Feast for Thieves (34 page)

I glanced at Bobbie. Her face was expressionless and she stared straight into Crazy Ake’s eyes.

Leisurely, the man looked at his watch again. He turned forward and examined the gauges, then turned back to us. “In precisely sixty seconds, I’m going to drop this bird another two
hundred feet and we’ll all exit the plane. We need to exit the plane quickly because once we do, the plane will slam headlong into the hard side of the next mountain. That, again, dear friends, is all part of the plan. A burned plane means no bodies are found—and that’s only good for us when the law gets antsy to look for the loot.”

“What are we waiting for?!” My mind snapped into gear and my head was already craned around behind us in an effort to rummage the chutes out of the duffel bag. I passed one up to Crazy Ake, threw mine on, and helped Bobbie buckle hers.

“Rowdy!” Bobbie said, her face white. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

I heard Crazy Ake back at the controls, muscling the plane lower in altitude. A long drone sounded as the plane dropped quickly. Time was wasting.

“Yes you can!” I said back to Bobbie. “It’s just like when we jumped off the running path into the river. I’ll place your hand directly overtop the rip cord. After you jump, you count three Missisippis in your mind, then pull the cord. You’ll feel a powerful tug, but after that it’s an easy glide to the bottom. I’ll be right by your side the whole way.”

“No,” she said. Her voice trembled. “I don’t think I can do this today. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Plane’s level!” Crazy Ake’s leisurely tone vanished. “Twenty seconds to impact!”

He was wrestling to buckle himself into his chute, and I turned my head his direction a moment to judge his success. In a flash I saw him take the other duffel bag, the one filled with cash, lay it against his chest, and buckle it securely to him with two sets of handcuffs. “Ten seconds!” he yelled. With a charge, he shimmied over the seatback, kicked open the side door, and propped it open. The wind howled past the aircraft’s opening. His body lay halfway overtop of us in his effort to reach the door. There wasn’t
much room in the backseat to begin with. A gob of froth stuck to his bottom lip. “Five seconds.”

“Go!” I yelled. “Go!” Crazy Ake jumped first. I slapped Bobbie’s chute to signal okay, pushed her out, then jumped myself.

In those first few split seconds after jumping out of the Beechcraft, nothing existed. No feeling of falling. No rush. No markers or indications of orientation. Just streaming straight down. In the whirl of air, I saw two images almost simultaneously—one by glancing up and the other by glancing down. The first was the plane slamming into the face of the mountain. The Beechcraft exploded in an orb of fire, as colorful as the sunrise we’d viewed a few hours earlier. The second was Bobbie’s chute opening below me. The girl had found her courage, and I knew she was going to be okay.

We’d jumped so low, the ground was nearly upon us. I could see it rushing straight at me with the power of a freight train. I pulled my cord. Instantly I felt a pop and a jerk then looked up into the silk to check that all twenty-eight panels were still there. Blow too many, and you fall too fast. I swung back and forth, the only sound in my ears a rush of wind around the chute.

The ground hit. My legs buckled beneath me. I lost sight of Bobbie. I was tumbling, rolling, falling, bouncing. We’d all hit the ground at an angle against the side of a valley, and I had the good sense to clutch myself into a ball and raise my arms up against the sides of my head. Something brown and prickly whooshed by my face and I closed my eyes, bounced twice, hit my head against something hard, and saw black.

I was out for only a minute. Blood ran in my mouth and my sight line was blurry when I looked into the distance. The terrain was sun scorched and waterless, although somewhere within my hearing I heard the faraway burble of a brook. All else was silent. I couldn’t fathom how strawberries ever grew in this grassless
canyon, an arid wasteland so full of desolation and rock, if that’s indeed where we’d landed—in Strawberry Canyon.

Gingerly I fingered my way along my legs and ribs. No bones felt broken although at the back of my head my hand passed over a large lump forming. My gaze shook, then became clear. I tried to stand, sunk to my knees, then tried again.

Far in the distance stood Bobbie. She was wrestling with the back of her chute, trying to free herself, and as I walked toward her she stepped out of the silk and walked forward a few steps, then went and sat on a small rise that overlooked a waterfall. Sure enough it was a brook, but a brook that tumbled through brown boulders. She gazed far off into nowhere, and I noticed how her hair was the color of honey. Her skin like a peach. She was quizzical and wide-eyed and looked like she could have been the mother of my child.

