In a few minutes, the Hatfield & Sons driver finished fueling his rig, climbed into his big red Kenworth tractor, and drove away. Cutbirth pulled the Winnebago forward, then got out and began filling the antique motor home’s 100-gallon fuel tank.
Ten minutes later a Chinese soldier waved them out of the main gate and they were on the road again. The Toyota Himalayan had waited at the side of the road a hundred yards or so from the main gate. It fell in behind the Winnebago. Diego rolled over and finally managed to get to sleep.
***
Diego was later wakened by the absence of the vehicle’s lulling motion—the motor home had stopped moving, though he couldn’t say when. He glanced at his watch: 3:05 a.m. The Winnebago’s auxiliary engine was running, Diego guessed to power the air-conditioner. He pulled back the curtain and looked out the window. They were parked in front an adobe building decorated with a mural of a dancing woman shaking castanets. A small lighted sign read Silva’s Saloon.
He slipped quietly out of bed. Adriana was sleeping comfortably thanks to a second Z patch. He pulled on a T-shirt, slipped into his hiking boots, and maneuvered through the darkness down the narrow hallway and into the living room. The pup lay curled next to Henry on the small sofa hide-a-bed, the man’s thin watery snores coming in five-second intervals. Henry had one arm looped through a strap of his orange backpack.
Yong and Sam had been assigned the larger sofa hide-a-bed, and Diego glanced down at them as he shuffled toward the front of the Winnebago. The two men were locked in a slumbering embrace.
Cutbirth had left the bi-fold door cracked, and Diego walked quietly down the stairs, pushed the door open, and stepped outside. The Toyota pickup was parked at the edge of the gravel parking lot, a stone’s throw away. The sight of it made Diego’s skin crawl with gooseflesh. The bastards were like an eternal cancer. The Toyota blinked its parking lights at Diego as if to say, “Howdy! We’re still here!”
“Fuck you,” Diego muttered. He flipped them the bird. He couldn’t remember the last time he had flipped off someone. Even though it accomplished nothing, it felt good.
A car and two pickup trucks were parked in the gravel lot to the left. Off to his right, the horizon was bleached white by city lights. Diego had no idea what city. It had to be a city of some size because the smell of burnt flesh was thick in the night air and most small towns still had the space to bury their dead. He guessed they were somewhere in New Mexico.
A sign on the front door of the saloon instructed Diego to RING BUZZER. He did, and in a few seconds a small window on the door slid open and a woman’s face appeared.
“How can I help you?” A bleach-bottle blonde, the woman had been rode hard and put up wet, as the saying went. She had some mileage. Looked 50 though she was probably only 35. But she had pretty ocean-blue eyes.
“I’m looking for Arnold Cutbirth.”
“You a friend of his?”
Diego jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m traveling with him.”
The window closed, a lock clicked, and the door opened.
“Come in, please,” the woman said. She was dressed in a racy low-cut pink blouse and a long, flowery skirt. Diego wondered if she had posed for the building’s mural. “My name’s Thelma. What can I get you?”
“Where’s Arnold?” Diego said, looking around. A cowboy sat at one end of the bar talking on his cell phone, a Latino woman reading a paperback at the other. Two elderly men sat at a small round table drinking beer and talking to two women, both of whom were blessed with well-defined cleavages. The jukebox was playing a sad, twangy country song.
“Why don’t you have a drink? He won’t be long,” Thelma said.
“Where is he…exactly?”
“He’s in the back with the Tish sisters.” She walked behind the bar.
“How many Tish sisters are there, Thelma?” Diego asked. He climbed onto a bar stool.
“Four,” she said.
“Four?”
“Only two work here. The other two live in Gallup,” Thelma said. “Would you like to go next?”
“‘Go next’ with the two Trish sisters?”
“Yes.”
“No, thanks.”
“What can I get you to drink?”
“Does he come here often?”
“Beer or whiskey?”
“Take me to him. We need to talk.” Diego eyed a beaded doorway curtain at the end of the bar. He stood up. Cutbirth was costing them valuable time.
“I wouldn’t interrupt Mr. Cutbirth if I were you,” Thelma said. “He doesn’t like to be interrupted. So what’ll you have?”
Diego uttered an annoyed sigh and slumped back onto the bar stool. “A shot of Johnnie Walker, black label.”
“Ten dollars a shot.”
“That’s fine,” Diego said.
“Up front.”
Diego remembered he was broke. “Does Mr. Cutbirth run a nightly tab?”
