Rovers

by RICHARD LANGE

  He calls for a smoke when he finishes. Johnny Kickapoo passes a pack of Lucky Strikes.

  “What happened next?” Antonia says.

  “I laid there until I healed, then made my way back here,” he says.

  “No sign of them on the way?”

  “Not hide nor hair.”

  “Would you know them if you saw them again?”

  “The motherfuckers who dusted my best friend and tried real hard to dust me? Yeah, I’d know them.”

  The Fiends are roiling, thirsty for revenge, ready to ride out and tear the city apart searching for the lowlifes who killed their compatriot, but it’s already 4 a.m.—only an hour until daybreak.

  “We’ll come up with a plan and start hunting as soon as the sun sets tonight,” Antonia says.

  “I’m not waiting,” Bob says. “Who’ll lend me a bike?”

  “Take mine,” Johnny says.

  “And I’ll ride with you,” Pedro says.

  “No,” Bob says. “I’m going alone.”

  He cruises the strip of seedy motels on East Van Buren, the ones that rent rooms by the hour and show dirty movies on the TVs. There’s hardly anyone on the street. A jitterbugging speed freak swatting at imaginary insects, two alkies grappling under a neon cactus, a cop walking from his patrol car into a diner. No rovers.

  A dark-haired skeleton wobbling down the sidewalk makes him ease off the throttle. She resembles the girl from the mountain. As he rolls slowly past, she yanks the neck of her T-shirt down to flash her tits, and he sees it’s just some whore, some dope fiend. He feels like killing her anyway, feels like watching someone die. Problem is, the sun’ll be up before he could do her and get rid of the body.

  Even so, he pulls over and waits for her to catch up.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she says.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he says.

  “You looking to party?”

  “You looking to die?”

  The whore recoils. “Get the fuck out of here, man, before I call a cop,” she screeches.

  Bob roars off, leaving her spewing curses.

  He gets back to his room right before daybreak. As he lies down on the bed, the phone rings.

  “Any luck?” Elijah says.

  “Nope,” he replies.

  “We’ll find them tonight, don’t worry.”

  Elijah hangs up the phone and pulls the curtains tighter to keep out the rising sun. Antonia is reading on the bed. Her nose is always in a book, which delights Elijah. He views it as something special about her, as he’s never in his life known anyone else who read for pleasure.

  And a long life it’s been. He’s the oldest of the Fiends, born in 1757 in Madrid as Diego Mateo Casal. His father was a wealthy trader and confidant of the king, but all Elijah remembers about growing up is learning to hunt. Boar, deer, mouflon, pheasant. Until he turned, stalking game with a rifle was his greatest passion, and he still finds it funny that a man who once lived to hunt now hunts to live.

  He eventually went to work for his father, who sent him to New Orleans and put him in charge of the family company’s office there. He fell in with a crowd of dissipated expatriates, including a wild, troubled Creole girl, a rover, who introduced him to opium and persuaded him to turn. She killed herself a year later, dashing, in the throes of a drug frenzy, out of their room and into the sun-blasted courtyard at high noon one day, and he fled New Orleans bereft, disowned, and under suspicion. He changed his name and roamed the growing towns, swelling cities, and endless wildernesses of the new country of America. He met Antonia in Boston in 1842. She was the smartest and most beautiful rover he’d ever encountered, and they’ve been inseparable ever since.

  “Bob didn’t find the men who attacked them,” he says to her.

  “Did you think he would?” she replies. “They probably left town right afterward.”

  “We have to search at least one night if we expect to keep him and the rest in line.”

  “They do love to go on and on about loyalty, don’t they?” Antonia says. “One for all and all for one and how willing they are to die for the gang.”

  Elijah sits on the bed beside her. “You used to feel that way, too, when we started this thing,” he says.

  “And now most days I wouldn’t be comfortable turning my back on a one of them.”

  “There’s another reason we need to find the killers. If word spreads that we let someone get away with dusting one of ours, it’ll make us look weak—weak enough that someone else will take a crack at us. We need to keep people scared. That’s what keeps us strong.”

