The Mexican Tree Duck

by James Crumley

  “Beats me,” Frank said. Then continued with his breakfast until it irritated me.

  “I don’t know how a dying man can eat like that,” I said to Frank, who merely smiled like a man who had been told his zipper fly was open. But Jimmy grunted like a man hit, and when I managed to focus my drunken, stupid eyes on his face, I gathered enough sanity to apologize. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Me, too,” Jimmy said to Frank, his anger gone immediately. “I was drunk, I guess. I just thought he should know, or some other stupid shit …”

  “No problem, James, no problem,” Frank said, then stared at me, holding the last disgusting hunk of his breakfast on a fork. “Remember when you figured it out, Sughrue?”

  “What?”

  “That staying alive had nothing to do with you,” Frank said softly, “that it was all luck.”

  I looked out the window. On the interstate people were going places I’d never been, people perhaps with a future, people whose lives were lived without looking always backward.

  “When Willie went down,” I said.

  “The baddest of a bad bunch,” Frank said. “First Squad, Charlie Company, Third of the Seventh, First Air Cav. Nobody did it better than we did, and none of us were as good as Willie. And he died like a fucking jerk. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “So I’m dying now, Sarge,” Frank said, “and when the time comes, I’ll eat my piece and try not to make a mess, but until then, I’m alive.” Then he looked out the window. “It’s fairly simple, man, it’s how you live, not how you die.” Frank looked at me a long time, then reached over the table for my plate. “If you ain’t going to eat your breakfast, I will.”

  After a second, I took my plate out of his hands, and ate every bite of the cold, withered omelette.

  We crashed at a nearby motel, taking a single room with two double beds for the normal-sized people and a rollaway at our feet for Jimmy, circling the wagons, setting up the night defensive position. I looked around before switching off the lights: Jimmy grinned like a child curled on the rollaway; with his arms propped behind his head, against the white sheets, Frank seemed dark and large, ominously huge, except for his large white smile; I suspected I still looked like shit.

  “Sorry about your friend, C.W.,” Frank said seriously, “and sorry about coming down on you so hard, but it sounds like you’re in some kind of big-time trouble, and you got to keep your wits about you, or we’re all dead.”

  “No problem,” I said, “I got a handle on it. And thanks for taking care of me.” I switched off the lights. “Why didn’t you guys go home?” I asked in the darkness.

  “Hate to leave even a dumbfuck lifer behind,” Frank said.

  “Thanks.”

  “If you guys are gonna jabber all fucking night,” Jimmy said, “you take the perimeter guard and I’ll take the nap duty.”

  After a long pause, Frank said, “Fuck the duty, Jimmy, let’s get some sleep. The war will still be out there tomorrow.”

  As far as I knew, we slept like the dead. For a change. Perhaps we all felt as if somebody were watching our backs. For a change.

  At noon the next day, over another truck-stop breakfast, I tried to talk Frank and Jimmy into going home. Not too hard, I admit.

  “So what’s next?” Frank said, another gooey pancake sandwich in front of him.

  “If you want to stay, you’ve got to go back to Denver,” I said, “and put in your papers.”

  Frank nodded. “It’s time.”

  “Take the rent-car back to the Aspen airport, turn it in, and you guys fly back to Denver and wait for me to call,” I said, then looked at them. “Either of you guys ever spent any time in El Paso?”

  “Why El Paso?” Frank said.

  “That’s where the Cisneros woman lived,” I said, “and her hubby, Joe Don.”

  “I got a tattoo there once,” Jimmy said, pulling up his shirt sleeve to reveal a blue blur that had once looked like the sailor on a pack of rolling papers.

  “You know I grew up there,” Frank said, “but the only person I’ve stayed in touch with is my mother.”

  “And you don’t want her around this shit,” I said flatly.

  “Nowhere near.”

  “I met a guy there,” Jimmy said, “in jail …”

  “This before or after the tattoo?” Frank wanted to know.

  “… in Juárez. Before. Anyway, this guy’s a vet, a Navy guy …” Obviously Frank and I sneered because Jimmy quickly added, “A riverboat commander and a SEAL, Barnstone, one bad dude.”

