An American Outlaw (16 page)

I thought of Nate. Dead. His brother, Steven.

Michael had to live.

I stepped in the trailer. 

Tennille's standing with Connie, by Michael, flat out on the canvas cot. There's an edge in their voices. They stopped talking as I stepped inside.

Tennille shoves her hands in her jeans pocket. “There must be something else.”

Connie dips her head. “There's a house...”

“What house?”

“It's a place I use. But I can't take him there...”

Tennille looks at her.

“It's a safe house,” Connie says. “A place if somebody needs more treatment...”

“Then why not?”

Connie held her arms in tight across her chest. “Sugar, I'm talking about girls with no health insurance. That need a termination, or something. Right?”

I stepped in closer. “What's the difference?”

“Between that and treating a gunshot?”

“Nobody's going to know,” says Tennille.

“Five to ten years, honey. Jail time.”

“You won't treat him?”

“It's too much of a risk.”

Tennille stared at her.

Connie shook her head. “No.” She picked up her satchel bag from the trailer floor. 

Tennille stepped in her path. 

“Darlin', this ain't no hunting accident. Alright? Let's not pretend with each other.”

I says, “Where's the nearest hospital?”

“The nearest place that could treat him?”

I nodded.

“You know they'll call it in?”

“Where is it?”

“There's a clinic in Presidio. It's not a hospital, but it's the closest thing. Hour and a half, you could be there.”

“Five thousand,” says Tennille.

Connie took a step back. “Honey...”

I looked at Tennille. “I'm taking him. I'm taking him in to Presidio.”

Connie twisted the satchel bag in her hand.

Tennille reaches in her hunter's jacket. “Cash,” she says.

I grabbed her arm. “Forget that...”

She shakes off my hand. “You keep him at this safe house, till he's stable.”

Connie squints through the deep lines around her eyes.

Tennille starts to count off the money she's holding—the money from the gas station.

“Maybe just a couple days. IV. Oxygen. Antibiotic for any infection...”

“Take it,” says Tennille, eyes on the money, not looking up.

Connie puts out a bony hand. Dry lips drawn back, her teeth cracked and worn.

I just stared at Michael in the dim light.

“Take him,” says Tennille. “Keep him alive.”

CHAPTER 18

ANBAR PROVINCE, WESTERN IRAQ.

A pipe barely big enough to crouch in. Pitch black. Reeking.

Platoon commander back at base found it, on his map. A sewer network running beneath the streets. New orders. Clear the ambush. Get out—down it.

Four of us. Down that stinking pipe. Nothing more than pistols in our hands. Nate Childress. My car man. A private from my second fire team.

Thirty meters in. We heard their voices. Opened up. A noise like hell inside that tiny space.

I still dream about those seconds. Live them.

After. Praying they were dead. Pushing on, right over them, walking on top of their bodies. A shaft of sunlight from a drain grill. Nate first out, into a deserted street.

Two parked cars. To left and right, either side. No intel. My car man shaking his head. 

Nate. Grinning under his helmet, running out, down that street.

The right hand car went off. It blew, threw him through the air, he landed on his back. He didn't move.

I ran. Rounds flying, ripping through the air. I reached him, saw the blood running out of both ears. I grabbed his vest. Light-caliber smacking into the ground. 

Dragging him, unconscious, back to the sewer. Then back the length of it, through—back to the patrol.

I radioed in. Told Lieutenant Black; no.

We moved the wounded to a walled garden, a derelict house. Six wounded, three dead. Nate unconscious. But breathing.

Base ran a check—units close enough to get to us.

Michael volunteered.

Five up-armored Humvees. 

Fifty cal M2s. Michael leading it. 

By the time the column made it, we were on last rounds. My M9 pistol in my hand.

They came in like the end of the world. Cleared the street.

Before the RPG hit Michael.

And I watched him burn.

“
whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed”

Genesis IX : 6

CHAPTER 19

Salt Grass Road, Terlingua Creek, TX.

