The Hummingbird and the Bear

by Nicholas Hogg

I didn’t dare. I lay for a while inside her, listening to her heartbeat, tasting the salt on her neck. Beyond the windows palm leaves rattled in the breeze, waves hissed as they broke on the shore. And when I woke still wrapped in her arms, the first light of dawn gilding the cheap curtains, I pulled the duvet over our heads and pushed my head into her cleavage and slept, lost myself for a precious while more.

  The next time I opened my eyes I’d shifted to the edge of the bed. The first thing I saw was my phone. Jenni. I still hadn’t switched it on. When I reached on to the dresser and powered it up the message waiting buzzed four times. Instead of opening the inbox I turned it off.

  I felt that my being alive was only an illusion. Part of an even more elaborate illusion that would vanish in a puff of smoke if I switched on the phone.

  I got out of bed and drew back the curtains. Yachts in the marina, a huge road bridge and a navy destroyer moored further along the bay.

  ‘That’s better than a sea view,’ said Kay.

  I was naked.

  ‘Come here.’

  We rolled around, mock wrestled each other. I let Kay grab my wrists and sit across my chest. I tried to shunt her off, but she put her knees over my shoulders. ‘Hey.’ She laughed, tickled my sides until I screamed. ‘Stop, stop.’

  She did stop and instead we kissed, slowed our breathing, tasted each other from the night before. I was hard against her stomach when there was a heavy knock at the door.

  ‘Hello?’ I jolted on to my elbows. No answer. ‘Hello?’ I called again. I could see the shadow of feet under the gap. ‘Who is it?’

  Kay pulled the covers over her bare breasts. On the next knock I got up and wrapped a towel round my waist and loudly asked again, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Housekeeping,’ came the reply, a heavy Latino accent.

  ‘Come back later,’ called Kay from the bed, sitting up and pulling on a T-shirt.

  I watched a shadow move across the curtains, then walked back to the bed, the mess of sheets. ‘That spooked me a bit.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  Then I walked back to the door and opened it a little, watched the cleaning lady push her cart along the landing to the next room.

  ‘I think I need a run,’ I said. ‘Thirty minutes of Zen time, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Do your thing,’ she said. ‘Just save some energy for me.’

  We had the end room on the top floor. Kay was stretching and watching the news. Iceland was bankrupt, more financial doom and gloom that seemed utterly removed from our lives. I kissed her and promised I wouldn’t be long, then shut the door and took the stairs into the lobby before jogging across the grass median between the palm trees.

  Saying ‘Zen time’ to Kay now seemed ridiculous. That I could erase my thoughts and be purely a thing of body was impossible considering the situation. I’d come outside because I thought the power of feeling so alive had threatened to pull me to pieces. Guilt and joy competing extremes.

  I ran harder to race the thoughts, shuttled up and down the rows of steps along the concrete wharf until I came to a pagoda-shaped watchtower built into the marina. I stretched and looked out to sea. I saw a dolphin’s tail splashing as it dived. I watched the glassy water, waiting for it to surface, but decided I’d imagined it by wishful thinking. Or was simply looking for distractions from the fact I had messages on my phone from Jenni.

  PARANOIA HAD GOT THE better of me, that’s what I believed. That my imagination had put his face in a car on a Texas sea front. My guilt. How could Segur follow us from train to plane to rental car and finally a Super 8 motel?

  But I decided to jog back, anyway.

  Then that jog became more of a run, a lengthened stride.

  When I saw a car parked askew in the motel forecourt I knew something was wrong. I hurried into the lobby and jabbed at the elevator button. It was stopped on the top floor, where our room was.

  The Segur credit card, I abruptly realized. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Everything okay, sir?’ asked the receptionist. ‘The elevator is a little slow, I’m afraid.’

  I ran up six flights of stairs. I ran because the receptionist told me that a driver was here to ‘pick up Mrs Segur’. I sprinted up the concrete staircase, my feet slapping loudly with each panicked step, no thoughts but Kay, and what I’d do to Segur if anything had happened to her.

  The door was ajar. Before I turned into the room I heard the cracking sound of splintering wood.

