Rivers: A Novel (25 page)

He let go of the pistol and took his hand out of his pocket and he made a peace sign. Then he shot the bird. Then he turned his hand sideways and made a dog. When he was out of tricks, he posed as if holding the baby, imagined what he looked like with a child in his arms. He thought of that baby boy and how out of place he seemed
down here, this child of thunder. How out of place they all seemed. For so long, staying below had made sense to him but no more. He was sick of the rain and had been sick of the rain for months and he was sick of the cold and sick of the wind and sick of trying to build that goddamn room that he swore to God that he would build. He knew that whenever he was above the Line, a day from now or a week from now or a year or five years from now, that he would feel a guilt in having left. He knew that some part of him would want to come back. Want to return to the place and want to imagine her there and want to go and sit out by their tombstones and talk to them. He didn’t expect that there would ever be a time when he would be free of his desire to be there, with them. But he realized that he had started something new and he wanted to finish it.

He let his hands fall to his sides and stared at his reflection. He looked at himself as if he had seen someone from across a room and knew that he knew the person from somewhere but couldn’t remember exactly who it was. And the stranger stared back with the same curious expression.

They looked at each other, but their curiosity was interrupted when he heard a strange thunder. When he turned to look out, it wasn’t thunder but the murmur of an engine and along the four-lane, a camouflage-colored lifted truck with tires as big as small people was rolling in their direction, a spotlight above the truck cab slicing through the storm.

“Shit,” he said and he ran back to the kids’ store and ducked inside and he told them to get to the back, get to the back. They’re coming this way.

Kris scooped up the baby and Nadine helped her along and Evan grabbed Brisco by the arm and lifted and carried him. Mariposa followed and Cohen was behind them all. They ran into the storage room and Cohen ran outside and to the back of the grocery store. He jumped off the loading bay into the back of the truck that held the guns and ammo. He reached under the tarp and grabbed three rifles and ammo and hurried back up and he shoved one in Evan’s chest as the boy put
Brisco down and he told Evan to come with him and everybody else to find a dark corner to hide in. And keep that damn pacifier in that kid’s mouth.

“Get down,” Cohen said in a whisper as he and Evan crept back into the storefront. They made their way behind the counter and knelt. He set one rifle on the floor with the boxes of shells and then he propped the other rifle on the countertop and told Evan to do the same. Steady yourself. Use the counter. Don’t jerk. Keep your head down as far as you can but still see. Don’t move.

They listened and the hum of the big truck grew a little louder as the seconds ticked away. “They’re going slow,” Cohen whispered.

“Did they see you?” Evan asked.

“Don’t know.”

From where they were back inside the store, they wouldn’t be able to see the truck until it was almost directly in front of the strip mall and it was not visible yet but almost there. Cohen took his hand from the trigger and flexed his fingers and hand. Evan saw him and did the same thing.

“Don’t be scared,” Cohen said.

“Too late.”

And then the truck stopped, not yet in their sights. The engine was turned off. Then the sound of doors opening and closing and the voices of loud-talking men.

“What’d he say?” Evan asked.

Cohen shook his head. “Couldn’t tell.”

There was a banging on the side of the truck and the back door sliding up and more voices back and forth in a brief dialogue and then silence.

“Listen,” Cohen whispered. “If they come walking this way and we have to shoot, you start on the far left and I’ll start on the far right. Don’t matter how many it is. You start left and I start right. Got it?”

Evan nodded. He was breathing heavy but his eyes were steady.

“Show me your left hand,” Cohen said.

“What?”

“Your left hand. Show it to me.”

Evan took his left hand off the rifle barrel and waved it.

“Just making sure you knew which was which,” Cohen said.

In the back room the women and Brisco scurried around looking for a place to hide as Cohen and Evan waited on the men to show themselves.

THE MEN WALKED INTO SIGHT
, moving cautiously into the parking lot, sticking close together. Four of them. They all wore thick black raincoats. Cohen recognized the automatic weapons that had belonged to Charlie’s muscle slung over the shoulders of two of them. The one who walked in front didn’t wear his hood but instead a cowboy hat and he had a long goatee that touched the middle of his chest. He raised his hand and they stopped. They looked around. Then the man made other hand motions and they split, two of them walking to the right toward the grocery store, two to the left toward the furniture store. Cohen and Evan knelt in the middle, in the shadows.

