Feast for Thieves

by Marcus Brotherton

  Crazy Ake began to flip switches. The Beechcraft’s front prop turned and coughed and its engine sputtered to life. I’d never piloted a plane before; I didn’t know what he was doing. Crazy Ake hit some more switches, tapped on the foot pedals a couple of times, and pulled out the throttle, I guessed it was. The plane started rolling down the field. At the end of the airstrip the plane turned around and stopped a moment. All at once the motor roared and the plane quivered and shook.

  “Here we go,” I said to Bobbie. Faster and faster we rolled until the plane gave a little jump and we were off the ground. I looked out the window and saw the hanger go streaking past. We were soaring through the air now and doing a climbing turn. I could see lights from the town of Cut Eye beneath us. Bobbie reached over, squeezed my hand tightly, and held on. I gathered it was her first time in an airplane.

  The plane leveled off and we began to fly what I guessed to be due south. Crazy Ake hit some more switches and a vibrating sound was heard as the landing gear sucked back into the belly of the plane. It felt like we were riding in a car except we were high over what I guessed to be clouds. It was hard to tell exactly where we were because of the darkness all around us.

  “Attention—attention. This is your captain speaking.” Crazy Ake laughed as he yelled back to us. “Our trip’s six hundred miles as the crow flies. The Bonanza cruises about 160 m.p.h. We should be at the telegraph office in Pachuca before breakfast. You like tequila with your scrambled eggs?” He laughed again and looked forward.

  Bobbie and I said nothing. For some time we were quiet and my mind churned on various plans. When I played them all forward in my mind, none seemed to work. I stared out the window. The sky was black. Bobbie’s eyes were closed.

  In about an hour and a half, a streak of color began to show low across the western horizon. It showed as an intense red at first. The red stayed on the horizon and a band of orange lay out across it. In a few seconds the sky streaked with yellow rays. Darkness changed to blue, the scattered clouds became white, and all around us looked far off and immense, like we were hurtling along through heaven itself.

  Bobbie opened her eyes, squeezed my hand tighter, and spoke. “Who hast set thy glory above the heavens. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”

  We were quiet for some time to come, both looking at the sunrise. Then I asked, “Was that Radchenko again—the Russian?”

  She tried to smile. “King David. Psalm 8. Don’t you ever read your Bible?”

  “Not enough, I reckon.”

  Her voice was low over the engine, just low enough for me to hear her, and I saw her smile fade in the eerie light from the dashboard. “Rowdy,” she said, “you ever wonder what Jesus was talking about when he told folks to turn the other cheek if they get hit?”

  “I wondered about it a few times,” I said. “That was tough teaching for me to reckon with while I was slugging it out at the tavern all those nights, trying to get all those fellas to come to church. I know some folks believe it means we should never fight nor protect ourselves, but I’m a man who’s been to war. I’ve seen how unchecked evil can ruin innocent lives. So I confess I’m not in harmony with pacifist ways of thinking, no.”

  “I’ve thought about Jesus’ words quite a bit,” she said, “and, as a rule, I believe the Bible says what it means. Yet when you grow up in Texas and your Daddy’s a sheriff, you learn to broaden some interpretations. I believe Jesus was telling folks to overlook matters of personal insult, not assault, because later on he told his disciples to buy swords. Whether those swords were so they could be classified as transgressors, or for them to protect themselves when he wasn’t around, I’m not certain. But I do know one thing for sure—and that’s regarding the direness of our circumstances at this moment.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Crazy Ake will not let us live. I’m not sure he’ll let Sunny live, either. Not when we’ve come this far with him. We know too much now for him to ever let us return to our former ways of living.”

  A drop of sweat rolled down my forehead and I clutched Bobbie’s hand. “No, you’re wrong about that. We will live through this, and so will Sunny. We just need to help get him to Pachuca, then he’ll let us go. I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out, but we’re all gonna stay alive. Trust me on this. I didn’t take a bullet in Holland just so I could die in Mexico.” My heart hammered, and I hoped the words I spoke were true.

