“This was not the fuckin plan.” House Cat surveys the damage from the door. His voice has sawdust in it now, the anxiety coursing through his body dropping the register as he tries to remain cool. Wheezing from the run. Eyes riveted on Nadine’s body, he looks up, gasps when he sees Odin, the left side of his face like hamburger.
Blood drips to the just mopped floor where it shines brightly in the fluorescent glow. House Cat staring at Odin, not moving. Odin staring at House Cat.
“Whore fuckin tased me,” Odin says in a strangled voice, the shock having driven his register up an octave.
“She have a gun, too?”
“There’s a dead guy behind the counter with a sawed-off.” House Cat peering over the counter, groaning, calculates the years a second dead body could add to a prison sentence. House Cat’s future: a three-time loser looking at life. Wrong! It was death this time, lethal injection. A Niagara of curses pours forth. Odin receives them like an indictment. He rubs his bleeding arm, says, “What the fuck you expect me to do? Motherfucker’s blasting like it’s the road to fuckin Kandahar.”
“Clean the wound,” House Cat says, aggravated at the whole situation. Grabs a water bottle from the refrigerator, twists the top off, hands it to Odin who tilts his face and pours it over the torn skin.
“They got band-aids in here?” Odin asks.
“Band-aids won’t do squat.”
“Ain’t going to no hospital.”
House Cat pulls a bulky package off a shelf, throws it at Odin, who catches it with both hands. It’s the size of a small suitcase.
“Diapers?”
“Put one on your head.”
“You want me to put a fuckin diaper on my head?”
For a moment, House Cat thinks if Odin has a problem with the suggestion he might just blow the dumb shit’s head off, let the cops sort that one out. Nadine, the counterman, and Odin with his prison record, shotgun wounds and a bullet in his head. Good luck figuring out what happened. But Odin says nothing, just wipes blood from his eye with the heel of his hand. He jams the revolver into his belt.
“Half your face is torn off,” House Cat says. “It’ll stop the bleeding.”
Odin is considering this when a pair of headlights slices through the night. Both men stop talking and stare at the road until the car moves past and disappears into the darkness. Then Odin rips open the package, pulls out a diaper and, after examining it from several angles, places it over his head with the crotch at the crown. He resembles a bloody Q-tip, but the soft absorbency of the diaper, snug against his leaking face, arrests the profusion of blood.
After a brief debate about whether or not to remove Nadine’s body and dump it where they had originally planned, House Cat steps over the recumbent corpse of the counterman, averts his eyes from the lifeless face, and opens the cash register. Grabs the bills and shoves them in his pockets. Tells Odin they need to make it look like a robbery. Odin demands half the money now. Exasperated, but not wanting to create additional problems, House Cat counts it, singles, fives, tens, twenties, and hands a wad to his bandaged partner. Tells him they need to clear out before another customer shows up. Odin shoves the bills into his pockets. Steps behind the counter, spots a VCR. Presses ‘eject’ and removes the tape. Then he aims the gun at the security camera and fires. As pieces of the obliterated camera rain to the floor, he grabs a fifth of Southern Comfort from behind the counter and they’re out the shattered door.
The headlights of the Impala throw off a long glow creating stretched shadows as House Cat and Odin make for the car. House Cat asking Odin if he’s going to be all right and Odin, the blood-soaked diaper clinging to his head, swigging from the Southern Comfort, tells him to shut the fuck up and not worry about it. House Cat takes the vinegar as a positive sign.
Because the headlights are shining in their eyes, it takes a moment for the pair to realize someone is standing next to the car.
The man is gaunt and appears to be around sixty. He’s wearing greasy jeans and a green windbreaker with U.S.M.C. stitched in white across the left breast. An unfiltered cigarette sticks out of a week’s worth of gray beard that looks like someone has been chewing on it.
“Flat tire?” the man says.
“Yeah.” From House Cat. “Got a spare in the trunk.”
The man staring at Odin. “That a diaper on your head?”
“Bandage.” Odin all sensitive.
“Looks like you been wrestling a bobcat,” the man says.
“Cut himself shaving,” House Cat says. The man nods, like this might have actually been what happened. Odin and House Cat stare knives at the interloper, willing him to move along. He doesn’t take the hint but instead stands there as if they’re all waiting for an elevator. Odin places his hand on the unseen gun jammed into his waistband. House Cat sees the movement and barely perceptibly shakes his head side to side.
“Need a hand with the tire?” Both men mumble no and House Cat reaches into the trunk. He pulls at something but it’s stuck. The man moves toward the trunk, turning his back to Odin. Odin pulls out the gun, points it at the back of the man’s head. The man is bent over the trunk now, trying to help House Cat.
“I said I got it,” House Cat says, turning from the trunk with a jack in his hand. The man is still fumbling in the trunk. House Cat violently motions for Odin to put the gun away. Odin jams the gun back in his pants as the man turns around holding a flashlight. He flips it on as House Cat hands the jack to Odin. The man shifts the beam from Odin to House Cat, their faces horror show puppets in the lurid glare.
