Not Forgotten

by George Lee Miller

  Skeeter tried to smile. He was hurting. “I figured you’d show up,” he whispered.

  “We gotta go,” I said.

  He nodded, and I found his pants and shoes in a plastic bag in the closet. I helped him sit up and put them on. There was no shirt. It was probably too bloody to keep, so I had him use the hospital gown for a shirt and tucked the long end into his pants. He put a gigantic hand on my shoulder. I felt at least two of his three hundred pounds pressed down on me. We wouldn’t get very far like this. I kicked open the door, and we headed for the exit.

  The trip down the stairs reminded me of taking Sylvia’s oversized couch out of her second story apartment. I had to stand it on end and take it one step at a time. Like the couch, Skeeter seemed ready to topple headfirst into the concrete with each step. At the bottom, there were two doors—one to the ER and the other to the parking lot. I slipped my .45 out of my waist and reached for the emergency exit.

  “Don’t open that door. The alarm will go off,” an ER nurse shouted from behind me.

  I kept going. If I raised the .45, she would scream even louder. I gave the door a shove. There was no sound. No alarm. The system must have been offline.

  “Where are you going?” the nurse shouted.

  But we were through the door and walking toward the Jeep. I didn’t look back. The door slammed in her face. Skeeter tried to move faster.

  “Take it easy,” I whispered. “Breathe. You’re gonna start bleeding again.”

  He gritted his teeth and tried to smile. I knew he was in pain.

  When I got him into the Jeep, a black Ford Super Duty with dark tinted windows slammed on the brakes near the entrance. Two men jumped out. I recognized them as the short-hairs guarding Patrick Allison at the convention center. That pickup had been following me all over San Antonio.

  I sped south across the highway toward the high school. Suddenly, the engine sputtered. I knew that sound all too well. The Jeep was out of gas. The engine ran for another thirty yards, then cut out. We coasted into the parking lot of the Battlin’ Billies football stadium, then I jumped out and pushed it between two pickups and out of sight of the street.

  Skeeter looked at me.

  I shrugged. “Wanna play some football?”

  He looked at the sign on the stadium. “Battlin’ Billies?”

  It made sense to the local kids who had grown up around goats and knew how tough a full-grown male could be. For everybody else, including most of our rival teams, it was a source of constant amusement.

  “You ever been in a pen with a billy goat?” I’d been out of high school a long time, but being teased about the mascot still touched a nerve.

  “As in, ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’?”

  “I don’t have time to explain it to you,” I said.

  “Trip, trap, trip, trap.” Skeeter laughed, then winced in pain.

  I felt like I was back in high school. It annoyed the hell out of me. But it was a good sign he was feeling better. I jumped out of the Jeep and checked the doors of the four pickups parked in the lot. I had left my keys in my pickup a dozen times during high school. One of the many benefits and drawbacks to growing up in rural Texas was that everybody knew what you drove and where you were. No one I knew ever got his vehicle stolen.

  “Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” Skeeter was still at it, laughing to himself.

  I found a set of keys in that last place I looked—a Volkswagen Jetta with pink seat covers. I wondered if it was one of the football players’. A red-and-white graduation tassel hung from the rearview mirror along with an overpowering Christmas tree air freshener.

  “Will you shut the hell up about the Billy goats?” I shouted in a harsh whisper. I heard the roar of the Ford Super Duty. “Put your head down.”

  Skeeter tried to duck, but the bulk of his right shoulder stuck out of the Jeep like a camel’s hump. The pickup flashed by without stopping. I opened the Jeep door and guided Skeeter to the Jetta. When he plopped down in the seat, the weak suspension protested. The whole car tilted to the right. I climbed in the other side and scooped the owner’s pile of fast food wrappers into the back seat. My hundred and ninety pounds pushed us closer to the ground. The Jetta wasn’t going far on the rough gravel roads without bottoming out.

