An American Outlaw (23 page)

The driver window was coming down—inside, a guy in a suit and Western hat. Leveling a gun on me. 

I fired again, wide of the cab, saw his hand whip up, holding a big revolver.

I rolled flat, saw the muzzle flash, came up at the van side. There was a clunk on the road, behind me.

Tennille shouted out; “
I've got it.
”

The driver of the Silverado fired again. The round smacked the door-pillar, behind me.

“
I've got the cases
,” she shouts, “
let's
go
...” 

I aimed straight at the Silverado, the guy threw himself down. I fired, not to kill, but to drive him off; the hell out. Pumping a fifth—firing, running now, in close.

His engine stalls out.

“
Come on
,” Tennille shouts, “let's get out of here...”

I'm at the truck window, the driver's laying across the seat. Arms up over his head, big revolver in his hand.

“Drop it.”

He squints at me, a dust of splintered glass on him. He nods, drops the gun on the cab floor, by his hat. He's tough-looking, a square face, busted nose. The look of a pro.

“The hell you think you are?”

“United States Deputy Marshal. John Whicher.” A grimace. “I been wanting to speak with y'all.”

My heart's pumping, but I'm calm, cold inside, on a set of known rules. 

“Get the hell out here.” I wrenched open the door.

He sat. Slid out. Stood, his hands out in front of him.

“Lose the jacket.”

He put a hand to his lapel—slipped off the jacket, let it fall on the road. He's wearing a white shirt, dark tie, black shoulder-holster; empty. Around his waist is another gun belt. Glock 22.

“Get that off...”

He put his hands to the buckle of the belt, eased it loose.

“Drop it. And get over there. Up by the Dakota...”

He walked ahead, hands in the air. 

Tennille was standing at the front wing of Joe's truck. Twelve-gauge at her shoulder. 

Through the open door, I could see inside the truck cab—both flight cases, all the money. I glanced at her face, caught the look in her eye.

I pushed the marshal forward; “Get in the back of the pick-up.”

He walked on, past Tennille, past the E-series. Stuck a boot on the truck tire, a western boot, tooled leather. 

He swung a leg up into the truck bed. 

The two men in the van sat staring out—wall-eyed, a pool of engine coolant gathering underneath the fender. The driver with his hands locked around the steering wheel.

I turned to the guard. “This here Moss? What is it, eight shot? You rack a ninth in the chamber?”

He nodded.

I looked at the marshal. “Three in the hole.”

Tennille shouts out, “
Plus two
.” She raised the barrel of the 870.

The engine in the E-series was starting to seize. I told the guard; “Let's leave it at that.” I called to Tennille, “You drive. I'll sit up in back a piece.”

Her chin juts a fraction.

“Head straight up the road, there. I'll tell you when to stop.”

I wrapped a hand around the forestock of the Moss. Pulled the SIG from my jacket, pointed it at the marshal. “Slide on down the back there.”

He moved down the truck bed, hard against the tail-gate. 

I jumped in, facing him. “Okay, let's roll...”

Tennille ran the truck across the edge of the field. She straightened out, hit the gas, accelerating hard. 

Behind the marshal, the E-series sat stranded, all its tires shot out.

“You wanted to speak with me?”

We were barreling down the road now, wind blowing in about us.

“You find what you was looking for?”

He says, “Not exactly.”

There was a haze, forming up around the sun. Streaks of cloud, the air thick, snag of dust in the fields. 

The marshal's just watching me, hands holding on the truck sides as we blast down the road. 

“I'm a criminal investigator, Mr. James. Been on y'alls tail a piece.”

“Since when?”

“Alpine.”

“I wasn't there.”

He glanced at the Mossberg. “You're pretty handy with that.” Watching me—sitting low in the pick-up bed. Dark red tie flying like a leash.

“Had a mil. spec 590. In the Corps. Couple years back. Not unlike it.”

“That where y'all learned to shoot?”

“Right.”

“What you plan on doing now?”

I didn't answer.

“Y'all on a streak?”

I watched the road stretching out behind him, a strip running through the fields of cotton, dirty white.

