One of the young men, with a shamrock and the number 666 tattooed on his face, put an arm around him and said that was damn fucking fine, just fine. His name was George Chives, but they called him Nickel then for no reason that Earl ever knew, although that was eventually changed to Big King. And it was thirty years later that Earl set him on fire in his jail cell, burnin’ him alive with a balloon full of lighter fluid. But on that day in 1981, George asked him his name and explained that everyone needed someone behind bars, everyone needed a friend, and that with one punch Earl had just made all the friends he’d ever need for life.
He’d been so afraid of gettin’ pulled down into a group, but it had happened the other way around.
They’d come to him . . .
QUEEN OF CLUBS
Then there was Sierra . . .
She was a little dancer at a place called the Aces High in Sweetwater, although her real name was Phyllis. She was young, could have been his daughter, and he was twice a daddy already: Little B was five or six, and Jesse probably twice that. Things were tough and he was movin’ all around, sending Sunny a little money now and then, some of it even from that robbery in Roscoe that was bringing down all the heat. Daryl Lynch was telling him that a Texas Ranger was looking at him hard for that particular bank job, and had been asking about him and runnin’ a lot of questions up the flagpole. This Ranger spent his free time and money at the Aces High, Lynch’s place, and liked talkin’ up all the pretty girls, and unfortunately Earl was learnin’ Lynch was a bit of a talker, too—snitchin’ out of both sides of his mouth. It was only a matter of time before all the money the Ranger was throwin’ around might be worth more to Lynch than whatever threats Earl could enforce while on the run.
He once walked out of a Dollar General store and caught that Ranger sitting across the street in his truck, reflected in the store’s front windows like there were two of them—both of them staring at him.
Then, to make it all worse, Phyllis told him she was pregnant. He had been fuckin’ her for a few months and keepin’ her up to her eyeballs in crank, all ’cause she reminded him so much of Jesse’s mama. Same eyes, same hair, same way she said his name when he slipped inside her—the only woman he’d never put his hands on in anger. But he did hit Phyllis when she said she was having his baby, busted her up pretty good, and told her he wasn’t having another goddamn kid, not with a cranked-out stripper like her, even as she swore it was his and he had no reason not to believe her. Actually, he had a hundred reasons—every fuckin’ prick that had ever walked into the Aces High in the last four months—but he knew she was telling the truth and it was gonna be his. She was staying in that shitty little apartment just outside Sweetwater with two other girls and her tiny room was all done up with her high school stuff: cheerleading trophies and pictures of old boyfriends and magazine cutouts and even a pink stuffed dog from the 1989 Texas State fair on the bed, and although Phyllis had her problems—a whole fuckin’ bruised-up armload’s worth of ’em—being a lyin’ piece of shit wasn’t one.
And he knew that, like Sunny, Phyllis was gonna keep the baby no matter what he did or said. So he stayed away from her for a few days, trying to sort it all out, while Lynch kept at him about that damn Ranger; tellin’ Earl also it was about time they made him a full ABT. Lynch was a pure peckerwood only good for errand-boy shit and little else, but Lynch thought different about it, figuring he’d earned his colors. So much so that every time he opened his mouth it was startin’ to sound like a threat, and Earl didn’t like being threatened.
It was all so much like a goddamn noose around his neck, that a year later when he was back inside, he had a noose tattooed there, just to remind him.
So he got a shotgun and a pistol from Mel “Krazy” Ketchum, who brought them all the way from Tyler. The weapons were stolen from the house of a federal judge up there six months before, and there was nothin’ to tie them to Earl if it ever came to that.
Nothin’ at all.
Next he told Phyllis he just needed her to do this one little thing for him, almost like a joke, but a little more serious. And when it was over, he was gonna take her with him to Corpus Christi, where they could go sleep on the beach for a few days and drink and fuck and talk baby names or whatever.
