Once on the ground, Crow said, “Do we go to the van?”
“Sometimes I think your brain’s no bigger than a tadpole, honest to fucking Christ,” Heddy said. “No, we don’t go to the van, they could be there. We walk away from here, that’s what we do, now let’s go before they figure out we went over the roof.”
It must have been two in the morning. We hadn’t gotten to the hotel until a little after midnight. I was tired and sleepy, but it didn’t look like we’d sleep anymore that night.
The streets were oily black with night dew, pools of light from street lamps dotting the dark. There were no cars on the streets moving and the stoplight at the corner blinked silently from red to yellow to green. I could smell the town. It was a smell like a bag of wet kittens, wet fur and burlap.
Where were we going? What would happen if I just skipped away from them? If I just took off down a side street and ducked through parking lots, losing them?
But I couldn’t leave my mother. Who would she have if I left her? No one. Daddy had really deserted her now.
The clanging started up in my head that signaled someone was seeping. That’s what I call it sometimes when I start picking up the thoughts from someone--their minds are seeping. I tried to block it out, but it was very loud and I guess I wasn’t surprised to find out it was Crow; the thoughts belonged to him. They were strong and noisy, a herd of wild horses stomping down through canyons like in old cowboy movies.
Most of it was too mixed up crazy to understand, but one thought of his stood out. He had the money, all the money, and he’d kill anyone who tried to take it away.
Especially if that someone was Daddy.
#
IT was the first time Heddy had found herself unable to cope. As the five of them trooped along the dark sidewalk away from the area of the hotel, she slipped her hand into her bag and brought out a bottle. Needed just a sip, that’s all, something to steady her.
A sip didn’t do it. She drank deeper, longer, fire burning the back of her throat and it seemed even her gums tingled and her tongue caught flame. She paused to catch her breath, stopping on the sidewalk to blink and to collect herself. Crow turned around, scowling.
“What are you doing?” He asked. Then he saw the bottle in her hand. “This is no time for that!”
“Don’t tell me what time it is or what I can do,” she snapped, putting the Jim Beam to her mouth and swallowing a third time. She could feel it working already. A new sun sank into her belly and lit her from inside out. It was like swallowing a nuclear reactor. She even stood straighter and everything took on a supernatural sheen, coming into sharp relief. She could get on with the world now. She could handle whatever it sent her, C.O.D. or Federal Express; she was ready for it.
Crow grabbed her elbow and pulled her along the sidewalk. “Get moving,” he told the Anderson family who had stopped, impeding his path.
“Let me go.” Heddy said it so softly she wasn’t sure he had heard her.
He did let go of her arm, however. He said, “Don’t get yourself drunk, Heddy, we have to get out of here.”
Heddy looked behind them. They had turned a few times since leaving the back of the hotel building, but she could still see the three-story structure against the night sky. No one was on the street. It was as eerie as being lost in a Twilight Zone episode.
“This place is so empty, it spooks me,” she said.
“Just hold it together. We’ll find somewhere else to hole up till morning.”
“Which the hell way is Mexico?” She asked.
“I have no idea. We can’t do anything until daylight.”
They wove through the small town streets like children on an illicit lark, taking corners without knowing where they led, moving away from the heart of the business district to the dry edge of the city, always alert to passing vehicles and shadows that followed behind them.
They were nearly to the city limits when Heddy felt the repercussions of her drinking. The alcohol made her head swim so that she staggered, missing a step and nearly falling headlong onto her face. Crow caught and righted her, hissing through his teeth.
Hell, she was drunk! What a grand thing to be. She usually could drink much more than the few ounces she’d swallowed minutes before and not be affected in the least. But this time the street and the parked cars and the lights kept wavering to remind her she was not altogether sober.
It must have been the adrenaline, she decided, the flight from the hotel, the fear of a showdown with two more toughs dogging them all the way across Texas from Missouri. That combined with the alcohol sent her reeling. She had to hold onto Crow for support, which raised her ire. “You got us into this,” she accused. “It’s all your fault.”
