Rumble Tumble (17 page)

27

I slept painfully, but the next morning, just before daylight, I was a little stronger. Out of the pack Bill had brought he produced some tins of sardines. We opened the cans and ate the fish with our fingers. I found that I not only had an appetite, but was feeling better. Not strong enough to jerk my dick, maybe, but at least strong enough to hold it and think about the motions.

After I had eaten, Leonard helped me get into my clothes and shoes. I tried to stand, but couldn’t. Leonard went outside and came back carrying Irvin in a fireman’s carry. He put Irvin in one of the seats, propped him up and started slapping him.

Not too hard at first, but he picked up the pace.

“Easy,” I said.

“You just relax,” Leonard said, “and leave the slapping to me.”

He slapped Irvin some more. Irvin opened one eye and tried to grab Leonard’s wrist, but Leonard grabbed his, bent Irvin’s arm at the elbow, and put a reverse gooseneck on his wrist. It was enough to make Irvin sober for a moment.

“Goddamn!” Irvin said. “You’re hurtin’ me.”

“Man, I hate that,” Leonard said. “You done had you a good night’s sleep, so what we want for you to do is fly us out of here.”

“Fly you out,” Irvin said. “I can’t even see!”

“What I want,” Leonard said, “is for your vision to improve dramatically.”

“I’m sick,” Irvin said.

“I don’t give a shit,” Leonard said. “Fly us out.”

“In broad daylight!” Irvin said. “You can’t do it in broad daylight.”

“Is there another place we can park for the day?” Herman asked. “Some place away from this village?”

“I know one or two,” Irvin said. “But we’re not that well fueled. We’d be stretching it.”

“Is it possible?” Leonard asked.

“Yeah, it’s possible,” Irvin said, “but we might have to fart in the tank to finish out the ride. We make it, it’ll be by a cunt hair.”

“Where is this place?” Herman asked.

“It’s not a landing strip,” Irvin said. “It’s not even a field like this. It’s just a place. I put down there once because I had to. Ground’s flat enough, I suppose. It’s south of here. But it’s stretching the fuel, I’m tellin’ you.”

“Sittin’ here is stretching our odds,” Leonard said. Then he called to the back. “Any sardines left?”

“Yeah,” Bill said.

“Feed this asshole, and let’s go.”

“Fuck the sardines,” Irvin said. “Don’t talk to me about sardines. I can’t eat that shit, way I been drinkin’. I don’t eat that shit when I’m sober.”

“Then you do whatever you need to do short of another drink,” Leonard said. “Lift us out of here. Go where you need to go. And come dark, you fly our asses back to Texas. Herman, you want that midget, I’d load him on board now, and get all his little cowboy suit accessories too. And let’s keep things like they been. Meanin’ people got guns keep guns, and those don’t got guns don’t get guns. And Herman, I don’t much like the fact you got a gun.”

Herman didn’t respond. He was still carrying the Winchester we had given him. He put it down on the seat next to Leonard, went outside to get Red out of the jeep.

We flew to the spot Irvin had told us about. It was a short and scary flight. Bolts in the plane rattled and we jerked about a lot in the wind. When we landed the day turned very hot and by afternoon I was covered in sweat and sick to my stomach and could only sip water. Inside the plane was like being inside a heated pottery kiln, but I was too weak to go outside, and Leonard assured me it was worse out there.

Red had come out of his drunk talkative as ever. He spent a lot of time complaining about how he felt and what we had done to him and how we had messed up his plans.

Tillie hadn’t moved, and if it weren’t for Brett checking on her from time to time, I would have thought she was dead.

I propped myself up in the seat, and Brett sat down beside me. “She’s really out,” she said. “I think I get her home, I got to start her with rehab. I just hope to hell I got money to do rehab.”

“Just keep your spirits up,” I said.

“Honey, my spirits are so far down they got to look up to see my socks. And then they need binoculars.”

*    *    *

As nightfall came I began to get a chill. Leonard put his coat on me again, and Brett sat close, holding me. When it was dark enough, Leonard gave Irvin a little encouragement. “Let’s go, shitwipe.”

“Leonard missed his calling,” Brett said. “He should have been in the diplomatic corps.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s got a way with words.”

Irvin groaned, got up, and wandered into the open cabin. He sat down behind the controls. Leonard sat in the navigator’s seat. Irvin said back to us, “Remember, we don’t make it, it’s ’cause this bully made me fly without enough fuel.”

