The Take

by Mike Dennis

  “What are you talking about? What do you me –“

  Felina held her mother’s shoulders. “Please, Mami. Just wait and trust what I say. Very soon, I will be able to repay you for all of the wonderful things you did for me. And for everything you wanted to do but couldn’t.” Her mother started to speak again, but Felina silenced her. “I will call you and let you know where I am. I promise I will. In just a couple of days. But now I need to get a few things and then I must go. Quickly.”

  This stab of news plunged deep inside her mother’s heart. Her sharp black eyes turned wet with pain. When the tears came, she buried her face in her hands. Within moments, Felina came out of the bedroom with a small carrying bag.

  “Please don’t cry, Mami.” She helped her mother to her feet. “I will call you, just be patient. I promise I will call you.” Then she added, “Everything will be all right. You will see.” They hugged again in the doorway. Felina was having her own problem fighting back the tears. “Mami, Mami! I love you so. I love you.”

  As Felina pulled away from the embrace and slid down the steps, she heard Eddie start the car. Then her mother called out through her tears, “I love you too, honey. Oh, be careful. I love you, I love you.”

  “I love you, Mami,” she cried as she got in the car. As it pulled away, she looked back through the rear window at her mother standing in the half-open aluminum screen door, waving.

  8

  “Everything okay?” asked Eddie, as he wound his way to the trailer park exit. His casual tone told her he didn’t want any details.

  “I feel terrible, Eddie. I couldn’t tell her anything. Only that I’m leaving, and I don’t even know where I’m going.”

  “It’s okay, baby,” he said, trying for consolation. He saw a tear or two had made it out onto her cheek and he knew it must have been rough.

  A few large raindrops began splattering the roof of the car. Within moments, they became a downpour. It didn’t chase away the heat and humidity, though. Eddie turned up the air conditioning, looking for relief, but it didn’t do the job.

  “Listen,” he said, “my sister Linda lives in New Orleans. We can stay with her till we get our bearings. Then we can call your mother later on when we’re sure it’s safe.”

  “New Orleans?” she cried. “Eddie, that’s not very far away. Don’t you think Salazar —”

  Eddie gestured reassuringly with a free hand. “Hey, don’t worry, darlin’. We’ll be okay there. It’ll just be for a few days, and then we can really take off.”

  Her voice turned downward. “Eddie, it’s not a good idea. We’ve got our chance now. We’ve got to get away from here.”

  “We are getting away from here. New Orleans is not close. It must be three, four hundred miles from here. And it’s just for a couple of days. Besides, nobody knows we’re going there. So don’t worry about it.” He pounded the air conditioning unit with his hand, trying for increased output, then he guided the car up onto the eastbound freeway.

  “Well I am worried about it. It’s my ass, too.” With clenched fists, she added, “And if Val or Salazar catches up to us, I’m gonna be just as dead as you!”

  Eddie gripped the steering wheel more tightly. He spoke very slowly, squeezing his sentences out. “We are going to go to my sister’s. I am not going anywhere without seeing her. You don’t understand. She raised me. From the time I was little. I’m not gonna disappear without seeing her. Now, we stopped at your mama’s so you could say goodbye. So we are going to New Orleans and that’s that.”

  Felina leaned back hard into the seat, folding her arms in disgust.

  Eddie went on: “Look, baby. Salazar doesn’t know where we are. You said it yourself. He doesn’t even know who we are. We could be in New Orleans, we could be in Dallas, we could be in fucking China for all he knows.” He softened his voice and reached over to touch her thigh. “Now c’mon, darlin’. I’ve gotta see Linda and then we can go anywhere you want to. Okay?”

  She looked at him without anger. “Oh Eddie, it’s just that I’m so afraid. I’m so afraid they’ll find us. They’ll all be looking for us and …”

  “Yes, they will,” he said. “There’ll be some heat for a while, especially from Salazar. But after a while, things’ll cool off. I’m telling you, we’ll be all right.” Even though he was patting her thigh, he wasn’t at all sure.