Crazy Ake was next to her in a jiffy. He was already out of his chute, too, twirling the revolver with his finger. I managed to make my legs keep working and ambled over, sat down a short distance away to catch my bearings, and looked at them out of the corner of my eye.

“Good—you ain’t dead,” Crazy Ake called. “Let’s get going—time’s wasting. At the bottom of those falls lies a road. Our truck sits on that road. Let’s move.”

Bobbie and I both stood up. I wobbled, but I asked her if she was okay.

“I could write a thousand poems,” she said, “and never describe that feeling of jumping out of a plane. I’m fine, yeah, but you look like you could lay down a spell. How’s your head?”

“I’ll be all right.”

Crazy Ake hiked behind us as we wound our way downhill around rocks and boulders. Sure enough, the truck sat parked where he said it would be.

He threw the duffel bag with the money in the back, opened
the driver’s side door, pocketed the keys, and pulled out a rifle from underneath the seat. It was an M1, same as I was used to, and he checked the clip to make sure it was full, and tucked his revolver in his belt. He walked forward ten paces, drew a line in the sand with the toe of his boot, and walked back. Bobbie and I both stood near the truck.

“Well, you’ve both got grit,” Crazy Ake said. “That was good to see—not that I ever questioned yours, Rowdy. But I’m afraid I need to ask you both one more question before we can proceed any further today, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this before, I truly am. But I doubt if you would have helped me get so far and so kindly if you knew this lay ahead.”

“What question?” I asked. My voice was flat.

“A question of great importance,” Crazy Ake said. “The question of loyalty. I need to know right now—without a shadow of a doubt—if you’re both in or out.”

He pointed the rifle our direction and motioned to the line in the sand.

Bobbie and I stared at him with quizzical looks, wondering exactly what he meant.

“This has always been about more than money,” Crazy Ake said. “You know that. Money makes it all happen, but it’s about me running the system, same as I did in jail—and I can’t do that alone, particularly on the outside. I need my sergeants, Rowdy, same as I once had. You savvy what I’m saying? I know you do. I’m just not so sure your girlfriend does.”

“Point your rifle down,” I said. “I ain’t never been one of your sergeants, and time’s wasting besides. We need to get to the telegraph office quick.”

Crazy Ake laughed and licked the foam from his lips. “Oh, I’ll get to the telegraph office, I promise you. I’m a man of certainty, and it’s a straight shot from here to there. But the big question is
if you’re truly a changed man. See—what I need now is a regular gang. There’s plenty more of these jobs to be pulled—even some with pots larger than fifty grand—so what I most need now is a few friends I can fully trust.”

“Friends?” Bobbie said. “We are not your friends.”

“Well, that’s what I’m sorting out, girlie,” Crazy Ake said. “Now that we’re in Mexico, I’m safe. You’ve both done your job, thank you much. You got me in and out of the mayor’s house safely, and you got me onto the airstrip and into the plane. The law in Cut Eye doesn’t know what direction we were going, and the Mexican authorities are doubtful to know about the heist yet. That means I’m a free man where I stand, and, sorry to say it, but you two have used up your usefulness.” He glanced at his rifle and laughed. “Whenever I don’t need a gang member, there’s only one fate awaiting the deadwood. But you both did good, and I’m proposing a wide-open opportunity. I’ll cut you in for thirty percent of the cash—that’s fifteen thousand dollars today to split—more money than you’ll see in two lifetimes of being reverends, and I’ll cut you in on future jobs, too. I just need to know for certain whether I can trust you from here on out.”

“Why would we ever trust you?” Bobbie asked.

“Not you trusting me, no,” Crazy Ake said. “Me trusting you.” He smiled and continued. “It’s very simple. It’s one thing to play along being a thief for one evening, Miss Barker, but I need to know if you’re ready for a lifetime of wrongdoing. And you, Rowdy, you can’t go back to Cut Eye and your new preaching job now, so you may as well throw in your lot with me once and for all. That’s the offer. If you’re with me, then there’s big reward. If you’re against me—” Here he looked at the line in the sand. “Then I’m afraid your adventures with the mighty Akan Fordmire have come to an end.”

