An American Outlaw (2 page)

But they'd fix the power.

I thought of back home, Lafayette, the night we first talked—saying out loud about taking; stealin', robbing a warehouse. A bank. Everything else. Nate was newly dead then. The three of us raw—Steven and Michael and me. We were drinking beer, out on the porch at Michael's place, out by the freeway. All the time we was talking, I could hear traffic in the background. Cars and trucks, running down Evangeline. The world heedless, turning on.

I pulled myself out of the pool. Sat at the water's edge. Thought again of the other gas station; Presidio. 

Maybe the truck could make it? On the map, the road out had seemed short enough. Even as I thought of it, something else hit me—a feeling something wasn't right.
The gun in my bag
—in the motel room. When I'd put the map away, on top of it, something'd caught my eye.

I sat a second more. Then jumped to my feet, ran back in the motel room and locked the door.

 I ripped open the bag. Pulled the gun out from under the map. Stared at it.

The last number machine-stamped in the frame was a seven
.
A seven, not a one. Wrong serial number. I had 
Nate's
gun.

Christ. Steven must have mine.

I picked up the phone to call Steven. The line was dead. Yeah. It fucking had to be. I sat on the bed, thinking.

I checked my watch. Almost one. I felt my heart rate quicken, ran a hand through my wet hair. 

They wouldn't go, they'd pull it. Like we said. Anybody didn't show, we'd scratch. Re-arrange the hit the next day.

I dressed quick, grabbed my keys, ran out, ran to the truck. I climbed in, drove around back of the motel—away from the road, where no one would see. 

It was too late, no way I'd make it. If we were bugging out, less anybody saw of me, the fewer eyes the better—like I learned in the Corps

I'd stay out of sight. Wait on the power. Blow as soon as it hooked back up.

I locked the truck. Left it well out of sight behind a couple of rusted dumpsters. 

From the scout, I knew there was a clap-board store a mile up the hill. I could walk up, buy something to eat, something to drink, stay away from the diner. 

I set out to walk up the highway keeping back from the road, among the scrub and rock. At the top of the long hill I tried the cell again, holding it in the palm of my hand; willing it to work. 

Nothing. Miles it'd been, a whole day before, since I last had any signal.

But they'd wait.

Inside the store, it was dark, deserted, no power, no working lights. The sound of some guy in back running around yelling, all his stock starting to melt. 

I picked out what I needed. Left money by the counter.

I headed on back down the hill. Thinking on Steven, and my gun. 

An M9 Beretta—service-issue. My gun. Nobody ever had it, except for me.

At The Old Mission, everything was deserted. One room only rented—my room. A clerk showed up in the morning at check-out time, then again in the evening, for any new arrivals. The place was empty, Terlingua an outpost. No-one came there. That was the reason we chose it.

I waited on the pumps. On that Exxon sign to light up. No way of moving. Nobody I could call. 

A feeling started to grip my stomach. 

In back of the diner the generator ran on, kicking black smoke—to vanish in the hot wind. Every once in a while, a car pulled in off the highway, into the gas station. And pulled back out a minute later, seeing it closed.

If there was anybody living within twenty miles, they must've known the place was shut down. Nobody came.

I thought of Michael and Steven.

If they'd pulled it, if they'd bailed—how come nobody came to look for me?

Maybe not Steven. But Michael would.

By late afternoon, I watched the big guy from the diner start to close it up. Him and some short-order cook. The big guy, Lem, tanked the generator from a ten gallon can and climbed into a Bronco. 

The cook got into a panel van. 

The pair of 'em hit the highway. I watched them both disappear.

I went around back of The Old Mission to sit in my truck. Watching the light start to change. To fade, into evening. 

I pulled the gun from my bag, the gun that Steven had been carrying—Nate had owned it, in the service. It was exactly alike with mine. Marine-issue M9, semi-auto. Identical, but for the numbers stamped along the frame. 

Two pistols that'd kept me and him alive. 

I climbed down from the cab. Stood watching the empty highway.

Dusk was closing in all around now. I went around back of my truck, climbed over the side and lay in the truck bed, against the hard metal. Sweat running in my hair.