  The rain picked up. A few more miles down the road Felina began to cry. “My mother is so wonderful. I love her so. And we might never come back here. Oh Eddie, promise me I can see her again!”

  He had no real reply. So he just said, “We’ll send for her one day real soon. I promise.”

  She sobbed for a few minutes as they moved down the freeway, slicing through driving rain. After she had gone through a couple of Kleenex, she sniffled. “You know, when I was growing up, it was just the two of us. I never knew my father.”

  “Is that where y’all lived, back there? In that trailer?”

  “Y-yeah. That was it. Oh, but it — it wasn’t as bad as it looks.”

  Eddie realized he’d scraped a sore spot. “Hey, it didn’t look bad,” he said, trying to rescue himself. “I was just wonderin’. Just …”

  “Don’t worry about it, Eddie. I know it doesn’t look like much, but you know, Mama really loved me. I mean she really, really loved me. I guess she was about the best thing ever in my life. It about killed her, though, when I left years ago to go out on my own. You know, she didn’t want me to go.”

  “How old were you when you left?”

  ”Fifteen.”

  ”Shit, that’s pretty young.” It really is, he thought. “No wonder she didn’t want you to leave.”

  He tried hard to imagine what life must have been like for her. He got nowhere.

  ≈≈≈

  Even though his own life hadn’t exactly been a real big party, there was no way Eddie could have known the trials of Felina’s impoverished upbringing. He could never have known about the nights she spent in front of their little television, stoking her curiosity and filling herself with hunger for the wider world. The world she knew must have existed outside her own ramshackle surroundings.

  And what a world it was! A world apparently filled with beguiling women, who had everything they wanted, courtesy of anxious men gathering at their feet. Dazzling clothes, shiny cars ¾ nothing was beyond their reach. They had merely to desire it and it would be theirs.

  With puberty, she realized that her own appearance had acquired considerable value, even in her confined setting. With practice, she emulated the small-screen vixens, their walk, their gestures, the way they used their eyes. Before long, boys — and soon after, men — clustered around her with tribute in hopes of ravaging her firm, nubile body. She learned how to play this big trump card, until she eventually parlayed it into a ticket out of the trailer park.

  But how could Eddie have known anything about what she went through at fifteen?

  And how could he have felt the awakening that surged through her when she first saw tourist brochures of Mexico? Had he seen them, she knew it would have been through his own gringo eyes. For Felina, however, each colorful photo, each alluring description, resonated deep within her Latin belly.

  Such a beautiful place. Here was the place of her people. Her people, her country. It was her place, a notion she could never apply to Texas.

  She was pretty sure Eddie wouldn’t have bothered to learn about the vibrant Mexican culture; shit, they’s just Mess’cans, he would say. She’d overheard him say that more than once. He had no way of knowing the complexities of Mexican society, the importance of family, of music, of the very border itself. He would never have fallen asleep on countless nights the way Felina did, with the endless chatter of Spanish-language radio by her cramped bedside.

  Sometimes, there would be men who knew of Mexico through their travels, or were from there — real Mexicanos — and they would enchant her with stories of México lindo. How could his insides quiver the way he
rs did when she heard these tales?

  “Mama named me, too,” she went on. “Felina, like the girl in that Marty Robbins song, El Paso.”

  And in a soft, sultry voice, she began to sing, surprisingly on key:

  “Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina

  Wicked and evil while casting a spell

  My love was deep for this Mexican maiden

  I was in love, but in vain I could tell.

  “A lot of Mexican girls born in the sixties and seventies, and even the eighties, were named after her. Did you know that?”

  He shrugged.

  9

  They kept going east, and the sun soon came back out. They were less than forty miles from Beaumont when, without warning, a loud shot came from outside.

  They found us! Eddie thought, ducking reflexively as the car swerved.

  He glimpsed Felina sidelong. She was looking around in panic, but unhurt. But what the hell’s wrong? What — the car. The car! Now veering wildly across the interstate, they nearly dusted a pickup in the left lane. With a lot of effort, Eddie brought the vehicle under control. He guided it to the side of the road, slowing the thwoppa-thwoppa of the blown tire.

