by E. R. Brown
He wasn’t much taller than me, but packed at least a hundred pounds more muscle. I felt my arms separating from their sockets and couldn’t help crying out.
“No? Fine by me,” Bullard said, and let go.
It was only a few inches fall, but as I scrabbled for something to land on, one foot caught the edge of a waffled dozer track and folded over on the ankle. I landed heavily on my side, back into the churn of warm splinters and mud. I tried to push up on an elbow, but my strapped arm was numb and useless and I rolled backward into a spray of cedar roots. Something thick and gummy slid into my throat and I tried not to break into tears.
Behind me, a quiet crunch of boots on slash and Ivan’s accented voice. “What happened, the kid walked into a door?”
“It’s an educational outing,” Bullard said. “A learning experience.” He stepped right over me and planted a foot on a twisted stub of branch while he leaned back to examine the sky. I squirmed into a squat and then pushed myself upright.
“He’s seen enough.” Ivan said. “Stuff him in the trunk.”
For whatever protection it might afford, I edged closer to Bullard’s truck, thinking I could duck behind it. I knew all the back roads, and if I made it into the bush I could lose these guys and hide in a gulley until morning. I’d head south until I hit the clearing that marks the U.S. border and follow it out of the mountains. Or I’d go east, find the Columbia highway, and thumb a ride.
“I hear music.” Bullard said, and I heard it too, over the sound of idling diesels, the hammering thud of a helicopter. Is that what we were here for? Not Randle?
“Light up?” Ivan asked, then leaned into his truck to flick on a bar of floodlights mounted over the cab, filling the clearing with light. Then he did the same to Bullard’s and four trucks across the cutblock followed. Doors clunked open and people came forward, faces uptilted in the blue-white glare. I recognized two of them from Randle’s operations. They had the weathered look of loggers. The fat biker who’d closed the gate on me back at River Road was there, and Keech, pulling on work gloves. No Skip.
I was tugged at by a rough pair of hands, and there was a metallic snick, and my hands swung limp and loose. Bullard flicked his knife closed, his jaw working frantically as the copter came in under the clouds, and tilted back to hover overhead.
Blood flowed in sharp stabs back into my forearms, wrists, and palms. I flexed my fingers to work some life into them. Finally I could reach up to my nose. As I worked to straighten the cartilage, I saw a trickle of blood seeping down one wrist, where Bullard had cut the zip-cuff and a patch of skin along with it.
He leaned in close, yelling over the pounding blades. “Emergency shipment. Got a sudden glut of product from all those operations your friend thought I didn’t know about.”
Bullard clambered over the slash and into the floodlit circle. This was my chance, while everyone’s eyes were on the sky. I leaned back on the truck and began to slide, inconspicuously, out of the headlights’ glow.
It was an ambulance copter, or had been at one time, with stretcher-baskets attached to each side under wide sliding doors. Bullard waved to the pilot and knelt as it descended, one forearm hiding his face from the duststorm as it squatted heavily in the clearing. As the blades spun down, I stretched, like my neck was stiff, and tried to scan the woods for an opening. Ivan’s eyes caught mine through the vortex and flicked to the bush, as if saying, Do it, make a run, give me an excuse. They say that killing someone is the fast track to earning your patch.
The pilot slid the doors open and waited. He was bald, tanned, and expressionless, a business-like guy in a blue nylon jacket. The trucks pulled in close and the drivers worked as a team. First they unloaded a stack of plastic crates from the helicopter, the white: coke or junk or whatever he was trading the weed for. Then they made a line, handing bale upon bale of green from truck to helicopter. They were nonchalant like it was another day on the job, nothing special or remarkable, which it probably was.
I couldn’t help myself, I counted each bale of compressed weed as it filled the copter from floor to ceiling, with extra bales lashed to the stretchers and tied to a wooden pallet slung underneath. The dollar value of the load was breathtaking, and gave me an idea of the money that Randle had been pulling in.
The helicopter loaded, the trucks left in a grind of diesel engines that faded as they rolled downhill. None of the drivers had even glanced my way.