“I fucking did not,” he said.
“Yes, you did. Don’t think I don’t know you had something waiting at that hotel. I know. And those assholes from the lab house knew too. You’re about as dumb as a wrecking yard.” She giggled at that, though it wasn’t very funny. Crow being stupid was not funny.
“Whatta you mean I had something waiting?” He sounded all wounded and peeved. It made her want to sock him.
“The money,” she said and noticed the words slurred together despite her best efforts. It came out sounding like “Uhmoney.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m not stupid though.”
“You’re stupid drunk.”
She pulled away from his hand and hauled back on her heels. She was nearly shouting. “You weren’t going to tell me you sent the rest of the money here! You lying, cheating-ass bucket of piss.”
“Hold on, Heddy...”
They were all standing in the middle of an empty street crossing watching The Heddy Show. She knew it, could see it as if she were standing back and watching too. She knew she was being bad, she was going straight to hell this way, but Crow made her so mad she could reach down and yank off his dick. He was trying to skim her. After what she’d done for him.
“After what I did for you!” She screamed.
“Now, stop it, take it easy...”
He approached her, trying to take her arms, but she pushed him away and fell back, catching herself just before she fell. “You don’t lay your maggot hands on me, buster.”
Crow laughed. That made her so furious she wanted to roar and fall rolling to the street. “There was six hundred thousand in that kitchen,” she said in a controlled voice so that she would not stutter, intent on getting it out in the open. “Six hundred thousand! And you ship it down here for safekeeping to that rat-hole hotel and you weren’t gonna tell me.”
“If you keep this up, someone’s going to hear you.” Crow glanced around at the middle-of-the-night emptiness and shivered. “What if those guys come cruising through here and see us in the middle of the goddamn street? What if someone calls the cops?”
The mention of the law made her eyes squint. She knew he was right, something in the back of her head said listen to him, he’s right, get your ass out of here, but his betrayal was so large, so fresh, so...so...unfair...
Tears broke and rushed down her face. She swatted at her cheeks to keep the tears at bay. “I wouldn’t have stolen from you,” she said in a small sad voice. “I was the one worked out how to get you out of prison. I’ve done everything for you...”
Crow came closer and took her arm again. “C’mon, let’s find somewhere to get off the street, we’ll talk then.”
“I want to go home,” Carrie said. The Andersons had been quiet all this time, watching the spectacle of Heddy losing her famous cool.
Heddy looked at her and said, “Is she who you want to run off with to spend that money?”
Crow denied it and told her to keep moving, don’t talk about it.
She sneaked her hand into her bag again and turning her head to the left so Crow couldn’t see, she took another slug of the whiskey. If she was going to be drunk, by God, she was going to be freaking out-of-this-world drunk, she was going to be walk
ing-in-a-dream drunk, she was going to be so drunk she wouldn’t even remember herself.
#
IT might have taken them an hour of steady walking, but they found themselves outside of Brownsville on the outskirts where Mexican families lived in small tract houses on tiny plots of land. An occasional flower box full of geraniums lightened up an otherwise drab home here and there, but most of the houses were run down and sad as wilted daisies. There were rusted cars up on concrete blocks, broken toys hiding like soldiers in tall weeds, and dog-chewed scatters of garbage in the tablet-size front yards.
Crow hustled them all past this and through it to the edge of the development, Heddy complaining all the way. He had to get them away from town, away from habitation, though he didn’t quite know where he was headed. Now and again he made them stop while he checked parked cars at the curbside for one with a key left in it, but no luck. Even owners of broken-down ten-year-old cars weren’t cavalier enough to leave their keys in the ignition. This was a changed world. There just wasn’t any faith anymore, unluckily.
When the little girl, Emily, started lagging back, he knew he wouldn’t be holding his little group together much longer. They must have walked for miles and hadn’t seen but two other living beings in passing cars gliding ghost-like down the streets.