  Chapter Forty

  Ipegged the little Jetta’s cruise control on seventy miles per hour and filled Skeeter in on what happened when I found Marcus and Sylvia in Grandpa’s airplane hangar. He listened without comment. I knew his opinion of Sylvia and expected him to say “I told you so,” but he didn’t. We drove south in silence for several miles.

  “I wish you’d have told me,” I said.

  “First of all, you’re too hard-headed to ever take advice from anyone. And you were head-over-heels in love with her.”

  He was right. I was guilty of both.

  “She picked you out at St. Mary’s because you were the alpha dog.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “She was on her own for the first time. Estranged from daddy.” Hearing him say it out loud reminded me that I had known what she was doing all along.

  “You think she knows what Marcus did?” I asked.

  “I don’t think it went that far. I think Marcus used her to get information,” he said.

  “I can see that. She probably thought she was doing the right thing. That I was outside the law.” I found my cell phone and started to call Kelly.

  “SAPD will be tracing your phone calls,” Skeeter reminded me.

  “I have to call Kelly,” I said.

  Skeeter brought out his cell phone and found the teen owner of the car’s charger cord. It wasn’t hard to believe it fit his phone. Skeeter always had the latest and best new tech gadgets and so, it seemed, did rural teen girls. I didn’t get my first cell phone until after I got out of the Marine Corps. I found Kelly’s number and showed it to Skeeter. He dialed and handed me his phone. It was one a.m. I hoped she’d gotten my message. If she hadn’t, I hoped Marcus’s thugs hadn’t found her.

  The phone rang five times. It didn’t immediately go to voicemail. I imagined she would be looking at the caller ID and see it was an unknown number. I was counting on her seeing the San Antonio area code and making the connection. Her voice message came on.

  “Kelly, this is Nick. Call this number as soon as you get this message.” I handed the phone back to Skeeter.

  “Do you trust her?”

  “She helped me out with the DNA test.”

  “That’s not what I asked. You don’t have a real good track record when it comes to women. What did you say to her?” he asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When you left her in Lubbock. You must have said something stupid. You usually do.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Well?” Skeeter was watching me and waiting for an answer.

  “All right. She wanted me to spend the night.”

  “And you said what?”

  “I couldn’t. I was seeing someone else.”

  “Sylvia?”

  “Yeah, Sylvia. Who else?”

  “Even if she wasn’t a black widow spider, which she is, you was in Lubbock and she was in San Antonio. That’s three hundred miles away. She offered her bed, and you turned her down. Don’t sound like a Billy goat to me.” He laughed.

  “Don’t start with that.”

  “That’s why you’re the only white guy I trust. You’re old school. I’ve known Sylvia was scamming you since I met her. Those big brown eyes had you under a spell, or you’d have known it too. You think you need a fashion model with big boobs and a thousand-watt smile, but what you really need is a woman who packs heat and dips snuff.”

  “If me saying no to Kelly because I was loyal to another woman pisses her off, I don’t want any kind of relationship with her.”

  “Man, you are old school. You sure you didn’t time travel from a different
century?”

  “Your mother would beat you silly if you did any different,” I said.

  “That’s why she likes you. You two think alike.”

  “Send Kelly a text. Say it’s from me. Tell her it’s life or death.”

  Skeeter nodded. He started tapping out the message. We’d been lucky on the main highway so far. No highway patrol road blocks. There were several hogs and a handful of deer, but no other cars. The ranch houses along Highway 16 were tucked behind hills or groves of trees, leaving us feeling even more isolated.

  I thought we’d made a clean getaway, until I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the Ford Super Duty top over a hill behind us. It was several miles back but coming on faster than the Jetta would go with its current cargo. The profile of the Super Duty was unmistakable. It had a bar of lights centered under the front bumper that lit up the highway like running lights on a commercial airliner.

  Skeeter finished typing. Before he could hit send, the phone rang. “Here’s your ex-Marine,” he said and handed me the phone.

  “I just got your message,” Kelly said. I could hear the concern in her voice. “I was in the lab working the late shift. You’re all over the wire. They say you killed an SAPD officer. Every agency in the state is looking for you. What happened?”

