw through my pockets looking for a match. Where are my goddamn matches? I empty everything from my pockets except for the guns, and dump it all on the cement between my legs. Map, cell phone, charger, cigarettes, Christmas card, empty matchbook, a crumpled pile of hundreds and twenties, a spill of change. Headlights blast me from behind and a car horn jolts me to my feet. I spin, the car from the pumps is a few feet from me, its horn blaring. The silhouette of a head emerges from the driver’s window.
—Get the fuck out of the way!
I look around. I’m right in the middle of the entrance to the station. The driver honks again, loud and long. I hold up a hand, palm out toward the car, bend down to pick up my stuff, and step out of the way as the car moves forward. It’s a taxi. The driver looks at me as he eases past, shakes his h
ead in disgust. I stand there with my hands full of junk. Map, cell, charger, smokes, Christmas card, money.
Christmas card!
The cabby taps his brakes, halting for a moment as a bus drives past. I run up to his open window and stick the red Christmas envelope inside.
—Here, I need to go here.
He ducks back from me and pushes my hand away.
—Fuck off!
I have my head and right shoulder stuck in the window. He tries to shake me loose, and I stumble alongside the crawling cab. I shove the envelope in his face.
—Here!
He’s looking less pissed and more scared now as he slaps at his armrest, trying to roll up his window, but only succeeding in locking and unlocking the doors over and over. I get my other hand inside the window and shake a handful of cash at him. The taxi stops moving.
—A hundred bucks. I’ll give you a hundred.
He looks at the envelope I’m sticking in his face.
—That address is in California.
What? Oh, Christ.
—The other one, the return.
His eyes move to the return address and then to the money in my other hand.
—Two hundred.
—Two hundred.
I peel off two hundreds and hand them to him along with the card in its envelope, then I pull open the back door and flop across the seat.
—You puke or piss or anything back there and it’s gonna cost you another hundred.
The taxi starts to move. I close my eyes.
I OPEN my eyes.
Fuck me; oh fuck me, what am I doing? I look around. Taxi. Got it, I remember. I scooch up in the seat. The cabby is looking at me in the rearview.
—Too much tonight, buddy?
Way too much.
—Yeah.
He stops at a red light.
—In town for the rodeo?
Rodeo?
—Uh.
—Only guys I see as messed up as you are cowboys. You a cowboy?
I laugh.
—Yeah, yeah, I’m a cowboy.
—I figured. Couldn’t pay me enough. Crazy shit.
—Yeah, crazy-shit cowboy, that’s me.