A Chevy Silverado bucks its way down a desert track. Behind it, a column of dust rises, in the still air. It hangs against a sky the color of stone.

Marshal John Whicher steers the big pick-up; V8 humming under the hood. Sergeant Troy Baker of the Brewster County sheriff's department sits beside him. Ice air, all the way cranked.

“According to Lem Stinson,” says Whicher, “this Joe Tree feller lives someplace out near the Labrea land.”

“Labrea Ranch.”

“Y'all been out there?”

“I know it some.”

Whicher peers through the windshield. “These here back trails, they a lot of 'em?”

Baker nods.

“They go where? Old ranches, farms?”

“Yes, sir. And mine workings. Such like.”

“Any houses?”

“A few, yes sir.”

“And parcels of land like Joe Tree's.”

“Not so many of them. A lot of this land folks tried working. Horses. Livestock. But ain't near enough water. Or feed.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Worse now. In summer,” Baker says. “Goats can stand it.”

“Lot of money—in goats?”

A shadow flicks along the ground from a buzzard, wheeling high. The only living sign upon the land. 

The marshal shakes his head. “If a man was after getting around, using the tracks to navigate? Miss out on the roads?”

“It's possible. You'd have to know 'em pretty good.”

You'd have to know them. Or else, be with somebody that did. 

If some type like Joe Tree found Gilman James' truck, how could he be at an interstate a hundred eighty miles north? In Reeves County. And rob a gas station with some girl.

Whicher had called Lieutenant Rodgers. First thing that morning, before setting out. Got him to run a check—stolen cars; anything, a hundred mile radius of Alpine.

It took fifteen minutes for Rodgers to call him back at the motel. There were no reports of any. In the last three days.

If he didn't steal one, somebody had to be in helping this guy.

Sergeant Baker raises an arm, pointing out the window. 

“That's the turn. Up there.”

Whicher takes his foot off the gas. He lets the Silverado slow against the slope. His eyes follow a pitted track kicking off in the hills. It disappears in the low scrub. 

“Y'all are telling me there's actually something the other end of that?” 

He pulls the truck over and stops. He opens the door, climbs out, sets the tan Resistol forward, against the glare of sun

Sergeant Baker leans over in the cab. “Everything alright, Marshal?”

“Just fine. That pump-action shotgun behind your head? Y'all see it? In the rack there?”

Baker turns his head. “Uh-huh.”

“Time to break it out, Sergeant.”

“You want me to take it out, sir?”

“I sure do.”

Baker unclips the straps. He slides the shotgun clear of the rack.

“Alright.” Whicher takes another look at the stony track. Barren hills. Heat blistering on them. “Keep it where you can get it.” 

He climbs back in, sticks the truck in low. Pulls away.

 “This guy, Joe Tree? He got a sheet?”

“Couple of larcenies on his file.”

“Like?”

“Car theft. Horses.”

“Old school,” says Whicher.

“He keeps out a' the way, mostly.”

“He an incomer?”

“Local. About as local as a man can get.”

“Kind of guy'd know his way around? The tracks and trails, an' all?”

Baker nods, “Definitely.”

“Y'all think he could've found a truck abandoned? Bank robber's truck?”

“Joe gets around. He sort of roams the hills. Some folks here are like that, sir.”

“Livin' in their own world,” says Whicher. 

He steers ahead to where the track drops away between hills of withered brush and Texas agave. A mountain of bare rock behind it.

“That's it, Marshal.”

“The Forgotten Valley...”

The Silverado rolls forward, slow. Rocks crumbling from the dust at the edges of the track.

 There's three trailers, a bunch of junk, stacks of firewood. Whicher pulls up in front of a pile of rusted oil drums. 

Both men climb from the cab, sun lighting them up. Into air like an open oven.

Baker carries the pump-action at the waist. Barrel to the ground.

They both listen; the silence like a tangible force.