That left Bullard and Ivan, and the stone-faced pilot under a moonless sky. The helicopter made ticking noises and I shivered in the sudden chill. Think positive thoughts, I told myself. If he’d wanted to dump my body on a logging road, I’d have been dead before those drivers saw me. They know me, half of them. They’re witnesses.
Bullard gestured at Ivan and then to his truck.
Ivan strode, high-legged through the branches and chips, to the back door of his truck and swung it open. He sang out, “It’s show time,” and struck a pose like a parking valet. Nothing happened. After a moment, he ducked his head inside, said something I couldn’t catch, then reached both arms in and pulled.
I felt suddenly light-headed. There was a body on the back seat, wearing familiar high-end Nikes. Ivan tugged, and there was a shudder — Randle was alive, at least — and I had to steady myself on Bullard’s truck as his running pants were revealed, reflective stripes glinting in the headlights. One of Randle’s feet stretched and pointed, seeking ground, but the truck was too high and Ivan gave one final heave, ejecting Randle from the back seat. He shot out and down, striking his tailbone against the lip of the door as he flopped clumsily to the dirt. He was hooded, blind, unable to protect himself, and his arms were strapped with the same kind of zip-cuff Bullard had used on me.
Even from my distance, I could hear his shallow, laboured breathing as he fumbled around awkwardly, his bound hands finally finding a knobby tire to grab on to and pull himself upright. His head drooped under the hood. The cloth was darker around his mouth and nose, from breathing, or spit maybe, but more likely from blood. A sticky-looking trickle ran down his neck from somewhere underneath.
Bullard gave me a smugly raised eyebrow, clearly expecting a reaction. What was there to say? Maybe Randle had lied to me and used me, but he’d also seen something in me, back at the coffee shop, and taken me out of there, trained me, paid me more than I’d imagined possible, and trusted me with his secrets. Nothing he’d ever done to me equalled my betrayal. I felt shame and guilt — but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that, somewhere in me, I felt a bubble of hope, because it was him under the hood and not me.
Bullard pinched a loose corner of the hood and tugged it up and off Randle’s face, and Randle’s head lolled and his eyes blinked crazily. He looked old and grey and beaten, and the cloth flopped over his forehead made him look like a monk, or one of the seven dwarfs. Then he shivered and came alive, and jerked his head in every direction, taking in the unforgiving wasteland and the waiting helicopter and me. Our eyes locked for a moment, but he didn’t nod or acknowledge me in any way.
“No words of welcome?” Bullard said to me.
I gave a weak shrug. My chest was so tight I couldn’t breathe.
Randle’s voice was surprisingly loud. “Norman.”
Bullard’s first name, I remembered. It sounded like a mother’s scold, except there was something muddled in his voice.
“This is not good business.” Bithneth, it sounded like. It was his mouth. His lips slid over shredded gums where teeth used to be.
With a grunt, Bullard lifted Randle, spun him by the armpits, and push-walked him toward the helicopter.
Randle worked his lips as he stumbled, “You’re letting emotion take over.” Emofum. “Think of the money you make from my channels.”
“I am your channels. You have no channels but me. You thought you could deal direct, cut me out? Get up, you little turd. You like the border so much, I’ll show you the border.”
Bullard spun Randle so they were fac
e to face and dead-lifted him, grabbing his legs so Randle collapsed at the hips, folding over Bullard’s shoulder and hanging face-down. His head bobbled as Bullard turned and jerked a thumb at me. I squeezed my eyes shut, please, no, but followed, trying to block out the clacking of Randle’s gums as he swung against Bullard’s back all the way to the helicopter.
The chopper’s idling downdraft fanned the charred surface into embers, whipping the smoke away as quickly as it fed it. Bullard tossed Randle in the helicopter with no visible effort, and tilted a quick sideways nod at me to get inside. This was it, I realized. I stood there, my mouth open to the cloud of dust and ash, blood running from my nose, my arms still half-useless while Ivan watched from just outside the shadow of the blades. All those plans of escape, gone. I clambered aboard and Bullard leapt up behind me, eager to get in the air.
Bullard reached out and Ivan passed him a grey metal briefcase. Then he clapped the pilot on the shoulder and the blades spun up, lifting the loaded helicopter with a lurch. Bullard put a hand on the helicopter’s open doorframe and leaned out into the vortex of smoke, bark, and flying clumps of mud.
