An American Outlaw (5 page)

“Nothing that'd stand up in court.”

“I think they're describing Childress,” the lieutenant cuts in. He gestures to Doctor Wendell. “Alright. You can cover him up now.”

Whicher folds his arms across his chest. 

The doctor raises the sheet back up. Wheels the body from the room.

“Why did y'all want me to see this?”

“We can't say for sure,” says the lieutenant, “if Steven Childress was the shooter at the supermarket. Maybe he wasn't. I think he was. But either way, you've seen for yourself—it's inconclusive.”

“Right.” Whicher thinks of the shooter—stopping to pick up the empty shell cases.

“But we have to assume three men were involved in raiding the bank.”

The marshal nods. “If we can't prove it was two...”

CHAPTER 7

Black Mesa, Terlingua.

I opened my eyes. The first thing I seen was the inside of a barn roof. Rough timber frame, old shingle. Smell of horses. Horse and grain.

My face was running with sweat, hair soaking. Heart racing, my breath coming short. 

I lay still, breathing shallow. Gripped—close to panic. I'd had the dream again.

I felt like I could smell the rank air in the black sewer, beneath the road in Fallujah, feel its damp living stench. M9 Beretta slippery in my hand. Four of us, deafened—after the noise of the first shots. 

Moments, crouching. Trying to hear again. Nate and me. Behind us, a corporal and a private from my second fire team. Were any more coming in—after the first two? They were up ahead, somewhere. We'd have to walk over their still-warm corpses.

I sat up, pressed a hand against my eyes. I was in a barn. Somewhere. Not there.

Overhead, the roof seemed to rush at me. I rolled on my side, tried to sit up, pain surging through the back of my head. 

I put my face in my hands. Tried to black out everything.

“
Hey
...” 

A woman's voice. 

Calling out somewhere behind me. I thought of Nate's wife; Orla. 

I turned. To a silhouette of a girl. At the barn's open door.

“You finally woke up?”

The girl at the ruined miner's house; the night before. 

The girl with the shotgun
. 

I tried to sit, mouth dry. Unsure of anything.

“You don't remember?” she said.

I propped myself on my arms. Shook my head slow. Put a hand up, felt the swelling at the side of my skull.

She stepped into the barn interior, her long dark hair loose—over a green hunter's jacket. 

“You knocked yourself cold,” she said. 

She pushed her hair back, out of her face. 

“Up at my Grandaddy’s place. That ruin you were in?”

“Yeah,” I croaked. “That it?”

She moved closer. 

I tried not to stare. 

“You were hiking,” she said. “Looking for water. You camped down. I found you there.”

I breathed slow. Smelled the horse sweat. Stale air.

“You tripped,” she said. “In the dark—all that loose stone up there. You hit your head—against a wall.”

I put my hand against the swelling on my head. I thought about standing—my legs were heavy; numb.

“You just about broke your skull open.” 

She stopped short. Eyed me, wary. 

“I couldn't just leave you.”

I felt my tongue, like leather inside my mouth.

“You could've lain there all night. All day, too.”

I nodded.

“You would've died of thirst.” 

She took a pace back. Shoved her hands in her pockets.  

“I dragged you back to my truck. Brought you here. Let you sleep in the barn. I was just about to call a doctor...”

“Don't do that.”

She watched a moment. 

“You look a mess.”

I took a couple of shallow breaths, tried to focus my mind. 

She walked to the shadows, at the edge of the barn. 

“I left this,” she says. 

She picked up a bottle of water. Carried it to me. Unscrewed the top. 

I took it from her. Poured some in me.

“My name's Tennille.”

“Gil.” I said it without thinking.

She stared at me. “You sure my husband didn't send you?”

I took a long drink. Felt the water swell my belly. Put the bottle on the ground. 

“I don't know him.” I rolled to my side. Pushed myself upright. “I don't know anybody round here.”

She watched me, dark eyes intense, close on hostile.

 “I brought your backpack. I put it in the corner—over there.”

I stood. Hands gripping the tops of my legs. Thinking on Nate's gun.

“Take your time,” she says. She stepped in closer. Eyed my head. “I'm going on up to the house. I'll bring you something.” 