He must find them somewhere to rest. If he didn’t find some place safe soon, he thought there would be a revolt. Either Heddy would drop over drunk in the gutter, Jay would make a break for it, or the little girl might sit down and refuse to move again. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to carry her.
It was that kind of night, after all. Things going all wrong, going all to hell. All he could think about was the guys back in St. Louis had tracked his movements to the motel he and Heddy stayed in the night after the murders and the robbery of the loot. Could they have then had a tail on him when he dropped the manila package in the mailbox? If they could have fished it out they wouldn’t have had to track them down here, having recovered the main amount of what had been stolen from them.
Unless they’d watched him closely, how could they have known what hotel..? He remembered then the van and how they’d let the one guy live at the abandoned fishing camp up in the middle of Texas. That man knew the van. They simply tracked it down, the goddamn van. It made him want to slap his head in wonder at how stupid they’d been.
Shit. It was like he and Heddy had been dropping a trail of crumbs all the way. If they’d only tried harder to find another car to take. They had known the assholes wouldn’t give up trying to recover the money.
Hell. If only they hadn’t picked up this fucking family who were a noose around their necks. If only he’d been straight with Heddy.
If only he had Evel Kneival’s motorcycle and about one tenth his courage, he’d jump the fountain in Vegas.
That made him smile. It was not all lost, that was the point he needed to keep in mind. They’d gotten out of the hotel and evaded what surely would have been their deaths. He had a lot to smile about.
If only he could find a place to lie down until dawn. The muscles in the back of his neck were so tense and bunched when he turned his head he felt like a mannequin just coming to life.
The housing development ended abruptly on the edge of a flat field hemmed by barbed wire. Ahead Crow could see one more house sitting by itself, a silhouette in the distance. It was an old white frame farmhouse set apart from the field by a ring of tall leafy trees. No lights. No cars, either, as far as he could tell.
“We head over there,” he said, pushing Jay in the small of his back and hauling Heddy along by one of her arms. He had never seen her so ditzed. He thought if he let go of her, she’d fall flat on her ass in the road.
No dog barked as they moved up the rutted dirt road toward the house hidden in the trees. Thank goodness for that, Crow thought. He didn’t trust or like dogs, would have shot every damn mongrel he met if left up to him.
One time when he was sixteen he’d been robbing what he took to be an empty house. A big black mongrel with a face like a Mack truck came out of nowhere and bit him in the thigh, hanging on for dear life. It hurt like a motherfucker. He’d had to slam the dog in the forehead with his flashlight over and over again to get him to loosen his hold. He had the scars to prove it. Since then he had no more use for dogs than he had for a hole in his head.
There were no lights on in the house and still no evidence of a vehicle. The closer they came, the more it seemed to Crow that the house was deserted. He was sure of it when they entered the circle of trees and could see the tall rectangular windows that blinked wide curtainless eyes at the stragglers in the front yard. The door stood open to the night and any stray creatures that wished to make it home.
He breathed a sigh of relief. He thought if he had to get involved with any more hostages at this point, he’d go berserk and kill the whole goddamn bunch.
“No one lives here,” Jay said, hesitating at the edge of the weedy yard.
“Aren’t we lucky sons of bitches?” Crow said, prodding the man forward. “Get your ass in there.”
“This doesn’t look like Mexico,” Heddy complained bitterly, looking around the weed patch and swaying at the end of where he held her arm. “This does not look like fucking Mexico.”
Crow let out an exasperated sound, a cross between a raspberry and a sigh. “It’s just a place to stay until there’s light,” he said. “C’mon, Heddy, let’s go inside, you can get some sleep.”
“I don’t woan sleep.”
“Yes, you do, trust me.”
“I wouldn’t trust you to wipe mud off my shiny white ass, Crow.”
He ignored her bad temper and hustled the Andersons ahead of him up the worn steps to a small porch, and in through the sagging door.
