A Thousand Falling Crows

by Larry D. Sweazy

  Silence, with the exception of rain falling on the roof and the hum of the Coca-Cola box by the door, returned to the inside of the market. Sonny was glad for it as he realized the good fortune of bad weather. There would be no one to stare at him if his luck continued. He could get what he needed and get home without seeing anyone, or being seen by anyone, other than Tom.

  His concern about his inaugural appearance to the outside world had been steeped in self-pity, conceit, and pride. Maria Perza, the Mexican woman, his mommasita, would have been disappointed in him. Pride was the biggest of all sins as far as she was concerned.

  He picked up a basket woven of thin wood that looked like it had once served picnics instead of groceries, then set about navigating the aisles for his immediate needs. Long-term groceries would have to wait until another day—which didn’t settle well.

  First thing Sonny did was find the Van Camp’s. He reached for them with his right hand, but realized, a half-second later, that it wasn’t there. He let the basket slide to his elbow, hooked it there, then leaned forward to grab one can of the beans. Every act was going to require relearning. Even putting a can in a grocery basket.

  It was awkward bending his wrist back and juggling the basket at the same time, but he managed on the first try with a little toss. The task would prove more difficult the fuller the basket got. Slowly, cautiously, Sonny made his way up and down the aisle, careful to put only what he needed in the basket. There was little on the shelves that offered reward, or pleasure. Sometimes a Baby Ruth candy bar would satisfy his craving for sweets, but it felt like a luxury he could ill afford. These days, most folks thought the chocolate was named for Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat himself, but Sonny knew better. Baby Ruth had been named for President Grover Cleveland’s daughter.

  Tom had the chunk of cheese waiting on the counter. Sonny hoisted the basket onto the counter next to it.

  “Looks like that ought to keep you for a spell,” Tom said.

  Sonny nodded. “Probably best send Bertie out with some ice for the box first chance he gets.”

  “Won’t be no call for that one of these days, I suppose. Frigidaires’ll be in every house, if you can imagine such a thing. Bertie’ll have to find something else to cart around. Ain’t good for much else, but don’t tell my brother I said that. He thinks the sun rises and falls on that boy. I suppose there are worse things.”

  Sonny ignored the comment. Any man in law enforcement was a keeper of secrets whether he wanted to be or not. He reached back and took his wallet out of his pocket, looked Tom Turnell in the eye, and forced as much of a smile as he could muster. “When I was a boy, I couldn’t imagine driving a truck. Figured there’d always be horses and wagons. I would’ve never made it here on a horse on a day like today.”

  Tom Turnell smiled briefly. “Still are folks that just got a horse and a wagon, probably always will be, but I guess I see your point. Lord knows, you can’t stop progress. Not even the government can do that.” Tom began to punch in numbers on the cash register. After taking everything out, boxing it as he went, he totaled the machine, and said, “Well, Sonny, that’ll be four dollars and seventy-eight cents.”

  Sonny counted out five ones and handed them to Tom. “If you get any more Van Camp’s in, have Bertie run me out some.”

  “You got a phone?” Tom handed the change to Sonny, who laid it back on the counter.

  Sonny nodded.

  “You call me with an order and I‘ll save you a drive here. We quit doing delivering a while back because of the tone of things in the world, if you know what I mean. Same thing that happened to my delivery truck could happen to Bertie. Couldn’t stand the thought of such a thing.”

  “Yes, I have a phone.” The idea of getting groceries delivered heightened Sonny’s mood. He almost smiled broadly for the first time in memory. “Can you add on one of those Baby Ruth bars?”

  “Sure, I can. I sure can.”

  A pair of headlights swung into the parking lot, drawing Sonny’s attention to the door. At first, he thought it was Bertie returning from an ice delivery, but it was a car, parked close to the overhang.

  The rain had picked back up, and the distant horizon beyond the car—a make and model Sonny couldn’t identify—was gray and murky, like a thick fog had settled in with the storm or a cloud had crashed to the ground.

  It was hard to see anything clearly, but it looked like a woman, or a girl, was behind the steering wheel, which was the first thing that Sonny thought was unusual. Men drove most of the time, and women rode in the passenger seat.