“We don’t make it,” Brett said, “it’s because your ass was drunk last night when we should have flown out.”

Irvin threw up his hands, shifted in his seat to face the controls. “All right,” he said. “Contact.”

The plane clanked across the rough ground, and when it lifted off it went up fast and at an angle so sharp I thought we were on our way to the moon. The windshield clattered like cold teeth rattling. The engines sounded like a chef chopping cucumbers into slices. The sides of the plane warped and waved.

The air had turned cooler, and up there it was cooler yet. I got the impression the wind was coming in through places that hadn’t been there when we left. As we climbed up, so did my sardines, but I fought them down just below my jawline, and when we finally leveled, I looked out my little window and saw the great blackness that was space and the fine white spots that were the stars.

“Jesus Christ,” I heard Herman say behind us. “Run this fucker smoother!”

“What you think you’re in?” Irvin yelled back. “A 747?”

We flew on and I drifted in and out, mostly out, as the jerks and drops of the plane would bring me awake as soon as I dozed off. I felt cold and feverish at the same time. I looked out the window and saw the night earth running along under us, the plane a great shadow against the moonlit ground.

“How are we?” I asked Brett.

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you were asleep. You missed being scared to death by a land rise, or as we say in East Texas, a mountain. We nearly ran into it. Someone, possibly Mexican Border Patrol, took a shot at us too. There’s a hole in the floor near the tail and we think the wing took a shot, and maybe one of the engines. You know that stuff I told you about never soiling my underwear. Well, I was wrong.”

“Got any more aspirins?”

“Yeah.” Brett pulled her pocket purse out of her coat and got out the aspirins and gave them to me. She went away then and came back with the canteen. I took a handful of aspirins and drank some water.

“What about Tillie?” I asked.

“Still out,” Brett said. “Had the shot been another three feet forward, she would have taken it. Shit, Hap. Is this going to end?”

I patted her leg and gave her back the canteen. I turned and looked toward the back. Bill and Herman were sitting in one of the long seats together. Red had one of his own, looking out the porthole, biting his nails. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his cowboy hat and his string tie. There was just him and the soiled suit now. I saw Tillie on the floor, still as the dead.

“Reckon if the Mexican Border Patrol took a shot at us a ways back, we’re in Texas now,” I said.

Irvin, having overheard us, called from up front. “Actually, we’re about to enter Texas. There’s a kind of gap in surveillance here, and if we fly low enough, we’re okay on radar.”

“So how much further to the landing strip?” Red called.

“Not much,” Irvin said. “We’ll be passing into Texas pretty soon, then we got to do a half circle away from where the law is thick, come into the airstrip low enough to pick vegetables, then I got to land this baby without wadding it up. Which, by the way, takes pretty good skill. The landing strip doesn’t have any lights, just a handful of reflectors.”

The moment Irvin finished his speech there was a sound like someone had fired a shotgun inside the plane. Briefly, I thought that’s exactly what had happened. We were tossed up and back down. I banged my head against the side of the plane, slid halfway to the floor, got my hands under me, pushed myself back into the seat, wished to hell there were seat belts.

Brett was on her knees in the aisle.

“Goddamn!” she said. “Goddamn!”

I reached out and got hold of her and pulled her into the seat, feeling my shoulder tear, my injured thigh stretch. Brett and I looked over our shoulders for Tillie. Tillie had somehow gotten turned longways and was sliding down the aisle toward us on her belly. I glanced at Leonard. He was turned around, riding his seat like a horse.

I heard Irvin say, “Oh shit,” and out of the corner of my eye I caught something, jerked my head for a better look. There was a flash of red and yellow on the wing and it swelled and turned orange and licked blue flames at its tips. The plane yawed and coughed and sputtered. The port engine was on fire.

28

Either one of the shots Brett said were fired from below had damaged the engine, or it had finally had all the dust, wasp nests, and lack of maintenance it could stand.

The plane pitched and bucked as if in a carnival ride, lost velocity, then suddenly it was as if you were standing on something you thought was solid only to discover it was actually made of quicksand.

We just dropped.

The flames were wild now and in their glow I could see wisps of black smoke and the smoke coiled and curled around the wing and past the glass.

Brett was in the aisle. She had hold of Tillie, was lying across her. I clung to my seat, glanced up, saw Leonard through the open cabin door. His face looked horrible, his eyes wide.

