“Are you sure they’re missing, Little Mother?” Cutbirth inquired.
“They’re missing,” Diego confirmed. “Adriana has cancer. The pain patches…help.”
“Okay, everyone empty their backpacks,” Cutbirth ordered. “If we’re lucky, we might get on the trail by sunset.”
“I’m not dumping my backpack,” Henry said. “You can’t make me.”
Cutbirth walked over to Henry. “You have exactly ten seconds to empty your backpack or something very bad will happen to you.”
Henry began to reply, thought better of it, and immediately emptied his backpack. It was stuffed with dozens of official-looking documents embossed with gold seals.
“Good boy, Henry,” Cutbirth said, glancing at the stack of papers.
Everyone dumped the contents of their packs on the ground, then stood back as Diego and Adriana picked through each pile. There were no Z patches to be found.
“Could you have…misplaced them, Adriana?” Diego asked. “Think for a moment where you might—”
“I didn’t misplace them,” Adriana said in a frustrated voice. “How could I misplace them?”
“Okay,” Diego said, “but why would someone take two and not all three? That’s all I—”
“Someone took them, Diego!” Adriana interrupted in a sharp voice. She shot him a snarly, venomous look. He had never seen such rage in her eyes—he attributed it to her pain—and it made his stomach turn.
“I doubt that anyone would be so callous as to steal your pain patches,” Henry speculated, stuffing the documents back into his backpack. “Nobody could be that cold.”
“When I want your opinion,” Adriana said, “I’ll ask for it, Henry.”
“Excuse me for living,” he replied, milking his goatee.
“Whoever took the patches,” Diego speculated, “must have already applied them.” He eyed each of his traveling companions.
“What’s your point?” Cutbirth said, looking unhappy.
“My point is that those pain patches must be hidden under someone’s T-shirt or shorts,” Diego said. “They might even be wearing them.”
“If you’re suggesting we do some sort of strip search,” Yong said, “it ain’t gonna happen.”
“No way I’m undressing,” Sam said.
“Nor I,” Rosie said.
Cutbirth looked at Diego and said, “What if we do a strip search and don’t find the patches?”
“What if we do?”
Diego liked the idea of an unannounced strip search. If someone was wearing one of the patches beneath his or her T-shirt or shorts, they would not have had the chance to remove them.
“I’m not undressing for anyone,” Henry said.
“Yeah, you are,” Cutbirth said. He looked at the others. “Men down to their skives. Women down to their panties and bra. If there is a thief among us, let’s flush him or her out. And don’t waste any time about doing it, either,” Cutbirth growled. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
“No way I’m taking off my clothes,” Rosie protested. “You can’t make me, Mr. Cutbirth.”
“Oh, I can make you,” he said. “I can sure as hell make you.”
“Emily isn’t stripping down for anyone,” Sissy said. “She and I will take our stuff and leave before that happens.”
“Emily is exempt,” Cutbirth said. “Everyone else, off with your treads. The sooner we get this behind us, the sooner we’ll arrive at the cave.”
“I’m with Rosie,” Henry said. “I refuse to take my clothes off. This is insane. Totally fucking insane.”
Cutbirth gave Henry a look. “If I have to force you at the point of my gun, you will remove your clothes. If there’s a thief among us, I’d like to know who that person is.” He turned and looked at them. “In fact, if that person steps forward right now and produces the Z patches, we can dispense with the strip search and I’ll allow that person to remain a part of the group. If they don’t, and I find the patches on their body, something very, very unpleasant will befall that person.”
Each of them exchanged glances, but no one said a word.
“Okay, Henry, you’re first. Off with the duds,” Cutbirth said. “And turn your pockets inside out once they’re off.”
When Henry hesitated, Cutbirth removed Madame Glock from the shoulder holster, walked over to him, and pointed the gun at his head. Henry began to undress.
“This is a sin again mankind!” Rosie cried. “An abominable sin.”
Cutbirth looked at Diego. “You, too, Ad Man.”
“Why would I steal my wife’s pain patches?”
“Just do it!”
Sissy sent Emily into the forest with the instructions to turn her back toward the campsite until she was given the all-clear. Emily scurried away.
“Boots, too,” Cutbirth said. “That would be a perfect place to hide a pain patch or two.”
Henry was the only one who had started to undress. He had removed his T-shirt—his sunken chest was as white as the underbelly of a week-dead fish—when he said, “It’s not fair that we should remove our clothes and you don’t, Cutbirth.”
“Henry’s right,” Yong said. “You could just as easily be the thief as any of us.”
“I’m the alpha male, remember?” Cutbirth said. “I give the orders.”