  Bobbie was silent, her brow furrowed, then she said, “There’s another verse of Psalm 8 that comes to mind, and it’s not nearly as nice as what I just quoted.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked. “All that talk about stilling an enemy?”

  “It means,” said Bobbie, “that if Crazy Ake hits your right cheek again, Rowdy, that Jesus wouldn’t want you to turn to him your left.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  We were three and a half hours into the trip, flying low over the Sierra Madres, when Crazy Ake pulled out a bungee cord from the side compartment near the window, and tied the controls fast. We were flying low on purpose, Crazy Ake had explained earlier during one of his many rants, since it was harder for radar to pick up our location. With the plane now on a crude sort of autopilot, he turned around from the front seat and stared at us, the revolver in his left hand.

  He didn’t move or lunge. All he did for about five minutes was hold his gaze steady. The foam out his mouth was dribbling again although he hadn’t told a story in at least half an hour, and I glanced out the window to gain our bearings and saw the craggy formations underneath us in the morning sunlight. The land looked to be weathered by long periods of sun and erosion. Large blocks of plateaus were lifted up out of the ground, and deep gorges were formed in the valleys between peaks of rock. The entire earth below looked angular and full of canyons.

  “Well, it’s time at last,” he said finally while looking at his watch. “Look behind you in that big duffel bag—the one we ain’t touched yet.”

  “Time for what?” I asked.

  “Time for you to keep doing what I say. We can’t waltz up to any old airport in a stolen aircraft. But I’ve been anticipating this all along. Exactly three minutes from now we’ll come to an area of some deep outcroppings. The locals call it Cañón de Fresa—the Strawberry Canyon. We’ll find a Ford pickup waiting for us at the bottom. The keys are inside, hidden under the seat. It’s a straight shot on a dirt road south to Highway 85. That’ll lead us all the way into Pachuca. When we get to Pachuca, we need to send a message to Sally Jo at the Rancho Springs telegraph office.”

  “She’ll be at the Rancho Springs office?” I said. “How come you’re telling us her whereabouts now?”

  “As a gentleman and a crook, I am both unoriginal and cheap,” said Crazy Ake. “When I ordered Sally Jo to drive around with Sunny all day, she wanted extra for gas money.” He laughed. “That wasn’t going to happen, so I told her just to go park in the shade, and then drive over to Rancho Springs at noon. I’m telling you this because I want you to know I’m a man of my word, rotten to the core though I may be. There’s the thin chance one of us ain’t gonna survive this next step of the plan, and although I’m no stranger to murdering folks, you were my cellmate once, and decent about it. Besides, I don’t want the ghost of your dead daughter haunting me the rest of my life.”

  I was thankful for the slim revelation, but still I began to sweat, sensing what lay before us next. I needed to ask to make sure. “Just how you propose we reach a deep canyon while flying in an airplane?”

  “We won’t by flying in, of course, which should be no problem for an ex-paratrooper such as yourself. As for the young lady—” He glanced at Bobbie. “
I’m afraid the first time jumping out of an airplane can come as quite a shock. Inside that last duffel bag are three parachutes, Rowdy. I packed them myself. Get ’em out.”

  I glanced at Bobbie. Her face was expressionless and she stared straight into Crazy Ake’s eyes.

  Leisurely, the man looked at his watch again. He turned forward and examined the gauges, then turned back to us. “In precisely sixty seconds, I’m going to drop this bird another two hundred feet and we’ll all exit the plane. We need to exit the plane quickly because once we do, the plane will slam headlong into the hard side of the next mountain. That, again, dear friends, is all part of the plan. A burned plane means no bodies are found—and that’s only good for us when the law gets antsy to look for the loot.”

  “What are we waiting for?!” My mind snapped into gear and my head was already craned around behind us in an effort to rummage the chutes out of the duffel bag. I passed one up to Crazy Ake, threw mine on, and helped Bobbie buckle hers.

