BAD TRIP SOUTH (24 page)

The rungs were slippery with damp and there was fog crouching on top of the building like a very big, building-size gray cat. The fog scared me more than the thought of slipping off the fire escape. We couldn’t see
what
might be up there on the roof. I understood there were some men looking for Heddy and Crow, and I knew they must be from the drug lab, not the police, from the way I’d heard the clerk talking about them. My main worry was--
what if they were waiting for us to get up there?

I felt my legs shaking as I climbed. I kept catching little looks up at the bank of fog hovering like something alive over the edge of the hotel building. In front of me was Mama, still muttering about how they needed to let us go, just let us go,
please Jesus
.

Above her was Daddy and I saw when he disappeared over the edge, swallowed into the swirl of thick fog. I paused, holding my breath, and from below me Heddy tapped at the back of one of my legs. “Get fucking moving!” She said. That scared me more than any old fog so I scrambled up another few steps until I caught up with Mama.

I didn’t want Heddy mad at me, not now, not on the slippery steps.

An arm came down out of the fog, taking hold of Mama’s arm, lifting her up until she too disappeared. I was about to cry. I didn’t want to do that--cry--. I hadn’t done that hardly at all during the days we were with Heddy and Crow. I didn’t cry even when I couldn’t stop thinking about the young man who died in our motel room or the policeman Heddy shot, or the man down by the fishing camp, or those people in the convenience store. I thought I might never cry anymore and that meant I was grown, but now I could feel myself puddling up with tears half blinding me. That’s when Daddy’s strong arm reached down again and caught me, bringing me up and up onto the roof’s edge and pulling me over it into the soup.

That’s what it was like. Thick and wet, lukewarm soup. I could see vague outlines of Mama and Daddy, then Crow and Heddy as they piled onto the rooftop. When anyone moved, the fog parted and then swept back again, folding around him. I licked my lips and tasted salt. My tears, I guess, because I’d cried. I didn’t think fog had salt in it.

Suddenly that made me mad enough I stopped crying. If anyone could have seen me clear, he’d have seen I was up on my feet standing, my hands on my hips, mad and madder yet that we had been done this way. I was angry we were still being pushed around like we were little ragdolls you put in chairs at a table for a tea party. I was no doll. I was tired of all this pushing and shoving.

“
Everyone hold hands. We’ve got to get across this bastard to the other fire escape.”

That was Crow. I almost didn’t mind him, didn’t do what he said, but Daddy had my hand and I couldn’t pull away or I knew I’d be lost in the fog and might fall right off the edge.

It seemed forever crossing the roof, running into stacks and vents that stuck up from the floor and tripped us before we could see them. Heddy cursed beneath her breath saying things worse than she’d ever said before. Both of them cussed all the time, but this night Heddy came up with stuff that scorched my ears.

I was about to cry again until I let the mad come back. I wouldn’t cry because of her, or of being in this awful damp fog, or of having to climb down fire escapes to keep two men from finding us. I wouldn’t cry if they beat me, that’s what I thought. Kid or not, I didn’t have to act like one and nothing we were going through was going to make me.

One by one we found the handrails on the fire escape on the opposite side of the building and one by one we carefully got ourselves onto it and down. Once out of the fog and back at street level where I could see again, I didn’t think I’d cry or, want to cry, again.

Once on the ground, Crow said, “Do we go to the van?”

“
Sometimes I think your brain’s no bigger than a tadpole, honest to fucking Christ,” Heddy said. “No, we don’t go to the van, they could be there. We walk away from here, that’s what we do, now let’s go before they figure out we went over the roof.”

It must have been two in the morning. We hadn’t gotten to the hotel until a little after midnight. I was tired and sleepy, but it didn’t look like we’d sleep anymore that night.

The streets were oily black with night dew, pools of light from street lamps dotting the dark. There were no cars on the streets moving and the stoplight at the corner blinked silently from red to yellow to green. I could smell the town. It was a smell like a bag of wet kittens, wet fur and burlap.

Where were we going? What would happen if I just skipped away from them? If I just took off down a side street and ducked through parking lots, losing them?

But I couldn’t leave my mother. Who would she have if I left her? No one. Daddy had really deserted her now.

The clanging started up in my head that signaled someone was seeping. That’s what I call it sometimes when I start picking up the thoughts from someone--their minds are seeping. I tried to block it out, but it was very loud and I guess I wasn’t surprised to find out it was Crow; the thoughts belonged to him. They were strong and noisy, a herd of wild horses stomping down through canyons like in old cowboy movies.

Most of it was too mixed up crazy to understand, but one thought of his stood out.
He had the money, all the money, and he’d kill anyone who tried to take it away.

Especially if that someone was Daddy.

#

IT was the first time Heddy had found herself unable to cope. As the five of them trooped along the dark sidewalk away from the area of the hotel, she slipped her hand into her bag and brought out a bottle. Needed just a sip, that’s all, something to steady her.

A sip didn’t do it. She drank deeper, longer, fire burning the back of her throat and it seemed even her gums tingled and her tongue caught flame. She paused to catch her breath, stopping on the sidewalk to blink and to collect herself. Crow turned around, scowling.

“
What are you doing?” He asked. Then he saw the bottle in her hand. “This is no time for that!”

“
Don’t tell me what time it is or what I can do,” she snapped, putting the Jim Beam to her mouth and swallowing a third time. She could feel it working already. A new sun sank into her belly and lit her from inside out. It was like swallowing a nuclear reactor. She even stood straighter and everything took on a supernatural sheen, coming into sharp relief. She could get on with the world now. She could handle whatever it sent her, C.O.D. or Federal Express; she was ready for it.