The man in the hat whistled and they stopped. Maybe thirty yards away from the storefront. Evan took his hand from the rifle and wiped his sweaty palm on his pants. And then the lead man called out.

“Pretty day out here,” he yelled out above the rain. “Don’t get no better. Might as well come on out and enjoy it.” He paused and waited for a response but the only reply was from the thunder. He waited until it died and then went on. “Come on out and get something to eat. I know y’all are hungry. Get you something to eat. Something to drink. Sandwich cart don’t come around often anymore.” He waited again. Lightning cracked and the men in the black coats jumped but then steadied. “I saw you and I know you’re back in there somewhere. Turns out it’s your lucky day. We always looking for a good man. If you are one. Good man can come on out and get something to eat. Maybe get
himself a job and a title. Everybody out here’s got a title. But we can’t divulge until we get a look at you.”

A couple of them laughed. Cohen noticed that none of them held their rifles ready to fire but instead hanging at their waists. One man had his hands in his coat pockets. The man doing the talking had folded his arms and was enjoying listening to himself talk and it was then that Cohen realized their mistake. Their miscalculation in assuming that a single person was somewhere back in there and that he had no way to defend himself against a posse. These same men who had earlier ambushed and slaughtered men who were ready and prepared and armed were now making the most crucial mistake of all in this land and that is you can never be sure. But they seemed sure and unconcerned as they waited on what they thought was a defenseless straggler and Cohen knew that there would not be another opportunity like this one.

“Evan,” he whispered.

The boy looked at him.

“Don’t talk. Listen. You see the one on the left. Put your sight on him and when I count three shoot him. Don’t miss. You got it. Don’t goddamn miss.”

Evan nodded.

“Shoot him and as soon as you do, run to the back and get everybody in the trucks and get ready to drive like a son of a bitch. I got the rest here. You just shoot and hit and then run back and get everybody in the trucks and get cranked and then I’ll come running and hop in the back and we’ll get the hell out of here. You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. On three. You got left and then go and I got the rest.”

“All right.”

“Be cool.”

“Just count.”

“Okay.” They each propped and resteadied themselves. From behind the counter they were undetected and each had a clear shot.

The man with the hat said, “Fine. Have it your way. Never heard
of nobody who didn’t want food and a title. But if we have to come in there the offer is revoked. Won’t be nothing but—”

Cohen said three and the man on the left went down with the crack and Evan was up and gone. Cohen took down the man on the right and turned to the other one on the left who had raised his rifle and was firing wildly and Cohen hit him once and he went down and then Cohen hit him again. He turned next to the leader, who had taken off running and gotten behind the concrete base of a parking lot light. But he couldn’t get all the way behind and Cohen hit him in the leg and the man aimed the automatic rifle over his shoulder and sprayed the strip mall. Cohen ducked down on the floor as the bullets shattered through the walls and windows and concrete. He crawled around the side of the counter but couldn’t get a shot from down low. When the man turned to get to his knees Cohen raised and fired and hit the pole and the man fell back, thinking he was dead. But he wasn’t dead and he raised up and sprayed fire again and Cohen went down and from behind the building he heard Evan yelling for him to come on, come on. The firing stopped and Cohen raised and shot and hit the man in the chest and he dropped. Cohen fired once more into the concrete post and then he stopped and waited.

Nothing moved in the parking lot.

“Come on!” Evan yelled.

Cohen waited, counted to five, and still nothing moved. So he turned and ran out the back of the kids’ store and jumped from the loading bay into the back of the truck. Evan was in front of Nadine and the truck leaped and Nadine was close behind as they sped out from behind the stores and the trucks leaned at the left turn into the parking lot and at the right turn onto the highway. Then Cohen slapped on the back glass and yelled, “Stop it! Stop it!”

