“Long ago,” Bill said.
Herman introduced me and Brett and said, “This is Red, my brother.”
“Red,” Bill said, and stuck out his hand. Red took it and Bill pumped the entire midget like a water pump handle.
Leonard appeared in the open doorway with his shotgun.
Herman said, “And this is Leonard.”
Leonard shut the door, said, “Glad to meet you.”
Bill nodded. “I take it, Herman, these men and this woman are not friends of yours.”
“Not exactly,” Herman said. “They are not friends of Red. I am caught in the middle. Please, sit down.”
Bill started to sit, but Leonard said, “No hard feelings, my man, but I’d like you to come over here and put your hands on the wall.”
Bill looked at Herman. Herman shrugged.
“I don’t suppose while I have my hands on the wall you want me to lower my trousers, do you?” Bill said.
“Only if you want to,” Leonard said.
Bill did as he was told. Leonard held the shotgun to the back of Bill’s head with one hand while he patted him down with the other. Leonard removed a lock-blade knife from Bill’s front pocket and a little revolver from a holster at the small of his back.
“You can sit down now,” Leonard said. “Do that and we’ll get along.”
“We’ll get along all right,” Bill said. “All you got to do is treat me good and don’t call me Chief.”
“He doesn’t like being called Chief,” Herman said. “Bill here, he’s a Kickapoo Indian.”
“Long way from your original stomping grounds, aren’t you?” Leonard said.
“What about you?” Bill said. “My people at least came from this continent.”
“Actually,” Leonard said, “my people come from East Texas.”
“That might as well be another continent,” Bill said, and sat on the bed.
“Story is you can get us across the border into Mexico,” I said. “Carrying guns and ammo.”
“Maybe,” Bill said. “There’s something I must get straight. I am not a great friend of Herman’s. I know him. We have done some work together in the past. Smuggling. I want it understood up front that I’m my own man, and I’ve got my own help, and that’s who I’m taking care of.”
“Help?” Brett said.
“Two men,” Bill said. “One is a pilot. The second man will help in other ways. I want five hundred dollars for each of us.”
“Herman said a thousand,” Brett said.
“Herman has no idea what I want,” Bill said. “Prices change. And I don’t do this much anymore. I have to make it worth my while. And frankly, that’s pocket change.”
“I can write you a check,” Brett said.
Bill laughed.
“I can give you a thousand in cash,” Brett said. “I thought I might need money for something like this. I have that much. A little more, but I’ll need what’s left for food and such.”
“All right,” Bill said. “You give me a thousand cash. Write me a check for five hundred, and put down on the check it’s for car repairs. You get asked, I had to fix your brakes and balance your tires, do a tuneup. All kinds of things. You understand?”
Brett nodded.
“I have to talk to my men,” Bill said. “I don’t even know they’ll do this. I didn’t tell them anything. I wanted to see you first. I want to see some money now.”
“You can see it,” Leonard said, “but you aren’t taking it with you.”
Bill gave Leonard a strained look. “I have to advance my partners some.”
“Why don’t you advance them your best wishes,” Leonard said. “They’ve worked with you before. Right? They trust you. Or do they?”
“Yeah, they trust me, but I don’t trust any of you.”
“But we’re supposed to trust you?” Leonard said.
“I’m the man you asked to see,” Bill said. “Not the other way around.”
“This entire expedition from start to finish has been misguided,” Red said to Leonard. “I suggest you let Herman and I go, cut your losses, and accept that Tillie is a whore and she is going to be busy at the quick-stop five-minute lube for the rest of her life. At least until she’s too ugly to draw customers.”
“I advise you to shut up,” Brett said. “Or you’ll draw flies.”
“Another word out of you, Red,” Leonard said, “and I’m going to see I can flush a midget down the crapper.”
“Lay off,” Herman said.
“I hope you don’t think you scare me,” Leonard said.
“I know I don’t,” Herman said. “But know this. The feeling works in reverse. You don’t scare me. It won’t be worth it for either of us.”