  “Nobody’d be scared of us if they knew how close the legendary Fiends were to coming apart these days, how little it takes to set us at each other’s throats.”

  “Even so, now’s not the time to walk away,” Elijah says. “The least we owe them is to see this situation through. We’ve ridden together for a good while.”

  Antonia scoffs and shakes her head. “You know what your problem is?” she says. “You’re tenderhearted.”

  Elijah tears the book out of her hands and climbs on top of her. He pins her wrists to the mattress and kisses her hard on the mouth. “Who are you calling tenderhearted?” he says.

  17

  J​ESSE STOPS FOR GAS IN FLAGSTAFF. HE’D LIKE TO PUSH ON and put more miles between him, Edgar, and Johona and the Fiends, but it’s already 3 a.m. They could make Tuba City before sunrise but would be in trouble if no rooms were available. Better to play it safe and hole up here for the day.

  “Do you know of a decent motel?” he asks the kid scrubbing bugs off the windshield of the Grand Prix.

  “The Spur’s down the road,” the kid says around a wad of tobacco. “It’s cheap and pretty clean.”

  Edgar and Johona return from the station’s bathrooms. Edgar asks for change for the candy machine. Jesse tells him to get in the car. Johona yawns and stretches. She’s calmed down over the past few hours, had time to think things through.

  Jesse asks if she’s tired.

  “Bad dreams keep waking me up,” she says.

  “We’ll stop here. You’ll rest better in a bed.”

  They check into the motel and walk to a diner next door. It has a cowboy theme. Knotty-pine paneling, steer horns hanging behind the cash register. The breakfast special is called the Roundup. Jesse, Edgar, and Johona are the only customers.

  “Out late or up early?” the waitress asks as she pours coffee.

  “Driving at night to beat the heat,” Jesse says.

  “Good thinking. What can I get you?”

  Eggs, pancakes, sausage, biscuits—Jesse and the others order more food than they can finish and eat it faster than they should. When Jesse runs out of steam, he sits back and looks out at the empty parking lot and deserted highway. He hates the orange streetlights that are replacing the old white ones. They suck the color out of everything and put him in mind of fire.

  “How far are we from Denver?” Johona says.

  “Ten, eleven hours,” Jesse says. “We’ll have to stop again, probably in Albuquerque.”

  “We’ll be passing the rez,” Johona says. “I’ve got family on it. My grandma and grandpa, shimá sání and shicheii. I should have you let me off. If any bikers show up out there, my cousins’ll beat the shit out of them.”

  She wants to sound tough but is too tired to be convincing. Chewing her bottom lip, she drags her fork through a puddle of egg yolk. She looks most like Claudine when she’s like this, unmasked, unselfconscious.

  “You speak Navajo?” Jesse says.

  “Diné,” she says. “The language is called Diné. My mom tried to teach me, but I wasn’t into it. I took French instead.”

  “Say something in French, then,” Jesse says, not sure he really wants her to, not sure he can handle it.

  “Je t’aime,” she says, and he sees Claudine saying it.

  “Do you know what that means?” Johona says.

  “No,” Jesse replies, lying.

  “That’
s I love you.”

  Edgar opens a jelly packet and slurps the jelly out of it.

  “Quit,” Jesse says, glad to have a distraction.

  “It’s good,” Edgar says, sliding him a packet. “Try it.”

  “There’s a lady present,” Jesse says. “Act like a gentleman.”

  “Forgive me, Miss Johona,” Edgar says with a courtly nod. He can’t keep it up, starts giggling. “Convoy” comes on the radio behind the counter, and he sings along. “Breaker one nine, this here’s the Rubber Duck…”

  Outside, the stars are disappearing one by one. Jesse feels day creeping up.

  Edgar and Johona get the beds, and Jesse stretches out on the floor with a blanket and pillow. The long night has taken its toll. He falls asleep as soon as he closes his eyes. As a reward for all he’s been through, he finds himself walking his desert road again, dreaming his dream.

