The Right Side of Wrong (28 page)

Chapter Forty-eight

The smell of damp dust and sour mud made it hard for me to breathe as we cruised beside the Rio Grande in the back of Uncle Cody's El Camino, but my puffer did the trick.

Pepper punched my shoulder as I stuck it back in my pocket and pointed. “Look! There's some people in the water!”

We'd already made two passes on the road across the river from a cluster of houses and barns half hidden by cottonwoods, willows, and mesquites. Norma Faye said there was a town somewhere over there, but the only thing showing through breaks in the trees were worn out buildings. Something big was on fire, black smoke boiling into the still air.

We heard a lot of shots, and I knew it wasn't anyone taking target practice. The sounds were like we heard on the television show,
Combat
. I was scared, because nobody got through that much shooting without being hit and I knew Grandpa, Uncle Cody, and John were somewhere over there.

Norma Faye and Miss Becky had picked us up at daylight from Grandpa's motel room where we'd been watching television with a Spanish lady Mr. Tom paid to sit with us. She worked there, cleaning rooms.

When we pulled up in front of the motel that morning with Mr. Tom, he said we hadn't missed Grandpa and Mr. John but by a few minutes. He gave Miss Hernandez some money, told us to wait until somebody came and got us, and then hurried off to catch up with them.

I thought we were in for a butt whippin' when Uncle Cody's El Camino pulled up in front of the room, but when we realized it was only Norma Faye, Miss Becky, and Miss Sweet, I knew it would wait. It was strange to see the three of them puffing and wheezing to get out of that two-door car after riding so long all squished up like sardines. When they saw us looking out the window they ran into that little room, crying and hugging us like we'd been gone for a week.

Miss Menendez had a letter for Norma Faye in an envelope. I'd been admiring Mr. Tom's handwriting while we waited for them to get there. The big flowing letters reminded me of the signatures on the Declaration of Independence.

When she finished reading the letter, Norma Faye sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the pages in her hand. “Mr. Tom really was a Texas Ranger. He knows this area, and says that when they come back across the river with Cody, they most likely won't use the bridge. We're supposed to look for them…,” she waved toward the west, “out of town.”

“What does that mean?” Miss Sweet wanted to know.

“It means they had to break Cody out of jail and people will be chasing them.”

Miss Becky hadn't set down. She'd been frowning at the room, her big purse hanging in the crook of her arm. “We need to get going.”

Miss Sweet shook her head. “Laws, honey, I got to rest a spell. Y'all leave me here, and I'll be waitin' when y'all come back.”

They left her resting on the bed and less than an hour later, me and Pepper saw three heads bobbing close together. The current carried them out of sight, but Norma Faye heard us hollering at her to stop and she finally caught a glimpse of them in the water. She paced them until they disappeared under the bank, and then idled along until the brown-green water pulled them into view again, this time much closer.

Norma Faye stopped us in the shade, and we waited for another glimpse.

Chapter Forty-nine

John was terrified they'd be swept under the bridge, but the sluggish current wasn't enough to carry them around the last bend to meet the watchful eyes of the border guards.

“Kick, Mr. Ned, kick.” His order was more to keep Ned alert than for the assistance. Ned kept going limp and John was sure he passed out each time, but at his shout, Ned rallied and continued to fight.

John whispered under his breath. “Thank the good Lord them boys back there on the riverbank thought about these jugs. He sent us a couple of angels to hold Mr. Ned up.”

They were completely out of sight from Reynaldo and the kids when Cody's feet finally once again touched the muddy bottom. He kicked a few more times, and with a grunt, planted his shoes and gave a heave. It was enough relief for John to set his own feet, and together they dragged Ned onto the shore.

“We made it.” Cody flopped to the ground. “Back in good ol' Texas.”

“Not yet, we ain't.” John stretched out, holding Ned and scanning the landscape. “We gotta get up this sharp bank where them people back there cain't shoot at us no more, and down the road a piece, then we're home. Right now, it looks like a long way to the top.”