“You people going to do business or what?” Bill said. “Personally, I don’t care who’s got the biggest dick here.”
“Keep talking,” I said.
“I say, five hundred now,” Bill said, “five hundred when we actually start out, and you give me the check when we finish.”
“Here’s how it is, Bill,” I said. “We give you two-fifty now. That’ll keep you in paint thinner, but I advise you not use any until we finish up things.”
Bill’s eyes shifted away from mine.
“And I thought he was just messy,” Brett said.
“There’s paint all over his coat,” I said. “He sniffs a little paint with thinner. They used to call it doing the bag. Sometimes it’s glue instead of paint and thinner. But with Bill here, it’s thinner. Am I right, Bill?”
“I’m not addicted,” he said.
“I really don’t give a shit,” Leonard said. “You don’t touch that shit until we’re out of your life.”
“Five hundred now,” Bill said.
“We don’t even know you’ll follow through on things,” I said. “Two-fifty now. Two-fifty when we get going. Rest of the cash and check when we finish the job.”
“Things are hard,” Bill said. “I need the money.”
“Hell,” Leonard said. “My thing is always hard, but you don’t hear me whining about it.”
“You don’t know what life is like for me,” Bill said.
“Oh shit, here we go,” Leonard said. “Let me guess. You’re displaced Kickapoos. Your culture is all lost. You don’t get to hunt the sacred deer. You know what, that’s sad. Really. But, on the other hand, I don’t give a shit. I’m fuckin’ tired of the whining and the excuses for not getting on with life. I could sit here and give you my poor-little-nigger speech, but I won’t. Because I don’t see myself that way. My people came from a bunch of ignorant farmers, and so did Hap’s, and he’s white, and that’s his drawback. Way I see it, I’m black and I’m human and I don’t beg nobody for nothin’. So, you believe whatever you want, but it’s not my problem.”
“All right,” Bill said. “I see where this is going. Take care of yourselves.”
“We will,” Leonard said. “Try not to track anything on the carpet on your way out.”
Bill didn’t move. He fumbled inside his jacket for cigarettes.
“Don’t smoke that,” Brett said.
Bill pushed the cigarette back into the pack. He just couldn’t win. He hung his head. He sighed.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll take the two-fifty now, and talk to my partners.”
“I’ll go with you while you talk to your partners,” I said. “Then maybe you’ll take two-fifty.”
Bill didn’t even try to argue this time. He merely nodded.
“You, Leonard,” Bill said. “One word of caution. Watch yourself. Your mouth could easily write a check with me your ass can’t cash.”
Leonard grinned at him. “I can write a damn big check, Early Bird.”
Brett opened her purse, peeled out two hundred and fifty dollars and gave it to me. I put it in my wallet. I took one of the handguns and put it in the holster I had clipped under my shirt. I said to Bill, “Can we find your friends now?”
Bill nodded.
&nb
sp; “We’ll keep your weapons here,” Leonard said to Bill. “A word of warning. Hap there. He’s one of those intellectuals, and he likes poor folks and puppy dogs, niggers, injuns, kikes and rednecks, white trash and midgets. He probably even cares you’re a poor little Kickapoo done lost your culture. But you fuck with him, he will stomp your ass into next Sunday.”
Bill looked at me. “That true, Hap?”
“Most likely,” I said. “But just so you won’t think I’m a complete humanitarian, I don’t have any kind of thing for cats.”
22
Bill Early Bird drove an old Ford pickup that looked as if it had been in a meteor shower. It had gray filler plastered all over it, and what wasn’t filler was blue paint and not very good blue paint at that. Every time Bill stepped on the brakes the truck sounded as if it were in pain. The tires were so thin on tread you could almost see the air inside.
We drove through the little town of Echo, Texas, to the outskirts, crossed over a large overpass, went off the highway and down a dirt road and around a curve to where there was no real road, and still we drove. Eventually the overpass loomed above us, and beneath it I could see a fire, and when we parked and got out, I could see the fire came from an old fifty-five gallon drum. The air was cool and the flames leaped and crackled and most of the heat went up and away. There were some cardboard and plywood shacks under the overpass, and there were people to go with them. Four were visible, all Indians, squatting down, passing something between them, and as Bill came up and called out, two others drifted from the hovels and squatted with the others.