  “Rowdy!” Bobbie said, her face white. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

  I heard Crazy Ake back at the controls, muscling the plane lower in altitude. A long drone sounded as the plane dropped quickly. Time was wasting.

  “Yes you can!” I said back to Bobbie. “It’s just like when we jumped off the running path into the river. I’ll place your hand directly overtop the rip cord. After you jump, you count three Missisippis in your mind, then pull the cord. You’ll feel a powerful tug, but after that it’s an easy glide to the bottom. I’ll be right by your side the whole way.”

  “No,” she said. Her voice trembled. “I don’t think I can do this today. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Plane’s level!” Crazy Ake’s leisurely tone vanished. “Twenty seconds to impact!”

  He was wrestling to buckle himself into his chute, and I turned my head his direction a moment to judge his success. In a flash I saw him take the other duffel bag, the one filled with cash, lay it against his chest, and buckle it securely to him with two sets of handcuffs. “Ten seconds!” he yelled. With a charge, he shimmied over the seatback, kicked open the side door, and propped it open. The wind howled past the aircraft’s opening. His body lay halfway overtop of us in his effort to reach the door. There wasn’t much room in the backseat to begin with. A gob of froth stuck to his bottom lip. “Five seconds.”

  “Go!” I yelled. “Go!” Crazy Ake jumped first. I slapped Bobbie’s chute to signal okay, pushed her out, then jumped myself.

  In those first few split seconds after jumping out of the Beechcraft, nothing existed. No feeling of falling. No rush. No markers or indications of orientation. Just streaming straight down. In the whirl of air, I saw two images almost simultaneously—one by glancing up and the other by glancing down. The first was the plane slamming into the face of the mountain. The Beechcraft exploded in an orb of fire, as colorful as the sunrise we’d viewed a few hours earlier. The second was Bobbie’s chute opening below me. The girl had found her courage, and I knew she was going to be okay.

  We’d jumped so low, the ground was nearly upon us. I could see it rushing straight at me with the power of a freight train. I pulled my cord. Instantly I felt a pop and a jerk then looked up into the silk to check that all twenty-eight panels were still there. Blow too many, and you fall too fast. I swung back and forth, the only sound in my ears a rush of wind around the chute.

  The ground hit. My legs buckled beneath me. I lost sight of Bobbie. I was tumbling, rolling, falling, bouncing. We’d all hit the ground at an angle against the side of a valley, and I had the good sense to clutch myself into a ball and raise my arms up against the sides of my head. Something brown and prickly whooshed by my face and I closed my eyes, bounced twice, hit my head against something hard, and saw black.

  I was out for only a minute. Blood ran in my mouth and my sight line was blurry when I looked into the distance. The terrain was sun scorched and waterless, although somewhere within my hearing I heard the faraway burble of a brook. All else was silent. I couldn’t fathom how strawberries ever grew in this grassless canyon, an arid wasteland so full of desolation and rock, if that’s indeed where we’d landed—in Strawberry Canyon.

  Gingerly I fingered my way along my legs and ribs. No bones felt broken although at the back of my head my hand passed over a large lump forming. My gaze shook, then became clear. I tried to stand, sunk to my knees, then tried again.

  Far in the distance stood Bobbie. She was wrestling with the back of her chute, trying to free herself, and as I walked toward her she stepped out of the silk and walked forward a few steps, then went and sat on a small rise that overlooked a waterfall. Sure enough it was a brook, but a brook that tumbled through brown boulders. She gazed far off into nowhere, and I noticed how her hair was the color of honey. Her skin like a peach. She was quizzical and wide-eyed and looked like she could have been the mother of my child.

  Crazy Ake was next to her in a jiffy. He was already out of his chute, too, twirling the revolver with his finger. I managed to make my legs keep working and ambled over, sat down a short distance away to catch my bearings, and looked at them out of the corner of my eye.

  “Good—you ain’t dead,” Crazy Ake called. “Let’s get going—time’s wasting. At the bottom of those falls lies a road. Our truck sits on that road. Let’s move.”

