In the Path of Falling Objects (13 page)

We heard what sounded like a door slamming from around the back of Chief’s Roadhouse. I had seen an outhouse there when we pulled up.

“Are you just trying to make him jealous? Mitch?” I asked.

“Sometimes. I didn’t think he’d care,” Lilly said. “It’s stupid, really. I never thought about Mitch like that. Ever. I didn’t think he’d care what I did.”

“It would make me crazy if I was him. Will you help us get away from him?” I asked. “Maybe you could just tell Mitch. I think he’d do what you ask.”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you come with me? With us?”

Lilly trembled. “I’m scared Mitch would kill you.”

I said, “Why do you stay with him?”

“I thought he could help me get away. I can’t go home, anyway. There’s only one direction I can go, even if I don’t make it. But every time I turn around, it seems like I haven’t gotten anywhere closer to where I want to be. I know I mess with Mitch too much. It’s ’cause I’m mad. So he gets mad, too. I know I should stop. And now I’m afraid of him, I guess.”

“I want you to come with me, Lilly.”

I grabbed Lilly and pulled her over to me, covering her mouth with mine.

The door around back slammed twice more.

I couldn’t stop it, even if I knew I had to. She was going to get us killed.

Chief watched them as they smoked and drank their beers, Simon, already beginning to giggle to himself at how froglike the little man seemed, his big dark eyes just clearing the surface of the bar.

“Is he really your brother?” Chief asked.

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “Give me some whiskey, too.”

Chief spun around and climbed up on the shelf where the bottles were.

“The reason I asked,” Chief said, “is ’cause I don’t have a problem with a man buying a beer for his own brother. My brother did it for me when I was a kid, too.”

“He’s hurting today,” Mitch said. “He just caught the girl he’s in love with in bed with our middle brother.”

“Is that how you got that black eye?” the bartender asked.

Simon didn’t say anything.

“Brothers shouldn’t do that kind of stuff,” Chief said, sympathetically, as he climbed down with the whiskey bottle. “You jealous, kid?”

“He’s a bastard,” Simon said.

Simon began fidgeting on the barstool. He finished his beer and lit another cigarette.

Chief poured out a shot of whiskey for Mitch and another for himself.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Chief said, and raised his shot glass, “cheers,” before tipping his head and pouring the whiskey straight back into his throat.

“Does the kid want another beer?” Chief asked.

Simon fidgeted. “I really need to pee,” he said. “But, yeah, I’ll have another one.”

Chief began refilling Simon’s glass, saying, “Go out that back screen door and turn left. The toilet’s the first door there. Or you can just piss in the dirt. Not like it hasn’t happened already today.”

Simon jumped down from the barstool and practically ran for the door, which slammed loudly behind him.

Chief laughs.

He turns around to replace the whiskey bottle.

“Heh heh,” he says. “The boy needs a little more drinking practice if he’s gotta piss that bad.”

He turns around, smiling.

Mitch shoots him in the center of the forehead with the pistol he’s been hiding in the Lincoln’s glove box.

Smoke and grit spout from the back of Chief’s head, through his greasy black hair.

At first, he looks startled, like he’s about to bust out laughing when the bullet smashes the same bottle he’s just taken his final drink from.

Mitch puts the gun into his jeans and hangs his shirttail over it.

He takes a drag from his cigarette and listens to the sound of the whiskey dripping down onto the floor, the fluttering of Chief’s hands on the wet tiles.

He stands so he can look over the bar.

He’s a dead fish in the pool of whiskey and blood, the jagged shards of glass that look cool like ice. He moves his mouth just once, and a snotty bubble of blood inflates and pops on his lips.

He dies like that.

Mitch inhales. He likes the smell: whiskey, gunpowder, blood, the cigarette, the way that bars like this always reek of piss no matter how far out they put the toilets.

The door slams again. The little Piss-kid is back.

Simon sat down on the stool beside Mitch and grabbed his beer.

“Do you feel better?” Mitch asked, smiling.

“Yeah.”

“So do I, man. A lot better.”

Mitch finished his beer. “I just noticed you can’t hear your feet in those moccasins.”

“Yeah,” Simon beamed. “I dig them.”

