by Ted Bell
Homer climbed out of the car and put his hat on, shading his eyes from the sun.
“Sorry to bother you, Sheriff, I been calling you on the phone.”
“When they get the kinks out of those cell phones, maybe I’ll get one. How can I help you, son? I’ve been out here in the barn all morning. Daisy went to church services and then to her prayer group lunch right after. I was just going inside to make a ham sandwich and some ice tea. You want to join me?”
Franklin started for the house and Homer followed.
He said, “What I’ve been calling you about? Somebody’s fixing to get their selves lynched here later on today.”
“Lynched? Who?”
“I don’t know their names. Three Mexican boys, is what I hear.”
“Come on over here on the porch and set in the shade, Homer.”
Franklin was tired. He stepped up on to the porch and went over to the far end and sat in his rocker. There was a tupelo tree at that end of the porch. He and Daisy had planted it as a sapling when they first bought the place. It gave off pretty nice shade this time of day. He pulled out his bandanna and wiped all the sweat off his face. There was a pitcher of lemonade with all the ice melted sitting on the table and he poured two glasses. Then he leaned back against the old rocker and started rocking, scuffing his boot heels across the dusty floorboards.
He said, “Start at the beginning and tell me.”
Homer took off his hat, tilted his head back, and drained his glass. “Like I say, it’s three Mexican kids.”
“Kids?”
“Teenagers, I’m pretty sure. The banditos apparently broke into Sadie Brotherwood’s place last night, looking for liquor in the ranch house. She came home and surprised them.”
“She lives over there on the river, right? What’s it called?”
“The Lazy B. She stayed on the place when Woody died last spring. She didn’t call anybody about the break-in. She got the drop on the boys, put a shotgun on them, and locked them up overnight out in the tool shed. This morning, here about an hour ago, she didn’t hear any noise coming from the shed and she called her brother-in-law, old Ed Parks. Ed apparently came over with a couple of his boys and told Sadie not to call you, said they’d take care of this themselves.”
“These Mexicans are local boys?”
“No, sir. Illegals. Roy Steerman went over there to Brotherwoods with Ed originally, but didn’t want anything to do with it after he got there and left. Been out there in the desert a while seems like. Skin is burned black, Roy said. All of them dehydrated and probably dizzy from drinking their own urine out there. He said when they got there one of them was swimming in the dirt like he thought it was a stream. Like his brain was baked in his brain pan, Roy told me.”
Dixon looked away. How many times in his life would he have to hear this same sad story? The law was the law. But children locked in a shed and dying of thirst was a painful way to enforce it.
“Maybe they weren’t looking for liquor, Homer. Maybe they were just looking for water.”
“That’s just what I told Roy Steers here not half an hour ago. He said, ‘Nobody over at Sadie’s cares two hoots in hell about that. These damn kids are here illegally, broke into a woman’s house to steal her property, and they’re going to string ’em up.’ That’s a direct quotation.”
Franklin got up without a word and went inside the house. A minute later the screen door opened and he came out with his hat on. “Let’s go, Homer,” he said.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER they turned off on the state road that led to the Brotherwood ranch. Homer took a right on to an unpaved stretch and they drove another two miles of barbed wire on either side before they came to the Lazy B. There was a heavy aluminum gate at the entrance to the drive and somebody had closed it and locked it with a length of chain. Homer pulled over on the shoulder across from the gate and got out of the car. He looked both ways and then crossed the baking asphalt to open the gate.
Franklin saw he was having trouble with the lock and started to climb out of the car. That’s when the two big fellas stepped out from inside a dense stand of pecans just inside the gate.
“Hey,” one of them said. Franklin recognized him as one of the boys from the Wagon Wheel he’d locked up. Had the same sleeveless leather vest and the prison tats covering both arms. If he remembered the arrest record correctly, these two gentlemen’s names were Hambone and Zorro. William Bonner, Hambone, and Bernie Katz, Zorro represented a whole lot more trouble than they were worth.
