Rumble Tumble (16 page)

25

Herman made it, poked a knife in the tire. We could hear the air go out of it all the way up the hill. But no one came out of the house. The music was loud and no one was on guard. It wasn’t a place they thought they had to be on guard.

Herman cut the rest of the tires. We could hear the air from them as well. Herman waved at us. Brett took a deep breath. I said, “Remember, it gets down to brass tacks, hon, you cover your ass.”

“I will,” she said, and kissed me.

“Go wide,” Leonard said. “No hurry. Take it easy. We’ll watch till you get behind the house before we make a move. Find some place to lay down back there and wait for our noise. When you hear it, let it be a starting gun. Don’t think about it. You come through that back door like you’re ten feet tall and bulletproof.”

“I think I can do this,” Brett said.

“You can’t,” I said, “just hold your position out there somewhere. We’ll do what we can.”

“I can do it,” Brett said. She turned and ran wide along the low ridge, went over it stooping, making a wide circle toward the back of the house.

Leonard rolled over on his back and stuck out his hand and I shook it. He said, “Good luck, brother.”

“Ditto,” I said.

“When this is over, Hap, what you say we make something of our lives?”

“I’d like that.”

“I mean it this time.”

“I mean it every time.”

“But it don’t change.”

“I mean for it to.”

“We got to do more than mean it this time. It’s got to happen.”

“Maybe I don’t know how to change.”

“We’re going to learn how. Got me?”

I saw that Brett had gone wide and was now behind the house. Herman was out of sight. Most likely in the jeep. I said, “Watch your ass, Leonard.”

“You too,” he said, and grinned at me. The moonlight made his teeth seem magnificently white, as if they were lit by blacklight. I gave him a pat on the arm and we eased over the rise on our bellies, made a Y. Me to the left, Leonard to the right. We were about thirty feet apart, crawling toward the thick clusters of brush in front of the house. It was slow go and hard on the body, especially since I was toting a few more pounds than I needed. The air seemed clean and sharp as a knife inside my lungs. My mouth was dry. My body seemed disconnected from my mind. As if I were standing up on the hill watching myself ease down toward the house. I tried not to think beyond the moment. The moment was all that mattered now. I had to be alert. I had to be ready.

Quit thinking about the moment, goddammit, about being ready. Just be ready. Keep crawling. An inch at a time. Eyes open, ears alert. Reach down inside yourself and find that primal part of yourself. The old reptilian brain. The part of the mind that is nothing more than motor response; the part that’s pure survival. Don’t think, just do.

The brush was sharp with thorns and bristles and it tore at my light jacket. I slipped out of the jacket, took the Winchester shells from it, and put them in my right back pocket. I took the pistol out of the jacket and slipped it in my left back pocket. I crawled on.

A sidewinder rattlesnake slithered in front of me and went into the brush. It was all I could do not to leap up and start running. All I could do not to open fire on it.

I thought, you’re going to run like hell from a snake, but you think you’re going to kick open the front door of a house full of bad-asses and go in there shooting?

Reptilian brain, my ass.

You are one crazy sonofabitch, Hap Collins.

Finally I bellied within twenty feet of the cabin. Around the door the vegetation was cleared. I could smell food coming from under the crack of the door. Steak maybe. My stomach rolled over. It was loud and rambunctious in there. They were playing ZZ Top’s “Legs.” Just a bunch of guys having a party. Drinking and doping and dancing and banging whores. Who was I to interrupt them? I didn’t make Tillie a whore. I didn’t ask her to run with the wrong crowd. I didn’t even know her.

I turned my head. I couldn’t see Leonard, just brush. After a moment he raised his hand above the brush. We both rose and darted toward the door. I stopped on the left side of the entryway, Leonard on the right. He looked at me. I took a deep breath and nodded.

Leonard turned the knob, swung the door open, stepped in and I went in behind him. He fanned right, I fanned left. At a glance I saw eight men. One of them, a black man, was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Another black man was sitting in a chair beside him holding the dead man’s head, saying over and over, “That nigger’s dead. I killed that nigger.”