“Yes.”
“Put it on his tab.”
“Don’t get much call for Johnnie Walker black,” Thelma said. “I’ll have to go in the back and see what we have.” She disappeared through the beaded curtain, the beads rattling as she pushed through. Diego looked at the woman at the end of the bar. She was making goo-goo eyes at him. In a few seconds Thelma reappeared with a brand new bottle of Johnnie Walker, black label.
Diego watched her pour the shot, his senses tingling. “Best scotch made,” he said, raising the glass to his nose and filling his nostrils with the honeyed aroma.
“I wouldn’t know,” Thelma said. “I’m a gin drinker.”
Diego threw down the shot and shuddered. “Man, I needed that.”
The woman at the end of the bar—the one reading the paperback—came down and took a stool next to Diego. “¿Quiere usted al partido conmigo?” the woman asked. Her perfume was strong and smelled like ripe melons.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.” Diego guessed she was about 20. A pretty girl. Perfect teeth. Flawless skin the color of mahogany.
“I said, do you want to party with me?” the woman said. “My name’s Guadalupe.”
For a split second Diego wanted very much to party with Guadalupe. He wanted to fall into Guadalupe’s soft embrace and forget all about a wife that was dying. He wanted to caress Guadalupe’s supple breasts and forget all about his unspeakable encounter with Raul Perez. He wanted to spread Guadalupe’s legs and thrust himself into her and forget about Russian T-48 anti-personnel landmines and .50-caliber machineguns.
“It’s a tempting offer, Guadalupe. You’re a beautiful woman. But I’ll have to pass. How long has Mr. Cutbirth been in the back?” He glimpsed the curtained doorway again. They needed to get the hell back on the road. They needed to get the hell across the border as soon as humanly possible. Adriana only had five Z patches left. Diego had become obsessed with the single notion of getting Adriana across the border. Nothing else mattered.
“Are you with Immigration?” Guadalupe said.
“No.”
“Morals?”
“No, I’m not with the government.”
“He won’t be long,” Guadalupe said. “Would you take me with you?”
“What?”
In a stage whisper, Guadalupe said, “Take me with you across the border.”
“What makes you think we’re going across the border, Guadalupe?”
“Mr. Cutbirth comes through with a coach filled with people. He returns a week later and the coach is empty. It’s obvious.”
“You’d better talk to Mr. Cutbirth about that.”
“It’s not easy getting across the border,” Guadalupe said. “How does Mr. Cutbirth do it?”
“I have no idea.” It occurred to Diego that Guadalupe might be a paid informer. Then it occurred to him that he was becoming paranoid. In the end, it occurred to him to keep his mouth shut and drink another shot of Johnnie Walker.
“My cousin and his wife tried. He was shot. She’s in prison.”
“I’m sorry,” Diego said. He wished he hadn’t heard that.
“I want a life. I have none here.” Her eyes turned misty.
“You’d better talk to Mr. Cutbirth.”
Guadalupe sighed. “Would you buy me a beer?”
Diego was about to tell Thelma to put a beer on Cutbirth’s tab when her cell phone rang. She dug it out of her skirt pocket and flipped it open. “This is Thelma.” In the next moment, her ocean-blue eyes took on the look of unholy dread. She flipped the phone closed, dropped it into her skirt pocket, and in a loud voice said, “Cops are coming! Everybody out!”
Thelma kicked back a throw-rug at her feet, then leaned down and opened a trap door. She pushed the door back onto its hinges and hurried over to the curtained doorway. She poked her head through the beads and yelled a second warning. “Cops will be here in three minutes!”
Guadalupe bounced around the end of the bar and scrambled down a ladder and into a dark hole. The well-endowed women who had been sitting at a table with the elderly men were moments behind. One of the women tripped over the rug and nearly fell headfirst into the hole. She crawled the last few feet on her hands and knees.
Diego understood the implications immediately. Prostitution (or Harlotry as the government liked to call it) was not tolerated. Anyone suspected of participating in such vulgar activities (be they the giver or the receiver) were not only fined and sentenced to five years in prison—and it seemed the government never had a problem successfully prosecuting their cases—but the perpetrators were also forced to sit through 200 hours of behavior modification classes while serving their sentence. In Diego’s mind that would be worse than jail time.
