I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

by Steve Earle

  “Careful!” the cat coughs, but the Mexican can’t hear him. The spirit can only circle the combatants impotently, like a referee without authority.

  His own name in the mouth of a priest that he had never seen before was too much for Manny. He glanced over his shoulder again for some sign from Graciela, and the distraction allowed Killen a crucial uncontested step forward. The heel of a hard, heavy black oxford crashed down on Manny’s instep, and he collapsed in pain, dropping like a freight elevator until his chin collided with the priest’s upthrust head. A second head butt sent the vanquished giant sprawling semiconscious to the ground.

  Doc didn’t stand a chance. By the time he realized what was happening and stepped protectively in front of Graciela, the intruder was on the porch.

  “You must be … Doc!” The priest grunted, putting his full weight into a rib-crushing left hook. Doc dropped instantly but Killen stood him back up with a knee in the groin. “Murderer of innocents!” Uppercut to the chin. “Corrupter of children!” He shunted the helpless physician to one side in a heap. “Well, no more. It all stops here and now!” He snatched Graciela’s arm as she rushed to help Doc, but the girl bit him, clamping down hard on the back of his hand. He cursed as he ripped the wounded member free but didn’t retaliate. He offered Graciela the other hand instead. “Take it, child! Come with me. I’ll take you away from this place. From these people!” Graciela threw herself protectively across Doc’s body and muttered a sequence of syllables, low and musical but completely nonsensical to non-Nahuatl speakers: “Yolistsintlayektli Ooselo, Nekauyo…” Even Graciela didn’t understand what she was saying. She only knew that her grandfather had insisted that she commit the words to memory against a day when every ray of hope had faded. That day had come.

  Hank’s ghost sputters helplessly over the tangle of humanity. “Get up, Doc!” he screeches, but the physician doesn’t respond. He involuntarily shifts between one shape and another, settling into his feline aspect only when the jaguar arrives on the scene to take charge.

  Graciela instantly recognizes the newcomer. “Grandfather!” she cries, and the big cat purrs in acknowledgment. Hank follows the older entity’s lead, and the two cat-shaped spirits take up defensive positions flanking Graciela and Doc.

  Killen saw no shadow or shade of either man or beast. Manny was sprawled behind him and Doc lay crumpled before him and nothing now stood between the priest and the miracle he prized. His miracle! The priest had eyes only for the Mexican girl, and he never saw Big Tiff coming.

  Doc did. He had just managed to struggle up to one knee, but he nearly laughed out loud when he spotted the transvestite pelting up the sidewalk in pedal pushers and an undershirt. Then he recognized the shiny nickel-plated barrel of a Saturday night special, and the hint of a smile vanished. “Gun!” he hollered as Tiff charged the priest like a linebacker zeroing in on a quarterback. The scene unfolding before him was sickeningly familiar. He’d seen it before, beamed in from Dallas, a flickering image on a black-and-white twelve-inch screen. But his was live and in living color and happening right before his eyes, and Doc knew that if he didn’t do something, nobody would. “Not this time, you son of a bitch!” he swore. He stepped in front of the priest and turned to face Big Tiff just as the first of eight sharp, rapid pops rang in his ears.

  Doc reckoned that none of the bullets had found its mark until he tasted a pungent whiff of gunpowder and seared flesh, stronger than any he had ever known. A halting heartbeat later, a second nauseatingly familiar and even more pungent composite stench pervaded his senses, blood and bile and feces intermingled and spilling from a broken bowel. He felt no pain whatsoever even as his legs betrayed him for the second time in as many minutes, folding beneath him at awkward angles and dumping him to the rough pine boards. Only when Graciela screamed his name did Doc finally understand.

  For an instant Big Tiff just stood there, mouth agape, the empty pistol still smoking in his hand. Then he began to wail. “No-o-o-o! I’m sorry, Doc! I didn’t mean you! It’s that motherfucker—” but he was cut off by a perfectly executed hook from his blind side, and Father Killen thanked the Lord Jesus, out loud, for delivering him from certain death as he stepped over what he was sure was the last soldier of Satan that stood in the path of the righteous.

