“I speak,” Sam said. “But, unlike others, I speak only when I have something relevant to say.” He shot Henry a look.
Cutbirth told everyone to chill out and enjoy the ride and the beautiful California scenery, and when the time was right he would divulge their ultimate destination.
Diego glanced out the galley window. The Toyota Himalayan had pulled into the parking lot of a Laiwu Family Restaurant across the street from Denny’s. Diego asked Cutbirth if he had any binoculars. Cutbirth said he kept an extra set in a kitchen drawer, and Diego retrieved them. He returned to the galley table, gazed out the side window, and trained the powerful field glasses on the two bounty hunters sitting in the pickup. Mr. Mustache’s bushy handlebar mustache partially disguised his long, pointed nose. He was wearing a Hooters – San Pablo T-shirt. Uno, a diminutive porcelain-skinned beauty, was chewing on a toothpick. It seemed odd to Diego that neither Uno nor her mustached partner seemed concerned they’d been spotted. It gave Diego the creeps.
Diego remembered watching a news special on PNN about rabbits and the bounty the government had placed on their heads. The law was clear: Rabbits were wanted dead or alive. Diego tried to shake the grisly thoughts from his mind. He was about to pull the glasses away when he noticed something odd. Uno and Mr. Mustache were signing to each other.
Diego stowed the binoculars, then went up to the front of the coach where Cutbirth was seated in his cab seat. He was counting the wad of money Sissy had given him.
“Does it tally?” Diego asked. “I’d be leery of redheads with facial piercings. She’ll probably try and stiff you.”
“Funny boy,” Cutbirth said.
“That bounty hunters TV show you were talking about. You saw Uno, right?”
“Yeah, Uno something or other.”
“Was she talking?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, did she have the gift of speech?”
“That would fall under the heading of 'stupid fucking question.'”
“I saw Uno and Mr. Mustache signing.”
“What, like deaf signing?”
“Yeah, deaf signing.”
“That’s crazy,” Cutbirth said. “They must have been playing some sort of a game.”
“Two bloodthirsty bounty hunters playing a game? I don’t think so.”
“I don’t have the answer,” Cutbirth said. “Now get the hell back to your seat and let me finish counting my money.”
In a few minutes, Sissy returned to the big coach, a young girl in tow. The girl was dressed in tan shorts and a T-shirt that read Save the Sequoias. She was wearing a backpack stenciled with a dolphin image. Her face was covered with freckles, and her hair was the color of ripe tomatoes. A small camera hung from a strap around her neck.
Cutbirth cracked the bi-fold door and bellowed, “Who’s this, Hummingbird?”
“This is your newest passenger,” Sissy said. “Now open the door and let us in.” She pushed her hand through the crack in the door and tried to pry it open.
“I must have failed to mention it,” Cutbirth said in such a loud voice that passersby turned and looked. “No kids. They’re a pain in the ass. No kids! Not now! Not ever!”
The freckle-faced girl stepped up to the crack in the door, and said, “I’m not a kid! I’m ten and I’m not a pain in the ass!”
“I tried smuggling a kid across the border once,” Cutbirth said. “It was a disaster.”
“Then give me my money back,” Sissy howled. “All of it. Eighty grand. I want it now or I’m flagging down the first National Police patrol car I see and spilling my guts.”
The words hadn’t completely left Sissy’s mouth when a National Police car pulled into Denny’s parking lot. The timing was uncanny and the gnawing tightness in Diego’s chest started to ache. He watched the police car back into a parking space.
Adriana had heard enough. She jumped to her feet. “Mr. Cutbirth, you let Sissy and that girl into this motor home this very moment or my husband and I are also leaving. And we’ll want our money back, too. If my math is right”—she paused, working for breath—“you’ll be out another $80,000.”
Cutbirth turned in his seat and looked at Diego. “Little Mother speak for you, Ad Man?”
“On occasion,” Diego muttered. He had his eyes on the black and white cruiser. The female officer behind the wheel had lowered her tinted window. From across the parking lot, she watched the drama unfold outside the door of the old motor home.
Cutbirth looked out the door at Sissy. “Does she have her photo ID?”
“Of course.”
“Travel Pass?”
“Kids under 12 don’t need one if they’re with a parent,” Sissy said.
Cutbirth mumbled something, as if considering his options. “You cause trouble, kid,” he told the girl, “and you’ll find yourself hitchhiking with the street freaks.” He opened the door.