Below us, Ivan’s headlights flashed over the dead, white limbs of uprooted cedars. I huddled behind a protruding bale of weed, as far from Randle’s writhing body as possible, while the chopper pitched and swung, up and away.
The weed was crammed from floor to ceiling, and even after Bullard slid the door closed and took a seat beside the pilot, there wasn’t much floor space. Using his elbows, Randle seal-squirmed against a stack of weed and worked himself into an awkward sideways squat. His hands were still strapped, and his gaze never left Bullard.
Every time the copter lurched I bumped against the metal bulkhead, until I gave up and slid nearer to Randle, until we were side by side, as far from the open cargo door as possible. Once I was settled, the pain behind my eyes returned and I probed my nose again, feeling for breaks. Everything from lip to eyebrow felt soft, swollen, and tender, and my hand came away sticky with blood.
Beneath me, the chopper’s floor was gouged and scarred with knife-sharp curls of aluminum. Ridges and boltholes marked where equipment and seats were mounted before the medivac was stripped to maximize cargo capacity.
Randle’s eyes sought mine, but I pulled my glance away.
Bullard paid no attention to either of us, perched beside the pilot, chewing gum relentlessly, a headset to one ear. The pilot increased speed and raced, clinging to the mountain valleys toward the border. The air in the cabin cooled, but never lost the cloying smell of green. Twenty minutes passed, maybe more. I lost track of time as we dipped and swung, almost grazing the treetops, dozens of feet from steeply rising rock faces that dropped to black chasms below. We had to be in America by now, somewhere in the Cascade Mountains. I could barely form a thought in the unrelenting throb of motor and blades.
Then things changed. Bullard pushed his microphone to his mouth and yelled a command. The pilot nodded and the helicopter’s angle altered as we lost momentum. The change in engine speed alerted Randle, and I assumed a crouching position, palms flattened on the floor in readiness for something. Holding us motionless in the air, the pilot turned to Bullard, who gave him a thumbs-up confirmation and we began to gain altitude.
Bullard swivelled the co-pilot’s chair toward us, and, lurching down onto one knee, made a quick grab for one of Randle’s legs. Caught, Randle arched his back and kicked the free leg at Bullard’s face, making heel contact above one eye. We were far above the valley floor now, and still rising. Bullard’s mouth shaped the word fuck! and his eyebrow split, spurting blood, but he held on, on both knees now, tugging Randle’s leg as he scuttled closer to the cargo door. Randle bucked, and Bullard used his superior weight to twist the leg knee-downward — it looked excruciatingly painful for Randle, who was forced belly-down. Bullard pinned the leg under one armpit while he leaned out to pull the latch and slide the cargo door wide. Our ascent had stopped. All I could see outside was a starry sky. Below, I knew there was nothing but crags and crevasses above impenetrable forest. I clung to the bales of grass, as far from the other two as possible.
Understanding his situation, Randle made a full-body twist with a wrestler’s flexibility, breaking Bullard’s grip, and pulled his legs away from the door, kicking me as he landed. His elbow struck a sharp-looking flange of metal that punctured the skin, and he curled and hooked both wrists over the bloodied flange, sawing the plastic strap over it with frenzied energy. Bullard, his eye closed and bleeding, seemed to say, enough, and dropped his full weight on Randle’s torso, pinning him to the floor and wrapping an arm around his chest. With surprising ease, he slid the squirming Randle away from the sharp-edged flange and back to the gaping doorway. Bullard flipped Randle face-down and dropped a knee onto the small of Randle’s back. With Randle pinned, he straightened and took hold of the door frame for balance. He swiped blood from his eye and signalled me to come close.
I shook my head, not as a gesture of brave resistance, but in sheer terror. Bullard’s good eye narrowed and he pointed a dripping finger at me. I couldn’t refuse. I crawled as close to the open blackness as I dared, and Bullard found my collar and heaved me to the door’s edge. The medivac shuddered and lurched, and I could see nothing but blackness far below, as Bullard screamed my orders. I couldn’t hear a word, but his spittle was hot on my cheek. He took me by the face and repeated it, his lips shaping, Out! Put him out!