  Before Sonny could gather his thoughts or turn his attention back to Tom, two men rushed in the front door, their faces obscured by red handkerchiefs pulled over their noses, both waving shotguns like they knew how to use them.

  “Hands up,” one of them yelled. They looked like mirror images of each other: same hair, same height, and same skin color—Mexican. Only their eyes were different. One was confident, the other was fearful—a follower, that much was clear. “This here’s a robbery. Do as I say, and nobody’ll get hurt.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Sonny hesitated, staring at the lead man, the one doing the talking. His mouth went dry, and a tremble started deep in his stomach. He allowed his left hand to dangle where it was, tried not to move, but the surprise of the robbery nearly knocked him off his feet. The last emotion he thought he would confront on this day was true fear. His previous tangle with two outlaws hadn’t turned out so well.

  Both men had stopped just inside the door. The quiet one, the fearful one, leveled his shotgun directly at Sonny’s head. The other one, the talker, was focused on Tom. He was confident, strident, certain of the task at hand. Cockiness was a dangerous ingredient in a situation like this. Sonny knew that better than anyone.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said, old man?” The talker turned his attention to Sonny. Tom’s hands had gone straight up in the air at the first command. For some reason, he didn’t look surprised. Probably had been through a robbery before, or expected it to come through the door sooner or later. It was hard for Sonny to know for sure, since he didn’t know Tom that well.

  “I don’t have hands,” Sonny said. He was trying to figure out a way to help Tom, buy time, find an opportunity to turn things their way, and get to his gun without alerting the duo that he was armed.

  “Hand. Then raise your damn hand.” The talker brought his barrel level with his partner’s so they were both focused on Sonny.

  Tom stood still in the periphery, hands reaching to the ceiling. He looked like he was playacting a statue or a tree. There was no emotion on his face, and he barely blinked. It was like time had stopped, catching Tom Turnell unaware. But that wasn’t the truth. The market owner was completely aware of every movement, every sound. Sonny was sure of it. Just as he was sure that somewhere close, under the counter or nearby, a weapon of some kind sat waiting. A man like Tom would be prepared for something like this, especially with the hooligan barns across the road. He just seemed too calm, too resigned, not to have some kind of plan.

  “Go ahead now, old man, don’t make me do somethin’ I‘ll regret,” the talker said, with a flip of the gun’s barrel. There was an obvious, familiar accent at the end of his tongue. Sonny had already determined the two were Mexican, but he didn’t recognize either of them. They’d covered their faces like old-time bandits, which wasn’t a bad move on their part. Sonny probably wouldn’t have known them anyway—they were young—but he could identify them later if he could get a good look at their faces.

  “Your mother must be proud,” Sonny said. He said it in Spanish as coldly as he could. Su madre debe estar orgulloso.

  It surprised the talker that he could speak the language so clearly, so fluently. He glanced over to his partner. “Keep him covered,” he said in Spanish as well.

  The partner said nothing, just nodded as the talker lowered his weapon and walked over to Sonny, stopping inches from him. He was shorter than Sonny and had
to look up to make eye contact. He smelled like juniper berries and sweat. The foulness spoke to Sonny. The talker’d been in a room with a batch of bathtub gin recently, but it was more than that. The kid—and that’s all he was, a kid—was afraid, too. It was just harder to see at a distance. There was a twitch in his right eye. Sonny wondered if this was his first stickup.

  “Don’t try anything stupid, amigo,” the talker continued in Spanish. “We just want money. No trouble, you understand? But I will hurt you if I have to. My brother might even kill you—just for the fun of it.”

  Careful, Sonny thought, you’re giving yourself away, amigo. He said nothing, though, just nodded, looking at the talker’s head, then over to the other one. Quiet ones could be even more dangerous than cocky ones.

  Sonny didn’t believe the fearful one had it in him to kill. That clearly wasn’t their intent. But it could happen. Years as a Texas Ranger had forced him into the aftermath of a lot of human storms, some planned, most not—just circumstances that had spiraled out of control quicker than they were supposed to. An explosion of anger followed by fleeting regret. It was common. Rage, fear, often mixed with jealousy and alcohol, were more lethal than any gun sitting on a shelf or in a locked drawer.