“Turn the fuckin light off!” Odin says. House Cat grabs the flashlight from the man, turns it off and tosses it back in the trunk.
The man says, “Can I have it?”
“No, you can’t fuckin have it,” Odin says.
The man shrugs and watches as Odin places the jack under the car while House Cat digs the spare out from under a dirty blanket. It’s a donut, about half the size of a regular tire. “Can’t drive more than forty miles an hour with that thing.”
They ignore him. The man doesn’t move, just stands there smoking his cigarette. Odin pumps the jack and the car rises several inches. He goes to the trunk and removes a tire iron. House Cat hopes he doesn’t smash it over the man’s skull and is relieved when his partner kneels next to the jack. Odin spins the lugnuts one by one and removes the flat, replacing it with the spare. All this is done in silence.
“I’m out here all the time,” the man says. “Looking for aliens.”
“Lot of beaners out this way?” House Cat asks.
“Extraterrestrials,” the man says. Odin and House Cat look at each other. Whatever perceived danger this apparition represented just dissipated. “Buy me a cup of coffee?”
“Maybe some other time,” House Cat says.
“I could be dead tomorrow,” the man says.
“You could be dead tonight,” Odin says, tossing the flat in the trunk and slamming it shut. If the man takes offence at the perceived threat he does not show it. Odin notices the letters on the windbreaker. “You in the Corps?”
“Khe Sanh, 1968. Got a purple heart.”
“No shit,” Odin says, impressed.
“You?”
“Operation Enduring Freedom,” Odin reports. “Two tours in Ass-Crack-istan.”
This information is received in a way that takes the exchange in a salutary direction. Now it’s a band of brothers out here on the desert highway in the middle of the California night. “Looks like they’re open,” the man says, peering up the road. Odin and House Cat follow his gaze to the Super #1 Store, glowing against the vastness of the dark sky.
“They’re closed,” House Cat says.
“Ain’t closed,” the man says. “Lights on.”
“We just tried,” House Cat says, looks at Odin, do something. Odin reaches into his pocket, pulls out the wad of bills, peels off a twenty and hands it to the man.
“You buy yourself a cup of coffee, Po
ps. Just not there.”
The man holds the bill in both hands, stares at it then folds it in half and sticks it in the pocket of his dirty jeans. “You really in the Corps?”
“Fuck, yeah,” Odin says. “2nd Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, Delta Battery.”
The man nods, absorbing Odin’s C.V. Takes a long drag on his cigarette and exhales. “Well, whatever you two done . . . I ain’t telling.”
“Semper Fi,” Odin says.
Ten minutes later Guillermo Robles, a fifty-four year old short haul truck driver from Clovis who is on his way back from delivering a load of apples in Palm Springs pulls into the parking lot at Super #1. He notices the shattered glass in the doors, looks inside and sees the dead bodies. In the age of Reagan, Guillermo Robles served on a Contra death squad in Nicaragua, so although he is surprised at the grisly scene, it does not shock him. He dials 911 from his cell phone and reports the carnage. Then he calmly waits in the cab of his truck until the police arrive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Princess lies in bed wearing a thin, gold nylon nightgown trying to get back to sleep. The bedroom is right off the living room. Her son Chance King’s tiny room is off the kitchen. Still, he’s only about twenty-five feet away. Straining to hear, she concludes that he has finally drifted off. The boy has been having night terrors. Nerves jangled and spent from lack of rest, she tosses in the bed trying to find a comfortable position. There was no chance to shower today and her hair is dirty but she doesn’t want to take one now because the water pressure is bad. She exhales in frustration, stares at the ceiling. She wants to talk to Odin about moving to a place where she can take a shower that doesn’t require her to spend half the morning to get clean. If she wanted bad plumbing, she could have stayed in the Philippines. Forty hours a week sorting packages at the Fed Ex depot, sometimes more with the overtime they needed in order to survive, this would have to change. Odin’s job at the auto salvage place is only part time. He has promised to look for new work but told her it might take a while since people are not keen to hire ex-convicts, particularly in a down economy.
There were lots of guys who came on to her at the strip club in Redlands where they had met, some of them with nice cars and good jobs with benefits. She was making a few hundred dollars a night in tips as a dancer and most of the guys who bought her ten dollar glasses of fake champagne at the long bar had hit on her hard, offered to buy her gifts, take her on trips, marry her. Dressed in a teddy, her back aching from the five-inch heels she had to wear, she’d listen as they talked about their work, or their guns, or their trucks. The ones who didn’t stare at her breasts while they talked were rare as snow at home, but one night it finally happened. A handsome Marine chatted her up and he bought her a few drinks and told her his uncle had been stationed at the United States Naval base in Subic Bay and he’d always wanted to visit the Philippines. He was polite and respectful and she agreed to see him away from the club. A month later she was pregnant then Odin was in Afghanistan and didn’t make it back for Chance King’s birth. He was only out of the service a month before the incident with the police that landed him in prison. Lately she’s been thinking about quitting the Fed Ex job and going back to dancing where she could make a lot more money, but that would probably lead to a fight with Odin who had told her he didn’t want his woman strutting around shaking her nakedness in front of strangers every night. She was going to have to do something, though. They were cutting people’s hours at work and she couldn’t depend on Odin to make up what she was going to be losing in wages. Why didn’t she escape the other day like she had planned? If he comes back with the money he talked about maybe she’d give him another chance.
