Big Maria (26 page)

The burro, unable to turn around, backed away from the cougar, walking right over Ricky. One hoof dug into his leg, another completely crushed his dead arm. He was already in so much pain from the kick in the gut that the additions barely registered.

Ricky quickly realized there was nothing between him and the cougar. The cougar seemed aware of it, too. Why tangle with the crazy thing with hooves, when there was a soft, bloody snack right in front of him?

God’s design had definitely failed Ricky at this point. What Ricky would have given for some claws, fangs, talons, or, at the very least, anal scent glands. Advanced reasoning and opposable thumbs did little good in a head-to-head scrap with a cougar.

The cougar stalked slowly forward. Each step landing softly and quietly. Ricky had never felt defeat as strongly as he did at that moment. All Ricky could think to do was close his eyes. He was done. He accepted it. He just didn’t want to see it happen. He would rather spend his last moments thinking about his daughter.

“I’m ready,” Ricky said.

A loud growl and strange, fleshy chunking sounds followed. Like the sound of a paper cutter trying to slice a brisket. The cry of the cougar reached a deafening pitch.

Ricky opened his eyes in time to see the cougar fall, bloody gashes in its side. The animal struggled to its feet but fell
immediately back down. As scared as he had been, Ricky felt bad for the cougar as it took its final breaths. Blood and guts soaked the ground.

The last thing that Ricky remembered before passing out for the second time in one day was the image of Harry covered in blood from head to leg cast. Harry, standing over the dead animal, holding a samurai sword, and yelling, “Fuck you, cat! Fuck you, cat!”

R
icky jerked awake, but Harry quickly pinned his shoulder to the ground. He was so weak, he didn’t bother to resist. “Don’t move. I patched you up. Don’t want you to mess up all my work.”

“Where are we?” Ricky relaxed, the pain reducing his desire to stand.

“A cave. Somewhere in the middle of downtown nowhere. Frank’s here. He’s sleeping. Both burros are tied up. Here for the night. Taking a personal day after all the excitement.”

Ricky let his eyes adjust to the darkness. They were in a low cave. The ceiling was about four feet above them and covered with daddy longlegs spiders. There were so many, it made the rocks look like a breathing sweater. Looking toward the dim twilight at the mouth of the cave, he could see the burros. One stood, licking the bite and claw wounds of the other burro that rested on the ground. It wasn’t clear if the animal was trying to help or if it liked the taste of blood. Frank snored somewhere, but Ricky couldn’t find him.

Harry went back to work on Ricky’s wounds. “Frank snores like a hungover pig, but it’s good he’s sleeping. That minefield took some years off all of us. I thought he was going to have another heart attack, a stroke, something. Surprised I didn’t have one. He only got his color back an hour ago.”

“What happened? Back with Wood? Can’t see it.”

“This is going to hurt,” Harry said, pouring vodka onto Ricky’s torn chest. After Ricky got all his screaming out, Harry took a gulp of the vodka and helped him fill in the blanks.

“After Wood stepped on a landmine—wasn’t his week—boom, everything happened at once. The air was all dust and black smoke and like a bloody red mist. We should’ve let the burros go in front of us. Not that I would’ve wanted them blown up, but better than what happened, yeah?”

“How did I, we, get out of the minefield?”

“Fate, maybe. Mostly luck. The mine explodes. Your donkey bolts, dragging you like a rag doll. You were probably unconscious, out from the blast, but still holding on to the reins and mane. Good grip you got, even your little arm.

“You should kiss that burro on the mouth. It made a beeline for the hills. Easy as you please, ran right out of the minefield.”

“And you two?” Ricky asked.

“Our donkey took us on Mr. Toad’s. Where yours went straight for the hills, ours jumped all around. Heeing and hawing and kicking. In a minefield. I grabbed its mane and held on, cussing and crapping myself. Frank wasn’t as lucky. He had the reins wrapped tightly around his hands and it kind of dragged him here and there. He never got under its hooves, but still, it was a lot of thrashing around for an old man.

“Bad luck to be in a minefield. Good luck to get out. How everything’s been since we started. Step back, step forward. We’re here. We’re closer. We’re alive. Frank cussed me out, says it was because of Constance’s head, because I brung it. Bad luck charm. Or maybe the head was the thing brought the good luck part of the deal, you know? Our talisman.