Evan hit the brakes and Nadine nearly rear-ended them but she swerved to the side. Cohen told her to wait and told Evan to turn around and go back to the big truck and hurry your ass up. Evan spun around in the four-lane and drove hard back to the truck and he slammed on the brakes and Cohen crashed into the back window. He dropped his
rifle and grabbed a pistol out of his pocket and told Evan to get turned back around. Cohen ran around to the back of the men’s truck and dropped the tailgate and saw what he was after. He jumped in the truck bed and the first two gas containers he grabbed were empty and he tossed them aside, but the next two were full five-gallon containers.

He lifted the gas containers and set them on the tailgate and he jumped out. He waved Evan to back up and Cohen set the containers in the back of the pickup and as he was climbing in, Mariposa pointed and yelled, “Look back there!”

Coming for them were the headlights of an army utility truck and standing in the back was a handful of men pointing in their direction. The truck was coming fast and Cohen took out the pistol and fired it over and over to make the sound of men with guns instead of man with gun and Evan hit the gas pedal. When the pistol was empty Cohen tossed it over the side and took out the other but didn’t fire. They shot back and the side-view mirror shattered and then a rim shot off the back fender. Evan laid on the horn as he got to Nadine, the shots skipping around them and Cohen lying flat in the back and Mariposa screaming come on, come on. Evan and Nadine together drove off like hell, swerving and splashing through the big stuff and busting through the little stuff and when the army truck got to the U-Haul, they kept firing, but they stopped to see about the others, and within minutes, the two trucks were out of town and out of sight, and the rain came on as if it had something to prove.

When it felt safe, they pulled the trucks off the highway underneath the cover of a half-standing auto shop and they all got out and walked around and the wind and rain relieved their anxiety-ridden faces. Some thanked God and some were still breathing heavy from the excitement and some did both. The baby had to be fed so Nadine climbed in the back and found the formula and a bottle of water and gave it to Kris, who sat in the truck cab with the baby. Brisco and Evan walked behind the building to pee. Cohen, after taking the gas cans and pouring gas into the trucks, walked away from them all and stood alone, looking back south from where they had come. It was charcoal gray and the rain fell in big drops and swirled with the twisting winds.

He managed to get a cigarette lit this time and he couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe he had panicked and left the Jeep. Made the decision to hop in the back of the truck without thinking about the Jeep. Son of a bitch son of a bitch son of a bitch, he kept saying to himself.

“What?” Nadine said.

“Nothing,” he snapped.

“Bullshit.”

“My Jeep. I left the Jeep and I got to have it.”

“It’s a Jeep. It ain’t a gold brick.”

“I know what it is and I got to get back to it.”

“Like hell,” she said.

COHEN GOT AWAY FROM HER
and he smoked and cussed himself. By the end of the cigarette he had calmed some and he went to each of them to make sure no one was hurt or hit.

“That was like a movie,” Nadine said. “And I like watching a lot better than being in one.” She rubbed her wet head with her hands and her short hair stuck up in different directions. “I’m going to sit with Kris,” she said.

Brisco hopped around with his hands made into pistols and he shot imaginary bullets at imaginary bad guys. Evan told him to stop it but he kept on. Cohen asked Evan if he was all right and Evan nodded.

“That was a good job,” Cohen said and he patted the boy on the shoulder, but Evan still didn’t answer.

Mariposa told Cohen she’d like that cigarette now. He lit one from his and gave it to her.

“You’re not hit, are you?” she asked.

“No.”

“You think that was them that got all the others down in the parking lot?”

Cohen nodded.

“You think that’s all?”

“It’s never all, Mariposa.”

She smoked and squinted. Seemed to get used to it. She looked scared. They all looked scared but for Brisco. Evan walked away from
them, his hands in his pockets. Cohen wanted to say something to him but he didn’t know what.

Mariposa’s hand shook as she moved the cigarette to and from her mouth. Her head was wet and she shivered from the cold or from what had just happened or from both or from something else altogether. She dropped the cigarette and looked at Cohen and she was about to cry and she said, “I didn’t mean nothing in her dress. I swear it.”