300 Miles to Galveston (7 page)

“That’s actually pretty comfortable.”

“Good. You lunatic.” Kurt shook his head, then looked around. “I don’t think this is mating season. It’s fall, right? So this thing’s – how’d you know it was a she?”

“I dunno. I just did.”

“Well, you were right.” He looked at it closely, then pushed its paw away with his baton. “Sorry, girl.” He put his shoe on her jaw, set down his baton, and pulled out his knife. With one sure cut, he severed her jugular and half her neck. No blood spurted. He wiped the blade on his shirt, and pulled Sophie’s spear out of the lion’s shoulder. She was about five feet long, maybe 100 pounds, ribs visible, starved.

“I’m going to get a medical kit. Don’t move around till I get back.” He handed her the spear.

“Can you prop my head up a bit?”

“No. I want your heart at ground level. It’ll reduce the bleeding.”

“OK.” She sighed, and held her spear across her chest. He took off his bloody t-shirt and wrapped it around her knee, tugging the half-knot down tight, then making a bow. As he left, her blood seeped into the shirt, and she felt sleepy.

Bane’s bike was there, but he wasn’t. Kurt unzipped the bag with the medical supplies, and noticed a gym coach’s whistle. He blew it twice.

Bane staggered out of an abandoned booth, one of those tiny, stand-alone buildings that, over the years, had been a photo processor, a hot dog stand, and most recently, a tobacco store.

Kurt walked towards him. “What were you doing in there?”

“Found her kittens. Eyes are open, but they’re pretty weak. Two alive, one dead.”

“Oh, crap. Don’t tell Sophie. She’s gone all Sheena Queen of the Jungle on me. She’ll want to adopt them.”

“Where is she?”

“We found the mountain lion hiding in the bushes next to a house, bleeding out. She and Sophie locked eyes, and then Sophie just hauled off and ran her through with her spear. Got swiped on the leg pretty bad. Gonna need stitches.”

“She killed it?”

“Yeah. You hit it good, but she finished it.”

“Damn. We need to give her an Indian name or something.”

“Won’t Listen to Father,” said Kurt.

Bane chuckled. “Or
Sophie Long Spear
.”

“That’s not bad.”

Bane nodded.

“But let’s not tell her about the kittens.”

Bane kept nodding. “They’ll die, though.”

“Everything dies,” said Kurt. “I’m stopping this Rudyard Kipling moment right now.”

Bane chuckled, and they walked back to his bike for a needle, thread, and a flask of whiskey.

Kurt noticed a black vulture circling, back where Sophie lay, about a thousand feet up. Then, two. As his eyes drifted downward, he noticed two turkey vultures doing the same, but only one hundred feet up. They wouldn’t be able to do anything to Sophie unless she had passed out. Still, the scene tugged at his protective instincts, and he double-timed it back to her, leaving Bane to struggle through the weeded yards.

“I want you to take a sip of this,” said Bane.

“What is it?” said Sophie.

“Whiskey. It’s gonna taste like crap, but think of it as medicine. It’ll numb you a little bit, which will help when we sew up your knee.”

She took the flask, sipped, winced.

“More than that.”

She nodded, took a swallow, then shuddered.

He poured a little more across the wound, and she showed her teeth, but said nothing. She felt the needle each time it went through her skin, and felt the whiskey burn through her chest, and down into her arms; the sweat drop off her neck; the weight of the men on the grass beside her. She felt everything, and for that moment, the world became her temple.

Kurt and Bane helped her up, and braced her as she limped.

“You can’t bike with that knee. We’re going to put you on Bane’s trailer, and I’ll walk the bikes. We’ll camp early, and we’ll see if we can figure out a one-legged way for you to do this.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy.” She felt selfish and small as the consequences appeared clearly to her. She couldn’t travel. Now, she was a burden.

“Hey. Look at me. You were very brave. Crazy, but brave. Here.” He handed her the slender spear, which he’d taken when helping her walk, and Bane likewise pulled away from her, leaving her to stand on her own, leaning on her spear.

“We hereby recognize your courage in life, and dignity with death, by bestowing your woman-name.” He looked to Bane, and they said, together: “Sophie Long-Spear.”

She beamed.