  He got out to examine the unraveled remnants of his right front tire. Opening the trunk, he reached behind the leather suitcase for the jack. He retrieved the stand, but there was no handle.

  “Shit,” he cried. Felina rolled down the window. “I left the goddam jack handle over at Val’s last night. It’s what he used to pop open Salazar’s suitcase.”

  Felina laughed a throaty tune. “Now we got a million bucks and no jack.”

  The sign up ahead told of an exit two miles down the road. Eddie was still looking for a way out when a 1980s-vintage lemon-yellow cargo van pulled up behind them, rolling to a stop. Two young men in sunglasses got out, their bright-colored sport shirts clashing with the van. As they approached, Eddie could see they were Latinos.

  “You habbing some trouble?” asked the driver as he walked around to the front of Eddie’s car.

  Eddie looked around. His piece strained his waistband under his shirt, clammy against his sweating skin. He eyed the open trunk and replied, “Y-yeah. A flat tire and no jack.”

  “Man, that tire ees really gone,” observed the driver. “Bu’ you can jooze our jack if you want.” The passenger was standing directly between the van and the yawning trunk.

  “That’s very nice of you.” It was all he could think of.

  The two strangers conferred in Spanish and then produced a jack from the rear of the van. “Here, I get the spare for you,” said the driver, reaching into the trunk and shoving the suitcase aside.

  “No! No,” cried Eddie. “No, I’ll get it.” He rushed to the rear of the car and jostled the driver aside, grabbing the spare. “I mean — I don’t want you to get dirty. You’ve been very nice … stopping to help. I don’t want — I mean, your clothes, they’re …” Then he shut up.

  He made the tire change, then after thanking the two men, Eddie and Felina pulled back onto the freeway. They both exhaled loudly, as though they had held their breaths during the entire episode.

  At the next exit, Eddie left the freeway. After pulling into a service station to clean the carbon black off his hands and arms, he continued eastward down Route 90, the old Federal highway to Beaumont. Soon, along this stretch of forgotten road, he found a small used car lot, where he traded up for an eight-year old vanilla Ford sedan, paying for it out of his pocket. He deposited the suitcase into the big trunk, as they took off, staying on the old two-lane.

  Shortly, after one o’clock, they crossed the Sabine River. The sign said “Welcome to Louisiana”. Eddie noted to himself that this was his first trip ever outside the Lone Star State.

  And I wouldn’t be makin’ this trip now if the goddam Dodgers hadn’t got lucky.

  As Texas and the Toyota faded into memory behind them, they felt a little safer. Just outside Lake Charles, they stopped to eat.

  It was a diner-gas station combination, one of those flyblown roadside places that used to do big business a long time ago. But since the dawn of the Interstate Highway era, there hadn’t been much outside of a slim local trade, mostly lunch, mostly oil and construction workers. Eddie reasoned that was why the flimsy screen door hadn’t been fixed in a while.

  He and Felina took a booth near the back. He remembered he hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. The big hamburgers he saw on the grill sizzled almost as loudly as George Strait’s plaintive pleas pouring out of the jukebox.

  The waitress took their orders, then brought their drinks. Eddie stirred the sugar into his iced tea, while his mind raced.

  At this very moment, Val Borden, Raymond Cannetta, and Chico Salazar’s pals were surely hot to find him, to say nothing of the cops. He had gotten himself into a tight trick bag and now he had to get himself out. It wouldn’t be easy, but he had no choice. If he needed any incentive, though, there was plenty to go around.

  The stakes were as high as they ever get: his own skin, a million bucks in cash, and a woman.

  10

  Eddie was digging into his cheeseburger, while Felina was fanning mosquitoes away from hers, when he approached their booth.

  “Excuse me, but didn’t you folks pull up a few minutes ago in that car out there? The one with the Texas plates?” He stood about Eddie’s height, with a dark mustache and a hint of anxiety.