The plane filled with a noise like a pride of lions roaring, and I realized it was the wind and flames. The fire was licking all along the wing now, tapping at the glass, asking us to invite it in. The wing was melting, becoming a tatter that resembled something made out of chicken wire and blazing toilet tissue.

Then the plane went quiet, except for the roar of the flames, the hiss of the wind. We seemed to float, just float. The right side of the plane jumped and there was a whirling noise. We leaned starboard slightly, started moving forward and down, but at a calculated pace.

I don’t know much about planes, but it occurred to me that Irvin had cut the engines. Maybe to stop the gas to the port engine. The flames were still there, but they weren’t as high as before. The right engine was all that was working now, and Irvin was using that to bring us down.

I looked out the window, saw the ground was way too fucking close. The plane went silent again, the right engine out of play, the propeller whirling to a stop.

“Out of fuel!” Irvin yelled. “Coasting in. Grab your asses.”

Smooth and quiet we went, but like a bullet. I looked out the window at the flames on the wing, saw a stand of dark gnarly trees below us. And I mean just below.

Ahead of us was a clearing, a metal hangar. It was the strip we had departed from. I had a moment of hope. I looked at Brett. She was still lying on top of Tillie, who to the best of my knowledge had yet to twitch an eyelash.

I looked through the cabin doorway. Leonard continued to cling to and ride his chair like a horse. I could see the ground through the windshield. Big hard ground. The plane hit and bounced. It went way up, nose pointing at the sky, then it went back down, bounced again, not so high, bounced some more, then we were darting along the runway.

The wheels screamed, bent under us. Next thing I knew the plane flipped, spun sideways, and skidded up a dust cloud, and finally, after what seemed about two weeks later, stopped upright, leaning.

I wasn’t in my seat anymore. I wasn’t sure where I was. I discovered I had hit the wall next to the cockpit. My wounds had opened up. They were running freely. Except for a slight pain in my neck, there didn’t seem to be any new injuries.

I looked into the cockpit. Leonard was getting off the floor. Somehow, Irvin had maintained his seat. Then I saw how. He had on a seat belt. He sat there with his head bent forward. Red was getting up between two seats and Herman was sitting on the floor holding his head. Bill was lying on the floor, and from the way part of him was wrapped around the stanchions of one of the seats, I knew he wasn’t doing well. Brett and Tillie had slid up under a seat, and I went over there and pulled Brett out. She had a banged forehead, a little blood. I sat her down in a bent seat and pulled Tillie out from under there.

Tillie was snoring. I carried her and lay her across the seat so her head was in Brett’s lap. The plane was becoming very warm. I looked out a port window. What was left of the wing was blazing and the side of the plane was starting to catch.

I pulled at the exit door, but it was stuck. I kicked at it and it came open. I got hold of Tillie and tried to lift her, but the wounds, the loss of blood, the crash, it had taken everything out of me. I had to sit down on the floor with her.

Leonard appeared. He picked Tillie up and carried her out. Brett got hold of my arm and helped me out of the plane, onto the ground. Herman and Red followed. Leonard went back in. He came out carrying Irvin, who was unconscious. He went back in and brought Bill out. When he laid Bill on the ground Bill’s body moved like mercury flows. The foot on one leg faced the wrong way.

“He’s dead,” Leonard said.

“No shit,” I said. “What about Irvin?”

“Unconscious.”

“I want everyone to relax now,” Red said. We turned to look at him. His head was bleeding and his suit jacket was almost ripped off. He was holding one of the Winchesters, pointing it at us.

“From here on out,” he said, “we do as I say.”

Leonard moved incredibly quick. He grabbed the Winchester by the barrel, snatched it away from Red, whirled it around his head and cracked Red a solid one over the ear. Red decided he had to lie down on that one. He held his head with one hand, said, “Oh God, I think something is broken.”

“I advise we get away from the plane,” Leonard said. “And if anyone else has any ideas about guns or fighting, let’s get it over with now.”

No one did.

Leonard kicked Irvin a few times. Irvin grunted, opened an eye. “You can lay here, or you can get up,” Leonard said. “Personally, I think what’s left of your plane could blow.”

Leonard picked up Tillie. Brett gave me a boost and helped me walk. My injuries only hurt now when I walked, breathed, or batted my eyelashes.

I looked back. Herman and Red followed, Red holding his head. Irvin rolled to his hands and knees, crawled, finally made his footing and began to stagger after us.

The plane didn’t exactly blow. It just burned and gave off a few muffled pops. It lit up the night sky like an oil well fire.