Whicher moves forward, stepping between the litter of debris on the ground. All three trailers are shut up. There's a camp fire. Whicher kneels to it. It's cold—the ash wet. Last night's rain. Or doused. No way to tell.

He walks to the nearest trailer—tries the door. It's locked. 

“Check 'em all.” 

He reaches to his shoulder-holster. Takes out the .357 Magnum Ruger.

Baker looks at him. “What kind of trouble you expecting, Marshal?”

Whicher walks towards the second trailer. “Hard to say...”

He tries the door. It's locked. There's a small window at the side, blacked out, no seeing inside.

Sergeant Baker tries the third trailer. He raps on the door. “Anybody home?” 

He tries the handle, it's locked.

Whicher picks his way through the dusty camp. An empty lean-to, rusted water tanks, spools of fence wire. There's something, though. It feels like there's something. Maybe it's just the wind. The hills. The empty space.

Sergeant Baker searches at the back of the trailers.

Whicher walks to the Silverado, eying the surrounding land.
What else?

Baker swings the shotgun up to his shoulder. “I guess he could be anywhere.”

“He keep a vehicle?” Whicher points the tip of his boot at the ground. “Tire marks there. Bunch of 'em.”

Baker scratches at his arm.

“What else is out here? What about the Labrea place?”

“It's just an old place, Marshal. Other side of Packsaddle Mountain. Ol' ranch. Max Labrea's place.”

“Labrea? What's he like?”

“He's not living there any more, sir. He left. His daughter lives out there now.”

“Daughter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kind of age?”

“Young. Twenties. Late twenties.”

Whicher tips his hat forward a notch. Holsters his pistol. 

“Get in,” he says, “let's go take a look.”

Casa Piedra.

Tennille drove the big 350 up a gravel ridge. Ahead of us, Joe Tree drove an old Dodge Dakota.

“You learn your way around,” I says, “off of him?”

She glanced at me from behind the wheel. 

“I know what I know.”

We were topping out on a steep-sided pass. Below us, a disused rail line. A dry creek, a group of buildings, part stone built, part adobe—flat roofs of fiber cement. 

Some kind of old homestead, it looked like. 

No sign of people. An old van parked in the shade of a barn wall.

Joe started his truck to roll down a drift of grit and sand.

“This Connie's? The place she uses?”

Tennille didn't answer. She shifted gear, followed after Joe.

I'd slept maybe an hour, since Michael had gone. Connie took him. I helped her get him in her Tahoe—told myself it was the only way.

Joe reached the foot of the drift. He drove the Dakota across the old rail track. 

I scanned the run-down homestead, trying to get a fix. Where the rail line ran out there was a sheet-iron sign on a post. Letters faded on it;
Texas Pacifico Transportation
. 

Joe crossed a dirt ford through the empty creek. He was slowing up, approaching the buildings. He turned towards them in his pick-up, then circled back.

“What's he wary of?”

Tennille's eyes were everywhere.

Joe parked. He didn't get out.

“Where the hell are we? This where Michael's at?”

She braked the 350 to a standstill. Shook her head.

“After, I'll take you.” She eyed me from behind the wheel. “First,” she says, “you're going to tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

There's a thin line of sweat at her forehead. 

“What else. What else you were planning on robbing?”

An hour's sleep on a floor in Joe's trailer. A girl that said she stepped across a line. Michael with a crank-head doctor. I thought of going for the SIG in my pocket.

The door opened a crack on Joe's Dakota.

I says, “It's three hundred miles from here.”

“How are you going to get there?”

I could see Joe, holding his rifle. 

He pushed a boot at the door of his truck.

“You're going to need help.”

I didn't answer. I thought of Jackson Fork; the place next on the list.

Maybe. 

Maybe she could get me there.

I thought of Nate—he'd been living there. Five miles out of Jackson Fork. He'd been living on a farm, trying to make an honest-to-God go of things. I thought of his widow, Orla.

“Tomorrow,” I says.

She looked at me.

“Ten miles shy of San Angelo.”