I tried not to think. Of Nate. I tried not to think of a desert, thousands of miles from there. Of the flashes in my head, if I closed my eyes.

All I could do was wait.

There was just the wind. Grit sticking to my wet fingers. A blackening sky.

No sign of any life, no light across the land.

Where were they?

CHAPTER 2

I'm still laying in back of the truck when the power snapped back on.

I felt a rush, gripped the steel sides of the truck—hauled myself to my knees, trying to shake the confusion. There were lights burning from out of the dark everywhere—like a battlefield. But it wasn't Iraq. I couldn't be there.

I sprang out of the truck. Stumbled. Ran across the dirt to my motel room.

The door was wide open. All the lights on, the A/C unit—the TV. Unreal. My eyes blinking, trying to focus. Hands feeling along the wall, for switches, to turn out the lights. 

By the bed, a clock. A red display of numbers—
five-thirty a.m.
 

By the clock the phone. I grabbed it. Clamped it against my ear. Already dialing a number for Michael.

No sound's coming out of it. It's dead. Not connected. I stabbed at the cradle, chopping it up and down.

On the wall above the bed is a TV. Set to the local news station—a loop, running through the early hours, A/C drowning out the sound. I saw the flash of an image. Brick building, two-story. Nausea flooding my stomach. 

I scrambled for the remote, turned up the sound. Knowing it was Alpine—even before they said the name.

One man shot dead. Another escaped the scene.

Police issuing an alert—for 
Gilman Francis James
. Of Lafayette, Louisiana. Owner of a red Ford F150. Louisiana plate.

I woke up so fast with all that adrenaline flooding my bloodstream.

How long does it take to put up a manhunt? How long to cut the roads?

I didn't know that morning. Thank God, is all I can say.

'Cause it was just getting started.

CHAPTER 3

Steven must be dead.

It was my gun he'd been carrying; my numbers on it, it had to be Steven—if they were looking for me. 

I snapped off the TV. Stared at the condensation on the window by the A/C unit. Listening to it rattle and blow.

Michael must've got out, somehow.

I drank some water from the faucet. Put my head under its cold stream.

I had to find him. Wherever he was.

I checked the room fast—nothing of mine left inside there. 

I ran out, ran the fifty yards to the gas station. The pumps dead. The big Exxon sign unlit. 

Inside the diner, ceiling lights showed, but nothing else.

I ran around the back. Any vehicle. Anything would do. Beyond the building, the ground was deserted. There was nothing.

Past the dumpsters, behind the Old Mission, I could see my truck. Low sun starting to creep over the mountains. 

I sprinted back to the truck, scrambled in the cab, grabbed Nate's pistol, checked the map. Due north was Alpine. East, the road gave out in the hills. Only place to go was west—towards Presidio. Get out of Terlingua. I'd get as far as I could. Then dump the truck. Find something; improvise.

I fired up the truck. Pulled out of the lot. Took the turn onto 170, the sun rising behind me. 

I felt for my cell, set it with the pistol on the empty seat beside me. Steered onto a two-lane into a desert of flat scrub. Jag of red mountain on the skyline.

Steven was dead. Steven or Michael. I knew it must be Steven. Gone. Like Nate, like his brother.

I thought of their mother—back on east Vermilion. Thought of Michael, that I grew up with, his place on south Refinery, where he finished up—dumped couches, abandoned shacks. Thinking on why that was. Why I blamed myself. And always would.

I came up a rise in the road. Shale bank at the side of the highway. Where the road topped out, the ground opened into a wide plain.

A truck was headed towards me. White pick-up. Side-lights on.

I held my speed, right hand floating from the wheel—till I could feel the M9. 

The pick-up drew level. One guy in it, wearing a western hat. 

It passed behind. I held steady, watched the rear-view till he topped the rise and disappeared the other side.

Ahead, the road stretched west, the land empty, mountains rising in the south. White cloud hanging over Mexico. Across the border—the only other way out. 

To the north, on a bluff of rock, an outline showed against the sky; some kind of mast. A repeater mast. It could be.

I checked the rear-view. Grabbed the cell off the seat. Held it in front of the wheel. 