  Bobbie and I both stood up. I wobbled, but I asked her if she was okay.

  “I could write a thousand poems,” she said, “and never describe that feeling of jumping out of a plane. I’m fine, yeah, but you look like you could lay down a spell. How’s your head?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  Crazy Ake hiked behind us as we wound our way downhill around rocks and boulders. Sure enough, the truck sat parked where he said it would be.

  He threw the duffel bag with the money in the back, opened the driver’s side door, pocketed the keys, and pulled out a rifle from underneath the seat. It was an M1, same as I was used to, and he checked the clip to make sure it was full, and tucked his revolver in his belt. He walked forward ten paces, drew a line in the sand with the toe of his boot, and walked back. Bobbie and I both stood near the truck.

  “Well, you’ve both got grit,” Crazy Ake said. “That was good to see—not that I ever questioned yours, Rowdy. But I’m afraid I need to ask you both one more question before we can proceed any further today, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this before, I truly am. But I doubt if you would have helped me get so far and so kindly if you knew this lay ahead.”

  “What question?” I asked. My voice was flat.

  “A question of great importance,” Crazy Ake said. “The question of loyalty. I need to know right now—without a shadow of a doubt—if you’re both in or out.”

  He pointed the rifle our direction and motioned to the line in the sand.

  Bobbie and I stared at him with quizzical looks, wondering exactly what he meant.

  “This has always been about more than money,” Crazy Ake said. “You know that. Money makes it all happen, but it’s about me running the system, same as I did in jail—and I can’t do that alone, particularly on the outside. I need my sergeants, Rowdy, same as I once had. You savvy what I’m saying? I know you do. I’m just not so sure your girlfriend does.”

  “Point your rifle down,” I said. “I ain’t never been one of your sergeants, and time’s wasting besides. We need to get to the telegraph office quick.”

  Crazy Ake laughed and licked the foam from his lips. “Oh, I’ll get to the telegraph office, I promise you. I’m a man of certainty, and it’s a straight shot from here to there. But the big question is if you’re truly a changed man. See—what I need now is a regular gang. There’s plenty more of these jobs to be pulled—even some with pots larger than fifty grand—so what I most need now is a few friends I can fully trust.”

  “Friends?” Bobbie said. “We are not your friends.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m sorting out, girlie,” Crazy Ake said. “Now tha
t we’re in Mexico, I’m safe. You’ve both done your job, thank you much. You got me in and out of the mayor’s house safely, and you got me onto the airstrip and into the plane. The law in Cut Eye doesn’t know what direction we were going, and the Mexican authorities are doubtful to know about the heist yet. That means I’m a free man where I stand, and, sorry to say it, but you two have used up your usefulness.” He glanced at his rifle and laughed. “Whenever I don’t need a gang member, there’s only one fate awaiting the deadwood. But you both did good, and I’m proposing a wide-open opportunity. I’ll cut you in for thirty percent of the cash—that’s fifteen thousand dollars today to split—more money than you’ll see in two lifetimes of being reverends, and I’ll cut you in on future jobs, too. I just need to know for certain whether I can trust you from here on out.”

  “Why would we ever trust you?” Bobbie asked.

  “Not you trusting me, no,” Crazy Ake said. “Me trusting you.” He smiled and continued. “It’s very simple. It’s one thing to play along being a thief for one evening, Miss Barker, but I need to know if you’re ready for a lifetime of wrongdoing. And you, Rowdy, you can’t go back to Cut Eye and your new preaching job now, so you may as well throw in your lot with me once and for all. That’s the offer. If you’re with me, then there’s big reward. If you’re against me—” Here he looked at the line in the sand. “Then I’m afraid your adventures with the mighty Akan Fordmire have come to an end.”

  “Lay it out plainly,” I said. “What do we need to do?”

  Crazy Ake grinned wider. “Just swear allegiance.”

  “To the flag?”

  “No,” Crazy Ake said. “To me.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I swear allegiance to Crazy Ake. Let’s go to Pachuca.” I opened the door of the truck.