A Thousand Falling Crows (9 page)

Sonny didn't believe the fearful one had it in him to kill. That clearly wasn't their intent. But it could happen. Years as a Texas Ranger had forced him into the aftermath of a lot of human storms, some planned, most not—just circumstances that had spiraled out of control quicker than they were supposed to. An explosion of anger followed by fleeting regret. It was common. Rage, fear, often mixed with jealousy and alcohol, were more lethal than any gun sitting on a shelf or in a locked drawer.

“Now, amigo,” the talker snarled, “I don't have much time to be nice, even to a cripple like you.”

There it was. The loss of his arm had evoked a response. Maybe it would save his life—the irony wasn't lost on Sonny, and he offered no reaction to the word. He raised his hand straight to the air without any protest at all.

“That's more like it, amigo,” the talker said in English. “You move a muscle and you will be shot. Do you understand?” He glanced over at Tom—who had not offered any evidence that he understood Spanish—making sure he understood. Sonny was betting that Tom understood every word that had been said. But it was hard to tell. Some folks refused to utter, or learn, a word of Mexican. It was un-American.

“Go about your business,
chico
,” Sonny answered back in English. “And I‘ll go about mine.”

Anger flashed in the talker's eyes, just as thunder crashed overhead. The steady rain had been pushed out of the way by a storm. A chorus of hammers thudded on the roof. Hail. A heavy downpour. The screen door slapped at the frame, and wind pushed inside, bringing water to the floor and a coldness that hadn't existed inside the store before.

Sonny could barely see the car parked just outside. The driver's window was rolled up, coated with condensation, steam from the heat of a human being sitting inside. She looked like a shadow, staring out into the grayness, fearing light, nervous for an escape.

The talker glanced up to the roof, then to his partner. With a nod and a redirect with the shotgun, refocusing on Tom, he moved to the counter, opposite the market owner. “Open it.”

“I can't talk you out of it?” Tom asked. There was a quiver in his voice that hadn't been there before the two men had rushed into the store.

The talker shook his head. “Open it, or I‘ll shoot you and open it myself. That simple. We've been here too long the way it is.”

“I‘ve got a family,” Tom said.

“I don't care,” the talker replied. He stood sideways between Sonny and Tom. The three men were almost a perfect triangle. “Lower your hands real easy. One stupid move, and I pull the trigger.”

“Isn't much here,” Tom said, as he complied with the talker's demand.

Sonny stood still, his focus on the fearful one.

At the moment, Sonny was acting like a good soldier, doing everything the talker told him to. That didn't offer him much of a chance to do anything to help end the situation. If the storm hadn't been overhead, the only sound inside the store would be four heartbeats, all running at the same rhythms—fast, pumped up with nerves and adrenaline even though each man stood still.

Tom opened the cash drawer, gathered up the bills, then handed them to the talker. “You want the pennies, too?”

The talker took the money, looked at the thinness of the stack with disappointment, then stuffed it hastily into his front pocket. “Where's the rest of it?”

“I told you there wasn't much,” Tom said. “Look at the shelves. I don't have much to sell—times are tough all over. Not just for you.”

“You don't know anything about me,” the talker yelled, lurching forward toward Tom, turning away from Sonny. The shotgun barrel was inches from Tom's mouth. “You have a safe in an office somewhere? Don't lie to me. Tell me, damn it. This isn't enough!”

Sonny remained standing still, his arm over his head. It was starting to ache, blood running out of it with the immediate threat of numbness. He'd never considered living life without two arms until that second.
Things could always be worse.
He didn't take his eyes off the fearful one—whose attention had been drawn to the talker by his outburst.

“Don't get mad, Eddie,” the fearful one said nervously. “We don't need no more bad things. We just need rent and then we go, all right?”

Eddie turned to his partner, his eyes even more enraged. “Shut up,
me'jo
. Just shut up. Look what you went and did. Look what you went and did now, you fuckin' idiot.” His back was to Tom.