  The shots had jolted Manny back to consciousness, but it was an eternity of seconds before he was able to gain his feet and climb the steps to the porch. When he finally got there, he found Doc laid low and Graciela covered in blood and being manhandled by the same wild-eyed priest who had knocked him out cold.

  “Come, child! It’s time for us to go now!” Killen exhorted Graciela, clamping both of his hands around a tiny, doll-like arm and standing her up. When he turned, intent on dragging his captive away to his car, he found a great hulking obstacle in his path.

  “She ain’t goin’ nowhere with you, pendejo!”

  Nothing that Killen had learned from Father Walsh could have prepared him for the onslaught. The back side of a ham-size hand smashed into the side of his head, wrenching it sideways with such force that his body was forced to follow. Unable to maintain his grip on Graciela any longer, he tried to refocus on his assailant. He had beaten him once. He could do it again. In through your nose; out through your mouth …. But no, the giant hand closed in a semicircle around his throat, and his head slammed into the wall, the clapboard completing the vise and grating at the exposed skin on the backs of his arms as he was hoisted a full foot above the floor. The priest hung there, legs kicking, arms flailing impotently, as Manny effortlessly held him in place. The very life in him was draining away and he tried to scream. He tried to pray. But it was no use. He could only watch his own agony reflected in the eyes of …

  … a bear! A great brown bear stares back at the priest, dispassionately watching him die. Nothing personal. He is merely prey, a single installment toward a daily quota of caloric intake. This isn’t so bad; unexpected, but not bad … but where’s … Jesus? He isn’t here, is He? For that matter there is nothing even vaguely human-shaped here, only the bear and a cat … no, two cats. One black and one great one, nearly as large as the bear and covered in dark jungle-foliage-shaped spots … watching and waiting for whatever the bear leaves behind … but listen! Do you hear her? Do you hear her singing? I knew it! I knew she would come! It’s an angel!…

  “Manny! Stop it!” Graciela shrieked, and when he didn’t respond she switched to Spanish and pounded on his back with both of her fists. “¡Basta, por favor! ¡Dejarlo ir!”

  This time Manny did as he was told and let Killen drop to the floor, where he crawled across the porch on his hands and knees, semiconscious and retching, right into the path of Hugo Ackerman.

  Hugo had arrived back on the scene, even more out of breath than before, his ludicrously tiny snub-nosed revolver gripped in one chubby hand, his sweat-soaked handkerchief held in the other. “What the hell is going on around here?” he wondered out loud only half rhetorically as he tried to make some kind of sense of the battleground. Big Tiff was out cold at his feet, still clinging to the gun. Hugo kicked it out of his grasp. Killen made one last halfhearted attempt to slither away down the steps on his belly, but a worn brogan backed up by three hundred pounds held him gently but firmly where he was. “Not so fast, Padre!” the cop warned the priest. “Stay right where you are.” Hugo’s eyes followed the blood to where Manny and Graciela hovered over a familiar supine figure.

  “Doc?” When he was a step closer he realized Doc wasn’t going to answer. He waved his pistol at the priest. “Over there where I can see you!” he ordered, and, still crawling on all fours, Killen complied. “Who did this, Manny? How bad is he?”

  “Bad enough!” said the big man. “Fuckin’ Tiff.” He craned his neck, vainly attempting to see around Hugo. “You alone?”

  “Not for long! I heard the ‘shots fired’ call on my radio and I was only a couple of blocks away, but every cop on the south side’s gonna be here in ten minutes. Any
way, I guess that doesn’t matter now. I better call an ambulance.”

  “No!” Doc croaked.

  Graciela had believed he was dead, and she burst into tears. “Don’t try to talk!” she begged. “Help is coming—”

  “No! I can’t! I won’t! They’ll patch me up just so they can lock me up.”

  Graciela looked up at Hugo. The cop nodded sadly. “No doubt. Big Mike means business.”

  Disembodied amber eyes are suspended in the air over Graciela’s left shoulder. A black cat slowly comes into diffuse focus, but it’s Hank’s voice in Doc’s ear.

  “Trust me, Doc. If you never listened to me once in your life, hear me when I’m talkin’ to you now. They’re comin’ and this here is the last place on earth that you want to be caught dead or alive. Mark my words. If you die here, your soul will stumble up and down this strip until the end of time. Get up, Doc! If it’s the last thing you ever do, get up and run like hell!”