Chapter 7: Half a Bottle of Advil

They crossed the Preston Bridge over LBJ like refugees from a strange war. Sophie was propped up on Bane’s trailer. Bane was pumping his recumbent bike with the hand crank, and Kurt was walking both his bike and Sophie’s like tired horses. They looked like they were headed for the island of misfit suburbanites.

Pausing mid-way across the bridge, Kurt looked down to the overgrown highway.

“Plenty of foliage and trapped water. I bet the mountain lion hunted here.”

Bane nodded. “Makes sense. Animals would get funneled down there, and the lion could watch, then sneak down for a kill.”

They continued, turning left onto the LBJ access road.

“Let’s set up camp over there, in the shade of those office buildings. The walls will cut the wind, and give us a bit of hiding space.”

Sophie was asleep, and Bane let the bike and trailer coast as the access road sloped downhill.

* * *

“I guess this is going to be a short trip,” said Kurt, once he was sure Sophie was asleep in the open tent. She was snoring, the tent flap open to a median overgrown with soft grasses and wildflowers.

Bane, sitting on a nearby bench, nodded.

“You could go on ahead,” said Kurt as he paced. “I’d be happy to give you whatever gear you wanted.”

“Nah,” Bane said. “I wouldn’t survive this alone. Besides, I’ve enjoyed the company. When she heals up, we’ll have to do this again, if only nearby, and for fun.”

“Agreed.”

They drank water and relaxed. Bane scribbled in a spiral notebook.

“Diary?”

“Something like that. I don’t record everything. Just the interesting stuff. Today has been interesting.”

“I heard Elmore Leonard said he tried not to write the parts that people skipped.”

Bane chuckled. “You a writer?”

“Something like that. I taught high school English for a while, did some tech writing. Got a couple of short stories published, but nothing fancy.”

“Cool. What did you write about?”

“The angst of the educated white man.”

Bane guffawed. “How’d that sell?”

“Surprisingly there wasn’t much of a market. Hell, I was just imitating what I’d seen. Fitzgerald, Joyce, Faulkner, TC Boyle... I was trying to be them.”

“I always thought that little whiney fella was funny... Sedaris. David Sedaris.”

“Oh yeah, loved his stuff.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“His French lover covered his bed in rancid duck fat and set him on fire.”

“No kidding?”

“He was drunk, didn’t wake up in time. Got all wrapped up in it. When they found him, he was a blackened mummy, sealed in a twist of Alexandre Turpault scorched linen, like Satan’s cigar.”

Bane stared at him, then gestured him to come closer. When Kurt came over, Bane gave him his pencil. “I have another spiral pad in that grey canvas bag over there. You need to write that down.”

“Nah,” Kurt said, handing him back the pencil. “Thanks, but that time is past.”

Bane took the pencil, and scribbled quickly. “...like …Satan’s …cigar. How do you spell that French name?”

“Does it matter?”

Bane shrugged, and put the pencil behind his ear.

* * *

At nightfall, Sophie was moaning.

“Crap,” Kurt whispered. “She’s got a fever.”

“I’ve got some aspirin,” Bane said.

Kurt shook his head. “No aspirin. Ever.”

“OK.”

Kurt wet a rag and laid it across her forehead. “Stay with her. I’m going to see if that gas station near the bridge has anything left in it. Maybe there’ll be some Tylenol or something.”

Kurt pumped his flashlight and thumbed it on, then checked that he had his knife, the extendable baton, and a plastic bag folded into his back pocket.

When he got to the bridge he saw one of the mountain lion kittens, scrawny and big-eared, sniffing the asphalt where they had crossed. Sophie had been dripping blood, leaving brown splotches every five feet.

Kurt waved his arms and drove it off, and then it lurched into the sky with a sharp kitten growl. He couldn’t tell the color, but from the silhouette it appeared to be an eagle that had snatched it, the six foot wingspan making the dead lion kitten look like a doll with a floppy neck.

He walked across the parking lot, avoiding the humps with steel plates where the old underground gasoline tanks were refilled. The LNG tanks that had replaced them were tall, white cylinders, shaped like toilet paper spring tubes standing on their ends. Kurt circled the store. No broken glass. No recent signs of entry in the dust.

Popping the door open, he saw two empty wire racks that had once held chips and crackers. The fridges were likewise empty. Walking behind the counter, he found a yellow pack of American Spirit cigarettes from the Res in Oklahoma. He didn’t smoke much, but when he did, these were his favorites. They were still in the plastic.