“Howdy, Hambone,” Franklin said to Bonner. He saw that the gate was padlocked with a big Master lock.
“Can we help you?” Bonner asked.
“You can open that gate.”
“No can do, Sheriff. Private party.”
“Homer,” Franklin said, “take your sidearm out and shoot that lock off, will you please?”
“Yes, sir.”
Homer removed his weapon and fired two rounds into the heavy padlock. The thing blew apart, wide open, which surprised Franklin because he’d seen an old commercial where a slow motion bullet goes right through a padlock without any effect. He reached over and pulled the chain out of the gate rungs and dropped it to the ground. Then he started to swing the right gate inward. Hambone stepped into the path of the gate and crossed his lodgepole arms over his chest.
“Like I say, it’s private.”
“Mr. Bonner, you boys just got out of my jail. If one of those Mexican boys is harmed, you’re going back. If one of them dies, you’re going back inside the system for twenty years as an accessory to murder. How do you want to handle this?”
“It ain’t murder to kill no illegal alien.”
“Murder is murder, Mr. Bonner.”
Bonner didn’t respond. Just looked over his shoulder and spat on the ground.
“C’mon, Billy,” the one named Katz said. “Let it go. We don’t need any more shit from this particular asshole.”
Bonner looked at Dixon and did his best impression of a man staring daggers into somebody’s eyes for a couple a seconds and then he kicked the ground and walked away from the gate.
“Where are your bikes located, Bonner?” Franklin said to the man’s back.
“Over there in the pecan grove,” Katz said, pointing at the trees. You could see pinpoints of chrome back in there among the dark trunks.
“I suggest you fellas mount up and git. I don’t want you in my county any longer. You understand what I’m saying? If you’re still here when I come back this way, I’m going to impound your motorcycles and lock you up again. We clear?”
The two outlaws didn’t say anything, just turned and headed for the pecan trees.
Franklin swung the two aluminum gates inward while Homer went back for the car. After a minute, he heard the deep popping noise of the two Harleys cranking up in the woods as Homer drove through and came to a stop. He climbed inside and they continued up the drive to the ranch house proper.
Homer was staring straight ahead, driving as fast as he could over the uneven ground. He spoke to Franklin without looking at him.
“You recall seeing those fires at Yellowstone on the TV, Sheriff? Burning out of control? Threatening all those little tinderbox towns.”
“Yeah. I remember that.”
“Sometimes I feel like the border is one long tinderbox. Like Prairie is nothing but a tiny oasis in the middle of a dried up pine forest. It’s baking hot day after day and folks are walking around knee deep in pine needles. Bone dry. And everybody on Main Street is striking matches.”
“Some folks think those big fires are natural remedies, Homer. Just nature taking care of itself.”
Homer looked at him. “I have a real hard time believing that, Sheriff.”
“Well, you better slow down, son, there’s the ranch house right over there.”
There were four or five pickups pulled up outside the house. Homer hit the brakes and they got out and knocked on the front door. They waited a minute but nobod
y came and so they walked around the side of the house and down to the dried up river bed about five hundred yards away.
There was a big live oak tree standing at the bend on the other side of what used to be the river. It had been dead for years, but still had a lot of its lower limbs. Even from a distance you could see that somebody had looped three ropes over the lowest and biggest branch and tied a noose at the end of each one.
“Looks like we’re just in time,” Franklin said to Homer.
The men were standing at the base of the tree and Franklin could make out three small boys on the ground. They were sitting with their backs to each other, probably all tied together at the wrists. The local men, and one woman, were standing in a circle, just looking down at the boys.
“No need for you here, Sheriff,” Ed Parks said, stepping forward as the two lawmen crossed the dusty riverbed.
Franklin said, “Good afternoon, Ed. Boys. You, too, Miz Brotherwood. I hear these kids broke into your house last night.”