She turned and walked from the barn, into the glare of light.

I staggered across the dirt-beat floor to my backpack—hands fumbling on the zip. 

I pushed my fingers inside the pack, feeling for metal, pushing all the way down. It wasn't in there. I held one arm against the barn side, to hold myself upright.
The jacket
. The gun was in the jacket. I left it somewhere at the miner's house.

I stood; legs rigid, trying to think. 

She couldn't have found it.

But I had to get out. I should've been long gone. I should've been with Michael, up in Marfa. 

I rummaged through the bag again, found the cell phone, head swimming. 

I tried the cell—no signal. I walked unsteady out the barn.

I was in a fenced lot. Thin desert grass. The baked earth marked up with hooves. 

The battery on the phone was practically out, left on all night, searching out a signal. 

The girl was nowhere now, I couldn't see her. Above the barn, the ground rose to a ridge of bedrock, the house must be over the ridge, somewhere out of sight.

I stumbled around the sloping lot, like a drunk across the uneven ground. Headed downhill towards a bank of snakeweed, by a concrete stock tank. 

There had to be a signal, somewhere. I stared at the cell's screen, willing there to be one. 

From where I'd been, in the ruins of that miner's house, I'd reckoned it at thirty to forty miles up to Marfa. I thought of trying to cover the desert ground on foot, like before. My body ached, my head was a mess. I'd never make it. 

I stared at the hills rising in the south—in Mexico. The land stretching out, wave after wave of scorching desert.

Michael was hurt. Maybe they'd found him? I checked the phone a last time—still nothing. I switched it off. 

I thought of the girl, Tennille—whoever she was. She couldn't know what'd happened; about me, about Alpine, she'd have called it in.

To the south and east, the desert was open ground, long sight-lines, twenty miles and more. 

To the north the land rose up, cutting the horizon in bluffs of rock. No sign of life, no road anywhere, no buildings. Where were we?

From lower down the slope, beyond a bank of scrub, I could see dust rising. A thin line of tan against the sky. 

For a minute, I watched it, a column of dust. I thought of making for the barn—maybe fifty yards behind me up the slope. In the still air, there was something; some faint sound. I thought of hooves. Feet hammering against the dirt.

I stared past the concrete stock tank. A horse was crashing through the bank of scrub, charging straight for a mess of wire.

It hit the wire—reared up on its hind legs, bucking and kicking, eyes wide. Instead of staying still, it turns in a frenzy, twisting and writhing, the wire cutting into it, dark blood already on its flanks.

I ran, closed the space, reached the horse, threw my arms around its neck. Blind panic in the air. Dust swirling, choking. Like some evil magic. 

It turns, swivels, lifting me off my feet.

Somebody's shouting; “
Stay there
...” 

A girl's voice.

The horse is slowing. 

My arms gripping tight about its neck. Face buried in its mane.

 It's not kicking, not rearing any more. And I realize, as the horse stops, its feet still. 

I'm in a dirt field. In Texas.

I loosened my grip. Took a half-step back.

The girl's beside me, Tennille, a pair of cutters in her hand. 

She pushes her fingers against the horse's flesh, where the wire's ripping, blood running underneath. She slips the cutters in, fast, moving from one wire to the next. Horse blood dripping down her arm.

“Keep your hand in her mane. Don't let go.”

I held tight. Legs weak, fighting for breath.

She moved around the horse's body, cutting it free. 

“Try to lead her out. You've got her...”

I staggered out from the wire, to where the ground was clear. Pushing at the horse, heading her up the field, holding on.

We reached the barn, its doors wide. 

Tennille ran inside. 

She grabbed a head collar, ran back out and pushed it over the horse's head. She tied the rope to a hitching post. 

I slackened my grip. Eased my hand from the mane. Coarse black hair sticking to my fingers.

“I saw her coming, from the house,” she says. “She must've bolted.” 

She knotted the end of the rope tight.

I stepped away. Walked backwards. Crashed down on a grain sack. Now that I stopped, my head felt about to burst.

“Gil?” she says. 

She ran her bloody hands across the horse, checking the cuts. 