There were small plastic packs of energy pills, hangover powders, key chains with rebel flags and playboy bunny heads and empty photo frames. No real medicine.

He went to the storage room, which was locked, but after a few minutes of looking, found the key on a hook beneath the counter.

Inside were a mop and bucket, and two shelves with light bulbs, toilet paper, a small metal marijuana pipe, and a huge bottle of Advil. He tapped it, and the gel pills inside broke free from each other and rattled. Unscrewing the lid, he could see it was half full of blue gel caps – about 100 of them. He closed his eyes and said, “Thank you.”

Something cold flailed down onto his head, splitting his ears and turning his vision a sparkled red and blue. He collapsed.

* * *

As he came to, the first thing he noticed was the smell, a combination of weed and unwashed blue jeans. Then he noticed the sounds. Two young men, probably white, not educated. He blinked, but saw nothing.

“Hey! He’s movin.”

“Hit him again!”

“No, please don’t,” he said, and held his hands up. “I can’t see.”

“How’d you get in that closet if you can’t see?”

“I think he means he can’t see
now
. Hey, he’s bleedin pretty bad.”

“So?”

“Hey, we don’t need to do nothin else.”

“Shut up. So, where are your friends? We saw you a while back. Where are you camping?”

Kurt blanched. He said nothing.

There was a white flash in his mind as he was struck on the left cheek with the same object, something metal, maybe a pipe. His ears chimed and fresh blood streamed down his face.

“Hey, let’s just go.”

“Shut. Up. I like this flashlight. I bet he’s got other cool stuff.”

“Hey, you said there were others.”

“A cripple and a chick. Jesus, man, grow a pair or go home.”

They all heard the dripping sound.

“Hey, he’s bleedin bad from the back of his head, too.”

“Yeah. And look at his eyes. They ain’t movin right when I shine the light. See?”

“Whoa. Hey, yeah.”

The angry one stood up and unzipped his jeans. Warm urine splashed down Kurt’s shirt, then his face. He turned away and waved his hands, but it made him dizzy, and he fell back to the floor.

Both boys laughed, feeding off each other’s amusement.

“Leave him. We’ll come back after we’ve taken care of the other two. I could have some fun with a blind slave. Ain’t that right?”

Kurt struggled to his feet, but slipped on his own blood. He wanted to charge them, but he had no traction, so he grabbed at air. They laughed. There was another flash of white as he was struck above his left eye.

He passed out. The boys left.

* * *

When Kurt woke, it was morning. He didn’t remember anything from the night before, or even why he was in a gas station. He stood up, stretched, and saw just a few streaks of dried blood forming a wide ring on the floor.

“Holy crap. That can’t be from me.” He touched himself, looking in a glass door of the empty fridge case. His face and shirt were covered in a rusty outline of blood. It looked like he’d been in a horror movie, but the makeup artist had wiped most of it off. As he touched the outline of dried blood on his cheek, it flaked off, like tea leaves.

Walking outside, he found a puddle without an oily rainbow and washed his face, neck, and hands, then went back to look at himself in a gas station window. He looked fine. There was a small line, like a decade-old scar, on his left cheek. He examined it carefully.

“Where did that come from?” he said.

The baton, flashlight, and other things were gone, and he realized now that he smelled like urine. He winced, then took off his shirt and tied it around his waist.

Checking the gas station again, he found the half bottle of Advil, but realized he didn’t need it. He felt fine. It was too big to fit comfortably in his pocket, so he just held it as he exited the station, looking around to get his bearings.

“Preston at LBJ. We stopped here? Kinda short,” he mumbled. “Sophie!”

It came back to him – the mountain lion, the camp site, the reason he had come to the gas station.

He ran.

When he got to the camp site, his throat went cold with fear. The tent was gone. The bikes were gone. There was a pool of blood across the pale yellow grass where Sophie’s open-floor tent had been. Too much blood for a stitched up knee. He walked closer, and found a finger.

He looked away and threw up.

When he felt better, he looked again. The finger was young, but hairy. Not Sophie’s. Not Bane’s. A young white man, maybe 20. It looked like it had been torn off.

“Sophie!” he yelled. “Bane!”