Yong looked at each of them. “Don’t anyone remove their clothes until Cutbirth does.”
Everyone looked at Cutbirth.
“I agree with Yong, Mr. Cutbirth,” Sissy said, “it’s not fair that we should—”
“You goddamned people are making me crazy!” Cutbirth cried. “If it will expedite the process, I’ll remove my clothes!” Cutbirth sat on the ground and pulled off his boots, then stood up and hurriedly slipped out of his shorts and T-shirt. He wasn’t wearing any underwear and he stood bare naked gazing at each of them. “Everybody happy?” Just like his arms and legs, Cutbirth’s back and chest were covered with a thick, gnarly mat of dark hair. Diego was certain it was that mat of hair that kept Neanderthals warm during the cold winters of Europe. Cutbirth’s penis hung like a limp fire-hose between his legs. Cutbirth raised his hands above his head and did a slow turnaround. “See, no pain patches.”
Sissy pulled her eyes away from Cutbirth’s donkey-sized dong and looked into the forest. Silhouetted by the faint light of dawn, Emily was 30 yards away with her back turned toward the campsite.
“Now, everybody strip!” Cutbirth commanded as he dressed.
Everyone sat on the ground and removed their boots. Yong, Sam, Henry, and Diego stripped down to their shorts.
Rosie stood in her bra and panties, her arms crossed over her bosom. Her melon-sized breasts sagged under their own weight inside a white sports bra. Rosie raised her arms above her head and turned full around. “See, no patches,” she said with urgency. She turned the pockets of her walking shorts inside out, and then dressed hurriedly.
“No pain patches here either,” Sissy said. She was wearing white-lace panties—no bra. Her smallish but symmetrical breasts bore dark, puffy nipples. She did a 360 turn, and then began to dress after turning the pockets of her shorts inside out.
Yong was wearing a spandex bikini brief. Sam wore colorful boxers. Diego and Henry were both in white briefs. At first Diego found it amusing that he and Henry shared the same taste in underwear, but then he shuddered to think that there was some deep-seated psychological connection between them as well.
“Don’t put your boots back on until I’ve searched them,” Cutbirth said. He examined the insides of everyone’s boots.
Fully dressed now, Sissy stared at the festering F on Sam’s stomach. She looked stunned, and in a soft voice said, “What happened to you, Sam?”
“A little, old-fashioned queer bashing,” Sam said.
“I am so sorry,” Sissy said, her eyes fixed on the terrible wound.
One by one, each man presented himself, arms raised. They showed their pockets, and then dressed.
Cutbirth looked
at Diego. “Satisfied?”
Diego wasn’t satisfied, far from it, but he had no choice but to say that he was.
“But I’m not,” Adriana said. “There is a thief amongst us.”
***
Before leaving the campsite, Cutbirth cut a leafy branch from a nearby oak tree and hurriedly swept the area clean of footprints that had been made in the few patches of dirt surrounding the campsite.
“Is there any other business?” Cutbirth challenged. “At this rate we won’t make it to the cave until Christmas. You people rank as the most disorganized, mentally challenged group of rabbits I have ever had the displeasure of knowing.”
Everyone gathered up their gear and fell in single-file behind Cutbirth, who followed a vague, narrow path, which ran north between the river and the base of the mountain. On Cutbirth’s back was his pack. In his hand was the black gym bag stuffed with $320,000.
It was high summer and although it was not yet daylight, the heat and humidity of the Missouri backwoods lay heavy in the air.
They had gone only a short distance up the trail when Rosie cried from the back of the line, “Mr. Cutbirth! I’ve got to go back!”
“What now?” Cutbirth roared.
“I left my Bible under one of the canoes.”
“Dammit, Mojado! Make it quick!” Cutbirth said. “We’ll wait five minutes, no longer!”
He looked at Diego. “Did I say we’d make it to the cave by Christmas? I meant Christmas of next year.”
Rosie loped off down the trail toward the campsite, her fleshy thighs jostling with each hurried stride.
Cutbirth said nature was calling him again—everyone had taken a bathroom break earlier—and he went off into the woods as each of them found a suitable spot to sit and wait for Rosie’s return. A towering oak had been uprooted by some force of nature—wind, most likely, Diego guessed—and lay parallel to the trail. They sat on the tree like birds on a telephone wire. Always the loner, Henry claimed a plot of ground at the base of a granite rock that protruded a few feet above the Ozark soil like a petrified dinosaur’s tooth.
“Adriana, I’m sorry about your cancer,” Sissy said. She was using her backpack as an ottoman. “I saw the scars.”