Arnold Cutbirth crashed through the beaded curtain with the intensity of a bull elephant. He hooked a ringed finger on one the curtain strings, and dozens of beads flew everywhere. They made a tinkling sound as they bounced across the floor. When Cutbirth reached the front door, one sneaker on, one sneaker off—the other departing patrons had left the door wide open—he stopped and did his best imitation of a pogo stick. Hopping around on one foot, he struggled to pull on his other sneaker. It was only then that he saw Diego, who had climbed down from his bar stool and followed Cutbirth to the front door.
“You’ve got some explaining to do, Cutbirth!”
“Not likely, Ad Man!”
“Oh, I think so!”
A melodic female voice cut through the chaos. “Goodbye, Neanderthal!”
Diego turned toward the voice. Standing in the frayed curtain doorway—the strings of beads curled about their heads and beefy shoulders—were two rather large and rather middle-aged women wearing white robes.
“Wouldn’t be seeing you girls again!” Cutbirth shouted. “Nice to have made your acquaintance over these many months.” He slipped into his sneaker and gave them a snappy military salute. “I’ll think of you both.”
“Into the cellar!” Thelma urged from behind the bar, waving the women toward her. They disappeared down the hole. Thelma then turned toward the front door. “You owe me money, Cutbirth!” she cried.
Cutbirth pulled a wad of bills out of his wallet and threw them in the general direction of Thelma, and then he and Diego exited Silva’s Saloon with the urgency of two bank robbers. They ran across the parking lot, the gravel crackling under their feet. The other saloon patrons were already in their cars and burning rubber. When Diego and Cutbirth reached the motor home, Cutbirth pulled open the bi-fold door. He started to climb the stairs, but Diego stepped in front of him.
“Listen to me, Cutbirth!” Diego snarled. “From now we stop to refuel, nothing else!”
“What the hell do you think I was doing?” His archaic face took on the guise of a Halloween mask in the dim light. “I was refueling. Now step aside!”
“Next time take a bottle of hand lotion and retreat to the bathroom.”
“Get the fuck out of my way before I knock your dick stiff.”
“That, my friend, is the problem—your stiff dick!”
“You have two seconds….”
“You put everyone in jeopardy!” Diego said, making his case with as much vigor as he could muster. “If you’d been arrested, where would that have left the rest of us? In a world of hurt, that’s where!”
“Okay, fine, you’ve made your point. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
Diego moved aside and Cutbirth sprinted up the stairs. Diego followed.
Everyone inside the motor home by now was awake.
Cutbirth dropped into his cab seat and started the diesel engine. It coughed and choked before turning over with a clamorous rattle.
“What’s going on?” Henry said. He was sitting on the edge of the small sofa, his orange backpack beside him. The pup was lying on the floor, his paws stretched out over one of Henry’s bare feet.
“Where are we?” Yong asked, raising up in bed and peering out the window.
“Is everything okay?” Sam said. He threw his legs to the side of the sofa-bed and sat up.
Sissy and Rosa stood motionless in the rear hallway. Sissy was chewing on a fingernail. Emily was beside her mother, her diminutive figure outlined by the light filtering through the rear window.
Diego gazed through the bug-infested windshield. The Toyota had come to life and was idling across the parking lot. Its lights were on.
“Diego…?” It was Adriana. She was standing in the bedroom doorway.
Diego hurried back to his wife. “Everything’s fine,” he assured her.
“You’ve been drinking.”
“I had a shot of scotch.”
Cutbirth dropped the big Winnebago into gear. Spinning gravel, he drove out of the parking lot and onto a narrow two-lane highway toward the sheen of lights in the sky. Diego and his wife stepped into their bedroom and sat on the bed. The motor home shook and rattled as it struggled to gain speed.
Adriana said, “What else did you have?” She sniffed the air. “I smell perfume.”
“There were women inside—whores,” Diego said. “I went in to get Cutbirth.”
“You didn’t…?”
Diego frowned. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
Adriana heaved a big sigh. “I suppose I’m feeling a bit insecure these days.” She closed her eyes and rolled her head. “Depressed, actually.”
“It’s the Z patches.”
Adriana nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“You’re still my girl. You’ll always be my girl.” He drew her close and kissed her lips.
Cutbirth had driven less than a quarter mile when a parade of three National Police cars sped past in the opposite direction.
12
It was a little past noon Saturday when the Winnebago made a second diesel fuel stop. The Laiwu farm was located three miles south of I-40 near Tucumcari, New Mexico. Every Laiwu farm was laid out the same—the Chinese were noted for their management concept of logistical efficiencies based upon asset placement—and after being waved through the gate by a soldier, Cutbirth drove directly to the fuel terminal.
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