It was the break the market owner had obviously been waiting for. In one quick scoop, Tom grabbed up the cheese wire, flipped it in the air so it wrapped around Eddie's neck, then grabbed the other handle as it swung toward him so he could put pressure on the boy's neck—which he did without missing a beat. It looked like a move he had practiced a million times. Choreographed it perfectly.

“You move one muscle, I‘ll pull this wire so hard it'll cut your head plum off. You understand me,
me'jo
?” Tom demanded. “Now drop the gun. You, too,” he said to the other one. The quiver in Tom's voice was gone, replaced by anger-fueled strength. His eyes were black with unwavering certainty. He meant what he said.

When Eddie didn't immediately do as he was told, Tom pulled the wire a little tighter to prove he was serious. The shotgun clattered to the floor.

Sonny had watched the whole exercise casually, not surprised by Tom Turnell's ballet-like move. It was time for him to join in, while the fearful one's attention was focused entirely on the situation Eddie had got himself into. He dropped his hand, bypassing the temptation to shake some blood into it, pulled the .45 out from its hiding place, and pointed it directly at the fearful one—who had gone from quietly nervous and afraid to visibly shaking with fear.

“You heard what the man said. Drop the gun, like your brother,” Sonny demanded, using his best authoritative Ranger-tone. He didn't have a badge or a right arm anymore, but that didn't mean he had abandoned everything that had carried him through his professional life over the last forty years—including the saying that followed every Ranger these days, “One riot, one Ranger.” The saying was attributed to Captain W. J. Walker of Company B at the turn of the century. Sonny had known Walker personally and the man seemed to enjoy the attribution more than he did the admittance of his origin of it. These boys didn't know that he was an ex-Ranger, so the reputation that usually preceded itself in a tense situation and laid the ground work for an easy end wasn't evident to either of them. The saying meant nothing to them. But it did to Sonny.

“Don't,” Eddie yelled to the other one. In just as swift a move, he rocketed his elbow upward, catching Tom just under the chin. The surprise hit propelled the man, breaking his hold on the cheese wire, sending it flying out of reach, allowing Eddie to lunge forward toward Sonny.

Tom crashed into the wall and fell to the floor, as Eddie pushed into Sonny, knocking him off balance, causing him to tumble into the shelf, sending cans and boxes crashing to the floor. But Sonny remained standing, the gun still in his hand, though pointed at the floor.

The fearful one stood frozen, his shotgun still pointed at the counter, even though Tom Turnell had fallen out of sight.

Eddie dove for his shotgun, but the barrel had spun around so it was closest to him, instead of the butt of the weapon. He picked it up by the barrel, anxious to reach the trigger, just as Sonny regained his balance and pointed his .45 at the Mexican.

Eddie swung the shotgun at Sonny like a club. The butt of it cracked against Sonny's wrist, sending the pistol flying into the air. It bounced off the top shelf and vanished into the other aisle with a skid, metal against wood, striking another mark in the floor.

Tom Turnell stood up, his nose bloodied by Eddie's elbow, and wavered, like he was dizzy, but stepped forward—toward the fearful one.

Thunder boomed overhead, rain continued to hammer against the roof, and a pair of headlights turned into the parking lot, offering a quick beacon of hope to Sonny. But both boys saw what he saw and whatever fear existed before was now elevated to a new, more desperate, level, like gas thrown on an already-raging fire.

Eddie's brother pulled one trigger of the shotgun. Tom was five feet from him and the shot hit him directly in the stomach, knocking him backward. But Tom remained standing, enraged, determined to put an end to the threat and the desecration of his store, once and for all. He gathered himself, pushed away the pain and surprise, and stepped forward again, his bare hands the only weapon he had.

It was a double-barrel shotgun; there was another trigger to pull. The second blast nearly cut Tom in half. He tumbled backward into the counter and collapsed into a pool of blood.