Cody glanced upward, thankful the drop wasn't nearly as sharp as the Red River bank at home. “Look, there's trails leading to the top. They're either cattle or game trails, or made by folks that swam the river like us. They'll help us get up.”

“Well, let's get to going. I want to get some cover between me and that sorry country over there. Them boys are still looking for us.” With a grunt, John pulled Ned upright. “I want to unloosen these wet knots, but I can't get them undone to get the jugs off.”

“Don't matter. We'll worry with them when we get to the top. You can work on them while I walk into town and try to find a car.”

“No need for that. You look a lot worse than I do, and I know where we left Mr. Ned's car at the motel.”

“Either one of us'll attract attention.”

“That's a fact.”

They let the idea rest and lifted Ned to his feet. For a moment he was almost dead weight. After their rough handling, he rallied enough to stiffen his legs and they supported him upright.

“Ned, stay with us a few more minutes. Then we can rest,” Cody said. Still heavily armed, the two pushed and pulled him up a crooked trail through the grass and mesquite. Cody groaned in relief when they finally struggled to the top of the bank and level ground.

In the shade of a cottonwood, they carefully lowered Ned to the dry earth. For the first time Cody surveyed their surroundings while John cut the jugs free with his pocket knife.

The land to the north was an open, treeless expanse of pasture and cultivated land. A single dirt road paralleled the river and meandered its way around cottonwood groves and deep cuts eroding into the river. The wide open space revealed all. They'd know if anyone was coming, and there was.

A cloud of dust rose in the distance and drifted toward the river as a vehicle rushed toward them. Cody slumped. “Uh oh. I bet that's the border patrol. We have some explaining to do.” He removed the pistol from behind his belt and laid it in a clump of grass. “John, put your guns down.”

Instead, John squinted at the approaching car and flung the jugs into the thin trees behind them. “Do the border patrol drive red-and-white cars down here?”

“I don't have any idea…” he drifted off. “Why that's an El Camino like mine…” He stopped in wonder, not believing what he was seeing through his one good eye. “That
is
my car, and Norma Faye's driving it.”

“Here comes another'n.” John looked in the opposite direction. He soon realized that he recognized that one, too. “Somebody's driving Mr. Ned's car, too.”

“What's going on?” Cody felt fuzzy as all of the energy suddenly drained out of his body. He looked down in wonder at hands suddenly heavy as cement.

Norma Faye slammed on the brakes when the men stepped out of the brush. The El Camino slid on the soft sand. Then both doors blew open. She jumped out of one side, and Miss Becky struggled from the other.

Top and Pepper rolled out of the truck bed and over the side. “Uncle Cody!” Top shouted.

“Mr. John!”

“Ned! Cody! Hallelujah!” Miss Becky shouted. She reached out to hug Ned and got a good look at his bloody shirt as he slumped to the side. John went with him and settled to the ground. He gently lowered Ned's head into his lap.

The rejoicing became horror.

“Oh my God, Daddy's hurt bad!” Miss Becky knelt beside him and placed her hand over the wound. The undershirt they used as a pressure bandage had slipped out of position and was soaked with blood and water. “Norma Faye, give me your slip right now.”

Torn between Ned's wound and the almost overwhelming need to hold Cody, Norma Faye reached under her skirt and yanked her slip down. She stepped out of it, and hurried to Ned's side.

The bullet entered through the fat that rolled over his belt on the left side. Miss Becky opened Ned's wet shirt to reveal the ugly powder-blackened entrance wound. “Tear it in two, hon, he's got two holes in him.”

Norma Faye divided the slip and handed it to Miss Becky. She rolled him to check the exit wound farther toward the middle of his back, where the .38 round crossed through his body. It bubbled with blood and water. Gobs of yellow fat protruded from the torn flesh.