  He watches a dust devil whirl, a lizard skitter. He kicks the pop can, chases it, kicks it again. A hawk circles in the sky this time, its shadow crossing and recrossing the road in front of him. Jesse. A voice calls his name. He looks around. Jesse.

  The dream fades, and Johona’s crouched beside him.

  “I’m freaking out,” she says. “Come talk to me for a while.”

  He’s reluctant. His weakness for her has already led to this, to them running for their lives, and the last thing he needs is something to happen that’ll complicate things even further. He has a plan, and he’s sticking to it: Drop her at the bus station in Denver and forget her. But then she puts her lips to his ear and whispers, “Please,” and his resolve sways and topples.

  He checks on Edgar, who’s snoring quietly, Abby between his legs, checks the door for the fifth time to make sure it’s locked, and climbs onto the bed. He means to keep some space between them, but Johona pulls his arm around her and rests her head on his chest. The weight of her, the smell of her, the warmth triggers so many memories, he’s not sure he can bear it.

  “You’re not lying, are you, about this rover jazz?” she says.

  “You saw that man turn to dust,” he replies.

  “Maybe it was a trick.”

  A thin strip of sunlight blazes between the curtain and the window frame. “Look here,” Jesse says, and Johona lifts her head to watch him stick his finger into the beam. Her body stiffens, and she wrinkles her nose at the stink of burning flesh. Jesse shows her the charred finger, and she stares wide-eyed as it heals. When it’s good as new, she takes hold of it and examines it closely.

  “That’s so fucking weird,” she says, reaching for her cigarettes. “So how old are you, really?”

  “I was born August 30, 1876,” Jesse says. “Edgar was born on the eighth of December, 1883.”

  “You’ve lived through so much stuff.”

  “I’ve been too busy looking after Edgar to pay much attention.”

  “It’s been a hundred years. Everything’s changed. There’s cars, airplanes, TV.”

  “Yeah, but people are the same. Still lying, still thieving, still killing each other.”

  Johona strikes a match and puts it to a smoke. “There’s a preacher who says the world is ending next year,” she says.

  “There’s always a preacher saying that,” Jesse says. “Don’t listen.”

  “You’re cynical. It’s because you’re a Virgo.”

  “Don’t listen to that crap either.”

  Two men walk past the window, arguing about whether the liquor store is open yet and how much beer to buy. Edgar rolls over, and Abby climbs onto his back and licks a paw.

  “What about Claudine?” Johona says.

  Jesse tenses. “What about her?”

  “Was she a rover too?”

  “She was.”

  “And it’s been how long since you last saw her?”

  “Seventy-two years,” Jesse says.

  Someone flushes the toilet in the next room and falls back into bed. The headboard bangs the wall. Johona crosses her legs and balances an ashtray on her knee, sits there smoking and thinking things over.

  “Do you know where she is now?” she says.

  “She’s dead,” Jesse says.

  He’d planned to leave it at that, but once he starts talking, he can’t stop. He and Claudine hit the road after she turned him, and he saw more of the world than he ever dreamed he would. Along the way she taught him how to survive as a rover—how to hunt, who to feed on, when to hunker down, when to run. After four years together his love for her burned as hot as it had in the beginning. He never once regretted turning, never once pined for his old life.

  In the summer of ’04, short of money, they rejoined the carnival Claudine was with when they met. The owner’s daughter was a rover, and the show was a refuge for her and others who’d turned. Claudine ran her fortune-telling racket, and Jesse worked as a roustabout.

  They’d been with the caravan two months when it set up in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Claudine needed to feed but was trying to hold off until they got to a bigger town, where hunting would be easier and safer. Their second night in Hot Springs, though, potential prey caught her eye: a drunk in overalls and muddy boots who’d been bum-rushed from the hoochie-coochie tent for spitting at one of the dancers.

  Claudine resolved to stalk this drunk and take him if the opportunity arose. Jesse told her it was too risky, but she wouldn’t be swayed. She’d misjudged her hunger and couldn’t wait any longer. All right then, Jesse said, but he was going with her.