The front door opens and she hears footsteps. Princess doesn’t want to deal with any of this in the middle of the night, so she rolls over and pretends to be asleep. She hopes he won’t try to wake her to have sex. Is that another set of footsteps? Whoever is with Odin, she prays the two of them haven’t been drinking.
“Princess, wake up.”
Odin’s voice has strained quality that alarms her. She sits up in bed and sees him silhouetted in the doorway. Something’s wrong. Backlit by the dull glow of the 40 watt bulb in the living room ceiling, he looks deformed, as if his head has swollen. She asks what’s going on. He tells her get dressed and get in the kitchen. Is that a liquor bottle he’s holding?
Pulling on a robe, Princess squints in the kitchen light and quickly realizes Odin’s Elephant Man-like deformity is being caused by the diaper on his head. Her eyes swing to the visitor, a thick set man with close cropped hair and a lot of rings on his fingers. He grunts at her. It takes her a moment to notice that Odin is bare-chested and his handsome face is bleeding through the tee shirt he is pressing against it. She stares at him, bewildered.
“Hunting accident,” Odin tells her. Takes a swig from the bottle.
“I thought you were moving an oil rig.”
“We stopped to do a little hunting.”
“At night?”
“It was a bad decision.”
From the other room Chance King starts to cry. Odin fills a glass with two fingers of Southern Comfort and hands it to Princess.
“Put this in his bottle with some milk. Can’t listen to the boy crying right now.”
Then he tells Princess to get some tweezers. When she returns a moment later—she ignored his instruction to give the boy liquor, hid the glass where he won’t see it—Odin has removed the diaper from his head. His face looks ghastly. Princess stares, frozen. Odin is seated in a chair with his head tilted back, the man examining him.
“Give me the tweezers,” the man says. She doesn’t move. When he barks “Hey!” she snaps out of her trance and hands them to him. Wonders where Odin met this guy since he doesn’t look like the ex-servicemen he usually pals around with. Hopes he’s not a prison buddy but no one’s making introductions. The crying continues and Odin yells at her to make sure the kid drinks the booze and then the man resumes his ministrations.
The curses that rain from Odin’s mouth as the man begins removing what look like tiny metal pellets from his bloody cheek, are a lot even for Princess who is no prude when it comes to provocative language. She stands and watches and hopes her son goes back to sleep. The man concentrates over Odin’s face, his thick forearms tensing with the effort. Neither of the men says a word. Odin grabs the carved wood Buddha on the kitchen counter, his souvenir from Afghanistan, and squeezes its smiling face to distract from the pain. Princess wonders what really happened but doesn’t want to ask, not now anyway. Glances toward the sink and notices the blood-soaked diaper lying there like a dead animal. Gingerly, she picks it up between two fingers and drops it in the plastic trash can under the sink.
After nearly ten minutes, the man says, “I got all I could. A doc can do the rest.” Princess takes a sponge from the counter and starts cleaning the blood from the floor. She once saw someone get stabbed back home and he didn’t bleed as much as Odin is bleeding right now.
“I can’t go to no hospital, man,” Odin says. “Gun shot wounds show up in an E.R., the docs have to call the cops.”
“Tell them you were cleaning your gun and it went off,” the man says.
“Like I’m a moron?” Odin says.
The man is rinsing his hands off in the sink. He dries them with a dirty dishtowel. Princess stands at the sink now, wringing out the sponge, Odin’s blood running through her fingers and down the drain.
“You got a better idea?” the man says.
“Princess,” Odin barks. Turning to face him, she crosses her brown arms over her small breasts. Why did she ever have a child with this man? “You’re gonna say you accidentally shot me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
He takes a last look at the Salton Sea, it’s splendid isolation, its fragile beauty, and the Harley accelerates, screeching, leaving a pungent rubber trail. Dale guns the motor and swings the machine around and he’s headed straight for the water and then
he’s bouncing along the beach fishtailing on the sand and he rolls the bike and the bike crushes his legs but it doesn’t matter because they’re dead already and he crawls along the sand, his hands grabbing fistfuls, then he feels the water on his fingers, on his forearms, his chest and shoulders and he is hauling his lifeless legs behind him and he is swimming beneath the crystalline desert sky, muscles straining under taut skin, he’s filling his lungs with the clean desert air, pulling himself through the cool healing water to the far shore where he emerges and he walks, yes, he walks through the desert, and he climbs up the mountains and lifts off into the star-dappled sky, and he shivers as if the cold emptiness has just now taken solid form. There is something metallic pressed against his neck.
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