An American Outlaw (12 page)

She runs towards a car pulling in at the nearest pump. Big sedan. Woman driver in a business suit. 

The old man’s still marching, straight toward me. 

I checked behind, two customers both still on the floor. Jonah and the red-head just standing, dead-still. A bullet hole and broken glass behind them. 

Nothing from out of the back room, where I fired.

Tennille's got her shotgun leveled at the woman in the business suit. She's out of her car, a Dodge Intrepid, stumbling away. 

I leveled my pistol at the old man. Looked in his eyes. 

He stopped. He didn’t back off, he just stopped. 

A telephone rang, inside.

I turned, to see Jonah, making to pick it up. 

“Leave it.
God damn it
.” I locked the SIG on him. He froze.

A wave of anger started to flood in me, finger curling around the trigger. Feeling its pressure, almost squeezing; semi-automatics can be light.

Jonah's staring. “Please, mister—I got four kids...”

The telephone stops. 

There's silence, except for the tinny little radio. I stepped out on the forecourt—Tennille already in the driver seat of the sedan. 

I jumped in, she floored it, swung out onto the road. 

My mind's racing, full of this rage; confusion, checking every movement. Looking everywhere, remembering; lines of sight, arcs of fire.

On I-20, driving like crazy, is a police cruiser. It turns down an off-ramp, skids across the road. Then it's gone from sight, behind an earth bank. 

The sign for Popeyes is sticking up over the bank, less than a quarter mile off. “We got to ditch this and run.”

“We're not ditching it...”

“It's too late,” I says, “he's already seen us.” 

There's some kind of feature running the direction we have to go, a dirt slope; drain gully, down to cast concrete. 

“Get off the road, down that cut there.”

Tennille swerves. Brakes hard. And we're skidding down a shallow incline, no way to stop. 

We hit the bottom, the engine dies.

“Get the bag, the money, I’ll get the shotgun. Take the bag...”

She grabs the money. Pushes open her door.

“On me. Follow me. Do what I do.”

We ran along the bottom of the gully. Out of sight from the road, but blind, too. 

The gully passed beneath the interstate, through a concrete tunnel, a steel mesh bolted over it, no time to get it off. I crawled up the earth bank on my hands and knees. If we could cross the road, nobody seeing, we could jump back in the gully, and follow it right back to Popeyes. 

A brace of trucks blasted by. 

“Alright, get up here...” 

We ran out behind the pair of trucks. Threw ourselves down the other side. Michael's SIG stuffed in my pocket, Tennille's shotgun in both hands. 

We slid to the bottom of the gully. Then ran fast, at a crouch towards a wood-panel fence around the lot in back of the restaurant.

I opened up a lead on Tennille. Ten yards in back of the fence, I'm about to run round the side, when I stopped. 

I threw myself straight to the ground. 

Voices.
 

There were voices in the lot.

CHAPTER 14

Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits. I-10.

“Git a lookit that light show...”

Tennille crawled up beside me. The smell of cigarette smoke curling into the air. 

I held a hand over my mouth, showed her two fingers on my left hand. She nodded.

“
Slow down, boy
.”

“He's goin' for the gas station,” the first guy again.

There's the sound of a police siren; closer now. 

I drew the SIG from my pocket.
Where was Michael?

“Yeah, well,” the second guy talking again. “You ‘bout through? Let’s go on in. I got to take a piss. I'm drinking too much coffee.”

“Break don't hardly last a single smoke. Winston's git shorter, I swear...”

We stayed dead-still, listening, just breathing. Among the weeds and highway trash. 

I kept my voice a whisper. “Let me go around first.” 

I put the shotgun down, stuck the pistol in back of my pants. And walked around the side of the fence, making out I was doing up my fly. 

There's two cars in the lot. Plus Tennille's truck.

Michael's still in there, the windows are down, he's slumped forward in the driver’s seat. I called over my shoulder; “Come on round, quick...” 

Tennille walks onto the lot, the paper grocery bag clutched in her hand. 

“Go on and get in the truck.” 

I checked the restaurant door—then edged around the side of the fence and grabbed the shotgun. No way we were leaving it. 