“Lay it out plainly,” I said. “What do we need to do?”

Crazy Ake grinned wider. “Just swear allegiance.”

“To the flag?”

“No,” Crazy Ake said. “To me.”

“No problem,” I said. “I swear allegiance to Crazy Ake. Let’s go to Pachuca.” I opened the door of the truck.

Crazy Ake fired the M1 at my feet. The bullet zinged into the dirt near the front tire and I jumped. “Not so fast, Rowdy. You both need to be legitimate about the swearing. You gotta know the depth of what’s at stake. All those months I spent in jail before I met you, Rowdy, I pored over books, you know. I ain’t the only one here who’s been to a university of sorts.” He glanced at Bobbie with a sneer. “Day after day I read everything in the prison library—even books I reckoned were foolish. Books of mathematics. Books of poetry. The writings of Tertullian of Carthage. Of Pliny the Younger. The term those idealists threw around was ‘baptism in blood,’ didn’t they, Miss Barker? Those ancient historians. Surely you must have studied that at your university in Dallas.”

“Baptism of blood—” Bobbie scrunched her brow, a look that told me she was searching her mind for where she’d heard it before. Her eyes grew round with fright and she whispered, “That’s a martyr’s death.”

“Yes sir, dying for the cause you believe in!” Crazy Ake bellowed. “James the Just—clubbed in the head. Perpetua and Felicitas—ripped apart by lions. Polycarp—burned at the stake for his beliefs. Applying hard pressure is the only way a fella can sort fact from fiction out of you idealists, or so I’ve studied. So here’s what I propose. To join my gang on the south side of the sand, just stay where you are and swear a firm and unbending lifetime of allegiance to lawlessness and the devil and me. If you stay put then you live, and you live with big cash. But step to the north side of the line and that means you’re holy rollers through and through and I can’t trust you, so you’ll get a bullet to the head from my rifle. What’s it going to be? I’ll give you thirty seconds to decide.” He looked at his watch.

Bobbie looked at me. I looked at Bobbie. Neither of us made a move.

“Time’s ticking,” Crazy Ake said. “Rowdy, you’re saying you’re a changed man. But I don’t believe that’s true. You’re just as incorrigible as you ever was. If you stay incorrigible, then you stay alive. We’ll swing by Texas from time to time. You’ll see your daughter again. You’ll pay off your debts. You’ll be rich. That’s everything you ever wanted. And you, pretty little Miss Barker—why, your whole life is stretching out before you. There’s so much you have yet to taste. Why …” He laughed heartily. “I bet you’re even still a virgin.”

I heard a rustle at my side. Bobbie was walking. She was already across the line, standing on the side of her death. She turned around and squared her shoulders toward Crazy Ake.

“Look, mister, I might have played along with your little charade back at the mayor’s house. But that was only because I believed Sunny would die if I didn’t. I’ll never swear my unbending allegiance to you, and I’ll never join your gang. In fact, I strongly recommend you reconsider your ways, Mr. Akan Fordmire—if that’s truly your name. Death comes to all men, and after that comes judgment. It’s not too late, even today, to save your soul.”

Crazy Ake laughed, frothy and nonsensically. He wiped his eyes then looked at me and spoke with a chuckle, “Oh, that was precious. A real sermon for the damned. Time’s up, Rowdy, what’s it going to be?”

I was thinking all this time. Thinking in that split second. Thinking back to that good meal of bacon and eggs and hot coffee I’d sought so earnestly at the mission. The man behind the pulpit was speaking straight to me. He was showing the way for any man to change, and he didn’t fiddle around with his words nor sugarcoat the facts. I’d been so hungry that morning. So hungry indeed. I walked across the line, and stood next to Bobbie.

Crazy Ake pulled the trigger.

I was watching his finger the whole time, and he was aiming to kill Bobbie ahead of me. I leaped in front of her, and the bullet meant for Bobbie drove into my body. Call me a coward, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her go with my own eyes.

A second shot rang out.

This one I heard with my ears but didn’t see. I was on the ground by then, gushing blood from my shoulder.

The next thing I knew, Bobbie was kneeling by my side, her snake gun in her hand.

“Oh, Rowdy,” she said. “You been hit bad.”

TWENTY-NINE