“That’s right they did,” Sadie Brotherwood said. “I caught ’em red-handed trying to steal my whisky.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Dixon said, brushing past two of the men and squatting in the dirt beside the boys. Their sun-blackened skin was bloody in places and their mouths were crusted with salt. Their black eyes were glazed with fear and exhaustion.
“Police? No need of calling anybody,” Parks said. “Waste of taxpayers’ money. We call the police every time we catch a bunch of these pollos, you wouldn’t have time to hand out parking tickets. No, we like to take care of this business ourselves out here. I told these boys we didn’t need no grass cut either. Hell, they’re just tonks. I reckon that’s why they’re here, brought in by coyotes and looking to cut grass up in Houston.”
“Goddamn pollos ain’t hardly human anyhow,” Mrs. Brotherwood said. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about.”
Franklin looked for some sign of grief in the widow’s eyes but only saw hard-bitten hatred and the dull gleam of self-righteousness. He un-screwed the cap from the canteen he’d brought and held it to the lips of the first boy. After the boy had drunk some water, he moved to the next one and repeated the process. The last boy, the smallest, was too weak to lift his head and drink.
“He’s mighty thirsty, Ed,” Franklin said. “You didn’t give them any water?”
“Why waste good water?”
“Que pasa hombre?” Franklin said to the oldest of the three after he’d gulped down some water. “Where are you from?”
“Nuevo Laredo,” the boy said, his voice a parched whisper.
“How many of you come across?”
“We were fourteen. We walked until we fell. My brothers and I, we are the last ones.”
“What is your name?”
“Reymundo.”
“And your brothers?”
“Jorge and Manuelito.”
Franklin stood up and looked at Parks and Sadie Brotherwood.
“All right, then. Here’s what we’re going to do. Mrs. Brotherwood, I’d like you to apologize to Mr. Parks here for bringing him all the way out for nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” she said, “It was three more wetbacks needed a good hanging.”
“Ed, you and the boys go on home. Homer and I will see these children get medical attention and then we’ll turn them over to the Border Patrol.”
“I’m gonna tell you something, Sheriff. I’ll go. But its people like you are going to ruin this great country. There are already more of them than us down here in West Texas. Hell, whole towns of ’em without a single white inhabitant. Not one! You want to give them the whole state? Is that your idea of right and wrong? Goddamn it, I don’t understand you anymore. I thought you were one of us. Hell, I voted for you in the last election. Now I ain’t so sure who the hell you are, Franklin.”
“I’m the law, Ed. That’s all. Now go on home.”
“The law. You think these three here give a flying fuck about you and your laws? Hell, they each paid their coyotes five thousand yankee dollars for the privilege of breaking your damn law. That’s the problem, ain’t it? It’s the damn law that’s going to ruin everything, you don’t start enforcing it for real. Come on, boys, let’s get the hell out of here before I puke on somebody’s badge.”
“Sheriff?” Homer said. He was sitting in the dirt beside the smallest boy, Manuelito, who seemed to have fallen asleep in the deputy’s lap.
“What is it?”
“This one here just died.”
26
DRY TORTUGAS
I got it!” Luis said.
“Got what?” Stoke asked.
“I finally figured out the whole anchor thing.”
“Yeah? Good,” Stoke replied, his mind somewhere else, namely his current life expectancy if he didn’t get his arm stitched up soon. “Tell me quick.”
Luis said, “Wait, yeah, I think this will definitely work.”
“Tell me what you got, Luis.”
Luis thought about it another second and then his face brightened. “What I’m thinking, hey, we just leave the anchor here. See? I crawl forward through the cabin up into the bow locker and untie the bitter end of the anchor line. Then we just let the line run out of the boat when we back down and get the hell out of here.”
Stoke just looked at him.
“You see? Fuck the anchor, man, we come back and get it later. Or, not!”
“That’s a very good plan, Luis. Seriously. If we were leaving right now. But we’re not, see? We didn’t come all the way out here to leave that gunrunner alive over there on that island. Who is he? Where’d he come from? Where was he flying home to? We’ve got something big down there in the deep and we need to know who’s dealing these weapons. And, dead or alive, I need to get a look at that shooter in the bushes, okay? And, in the unlikely event that he survives, have a chat with him about where he got those Russian missiles.”