I ran back, ripped open the rear door of the truck cab and threw it in.

Tennille's in the passenger seat looking out through the rear-view mirror. Michael's passed out in the driver's seat. Tennille's eyes lock on a spot—somewhere behind me. Something behind me; someone. 

Somebody coming out the restaurant.

The pistol. Fuck. It was sticking out the back of my pants. 

I spun around. It was a couple, in their sixties. I looked beyond them, at the restaurant door, like I was fixing to go in. 

The guy’s thinking; something wrong there, I could tell. He turns towards a cream Oldsmobile, car keys in his hand. But the woman stops.

She glances at Michael; slumped at the wheel. She calls over; “You folks all right?”

“Yes ma’am. We’re fine. Thanks.”
Go. Get the fuck out of here.

Tennille’s smiling out the window.

The SIG feels like it’s about to fall out the back of my pants and blow somebody’s foot off.

The woman nods, but there's some kind of look in her face. She hurries across to the Oldsmobile. 

I watched it back out, fast, and pull out on the road. I could see her glance back. 

I wrenched open the driver's door. Michael half fell out on the lot.

I caught him, “Buddy, we got to go...” 

I could hear the siren on the cruiser. Angry sounding. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. It was running off me like water.

Tennille had the bag of money. 

I says, “You want to count it?”

“We've got to get the hell out of here.”

I laid Michael out in the back seat, straightening his legs, blood oozing from the gunshot wound in his arm. His mouth was open. He was breathing fast, burning up. 

Tennille pulled a fistful of cash from the grocery bag. She stared inside it.

I watched the back door out of Popeyes. “Keep it,” I says, “you keep it—take it all. Just get us out.”

She fixed her eyes on me.

“Let us out some place,” I says. “Me and him. You keep the money.”

She stared, hair loose, a wild look in her face.

“I got to take care of him.”

“Get in the back,” she says. “Lay down. Out of sight.”

I looked her in the eye. “Yes or no?”

She snapped her head around, got behind the wheel, fired the engine.

Whatever she was thinking, she didn't look back.

Highway 118 out of Alpine.

Whicher stares at the desert where it stretches out south, beyond the empty highway. Mile after mile, unrelenting. He thinks of the pick-up truck with the Louisiana plate. Some girl waving a shotgun. Two men.

Whoever it was, they'd be long gone by now. The lieutenant could cover it, no point him going out there as well. 

He thinks of the mileage down to Terlingua, right down on the border. The store owner. The message from Alpine, at HQ. A store owner that thinks he's seen Gilman James—back on Monday, the day of the raid. 

It's the first lead that actually places James in the area, the day of the bank getting robbed. But what was he doing there, that far south? It didn't make a whole lot of sense. 

The radio flashes up inside the big Silverado.

“Marshal, it's Lieutenant Rodgers.”

“Go ahead...”

“We've just picked up an all-units from Reeves County. A gas station robbery. Man and a woman.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It's right up on the interstate...” The lieutenant waits at the end of the line.

“Y'all think it's them?”

“I don't know. I'm still up here at Paisano Pass. Up with the abandoned vehicle.”

Whicher stares at a bank of cloud filling the sky out of Mexico. He thinks of the interstate—the towns of Odessa and Midland just east of Reeves, El Paso only a couple hours west. It could be anybody. From any of those places.

“What do you want to do, Marshal?”

He can stop the truck. Turn north.

“Listen. Maybe it's them, maybe not. I'm half way to the border here. I want to speak to this store owner, in Terlingua. It's a solid lead.”

“Okay. Copy that.”

Whicher shakes the thought of a gas station robbery from his mind.

“There's a lot of blood in the cab of this pick-up, Marshal.”

“That patrol sergeant of yours?” says Whicher. “He reckoned the guy escaping the bank was hit, right?”

“Definitely.”

Had to be, then. Had to be one of their pick-ups. 

“What about the witness—that rancher. What'd he say?”

“He said it looked like it was some kind of fight going on.”

“A fight?” 

“He gave us a description of the three of them, but it's not real good. One guy kind of dark—a possible for Gilman James. He was holding onto the second guy...”

