Life or Death (8 page)

‘Nobody is going to give me a second chance.’

‘Give it time,’ Audie told him.

‘You don’t know what it’s like.’ Carl sat up straighter. ‘All I need is one big score. Then I’d be set. I could blow this place and start somewhere new with nobody prejudging me.’

Audie didn’t understand.

‘Help me rob a bank,’ said Carl, making it sound obvious.

‘What?’

‘I can cut you in for twenty per cent. All you got to do is drive. You don’t have to come in. Just stay in the car.’

Audie laughed. ‘I’m not going to help you rob a bank.’

‘You only have to drive.’

‘If you want money, get a job.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’re the blue-eyed boy, the favoured one. I wouldn’t mind being the prodigal son – give me my share early and you won’t see me for dust.’

‘We don’t have shares.’

‘’Cos you got it all.’

They went back to their folks’ house. Carl slept in his old room. Audie woke up thirsty during the night and went looking for a glass of water. He found Carl in the kitchen, sitting in the darkness except for the refrigerator door that was propped open. His face was shining.

‘What have you taken?’

‘Just a little sumpin’ to help me sleep.’

Audie rinsed out his glass and turned to leave.

‘I’m sorry,’ Carl said.

‘What are you sorry about?’

He didn’t answer.

‘World hunger, global warming, evolution, what are you sorry for?’

‘Being such a disappointment.’

Audie went back to Rice and topped nearly all of his classes that second year. He worked nights at a twenty-four-hour bakery and came to lectures with flour dusting his clothes. One particular girl, who looked like a cheerleader and walked like a catwalk model, gave him the nickname ‘Doughboy’, which seemed to stick.

When he came home that following Christmas he discovered his car was missing. Carl had borrowed it and hadn’t bothered bringing it back. He wasn’t living at home any more. He was at a motel off the Tom Landry Freeway, living with a girl who looked like a hooker and had a baby. Audie found him sitting by the pool, dressed in the same leather overcoat that he wore when he left Brownsville. His eyes were glazed and crumpled beer cans were scattered beneath his chair.

‘I need the keys to my car.’

‘I’ll bring it around later.’

‘No, I want it now.’

‘It’s out of gas.’

Audie didn’t believe him. He got behind the wheel and turned the key. The engine died. He threw the keys back at Carl and caught the bus home. He picked up his baseball bat and went down to the cage and hit eighty pitches, taking out his frustration.

It was only later that Audie pieced together what happened that evening. After he left the motel, Carl had filled the tank with a can of gas and driven to a liquor store on Harry Hines Boulevard. He took a six-pack of beer from the refrigerator and picked up packets of corn chips and chewing gum. The attendant was an old Chinese man, wearing a uniform with a name on the badge that nobody could pronounce.

The only other person in the store was in the far aisle, crouching down, looking for a particular flavour of Doritos that his pregnant wife wanted. He was an off-duty police officer, Pete Arroyo, and his wife Debbie was waiting outside, eating an ice cream because she was craving something sweet as well as savoury.

Carl walked up to the attendant and pulled a .22 Browning automatic from his overcoat and held it against the old man’s head, telling him to empty the cash register. There were lots of pleadings in Chinese that Carl didn’t understand.

Pete Arroyo must have seen Carl in the disc-shaped mirrors angled above the aisles. Creeping closer, he reached behind his back and took out his pistol. He crouched, aimed and told Carl to put his hands in the air. That’s when Debbie pushed open the heavy door, her baby bump sticking out like a jack-o’-lantern. She saw the gun. Screamed.

Pete didn’t fire. Carl did. The officer fell and squeezed off one round, hitting Carl in the back as he climbed into the car and it drove away. Paramedics spent forty minutes working on Pete Arroyo, but he died before he reached the hospital. By then witnesses had given police a description of the shooter and said there could have been somebody with him, sitting behind the wheel.

9

The bus leaves for Houston at 7.30 p.m. Audie boards at the last possible moment and takes a seat near the emergency exit. He pretends to fall asleep, but watches the concourse through cracked eyelids, expecting to hear sirens and see a blaze of flashing lights.

‘This taken?’ asks a voice.

Audie doesn’t answer. A fat man manoeuvres a suitcase into the overhead rack and dumps a bag of takeaway food on the tray table.

