Peak Oil (7 page)

Neil turned around in his seat. “Hang on a sec. Who is Jackson?”

Voelkner massaged his shoulders, bending his neck backward and forward. “A hitchhiker we picked up along the way. Nice guy, from Canada. Speaks perfect French.”

Alexa slammed the steering wheel with her palm. “Dammit, Voelkner, you had us worried. You can’t start getting into fights with the locals for no apparent reason.”

Neil glanced at her and she mouthed the words “Shut up.”

Voelkner looked down. “Sorry, Captain.” He looked up and smiled broadly, his broken nose bending slightly in the middle. “The general promoted us to full Lieutenants.”

Alexa nodded. “Good, you deserved it.” She winked at him in the rearview. “I’m glad for you. You did manage to save my life once.”

“Twice,” Voelkner said.

“What?”

“We saved your life twice, remember? First in Geneva and then again at Metcalfe’s estate,” Voelkner said, staring out of the window.

Alexa skidded to a stop in front of a building. A flashing neon sign in the window said, “Mo’s Diner.”

She pulled the key from the ignition and lifted the hand break. “The last time doesn’t count; I would have made it out on my own.” Alexa climbed out of the car.

“If you say so,” Voelkner mumbled.

She looked back at him and smiled. “Come on, I guess you must be hungry.”

Voelkner’s eyes lit up and he nodded. “Like an ugly Parisian prostitute.”

Alexa grinned and then hugged him. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
 

He cleared his throat and pulled at his collar. “Thanks, Captain.”

They followed Neil into the diner. He found a booth at the far end, and they slid in beside him.

Voelkner looked up as Alexa took his hand. “We need to find Latorre.” She squeezed his hand urgently. “Think, Lieutenant. Think.”

Mary-Lou saw the cowboy man look up at her as he put his phone back into his pocket. She inhaled a sharp breath and jerked her head away from the curtain.

She climbed off the recessed windowsill, scrambled up the ladder to the top of her bunk bed, then removed the photo of the pretty lady from beneath the pillow and examined it closely. One day when she was all grown up, Mary-Lou wanted to look exactly like her.

She put the photo back and fumbled inside her pillow case for something else. She pulled a passport from it and examined the face of the man on the photo. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, exactly like her daddy used to have. But he was gone now. Grandma Pauline said he was dead.

Mary-Lou lay on her back and kicked her legs into the air, examining her toes. She had seen a lot of things through Grandma Pauline’s window during the past couple of days. None of it had made much sense to her—just jumbled and random things happening in the world outside the reality of her room.
 

She grabbed a pencil from the pillowcase and flipped through the pictures that she had drawn in the blank pages of the passport. She licked the tip of the pencil and started sketching the pretty lady’s face. She stuck her tongue out and licked her lips as she concentrated on the lines.

After a minute, Mary-Lou was satisfied with her drawing. She rolled onto her stomach, drew in the shadows and finishing touches, and held it up to the light. She fumbled for the photo from beneath her pillow and put it beside her drawing. She compared her drawing to the photo. It looked exactly the same. If she could find her colored pencils, she knew she could copy it exactly.

Mary-Lou shrugged and put the items back in the pillowcase, jumped down, and ran toward the staircase.
 

Maybe Grandma Pauline would know where they were.

Alexa scanned the empty diner. A smiling waitress sat on a round barstool, leaning with her back on the counter. An older guy with a white paper toque on his head was leaning out of the serving hatch, cracking jokes.
 

On top of the counter, Alexa noticed a glass case that contained fresh fish, an assortment of vegetables, and rice. Behind it, an Asian man, his hair salted with grey, stood idly by, typing on his cell phone and looking bored.

Neil moved closer to Voelkner. “What happened at the bar? Start from the beginning. Tell me in French if it’s easier.”