“Help's on the way, Daddy. Just you hang on.” Miss Becky packed the wound with the slip and laid him back. “This ain't no worse than the time you got your hand caught in the clutch on that John Deere. You remember, you walked all the way across the field to the truck and wrapped it in that rag soaked with coal oil and …”

Her face told those around her that it
was
worse, though.

Finished with all they could do for the moment, Norma Faye slipped her arms around Cody and held him tightly for a moment, then she ran her hands over his body, looking for wounds of his own.

“What'n hell are you kids doing here?” Cody, numb, wondered aloud. The whole event suddenly had the semblance of a dream.

To everyone's surprise, Ned's sedan rolled to a stop and Reynaldo slid from behind the wheel. It made Cody's head spin. They'd only left him minutes earlier, and here he was, driving Ned's car on the Texas side. Without a word, Reynaldo hurried around and opened the passenger door, struggling for a moment to help the passenger out.

John and Cody squinted at the newcomers as the kids dashed from one adult to the other.

“Laws! It's so hot down here I cain't get my breath, and that ain't helping these old knees of mine that are plumb wore out. Young man, give me your arm and get me over to that there dark complected feller.”

Reynaldo held her fleshy arm as Miss Sweet lumbered toward the ragged group. The spreading bloodstain on Ned's wet shirt diverted the old healer's attention. “Oh, Lord help us, Mister Ned!”

Unable to move because Ned's head rested in his lap, John showed no surprise at the sight of his aunt so far from Lamar County. He blinked away the tears in his eyes. “Mister Ned's bleeding bad and 'bout dead. Can you help him, auntie?”

“I've done what I can,” Miss Becky told her and moved aside.

With a grunt, Miss Sweet settled heavily to the sandy ground beside Ned and opened her muslin bag full of healing herbs and salves. “Hold that slip tight agin' his belly 'til I get ready, hon.” She met John's gaze. “I'll do what I can with what I got, but it's up to the good Lord after that, John.”

“We need to get him to a hospital.” Cody turned too quickly and felt his head spin. He clutched Reynaldo's arm. “I'm as worried about shock killing him as that bullet hole.”

Reynaldo shifted uncertainly on his feet. “Sit down. You're in shock yourself.”

Cody sat, and turned to John. “How are you doing, partner.”

“I've got a powerful thirst. My mouth is dry as cotton.”

“Top,” Miss Becky called. “You take and get that quart of water out of the car and give it to Mr. John.”

The kids raced to the car. Pepper was the first to find the fruit jar of well-water in the floorboard and ran it to John. Instead of handing it to him, she gave it to Top who screwed the ring off and removed the lid. Only then did he pass it to John, who drained half a full pint in one long draught.

John held the jar up. “Why don't you give Cody a sip and then see if Mr. Ned can drink any of this.”

Top handed the jar to Cody, who passed the water to Miss Becky as he looked up at Norma Faye from his seat on the ground. He was having trouble tracking. “Where'd y'all come from?”

She dropped to her knees and hugged him long and hard in relief. “We'll explain it all later.”

Chapter Fifty

Hembrillo Sheriff W.M. Anderson and his enormous black mustache arrived five minutes after Miss Sweet stopped the bleeding. The sun-darkened, middle-aged lawman took quick stock of the situation. He radioed for the ambulance and called the border patrol.

Anderson wondered aloud at the marks on Cody's face and why many of them were several days old. He listened intently to Cody's story about fighting with an escaped Mexican prisoner who swam the river from
Las Células
before he shot Ned and disappeared into the thick mesquite that stretched for miles northward.

“You boys sure 'nough have a lot of guns,” Sheriff Anderson said around a cedar toothpick.

Cody shrugged and kept his face impassive. “We're lawmen, vacationing a long way from home.”

“Um hum. Where are your badges?”

“Musta left 'em home. You can call up to Chisum and talk to Judge O.C. Rains. He'll tell you who we are.”