Eddie jumped past Sonny, grabbed his brother, and ran to the door. He stopped and looked back at Sonny, cold eyes considering whether he deserved to live or die, when the car horn sounded—an alarm, an urging,
let's go
,
we have to go
. The car that had pulled into the lot had stopped. Someone else was coming. Another witness. Another person to shoot. Hopefully it was Bertie—or the police. Eddie stood frozen, fingering the trigger on his own shotgun, offering no signals to the car what his intention was, just staring at Sonny, counting his odds. Finally, the horn beeped again, and Eddie disappeared out the door without saying a word or firing the gun.

Before Sonny could take another breath or consider himself lucky to be alive, the car and the trio inside it sped off into the tumultuous grayness, disappearing completely from sight. But there was no question that they had been there, that Eddie and his brother had started something that they might not have intended to.

The crows had gathered on the telephone line as soon as the rain had stopped. They didn't know what humans called them when they came together, nor did they know what a murder was; the killing of one's own kind by another. All they knew was that there was blood, that death had beckoned them with opportunity and potential. They would just have to wait. Patience was something they did understand. They could stand on the wire until the last bit of light drained from the sky. Stand until darkness came, making them invisible, silent, and ready for whatever came next, whatever had been left for them by the violence of another. It was as if it had all happened just for them, just so they could continue to exist, black wing against black sky.

CHAPTER 11

“Get out of the car,” Eddie ordered Carmen. “Just get out.” His clothes were splattered with blood, his face carved with anger so severe that it threatened to stay there permanently. His handsomeness had vanished.

Eddie had said little after he'd run out of Lancer's Market. “Go. Go back to the motel.” Then he looked forward from the passenger seat, stared straight ahead tight-lipped, emotionlessly, as Carmen shifted through the gears, driving away from the market as fast as she could, but not so fast that she would draw attention to them. There were cars in the lot across the county line.

Tió had tried to apologize from the backseat. “I‘m sorry, Eddie; he was hurting you.”

“Shut up; just shut the fuck up, Tió.” His voice was like lightning hitting the ground. Biting electricity spread throughout the interior of the car, followed by deafening thunder.

“I didn't mean to kill him, Eddie. He wouldn't stop . . .”

Now, in front of the motel, the engine running in neutral, the vacuum wipers slapping against the windshield, Eddie repeated himself. “Go. Get out of the car, Carmen. Wait. Just wait. I‘ll be back.”

Carmen looked at Eddie, then back to Tió, who had shrunk into the gray upholstery like a fearful little boy on the verge of a spanking. Her gut told her not to argue with Eddie. Her gut told her to run from them both as fast as she could, as far away as she could get.

She pushed out of the driver's seat, her fingers numb from gripping the steering wheel so hard, and hurried to the door of their room as quickly as she could. There was no goodbye, no looking back.

For the first time since she had left home, Carmen longed for the comfort of her own bed, the smell of menudo simmering on the stove, her father sitting in his chair reading the newspaper after a long day's work at the hospital. Would he take her back? Forgive her if he knew what she had done? What about confession? Telling the priest? Something told her that there was no turning back, what was done couldn't be undone. She'd be marked for the rest of her life, all because she wanted to be with a boy, to strike out on her own. To be grown up.

A tear ran down her cheek, but she wouldn't let anyone see it. She could barely stand to wipe it away, acknowledge its sudden presence.

From the outside, the motel was as hopeless looking as it was on the inside. It was a long building with a sloping flat roof from front to back, like an old hog barn had been converted to house people on their way to slaughter instead of pigs. The motel sat outside of town, surrounded by fallow fields, along the main road out of Memphis that headed to all points north and south. Emptiness and squalid Indian reservations awaited in Oklahoma—a quiet kind of hell—while the draw of the city, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin, even farther south, piqued Carmen's curiosity with their size, opportunities, and places to disappear into. She needed to make a plan. She needed to decide what she was going to do next: Wait on Eddie—or go out on her own. “Wait,” Eddie had said. It was an order, a command no different than her father's.