Then he told Lynch how it was going to be. How it had to be—blood in, blood out. If he wanted to be a full ABT, it came down to that, and it always did.
* * *
• • •
THAT NIGHT THE WIND was gusting hard, and he and Lynch were hunkered down in the tall grass next to the road, the grass bent nearly sideways, so they both felt like they were hiding behind nothing. Sittin’ there so long he could barely feel his legs anymore, watching Phyllis smoke and get more and more nervous, until all three together saw the headlights comin’ toward them.
The right headlights.
Lynch was breathing hard the whole time through that dumbass mask he refused to take off, but Earl had wanted this Texas Ranger Robert Ford, who’d been following him all around and eye-fuckin’ him, to know exactly who’d done him in, so he made sure of it, when he finally walked up to the wounded man on the road and put his shotgun against his face.
He looked him right in the eye.
It wasn’t personal, nothin’ like that. It was just business, after all.
Some goddamn hard business.
And really, it was just unfortunate circumstances for everyone involved. He didn’t know much about Bob Ford, if he had a wife and kids. Hell, he barely knew anything about the man at all, and none of that mattered anyway.
Howdy, Bob . . .
ACE OF SPADES
And finally, there was Phyllis again . . .
Her eyes flickerin’ on and off, winking out like the lights in that trailer in Beaumont years earlier, but this time there was no fire to follow.
Just an endless black that she fell into and was gone.
* * *
• • •
THEY’D GONE TO CORPUS just like he promised, within sight and sound of the Padre Island Seawall Beach, so close there was salt and sand all over everything, dusting her hair, collecting later in her open and unseeing eyes. She’d been a mess since that thing on the road, so he set up the needle for her with everything he’d brought: a chunky mixture of pure white horse cut with a little powdered milk, and even purer, harder crank that Krazy Ketchum had cooked up for him, and she never once looked at it. Never even thought twice as he slid it in for her and held her arm tight to make sure she didn’t try to pull out too soon, not that he really thought she would, not that she ever did. She took it all and the whole time she kept going on about the blood and the wind and how she hoped the baby was a boy, even as her eyes rolled up white and then flat black again in her skull like holes in the ground itself, and her breathing went as flat as the low tide outside their motel window.
She wanted to name a baby boy Jeb.
Afterward, he sat with her awhile, smokin’ her last cigarettes, before he took her purse and everything else that said who she’d ever been and burned it in a trash can down by the beach.
Two days earlier, before they left Sweetwater, he’d also set up something similar for Daryl Lynch: a gas fire in the Aces High with Lynch inside, that damn mask he’d never wanted to take off taped across the eyes and mouth and held tight to his head with another half a roll of duct tape.
Blood in, blood out, motherfucker.
* * *
• • •
THE RETURN FAVOR for the guns that had killed Texas Ranger Bob Ford was helping Ketchum square a problem of his own: whacking a high-ranking Bandido in Abilene who’d been fuckin’ Krazy’s old lady. That was a tough hit that no one had felt good about unless Earl gave it the green light, ’cause no one wanted an all-out biker war over Krazy’s ole lady, who’d been pretty busy fuckin’ just about everyone in West Texas. But Earl owed the man, so he’d helped se
t it up, and after the Bandido ended up with three bullets but was still breathing—that was one tough motherfucker—a recording also surfaced of Earl talking about it, and that was all the bitch wrote.
Everything that had gone down from the start—the Ranger and Lynch and Phyllis—had all been about staying out of fuckin’ prison, but when all was said and done, he was sent back up anyway. This time for the one attempted murder he’d had almost nothin’ to do with, and not for the robbery in Roscoe or the killings in Sweetwater that he most certainly did.
* * *
• • •
BUT THAT WAS ALL done and gone now, and none of that bothered him too much, except for Corpus Christi.
Except sometimes, for Phyllis.