  They slipped away from the carnival and found the drunk pissing against a tree. He staggered and sang and argued with himself as they trailed him. The moon turned everything either bone white or blackest black. They’d walked about a mile when the drunk swerved off the main road onto a narrow, overgrown trail that sloped downward through a thick wood where the treetops meshed overhead to form a tunnel. Barely any moonlight penetrated this canopy, just enough to speckle the ground.

  Jesse offered to bring the man down for Claudine, but she drew her knife and trotted off to make the kill herself. Swiftly, silently, she gained on the drunk, catching up to him in a small, bright clearing. Everything was going as it was supposed to until a branch snapped under her foot as she raised her knife and the man whirled and dodged her strike.

  “Help,” he bellowed. “Help!”

  Claudine jumped onto his back, and his shout died in a gurgle when she cut his throat. She rode him to the ground and fastened her mouth to the spurting wound. He struggled, but in her bloodlust her strength more than matched his.

  Footsteps approached from farther down the trail, and someone shouted, “Jim! Sing out, boy!” Three other men stepped into the clearing with lanterns and shotguns.

  “What in the hell?”

  “She’s kilt Jim.”

  Claudine sprang to her feet, and a shotgun boomed. Jesse caught a glimpse of her in mid-air in the muzzle flash. Buckshot tore through her, nearly cutting her in half. She dropped to the ground, and Jesse ran to her. The other men fired. One blast shredded Jesse’s left arm, the other struck him full in the chest. After an instant of scalding pain, he lost consciousness.

  He stops here, can go no further.

  “I couldn’t do anything to save her,” he says.

  “I’m sorry,” Johona says. “I won’t ask you about her again.”

  Jesse manages to get back to sleep, this time dreamlessly. He has no idea how long he’s been out when the sound of the door being unlocked makes him sit up as awake as if he’d never closed his eyes. Johona is fumbling with the security chain. The sun is still shining.

  “I’m gonna get something to eat,” she says.

  “We have to lay low,” Jesse says. “The Fiends.”

  “I thought you said they can’t be out in the daytime? I’m just going for Fritos and a Coke.”

  “There’s candy on the table and some jerky.”

  “I need cigarettes too.”

  Jesse hesitates, unsure whether to push it.

  “I�
�ll be back in five seconds,” Johona says. She opens the door and takes care to block the sun with her body as she squeezes through it.

  As soon as she’s gone Jesse kicks himself for letting her go, worried he’s put too much trust in her. He paces the room, thinking of all the ways she might betray him. His anxiety turns to relief when she taps at the door ten minutes later and says, “It’s me.”

  “I got you these,” she says and hands him a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  “What do you expect I’m gonna do with them?” he says.

  “Some people wear them at night.”

  He slips the glasses on.

  “Check you out,” Johona says. “Joe Cool.”

  “Joe Cool,” Jesse says. “Okay, then.”

  They lie on the bed, and Johona tells him about growing up in Phoenix, chattering away until she dozes off in the middle of a story. He curls around her and buries his nose in her hair. He shouldn’t have gone back to the bowling alley, shouldn’t have taken her out afterward. Her resemblance to Claudine clouded his judgment, and now here they are in a world of trouble with the Fiends.

  He recalls the threat the biker made before he jumped and the story of the stolen motorcycle and similar savage tales he’s heard and knows that even if he puts Johona on a bus to Los Angeles, she’ll never be completely safe. And neither will he and Edgar. They’ll always be looking over their shoulders, worried the Fiends will catch up to them. And one night they will.

  Maybe there’s another way, though—an alternative to running and hiding that he’s too scattered and too panicky to see. What he needs to do is talk to someone with a clearer head, someone who can look at the mess he’s made and help him devise a plan to get out of it. What he needs to do is call Beaumont.

  Monsieur Amadu Beaumont was born in Africa and turned there too. He claims to have met Jesus Christ, Attila the Hun, and William Shakespeare; to have lived in various countries that don’t exist anymore; and to speak three forgotten languages. He’s also acknowledged to be the oldest rover in existence, making him a respected figure among the turned. Hoping to benefit from his experience and wisdom, rovers seek him out for advice, regarding him as a mentor, judge, and sage.