Voelkner closed his eyes, massaged his temples, breathed deeply, and nodded. “Okay, we decided to have a couple of beers. We went to the pub next door.” He scratched his neck. “We played pool until some leather-clad rednecks arrived.” Voelkner glanced at Neil and grinned. “Jackson was chatting up a girl, and the bikers didn’t appreciate that. Jackson told them that it was a free country, and then they said that Dabbort Creek wasn’t a country.”
 

A waitress arrived with a pot of coffee and some mugs. Gold and silver bangles jingled around her arms as she served them. A mop of curly red hair cascaded from beneath her white cap. A white pearl necklace disappeared into her ample cleavage. The name tag on her chest read “Patsy.”
 

Voelkner looked up and smiled sheepishly. She noticed and smiled at him as she placed a menu on the table. She was wearing Vera Wang. Alexa had bought a bottle in Paris after she had saved up for a couple of months.

“Anything to eat?” Patsy removed a notebook. “The maguro is good, arrived fresh this morning.” She leaned forward, dragging a menu to the center of the table and pointed to a picture. “We even have uni, all the way from Cape Town, South Africa.”

Alexa looked at the spiky ball Patsy was pointing to. “No thanks, we’re fine. But my friend over here would like a steak and eggs, burger and fries, waffles with maple syrup, and a banana boat.”

Patsy scribbled the order down. “All for him?” she asked and pointed the pencil at Voelkner.

“And an apple pie.” Voelkner handed his menu to the waitress with a wink.

Patsy raised her eyebrows but wrote it down anyway. “Sure I can’t interest you in some sushi?”

Alexa shook her head and smiled. Patsy turned around and shrugged at the Asian man who scowled. He lifted his cell phone and continued typing.

“What else?” Neil urged Voelkner.

Voelkner scratched his chin. “I took two guys down. The Canadian tried but didn’t put up much of a fight. I managed to pull the other two off him, but someone blindsided me with a bottle, I guess. Next thing I knew, I woke up in hospital.”

Alexa tapped her lip with her forefinger. “Let’s run through this again.”

Voelkner nodded. “Um, okay.”

She looked at Voelkner. “You go to the bar, shoot some pool, guys come in, you get beaten up. Nothing else?”

Voelkner shrugged. “And we drank a lot,” he offered helpfully. “I got shit-faced. This Texan beer is strong.”

“Who paid for the drinks?” Neil asked.

Voelkner cleared his throat. “I did. I tossed Bubba my wallet because I was playing against Jackson.”

“Wait,” Neil said, holding up his hand. “Who is Bubba?”
 

“The truck driver. He ran out of fuel on his way here. He was the other guy we gave a lift.”

Alexa folded her arms and leaned back in the booth. “You picked up two hitchhikers?”

Voelkner nodded. “Yep, Bubba and Jackson. Like I said.”

Neil scowled at Alexa, his hands making an imaginary throttling motion. He turned back to Voelkner. “And you trusted this Bubba guy with your wallet?”
 

“Yep, like I trust Latorre.” Voelkner said, nodding hesitantly. “We could have been brothers; he’s a good guy.”
 

“How do you know they didn’t arrange to have you beaten up?” Alexa asked. “You know? To steal your cash? How much did you have on you?”

Voelkner lifted his shoulders. “I don’t remember. A couple hundred bucks, I guess.”

Alexa tapped her lip with her finger. “No, that wouldn’t make sense. Too much trouble for too little reward.” She looked at Voelkner. “Where was Latorre while all this was going on?”
 

Voelkner laughed. “He ran to fetch the cops when the fighting started. I don’t know how far he made it, because he was drunk out of his skull.”

Neil drummed the tabletop with his fingers. “The deputy mentioned that they arrested two ‘Frenchies,’ as he called them. But Voelkner over here was taken to hospital. Who was the other guy?”

Alexa looked at him and snapped her fingers. “Jackson.”

Neil scratched his chin. “Harvey said they had taken two men to a bus depot on the town limits. Left them there.”
 

Alexa nodded. “So one of them must have been Latorre, and the other was Jackson,” She looked up at Voelkner. “Where was Bubba when all this went down?”