Then he pushed me away, and I tripped on Randle’s torso and fell back to the safe side, away from the terrifying depths. I rolled up to a stable kneel, my eyes on Bullard, not Randle, as he returned to the co-pilot’s seat, from which he watched me and waited, one eye closed and bloody, the other red and streaming from the high-altitude wind. The pilot kept his eyes front, his hands and feet on the controls that held us in position.
There was a moment of pause when Randle realized Bullard wasn’t attacking, and reassessed. He contracted into a fetal position and rolled to a half-seated crouch, his strapped arms facing me like a doubled fist. I backed off, unwilling to do as ordered and unprepared for what it meant.
Randle must have known that it was useless to take me out when Bullard was waiting to finish the job anyway. But he was an animal now. Immediate survival was his only goal.
I was not a fighter. I didn’t have the coordination, the motor skills, or the confidence, and I had no idea what to do. I grabbed the loose wrapping of a bale of weed and held on to it so I wouldn’t slip on the floor-deck. Then I kicked and pushed — just hitting at any part of him I could put a heel on, no matter how clumsily or awkwardly — since he was right at the lip of the door and any bump might be all it needed. He was having none of it — unlike me, he was strong — and he dodged and twisted, getting a grip on the doorframe and shoving off it to slip-roll back inside to a safer position. He paused and put his strapped palms outward, fingers splayed in a gesture of peace. Hang on, his bloody lips shaped, and I slid back, uncertain.
He wriggled forward, worming for position and staring fixedly at me. Then he curled his torso and twisted his forearms in a burst of strength and a pained grunt that I heard over the chopper’s thunder. The weakened zip-cuff snapped and his arms flew apart. With two hands for balance, he crouched like a coyote and angled his head to me, then to Bullard, who was looking out the window, bored. Let’s take him, his look said. His grey skin quivered with a fierce energy, the dried blood filling the lines in his face like warrior paint.
I stood, without losing grip of the bale of bud behind me, and angled myself toward him so we could work out a plan — I was still lost and inadequate, with no idea how the two of us could attack someone like Bullard, who might turn at any second, if he wasn’t already watching us out of a corner of his eye.
Randle lunged at me. He grasped my shirt and cracked his forehead into mine. I was stunned and blinded with pain and in a second I felt metal floor panels on my back. He was dragging me to the door. Shock and rage took over and I kicke
d upward with both knees bent, hard, and one of my knees hit something soft and he lost his grip for a second. I reached above my head and found Bullard’s suitcase. I threw it at Randle with both hands, hoping to knock him out. The medivac shook as Randle fell back, slamming into the edge of the door, while Bullard jumped up to grab the case. I spun to a sitting position and kicked. Randle lay on the floor, legs out and torso in, and I kicked again and again, heels first, with all the force in me. Bullard landed a kick as well, and returned to his co-pilot’s seat to watch. Every blow struck something, and I tried not to look at his eyes but they were there, bulging, seeking mine. But he didn’t move. He’d found something outside the cabin, probably one of the medivac’s stretchers, where he could latch a foot or a knee. He steadied himself and stretched one long arm back inside, not looking for a hold on the metalwork, but clutching at my ankle. He wanted to pull himself in by dragging me out. I began to slide. I stomped with my free foot, aiming for his fingers, and kicked again. His arm pulled back and I kicked my heel hard at his lying face and Randle was gone. The chopper shuddered and swooped upward with the sudden release of weight.
My ears were ringing and my blood pounded, and the helicopter’s noise muted to silence. I squatted, almost fainting, looking down, expecting his face to reappear like a vampire or alien. I felt hot. I felt cold. There was a thick flow of blood coming from my nose. I put my head between my legs and vomited, and vomited again.
The rest of the flight, and the return to Canada, passed in a senseless daze. I crawled to the farthest corner of the helicopter and watched Bullard’s back. I was certain that he’d come for me when he was ready. Time passed in stop-action moments. The helicopter descended into a fairy ring of headlights in a tall, dense forest somewhere in the Cascades. Thick-bodied shapes came and went, unloaded and loaded. On the floor I saw a bloody fingernail, caught in a sharp curl of aluminum. Then it was crushed under a boot. Again, I saw Randle’s wide-open toothless mouth fall away into the dark.