“Lafayette,” he says, “Alpine. That gas station, at the interstate. Now this.”

I stared at the flat land, dust rising behind us, power lines strung from pole to pole. 

Tennille drove the Dakota hard, tearing along the empty road. The van was gone from sight.

“Steven Childress is dead,” he says.

A glint of sun caught an irrigation boom.

“Where's Tyler?”

I felt the weight. The SIG in my hand.

“He's shot. Right?”

Thirty ounces. To knock a world off its axis.

“I seen a lot of this.” The marshal holds his head to the side. “This kind of thing.”

I looked at him.

He says, “It don't end good.”

Far enough. I reckoned it far enough. Mile and a half, maybe two.

I slapped a hand on the cab roof of the Dakota. “Alright, here. Pull it over.”

Tennille slowed up. She braked to a stop.

I jumped out onto the road. Flicked the nose of the SIG. “End of the line. You're getting out.”

He was watching me, wary now. He leaned forward, got to his haunches. Sat on the side of the truck. “You going to shoot me?”

I stared right at him. “No.”

He swung his legs out. Jumped down. Gave the slightest nod. “'Preciate that.”

“Don't come looking for me no more.”

He stood by the side of the Dakota.

“You carrying a cell?”

“In the truck.” He jabbed a thumb back down the road.

“Let's see.”

He put his hands in his pants pockets. Pulled them inside out. A few dollar bills and loose change fell.

“We're going to get going now.”

He nodded.

“Tell you what, Marshal?”

“What's that?”

“Let's not meet again.”

He looked up and down the deserted road.

Tennille shouts out, “
Come on. Let's go
...”

There's just the wind, rising, singing in the power lines.

“She worth it?” he says.

“It ain't on her.”

He rubbed a hand over his jaw.

“You're right about one thing,” I said.

He took his hand from his face.

“If there's a next time, it won't end good.”

“I guess that means you ain't...” He stopped. Searching for the right word. “Listening,” he finally says.

“Not to this.”

He stood facing me, under the wide sky—fields of cotton stretching out to either side. 

He pulled at the dark red slash of tie. Undid the top button of his shirt, loosed the collar. 

Something in the way he's standing, staring at the road. He kicked at a balled-up piece of mud. “And what
do
y'all hear?”

I climbed back in the Dakota, stuck my head out the window. 

“Voices,” I called to him.

Tennille started to pull away.

“
The voices of the dead
...”

Concho County, on U.S.83. Tennille driving. Thirty minutes, no sign.

In my mind I could see him still. Tearing in, his Western hat, big-frame revolver snapping at me. 

Clean and done, it was going to be. Clean and done.

Last he saw, we were headed north. Last-known-direction. We'd switched a dozen times since, east mainly. 

Twenty miles, we'd came to a place called Eden. I hauled up the first of the flight cases. Cracked it open. Saw it full. I lifted it, held off my knee, Tennille just staring at it. A feeling, like electricity, nerves snapping—like static across my skull. Stack after stack of money. Neither one of us speaking.

Past Eden, we found farm roads, tracks through the fields of cotton. Deserted. Running south.

“I reckon this at three hundred fifty miles,” I told her.

She didn't answer.

On the seat I had the map open, laying on top of the Moss. I traced every possible route south and west, to the border. “By the back roads, it could be closer on four.”

She flexed her arms, gripped the steering wheel. Stared straight ahead at the highway.

“Looking at six hours.”

She shook her head.

“You know it,” I says, “better than me.”

“In another hour,” she said, “it's going to start getting dark.”

I studied the map. Looking for anything. “Worse if it is.”

“Worse how?”

“No one else is going to be moving.”

To the south-east was hill country. Hardly a town on the map, nothing worth the name. Plenty of space. Broken country—wild mountain.

“We could hole up.”

“We have to get back,” she says. “Tonight.”

Sixty miles out of Jackson Fork—west of Kerrville. The money still uncounted, both flight cases on the floor.

“It was definitely him,” she says.

“That marshal?”

“From the roadblock, in Alpine.”