“Cuba.”
“Cuba. How do you know that? You find something you forgot to mention? I thought you said the plane was clean.”
“I don’t know. But it’s a good guess, right? So now what?”
“I’m still thinking.”
Stoke was still feeling woozy. The tourniquet helped a little. But, and it was a big one, could he really get up on his knees with the Mini-14, mark the guy’s location and shoot him before he passed out from blood loss or the bends or whatever his problem was making him so light-headed? Possible, but very low probability of a successful outcome. Normally, he’d slip over the side, swim underwater around the little island and come up behind the guy. But, in his present condition—
He looked at Luis and then he looked at the rifle and then back at Luis.
“Don’t look at me, man.”
“Who’s looking at you?”
“You.”
Damn. Luis was right. He just couldn’t see Sharkey doing this. In any way taking the guy on the island out. No possible way you could expect a one-armed man to try to pull this off. Recently wounded in his one remaining good arm, no less.
Stoke knew approximately where the shooter was, had a rough idea based on the muzzle flash and the angles these shots were coming from. The guy was crouching down in the mangroves on the left side of a little cove near a stand of stumpy cabbage palms. Another thing. He was convinced that the shooter was the copilot. Had to be. No other reasonable possibility. Down at the plane, Stoke had seen what looked like the last remains of blood smears on the right-hand windshield. Like somebody’s head had hit it real hard. So. Copilot bangs his head but survives the crash, cleans up the cockpit and his dead buddy, and swims ashore. Yeah, that had to be it.
The survivor had to be one hurting gaucho after thirty-some-odd hours out on that little spit of land all by his lonesome. It was hot out here. Lots of skeets to keep him company. Maybe hurt, maybe no food or water. Hungry. Thirsty. And seriously pissed off that the pretty blue fishing boat he’d seen steaming to his rescue h
ad not come to his rescue after all. Hell, anybody would be upset.
Well, one thing was sure, Sharkey was in no condition now to take the guy out. He was curled up in the stern with his one bandaged arm wrapped around his knees. Sitting over in the corner by the bait box forward of the transom. Staring at Stoke and wondering what he was going to have to do next. But there was another way out of this. Stoke had an idea.
“Take the rifle,” he said to Luis.
“Me? I’m doing it? I told you! I can’t.”
“Yes you can. Listen, okay? Relax. I’m not asking you to stand up and shoot anybody, Sharkey. I got a much better idea. Just slide over here and take the damn gun. Now.”
“Aw, shit, man. This is so messed up.”
“Do it.”
He did it.
“Now,” Stoke said, in a very soothing way, “I want you to take this gun over to the bridge tower ladder.”
“Climb up?”
“No, not climb up. You think I’m crazy? No, what I want you to do is, scoot over there to the foot of the ladder. Okay? Stay down. Then you take the gun by the muzzle, reach it up high enough so your old man can reach down and grab it by the stock end.”
Luis lit up one of those lopsided grins that went on and off like a neon light. Relief flooded his face as he took the weapon. “Papa’s going to shoot him?”
“That’s right. He’s got the high ground and the best angle. But he can’t afford to miss, tell him, because he’s probably only going to get one shot off before the guy starts blasting him. Papa a good shot? Say yes.”
“Good? I’ve seen that old hombre put a mako’s eye out at one hundred yards. Fish was leaping twenty feet in the air at the time, right off our transom. Blam, he dropped him.”
“Well, see what I’m saying, this’ll be cake then. Easy-peasy-Japanesy.”
“You check is it loaded?”
“Damn! Didn’t you see me check it a few minutes ago? Yeah, it’s loaded. Now, listen up, this is important. Tell him to stay down. No heroics till I say so. He’s not to do anything right now except take the gun. He’s got to keep his head down until you’re back in the water.”