As everyone turned to look at us, the black man kept repeating himself. “That nigger’s dead. I killed that nigger.” Apparently he and his buddy had had an altercation, and now his buddy was gradually assuming room temperature. No one else seemed in the least bothered by this.

There were two women in the room, and one of them, a pretty black girl, naked except for a T-shirt that almost covered her breasts and none of her bottom, wobbled over to the wall, stepped in the dead man’s blood and sat her naked ass in it. “Wow,” she said. The other woman, whose hair was so bleached it looked like cotton candy, was completely naked and being held up by a man so small his head was just under her left breast. As she wobbled, his greasy hair kept lifting it as if it might be trying to wave.

“Who the fuck are you?” said one of the men. He wore leather pants and work boots and was shirtless. He was balding and bearded and had a big belly. Tattooed on his belly was a blue and red eagle with a stick of lit dynamite clutched in its beak. On his chest was tattooed
I LICK PUSSY LIKE A DOG
. In green letters. Very festive. I didn’t worry about what was tattooed on the knuckles of both hands. Too far away. But I figured it was easily on the intellectual level of the chest tattoo.

“Everybody shut up,” I yelled over the music. “We’re here for Tillie.”

“Tillie?” said another man. “Who the fuck’s Tillie?”

“It got to be one of the whores,” said the black man.

“Man, y’all ain’t none of us?” said another.

“No shit,” Leonard said. “All you got to do is give us Tillie, and we will be on our way.”

“You can get right back to cutting one another, fuckin’, and dancing,” I said. “Just as soon as we take Tillie out that door. By the way, you need to bury that motherfucker on the floor. That stuff running out of him isn’t prune juice.”

The guy with the tit on his head said to the woman he was holding up, “You Tillie?”

The stoned woman shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

That was when one of the men in the back, either less stoned than the others or more so, produced a handgun quick as a bunny fucks and fired it. The shot hit me in the shoulder, and without really knowing how, I was on the floor. Then I heard Leonard cut down with the shotgun and the middle of the room went away. Lick Pussy Man had a hole in his eagle and a couple guys were lying on the floor in his blood, moaning. The gun roared again and the guy with the handgun spun around and landed face first. What was left of his head flowed across the floor.

Time stood still. I got hold of the Winchester and used it to help myself up. Now I felt pain. There was a roar at the back of the place, followed by a yell, then another roar. The door at the rear flew open and there was Brett, followed by the stench of gunpowder. A wreath of smoke circled around her head, blood was sprinkled on her face, blood was on the wall behind her. One hand was clamped on Tillie’s elbow, the other held the shotgun pushed up against her hip. Tillie was zonked and completely naked. Like her mother she was a real redhead. Leonard had been right, there had been some work done on her face, but it was her.

“Out of the way!” Brett said. “Fuck out of the way. I’ll shoot any fucker in my way.”

Those still standing parted. Brett and Tillie went between us and out the door. Brett’s face looked demonic. Tillie looked as if she might be trying to add up a hard math problem.

A couple of men, half dressed, but holding heat, rushed out of the back room. A woman peeked out between them, then turned and went away. The men were in the room now, both zonked as lords, but trying to sober. “What the fuck?” one of them said. “What the fuck?”

“Avon,” Leonard said. “And we mean business.”

Then I suppose it all came together for everyone, what was really happening. Pistols snapped out of back pockets and ankle holsters. I cut down the Winchester, cocking and firing. Metal bees buzzed by me, and I kept firing. People seemed to leap away from me, and I saw the girl who had been using her tit for a hat go back in a blaze of flesh and bone as one of my wild shots hit her in the chest. I pivoted to look at the woman sitting on the floor. She was pulling a pistol out from under the dead black man’s shirt and pointing it at me. I turned and fired and the shot drove her head back into the wall and the other black man yelled something at me and I saw he had a gun and I fired. I had gone prehistoric, sniffing that swamp gas and tar. I think I shot him three times. All I know was a moment later I was cocking and pulling the trigger on an empty rifle. I heard Leonard letting fly again, realized he’d been blasting all the time, then through the back door, out of other rooms more men began to pour. They had shotguns and pistols and no sense of personal safety.

