We Ate the Road Like Vultures (6 page)

The people of the small town were now watching the truck go by, having rarely seen such a new vehicle and quite possibly recognising the bandits from some sort of wanted poster. Or they might have simply been amused by the stupid white people trying to leap from the back. We were too slow, too indecisive and too fucking scared, cos it was a matter of about a minute before we drove past the bank again and heard shots and whoops and screams, and the guitarist and his friends came flying back into the truck with the traditional bags of cash and coins. I was so surprised by all this that I didn't even crouch down for any sort of protection, but Adolf had his wits about him and pulled my head to the bottom of the tray so that when the bank security guard
came out firing a pistol, and the bullets slammed into the side of the truck with a zing, I was at least partially protected. We roared off and sprayed dust at the townspeople who were not surprised at it all, but several of whom cussed and gave the finger to the truck as we went by. I had a terrible feeling they weren't going to stop at the church to let us off after all, and this was confirmed as we flew past it, the cross blurring and causing a rare frown to appear on Adolf's face. He banged on the cab window and was greeted by the driver firing his gun rapidly into the air, a gesture that seemed like it might have been meant to be cheeky and funny but was actually scary for regular Joes who were only used to cattle stampedes and racist protests.

Chickens scattered as we rounded the market and I hoped we would have to slow enough at some point to be able to get out, cos by this time I was ready to leave Adolf if he didn't follow me. I'd had enough of the crazy grins and cocked guns of the men in the back with me.

The truck was gaining speed every second and I knew we were done trying to escape, we would
have to ride it out until they stopped, and hope they didn't kill us or rape us or worse, and then run like hell. I settled back against the side of the truck and glanced at Adolf who reached down and held my hand. I imagine it was supposed to make me feel better or safer, but even amidst a bank robbery I was still girl enough to get all hot and bothered, and then my hand sweated and in the end I pulled it away on the pretence of looking behind us for help of some kind. I admit I didn't expect any so when I saw another truck bearing down on us I had a moment of hope followed by a moment of fear that extended into terror. It was the police. I had already seen the Mexican police at work on a town a few days back. Some guy was in the market and they came in, guns literally blazing, hunting him. Maybe he was a notorious paedophile or perhaps he had tried to assassinate the president, but I doubted he had done anything to deserve the arse-kicking he got right there in front of kids and women and hanging sacks of vegetables. When he was unconscious and unrecognisable they finally picked him up and dragged him to the police truck where they tossed him in the tray and left a trail of
blood dripping through the market. I had a feeling we were fucked. This became certain knowledge when the first bullets hit the back of the tray. They didn't penetrate but then the police were still a couple of hundred metres behind us. We threw ourselves to the floor and lay as flat and as far back as we could. Well, three of us did. Guitar player lay there with us, loot in his grimy hands, but the other bandit stood up and, swaying back and forth with the motion of the truck, he sprayed a steady stream of bullets at the police. I wasn't sure who to barrack for—the bandits who had kidnapped us or the police who were both our hope of rescue and potential death.

Nobody seemed very accurate with their high-powered weapons, thank God, and there was the stench of dust and gunpowder, and my sweaty hands had re-gripped Adolf's and might never ever let go, and I wondered how the hell we both came together in a place like that and if my father would ever even know how I died or if he would go on hoping for decades that I would call home. I loved that feeling of owing nobody anything and doing whatever I pleased from morning till
moon but when it came to it there was some old-fashioned kid in me who didn't want her family to be crying into their pillows, and who wanted to see the familiar rocky path from the gate to the front door of the house I had lived in my entire life.

I was starting to panic. On some level I always knew that trekking around the world by yourself involved a level of danger, but I was pretty careful to avoid weird people and dark places. I stayed with Christians or in free Buddhist temples, and when I had to pay, in a youth hostel. I avoided cheap hotels, I ate at truckstops full of burly men ready to protect a young girl with their lives and a steel pipe. In fact I'd had so few problems, I started to think myself charmed, a born roadster. And there I was on the back of a truck in the Mexican desert, pursued by cops and in a Rodriguez movie. My breathing started to catch and stumble and the dust suddenly felt thick and sticky in my mouth and eyes. I coughed and grabbed at the edge of the truck, I needed to jump no matter how fast it was going—I was
dead there anyway, the fall might only involve a broken ankle or shoulder or neck.