The energetic schoolgirl bounded up the steps, her red ponytail swinging from side to side. She paused on the top step, her button nose in the air, her blue-green eyes fixed on Cutbirth. “My name’s Emily Frost. I’m Sissy’s daughter and I’m going to be a famous photographer some day.” Emily strolled into the motor home with the regal grace of a young monarch, introducing herself to Adriana—“Hi, my name’s Emily. I dyed my own hair. What’s your name?”—then to Diego, and eventually to everyone on the bus, her eyes alive with intellect, her brilliant smile infectious.
Diego turned his attention back to the National Police officer. She had gotten out of her patrol car and was walking toward the motor home.
Diego gave a heavy sigh. We didn’t even make it out of California.
9
The female police officer—a tall, well-built 200 pounds—stood at the open motor home door talking to Cutbirth. Diego snatched bits and pieces of the conversation. The officer said something about a cracked taillight. Cutbirth asked if the taillight still worked and he flipped a dashboard switch. The cop stepped to the rear of the Winnebago and reported with a shout that the taillight worked fine. Then she walked back to the open door and told Cutbirth that the Winnebago’s rear tires were as bald as her ex-husband, and probably wouldn’t pass inspection. It all sounded like standard harassment bullshit to Diego, and in the end it was obvious the cop was more interested in Denny’s All-You-Can-Eat-Specials than in the mechanical shortcomings of an antique recreational vehicle. Two minutes later the Winnebago was on the road again.
Emily sat at the galley table beside her mother. Emily explained in great detail the many features of her Sony point-and-shoot digital camera to Diego and Adriana, who sat at the table across from her. They had just passed Tulare when Emily tottered to her feet and made her way to the front of the motor home.
“Mr. Cutbirth,” Emily began, “are we going to see the Grand Canyon? Maybe I could take some pictures.”
“No,” he said gruffly.
“How about Meteor Crater?”
“No.” His eyes were on the road ahead.
“Darn.” Emily frowned for a moment before her face brightened. “Do you want me to take your picture, Mr. Cutbirth? A picture of you driving?” She fumbled with her camera, which was hanging around her neck. “My camera has optical and digital zoom.”
“Go sit down and quit bugging me.”
“You don’t want me to take your picture?” Her camera was raised and ready. “It also has a movie mode. If you want I can—”
“Go sit down!”
The sides of her mouth drooping, Emily said, “Darn.” She returned to the galley table and slid in beside her mother, her face crumpling. “Mr. Cutbirth doesn’t want me to take his picture, Mom.”
“I know, baby,” Sissy said. “He has a lot on his mind. Maybe later.”
The old motor home continued south on Interstate 99 to Bakersfield, and then on to Barstow, where Cutbirth made a course correction (to everyone’s delight), heading east on Interstate 40. (East wasn’t ideal, but it was better than south.) The
highway followed the route of what had once been America’s Mother Road, Highway 66—Los Angeles to Chicago and points in between—back in the days of 30-cent gas and political civility.
Before leaving their apartment that morning, Diego and Adriana had stuffed their e-readers into their backpacks. Diego sat at the galley table immersed in the Chronicle’s daily crossword puzzle. Adriana had downloaded past issues of archaeology magazines, including Ancient America and American Archaeology. Adriana should have been lost in a world of prehistoric digs and archaeological artifacts, but her attention span was short, and she would look out the window every few minutes, her unfocused gaze fixed on the rutted silhouette of some distant mountain. Diego could only guess what she might be thinking.
When Sissy and Emily weren’t playing The Alphabet Game—finding consecutive letters of the alphabet in the first word on billboard copy—they were content to watch the desert landscape, which was lined on either side of the six-lane highway by thousands of towering windmills. Emily sat closest to the window, and when she raised her camera and began snapping photos of the soaring wind turbines, Sissy broke out her Tarot cards.
The Winnebago was passing through the parched remnants of Troy Lake—the Interstate bisected the dry lakebed—when Diego turned to his wife and patted her arm, interrupting another of her empty, thousand-yard stares. In a quiet voice he said, “What’s a three-letter word often used by married couples from San Francisco to prove their wild, crazy, mad love for another?” He had asked the question with a straight face. “Starts with the letter S.”
“I don’t have a clue, sweetie,” Adriana said in a low, ragged voice.
Diego looked at Adriana and mouthed the words, “I love you madly.”
“Talk is cheap, Mr. Sanchez.”
“How you doing?” Her eyes looked puffy.
“Viva la Z patch,” Adriana smiled.
Diego didn’t think her smile was all that convincing.
Yong and Sam sat at one end of the long sofa playing Scrabble on their cell phones.
Henry was asleep on the smaller sofa, his heavy breathing accentuated by thin, watery trills, his arms wrapped securely around his orange backpack.