  “You have to trust me. The guy I killed was a dirty cop. He killed Grandpa and wounded Skeeter. He worked for Marcus Lopez.” I waited for her to ask questions. When she didn’t say anything, I went on. “Where are you now? Right now?” I tried to sound urgent without scaring her.

  “I’m in my pickup in the lab parking lot,” she said.

  “Start driving. Get off campus. Don’t go home,” I insisted. I heard her engine roar to life. “Drive normally. They might already be watching you. Make sure you’re not being followed.” I didn’t know what connections Marcus had in Lubbock, but I was sure that he would go after her. I explained Skeeter’s condition, and that we were being followed.

  While I talked, I checked the rearview every few seconds. The Super Duty was gaining on us. Each curve brought the powerful lights closer. A half mile behind us and closing. They would have a clear line of sight into the windows of the tiny Jetta when they pulled beside us.

  “I’m gonna hang up. I’ll call you later.” I rounded a sharp curve. The lights of Kerrville suddenly spread out before us like a tiny patch of stars on a cloudy night.

  “Wait,” she said.

  I put the phone on speaker and tossed it on the dash, then cut the lights on the Jetta. Skeeter sat up, alarmed. The road disappearing at seventy miles an hour is not something that happens every day.

  “Can you see in the dark?” he asked.

  I couldn’t, of course, but the road was straight for the next quarter mile. I forced my focus on the parallel fence so that I was looking at the road with my peripheral vision.

  “I’m coming to you,” Kelly said. Her voice was clear and devoid of any emotion, like she was giving me an order.

  “That’s not safe,” I said. We shot past the cemetery on the right. I was looking for a turn to get us off the main road.

  “Skeeter’s hurt and you need backup. Give me your location,” she said. Her voice was more insistent.

  I knew that tone. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I found a road just past an automotive shop and made the turn an instant before the headlights popped back into view. I coasted to a stop behind a row of dumpsters fifty yards from the blacktop. If they saw us and made the turn, we couldn’t outrun them.

  “Did you hear me?” Kelly asked.

  “One moment,” I said.

  Skeeter saw the pickup lights and held his breath. I reached for the M24. The Super Duty slowed for the turn, then kept going. It wouldn’t take them long to realize I wasn’t in front of them anymore. We had managed to get away twice. The next time wouldn’t be so easy.

  “Nick? Hello?” Kelly was waiting for my answer.

  I looked at Skeeter and remembered what he’d said about my track record with women. Kelly was a by-the-book officer. She could hang up and call the highway patrol. My gut told me I could trust her, but so much had happened over the past week that I was starting to second-guess even that.

  “Meet us at Stonehenge.” I picked the one place Marcus’s thugs probably wouldn’t look. They would check the motels and the gas stations, but not a replica British landmark.

  “Give me four hours,” she said. “Stay safe and try to get some rest.” She disconnected.

  I handed the phone back to Skeeter.

  “Does she dip snuff?” he asked.

  I didn’t bother to answer him.

  He smiled. “We going to Stonehenge? The Stonehenge?”

  “The closest one to Central Texas,” I said. I started the Jetta and continued west on the back road that I knew eventually turned south toward Kerrville.

  “That’s gonna take us a while.” He leaned back in the passenger seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me when we get there. Always wanted to sample English tea.”

  The Stonehenge I was going to was located in Ingram, a small town on the Guadalupe River which, because of growth, was continuous with Kerrville. Their version was a smaller-scale reproduction called Stonehenge II that wasn’t quite as impressive as the real thing but gave you a taste of the Salisbury Plain. Locals gathered at the park during the summer solstice for a festive recreation of someone’s idea of a druid ceremony. When I went one year, the key players dressed like they were going to Woodstock for the 1969 music festival. When the sun rose over the eastern horizon, they all broke out in a chant that I didn’t understand. The air smelled like burning grass, the kind Willie Nelson wanted legalized, and by eight o’clock I left to get breakfast. It was very spiritual, but I was hungry. The waitress at Denny’s didn’t know about the replica Stonehenge even though it was less than two miles down the road. She was a university student and lived near campus. I told her she missed a real nice ceremony. She said she’d be sure to check it out next year, if only to sample the grass.