“Uncle,” Bill called out to one of the men. “It’s Billy.”
An elderly man, built along the line of five coat hangers with two teeth and lots of gray hair, slurred back Bill’s name.
Bill bent down and hugged the old man and the old man patted him on the back. When Bill stood up, he said, “This is my Uncle Brin.”
Uncle Brin tried to stagger to his feet, but had to sit down. Not on his haunches this time, but on his ass.
“He’s sniffed a little too much,” Bill said. “Don’t think he does this all the time. Just sometimes he gets down, you know.”
From the looks of Uncle Brin, I had an idea that the only time he wasn’t sniffing thinner and paint was when he was drinking liquor or was asleep.
Only one of the other men was elderly, or perhaps he just looked like hell. He had more meat on his bones than Uncle Brin, and his head was shaped oddly in front, a little like a pumpkin. The others were young and tough-looking, but wobbly. What the men out front had been passing between them was a paper sack containing a plastic bag containing paint and thinner. I saw Uncle Brin take the sack and put his face in it, and sniff.
I looked at Bill. He looked nervous, even ashamed.
Uncle Brin said, “Hey, Bill, go get us some smokes and some beer, huh?”
Bill nodded. “I will.”
We walked back to the truck. I said, “It’s nice to meet your relatives, but what’s this got to do with anything?”
“Uncle Brin isn’t a uncle by your standards. I suppose he is a cousin. But we call many male relatives uncle.”
“Still, what’s with him?”
“He’s one of the men I want to use.”
“No disrespect here, Bill, but he’s skin and bones. What you going to use him for? A lock pick?”
“He’s not always messed up.”
Bill started up the truck and we drove off. Bill said, “He knows the other man I need. This other man, he won’t do it for me. He might lose his pilot’s license, but he’ll do it for Uncle Brin. And some money.”
“And Uncle Brin will do it for you for some money?”
“Uncle Brin will do it for me anyway, but he needs the money. This man who flies the plane, he owes Uncle Brin a favor for a favor done for his grandfather.”
“Is it an old favor?”
“Yes, and one he has to continue to pay whenever Uncle Brin asks. He would do it without the money.”
“He’s that close to your uncle.”
“They hate each other. This man, this pilot, he honors my uncle for what he has done, not for who he is or if he likes him.”
We drove to the liquor store. I waited while Bill went inside and bought some cigarettes and beer. We drove back to the underpass and Bill carried the case of beer and the carton of cigarettes and set them down by the blazing fifty-five gallon drum. The men swarmed on the hot beer, opened it, drank it as it foamed. After a few sips, the carton of cigarettes was opened and packs were passed around and Bill produced a lighter and lit up one himself.
Bill turned to me. “I must talk to my uncle in private. We must speak in Kickapoo. Will you let me do that?”
“I suppose.”
“I give my word I’m not trying to cheat you.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, having no real choice. I went back to the truck, leaned against the front of it and watched to see if guns might come out. I also checked a good running route and something to hide behind. There didn’t seem to be any good route, as there wasn’t much vegetation or any real rises in the scenery. The best obstruction seemed to be the truck. I put my hand under my shirt and held the pistol butt and watched the men in the shimmering light of the fifty-five gallon drum.
Bill bent down next to Uncle Brin and they talked. Now and then Uncle Brin looked out at me and puffed his cigarette, each puff sucking his cheeks in, making them look as if they were touching inside his mouth. After a time I saw Uncle Brin nod. Bill hugged him, stood, and walked back to the pickup.
“He will talk to this man tomorrow,” he said.
“You know the man yourself?”
“I do. But I told you, this man will not do it for me.”
“You call him this man. Don’t you know his name?”
“I do. But it doesn’t matter. He will not do it for me if I know his name or not … Uncle Brin needs his money now.”