  “So what was he doing in jail in Juárez?” Frank asked.

  “Getting this buddy of his out, some redneck college professor or something,” Jimmy answered. “And he saw me in there, so he got me out, too. Paid my mordida, took me home, got me fucked up—and tattooed, by the way—then loaned me the money to get back to Denver.” Then Jimmy pointed a stubby finger at Frank. “And your people kept my fucking car.”

  “What for? Samoans don’t need cars, man. We ride the waves,” Frank said.

  “No, some Detroit niggers,” Jimmy hissed, “you asshole.”

  “You do this shit often?” I asked Frank.

  “What?”

  “Lie?” I said. “And defame your ethnic heritage. You told me the other morning that you could smoke dope without becoming a hippie because you were a Mexican.”

  “Patently true,” Frank said, as innocent as a gull drifting on an ocean breeze.

  Jimmy and I looked at each other. “Sometimes I find myself regretting my full Irish blood, just like I regret my RVN medal, my Purple Hearts, and my Bronze Star. What about you, Sughrue?” Jimmy said, then picked up his ice water.

  “Scotch-Irish,” I said, “and don’t forget it. And not even a good-conduct medal. My father had a DSC and a Purple Heart but he was most proud of his claim to be half-Comanche, but I think his mother was Czech or German or something, and the only metal she had was in her teeth. Who knows? You know how those people are, always changing their borders so they can change their names. Remind me of anybody you know?” Then I pointed out the window. “Maybe that guy.”

  Frank looked. Jimmy leaned over and poured the cold water into Frank’s cop shoe. “Jesus fucking Christ!” Frank shouted, and jumped up so quickly that he nearly tore the table from its moorings.

  Jimmy and I laughed, but one of the truckers at the booth behind us, the biggest one, of course, who had taken an interest in our multi-ethnic scruffy crew since we first sat down and picked up the Army talk, leaned over and said, “Why don’t you children grow up? And forget the war. You assholes are the kinda vets who make it hard for the rest of us. Just fucking grow up.”

  Jimmy stood up quickly. “You wanna teach me how to grow up, you worthless, gear-grinding Rear Echelon Motherfucker.”

  “Uh-oh,” Frank said to me. “Let’s see if we can’t at least get it outside.”

  We almost didn’t. As the big trucker’s buddy held the door open with mock politeness, Jimmy kicked him in the shin so hard he nearly fell down, but I managed to shove him outside so he could limp after Jimmy, who was walking fast after the big trucker.

  Frank tried to keep it fair, just Jimmy and the big driver, holding out his hands at the other five truckers, but they could see that the big trucker had as much chance of hitting Jimmy as kissing his elbow, and even if he could hit him, it would be like hitting a big rubber band. Jimmy had raised knots all over the trucker’s face with his hard little fists, so one of the other ones, unable to get his ethnic slurs together, called Frank a “spigger,” and took a swing at him.

  Frank had been a cop too long to ever hit a grown man in the face with his fist; he just dodged the roundhouse, let the punch’s momentum spin him around, quickly applied the time-honored choke hold for the few seconds it took for the guy to start “doing the chicken,” then dropped him to the pavement. That’s when everybody decided to take part.

  By rights we should have had our asses kicked—they w
ere twice our number and most of them half our age—but Jimmy was insane, Frank a large gentleman with lots of practice, and I … well, I don’t fight fair.

  I ripped an antenna off the closest truck, whipped one guy across the ear, which left a welt like forty wasp bites, then got the remaining one a couple of times on the arm and once on the neck before he ran over to his tractor to grab his tire-thumper.

  I stuck my hand under my vest and shouted, “If I have to pull this motherfucker, man, you are dead.”

  He thought about it, but luckily Frank’s two guys were twitching all over the pavement. When Frank moved on him, he let the wooden club fall to the ground.

  The guy Jimmy had kicked in the shin had wisely restrained from the melee, and the only reason the big trucker wasn’t supine was that Jimmy held him up by the collar.

