An American Outlaw (28 page)

Two hundred thousand each. Half the money from Jackson Fork. A stolen Toyota, a twelve gauge Moss, a pistol. 

Hunger; pulling deep in my stomach.

We passed a ranch front, grain silos at the side of the road. From behind a mesh of wire, a stick-ribbed dog followed us along the line of an old fence.

Tennille stared ahead. Past tin clad warehouses, a yard stacked with wheel hubs.

“How come you didn't leave before?”

She didn't answer.

“Maybe it would've been easier...”

“You can believe that,” she said. “If you want.”

The dog reached the end of the run of fence and turned away. To stare wall-eyed at an empty horse box.

“My father built that house,” she says. “Him and Joe.”

We kept on. 

Small town Texas, waking up, Saturday. The temperature pushing ninety under the trees. 

Past empty farm trailers, a scrap yard, an old school bus up on blocks.

“What did he do?” I asked her.

“Leon?”

I nodded.

“The truck business. Freight. Into Mexico and back.”

“Doesn't sound so bad.”

“He started taking risks. Carrying people. To make a little extra money.”

I looked at her.

“He was hooked in long before I kicked him out of my life.”

“How come he wants...”

She glanced at me. “For the disrespect.”

I thought of the burn at the back of the house. The shotgun, never far from her reach. He couldn't come right out—but an accident, a fire, a break-in gone wrong.

“He can't have me,” she says, “nobody will.”

Underneath the power lines a dirt track stretched out off the highway, trailer homes under the Texas live oak, wash lines strung between the branches. 

We passed a lean-to propped on rusting oil barrels. 

“What about Joe?”

“Joe looks out for me.”

Joe Tree. And his Marlin rifle. Living alone, the middle of no-place; the borderland, among those hills. 

Wanting nothing. Asking nothing.

Talking with the dead.

We found the main square. Sat on a bench seat, under shade trees. The grass burned brown in front of a two-story building, old stone—the County Courthouse.

Around the square was every business of any small town in the west. An auto shop, realtor, a grocery mart. A bank.

We sat on the bench and waited. Tennille smoking, under the trees.

 “Tell me about Michael,” she says.

I felt her gaze on the side of my face.

She blew out a long stream of smoke. Leaned into the bench, curving with it.

“He never made it. Back.”

She watched me for a long minute. Smoking in silence.

“What about you?” she says. “What will you do?”

“Canada. Maybe.”

I stared at the white stuccoed bank opposite. Thought of Jesse. Northfield, Minnesota. A disaster. Beginning to end.

Jesse and Frank were the only ones to make it out. They say it was revenge. One last thing that had to be done, the money in the bank Yankee money.

Tennille flicked a hair from her eye. “Is that it? Is that the place?”

Cars and trucks were parked up, angled in at the sides of the road. Townspeople, in ones and twos coming out of a building supply, a dollar discount, a liquor store. All the buildings lining the square must have dated back a hundred years. Frank James could've seen them in his old age, living in Texas. Selling shoes out of Dallas. Not Jesse. He was never going to make it that far.

“Don't,” she said.

I didn't answer.

“What do you want, Gil?”

I looked at her, underneath the shade trees, face still, dappled light on her skin. 

A rusted pick-up drove through the square, piled high with yellow straw. In its slipstream, a dust of gold. Light as air.

Michael should've never joined. He would've lived free.

Tennille stared down the street, beyond the square, searching for Joe. 

“Don't,” she said.

I just sat, one hand in my jacket wrapped around the SIG.

“You could walk away. Cross the river.”

I didn't look at her.

“You could go south.”

CHAPTER 29

Brooke AMC, San Antonio
.

At the picture window in the neuro-care center, Captain Black stares at his writing in the little square of card.

The folds of a white T-shirt hang loose on him.

Whicher reads the logo;
Dallas Cowboys—America's Team
.

“I don't know if I spelled this right. Condo-lence...” The captain raises his burned face to Whicher. The grafted hairline stark in the window's light.

“It's fine.”