I cut down with the shotgun barrel and it was as if a great and invisible wave tore through the fresh recruits, then I was yelling to Leonard to back out of there, and out he went, and me after him, the wall splintering behind us, the men from the back rooms falling over the bodies of their comrades, slipping in their blood.

I said we backed out of there. Hell, we ran out of there. The jeep came whipping up to the door. We jumped in and Herman lifted his rifle with one hand and fired at the doorway, then he dropped it, grabbed the steering wheel, and away we went.

Just as I was easing myself to a sitting position, there was a blast and I felt stings all over my lower left side. Leonard cut down on those behind us and Herman stabbed the accelerator through the floor. We bolted up and over the ridge where we had hidden earlier, and turned south. Behind us more bullets popped and hissed, but now we were running on the other side of the ridge and they couldn’t see us and their shots were striking the dirt.

“Holy shit!” Brett said. “Holy fucking shit!”

“Shit,” I said. “We killed a bunch of people, Leonard. We killed a bunch of people.”

“Of course we did,” Leonard said, putting a hand on my shoulder, pulling it back as he felt the blood. “Of course we did.”

“Oh, God,” Brett said. “They weren’t so tough, were they? Were they?”

My thigh began to ache. I looked down. It was bleeding, turning my pants wet. My side hurt. I reached over and felt it. Small wounds. Pellets under the skin. I felt limp.

Behind us I saw a blur of white. Leonard saw it about the same time.

A horse.

A man riding bareback.

One of the men had bridled a horse and was trying to chase us down.

“Fuckin’ Lone Ranger,” Leonard said.

The Lone Ranger was unsteady on the horse, but he was firing at us with a handgun. A bullet whizzed between us, just missed Herman’s back and webbed the windshield.

I reached in the front seat and picked up Herman’s Winchester, cocked it, aimed and shot. The horse went down and rolled over, throwing the man. The man stumbled to his feet. The horse didn’t move.

“You missed,” Brett said.

“No, he didn’t,” Leonard said. The jeep left the man far behind us, a little fleshy dot against the great landscape of the desert. “Shit, Hap, what did that horse ever do to you? I can’t believe you spared that fucker’s life and shot the horse. You are some kind of work, brother.”

I dropped the Winchester and lay back against the side of the jeep, my head tilted upward. I held my bleeding shoulder and watched the stars bound and bob to the jerks and surges of the ride. Dust came up from the desert and lashed about us and filled my nose. I thought I could still smell blood and gunpowder. The roar of gunfire was in my ears. My legs were starting to shake. I felt as if I might suddenly burst out crying. My ass hurt. I reached around and pulled out the Winchester shells and the revolver that were riding in my back pocket, dropped them on the floor of the jeep. I lay back again and felt weak, so goddamn weak.

Leonard took off his jacket, then his shirt. He gave the shirt to Tillie, who just looked at it. Brett took it and slipped Tillie into it, buttoned it as if she were dressing a small child. It was large enough to make Tillie a short dress.

“Are we going somewhere?” Tillie said.

Brett patted her. The jeep bounced us painfully over rough terrain. I was growing colder. Leonard moved over next to me and turned his coat over and tore out the lining on one side. He stuffed the lining under my shirt, into the shoulder wound. He tied his belt around my leg and pulled it tight by winding the barrel of my revolver in it. He slipped his coat over me, sat with his arm around my shoulders.

“You gonna be all right, Hap,” he said.

“Rumble tumble,” I said, remembering what Red had called a bad fight. “Rumble tumble.”

26

We came to a little road that seemed oddly placed out in the middle of the desert. We drove down the road a ways and came to a little town that looked to be out of an old Western movie. It was at least sixty or seventy years back in time. There were very few lights and there was only one place open, a cantina.

“You sure this is it?” Brett asked.

“Yeah,” Herman said. “The airstrip is on the other side of town. It’s used for smuggling. Lot of drugs are run from here. The town isn’t much, but it’s what’s out here and it’s reasonably close to the border.”

Herman drove over to the cantina and parked.

“What are you doin’?” Leonard asked.

“I know Bill and Red,” Herman said. “They’re more likely to be here than sitting out at the airplane. I got a feeling Irvin isn’t far different. They aren’t here, it’s a short trip to where the plane’s supposed to be.”