  ***

  “I hear you, Hank,” Doc affirmed. He took a deep, slow breath. A little pop and a gurgling sound. Not good. At least one hole in his left lung. And he knew he was gut-shot. Crazy fucking Tiff had emptied the pistol. God knew how many little-bitty bullets he had rattling around in him. He was probably fucked in any case, but one thing he knew for sure was that there wasn’t a goddamn thing anybody at the Robert B. Green Memorial Hospital emergency room could do for him.

  “Hugo, if Manny here was to get me to the car, and we could, uh, well, manage to …”

  Graciela shook her head and muttered, “No! No! You can’t,” but Manny had already disappeared into the boarding house once again. With no small amount of effort, Doc raised a bloody finger to his own lips to seal hers.

  The cop shrugged. “Doc, I don’t think there’s any way in hell you’ll get a mile down the road, but it won’t be me that’s standin’ in your way. And as for these two …” He untangled a pair of handcuffs from his belt and ungently ratcheted one end to Big Tiff’s wrist. The hustler regained consciousness as he was being dragged across the porch to where Father Killen cowered.

  “Goddamn, Hugo! That shit hurts!”

  “They’re handcuffs, asshole, they’re supposed to hurt.” Hugo produced a second pair of cuffs and completed the circle, handcuffing the transvestite and the priest together, wrists to wrists and back to back. Killen, realizing that Hugo was a cop, was suddenly alert and bristling with righteous indignation.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  “Shut up!” Big Tiff warned the priest in a whisper like a rattlesnake rattling.

  Doc was struggling to keep Graciela in focus.

  “Listen to me, Graciela. I need you to help me. I need you to get me out of here before the police come.”

  Graciela’s eyes widened with panic, but Doc shook that off.

  “You can do this!”

  “You’re crazy! I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can! Just get me in that car, and once we’re on the road you can say whatever it is you say and do whatever it is you do and I’ll be good as new. I know it! I need a miracle, darlin’. It’s the only chance I’ve got. That we’ve got. Anyway, if we hang around here until the federales show up, then you’re on a plane back to Mexico and I’m going to the penitentiary. Our one and only hope is to get while the gettin’s good and take care of each other the way we always have.”

  “Now you’re talkin’!” agrees Hank’s voice in Doc’s ear. Only a glance is exchanged between the cat and Graciela.

  Killen continued to plead his case to Hugo.

  “Officer, isn’t it obvious to you by now that you’ve arrested the wrong man? I am Father Padraig Killen, the pastor of … My God! Aaaagh!”

  Pain that the priest had never imagined in his worst nightmares cut the tirade short. Big Tiff had suddenly raised both of his powerful arms above his head and pulled forward with all of his rage and all of his might and he didn’t stop pulling until he heard a pop, louder than the pistol shots, as both of the priest’s shoulders separated from their sockets. He gave the handcuffs one last tug for good measure.

  “I said … shut up, bitch!”

  Graciela was resolved by the time Manny returned with one of Marge’s old army blankets, and not a moment too soon because Doc was fading fast. He continued talking to Graciela and Manny while they bundled him up, but his sentences began to become disconnected and jumbled, and even his own voice sounded distant and thin.

  ***

  … big, powerful arms surround Doc and lift him up and the feeling is familiar and reassuring. His head lolls skyward as he’s carried down the steps, and he traces the Big Dipper hanging by its bejeweled handle from an unseen hook on the ceiling of the world. He rolls his eyes back, almost inside of his head, and finds he can only just make out the inverted image of the black cat padding along on Manny’s left as they move across the yard. With a supreme effort he forces his chin to his chest and peers the other way to find the jaguar defending their right.

  Graciela led the way. She opened the rear passenger door and slid across the seat to the other side to receive Doc’s head in her lap. Her ears popped violently as the door slammed shut and Manny settled in behind the wheel.

  The V-8 rumbled to life, gears gnashing, crushed limestone crackling beneath vulcanized rubber as the vehicle lurched into reverse and swung around to aim itself south. Doc became aware of the shotgun rider only when he spoke.