“Yesterday I called Battalion. After what you told me...”

The marshal nods.

“I talked with my replacement. Nolan, his name is.”

“All of this stuff. Everything that's been happening,” Whicher says,  “it's under civilian law. It's not a military matter.”

The captain chews at the stump of a nail. 

“Nolan told me he'd heard. About what happened to Sergeant Childress...”

“Childress and Tyler were invalided out on account of a patrol,” says Whicher. “Whatever happened after that time, it's not your problem.”

 “They both went before a Medical Evaluation Board.”

Whicher turns the Resistol between his hands.

“Tyler had respiratory problems. Burnt lungs. Childress was worse...”

The captain grabs the stick control of his motorized wheelchair.

He crosses the room to a corner worktop. The lone star on his shirt hangs limp.

“James kept up a lot of noise about Tyler. He wasn't getting all the help he should have. According to some...” 

“He's on the permanent disability list,” Whicher says. “I checked.”

“They rejected him from a couple of programs...”

“Why was that?”

“Alcohol abuse.”

Three hours on I-10. To listen to the worries of a wounded man. Reliving the past. 

“Tell me something?” says Whicher. “Gilman James was nominated for the Navy Cross.”

The captain's eyes dart in his mask-like face.

“The nomination was for actions on that patrol?”

“A full report was made. Nobody of equal rank was present...”

“But the men on the patrol—they wanted it?”

The captain takes the card he's written. He places it on the worktop, searching among the papers and pens. “Nolan told me the Childress family lost their house...”

Whicher nods. “The farm. Out at Jackson Fork. I know, sir. ”

“No.”

Whicher looks at him.

“Nolan said it was a house. A house they were living in. After that. After the farm.”

“Y'all sure on that?”

“Some little place. Out past the hill country, in Edwards County. They bought a house. You know? Some little house. In Rocksprings.”

“No, sir. I didn't know.”

“They lost it. About a month ago, to the bank.”

Whicher stares at him.

“Will you see Mrs. Childress? The widow. Because of all this? I could mail this card to her, but it doesn't seem right...”

The marshal watches the trees, moving in the breeze beyond the window.

“They've got two children,” the captain mouths.

A farm. 

And then their house. 

To a bank.

Rocksprings.

A Chevy Tahoe pulls in to the main square, same color as Connie's; right age, double-front grille. 

Joe Tree's behind the wheel. Michael riding up front, beside him. They pull in at an angle to the road—Joe's mean face staring out of the windshield.

I stood. Swung the metal flight case up.

Joe rolled the window. He grunts at Tennille; “You okay?”

Michael stepped out, right arm in a sling, his leg stiff. Bandaged, it looked like—underneath his jeans. 

He was clean-shaven. Faint color back in his face. “What's in the case, man?”

I yanked open the rear door. “Get in the back.”

The two of us slid along the bench seat, Tennille climbing up in front. 

“Swing around,” she says to Joe, “make a right by the garage.”

Joe jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I want them out of here.”

We pulled out, made a U-turn, took the first right. 

I opened the top of the flight case, for Michael. 

He sees the money,  gives a low whistle. 

I thought of the E-series. Four tires shot-out, pissing coolant.

Joe turns to Tennille. “Why can't we just kick them out here?”

“Take them to their car.”

Michael broke off staring at the case. “What car?”

“We stole something.”

Joe barked out an ugly laugh.

Tennille looked at him. “Did you make sure,” she says, “since Casa Piedra. Did you make sure you've been seen...”

“All day I spent working at Molly's place. The RV park. Fifty people must've seen me.”

“You know we lost the Dakota?”

Joe shrugged.

“You can tell the police we stole it. I'll take care of everything, you know that.”

He looks at her. “They found that F150 of his in your barn.”

She stares out the window. “I wasn't planning going back.”

Michael shifts his weight off his bad arm.  

“I woke up Thursday night,” he says, “I thought I was having a fuckin' nightmare. I'm crashed on this bed. Some bat-skin nurse smoking boom over me. A drip in my arm, like a horror movie.”