“Make it quick,” Leonard said.

Herman went inside. Leonard adjusted the belt on my leg. “Guess it wasn’t a major artery,” he said. “Stopped bleeding for the most part. I think we can take this off.”

“Yeah,” I said. “All the blood’s on the floor of the jeep.”

“How you feelin’?”

“Not good,” I said. “I had some moments there where I drifted off. Didn’t think I was coming back.”

“I knew you were comin’ back,” Leonard said. “You still gotta get all your shit out of my house.”

I turned my head and looked at Brett. The movement was incredibly draining. “Brett?”

She had her arm around Tillie, who had fallen asleep. Tillie had her thumb stuck in her mouth like a baby.

“I’m all right, hon,” Brett said. “I’m never gonna forget what you two done for me. Never.”

“Ain’t over yet,” Leonard said. “Hand me that shotgun, just in case there’s someone in there got a different plan than the one we made.”

Brett handed him the gun. Leonard reached in the coat draped over me, took out a box of shells, carefully loaded the shotgun.

“One thing is,” Leonard said, “we can’t sit around here. Them people gonna know where we’re goin’. Ain’t no other place to go south other than this. We put a dent in them ’cause we had surprise on our side and they were fucked up. But when they get straight, ain’t gonna be so easy. ’Specially Hap here havin’ holes in him.”

“Can’t believe these shits are hanging out in a saloon,” Brett said.

“Irvin and Bill didn’t think we’d be coming back, that’s why they wanted far away as they could get,” Leonard said. “Red, he didn’t give a shit. I don’t know he cares all that much about Herman, even. I think his mouth could say all kinds of things he doesn’t mean. I may kill all of ’em on general principles.”

“Been enough killing,” I said. “I don’t want no more of it.”

“You don’t always get to choose, Hap.”

Herman came out. He had Bill with him. Herman leaned on the jeep, said, “You won’t be flying out tonight. Irvin is so stoned he’s passed out on the floor next to a jukebox. He got in some kind of fight with a Mexican and got his block knocked off pretty good too.”

“Shit,” Leonard said.

“What about Red?” Brett asked.

“He’s pretty drunk himself,” Bill said.

“I was just hoping he was dead,” Brett said.

“Hap needs a doctor,” Leonard said. “Got any ideas?”

“I can ask around,” Bill said. “I think I can find enough Spanish in my memory to do that.”

“You do that,” Leonard said. “And that doesn’t mean drink more first. I want Hap with a doctor. I want him with one pronto. I don’t hear from you quick, you’re gonna need a doctor. Comprende, amigo?”

“I don’t like to be threatened, black man,” Bill said.

“It ain’t no threat, red man, it’s a promise.”

Herman got in behind the wheel, started up the Jeep. “We’ll be out at the plane,” he said.

I passed out somewhere between the little town and the plane, and when I awoke I was lying across the plane’s seats, stripped down to my underwear. A little Mexican man with a wart on his cheek about the size of a doorknob and a hairdo that looked to be about three-fourths Wesson oil was poking at me with a pair of long bloody tweezers. There was blood all over the tweezers. He was dropping pellets from my side into a coffee can. When he saw I was awake, he nodded, smiled, poked the tweezers into my side, pulled out another pellet.

He carefully rolled me on my back and started probing at my shoulder and thigh wound with his fingertips, which didn’t look all that clean.

“You have to do that?” I said.

“He doesn’t speak English,” Herman said.

I turned my head. Sitting nearby were Leonard, Brett, and Herman. Bill was standing up, smoking a cigarette. I didn’t see Tillie, Red, or Irvin.

The Mexican turned and spoke to Herman. Herman nodded, said to me, “He says you’re not too messed up. Lead went through your shoulder. There’s a piece in your thigh that’ll take more work than he’s willing to do. He’s stuffed some gauze in the wound, and he’s picked out all the buckshot you got in your side. None of it went in straight on. Just the pellets from the shotgun, and you caught the far edge of the spray. Still, you need blood.”

“Then let’s get him some blood,” Leonard said.

“This guy, he does abortions mostly,” Herman said. “Delivers babies. He’s not a real doctor.”

