Biker (16 page)

The cramps went away slowly, leaving him scared of extending those muscles. He needed water. He looked up. Disc was closer now. With eyes on the deep blue disc he inched upward. Four heaves. Then three. He got his hands over the rim and hung there panting for five minutes, feet braced against a couple of protrusions, gathering strength to heave himself up and out.

He raised himself on protesting arms. For the first time in hours he saw the horizon. The little valley was deserted. The silence was immense. Even the omnipresent crickets and katydids had ceased their constant sawing. Pratt grasped for the outer edge and got it. With both hands gripping the outer edge, he got his right leg up and over until finally, gratefully, he tumbled from the low rim to the matted brown grass and lay there panting.

The impatient North Star had already emerged in the sapphire sky. Pratt felt the cramps gathering in his limbs, massing for attack. He relaxed his gut, willing his overheated body to calm down. He had to relax it in stages. It wouldn't all go at once. He started with the toes, an old yoga trick. The cramps retreated.

Water. He needed water.

Pratt sat up and looked around. There was no sign of other living creatures save a lone turkey buzzard.

Is that you, my friend?

“Thank you for saving my life once again,” Pratt said. He arched his back looking up at the heavens. Pratt staggered to his feet. He felt lightheaded, fresh off the boat and hadn't got his ground legs yet. Darkness flowed through the hills into the little valley. The Quonset hut was a black silhouette.

“Eric!” Pratt yelled once. His voice cracked. The place felt empty.

Pratt stumbled for the hut, automatically glancing to his right and left. The tepee glowed pale ivory in the starlight. Pratt gripped the Quonset door frame and stared into the darkness of the interior. A slow river of reek invaded his sinuses.

“Eric,” he said. Nothing. Pratt stood in the door frame, listening. The crickets and katydids were back at it.

Pratt needed water badly. He had never felt such a thirst. He found a light switch next to the door but it clicked uselessly. Some light filtered in through ivy-covered windows and the lone skylight, revealing a Coleman lantern resting on some cardboard boxes inside the door. Pratt took the lantern and looked for matches.

He found them on the workbench, crowded with Bunsen burners, chemicals and latex gloves. The matchbook said, Vern's Place, 421 Main St., Hog Tail, WY. Pratt lit the lantern. It cast a yellow glow into the jumbled hermit hoarder's lair, boxes everywhere, an old sofa shoved up against the side beneath one occluded window. American Pickers would have a field day. There was a sink in the worktable surface and beneath that several picnic coolers. Next to the sink was a small glass vial labeled “ketamine” with a warning and what looked like a pharmaceutical bottle labeled “Ciclosporin.” Several spent hypodermic needles lay in the bottom of a ten-gallon tub used for trash. Another ten-gallon tub served as an umbrella stand. It held a pump-action air rifle and a nine iron.

Pratt pried the lid off one of the coolers. A flesh-eroding stench latched onto his skin and he slammed it shut without looking. Breathing now through his mouth he pried up the lid of the second cooler and found three quart bottles of lime-flavored sports drink, still cool from the water in the bottom of the chest.

“Thank you Jesus,” he muttered, twisting the cap off one and upending it. He chugged it down and opened another. Half of that and he was finally sated. Holding the lantern before him Pratt began a careful search of the interior. A stained coffee table in front of the sofa was virtually invisible beneath piles of old magazines, empty take-out food wrappers and bottles. An old compound bow poked up from behind the sprung sofa.

The fumes made Pratt's eyes water. He made his way toward the rear of the hut. A scurrying sound froze him in place. Mice. In the back beneath an open window he found the nest. Piles of old rags and blankets formed into a crude hollow, like a dog might make, covered with fur. There was so much fur, the pattern of the fabric was invisible. Pratt reached down, pinched a wad and stuck it in an open envelope he found in the trash. The envelope was addressed to Arnold Daggett, Spearfish, SD. The postage marking was three years old.

Next to the pile of rags was an aluminum water bowl. An iron ring had been sunk into the floor of the hut. The nest smelled like feces. Taped to the wall about four feet off the floor was a picture cut from a Sunday magazine: the Simpson family all together smiling for the camera. Pratt stared at it a long time thinking the same thoughts Eric had.

The combination of assaultive smells pushed him inexorably back to the door.