“She's a doctor,” says Tennille.

We drove out of Rocksprings down the back roads—Michael staring at the low-grown trees; high sun, kids playing in a backyard. 

“Hell, it's good to be out,” he says.

We were close to the main road south, I remembered. Two weeks, all it was. Driving around in my F150, working it through. Scoping every site, just like the service. Routes in, routes out. Steven still alive, itching to be started, to get to Alpine. He had to show us his bank, the damn bank that let him hang. Just like his brother went hang. How could he help Nate, after that? With no job. Burned up, he was. Ate to the bone.

We came to the junction with the highway. Not far from the stolen Toyota. 

“Make a right at the end.”

Joe waited for a truck to clear. He hit the gas.

One last thing, that's all there was. Then it would be over.

We reached the edge of town. Trailers, grain silos—half a mile on, the dead-end lane. 

“Make a left up there.”

Joe swings the big SUV across the highway. Powers the Tahoe up the lane. 

The car's still there, beneath a stand of mesquite. 

He hits the brakes. We skid to a stop in the loose gravel.

“Alright, get the hell out.”

“We're leaving.” 

I stepped out. 

Joe reached inside his jacket. He pulled out the snub-nose .38.

Michael steps out. “Put that thing the fuck away.”

Joe held the revolver at me, waist high.

Tennille pushes open her door.

“Hey,” Joe says to her. “You want to stay here? With them?”

She was out of the Tahoe, walking fast—to the far side of the lane. 

“Gil,” she says. 

She stops. Shoves her hands inside the hunter's jacket.

I followed her across the lane. 

“It's too late,” she said. “I have to get my daughter.”

Joe shouted from the Tahoe; “
Get the hell back in here
...”

“Don't go near that bank,” she says. “There's a crossing place. A canyon, at the river. Santa Elena, it's called.”

I tried to imagine—for a split second, another life.

“Drive south.” She stepped a pace closer. “Tonight, I'll be there.”

I watched the shadows of the trees. Heat stacked above the hard ground. The border. An unguarded river.

“Then get to Canada,” she says. “Or as far as you can. With Michael.”

She walked away.

She climbed in the front seat.

I watched as Joe cranked it around, full lock. And floored it down the lane out on the highway.

She was gone.

Highway 41, TX.

Whicher steers his truck in the haze across the baked savanna. Inside an hour he can be there.

He listens to the sound his tires make running over tar strips in the roadway. A blunt rhythm—shudder, like rail cars in the night.

The flat highway stretches out ahead, lined with zinc wire fencing. Split wood posts. Nothing in any direction but bluestem and shrub mesquite. Dotted stands of live oak.

His radio lights up. 

He checks the road in front; arrow straight. Lets his speed dip. Picks up the call.

“Did you go?”

“Cornell?”

“Did you go? To Brooke, Marshal?”

“I went.”

“You see that CO of theirs?”

“It's Rocksprings,” says Whicher. “That's where this thing got started out.”

“I told you,” says Cornell, “Childress had been living there...”

“Y'all didn't tell me he got his house repossessed.”

There's a pause on the line. “I was calling with that.”

At the side of the highway, twin stone pillars on a ranch flash by. Whicher eases back on the gas.

“Marshal?”

“Yeah.”

“The bank that made the loan on their house is in Rocksprings.”

“Actually
in
the town?”

“I know,” says Cornell. “Maybe they thought they'd cut 'em some slack, going local. It's called Home Valley Bank.”

“I'm running through Edwards County; I'm calling in there.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

Whicher pulls the shirt collar from his neck.

“Considering what happened with Jackson Fork,” says Cornell, “you ought to give them fair warning.”

“I'm on hang up,” says Whicher. “I'm calling the county sheriff...”

Rocksprings.

Along the sidewalk, in the shade of the north facade, a farmer steps from the door of the bank. He tips back his hat, crosses the square, keeps walking past the auto shop, till he's out of sight. 

Nobody else is inside.

Ten minutes have passed since the farmer went in, he's the last to enter.