  “No harm, no foul,” I said. Everybody agreed but the guy in the worst position, the big guy with his hands over his face.

  “No harm, my ass,” he mumbled. “I think the little fucker kicked one of my teeth out.”

  “He didn’t kick you,” I said. “You don’t really look old enough to be a vet …”

  “MP,” he muttered, “Long Binh. Nineteen seventy-two.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you,” Frank said.

  Jimmy jerked the trucker up as if to land another on his already swollen eye, but he raised his hands, saying, “Okay. Okay, man. You got me.”

  “Say it,” Jimmy said.

  “No harm, no foul.”

  “Thank God for the Denver Nuggets,” Frank said.

  So much for planning.

  Jimmy drove the van on the way back to Aspen, and I rode with Frank in the rent-car to see if we couldn’t come up with some sort of notion about what had happened and why, but all we had were guesses, until just outside of Rifle a battered gray GMC pickup went around us like a rocket and pulled up behind the van. The engine sounded like a Cadillac, well tuned and roaring, and the pickup sported four new tires.

  “I know that truck,” I said. “They were following the FBI when the FBI was following me. Let’s try something. Let me borrow your piece.”

  “What piece?” Frank said.

  “I thought the law required you to carry a piece all the time,” I said.

  “Only in Denver,” Frank said, “and I never even do that. I haven’t carried a piece on the job since I …” Then Frank paused a long time, staring at the road. “Look, C. W., I wasn’t just in that schoolhouse telling them little kids that the policeman is their friend … I was also talking to a nine-year-old girl who thinks she’s her daddy’s wife. She has thought that since her mother died when she was four. She cooks, keeps house, and warms the old bastard’s bed at night. I was trying to convince her to testify. I work child abuse cases, too. You don’t need a piece for that, man, just a cold heart and a strong stomach. If I carried a piece, C.W., somebody would be dead …”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t know.”

  Frank slapped me on the thigh with a giant hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “When it doesn’t work out, it’s the worst fucking job on the job. When it does, it’s still the worst fucking job on the job. My shrink …”

  “Your shrink?” I said, amazed.

  “What the fuck? Can’t the third world enjoy the benefits of analysis?”

  “I, ah, just assumed you natural folk weren’t in need of that sort of witch doctoring.”

  “Well, I used to beat drums and dance naked and bite the heads off chickens, bro’, didn’t think I needed any of that intellectual shit until the night I found myself eating my piece without taking the time to write a note to my kids or even think about it. And this was before I knew about the cancer,” Frank said, then smiled. “My job is too tough to do alone, C. W., so I got some help. Anyway, my shrink says I’ve got to stop blaming the cancer on the job, but you can understand how I might.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe I’m stupid to lose my shit over a woman I just barely knew. But dammit she was dead and I didn’t think I could stand it. She was a fine woman and a great bartender.”

  “Sometimes being scared and hurting is the right thing. It’s like evidence that you’re still alive. And we all need that. Sometimes,” Frank said softly, then raised his voice and slapped me on the knee. “Goddamn, it’s good to see you. You know how it is. Sometimes you forget how much you miss people when you don’t see them around.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I guess I should thank you for putting it into words.”

  “Don’t get too fucking sensitive on me,” he said, “I won’t trust you anymore.”

  “Thanks, asshole,” I said.

  “So why’d you want a piece?” Frank asked when he stopped chuckling. “I thought you were carrying.”

  “Bluffing,” I said. “I’d like to talk to those guys in the pickup and I want a a better choice of weapons than a tire iron and a radio antenna.”

  “Want me to pass Jimmy and take the next gas exit?”

  “Read my mail, old man, read my mind,” I said, then added a question. “How’d you feel back there, tussling with those truckers?”

  “Old” was his simple answer.

  “Yeah, me, too,” I said. “You know that asshole Mexican bartender told me that war was a young man’s game. We couldn’t go back in the bush again, could we?”

  “Not a chance,” Frank said. “You know what, though? If they’d do it the right way this time, I’d give it a try.”

  “What’s the right way?”