‘Dave Myers,’ he says, extending a big red-freckled hand. He’s sixtyish with sloping shoulders and a roll of flesh instead of a jawline. ‘You got a name?’

‘Smith.’

Dave chuckles. ‘Good as any.’

He eats noisily, sucking salt and sauce from his fingertips. Then he flicks on the overhead reading light and unfurls a newspaper, snapping the pages.

‘I see they’re gonna cut the border patrols again,’ he says. ‘How they gonna keep illegals out of this state? Give them an inch and they’ll take the whole nine yards.’

Audie doesn’t respond. Dave turns the page and grunts. ‘We’ve forgotten how to fight a war in this country. Look at Iraq.’ (He pronounces it Eye Rack.) ‘If you ask me they should nuke the whole lot of them Muslim countries, know what I’m saying, but that ain’t gonna happen with a black man in the White House, not with a middle name like Hussein.’

Audie turns his face to the window and looks at the darkened landscape, picking out the dotted lights of ranch houses and navigation beacons on the distant peaks.

‘I know what I’m talking about,’ says Dave. ‘I fought in Nam. We should have nuked them slant-eyed gooks. Agent Orange was too good for them. Not the women. Those gook girls could be mighty fine. They might look twelve but they cum like flapping fish.’

Audie makes a noise. The man pauses. ‘Am I bothering you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘My wife is Vietnamese.’

‘No shit? I’m sorry, man, I didn’t mean no disrespect.’

‘Yes you did.’

‘How was I to know?’

‘You just insulted an entire race of people, an entire religion and women in general. You said you wanted to fuck ’em or nuke ’em, which makes you a racist and a scumbag.’

Dave’s face grows red and his skin tightens as though stretched over a bigger skull. He stands and reaches for his suitcase. For a moment Audie thinks Dave could be looking for a gun, but he moves along the aisle, finding another seat, where he introduces himself to someone new and complains about the ‘intolerant assholes’ you meet on long-distance coaches.

After stopping at Seguin and Schulenburg, they reach Houston just before midnight. Despite the hour, the concourse is populated by random clusters of people, some sleeping on the floor and others lying across seats. There are buses marked for LA, New York, Chicago and places in between.

Audie goes to the restroom. He turns on the tap and splashes water on his face, scratching the stubble on his jawline. His beard is growing too slowly to give him a disguise and sunburned skin is starting to peel from his nose and forehead. When he was in prison he used to shave every morning because it filled five minutes of his day and showed that he still cared. Now he sees a man in the mirror instead of a boy: older, skinnier, hard in a way he never was.

A woman and young girl enter the restroom, both blonde and both dressed in jeans and canvas shoes. The woman is in her mid-twenties with her hair bunched on the back of her head in a high ponytail. She’s wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt that hangs on the points of her breasts. The little girl looks about six or seven, with a missing front tooth and a Barbie backpack looped over her shoulders.

‘I’m sorry,’ says the mother, ‘they’ve closed the women’s restroom for cleaning.’

Setting a bag of toiletries on the edge of the sink, she takes out toothbrushes and toothpaste. She wets paper towels, peels off her daughter’s T-shirt and washes under her arms and behind her ears. Then she leans her over the sink and wets the girl’s scalp with running water, using soap from the dispenser to wash her hair, telling her to keep her eyes closed.

She turns to Audie. ‘What are you staring at?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you some kind of pervert?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Don’t call me ma’am!’

‘Sorry.’

Audie leaves hurriedly, wiping his wet hands on his jeans. In the street outside the bus station there are people smoking and loitering. Some are dealers. Some are pimps. Some are predators looking for runaways and strays; girls who can be sweet-talked; girls who can be shot up; girls who stop yelling when hands close over their throats.
Maybe I’m jaded
, thinks Audie, who doesn’t usually look for the worst in people.

Circling the block, he finds a McDonald’s, brightly lit and decorated in primary colours. He buys himself a meal and a coffee. A little while later he notices the mother and daughter from the restroom. They’re sitting in a booth making sandwiches from a loaf of bread and a jar of strawberry jelly.

Audie’s enjoying the scene when the manager approaches them.

‘You’re not allowed to eat here unless you buy sumpin’.’

‘We’re not doing any harm,’ the woman says.

‘Y’all making a mess.’