Rosie had taken up permanent residence in the leather reclining chair, which separated the spacious living room from the galley. She was reading her Bible, her lips moving over each word, her fingers absently fondling the metal crucifix hanging from her neck. Every few minutes she would pause, deep in thought, stare out the window at nothing in particular, and then resume reading.
From behind the wheel of the motor home, Cutbirth would glance from time to time out the side window at the swarms of dust devils churning across the barren landscape, some rising hundreds of feet into the scorching, cloudless sky. Earlier, Cutbirth had popped in a CD, and Billie Holiday’s silky voice wafted quietly throughout the Winnebago.
When Diego tired of the crossword puzzle, he turned to the Chronicle’s Metro Page. Asmall headline at the bottom of the page grabbed his attention:
Health-Food Store Owner
Dies From Overdose
Diego was almost afraid to read the story, but he had to. It confirmed his suspicions. Ryan Strunk, 64, had been found dead in his apartment above Strunk’s Natural Foods store in Oakland. He had overdosed on amitriptylin. The story went on to detail the circumstances of his death. He had been found guilty of disobeying a government decree mandating that he purchase all his fresh produce from the Laiwu Corporate Farms. He was out on bond and his sentencing was scheduled for today.
Diego showed the article to Adriana. She read the story, her eyes first showing sympathy, but then disgust.
Diego suddenly forgot all about the bounty hunters in the Toyota Himalayan. His uneasiness had been replaced with anger, and he uttered a bitter laugh. “Story in the Chronicle you might be interested in, Cutbirth.” Diego didn’t wait for a reply. “Says Ryan Strunk killed himself yesterday. Overdosed. You remember Ryan, don’t you?”
There were a few moments of silence before Cutbirth said, “He didn’t have the money. I have a policy that if a rabbit doesn’t have—”
“Screw you and your policy!” Diego yelled, one side of his mouth twisted into a snarl. He didn’t know why he was responding with such a visceral reaction. He didn’t know Ryan Strunk. What difference did it make? “Strunk said he’d get the rest of the money, Cutbirth! He even agreed to pay a late fee!”
“Easy, Diego,” Adriana said, resting her hand on his shoulder.
“Poor man,” Sam whispered.
“Who’s Ryan Strunk, Mom?” Emily asked, pulling the viewfinder away from her eyes.
Sissy shushed her daughter.
“Where is your humanity, Cutbirth?” Diego said.
Talking over his shoulder, Cutbirth said, “I told you it’s about the money, not the morality, and I meant it.” Cutbirth leaned forward and turned up Billie Holiday’s voice.
All the talking and yelling had awakened Henry, and he stood up and arched his back. He looked at no one in particular and said, “Try talking a little louder next time.” His backpack dangling from his arm, he walked through the galley toward the bathroom, scratching his butt every step of the way.
The Cummins diesel and its 400 horses hummed.
“Would anyone like a reading?” Sissy asked, shuffling her Tarot cards.
“Yeah, do me,” Yong said from the sofa. “Tarot cards. It’s psychic readings, right?”
“Doing Tarot readings is working with energy,” Sissy explained. “There are three sources of energy. Mine, yours, and the cards’.”
Yong smiled. “A psychic reading, right?”
Sissy offered a polite nod. “Right.”
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,” Rosie said, her eyes finding them over the top of her open Bible. “But inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
“We’re just having some fun, Rosie,” Sissy protested. “It’s just a game.”
“So what do you see in my future?” Yong’s dark eyes sparkled with curiosity.
Sissy got up from the galley table and went over and sat at one end of the big sofa. She shuffled the deck again, and then dealt three rows of cards face down on the sofa cushion. She slowly traced her finger above each row of cards, and then returned to the first column. Yong and Sam watched attentively from the other end of the leather couch. Sissy turned over the card at the top of the column and looked at it. Her eyes grew wide and she quickly placed the card face down again. “Oh, damn!” she gasped, a clumsy smile quivering on her lips.
Yong laughed. “What was it? Did you see something terrible in my future?” His smile slid into a worried frown. “Was it bad?”
“I’ll do another card.”
“Sure, do another one.”
Sissy looked at him with frightened eyes and shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Yong said, his frown deepening.
“I can’t lie. It’s an unwritten rule of Tarot readings. If you’re going to do readings you have to be honest. You have to take the good with the bad.”
“So be honest.”
In a quiet voice Sissy said, “It was the Death card, Yong.”
“False prophets in sheep’s clothing,” Rosie muttered.
Latitude 38 Page 9