For months afterward he’d still felt her there in his arms, like she’d never left him. A ghost he was carryin’ around. He’d close his eyes and there she’d be, sayin’ his name, talking about their goddamn baby. He’d wake up in his cell and smell seawater and salt, brushin’ at his face like the girl’s hair was still there. Once he even found sand scattered around his bunk with no idea how it got there, and for a while he’d been afraid she was never gonna leave him alone, but over time she’d started to fade and fall back, just like everything else in his life he’d ever turned his back on and left behind.
Just another fuckin’ card in the deck.
32
He left early like he’d planned, even though he never ended up getting much sleep. He kissed Mel and she kissed him back, saying his name softly once as she rolled over to face the fan, while the dog watched him with his head resting on her shoulder.
He holstered his Colt and grabbed his A5, not even bothering with a cup of coffee. He went out to his truck beneath a gray, diffuse sky, like the whole of their world was trapped in the long shadow cast by some distant, unseen thing. When he turned it over, the truck sounded muted, too, even in the desert’s expanse. After he rolled down the long gravel drive and reached the edge of the Far Six, where the gravel gave way again to the blacktop, he didn’t aim toward El Paso, but instead turned south, toward Killing.
* * *
• • •
CHRIS WAS SURPRISED when he nearly ran right into Earl flying toward him on Farm Road 12 on a big Harley; in black jeans—both shirtless and helmetless—his hair slicked back thick and hard so that even the wind didn’t move it.
The sun was just now up, setting fire to the quartz edges of the low-slung mesas around Killing, and although Chris had planned to go all the way to the front door of the Joyce house to meet Earl, here he was instead, burning oil and leaving a trail of smoke behind him on an early-morning ride, not a care in the world.
Chris flipped around and dropped in behind the bike and rider, hitting his lights and sirens and following him for another half-mile, until Earl turned once to look behind him, and then backed the Harley down and pulled over.
He was already lighting up a cigarette as Chris walked up.
* * *
• • •
THE RESEMBLANCE WAS IMMEDIATE, not even counting the tattoos, although there was definitely that: LIE OR DIE inked in big letters, along with GOD FORGIVES BROTHERS DON’T, just like Jesse. His throat was surrounded by a hangman’s noose, and Chris could make out a huge, flaming map of Texas with ABT in the center, spreading across his chest and sternum. HONOR and LOYALTY were stitched on one set of ribs, and a cross wrapped with a coiling nest of snakes covered the other. There were numbers and symbols written across every inch of skin, and there was something about the way Earl watched him, the way the older man remained stubborn and slouched on the bike seat but still tense, almost coiled, that reminded Chris of Jesse back in Murfee. Although Danny Ford might not think there was any love lost between father and son, they shared too much of each other for either of them to ignore.
Looking at each other must have been like looking in a cracked mirror.
Caleb Ross had always worried about how much of his father he would end up carrying with him. He’d never wanted Stanford Ross’s legacy or that same dark and poisoned blood running in his veins, and Chris wondered if Jesse Earl ever felt that way, or if he had simply embraced his birthright and all that came with it.
Earl flicked ashes. “C’mon, Sheriff, it’s early and I wasn’t goin’ that fast.”
Chris nodded. “No, you weren’t, and it is early. You got somewhere to be at this hour?”
“Naw, I just don’t always sleep well, can’t turn it off easy some nights.” Earl tapped at his temple with the fingers holding the cigarette.
“Bad dreams?”
“Them, too, and some bad, bad thoughts.” Earl chuckled.
“You’re John Earl, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Earl tilted his head, out of the early sunlight. “Same here, Sheriff, same here.”
Chris pointed up the road, to where it curved and disappeared around a jagged spear of rocks. “So where were you headed?”
“Just around, I like these early-morning rides. Helps clear my head when I ain’t sleepin’ anyway. When I was locked up, I used to go into the yard, lie on my back in the dirt, close my eyes, and imagine a ride just like this. The other peckerwoods and the guards thought I was crazy. Fuck it, maybe I was . . . being inside so long can do that to you. But I’d lay there like that in the sun and do two, three hundred miles in my head, easy. I’d think about all the places I’d been on my bike, remember each sign beside the road, each and every hill. I had these maps right behind my eyes, all perfect, even more perfect than seeing it for real.”