  Segur was kicking his way into the bathroom. Stamping his way through the panelling to where Kay had locked herself. Before he saw me he had her by the hair, yanking her out like a rag doll, his rag doll. So intent on taking her back he didn’t see me until I’d hit him, a running punch on the point of his cheekbone, the firecracker snap of bone on bone. He hit the wall and dropped. I got hold of Kay, pulled her from where he lay slumped against the dresser.

  ‘You motherfucker,’ he called me, halfway to getting back up, pushing himself off the wall. ‘And you said my tackle was a cheap shot.’

  ‘Fuck off, Segur,’ I shouted. ‘Get the fuck out of this room.’

  ‘That’s it, Chris,’ screamed Kay. ‘We’re done. Over.’

  Segur stood. A blood vessel had burst in his cheek, already a purple swell. ‘But worse than a blindside punch has to be fucking a man’s wife.’

  ‘It was coming,’ spat Kay. ‘And you know it.’

  Low and measured, as if without malice, Segur replied, ‘You stupid bitch.’

  I flipped. I went at him, throwing all my weight into a right cross. Perhaps I’d have dropped him again, but Kay screamed, ‘No, Sam,’ and yanked the sleeve of my T-shirt, stopping the punch short. Segur hit me hard and heavy. I might have gone down had Kay not been holding my arm. Blood filled my mouth, gritty bits of tooth. I spat the red mess in his face when he pulled back to strike again, flecking his hair and shirt collar.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ he snapped, wiping his face.

  When he came at me again Kay beat me to it. She had the lamp stand by the neck, stood on the foot of the bed and swung as if she were chopping wood.

  The first strike glanced off Segur’s shoulder, the second came down the side of his head, the corner of the base splitting his scalp. He raised his forearm and took the brunt of the third blow on his elbow. Seeing his midriff exposed I swung hard and low, direct on his diaphragm. Air rushed from his lungs and he groaned, crumpled, knocked the TV to the floor as he crashed to the ground.

  Kay was still on the bed, the lamp stand raised, crying, ‘You can’t pay for a wife. Some fucking warranty that lasts a lifetime.’

  Segur levered himself on to his elbows. Both of us stood over him, all three of us breathing hard, mammals baring tooth and claw, streaked and scored with blood.

  ‘Damaged fucking goods.’ Segur smirked. ‘No money back when what you’re buying is faulty.’

  If he hadn’t looked so down and out, hair dyed red by the welt on his skull, I’d have kicked his jaw clean off to stop him from talking. But I didn’t.

  ‘You thought you had a bargain, didn’t you?’ He smiled. ‘But you should know that we’re the ones who set the prices.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ I answered. ‘None at all.’

  ‘No sale, Sam.’

  ‘What?’

  Then he reached into his inside pocket. ‘No customer, no sale.’ And pulled out a gun.

  I froze.

  Kay struck his wrist as he fired. I swear I saw the bullet leave the muzzle. I definitely felt it graze the heel of my hand where I held my palm up as if I might halt the lead. Right then I could see the world more clearly than I’d ever done. The pistol flash. The smear of blood down Segur’s cheek. A peel of flesh loosed from the base of my thumb like a strip of fabric. And the sounds: not the shot, but the bullet ricocheting off the ceiling and piercing the mattress top, the dropped gun thudding on the carpet, bouncing up. Segur and I threw our hands to grab it as if catching back a wriggling fish on the boards of a skiff. I grab
bed it first. Not that Segur could have done anything if he’d beaten me to it, because Kay was finishing off her wood chopping, bringing that lamp stand down like the final axe strike on a stubborn log.

  She struck him square on the top of the head. He sat up straight for a moment, as a child might ponder his toys scattered before his outstretched legs, and then slumped against the dresser.

  ‘Is he dead?’ screamed Kay. ‘I didn’t want to kill him.’

  ‘He shot me.’ I held up my left hand, the gouged flesh pulsing blood. In my right hand I had the gun.

  And this is what the maid saw when she stood at the open door and screamed. And ran, ran from a man standing over another with a gun in his hand. A woman standing over the two of them with the posture of someone who’d just chopped down a tree.