Adolf pulled me back and turned my face towards him with his hand. It was a big hand I noticed, dark gold on one side and just as filthy as mine on the other. He was serious but calm as Jesus Christ in the storm as he looked into my blinking wild eyes and said very loudly, so I could just pick it up over the rumble and fire, ‘Much worse things than this have happened. This is just a few minutes.'

He said the last line three times before I wilted and sat still. It was his strangeness, as much as his words, that became my anchor—his weird view of the world and his calm way of travelling through it looking for ridiculous truth and imagination—it made me believe him. I smiled slightly, just a lift of my eyes. He returned to his examination of the men in the truck and, without telling me his plans, he inched forward, neither of them noticing in their equal focus—one on keeping his balance while firing, the other on keeping the bags of loot in place.

With a speed that seemed out of step on such a laconic figure, Adolf crouched and leapt forward, lifting the left boot of the gunman and pitching him over the edge of the truck without so much as a shriek. I spun and saw the Mexican tumble like a weed and lie still and I was glad to have not been the first to fall. In the same instant Adolf had slid far enough forward to grab the gun that lay beside the other Mexican, pulling it out of reach and into his own hands. The Mexican looked at him in terror, but kept the bags in his grasp. I thought Adolf might shoot the driver or at least threaten him, but he pulled out the long magazine clip and tossed it over one side of the truck and the gun over the other. He pulled my head back down and we lay on the bottom of the bumping tray waiting for whatever the next hour of our lives would bring.

‘The gun?' I tried to ask.

‘They will shoot us if we are armed.' Simple. We didn't have to wait long, only a few flashbacks of my childhood and a list of the many things I still wanted to do before I die—having sex being close to the top of the list, imagine
dying a virgin? Though a drink of water was also high on my list. Things to do before I die: Drink a glass of water in Mexico, spend four days purging it and then get the fuck out of the country.