“Me and Hap had a veterinarian work on us once,” Leonard said. “We’re not proud.”

“He doesn’t have access to blood,” Herman said. “He’s just telling you so you’ll know.”

“Shit,” Leonard said. “I could have told him that.”

“What we got to do is sober Irvin up,” Brett said.

Bill shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’re not talking a little drunk, we’re talking about being so fuckin’ drunk he’ll wake up speaking in tongues. Thing we got to do is let him sleep it off, lay around tomorrow, fly out when it’s solid dark. Then, if the Border Patrol doesn’t catch us, and my guess is they won’t because they never have, we end up back at the hangar. You folks go your way, and I go mine, and we never do business again.”

“But we can send you a Christmas card?” I said.

“A little candy on Valentine’s would be all right too,” Bill said.

“All this sounds like a lot of waiting for blood,” Leonard said.

“I can make it,” I said. “Leonard’s just scared I’m going to die and leave my dirty underwear under his couch. Where is Irvin?”

“He’s outside under the plane,” Bill said. “Me and Herman went and got him. He was still passed out, so we stretched him out there.”

“And Red?”

“He was at the cantina, pretty drunk. Doing handstands and stuff. He was trying to make the Mexican drunks in there understand he wanted a big dog to ride and he was showing them his dick, dipping it into a glass of tequila. He passed out on the way here. We left him in the jeep.”

“This sitting around bothers me,” Leonard said. “Those assholes will change tires on the other jeep, and someone in town will talk.”

“They might change tires,” Herman said, “but they’re going to have hell going anywhere with all the dirt I put in the gas tank. Pissed in it too. And it won’t do them a lot of good with the wires ripped out from under the hood and the gear shift bent.”

“Good for you, Herman,” I said.

“They could come by horse or mule,” Leonard said.

“They could,” Herman said. “I think they’re so stoned they’ll do good to stand up, let alone saddle and ride a horse. My guess is they got to wait about as long as Irvin’s got to wait.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear,” Brett said.

“Where’s Tillie?” I asked.

“At the back of the plane, sleeping,” Brett said. “They had her on something strong. Or she had herself on it. She’s really wiped out.”

“I think we take turns at watch,” Leonard said. “I don’t like being surprised.”

“Very well,” Bill said. “I’ll go first.”

The Mexican held out his hand, said something to Herman. Herman said, “He wants money.”

Brett picked up her purse, opened it, gave him a ten dollar bill. “That’s pretty close to tapping me out,” she said.

“Gracias,” said the little Mexican, then fired off something very fast in Spanish, got up, and left.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He hopes you don’t die,” Herman said.

It was late at night when I awoke, hurting like holy hell. Brett was sitting on the floor with her head next to the seat where I lay. When I turned to look at her, I saw she was awake.

“How you feeling?” she said.

“Shitty.”

“I’ve got some aspirin. I can get you some water.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Brett disappeared for a moment, came back with aspirin and a canteen. She had to hold my head up. I took ten aspirin and a sip of water.

“I owe you, Hap Collins,” Brett said.

“Hope you don’t think so,” I said. “Except in sexual favors, of course.”

“I’d give you a blow job, but frankly my guess is your dick stinks and you’ve bled all over it from your thigh. On top of that, you haven’t had a bath in a while.”

“Neither have you,” I said.

“Yes, but I brought perfume and I never soil my underwear.”

“Not even when I make you hot?”

“I guess that’s an exception.”

“How’s Tillie?”

“She’s still out. I think she’ll be all right, though. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“I feel weak, but all right. I get something to eat, a big glass of ice tea, and I’ll be ready to rock and roll. After a month of bed rest.”

“Soon as you get better, what you’ll be doing in bed won’t pass for rest.”

“You’re going to have your work cut out for you with Tillie, Brett.”

“I know.”

“You don’t just come out of a life like that and take up choir practice and run supermarket errands.”

“I don’t know. Maybe Tillie would love that sort of thing now. Maybe she’s through rebelling.”

“At her age, she’s not rebelling, Brett. She’s living a lifestyle.”

“Don’t depress me. Not after all we’ve accomplished.”

“Sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to.”