  “Now, amigo,” the talker snarled, “I don’t have much time to be nice, even to a cripple like you.”

  There it was. The loss of his arm had evoked a response. Maybe it would save his life—the irony wasn’t lost on Sonny, and he offered no reaction to the word. He raised his hand straight to the air without any protest at all.

  “That’s more like it, amigo,” the talker said in English. “You move a muscle and you will be shot. Do you understand?” He glanced over at Tom—who had not offered any evidence that he understood Spanish—making sure he understood. Sonny was betting that Tom understood every word that had been said. But it was hard to tell. Some folks refused to utter, or learn, a word of Mexican. It was un-American.

  “Go about your business, chico,” Sonny answered back in English. “And I‘ll go about mine.”

  Anger flashed in the talker’s eyes, just as thunder crashed overhead. The steady rain had been pushed out of the way by a storm. A chorus of hammers thudded on the roof. Hail. A heavy downpour. The screen door slapped at the frame, and wind pushed inside, bringing water to the floor and a coldness that hadn’t existed inside the store before.

  Sonny could barely see the car parked just outside. The driver’s window was rolled up, coated with condensation, steam from the heat of a human being sitting inside. She looked like a shadow, staring out into the grayness, fearing light, nervous for an escape.

  The talker glanced up to the roof, then to his partner. With a nod and a redirect with the shotgun, refocusing on Tom, he moved to the counter, opposite the market owner. “Open it.”

  “I can’t talk you out of it?” Tom asked. There was a quiver in his voice that hadn’t been there before the two men had rushed into the store.

  The talker shook his head. “Open it, or I‘ll shoot you and open it myself. That simple. We’ve been here too long the way it is.”

  “I‘ve got a family,” Tom said.

  “I don’t care,” the talker replied. He stood sideways between Sonny and Tom. The three men were almost a perfect triangle. “Lower your hands real easy. One stupid move, and I pull the trigger.”

  “Isn’t much here,” Tom said, as he complied with the talker’s demand.

  Sonny stood still, his focus on the fearful one.

  At the moment, Sonny was acting like a good soldier, doing everything the talker told him to. That didn’t offer him much of a chance to do anything to help end the situation. If the storm hadn’t been overhead, the only sound inside the store would be four heartbeats, all running at the same rhythms—fast, pumped up with nerves and adrenaline even though each man stood still.

  Tom opened the cash drawer, gathered up the bills, then handed them to the talker. “You want the pennies, too?”

  The talker took the money, looked at the thinness of the stack with disappointment, then stuffed it hastily into his front pocket. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “I told you there wasn’t much,” Tom said. “Look at the shelves. I don’t have much to sell—times are tough all over. Not just for you.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” the talker yelled, lurching forward toward Tom, turning away from Sonny. The shotgun barrel was inches from Tom’s mouth. “You have a safe in an office somewhere? Don’t lie to me. Tell me, damn it. This isn’t enough!”

  Sonny remained standing still, his arm over his head. It was starting to ache, blood running out of it with the immediate threat of numbness. He’d never considered living life without two arms until that second. Things could always be worse. He didn’t take his eyes off the fearful one—whose attention had been drawn to the talker by his outburst.

  “Don’t get mad, Eddie,” the fearful one said nervously. “We don’t need no more bad things. We just need rent and then we go, all right?”

  Eddie turned to his partner, his eyes even more enraged. “Shut up, me’jo. Just shut up. Look what you went and did. Look what you went and did now, you fuckin’ idiot.” His back was to Tom.

  It was the break the market owner had obviously been waiting for. In one quick scoop, Tom grabbed up the cheese wire, flipped it in the air so it wrapped around Eddie’s neck, then grabbed the other handle as it swung toward him so he could put pressure on the boy’s neck—which he did without missing a beat. It looked like a move he had practiced a million times. Choreographed it perfectly.