“I'll do that for sure. The three of y'all are soaking wet and you look like hell. The fight with that escaped prisoner carry all y'all into the river?”

“He was a rough customer.”

Shirtless and unshaven, with his hair plastered with oil and water, Cody's appearance did nothing to gain the sheriff's confidence. “Your whole family in the habit of traveling like this?”

Emotionally and physically exhausted, Cody wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep, but they needed to pass this one last hurdle, and he wasn't sure they'd be able to do it. “How do you mean?”

“You look like you've been lost out here in the scrub yourself for a week, while everyone else here looks like they slept in a bed last night. You know, this don't smell right, especially when I find a lawman with a hole in his belly while kids wander around looking for horny toads.”

Pepper swelled up at the comment. “We ain't looking for nothing except a little shade.”

“Hush, honey.” Miss Becky kept pressure on Ned's wound as Miss Sweet wrapped a poultice in the remnants of Norma Faye's slip.

“Um hum.” Anderson squinted at the young Mexican man standing nearby. “Don't I know you?”

Reynaldo flashed a wide smile under his thick mustache. “
Si, jefe
. I work on this side of the river, but
mi casa
is over there. You've seen me before.”

“What are you doing here?”

“He's driving my auntie around for us,” John answered truthfully, waving a hand at Miss Sweet, who was slipping the fresh poultice under the pressure bandage. Ned's color had returned after she gave him half a bottle of some dark liquid from her sack, and the waxy look was gone from his face.

Anderson cleared his throat. “That's another thing. I don't believe I've ever seen…colored and white families vacationing together. Y'all must do things a lot different in your part of Texas.”

“Sheriff Anderson,” John spoke softly, respectfully. “You ever been to Lamar County?”

“Nope, went to Eureka Springs once, but the rest of the time I've stayed right here in Hembrillo.”

“Well then, sir, you don't know much about us or the way we live our lives up there.”

Anderson glared a hole through John. The wail of an ambulance was far away. “That's true. We don't have too many niggers down here, but the ones I've come across have always been respectful, and they don't travel with white families.”

Miss Becky shocked the kids when she joined the verbal fray. Her statements weren't quite true, but far from lies. “Sheriff Anderson, John and his family have worked for us for years. It shouldn't surprise you none that they come with us to do what needs doin'.”

He recognized the significance of the bun on the back of her head. “So you sayin' they're…servants?”

“Nossir, and they ain't slaves neither. They're as close as family can get without bein' blood.”

Anderson wanted to say more, but a station wagon from the town's funeral home came to a dusty stop beside the group huddled in the shade of a mesquite tree.

The driver and his assistant moved quickly to load Ned into the back. Sheriff Anderson was on his radio when Cody moved close to Reynaldo and whispered. “Where'd you come from?”

Reynaldo seemed surprised at the question. “Why, I walked across the bridge with everyone else coming to work this morning. They were looking for
you
, not me. I knew where Mr. Ned is staying. There aren't too many secrets here. When I got to the motel, this woman was waiting by the swimming pool. We don't have many
tias negras
down here, so I knew she was looking for the big
negro
hombre, so here we are.”

“She didn't have keys to Ned's car.”

“Keys?
Amigo
, I learned a long time ago how to start a car without a key. Like the one your uncle left in front of
mi tia's
house a couple of hours ago.”

“A couple of hours.” John watched them slam the ambulance's back doors. Miss Becky slipped into the back seat and motioned for Cody to come on. “Lordy mercy. Has it only been two hours? You go on with Miss Becky and Mr. Ned. We'll take care of the young'uns and meet you back at that mo-tel when you know something.”

“
Bien
.” Reynaldo beamed at Top and Pepper. “You two remind me of my niece and nephew. Jorge is about your age,
algodon
, Cotton, and Yolanda is a little pepper, like you,
niña
.”

He wondered why John and Miss Sweet laughed.