“Did it really help?”
Earl offered Chris a cigarette and, when he declined, pushed the pack back into his jeans. “It did, for a while, but nothin’ inside helps forever.”
Earl’s smoke turned and coiled in the air. In Lubbock, Chris had looked through one of Nichols’s files, flipping through all the different booking and prison ID photos taken of Earl through the years. He’d started young, unblemished, but in each later one he’d been a little older, a little harder. More tattoos had appeared, and the lines around his eyes had deepened like scars, until you arrived at the man in front of Chris now. That’s what being inside so long did to you—it changed you inside and out.
“Your son came in town for his DNA test like I requested. I appreciate that. I know you made that happen.”
Earl didn’t say anything one way or the other.
“I imagine he’s not easy, Jesse I mean. He’s not the sort who’s going to do much of anything he’s asked. Probably even more when he’s told to do it.”
Earl laughed, pointing his cigarette at Chris, dropping ashes. “Now, you got that damn right. He’s headstrong, got that from his mama.”
“Where is she now? They see each other much?”
“Naw, we was done forever ago. She didn’t want much to do with either of us, least me anyways. He was mostly raised up by my brother and Sunny, too, my youngest boy’s mama, while I was doin’ my time. But c’mon, you know all that, right?”
“You know I do,” Chris admitted. “I guess that was hard on him.”
Earl’s eyes narrowed, thinking. “Sheriff, life’s damn hard on everyone.” He knocked off some more ashes. “I’m not the real fatherly type. I don’t come by it naturally, and I got that from my own daddy. Jesse’s always had a mind of his own. Always will.”
“Did he tell you he stopped in at a bar up in Murfee and had a few words with some folks there?”
“Your girl, right?” Earl shrugged. “It was brought to my attention.”
“One of them, yes.” Chris paused. “I don’t know, but with everything that happened in Terlingua, maybe he ought to be staying out of bars. Any bars, anywhere, period.”
Earl considered it. “Not the first time I’ve thought it, and not the first time it’s been told to him. His uncle likes his drink, though, so that makes it hard. But I
will pass your neighborly concern on to him. He’ll still do what he likes, but I’ll do my best.”
“He listened to you before, you think he won’t now?”
“Tough to say, sometimes he takes issue with his ole daddy’s opinion. Someone told me recently that most kids do.” Earl looked him up and down, trying to guess his age. “You and your girl have any?”
Chris shook his head. “No, we don’t.”
Earl nodded, stepped on some ashes with his boot, rubbed them away. “After Jesse and Little B, I knew I didn’t want no more. Hell, between you ’n’ me, I didn’t even want those two to begin with. Like I said, I’m not fatherly.” He winked. “Ask me today, and I’m still not sure I want anything do with ’em. They take everything, you know? Family does in general, but your damn kids most all. They eat you up, swallow you whole, and spit you out, if you let ’em.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, that’s a pretty shitty way to look at it.”
“Tell me somethin’ different after you have yours, and you will. You got that look about you.” Earl tossed his cigarette over his shoulder. “Anyway, I’m guessing you bein’ all the way out here isn’t just some coincidence, and you didn’t plan this social call to talk about kids and shit. If you’re upset about Jesse’s little dustup in town, I’ll try to keep him leashed.”
“You seem to have some pretty odd ideas about family.” Chris pointed at the ABT tattoos on Earl’s arms. “Isn’t that what all that’s about? Solidarity, unity, family.”
Earl glanced along the length of his inked arms. “Sure, right, gang and family, all the same. I believed all that shit for the longest time, until I learned it don’t matter. You give and give and there ain’t nothin’ to show for it in the end. Like I said, it swallows you right up.”
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