  ‘Chris?’ said Kay, stepping down off the bed, grabbing his shoulder and shaking him. ‘You stupid fuck.’ She punched Segur in the chest. ‘You’re not dead, Chris. Snap out of it.’

  And he did, rousing from the concussion, blinking at the woman who was legally his wife, the woman who’d nearly killed him.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  Kay stood very close to his face. I was more afraid of her kissing him than of Segur hurting her. And for a moment I think she thought about it. That close for so many years, a natural action of two mouths within touching distance. Instead she looked hard into his pale blue eyes and said, ‘I’m going now.’

  And we did, Segur swearing something as we ran from the room and along the concrete veranda and down the staircase into the car park. I jumped into the car and started the engine, swung from the space and took one last look at the balcony where our room was, where Segur stood with his hands on the rail like a preacher in a pulpit.

  I screeched off the forecourt as the concierge ran from the reception waving the unpaid bill. Along the sea front I had us up to nearly seventy before Kay told me to slow down. ‘The cops will stop us before he does.’

  And if they did? What would they make of a man and woman covered in blood? The gun on the seat between my legs, my ripped palm pulsing red over the steering wheel and on to the floor.

  ‘Your hand,’ said Kay. ‘Look at it.’

  I didn’t want to. I didn’t care at that point. I wanted us on a different planet from Segur, let alone in a different country.

  ‘You’ll bleed to death.’ Kay took her skirt between her teeth and tore a strip from the hem. ‘Here.’

  I drove with my right hand and held up my left as she poured water from a drinks bottle over the raw wound before binding it with the improvised cotton dressing.

  I nearly ran a red light because I was watching her tie the bandage. A woman and two children walked in front of the bonnet. The boy looked back and stared. Not until I pulled away and looked down did I see the splash of blood. Like a spilt glass of claret. ‘I should change my shirt.’

  Kay was staring out of the window shaking her head. ‘This is all fucked up. I’m so sorry.’

  I told her not to apologize for him. ‘We can do this,’ I said, reaching across and touching her hand. ‘Can you get a clean shirt from my bag?’ She did, and like the tea makers at a wake she was glad of the task, slipping my old shirt over my head while I briefly steered with my knees, too afraid to stop for even a second in case Segur had gotten down the stairs in time to see what direction we’d taken. Not that it wasn’t obvious, south Texas and a few hours from the border, a highway that forked both ways to Mexico.

  ‘You should change, too,’ I said, seeing my blood on her sleeves, her jeans.

  ‘Shit,’ she said, looking down. ‘All I grabbed was that fancy new outfit.’

  She yanked down her jeans, ripped off her bloody T-shirt, bunched it in her hand and threw it out of the window.

  Then she pulled on her white dress.

  ONCE OUT OF CORPUS Christi I opened up the car. Too much. I thought we were on an empty road, nothing but sun glimmer and two runaways.

  ‘Damn it.’ Kay saw the beacon in the mirror. ‘A cop.’

  Before I answered my own thought about speeding off, Kay did it for me. ‘Don’t do it. Just be calm, play it out.’

  I pulled over. Kay checked the seats for blood, made sure my shirt was zipped up in the bag.

  ‘Okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘The gun.’

  It was in the door well.

  ‘Under the seat,’ she said. I slipped it beneath me as the red and blue lights flashed in the mirrors.

  ‘Be polite, call him sir.’

  I watched the cruiser draw up to my bumper. The officer wore sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat and stepped from his car with his hand firmly on the butt of his gun. I put the window down when he signalled me to do so.

  ‘You know why I pulled you over?’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ I apologized, noting the gleam of his golden badge. ‘Was I speeding?’

  He smirked, put his other hand on his hip. ‘I had to look twice. You know how fast you were going?’

  ‘I didn’t realize.’

  ‘Ninety-seven.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ I said, simply relieved that I’d been pulled over for a traffic offence.

  ‘Can I see your licence?’

  Relieved until he saw my bandaged hand opening my wallet.

  ‘How did you hurt your hand there?’

  ‘Oh, this.’ I looked at the cloth. A raspberry stain of blood seeped through the material. ‘I caught my hand on the rail adjusting the seat. Just pinched the skin a little.’