  “Let the guys who do the work run the job,” Frank said, but I think he was talking about more than Vietnam.

  After ten minutes of duplicity at a convenience store just off the interstate at Rifle, which the gray pickup watched from a service station across the highway and which I spent prone in the backseat, we took our little band back on the road. Only this time, I had the Airweight strapped to my ankle, the Browning under my arm, and the 10mm Glock in my hand.

  “You got enough firepower?” Frank asked as we roared up the exit five minutes after the gray pickup.

  “Hey, as long as you can carry it, there’s no such thing as too much firepower,” I said. “When you catch up to the pickup, pull up beside it. I’ll see if I can’t get them to stop.”

  “Without gunfire, I hope,” Frank said. “My papers ain’t in yet.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Fat fucking chance.

  Frank pulled the rent-car up beside the pickup that didn’t sound like a pickup at all. I showed the Mexican driver Frank’s badge, which we had sullied beyond the point of shining, and made the motion of rolling a window down. Which he did.

  “Are you guys the good Mexicans,” I shouted, “or the bad ones?”

  The driver didn’t answer, he just showed me the twin dark holes of a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun.

  Conversation was out of the question. I jammed my foot over Frank’s, and we smoked to a stop on the left shoulder of the interstate. Only one pellet of the buckshot skipped off the hood of the rent-car.

  A big rig blasted past us, its horn blaring. I hoped it wasn’t one of the truckers from Grand Junction. We had already ruined their day enough.

  “What the fuck?” Frank sighed as the burnt-rubber cloud enveloped the car. “What happened?”

  “Sawed-off,” I said. “Good driving. Now, go, man, put your foot in it.”

  I had always loved cars as only a country boy can. Cars are freedom, romance, and true, true love. But I haven’t been able to tell the makes apart since I came back from Southeast Asia. So I didn’t know the make of the rent-car—something American full of rattles and bad plastic—but when Frank put his foot to the floor, that Detroit iron roared while I checked the 10mm clip again.

  Up the highway, the pickup sped toward the van. I saw the dark blunt shape of the shotgun pass from the driver to the passenger. I grabbed the Airweight, shot four holes in a square pattern into the windshield, which deafened us almost beyond hearing,
then tried to kick the safety glass out.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Frank screamed.

  “The assholes are going to do Jimmy,” I shouted back as a chunk of the windshield tumbled into the slipstream, then leaned into the wind. “Get me closer, goddammit, closer.”

  I didn’t know how fast we were going but was amazed that three cars and a semi whipped past us during the shoot-out. What the hell, it’s America; nobody dies, they just pass on the right. So I couldn’t complain. Besides, the flying convoy kept the pickup out of the left lane long enough for me to draw a bead.

  “Don’t fucking shoot anybody!” Frank, in his capacity as a minion of the law, shouted.

  “Not a chance,” I whispered, then fired half the 10mm clip at the pickup, praying for a lucky shot.

  Like most prayers, it was wasted. I should have been praying for a lucky ricochet. I missed the rear tires, but it was a tough shot for anybody at any time. So I got ready to try again. Frank didn’t have any advice this time. We were close enough to see the passenger lean out his window with the shotgun.

  Before I could pull the trigger, though, a cloud of oil and auto parts destroyed the remainder of our windshield and a roil of smoke spewed from beneath the pickup and it stopped without benefit of brake lights. The two Mexicans piled out of the cab, their gear flapping, and headed off the interstate highway, hopped the fence and headed up a low ridge, then turned right along the crest and headed south into the mountains.

  By the time we parked behind the pickup on the side of the interstate, the smoke still hadn’t completely cleared. But we could see them rapidly diminishing up another ridge hill as they chugged toward the higher ridgeline and invisibility. I watched their remarkable advance as Frank squatted to peer under the pickup.

  “Lucky fucker,” Frank said when he straightened up.

  “Me?” I said.

  “No. Jimmy,” he said. “Looks like your round keyholed through the pan and busted the crank.”

  “He was always lucky,” I said, but watching the incredible progress of the two men. “Frank.”