“When the donkey finally stopped its spaz, Frank and me were in the hills. Frank was scraped and bruised, could hardly breathe. He really didn’t look good. I set him down, gave him some water, and went looking for you. Grabbed the sword to
use as a walking stick and scrambled through the rocks best I could. When I found you, that lion was bearing down. I had a good angle.”

“Thanks for that,” Ricky said.

“I went ninja on his ass. Stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Jumped off those rocks and started slicing and dicing. Thought about taking a bite out of its heart, ’cause it seemed like what you’re supposed to do, but the thought passed.”

“You risked your life for me, Harry.”

“I wouldn’t’ve if I’d’ve thought about it. Get some sleep. Let’s hope tomorrow is less eventful.”

F
rank woke in the middle of the night. From dead sleep to wide awake. He squinted at the deep darkness of the cave and tried to make out shapes. Without anything to look at, he was left with his thoughts.

There was nothing quite like watching a man explode and surviving a minefield to stoke the coals of one’s introspection. And Frank had to admit that being alive felt better than it had in a long damn time.

Nobody was taking care of him. He was taking care of himself. Nobody was telling him what to do. He was making his own decisions. And most importantly he had something to look forward to in his future, erasing the bleakness that every man faces at the end of his life. Death wasn’t nearly as welcome a guest as it had been a few weeks back. It was good to be alive, no matter how short-lived life might be.

Frank reached out and touched the cave wall. He let the spindly legs of hundreds of spiders tickle the back of his hand.

“W
e are lost and we are only getting more loster,” Ramón said. He glanced at the sun and wiped the sweat from his face, wishing he was a lot stoneder.

Mercedes violently shook her head. “We are Native Americans. Proud Chemehuevi. We cannot get lost. Our blood is never lost. Our souls are never lost. We are connected to the land. One with it. We are the land with feet.”

She held her arms to the side, her face to the sun. “Guide us, Mother Sun. We’re your wandering children. Show us the way.”

Bernardo leaned in to Ramón and asked, “Did you give her more of the weed?”

Ramón nodded. “A little bit. It calms her down.”

“And crazies her up. Do we have enough for three?”

“I have one pound of the Purple Peace Pipe and a half pound of the Oliver Stoned.”

“That will have to do,” Bernard said gravely. “If she gets paranoid, that is on you.”

Mercedes waved her arms at the rocky hills that surrounded them. They had hiked up the mountain into the deep grooves of the bajada. Without a horizon, all sense of direction was gone. “If our Mother Sun cannot tell us the way, then our white man will. He knows this land. The foot’s on the other foot. The white man will guide the Indians.”

Cooker chucked his pack to the ground and sat on top of it. “Sorry to shit in your teepee, Fatahontas, but I got no idea where we’re at. I might’ve at one point, but now I can barely tell which way is up. No point in walking in circles. Sun’s low, too. It gets
dark in this maze, we’re likely to walk off a cliff. The big, dumb brave is right. We’re motherfucking loster than shit.”

“Get up!” Mercedes yelled, taking a few steps closer.

He shook his head, squinting at the sun and pointing. “Once that sun is gone, it’s going to be Pin the Tail on the Asshole, all blindfolded and spun around. Ain’t going to see nowhere from nothing. Just because I’ve been doing what you say don’t mean everything you say ain’t stupid.”

Bernardo stepped between them. “Worky has a point. We make camp here.”

A
n hour later, the four of them sat in the dark. A debate had erupted and quickly ended about starting a campfire. Ramón was disappointed. He had brought the fixin’s for s’mores and had his heart set on them. Their loss. More for him later. They were left with the country dark, their aching shoulders, and each other.

“How does this end for me?” Cooker asked.

Bernardo answered. “It ends good. You return home. Your addictions are gone and you are a better man.”

“Addictions? I ain’t addicted to shit. I cooked but never took. Except to test.”

“It is a disease. The first step is to admit that you have a problem.” Bernardo took a huge drag on a massive spliff and passed it to Ramón, who nodded in agreement.

“It is all about boundaries and self-control. Just say no,” Ramón said. He inhaled deeply on the joint.

“Papa Frank is trying to help. You will thank him when you see that he has saved you.”

“Saved me? Motherfucker kidnapped me. I’ve been telling you, you fucking morons. Your Papa Frank is keeping me on ice, because I know things he don’t want no one to know. Shit, he obviously don’t want you to know.”