“Is that what you said your name was?”

I nodded. Sweat pouring off of me, like water.

She turned from the horse. Fixed me with this look. “What you did...”

I watched her from the grain sack. Rubbed a hand across my face. 

She stared—held my eye with hers. 

For a second, something softened. Then she broke off.

I just sat breathless. Trying to come down. My mind half in another place, another desert. A different life.

She finished checking over the horse, talking to it, soft sounding. 

“This one belongs to one of my neighbors,” she said. 

After a minute, she turns to me, “Come up to the house.”

I felt the dry ache in my mouth, my throat. Sick feeling. Dazed. I shook my head. Felt it reeling.

“Come up,” she says. “Anyhow. There's no way you can leave...”

Her house was on a ridge above the horse barn. Adobe-style; render walls the color of fired earth. 

I stared at a sign driven into the hard ground—branded letters on it,
Labrea Ranch.

In front of the house, she had a garden—a bunch of cacti set in gravel; strawberry pitaya, rainbow. She had chimes, hanging feathers, beads; plants in wood boxes. Stones snaked out in patterns on the path.

Heat was already building in the morning air. 

I took a look around. 

To the side of the house was a truck. Battered 350 Crew Cab. Ten years old. Black and red. 

Maybe I could take it.

Around the front and rear, the house had a raised porch; shaded, with tables and chairs. There was a cycle, it was resting against the wall of an outbuilding. A kid's cycle. Pink. Paint faded from the sun.

I thought of the horse. She'd loosed it, soon as it had calmed. She'd put it in a fenced off lot down the sloping field. 

I watched the dog she must've had with her the night before—running around now, nose to the ground. 

I thought about what to say to her. All I could think was her standing there—in the barn, by that horse. Way she'd looked at me.

I walked on round the back of the house. 

At the far corner, the wall was burned. Render blackened by flame. The roof was damaged. And on the ground lay charred wood, the burnt remains of a lean-to. 

I thought of fire. Out there, it'd get ugly fast.

I saw the door open. 

She came out, on the back porch. She'd changed, she was wearing this print-dress. White with dabs of purple-blue. She had a pot of coffee. 

I walked towards her. Climbed the porch steps. She pulled out a chair.

I sat. 

The dabs on her dress were flowers. Texas bluebonnets, I think.

“I made a call,” she says. “About the horse.” 

She poured the coffee.

“You got somebody coming out?” I tried to make it sound casual.

She looked at me.

“Somebody coming up?” I says. “To fetch her?”

She pushed a cup across the table to me. “Maybe later.”

I put a hand against the bruise on my head. Felt the swelling under the skin.

“Where you from?” she says.

I thought about it. I'd never see her again. “Louisiana.”

“What brings you here? Down in Texas?”

I watched the line of distant hills—lit up in the sun. “Like to take off,” I says. “Time to time.”

“In the wilderness?”

“Something like that.”

She turned the mess of silver bracelets at her wrist.

“Supposed to be mountain lions,” I says. “Up in the hills. Never seen one. Kind of hoping I might.”

She took a sip on her cup of coffee. “Wild cats can be dangerous.”

“You ride around like that a lot?” I says. “Out in the desert.”

“What's that mean?”

“I don't know. On your own...”

In her hand, she held a brushed steel Zippo. She flicked it open with her thumb. Flicked it closed. 

“I don't scare easy.”

Her dog sidled up the steps of the porch, to sit down by her feet.

“What happened to your house?” I says. “Fire back there.”

She turned the silver bracelets. Eyes hooded. “An accident.”

I watched the sun on the hills. Color changing by the second. I drank the coffee, felt the heat hit my empty stomach. Turning my gut. 

A wave of nausea swept over me. “You think I could use the bathroom?”

“Through the house. Down the hall.”

I pushed myself out of the chair, to my feet.

“Last but one room,” she says, “at the left.”

I tried not to stagger, walking in to the house. 

Inside, the air was cool. A central corridor. Rooms leading off at either side. I walked to the last room but one. Took a right.

It was a bedroom, a child's room. Neat-folded clothes laid out on a chair.