Simon looked around. “Where’d the little guy go?”

“He said he’d be back in a bit,” Mitch said calmly. “Are you ready to go?”

Simon drained the last of his beer, and nearly fell down when he stepped off the barstool, laughing, “Yeah.”

“Hey. Get a load of this,” Mitch whispered, holding an index finger in front of his mouth so Simon would be quiet.

Mitch boosted himself up onto the bar, seated, so he was facing Simon. He reached around the cash register and pressed down the “No Sale” key and the drawer slid open with a bell.

“Shhh . . . Come here,” Mitch said, keeping a finger straightened under his nose.

Simon was intrigued. Mitch leaned quietly over the bar and tugged all the bills from the cash drawer. He folded them once, then handed them to Simon.

“Put that in your pocket. And don’t say nothing to Jonah or Lilly.”

“Jonah’s a stupid pig,” Simon said.

“Hang on,” Mitch said, and scooped a handful of quarters from the till. “Get as many packs of smokes as you can carry.”

“Cool!”

“And let’s get out of here.”

“You feel so nice,” she said.

“I never did kiss a girl before yesterday.”

“I know that.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I said.

I pulled Lilly’s scarf away and raked my fingers into her hair. She unfastened the top button on my shirt. She slid her hand onto my chest. I thought about her unbuttoning that same shirt as I lay in bed the night before.

“I didn’t mean to force you, Jonah. I just wanted to see what it felt like to be the one who was getting what they wanted for a change. I just wanted to see what it would be like to be with someone who was nice to me for a change.”

“What did it feel like?”

“A different world,” she said. “A perfect world.”

I wanted to believe her. I thought I could. But I could almost hear Simon telling me she was just playing, and I didn’t want to listen to it. She played with Simon, too; and maybe it was her way of asking one of us to save her. But her voice sounded so nice and I wanted to take her away so bad.

And I put my mouth to her ear and whispered, “We have to be invisible.”

Then the dark green door opened and Simon stepped out, squinting in the brightness of the day. Mitch was behind him, with his hand on Simon’s shoulder.

“What the hell, Jonah?” Simon said.

But Lilly and I didn’t say anything, and we didn’t make any attempt to separate as she rested beside me with my arm around her shoulders, her legs stretched out across the white seat of the Lincoln.

“No sale!” Mitch said. “You two need to keep your hands off!”

“You just told us to keep our clothes on, Mitch,” Lilly said, pushing away from me. “And we did. This time.”

I put my mouth to her ear. I whispered, “Stop it, Lilly.”

Mitch put his hands on the top of the driver’s door, and stared at the toppled statue leaning down against the dashboard.

I could smell the booze and cigarettes on both of them.

Simon, drunk, took a swing at my head, but I easily got out of the way of the punch, tucking my face against the seat back.

“You stupid bastard!” Simon growled. “I told you to stay away from her.”

“Leave us alone, Simon,” I said.

“Oh . . . so the mute boy finally speaks,” Mitch said.

Simon pushed past Mitch, and, reaching into the car, lifted up the meteorite in his fist as though he were going to crush it against my head.

Lilly put her hand up in front of my brother. “Now just stop it, Simon!”

Simon raised the rock again, then he let his arm fall limp to his side and walked around the back of the car and opened his door.

“That’s better, sweetie,” Lilly said, and she leaned over the front
seat and kissed Simon on the ear and brushed his hair back with her hand. He stunk like beer and sweat.

I guess I never figured we’d eventually have to wash the clothes we left home in.

Mitch started to straighten out the statue, and Lilly said to him, so sweetly, “Mitch, baby, can I trade places with Don so I can sit next to Jonah?”

Mitch looked at her with cold, unblinking eyes and a perfectly straight face, and said, “Don’t ever ask me that again, Lilly.”

And Lilly gave me a look that told me I was wrong, that Mitch wouldn’t do something just because she’d asked for it.

As soon as we were back on the road, Mitch started talking to himself again.

Simon put his head down against the door and went to sleep.

I slid a foot out of one shoe and moved it over and rubbed against Lilly’s foot under the seat. I tried to make myself be brave, even if I didn’t know what that was.