  The park was dark and quiet, and the replica stones cast deep shadows on the mowed grass. There was enough parking to accommodate visitors to the replica and the open-air theater that looked out over the Guadalupe River.

  I stopped the Jetta facing a full-size reproduction of an Easter Island head. Why it sat next to Stonehenge, I didn’t know. The blank elongated face reminded me of a law professor I had at St. Mary’s. Same big nose and sunken eye sockets. Both heads were made of stone.

  Skeeter was sleeping. If he snored any louder, the moai statue was going to come to life and finally give up the secret to his existence. I could feel the fatigue catching up to me. The adrenaline rush was finally dissipating. The run from the helicopter and the rush to get Skeeter out of the hospital had sapped my energy. I was hungry, thirsty, and completely spent. Safe for the moment. It was only a matter of time before Marcus’s thugs, SAPD, or the highway patrol found us. None of them were going to let us live. Marcus couldn’t afford to, and as far as law enforcement was concerned, I had murdered one of their own. I pulled the Christmas tree air refresher off the rearview and tossed it out the window. I didn’t like to litter, but I needed sleep, and the festive evergreen smell was making me nauseous. I opened the window, put my pistol in my lap, and let the mysterious moai take the first watch.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Awhite flash obscured the road. The windshield exploded into my face. The ground traded places with the sky. Rushing water filled my ears. My legs burned. I willed my body to move. Nothing. Mangled steel pinned my thighs. My vision faded red then black. A thousand tiny needlepoints stabbed my face. I opened my mouth to scream. Nothing came out.

  I forced myself to breathe. My fingers wiped blood from my eyes and shards of glass from my forehead. My vision cleared. I looked left. Corporal Lorenzo was bleeding from his mouth. The steering wheel crushed his chest. Ghost figures appeared outside the vehicle. Six of them. Weapo
ns up. I saw flashes but heard no sound. Bullets punched holes in the Humvee. I pressed all my weight against the damaged dashboard. My legs wouldn’t move. I wiggled my toes. I was trapped. I saw the faces of the men surrounding me. I knew them all. All members of my platoon, except one. Skeeter joined them, holding his shotgun. They were protecting me. I screamed for them to take cover. The words stuck in my throat. The movement shifted to ultra-slow motion, like a bloody action movie. I saw bullets leaving wind tunnels in the dusty air, passing through the men, and exiting their bodies leaving comet tails of blood. One by one they fell to the dirt. Their lifeless faces all turned toward me. Live, I heard them scream, but their lips didn’t move.

  The last two men stood with their backs to me. Bullets riddled their bodies. I tried with all my strength to move. Nothing. They turned. I saw my father and grandfather, their stern expressions chiseled in stone. Grandpa reached through the window. I felt him touch my shoulder.

  I jumped awake and lifted the .45 in my hand, finger tight on the trigger. Sound returned. I heard a voice.

  “Reveille.”

  My vision cleared. I saw Kelly’s smiling face. I was unsure where the dream stopped and reality began. The vehicle was right side up. The dust was gone along with the roar of battle. The sky was clear, but the pain lingered.

  “Take it easy,” she said, placing her hand over my pistol. “I’m friendly.”

  I slowly made the adjustment from Afghanistan to Central Texas. My clothes were drenched with sweat, my muscles felt raw, and the wound on my arm throbbed. The dream was so vivid and so real that I could smell the blood and the dust. I looked down at my clothes and realized I was covered with real dust and Skeeter’s dried blood. A flash of red caught my eye. A cardinal landed on the moai monolith and chirped his morning song. I suddenly remembered where I was.

  “Are you hurt or just getting some rack time?” she said and opened the Jetta door.

  I sucked in the fresh, dry air and got out of the car. My hands instinctively went to my face. No blood. Only sweat.