“I know things,” Ramón said defensively.

“I know where Frank is going—you know that—but I also know why he’s going there.”

Mercedes stood up, dusted the dirt from her backside, and stood over Cooker with her hands on her hips. “He was taken by two men. Dragged against his will into these mountains.”

“Don’t think so, honey,” Cooker said, making a bad decision by following with a smirk. When Mercedes kicked him in the leg, he acknowledged to himself that that one was on him.

“We have no secrets. My father tells me everything,” Mercedes said.

“Sorry, lady, but if he didn’t tell you about the gold, then he didn’t tell you shit.”

Mercedes opened her mouth to speak, but Bernardo got in before her. “What gold?”

“They got a map, the three of them. From the look of it, they killed some dude—cut his head off—to get it. That’s what greed does to a person. They find that gold, they ain’t sharing. Your Papa Frank, he’s like their leader. Kidnapped me. Lied to you. He’s got gold fever.”

“My father does not lie to me,” Mercedes said defiantly.

“How much gold?” Bernardo asked, ignoring his mother.

“Maybe why they dove in the reservoir,” Ramón added.

Bernardo shook his head. “Obviously. That is where treasure maps are. There was probably a pirate ship or something down there. How much gold is there, Worky?”

“I don’t know, but it has to be a lot to hike straight into a fucking artillery range, yeah?”

Mercedes sat back down. “Doesn’t change a thing. We’re finding your grandfather and bringing him home. Gold, silver, diamonds, what does it matter? He is an old man. A sick man. And he needs me, his daughter.”

Nobody said anything else. But that didn’t mean they weren’t thinking. Thinking about gold.

T
he sign read
WELCOME TO BAGHDADVILLE.

“What now?” Harry said.

The three tired men and their burros stood in front of the makeshift sign. The rocky trail had opened up into a paved road. The craggy hills to a high plain. And in the center of the plain, past the sign, there was a small village of about twenty buildings. A wood and plaster village. Deep-black asphalt roads led into the town from four directions.

There was no movement or activity. No clouds of dust or smoke. Not even a bird in the sky. They listened for engines or voices, but it was impossible to hear anything over the mortar barrage in the near hills.

“We shouldn’t risk it. Let’s go around,” Frank said.

“I don’t see no one, nothing,” Harry said.

“It’s a town. Whyever it’s out here, it’s for people. Might not be anyone this moment, but they’ll show up eventually.”

Harry said, “We go around, it’ll take a day, maybe two. And we still got to cross those roads. I don’t know if you noticed, but none of us is any kind of shape. The mine is over that rise.”

“We get seen, we get caught, it’s over. We rush it, we screw ourselves.”

“We go through the town,” Ricky stated with authority.

They both turned, surprised. Ricky had been quiet since they had found him. “Don’t mean to vote against you, Frank. But look at the terrain. Going around, we’ll be just as out in the open. At least in there, there’s places to hide. And Harry is right. We’re
beat-up. Maybe a place to fill our water. We’re running super low. It’s worth chancing it.”

Frank looked Ricky up and down. He was a mess. His whole body was a giant scab, some of the black from the explosion still embedded in his skin, and the burned bits were pink and yellow. Harry had told Frank that he was pretty sure the kid had some broken ribs, too.

Frank nodded and walked past the sign. The three men headed down the road into a town that shouldn’t be there.

N
one of the men had been to the Middle East. Hell, none of them had been to the Midwest. It didn’t matter. Walking into the town, they were convinced that they were getting an accurate taste of a Middle Eastern village. The attention to detail was impressive. All of the buildings had Arabic signs and advertisements in the windows. There were benches and chairs in front of a few places. The buildings looked authentic, like on CNN footage. But without people or animals, Baghdadville had that spooky ghost-town vibe of a place that had been evacuated quickly.

Ricky cautiously walked into one of the buildings, expecting to find wood frames and dirt floors like a movie set, but it was a regular room. Fully furnished with a worn table and old chairs and Arab pop music posters on the wall. Dishes on the table. A few oil drums felt out of place, but Ricky figured they had tons of oil over in Arabia, maybe so much the Arabs kept some in their homes. At closer inspection, the chairs weren’t old, but made to look that way. He thought it was called
distressing
. Like the fake bricks on the wall of an Italian restaurant or the rocks at Disneyland.