Borderland (15 page)

"Yeah,"
Nolan said. He approached the car and reached for the hood. Al stopped him.

"Don't
wanna see you hurt yourself. With those bandages I'm thinking you're either a
boxer or a bar brawler."

Nolan
laughed, but he didn't set him straight. He was certain Al had another
long-winded opinion on civil servants and drugs in America. He would've liked
to hear it, but it was hot and he was ready to make a deal.

"Real
good shape," Al said as he peered under the hood. "I'll let you have
it for ten bucks."

Nolan
stared at him. "Now I know why you're out of the used car business."

The big
man grinned. "Never was much good at it. Too damned honest for my own
good. But like I said, I'm ready to unload this place and go back home."

"Where's
home?" Nolan asked.

"Arkansas.
Ain't been back in years. My boy's set up in Denver and doin' real good. He's
what you call an intern. Dr. Dunwoodie, believe it? When he's not at the
hospital he's dishin' out soup at a poor shelter. Real proud of him."

Nolan
didn't know what to say. The longer he talked to Al the guiltier he felt. He
swallowed the thick, middle-class lump in his throat and looked under the hood.
Maybe next year he'd become a better, more caring human being.

"Let
me get that thing out for you," Al said. He reached into his overalls and
came out with a fistful of tools. "That is, if you want it."

"Yeah,
sure," Nolan said. "But you don't have to do it. I can get it
out."

Al
winked at him. "Better save them hands. Ladies'll appreciate it."

Nolan
was glad he let Al handle it. The man had the radiator out in less than fifteen
minutes, and in five more they were making their way back to the fiberboard
shack that served as his office, Al carrying the radiator in one hand.

When
Nolan saw the long, shark gray car behind his convertible he couldn't believe
his eyes. But yes, that was a big bad Buick, and yes, that was Cal struggling
to peel the gloved hand of a strange man from his mouth. The man was trying to
put Cal in the back seat of the gray car.

"Hey!"
Nolan shouted, and even the man behind the wheel of the car looked up.

Looked
up and pointed the barrel of a pistol out the window. Nolan heard the shot and
a loud ding as the round struck the bumper of a rusted Plymouth Duster to his
left.

"Sonofabitch,"
Al said, and the big man strode forward, holding the radiator out in front of
him. Nolan looked at him, thought he was just possibly crazy and then decided
to follow. He picked up a hubcap and a blackened muffler pipe on the way.

The guy
wasn't shooting. It wasn't because Al was so scary, as Nolan at first thought,
but because Cal had squirmed and tugged until he and the man he was struggling
with were directly in the driver's line of fire.

"Hit
him in the balls!" Al shouted to Cal, and when the driver looked over to see
if the boy was going to follow that suggestion, Nolan frisbeed the hubcap at
the windshield of the car. It bounced off the glass and landed on the ground in
front of the car.

"Goddamn
shatterproof shit!"

The man
holding Cal twisted toward the open rear door and the driver took another
shot…at Al this time.

He
missed.

Now
Nolan reconsidered the scare Al Dunwoodie could put into a man. Al looked like
a mildly pissed Kodiak bear getting ready to eat a BB-shooting camper. The
driver fired again and bit the radiator. Nolan threw the muffler pipe at the
same instant and watched in anger and amazement as it too bounced off the
windshield.

"I'll
be goddamned," he complained, but no one was listening. Al, mad as hell
about the radiator, picked up speed and charged the Buick. The man holding Cal
saw him coming and screamed at the driver to shoot. The driver was too busy
putting the car in gear. When the man holding Cal saw this he released the
furiously thrashing boy and grabbed for the rear door. He missed and grabbed
again as the Buick backed up, barely managing to get hold of the swinging door.
The driver spun the wheel and threw the man off balance before he could clamber
into the seat.

Al
dropped the radiator, caught one kicking foot in his monstrous hand and held on
even as the Buick pulled away. A black shoe came off in his hand, and the owner
of the shoe was dragged through the dirt all the way down Al's drive, still
trying to scramble into the car.