  “Hang in there, Doc.” Hank promises, “Not much longer now.” And Doc believes him.

  Graciela frantically fished around in Doc’s bag. For what? she wondered. She had the contents of the satchel memorized by now. There was no blessed relic there, no alchemist’s remedy for man’s brutality to man hidden among the tangle of stainless steel and cotton gauze. She ripped long strips of fabric from the hem of her dress and bundled them into pressure bandages the way she’d been taught, but the blood seemed to be coming from everywhere, life seeping out of Doc from so many places at once that she didn’t know where to begin. She prayed out loud in three different languages. She admonished Doc, begged and pleaded for him to fight for his own life, but the physician could barely hear her pleadings, lost as they were in crackling sibilance like the fading signal of a radio station left far behind on the highway.

  Hank’s coming in loud and clear. “Almost there, buddy! Just hang on until we’re past the city limits.”

  “The city limits?”

  “Yeah, then we’ll be free.”

  “Free? Free from what?”

  “Toil and trouble! This veil of tears! Free to go on to a better place. Or not. Leastways, we won’t have to hang around here no more.”

  Doc looks up at Graciela. Even her face is fading now, but he knows she is crying because he can taste her tears.

  “Graciela!” he calls, or at least he thinks he’s talking, but Hank shakes his head.

  “She can’t hear you, Doc. You’re past that now.”

  “You hear me well enough.”

  “I tried to tell you, Doc, must’ve been a thousand times I tried. You don’t have to talk for me to hear you.”

  “I just want to tell her that it’s okay … that she can’t … She can’t help me, can she?”

  Hank sighs grimly. “She already has, Doc. She wrestled that monkey off your back. I guess it’s a one-miracle-to-a-customer kind of deal.”

  “That makes sense,” Doc agrees. “Well, I guess that’s it then.”

  “Now, hold your horses there, Doc,” cautions the ghost of Hank Williams, turning to face forward and peering out through the windshield into the thickening darkness. “We ain’t quite there yet. I’ll let you know when it’s time.”

  “You do that, Hank. I’ll be … right here.”

  Doc can’t make out Graciela’s features anymore, but he can feel her, her warmth and her unyielding empathy surrounding him as she abandons any pretense of sacrament or procedure and simply cradles his head lovingly in her lap.

  Doc silen
tly concurs. “That’s right, darlin’. Let me go now. Nobody can help from here on out except Ol’ Hank here. He’s the only one of us that’s been down this road before.”

  The occupant of the front passenger seat, an impossibly thin, sad young man, turns to acknowledge Graciela with a finger and a thumb on the brim of his Stetson, and for the first time Graciela sees Hank the way Doc does.

  The speed limit was forty miles an hour on the last stretch of South Presa Street before it lost itself in the Corpus Christi Highway, and it took every bit of discipline that Manny could muster to rein the big Ford in. The big man prided himself on never having lost a load of contraband to a routine traffic stop and he knew that creeping along was every bit as likely to attract the attention of the police as a heavy foot on the accelerator. He tried his best to keep the needle on the speedometer somewhere between thirty-five and thirty-eight, but from time to time he looked down to find he was pushing fifty. He caught Graciela’s eye in the rearview mirror as they passed beneath a streetlight. “How’s he doing?” he asked, but he already knew. He’d seen enough cuttings and shootings to know a mortal wound when he saw one, but for Graciela’s sake, Manny didn’t say so out loud.

  Graciela watched helplessly while Doc’s face grew wan and tiny glistening drops of sweat, unnaturally cold to the touch, appeared on his forehead. His eyes were closed now but his upper lip twitched, and she thought he was trying to say something, so she bent close to listen. There was only a pitiful wheeze, like a broken accordion, from somewhere deep in his chest.

  “‘Leaving San Antonio,’” Manny read as they passed the green-and-white reflecting sign on the side of the road. “Now we can make some time.”

  As the big Ford rumbled into passing gear and bounded ahead down the highway, Doc stirred in Graciela’s arms and then mumbled something; she was sure of it this time.

  “Manny, the lights!” she commanded, and the big man complied, reaching over his head for the switch and calling over his shoulder, “You okay, Doc?”