At the right-hand edge of the road, a dirt track ran north towards the mast. I slowed up, steered off, holding the phone out in front of me. Weak signal showing. Keying in the number for Michael.

It's ringing. I pressed the phone to my ear. Held my breath. 

It picks up.

I stamped on the brakes. “Michael?”

“Gil?” he says. He sounded hoarse. Close to panic.

The truck skidded to a stop in the dirt. “Tell me where you are?”

“Marfa.”

I snatched the map off the empty passenger seat. Found the place. My finger tracing it, due north, across the desert.

“Don't come here,” he says. “Police are everywhere. Steven went crazy...”

“Are you hurt?”

He didn't answer.

I heard him cough, the sound muffled into his hand.

 “Steven's dead,” I said. “Isn't he? Tell me what happened...”

“He went in,” Michael's voice rising. “He just went right in. On his own.”

I shook my head.

“I tried to get him out...” He was silent.

I says, “You were supposed to wait.”

“Why didn't you come?”

“I'm coming now.”

“No, man.”

“Steven had my gun. I've got his. I got no alibi...”

He didn't answer.

 “They're looking for me,” I says. “It's too late. You know that.” 

All I could hear was him breathing; labored. 

“Where are you?”

“Christ. Some motel.”

“Are you hurt?”

Nothing but silence on the end of the line.

“Stay put,” I told him. “I'll get you.”

“Jesus Christ, Gil.”

“Are you shot?”

“Yeah,” he says, “I'm shot.”

“Put the phone down. Stay where you are.”

“Don't come here.”

“Keep off the phone. I get to Marfa, I'll find you, I'll call again...”

“Fuckin' don't.”

“Michael,” I says, “I'm hanging up.” I clicked off the call.

He was shot—but still alive. 

He'd stay alive, I told myself. 

Sixteen, seventeen hours had passed—if he wasn't already dead, he'd live, that was how it went. I thought of his voice on the line; weak already as he struggled to breathe. If he passed out he could bleed to death.

I made myself focus on the map. 

There was no chance using regular roads, cops already looking for the truck. But through the hills there were a score of tracks, dirt roads to ranches, farms, all kinds of places. Sooner or later, the truck'd run out of gas. I could look for some outpost, some farmstead, anything. I'd head north, find a vehicle to steal, get through, somehow. 

I tossed the map on the seat. Stuck the truck into gear.

Michael could treat a gunshot wound—same as anyone from the Corps. He could stop the blood.

He could stop it.

CHAPTER 4

Alpine, TX.

US Deputy Marshal John Whicher pulls his Chevy Silverado into the lot of the Alpine Municipal Police Department. He hits the brakes. Snaps off the 5.3 liter V8.  And elbows the door of the truck open.

He's wearing a gray suit, over western boots. Tan Resistol
Chute-Out
on his head. He's out of the Chevy, walking fast. Forty eight years old, in-shape; a stand-up guy. Busted nose, like a boxer. He ain't here fuckin' around.

Desk sergeant in the station house doesn't recognize the man walking in. He looks him up and down. He's not local. Never seen him before.

“I'm here to see Lieutenant Rodgers.”

“Sir. You are?”

“John Whicher.”

The desk sergeant checks his notepad. “That's fine, sir. Straight on down the corridor. Fourth door at the left.”

The marshal walks down the white-painted corridor, under strip lights. Knocks hard at the door. 

A uniform officer opens up. Lieutenant's white shirt. Early thirties. Buzz cut hair. 

Whicher puts his hand out. Takes the lieutenant's; the strong side of firm. 

“John Whicher. US Marshals Office. Western District. Good to meet you, son.”

The lieutenant beckons him inside the office. “Sir, take a seat.”

Whicher enters the small, bright room. Pulls out a chair.

The lieutenant sits behind his desk. He picks out a pen from an elk-skin container by the phone. “You ride down this morning, Marshal?”

“Yeah. Out of Pecos. Took me two hours. You want to tell me what in the hell's been going on?”

“Attempted armed robbery yesterday. At the Farmer's Bank. Unsuccessful.”

“Amen to that.”

“One dead. One man missing.”

“Gilman Francis James,” says Whicher.