“All right.” I took the two hundred and fifty out of my wallet and gave it to Bill. He gave it to Uncle Brin and we drove back to the highway.
Bill and I made some plans and he dropped me off at the motel. Inside, Leonard turned off the TV, said, “Do we trust him?”
“I think so,” I said. “Don’t know we got a lot of choice if we didn’t trust him.”
I told everyone what had gone on. Herman said, “Bill and I did some business now and then. He was never on the really bad side, like me.”
“You were doing business,” Red said. “That’s all.”
Herman ignored him. “Bill helped me run some guns and some grass. He helped me haul a few of the Bandito Supremes out of the U.S. and into Mexico. He arranged for an airplane. Some cars. He’s trustworthy.”
“He got paid, though, correct?” Red asked.
“He got paid,” Herman said.
“That I can understand,” Red said. “That makes Bill a professional. That’s what’s important. Professionalism.”
“What kind of world is it where you got to do business with a crook?” Brett said.
“Kind where if you want to get something done illegal, you got to ask a crook,” Leonard said. “Think about it, we’re riding around with a crook and an ex-crook.”
“I guess that makes us crooks,” Brett said.
“I suppose it does,” Leonard said.
“Seems to me,” Red said, “I’ve served my purpose. If my brother is set on helping you, then he must, but I suggest you let me go.”
“I don’t think we want to deal with Big Jim right now,” Leonard said. “We got a lot on our plate.”
“Big Jim may not be all that interested in helping me,” Red said. “In fact, I fear he thinks I was in on all this, and I would not be surprised if Wilber were not fostering that belief.”
“How’s that?” I said.
“Wilber has his good qualities, but loyalty isn’t one of them. He likes money, and if he feels he can discredit me, put himself in the catbird seat, then he will. My guess h
e’s making me responsible for all that business in Oklahoma City as well. Painting himself as a victim. That’s my take.”
“So if we cut you loose, where would you go?” I asked.
“I’m uncertain, but I would rather face that problem as it came to me than be with people who pistol-whip me, tie me up and humiliate me. I’m surprised I haven’t been asked to perform some circus tricks. Some flips and handstands. Perhaps a cartwheel.”
“Shit, that’s not a bad idea,” Leonard said.
Red gave Leonard a firm look, then slowly dropped his eyes. My guess was he feared Leonard might be serious, and that he would be forced to perform. Red picked up a can of Coke, swigged from it, then eased into sullen silence.
That night was not a good one. Herman was supposedly helping us. We didn’t want to alienate him by tying him to a chair, and we felt it might be bad form to tie Red to one. Leonard and I, by unspoken plan, stayed awake with the shotgun. Herman and Red watched TV most of the night, dozing on the floor from time to time.
Brett slept all night on the bed and snored loudly. Who says it’s a man’s world?
23
Next morning Bill called and we made arrangements for him to come over before dark and lead us to our airplane ride. When he came we followed his pickup through town and out.
The town where we had slept, Echo, wasn’t much. There were lots of tractors parked about and all kinds of yellow equipment that might have been designed for most anything. Farming. Tank warfare or prairie dog removal. In fact, Echo seemed little more than a town of old cars, old people, and huge yellow machines.
We drove out where there were no houses, no mobile homes, and no beauty, only long miles of dirt and brushy growth and soaring buzzards.
Miles later, we dipped down into an area between great hills and rocks and the falling shadows of the late afternoon. Beyond the hills, stretched out on a flat expanse of land that went for so many acres the eye could not follow, was a long tin shotgun building in front of which grew an oak that looked as if it might suddenly shed its sad sunburned leaves, keel over, and die. There was a relatively new blue pickup parked by the tree.
A man was sitting in a lawn chair under the oak, and when we pulled up close to the shed we saw he was drinking from a can of beer. There was a Styrofoam chest beside his chair. He looked to be a Kickapoo, or certainly to have a lot of Indian blood. He had on blue jeans, boots, and a leather jacket, which seemed inappropriate for the heat. His hair was oily and combed up high and flies had found it; they circled it, looking for a solid place to land.