  ‘That so.’ The policeman had crouched down now and looked across to Kay. ‘You folks a long way from home?’

  ‘I’m English.’

  ‘I live in New York.’

  ‘Y’all visiting family?’

  ‘A driving holiday,’ I answered. ‘No landscape like this in England.’ My accent was becoming more pronounced, posher. ‘I think I was speeding because I couldn’t keep my eyes from this stunning country. We just don’t get highways as long and straight as this on our little island.’

  He liked that, the gum-chewing policeman. ‘I bet you don’t.’ He took my licence. ‘Can I see your passport, too?’

  ‘Sure.’ I handed him the burgundy book.

  ‘Let’s just check this out.’

  He ambled back to the patrol car. We both watched him in the rear view mirror, thumbing through the pages, talking on the radio.

  ‘If something has already been reported,’ said Kay, ‘Chris making up some bullshit story, then all we have to do is tell the truth, simple.’

  ‘We’re not running from a crime, though. We’re running from him.’

  The officer walked back to my window, his hand on his gun.

  ‘Okay?’ I smiled.

  ‘Well the speeding’s not okay. Twenty-five or more over the limit and I can arrest you.’

  My stomach fluttered.

  ‘But I’m being nice as you’re not from round here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, trying not to look too relaxed.

  ‘These highways ain’t no race track. If you want to take a look around you’re best doing that at a slower speed.’

  I agreed, ingratiating to the point where I was making myself cringe.

  ‘Y’all drive careful now.’ He handed back my documents, then stood and turned to watch another car approaching, slowing. ‘I bet he wasn’t driving as leisurely as that a mile back.’

  All three of us saw the same face. Blood-caked hair, a swollen, ballooned eye staring down all three of us. And when the car had passed the image hung before me like a Halloween mask.

  The policeman paused for a moment, considered what had just driven by. ‘Unless that man was born this morning, that ain’t no birthmark.’ He jogged back to the patrol car, his gun and cuffs jiggling, then jumped in and pulled on to the highway, lights flashing. Within seconds I was wheel-spinning a U-turn and driving back towards Corpus Christi.

  ‘You saw him too?’ asked Kay.

  ‘
I could hardly miss him.’

  ‘What are you doing, Sam?’

  ‘Fuck this,’ I said, flooring the accelerator. At the next junction I swung a right.

  ‘These little roads go nowhere.’

  ‘I’m not playing his game.’

  I raced down a dirt track. Fields bounced in the windshield. The way the dust cloud trailed the churning wheels it looked as if the car were on fire.

  Kay, knuckles white, held the door handle to stop her head from hitting the roof. ‘Easy, Sam.’

  I had the accelerator pressed so hard that I could feel the pedal bend beneath my foot. I swung us over crossroads, cut corners behind signposts to farmsteads and ranches.

  But no one had followed, and there was no need to thrash the engine so I slowed, driving back roads between irrigation ditches and lonely farmhouses, barns filled with bales of golden hay.

  ‘I’ll get back on the highway once we’ve gone past that speedtrap.’

  ‘Then what?’ asked Kay. ‘Back to Corpus?’ There was a wobble to her voice.

  ‘Or drive until Chris pulls us over?’

  Kay twisted to see we weren’t being followed. ‘We should throw that gun out of the window,’ she said. ‘Get rid of the damn thing. Pass it here.’

  Part of me wanted to keep it. I felt safer having it under the seat, at hand, should I again cross paths with a man intent on ending my life. But I reached down and grabbed the barrel when she asked. Kay took it from me and said, ‘What the fuck?’ then put down the window and tossed it with a splash into an irrigation ditch.

  ‘And we should leave this car somewhere, too.’

  I agreed. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Just park up in the city.’

  ‘And then what?’

  Kay was shaking her head, looking across that hammered landscape, flattened of everything but the sun and the sky. ‘Get a bus to Brownsville instead of driving to Laredo, walk into Mexico from there.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Or double bluff him and carry on to Laredo.’

  I told her not to cry. ‘Hey, we should be happy that we’re alive.’

  ‘If you’d never met me, you wouldn’t be in the middle of nowhere, a fucked-up engagement, your hand split open, being chased by a man who wants to kill you.’