“Yes, they did a real number on my neck,” Adriana said, touching the long, ghastly incision. “They removed some bad lymph nodes.”
“Your voice is sort of scratchy,” Emily said. “Is that because of the cancer?”
“Yes, it’s because of the cancer.”
Sissy said, “My grandfather—the one named Arnold—had pancreatic cancer. He had pain patches too. I’m sorry you lost them or someone took them or whatever.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Is that why you’re going to cross the border, Mrs. Sanchez?” Emily asked. “To get your cancer fixed?” Emily was seated on the fallen tree beside her mother. She had to lean forward to make eye contact with Adriana.
Yong and Sam had staked out a place at the other end of the uprooted tree. They listened attentively.
“No, Emily, I, uh…” Adriana looked at Sissy for help.
“It’s okay, Adriana,” Sissy said. “Emily has seen a lot. She’s older than ten.”
Adriana looked at Emily and smiled. “My cancer is terminal, Emily. That means it can’t be fixed. It means I’m going to die. I’m going to cross the border so a doctor can help me die peacefully.”
Emily’s face turned sad. “Oh.”
“But I’m not unhappy about it.”
“Aren’t you sort of, uh, scared?”
Adriana considered Emily’s question. “A little.”
Silently fighting the flood of tears that was building behind his eyes, Diego had been listening to his wife’s conversation with Sissy and Emily. He had, however, been watching Cutbirth all this time. The Neanderthal had walked into the forest on a line that ran perpendicular to the trail. He had continued on this line until he was almost hidden by the trees. Almost, but not completely. Diego had caught bits and pieces of his shadowy figure making a sharp 90-degree turn back to the south, back toward their campsite from the night before. Was Cutbirth headed back to the camp? If so, why? Did he fear for Rosie’s safety? Or was there another reason?
Diego climbed to his feet and told Adriana, “I’m going back to check on Rosie. It’s not safe in these woods.”
Diego headed back down the dimly lighted trail toward their campsite. As he approached the campsite two minutes later, Diego could see Rosie through the tightly bunched thicket of trees. She had her back to him, a cell phone at her ear. When Diego was within 30 yards or so of the campsite, he stepped off the trail and hunkered down in a thick, waist-high bed of leafy ferns. The wind was coming out of the south, and he could hear Rosie’s voice.
“…what I said. Those idiotic bounty hunters are lost!” Rosie’s voice was strained with indignation. “Tell them to look for a canoe paddle sticking out of the mud at the river’s edge.”
Hidden in the overflowing plot of ferns, Diego raised up slightly. Beyond the campsite, perhaps 50 yards away, Cutbirth was emerging from the forest. Diego dropped to his knees and through a tiny window of stems and leaves, watched events unfold.
Speaking into her phone, Rosie said, “We’re about two miles from—” At that moment Rosie saw Cutbirth step from the forest shadows. Her words crashed to a halt. The cell phone slipped from her hand.
Arnold Cutbirth walked to within ten feet of Rosie and stopped, that cryptic, unreadable smile etched onto his unsightly face.
“Go ahead and finish your conversation, Mojado,” Cutbirth said politely.
Rosie remained silent, her body trembling. Diego watched through his window of vegetation as urine dribbled down Rosie’s leg.
“Cat got your tongue?” Cutbirth took another step toward her.
A dark premonition awoke within Diego, one he had never known. Something very bad was about to happen to Rosie. He knew it as sure as he knew his own name, and his heart accelerated.
“I won’t…I won’t make any excuses. I needed the…the money,” Rosie stammered. She had turned slightly and Diego could see an awkward smile pulling at her plump lips. “It’s as simple…as simple as that.” Her voice quivered with fear. She took a hesitant step backward.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mojado,” Cutbirth said, walking over and picking up her cell phone. He tossed it sidearm toward the river. The tiny phone skipped like a flat rock before sinking in a pool of water near the opposite bank. “You were willing to sacrifice eight lives for a few bucks. I admire your entrepreneurial spirit.”
“Please don’t…don’t hurt me,” Rosie begged.
Diego wanted to jump up and go to Rosie’s defense. Yes, she had betrayed them, but… But what? There was no argument Diego could make on her behalf. She had betrayed all of them, and she would be punished for that. A tsunami of conflicting emotions ripped through Diego.
“Stay where you are,” Cutbirth told Rosie.
Cutbirth strode out of Diego’s window of vegetation. Diego rose up slightly and watched Cutbirth walk over to the river’s edge. He looked upstream and downstream through the light shroud of morning fog—there was no one on the river at this time of day—and then removed the wooden paddle Rosie had stuck in the mud. He threw it into the brush.
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