“Mitch, honey,” Lilly finally said. “Don says he thinks you should pull over and smoke a reefer.”

Mitch, startled, snapped out of his chat and said, over his shoulder, “Far out.”

At a graveled turnout across the opposite lane of the road, Mitch wheeled the Lincoln to a stop alongside a bent and shotgun-peppered green-and-white road sign marked
RÍO CRUCES
. And I wondered why anyone out here in the middle of absolute nothingness, at least nothing that had any name on it, would care at all what this river was called.

And I had a feeling Mitch decided this would be the place; that he’d try to kill me there by that river today.

Today.

Simon straightened his head up. He may have sensed the car coming to a stop, but I could tell by his eyes he was completely drunk. I’d seen that same look enough times on our father, when he was at home.

I slipped my foot back into my shoe and let go of Lilly’s hand where I held it concealed behind the Spanish knight, and the four of us climbed out from the car, Simon practically stumbling. There was a narrow, sloping path down to the river. Small white, bubbling waves streaked over the water’s surface where it ran above rocks. To our right, the river bent ahead of us, connecting dirt roads on either side where a sagging wooden bridge stretched. It had been built between crooked telephone poles that jutted up from the banks, drilled through to thread thick and rusted metal cables that shaped the cupping of the bridge’s splintered surface.

I stretched my legs out; the gun in my jeans was hurting me again.

“This is a real pretty spot,” Lilly said.

“I’m thirsty. Can I have my canteen, please, Mitch?” I asked. I didn’t want to set Mitch off, and I knew Lilly couldn’t stop herself from pushing at him.

Mitch didn’t say anything. He looked at me once, his mouth turned down in a sour grimace. He went to the back of the Lincoln to open the trunk.

A few minutes later, Mitch sat, alone, at the edge of the river and rolled his joint. I watched him from the bank, could hear that lighter opening and shutting. I took out my map and added in the stretch of road we had covered since leaving the Palms, drawing a place I marked “Chief’s” and the spot with the sagging bridge crossing the river.

Simon began tripping down the trail toward Mitch.

“Simon!” I called out, already able to smell the oily smoke of the joint from where I sat beside the car.

Simon just kept going until he dropped down beside Mitch.

I could hear them talking, laughing about something. I saw Mitch hand the joint over to Simon, watched as Simon smoked from it.

“I’m not feeling good again,” Lilly said. “I need to sit down.”

Lilly moved back toward the open door of the car, then stopped and turned around.

“Can I do anything for you?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I need some water.”

Then she moved over to a clump of sagebrush and dropped to her knees, lowering her head, coughing and spitting. I let the backpack fall beside her in the weeds, the canteen resting on top.

“Here,” I said.

She drank. “There. I’m better now.” She tried to laugh. “Sometimes it comes and goes so fast.”

I helped her to her feet, holding her hand. I looked over my shoulder at Mitch and Simon, both of them facing the river, sitting with their backs to me, and said, “Let’s take a walk.”

Today. I had to try to get us away. I wasn’t such a dumb kid I didn’t know what Lilly was trying to do, but I could help her out, anyway.

I led her up the river, toward the narrow and deep bend where the old bridge connected the two sides. The sun, straight overhead, made the water look so dark and blue here.

“We’ll need to eat soon,” I said. “The next place we get to where there’s people around, you and me and Simon are getting away from him. Even if I have to force Simon.”

“All right, Jonah.”

Mitch relaxed. He leaned back on his elbows in the dried grass. Simon lit a cigarette and listened to the sound of the water spilling over the rocks.

“Simon,” Mitch said, “it’s hard to really trust a kid like your brother.”

“He’s dirty,” Simon said.

“What do you say we kick him off our ship, and make him find his own way to Arizona? And you can ride along with me and Lilly. And Don,” Mitch laughed.

“That would be fun.”

“We’d get you to your daddy. Or your brother. Wherever.”

“I like you and Lilly, Mitch,” Simon said.

“Maybe you like Lilly too much.” Mitch smiled and pushed Simon’s shoulder playfully.

“Maybe I do,” he said. “I thought she liked me more. It just drives me crazy seeing him all over her like that.”

“Yeah.”

And Mitch turned and looked at Simon.