Audie takes his tray and walks to the booth. ‘Hurry up, girls, what did you decide you wanted?’ He slides onto the bench seat opposite and looks at the manager. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good to know, maybe you could get us some extra napkins.’

The manager mumbles something and retreats. Audie cuts his hamburger into quarters and slides it across the table. The girl reaches for the food but gets a slap on the wrist from her mother. ‘You don’t take food from a stranger.’ She looks at Audie accusingly. ‘Are you following us?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Do I look like an old maid?’

‘No.’

‘Then don’t call me ma’am! I’m younger ’n you are. And we don’t need your charity.’

The girl lets out a squeak of disappointment. She looks at the burger and then at her mother.

‘I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to win my trust so you can do terrible things to us.’

‘You have a paranoid mind,’ says Audie.

‘I’m not a junkie or a prostitute.’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’ Audie sips his coffee. ‘I’ll go back over there if you want.’

She doesn’t say anything. The bright neon lights show up the freckles on her nose and her eyes that are – what? – green or blue or something in between. The little girl has managed to sneak a quarter of the burger and is eating it behind her hand. She reaches out and takes a French fry.

‘What’s your name?’ asks Audie.

‘Thcarlett.’

‘Did you get something for that tooth, Scarlett?’

She nods and holds up a Raggedy Anne doll, which looks pre-loved but much-loved.

‘What do you call her?’

‘Bethie.’

‘That’s a pretty name.

Scarlett covers her nose with her sleeve. ‘You thmell.’

Audie laughs. ‘I’m fixin’ to have a shower real soon.’ He holds out his hand. ‘I’m Spencer.’

Scarlett looks at his outstretched palm and then at her mother. She reaches out. Her whole hand fits inside his fist.

‘And who might you be?’ Audie asks the mother.

‘Cassie.’

She doesn’t take his hand. Despite her prettiness, Audie can see a hard shell around Cassie like scar tissue covering an old wound. He can imagine her growing up in a poorer quarter, conning boys into buying her snow cones for a flash of her knickers, using her sexuality but never quite understanding the dangers of the game.

‘And what are you ladies doing out so late?’ he asks.

‘None of your business,’ says Cassie.

‘We’re thleeping in our car,’ says Scarlett.

Her mother hushes her. Scarlet looks at the floor and hugs her doll.

‘Do you know of any cheap motels nearby?’ asks Audie.

‘How cheap?’

‘Cheap.’

‘They’re a cab-ride away.’

‘Not a problem.’ He slides out of the booth. ‘Well I best be off. Nice meeting you.’ He pauses. ‘When was the last time you had a hot shower?’

Cassie glares at him. Audie holds up his hands. ‘That came out the wrong way. I’m sorry. It’s just that somebody stole my wallet on the bus and I’m going to have trouble getting a motel room without identification. I got plenty of cash, but no ID.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘If you booked the room – I’d pay for it. I’ll pay for two rooms. You and Scarlett can have one of them.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘I need a bed and we both need a shower.’

‘You could be a rapist or a serial killer.’

‘I could be an escaped convict.’

‘Right.’

Cassie focuses hard on his face as though trying to decide if she’s about to make a stupid decision. ‘I got a taser,’ she says suddenly. ‘You try anything funny and I’ll zap you.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

Her car is a beaten-up Honda CRV, parked in a vacant lot beneath a Coca-Cola sign. She rips a ticket from beneath the wiper blades and crumples it into a ball. Audie is carrying Scarlett in his arms with her head resting against his chest. Asleep. She feels so small and fragile that he’s frightened she might break. He remembers the last time he carried a child – a little boy with eyes so brown they gave the word brown meaning.

Cassie leans into the car, shoving sleeping bags into corners and clothes into a suitcase, rearranging their possessions. Audie slides Scarlett onto the back seat and puts a pillow beneath her head. The engine turns over a couple of times before it fires. The starter motor is almost shot, thinks Audie, remembering the years he spent in the garage watching his daddy working. The chassis scrapes on the kerb as they reach the deserted street.

‘How long you been living in your car?’ he asks.

‘A month,’ says Cassie. ‘We were staying with my sister until she kicked us out. She said I was flirting with her husband but he was the one doing the flirting. Couldn’t keep his hands to himself. I swear there’s not one decent guy in this freakin’ city.’