“If he's figured out who you are, they'll be watching. Waiting at your place.”

She stared straight out through the windshield. Jaw set, streaks of color at her throat.

I studied on the map.“We go near Terlingua, odds are we'll run right into them.”

I thought of Michael, stuck with Connie. Somewhere out in the desert. 

Close on three years he'd been scraping by. His lungs were damaged, his brain injured. He couldn't work; neither him nor Nate. But Michael got off better. What everybody said. Compared to Nate.

Non-penetrating. Focal and diffuse.
I still remembered some of the words.
Cerebral edema
. Fifteen days before Nate came out of the coma.

A Navy doctor told me we missed the first hour
—
it might've been different. The night he told me, I sat in a chair, my quarters, in the pitch black. A bottle of hundred-proof whiskey that didn't touch me. The cold light of morning, bone awake. My M9 Beretta in my hand.

Nate's family got him out, got him to Jackson Fork. One time, I visited, only once. Orla running the farm, Nate in the fields. 

I pushed the memory away. Watched the light fading on the highway.

No way I figured we could make it back for Michael—not straight out, not all the way. 

Tennille was afraid, it didn't need spelling out. She was afraid for her daughter, her little girl.

I looked up from the map.

Tennille was leaning forward, tense in the driver's seat. Staring at something in the rear-view—eyes fixed.

“What?”

I turned to look. 

There were two cars, a hundred yards back of us. 

A third vehicle behind them—
some kind of patrol car
. 

I snapped around back to the map, finger pressing hard in at the paper. “There's a road junction coming up. Get off this, we can make a left.”

“If we turn, he'll see us.”

“He'll see for sure if we don't.”

There was a dip in the road, the outline of an iron-windmill against the sky—the smaller road just behind it, coming in at the left.

“We don't get off, we're stuck on here another twenty miles...”

She comes off the gas, starts to slow.

“Do I signal?”

“Make the signal.”

I watched the road out front, praying nobody's about to come and make us wait to cross the lane.

She slows right down. “Fuck, this better work.”

She makes the turn. 

The side road climbs across an open plain. Buffalo grass, live oak. 

She stomps on the gas. 

“Don't turn,” under her breath, “don't turn,” eyes on the rear-view.

He's turning in behind us.

He holds short, like it makes a damn difference. 

I ditched the map.

She cuts me a look. “Maybe he was already headed this way.”

“Maybe.”

Up front the road's twisting, starting to dip and rise. A stone track at the right.

“There...”

“That's going straight in the mountains.”

“He can't follow,” I says, “in any cruiser.”

She wrenched the truck right, floored it out up the track. 

We're powering through a stand of trees, climbing fast. 

I turned around in my seat to look behind.

“You seein' this?”

“I'm seeing it.”

The cruiser's bumping up the hill below us.

Ahead, the track's nothing but dry mud and deep ruts gouged by rain. We're coming to an overhang of rock, stunt trees growing from it. 

The cruiser's dropping back on the slope. 

We're climbing level with the outcrop of rock, turning a bend that disappears blind. There's a passing place off the track at the side. 

I grabbed the wheel, dragged the truck over.

“Stop the engine—turn it off...”

I threw open the door, grabbed the Moss. Ran back. 

We were hidden by the bend, he'd never see. 

I strained to listen for his motor. 

Tennille slid from the Dakota—twelve gauge in her hand.

I pulled a bunch of slugs from my jacket, tossed a couple at Tennille. Fed four in the tube of the Moss.

A white Crown Vic swings around the bend. Kerr County Sheriff's Department, in black across the door. 

He's alone, head dipped looking for us along the track—window down.

I stepped out, shotgun hard at him.

He stamped on the brakes.

Tennille moves in behind me.

“Kill the motor...”

He reached to the keys. Switched it off. Placed his hand on the top of the door, where I could see it.

 “Get out.”  

He stepped out. Pale-skinned, no hat, sandy hair, thinning. He raised his hands above his shoulders.

“Take off the gun.”

He lowered his arms. Unfastened the buckle. “Sir, take it easy...” Letting the belt and holster fall to the ground.