  “You move one muscle, I‘ll pull this wire so hard it’ll cut your head plum off. You understand me, me’jo?” Tom demanded. “Now drop the gun. You, too,” he said to the other one. The quiver in Tom’s voice was gone, replaced by anger-fueled strength. His eyes were black with unwavering certainty. He meant what he said.

  When Eddie didn’t immediately do as he was told, Tom pulled the wire a little tighter to prove he was serious. The shotgun clattered to the floor.

  Sonny had watched the whole exercise casually, not surprised by Tom Turnell’s ballet-like move. It was time for him to join in, while the fearful one’s attention was focused entirely on the situation Eddie had got himself into. He dropped his hand, bypassing the temptation to shake some blood into it, pulled the .45 out from its hiding place, and pointed it directly at the fearful one—who had gone from quietly nervous and afraid to visibly shaking with fear.

  “You heard what the man said. Drop the gun, like your brother,” Sonny demanded, using his best authoritative Ranger-tone. He didn’t have a badge or a right arm anymore, but that didn’t mean he had abandoned everything that had carried him through his professional life over the last forty years—including the saying that followed every Ranger these days, “One riot, one Ranger.” The saying was attributed to Captain W. J. Walker of Company B at the turn of the century. Sonny had known Walker personally and the man seemed to enjoy the attribution more than he did the admittance of his origin of it. These boys didn’t know that he was an ex-Ranger, so the reputation that usually preceded itself in a tense situation and laid the ground work for an easy end wasn’t evident to either of them. The saying meant nothing to them. But it did to Sonny.

  “Don’t,” Eddie yelled to the other one. In just as swift a move, he rocketed his elbow upward, catching Tom just under the chin. The surprise hit propelled the man, breaking his hold on the cheese wire, sending it flying out of reach, allowing Eddie to lunge forward toward Sonny.

  Tom crashed into the wall and fell to the floor, as Eddie pushed into Sonny, knocking him off balance, causing him to tumble into the shelf, sending cans and boxes crashing to the floor. But Sonny remained standing, the gun still in his hand, though pointed at the floor.

  The fearful one stood frozen, his shotgun still pointed at the counter, even though Tom Turnell had fallen out of sight.

  Eddie dove for his shotgun, but the barrel had spun around so it w
as closest to him, instead of the butt of the weapon. He picked it up by the barrel, anxious to reach the trigger, just as Sonny regained his balance and pointed his .45 at the Mexican.

  Eddie swung the shotgun at Sonny like a club. The butt of it cracked against Sonny’s wrist, sending the pistol flying into the air. It bounced off the top shelf and vanished into the other aisle with a skid, metal against wood, striking another mark in the floor.

  Tom Turnell stood up, his nose bloodied by Eddie’s elbow, and wavered, like he was dizzy, but stepped forward—toward the fearful one.

  Thunder boomed overhead, rain continued to hammer against the roof, and a pair of headlights turned into the parking lot, offering a quick beacon of hope to Sonny. But both boys saw what he saw and whatever fear existed before was now elevated to a new, more desperate, level, like gas thrown on an already-raging fire.

  Eddie’s brother pulled one trigger of the shotgun. Tom was five feet from him and the shot hit him directly in the stomach, knocking him backward. But Tom remained standing, enraged, determined to put an end to the threat and the desecration of his store, once and for all. He gathered himself, pushed away the pain and surprise, and stepped forward again, his bare hands the only weapon he had.

  It was a double-barrel shotgun; there was another trigger to pull. The second blast nearly cut Tom in half. He tumbled backward into the counter and collapsed into a pool of blood.

  Eddie jumped past Sonny, grabbed his brother, and ran to the door. He stopped and looked back at Sonny, cold eyes considering whether he deserved to live or die, when the car horn sounded—an alarm, an urging, let’s go, we have to go. The car that had pulled into the lot had stopped. Someone else was coming. Another witness. Another person to shoot. Hopefully it was Bertie—or the police. Eddie stood frozen, fingering the trigger on his own shotgun, offering no signals to the car what his intention was, just staring at Sonny, counting his odds. Finally, the horn beeped again, and Eddie disappeared out the door without saying a word or firing the gun.