"Sonofabitch,"
Al repeated, spitting this time for emphasis. "Can't even see the damned
license plate." He turned and held up the black shoe. "Now who in the
hell do you suppose this was?"

Nolan
ignored him in favor of a quick visual examination of Cal. There were plenty of
red welts that would become dandy bruises, but other than huffing and puffing
from exertion he seemed all right. "You okay, kid? Anything broken?"

"I'm
okay," Cal managed. "Fine."

"You're
some scrapper for such a skinny punk," Nolan said. Then he glanced at Al.
"Thanks, big guy. I owe you one."

Al shook
his head. "No need for that, just tell me who I tangled with."

"I
have no idea," Nolan said. He looked at Cal, whose cheeks were still
blazing with color. "Come on, kid. Who the hell was that?"

Cal
wiped his face with his T-shirt. When he lifted his head his bright blue eyes
were hard, his mouth tight.

"That
was my grandmother."

Al held
up the shoe again. "She's got awful big feet." Then he smiled.
"Come on into my office, boys. I think we could all use a cold barley pop.
And while I'm fixin' the hole in that radiator you can tell me why I was
gettin' shot at."

Cal
looked over and Nolan gestured for him to go ahead. He was ready to hear the
rest of Cal's story.

CHAPTER 12

Myra heard
the scream as she put Cal's plate in the refrigerator. She rushed into the
living room and saw Vic dozing on the sofa in front of the television, a
daughter curled under each arm. There was no one else in the room.

"Not
again," she breathed to herself. It was the same sound she had heard her
first night in the house, the same agonized cry from an invisible source. She
hadn't imagined the sound. She hadn't imagined anything. She went through the
kitchen to stand at the screen door in the pantry, suddenly anxious for Cal and
Nolan to return.

At the
door she felt her skin begin to crawl. The feeling of whatever it was came from
outside now, almost as if she were being watched by someone beyond the door. What
the hell was she doing? Twenty grand wasn't that much money. She should just
go. Maybe she should call Clarice back and ask for bus fare. They could get off
the bus just short of Houston and she could find a job somewhere until August.
Then they—

There.
Someone was out there, someone big moving around by the garage. Myra stepped
back to call for Vic, but the sound of a car engine prevented her from
speaking. She shoved open the screen door and darted down the steps to run
around the side of the house and meet her son. She gasped when she rounded the
corner and saw Cal emerge from the car. Dusk couldn't hide the ugly bruises.
"What's happened? Nolan, what did you do? Cal, what happened?"

Cal held
her away. "I'm okay. Just tired is all."

Nolan
pointed at her. "You and me, Myra. We're going to chat. Cal, go on in and
get some supper."

"Don't
tell him what to do," Myra snapped, but Cal was already moving toward the
house. She turned back to Nolan. "How dare you order him around
like—"

Nolan
curled his finger. "Come with me. I'm going to yell at you and I don't
want anyone to hear."

"I'm
not going anywhere with you," said Myra.

"You
will if you want to hear about your mother-in-law's latest kidnapping
attempt," Nolan said.

He
turned and walked off in the direction of the garage. The blood left Myra's
head, but she managed to make her legs follow him. When she entered the garage
he was sitting on the trunk of Darwin's Lincoln. Myra looked, but she saw no
one else in the building. She moved to stand before him, still conscious of
what she had seen earlier. "What happened?"

Nolan
studied his dirty hands. "They must've been watching the place. I figure
they followed us around from one yard to the next, just waiting for a chance to
snatch the kid. They caught up with us across the border but needless to say
they didn't get him. Thanks to a hell of a nice guy named Al. What I want to
know—" here his voice lowered ominously "—is why the hell you didn't
level with us in the first place. These fuckers had guns, Myra."

Myra
felt her knees weaken. She swayed back until she was holding herself up against
the rough, wooden wall. Clarice. Clarice had ordered them to shoot this time.