  Eddie’s nerves were already stretched wire-tight. Any reference to the car, any attention they attracted, twanged him into a state of high tension. All he wanted was to get through the day without being singled out.

  “Yeah, that’s our car,” came his wary answer. He stopped eating.

  The stranger turned humble. “Well, since you’re from Texas and maybe traveling east, I wonder if you might could help out a fellow Texan. I’m headed for New Orleans and my car’s gone out on me. They’re gonna fix it here in the garage next door, but they’ve gotta send away for a part. It won’t be ready for a few days, and, well, I’ve just gotta get to New Orleans right away. And they tell me there won’t be another bus through here till tomorrow. If I could impose on you folks for a ride maybe as far as you’re going, why I’d just —”

  “Sorry, but we can’t —” Eddie said.

  “Why, we’d love to help you out.” Felina turned to Eddie and said sweetly, “Honey, the man’s got car trouble and he needs our help. We can’t turn our back on him when we’ve got all that room in our car.” Then, as she looked back at the stranger, her mouth slipped into a promising smile. “We can take you all the way to New Orleans ‘cause that’s where we’re going.” Eddie glared at her, his jaw tightening.

  “Say, that’s great,” he replied. “I want you to know I sure do appreciate it! I’d be much obliged if you’d let me pay for — “

  “Oh, you won’t have to pay us anything,” Felina said, sugar seeping through her voice. “We’d be happy to give you a ride.”

  “Why, that’s mighty nice of y’all. Mighty nice.” Then he extended his hand. “By the way, I’m Lowell Garner. From Brenham, Texas. Big B.”

  “I’m Felina. And this is Eddie. We’re from Houston.”

  She gestured for him to sit next to Eddie. He did.

  ”Ah, Houston,” Garner said. “Lotta things happening there, all right. Lotta things. But it’s just too damn big for my tastes. Ha! Bet you’d never thought you’d hear a Texan say that about anything.” He shook his head once as if he’d really amazed himself. “In this case, though, it’s true. Houston’s just gotten out of control. Too much traffic. Too expensive.”

  Felina nodded. “You’re two hundred percent right, Mr Garner. That’s why we’re leaving. We’re moving to New Orleans.” Her smile held Eddie’s eyes. He loved it.

  Garner beamed at this disclosure. “Yeah, now there’s a town for you. New Orleans …” He didn’t seem aware that his voice had trailed off to a whisper, while his eyes drifted just a little farther away.

&nb
sp; Finally, Eddie quit fidgeting with his burger. He pushed his plate a couple of inches to the side so his elbows could park on the tabletop.

  Clasping his hands together, he said, “If you got any stuff you want to take, you better get it, ‘cause we’re leaving in a few minutes.”

  “Right, yeah. I got my bag in my car. I’ll go git it.” He jumped up from the booth and started for the door, then turned and said, “Hey, thanks again, y’all. I sure do ‘preciate this.”

  The screen door slapped shut behind him. Eddie leaned across the booth, as he growled through clenched teeth. “What the hell are you doing, dragging him into this? What is this shit? We don’t need —”

  “Eddie honey, listen to me,” she interrupted. She put her dainty hands in his and spoke with patience, like a teacher talking to one of her mediocre students. “There’s people after us and we’ve got to get away from them. This guy sounds like he knows New Orleans. Maybe he can help us out somehow.” Then she returned her attention to her hamburger. She picked it up to take a bite, but before she did, she shifted her voice to business level. “Besides, Val’s gonna be lookin’ for you and me in your old Toyota, not three people in this car we got now. Okay? It’s bad enough we’re only going to New Orleans. So we need all the cover we can get.”

  Eddie definitely didn’t like this, but she had a point. He had to admit, it was a good one. Then his eyes swept over her again, as he began to soften. While she sat there eating, even as she dabbed her napkin at the dressing dribbling down her chin, she was so easy to look at, so hard to stay mad at.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll take this rube with us. But we can’t keep him with us forever. Just long enough to get to New Orleans.”

  A minute later, Felina looked down at her plate. She swished a french fry around in a pool of ketchup.