On the way out he paused to take inventory of the work surface. Unbelievably, his wallet and cell phone lay on the bench half-covered with a BUDK catalog. Pratt flipped the cell phone open. No signal. He checked his wallet. His money and credit cards were intact. Pratt stuffed them back in his pockets. He grabbed a roll of gray duct tape. He saw cotton peeking from a cardboard box, peeled back the lid. Dozens of pale green shirts with a wild flame-colored logo depicting a fierce Sioux warrior in war bonnet and the legend, “STURGIS—THE ONE, THE ONLY, THE ORIGINAL.”

Pratt used his buck knife to slice the shirts into strips, which he used to stanch his blood.

Pratt pulled one out. It was a large. He struggled painfully into it, a spastic ballet. The fumes gave him a headache. Grabbing the two remaining bottles of sports drink, he went outside and inhaled deeply of the sweet night air.

He looked around.

Where had the boy gone?

Maybe he was watching from the surrounding hills. Maybe Pratt was the first human being other than Moon the boy had ever seen, other than his mother. What was he doing? What must he think, his home invaded, forced to participate in savagery? Eric's anxiety level had to be over the moon.

Don't think about the boy
.

Don't think about the elephant in the room
.

Pratt needed to alert Cass and Ginger that Moon was coming for them. He had to tell the police. He had to get his ass back to Wisconsin pronto. He dismissed going back the way he'd come. There had to be an easier way in and out. A dirt road ran from the yard up a rocky ridge and southwest, doubtless connected to some road somewhere. Pratt hadn't heard a vehicle last night when Moon had grabbed him but that meant nothing. Moon might have stashed the vehicle over the ridge to creep in. Why would he creep in unless he suspected there might be an intruder? How had he known?

When Grundy didn't show, Moon must have smelled a rat.

Pratt walked outside the copse, up the sandpapered rock to a slight promontory and did a 360. Shadows flickered across a ridge in moonlight. Coyotes barked weird yipping ululations. There—in the creosote. A pair of red eyes.

Pratt stared until his vision blurred. Wolves had red eyes in the moonlight. Men did not.

An icicle entered his heart. A sense of hopelessness seized Pratt in iron jaws like the first time he'd been thrown in jail, age sixteen, car theft. They got him when he ran the new Chevy Tahoe he'd hot-wired in a mall parking lot into the ditch. A cop with a face like a bulldog took one sneering look at him, pumped and inked in his wife beater, and tuned him up by the side of the road with swift, brutal little punches to his kidneys that left him pissing blood for days.

The bull had cranked the cuffs behind his back and tossed him in the back of his cruiser. The back seat smelled like vomit. The jail stank of urine. There was no mattress on the hard iron cot.

Pratt remembered sitting in the stinking cell by himself Saturday night thinking of ways to commit suicide, thinking,
Of course people kill themselves in jail. All the fucking time
.

They did it when the future looked worse than the past. They made that calculation in their minds—is it worth going on? Are things ever going to get better or is it all downhill from here?

Duane weighed in. “You ain't worth a glass of warm piss, boy. I don't know how you're gonna make it.”

Fuck you Duane, I'm gonna make it
.

Pratt shivered uncontrollably, sat right there and did the breathing thing. The desolation, the smell, the awful things he'd seen—he had to get out of there.

The pale white tepee decorated with Sioux pictographs beckoned like a beacon.

Pratt stiff-walked over and looked inside.

An ivory and rust colored tank gleamed dully in the moonlight, the word “Indian” painted on its side in elegant script with a gold outline. Ape hangers stuck straight up like a praying mantis' antennae. Indians had been around since 1901. The original manufacturer was in Springfield, Massachusetts. It went bankrupt in 1953 but ever since, venture groups had been buying up the name and introducing new “Indians,” capitalizing on the full-skirted fender look. This Indian was from 1999, with an 1800-cc chunk of iron in the cradle frame.

The key was in the ignition.

CHAPTER 29

The Indian was one of those legacy jobs based on the original tooling but with a modern engine. Art deco fenders covered most of the wheels. It had fishtail pipes and floorboards. It was long and low and weighed seven hundred and fifty pounds.

Pratt laughed when he saw it. Who would have thought the day would come when he would prefer four wheels to two? His cracked rib was incendiary and the rest of him looked like it had gone through a wood chipper. He'd bandaged himself as well as he could with rags and duct tape. There were bungee cords on the pillion. He used these to strap in his sports drink, gingerly sat on the saddle and unscrewed the gas cap. Good to go. He was seeping.