“Out cold. He passed out in one of the booths.” Voelkner smiled. “He wasn’t any help with the fight, but I won a lot of cash off him from pool.”

Neil turned toward Voelkner. “By the way, we found a girl who has a photo of Alexa.”

Voelkner looked up at Neil in surprise. “What? Where?”

“That’s right, Voelkner.” Alexa said with a frown. “She said she found it in someone’s wallet. Yours or Latorre’s?”

“Mine,” he said softly. He looked at Alexa and then down to the tabletop. “I found an old passport photo stuck to your temporary travel permit. You threw it away when you received your French passport.”

“Why would—?” Neil started to ask but Alexa squeezed his arm.
 

Voelkner looked down with slumped shoulders. “I kind of had a crush on the captain.”
 

Neil looked at Voelkner and back to Alexa. She shrugged. Neil burst out laughing. “I don’t blame you, man! I know how you feel.”

Voelkner looked up uncertainly. “But I’ve met someone else, her name is Nurse Betty. The captain is a thing of the past, like it never happened, I promise.” He raised his right palm in the air and put the left to his chest. “Legionnaire’s honor.”

Alexa looked at him with a grin. She never knew.

The waitress arrived with two trays. She packed the contents onto the table and walked away, shaking her head.

Voelkner started with the waffles. Neil watched in amazement as Voelkner worked his way through the steak, eggs, and burger. He finished the banana boat and apple pie and belched. It took him all of five minutes. “Excuse me,” he said and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his stomach with a satisfied grin.

Neil shook his head. “Are you sure you don’t have a tapeworm?”
 

Voelkner shrugged. “I don’t know. As they say in the Legion, ‘Meat is meat and a man must eat.’”

“Yep, that is true.” Alexa said with a smile. “A man must eat.” She stuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “But all meat sure as hell isn’t necessarily meat. Especially the shit we got fed in the Legion.”

They stood up from the booth and Alexa dropped a fifty on the table. As they left, the Asian man grunted and nodded his head. Patsy appraised them with a hint of a smile around the corners of her lips.

“Keep the change,” Alexa said.

“You folks have a good day now,” Patsy said, twirling her pearl necklace between her fingers. The door slammed shut behind them, and the sign on the door was promptly flipped to “CLOSED.” Alexa guessed they didn’t need the business. Or her exorbitant tip.

The day had turned to twilight, but the streetlights on the main strip shone brightly. A crisp breeze rustled the leaves in the forest, and Alexa put her arms around her shoulders and shivered. Neil opened her door. She smiled and climbed in. “Let’s go see if Missy has an extra room available for the Lieutenant.”

Neil nodded as he cranked the car.

The streets were deserted, save for a couple of bikes parked across the road at the bar. Alexa read the sign, illuminated from above by a strong spotlight: “The Keg and Kitten.” She wondered about the people’s infatuation with cats.

A large pair of headlights bounced their way, and a tanker truck rushed by, causing the car to sway in its wake.

They took a leisurely drive back to the Ocelot Inn. Alexa watched as the buildings scrolled by. The Dabbort Supermarket was open but empty. A sign above the doors flickered on and off: “Open for business, 24/7/365.” They drove past a Holiday Inn on the right and Saint Josephine’s to their left.
 

A large building loomed up to their right as they rolled down the hill. Calligraphy on the stone entry walls read: “The Fitch Academy, where Winners come to become Champions.” Stairs with up-lights mounted in them carved a straight line through the rolling green lawns to the modern, red brick building three hundred yards farther up. Oaks and ashes were scattered around the terraced lawns, and white concrete benches were placed beneath the larger trees. Oscillating sprinklers rhythmically blasted jets of water around the property.
 

To their left, the forest grew thick to the edge of the road, cleared here and there to make way for neat rolling lawns or parks. Yellow-petalled black-eyed Susans exploded in colorful patches between the mat of buffalo grass on the shoulder of the road as if they had been planted deliberately to make the route even more picturesque.