Crow grabbed her elbow and pulled her along the sidewalk. “Get moving,” he told the Anderson family who had stopped, impeding his path.

“
Let me go.” Heddy said it so softly she wasn’t sure he had heard her.

He did let go of her arm, however. He said, “Don’t get yourself drunk, Heddy, we have to get out of here.”

Heddy looked behind them. They had turned a few times since leaving the back of the hotel building, but she could still see the three-story structure against the night sky. No one was on the street. It was as eerie as being lost in a Twilight Zone episode.

“
This place is so empty, it spooks me,” she said.

“
Just hold it together. We’ll find somewhere else to hole up till morning.”

“
Which the hell way is Mexico?” She asked.

“
I have no idea. We can’t do anything until daylight.”

They wove through the small town streets like children on an illicit lark, taking corners without knowing where they led, moving away from the heart of the business district to the dry edge of the city, always alert to passing vehicles and shadows that followed behind them.

They were nearly to the city limits when Heddy felt the repercussions of her drinking. The alcohol made her head swim so that she staggered, missing a step and nearly falling headlong onto her face. Crow caught and righted her, hissing through his teeth.

Hell, she
was
drunk! What a grand thing to be. She usually could drink much more than the few ounces she’d swallowed minutes before and not be affected in the least. But this time the street and the parked cars and the lights kept wavering to remind her she was not altogether sober.

It must have been the adrenaline, she decided, the flight from the hotel, the fear of a showdown with two more toughs dogging them all the way across Texas from Missouri. That combined with the alcohol sent her reeling. She had to hold onto Crow for support, which raised her ire. “You got us into this,” she accused. “It’s all your fault.”

“
I fucking did not,” he said.

“
Yes, you did. Don’t think I don’t know you had something waiting at that hotel. I know. And those assholes from the lab house knew too. You’re about as dumb as a wrecking yard.” She giggled at that, though it wasn’t very funny. Crow being stupid was not funny.

“
Whatta you mean I had something waiting?” He sounded all wounded and peeved. It made her want to sock him.

“
The money,” she said and noticed the words slurred together despite her best efforts. It came out sounding like “Uhmoney.”

“
You’re drunk.”

“
I’m not stupid though.”

“
You’re stupid drunk.”

She pulled away from his hand and hauled back on her heels. She was nearly shouting. “You weren’t going to tell me you sent the rest of the money here! You lying, cheating-ass bucket of piss.”

“
Hold on, Heddy...”

They were all standing in the middle of an empty street crossing watching The Heddy Show. She knew it, could see it as if she were standing back and watching too. She knew she was being bad, she was going straight to hell this way, but Crow made her so mad she could reach down and yank off his dick. He was trying to skim her. After what she’d done for him.

“
After what I did for you!” She screamed.

“
Now, stop it, take it easy...”

He approached her, trying to take her arms, but she pushed him away and fell back, catching herself just before she fell. “You don’t lay your maggot hands on me, buster.”

Crow laughed. That made her so furious she wanted to roar and fall rolling to the street. “There was six hundred thousand in that kitchen,” she said in a controlled voice so that she would not stutter, intent on getting it out in the open. “Six hundred thousand! And you ship it down here for safekeeping to that rat-hole hotel and you weren’t gonna tell me.”

“
If you keep this up, someone’s going to hear you.” Crow glanced around at the middle-of-the-night emptiness and shivered. “What if those guys come cruising through here and see us in the middle of the goddamn street? What if someone calls the cops?”

The mention of the law made her eyes squint. She knew he was right, something in the back of her head said listen to him, he’s right, get your ass out of here, but his betrayal was so large, so fresh, so...so...unfair...

Tears broke and rushed down her face. She swatted at her cheeks to keep the tears at bay. “I wouldn’t have stolen from you,” she said in a small sad voice. “I was the one worked out how to get you out of prison. I’ve done everything for you...”

Crow came closer and took her arm again. “C’mon, let’s find somewhere to get off the street, we’ll talk then.”

“
I want to go home,” Carrie said. The Andersons had been quiet all this time, watching the spectacle of Heddy losing her famous cool.

Heddy looked at her and said, “Is she who you want to run off with to spend that money?”

Crow denied it and told her to keep moving, don’t talk about it.

She sneaked her hand into her bag again and turning her head to the left so Crow couldn’t see, she took another slug of the whiskey. If she was going to be drunk, by God, she was going to be freaking out-of-this-world drunk, she was going to be walking-in-a-dream drunk, she was going to be
so drunk
she wouldn’t even remember herself.

#

IT might have taken them an hour of steady walking, but they found themselves outside of Brownsville on the outskirts where Mexican families lived in small tract houses on tiny plots of land. An occasional flower box full of geraniums lightened up an otherwise drab home here and there, but most of the houses were run down and sad as wilted daisies. There were rusted cars up on concrete blocks, broken toys hiding like soldiers in tall weeds, and dog-chewed scatters of garbage in the tablet-size front yards.

Crow hustled them all past this and through it to the edge of the development, Heddy complaining all the way. He had to get them away from town, away from habitation, though he didn’t quite know where he was headed. Now and again he made them stop while he checked parked cars at the curbside for one with a key left in it, but no luck. Even owners of broken-down ten-year-old cars weren’t cavalier enough to leave their keys in the ignition. This was a changed world. There just wasn’t any faith anymore, unluckily.