"Did…was
anyone hurt?"

"Oh,
that's a neat question. Do you think we'd be here if anyone was hurt? We'd be
answering questions at the nearest law enforcement office if anyone had been
hurt. But we damn sure could've been, because they shot at us, Myra. Do you
hear what I'm saying? They didn't mean to miss. Now just how long did you plan
to go on risking the lives of everyone here? Did you think you'd wait until
someone got shot before saying anything?"

Myra put
her hands to her forehead. He was shouting at her as promised and the edge in
his voice was making her head throb. The heat of his anger came off him in a
sweat-soaked wave that charged the stifling air between them. "I…they
never shot at us before."

"That's
funny," he said with a snort. "Cal said they did. He said they had
guns the time Vic's dad stopped them from snatching him at the school bus
stop."

Myra
looked up, her eyes round. "He didn't tell me that. Why didn't he tell me
that?"

Nolan
slid off the car. "Weren't you curious to know why Darwin suddenly decided
to teach him how to use that shotgun? Cal said the old man was an ace with the
thing, said he blew the shit out of the kidnappers' car that day at the bus
stop."

"Hunting,"
Myra murmured. "He told me he was learning how to hunt with Darwin."

Nolan's
lip curled in disgust. "At least Cal felt bad about keeping quiet. He
thought it was only fair that I should know everything and I do now. I know how
you went to one of your mother-in-law's high-class dress design schools and
later got kicked out for sucking up to her playboy son. But she wasn't quick
enough on the draw because you were already knocked up. Lover boy married you
then forgot about you but old mom-in-law took one look at Cal's I.Q. and
decided to take over. And that’s what this is all about. She wants him
back…without you."

Myra
straightened and came away from the wall. "She does want Cal. But you'll
have to believe me when I say I didn't know about the guns or just how far
she'd go to steal him. I've had my suspicions lately, but no proof."

"You
came out here to get away from her," Nolan said.

"Yes,"
Myra admitted. "And when Patrick was killed she made sure we received
nothing. If I go back to Texas I can try to get what's coming to us by law. But
I can't go back to Texas. She'll beat me to court and try to have me proved an
unfit mother."

"I'll
testify to that," Nolan said.

Myra's
fist shot out, but he caught it easily and twisted it away from him.

"You
haven't shown me much to the contrary," he said. "But now I know why
you were both toting guns the day we arrived—a real healthy atmosphere for your
child, by the way—and why it looked like someone was trying to terrorize you.
Our showing up must've put a kink in their plans, temporarily anyway. If today
was any indication, I'd say they're ready to play ball."

Myra
wrenched her arm away from him and backed up to the wall again. "I appreciate
your helping him," she said in a cold voice. "But I don't like the
way you've twisted what he told you. Cal wouldn't have said those things."

"Which
part?" Nolan said. "The sucking up or the knocking up?"

"Both,"
Myra said between her teeth. "Patrick married me to get out of marrying a
certain debutante handpicked by his mother. He had an excuse: I was pregnant.
And I didn't suck up to him. He came on to me when I was a student. When
Clarice found out about it she threw me out of the school. I went to work as a
commercial artist and was as surprised as anyone when Patrick came and offered
to marry me. He knew I was pregnant for a month and never... Anyway, later I
heard about the debutante and realized why he did it."

"But
you went on living in the lap of luxury in spite of everything."

"I
thought I was doing what was best for Cal," Myra said. "You've never
had any children, Nolan. You don't know what it's like to want for them. You want
them to have everything you didn't. You want to protect them and make life
sweet as long as you possibly can. You know it's impossible; they'll grow up to
hurt and ache and struggle just like everyone else, but just for a time you
want them to know happiness and fullness and..." She turned away from him.
"I don't know why I'm trying to explain this to you. I don't have to
defend myself. I stayed as long as I could, until Clarice began pressuring me
to send Cal away to a school in Europe. He didn't want to go, so we left. Much
as I hated the thought, we had no choice but to join Patrick."