It occurred to him that with Moon gone there was no reason for Pratt to flee. He could stay the night, start fresh in the morning.

Maybe the boy would come back.

He thought about entering the hut and his flesh prickled. The place gave off a bad vibe. A long, slow, dangerous ride into town was preferable to staying there.

Pratt turned the key. The telltale lights in the huge instrument nacelle blinked on: red and green. Pratt thumbed the starter button. The machine whirred mechanically for an instant then exploded in an eruption of power. Pratt let out the clutch and eased the beast out of the tepee toward the dirt road that disappeared in a fold in the rock.

The headlight turned the world a sickly yellow as Pratt used first gear to negotiate the rock-strewn path.

If he can ride in, I can ride out
.

Pratt's feet left the floorboards to control his balance when they hit the gravel. The road surface hardened to clay a quarter mile up the road and Pratt was able to get into third gear. At one point as he traversed a narrow wadi, the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. He glanced up and thought he saw two red eyes peering at him from atop a promontory. He laid on the throttle, paying the price in pain as the big machine lurched and rolled over obstacles.

The road meandered through the hills before picking up the remains of a barbed wire fence on one side. Pratt subsumed himself in the task of guiding the machine, achieving for a time a blissful amnesia, a blessed release from the scare he'd just had. The hills retreated and the horizon expanded. Pratt and the bike functioned as one. Total concentration yielded to no concentration and the bike rolled flawlessly on. Pratt lost all sense of time. Eventually he was joined by a trickle of creek. Emerging from a stand of cottonwood next to the creek, a white-tailed deer dashed across the road.

Pratt checked the odometer. He'd gone twenty-five miles. He shut off the engine, reached behind him and snagged the last bottle. He drained it and stuck it back under the bungees. After a few minutes he heard the whoosh of traffic from beyond the next ridge. He started the engine and snicked the big bike into gear. Moments later he topped the crest and looked down at a busy two-lane blacktop. The dirt road ended in a locked gate set ten feet back from the highway. Ten feet back from the gate was a tiny pre-fab shed with a green metal roof. Down the road was a green highway sign, “HOG TAIL 6 MILES.”

Pratt rode to the gate, found a flat rock and kicked out the stand. The aluminum gate was part of an electrified wire corral enclosing a stable and an empty water trough. The gate was held shut by a Master padlock. Pratt hefted the lock and tested the connection. It was on tight. He looked up and down the barbed wire fence. A lot easier to breach the barbed wire then fight with the lock.

A truck whooshed by. The driver waved through the window as he passed. Pratt waved back. The moon glared balefully down. A Toyota whooshed by and abruptly stutter-stepped as the driver registered what he'd seen. There was a flash of brake lights, then the guy took off. Maybe phoning in what he thought he saw.

Pratt walked over to the shed. The door was shut, the hasp turned, but there was no lock. He opened it up and found a pair of bolt cutters in a rusted red tool box. He also found the fuse box and shut off the power going to the fence. Cutting another man's wire used to be a hanging offense.

Pratt cut through the three strands of wire. They fell inert to the ground. Pratt got on the Indian, started it up and rode through the fence, across the shallow ditch at an angle, onto the hard shoulder and up the road toward Hog Tail. His body achieved an uneasy equilibrium, pain evenly distributed like side saddles, vibrations soothing his angry nerves. Maybe he should just stay on the bike until he ran out of gas. He followed an old Ford pick-up and a PT Cruiser filled with whooping teenagers down a long slope toward the clustered lights of Hog Tail.

Hog Tail was six blocks of bars, a Piggly Wiggly, a post office, a grain elevator, a hardware and appliance store and real estate. A blinking sign on the bank said 10:15. A gleaming new Chevron station occupied one corner at the crossroads. Four choppers sat outside Vern's Place, a faux redwood dive with a horizontal window sporting a neon Hamm's sign.

Feeling light headed and shaky, Pratt backed the big Indian to the curb next to a well-worn FXLH. His multiple stab sounds and contusions had coalesced into a steady red alert pulsing through his whole body. He sat there for a minute while he waited for his vision to settle down. He was seeing double. High school harries cruised past in tricked-out Hondas. The Fast and the Furious had come to Wyoming. The ripping shrieks of their exhausts provided a suitable soundtrack for how he felt.