It was just awful. That was his first thought and it was born out on closer inspection. Mexicans must have used it for a layover from the Rio Grande. There were bottles and cans, used baby diapers, even piles of human excrement dotted with toilet paper in the corners.
“God,” he muttered, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. It reminded him too much of some of the places he had to call home when he was a kid on the run. He’d stayed in warehouses, condemned buildings, rat- and roach-infested apartments where the ceilings had holes large enough that you could see the stars and make out the Milky Way.
“Looks like your kind of place,” Jay said.
“Looks like your grave yard, man.” Crow pushed him once more to make his point before guiding Heddy over to a wall where he lowered her to the floor.
“Pick a spot and go to sleep or just keep quiet,” he told the family. “I’ll have good news for you in the morning.”
“Such as?” Jay wanted to know.
“Will you let us go then?” Carrie asked.
It was Emily that Crow looked at when he let the news out. She had been staring at him the whole time, all the way down the driveway and into the house, just as if she was puzzled by what he was going to do with them. Now was the time to let her know. She was just a kid, after all, none of this was her fault.
“Yes,” he stated simply, still speaking to the girl. “Tomorrow me and Heddy light out for the border and you’re free to go.”
“Why not tonight?” Carrie asked.
He turned from Emily to her mother. “If you have to ask that you’re not as smart as I thought you were. Now sit down and alla you shut up.”
He heard the swish of liquid from behind him and knew Heddy was at the bottle again.
Goddamn her.
#
WOUND up, unable to stop, like someone popped new batteries into her. The Energizer Bunny. That’s what I thought about how Heddy got going that night in the farmhouse. It wasn’t long till dawn. My eyes were tired and felt scratchy, and I was thirsty. I thought I could put my head in Daddy’s lap and go to sleep, but Heddy had been drinking like crazy. Once she started talking it was like a river washing over us. Even Crow couldn’t get her to stop.
“You think this house is bad? Hell.” She slurped from the bottle, emptied it, and threw it across the room where it slid and hit the wall. She rummaged in her purse and brought out another bottle, a full, unopened one. When Crow tried to take it from her, she took a swing at him. He put up his hands in surrender and said, “Okay, fine, drink that shit till your eyes fall out for all I care.”
“I guess you think I’m gonna tell you about all the dumps I’ve had to live in. Well, I’m not!” Heddy said. “You think I’m pissed off my mother’s husband hit me so hard in the face I can’t even move half my mouth. Well, I am! I’ve been pissed off ever since. That’s how I live--pissed off and pissed on. He got a dull knife through his ribs for it, though, so I figured it evens out. People like you...” She waved her hands at us and made a face before taking another swig from the new bottle. “People like you feel sorry for people like me, but I’m here to tell you you’re dead, you’re walking around dead people. At least I’ve lived a little.”
“Take it easy, Heddy,” Crow whined. He had moved closer to her and now sat cross-legged not far away. His gaze kept shifting between Heddy and us where we were huddled together near the center of the open room--the only area not littered with trash.
Moonlight spilled across the floor like a silver river coming through the door. I couldn’t see it, the moon, but it had to be out there just above the edge of the trees. I shivered from the damp air and scooted over closer to my father. He hadn’t been saying much at all and neither had Mama. Now that Crow had promised to set us free once it was morning, we could all stop worrying about it. There was no reason for them to hurt us. Even when we told they’d gone into Mexico, no one would ever find them.
But was my Daddy still going too? He’d said he was.
While Heddy ranted on about her sorry life, I looked at Daddy from the sides of my eyes. Would he really leave us? For Heddy? For drunken and full-of-hate Heddy?
I closed my eyes to shut out Heddy’s voice. I felt a purple wave of sadness coming off her. Once it touched me, I’d be swamped under all those feelings like under a big wave coming into shore from an ocean. What did Daddy think of her now that he could see her drunk and disorderly just like the people he put in jail?
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