An almighty bang, a jolt and a swerving catapult into a group of shrubs ended our trip. The truck went sideways, tilting to send us sliding into the hard edge of the tray before it lost traction completely and landed on its side. I could feel the rocks and gravel through the metal which, moments ago, had been thick enough to stop a bullet and now seemed to be eroding beside my head. Bits of dry grass and dirt spun up around my eyes and I had to close them. The truck kept skidding and spinning on its side for what seemed longer than my life so far, until finally we hit the scrub with a jolt that flipped me out across the dirt which ripped into my jeans and skin and tangled my hair, and I cut my forehead open on a rock. Blood immediately dripped into my eyes and while I had stopped moving and there was no real pain anywhere inside my body, I couldn't see anything at all and there was a burning stinging sensation on every
part of my exposed skin. I had a brief thought that this might teach Adolf to wear a T-shirt, and then I was jolted into a tight ball by the sound of gunfire only metres away. A single shot. Another. A third. Mexicans yelling in angry Spanish, that fluid garbled language full of curses and angst. Another shot. A scream of pain. I tried to wipe my eyes without drawing attention to myself. I was about ten metres from the truck and I was under a tiny covering of bush. I could see the police truck next to the overturned truck with its punctured tyres and spinning rims—flurries of cash, mostly American notes, fluttered around in the air like a Las Vegas heist film. I could see the Mexican from the back of the truck, half of him jutting out from underneath the fallen tray, his head somewhere underneath, his feet limp and lying apart. One foot was twisted around the wrong way and pointing upwards. I could see another body in the cabin, through the dust, slumped down near the ground. The other man, the driver I think, was being dragged by his long hair towards the police truck. One arm struggled, the other hung limp by his side, dripping blood that joined a long ooze
coming from a large wound in his belly. It looked like a gunshot—clean, round and red with thick blood on his dirty white shirt. His struggling was feeble, and when two of the police started to kick him and beat him with the soft rubber sticks they carried, he moaned and moved but could barely resist. Soon he was still. Another man climbed out of the police truck and scanned the scene. He was youngish, maybe in his thirties, and big, but not in the soft fat way of most older Mexican men—like a fighter. He was not nearly as dark as the other policemen, more a creamy colour, strange for a policeman, most of the ones I had seen were well-cooked by the sun, where he seemed only slightly singed. He had those quick eyes that dart around and see everything, the ones that don't just see but understand, and I knew he would spot me as soon as he turned this way. I tried to shove myself further under the scrubby brush and that was when I discovered that while I may not be injured, I was certainly hurt, everything ached and stung and I didn't make the fluid movement I envisaged but a jerky noisy gesture that drew his eyes even more quickly to my hiding place.
Our eyes met, mine covered in blood, his peering over the sunglasses he had lowered onto his nose, and I saw a man that terrified me, a man who did whatever he wanted. He said something low and terse to the other cops who looked in my direction and took several seconds to locate me under my layer of dust and branches then leaped towards me, lifting me to my feet by my shoulders and showing me exactly where every small hurt was in my tumbled body. I probably could have walked but I wasn't going to make it easy for them, I don't know why, I should have been cooperative with the police in the hopes of some sort of fair chance to explain myself, but I didn't like them, they were brutal and I had some strange angst against them that made me belligerent. One of them thumped me in the back of the leg with his knee urging me to move faster, and it really hurt, causing me to twist sideways and, without thinking, kick him in the leg with my other foot, a stupid thing only a person used to a law-bound police force would do. I instantly regretted it cos he dropped my shoulder and belted me across the top of my back with his
stick. The officer was watching. I could see him from under my arms which I wrapped around my head and I kicked out as much as I could, but two men were too much for me and soon I was huddled in a ball trying to keep the blows to my upper back, which were certainly meant to hurt, not kill. He finally said a few words and they stopped and hauled me back to my feet. I was badly winded and hacked and coughed for breath as quietly as my dignity allowed, though I was terrified and I knew I was so far away from everyone, and any sort of real law, that they could shoot me in the back of the head, or the front of the head for that matter, and leave me there until some archaeologist found me in a millennia and studied my demise like they study the Ice Man. There was still no sign of Adolf though I tried to search for him without showing them what I was doing, my hair hanging down and covering my bruised face and, of course, the tears I most certainly didn't want the policemen to see and which, despite my best efforts and every mental curse, were working their way through the sand and grease and down my cheeks.

The police captain's English was so perfect and unaccented I had no idea where he'd learned it, not American or British, no trace of Spanish in it at all.

‘Your friend is underneath the truck.'

I was so busy listening, the words took several seconds to register as information, and then I glanced groggily around until I saw Adolf's feet sticking out from underneath the bent-up side of the truck and they were still and perfect, just like the Wicked Witch of the West except with his white sandshoes, those strange things that managed to stay clean in the brown desert, unlike the ruby slippers. I pulled myself from the grip of the policemen so suddenly that they just stood there while I fell to the ground and started to try and dig him out, sand slipping through my fingers and falling back around his legs as fast as I could pull it out. He was deep in the soft sand and I couldn't help hoping it had somehow cushioned his fall. I ran to the other side of the truck and there he was, face up and barely a scratch on his naked chest and face, looking so peaceful he may have been asleep, and
I felt the deepest terror that if I touched him to check his pulse I would make him dead, my fear corrupting his immortality.

There was no such fear in the Mexicans, one of whom kicked Adolf's chest with force. Adolf opened his eyes, blinked and tried to sit up, though the truck was over his waist and he immediately fell back. I started to push the truck, which moved not even a quarter of an inch under my body weight, and I swore as loudly as I could at the police, ‘You dumb fucking cops, help me with this. You're supposed to be helping people, aren't you? Not fucking killing them.'