“The shot guy?”

“Most likely.”

“How about the girl?”

“Youngish. Dark hair.”

“Y'all run the plate on the pick-up?”

“Yes, sir. Toyota pick-up registered in Lafayette. To a Michael Tyler.”

“Twenty bucks says he's a Marine...”

The lieutenant hesitates. 

“I spoke with Lafayette police. They say Tyler's a bum. Some loser, lives out on the skids. They've had him DUI twice this year.”

Whicher scowls at his reflection in the window. “Alright. Head on up to that interstate, you get done. Call me on it. You got that?”

“I got it.”

The marshal snaps off the radio. Pushes down harder on the gas.

Davis Mountains.

I pulled the 350 off the dirt route, high in the hills. Parked in the shadow of a cottonwood. 

I jumped out. Wrenched open the rear door of the crew cab. Michael was burning up. The black top clinging to his body, skin shining with sweat. 

“I need to get him help.”

Tennille stepped from the truck. 

“You can't take him anywhere. Not with a gunshot wound.”

I worked Michael's top over his torso, the cloth sticking to his back. “Think I don't know that?”

Tennille pulled a cigarette from a hard pack, one hand gripping Michael's pistol. 

“You're not through,” she said. 

I didn't answer. 

The bandage around Michael's arm was soaked with blood. He  was in and out of consciousness. Mostly out. 

“I got to stop the bleeding.”

She nodded.

“You got something?”

 “No.”

I grabbed the sweat top, tore a rip in it with my teeth.

“I can get him help,” she says.

I tore at the rip, pulled it—loosened the blood-soaked bandage.

“I know somebody,” she said. “A woman that could treat him...”

Underneath the bandage the wound was a mess of blood and skin. I glanced at Tennille through the open door of the truck.

“She used to be a doctor.”

“She get drugs?”

Tennille nodded. I laid the ripped strip of cloth on Michael's arm.

“It's an hour since that cruiser saw us,” she says.

“So?”

“They'll never find us—in these hills.”

I wrapped the strip around the wound, pulled it tight. “What do you want?”

She didn't answer. She stared at a ridge covered in desert olive and goatbush. Held the silver bracelets at her wrist.

I tore a second strip out of the sweat top.

“I can get him help.”

“You in this, now?”

She took a pull at the cigarette. Blew smoke out the side of her mouth.

I tied the second strip around Michael's arm. “You get him help. Then what?”

“You're not done. I heard you say so. Neither am I.”

I eased Michael on his side, tried to prop him against the seat back.

“We get him somewhere safe.” She walked to the hood of the truck, eyed the pistol.

I looked at her. “And?” 

“How are they going to find us?”

CHAPTER 15

Terlingua.

Marshal Whicher stares out the window of the gas station diner. Past the pumps. To a big rock, that rises on the road north; rust red, against an iron gray sky. Every place else, the land is wide open.

He sips on a cup of coffee. Twists his watch. Waiting for the owner of the place—name of Stinson.

He scans the other diners. He's the only man in the place wearing a suit.

It's day two. Wednesday. 

A kid named Steven Childress in the Alpine morgue. His Nissan Frontier plus two hundred thousand in stolen money—in police custody. 

There's a Toyota pick-up. A Michael Tyler. And a Gilman James.

All the main roads south are covered. Check-points, Brewster County cruisers on rotation. The marshal stares out the diner window. West Texas goes on forever.

Paisano Pass a witness saw something. Still no word yet from Lt. Rodgers—on the robbery up at the interstate.

A big man approaches the table. There's sweat on him, his shirt sleeves are rolled to the elbow. 

“Sir? Y'all are the Sheriff? Out of Pecos?”

“US Deputy Marshal. John Whicher.”

“Excuse my workin' an all.”

“Not a problem, Mr. Stinson.”

“Everybody jus' calls me Lem.”

The two men shake hands. The owner sits. Hutches his chair.

“Alpine Police Department says you called 'em this afternoon. That right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You think you seen a man we're after finding?”

“Yes, sir, Mr Whicher.” Lem pushes up his sleeves. Leaning in to the table. “Monday, he was in here. Right here. In the diner.”