Double Wide

by Leo W. Banks

  Across from the bed behind my laptop, there’s a small window. I leaned over and pushed aside the little curtain and peered out through the half light thrown by the spotlight on Charlie’s roof. But it wasn’t bright enough to see much.

  I went out to the kitchen and opened the door and whistled as loud as I could for Chico. No response. I shut and locked the door. Opal lay there with a pillow clutched to her stomach.

  The TV was still on. Thinking she needed the voices, I left it on.

  Back in the bedroom, I took the Glock from the holster and checked the magazine. Fifteen rounds. Should I keep one in the pipe? Or is it a waste of time to fret over the two seconds it takes to rack a round?

  Two seconds is a long time if you need it to stay alive.

  I racked one into the pipe.

  The light in the laptop window changed, meaning one of my outside spotlights had blown. I heard Chico’s rapid-fire barking in the silence between gusts. I went to the kitchen and opened the door and saw that Charlie’s roof light had blinked off.

  “Chico! Come on, boy! Where are you?” Whistle, whistle.

  As I stood there, the half-moon glow in the sky over the county road disappeared, which meant my second spotlight, the one illuminating my entrance sign, had gone out too. I heard a sound above the rain, a short, high-pitched yelp—then nothing.

  The Glock filled my hand.

  I flipped on the main kitchen light and threw the door open all the way to send more light outside. “Chico! Come on, boy! Chico!”

  A shape moved in the darkness. As I struggled to see through the sheeting rain, a lightning flash threw down a split second of daylight. Someone stood on my entrance road, shoulders hunched, knees bent, arms extended in the shooting position.

  The figure fired several shots in rapid succession. Three hit the body of the Airstream, back to back thumps into metal. A fourth ripped through the air just beyond my ear, close enough for me to feel the breeze. It struck the Airstream’s back wall.

  I jumped for cover to my left. While moving, I squeezed off four shots as fast as I could jerk the trigger, aiming where I thought the running figure would be. The Glock threw up a storm of spent shells.

  I flipped off the overhead light and waited with my back pressed against the wall, gulping air and holding the gun with two hands between my legs.

  A bottomless silence descended. It lasted until Opal started screaming.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  Opal rolled off the bed. With the remote still in her hand, she pancaked her face to the floor and screamed like somebody had gone to work on her leg with a hacksaw. The TV played on above the foldout, the light flickering on the walls. The wind grabbed the open door and banged it against the side of the trailer, again and again with each gust.

  My heart roared in my ears and maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I couldn’t just stay put and take cover, leaving the gunman in control. He could sit back and riddle the Airstream with bullets until Cash stopped him, if Cash was still alive to stop him.

  The backlight from the TV would make me an easy target. I pried the remote out of Opal’s hands and turned it off.

  Complete darkness.

  “Stay inside, Opal! Don’t you move outside this trailer, or you will be shot!”

  I jumped out of the Airstream and crouched behind the Bronco and waited, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness and the rain. From behind came a sharp whistle, and the white portion of Cash’s Arizona Feeds hat appeared.

  “Don’t shoot. I’m coming over there,” Cash said, and ran to my side.

  “I saw one guy, that’s it. I couldn’t tell if it was Rincon.”

  “He’s here and he ain’t alone. Count on it.”

  “We need light. Cover me.”

  From the passenger side of the Bronco, I crawled in and started the engine. Bending low in the driver’s seat, I got the Bronco turned to shine its headlights down the entrance road. The rain blinked through the beams.

  Someone was crawling through the brush beside the road. He moved with difficulty, using his elbows to pull himself along. My wild firing must’ve scored. He pulled up behind a rotting saguaro, twisted his arm around the spines, and snapped off two shots.

  He didn’t bother to look. Only the arm swung out and it wasn’t bad work. The bullets whizzed overhead.

  The wind howled and that old saguaro swayed in the gusts.

  Squirming out from under the dashboard, I rose and fired twice. The bullets hit the saguaro with a heavy thump, like someone whacking a blanket with a broom. The gunman fired again. My left headlight shattered.

  I dove across the seat and belly-flopped out the passenger door into a puddle and sat with my back against the front tire, gulping air.

  “He ain’t giving up,” I said. “That was close.”

  Cash squinted over the hood of the Bronco at the gunman’s position. “Sit tight, Mayor. I got this peckerneck right where I want ’im.”

  With the AR up at his shoulder, Cash stepped around the Bronco into the open. The gunman fired again, but that was his last go. Cash fired, stepped forward, fired again, stepped, fired again, and kept walking.

  He was collected and exact in his aim, the sound deafening. Nine shots, the spacing precise. The saguaro visibly wavered and seemed to steady as the wind eased. But in the next second, another gust came and the giant began a slow, backward fall.

  The gunman screamed a long, “Noooooooo!” and then another and another.

  Cash hollered, “She’s a going! Yeee-haaaa!”

  The gunman’s cries became a continuous bawling as the saguaro crashed to the ground, the desert exploding with mud and stones. Cash ran forward and picked up the gunman’s pistol and stuffed it under his belt.

  He said, “Get a look at this. Never touched him!”

  The saguaro landed on one of its bent arms. The gunman lay in the small opening between the elbow and the main column, perfectly protected.

  “I call that luck right there,” Cash said.

  The gunman had been hit above the knee. His eyes were the size of dinner plates as he screamed his face red. Only after he ran out of breath and his facial features returned to their normal locations did I recognize Ed Bolt.

  I said, “You get bailed out and run to Rincon? Not smart, Eddie. You’d have been better off staying in the cage. Where’s Rincon?”

  Bolt gasped and pressed a hand over the hole in his leg. “You shot me, Stark!”

  A bloody knife lay on the ground beside him, a foldout with a four-inch blade and thumb stud release. I wiped the blade on my pants, folded it into the hilt, and dropped the knife into my pocket.

  Bolt said, “You’re going to die tonight, Stark! You shot me!”

  A tremendous explosion split the night. It left Cash and I sprawled over the wet ground, covering our heads against falling debris. When the earth stopped shaking, I pulled myself out of the mud and looked.

  The blast came from Angel’s trailer.

  Cash rose to his knees and spat. “What the hell?” He wiped mud from his face with his arm. He stood up awkwardly, unwinding his long body and setting his big feet wide for balance as he straightened his wire legs beneath him.

  “That’s Rincon,” I said. “He’s going after Angel.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “We’ve gotta get the kid out of that trailer. He gonna burn alive in there.”

  “Easy does it, Mayor. Rincon wants us to come running down the street like chickens.” Cash ran his tongue along his bottom lip as he looked down the entrance road and then toward the wash and the fire, assessing his options.

  When he made up his mind, he nodded and said, “Got me an idea, Mayor. Follow my lead.” As he moved out, he mumbled, “Too many sons of bitches in this world.”

  EIGHTY-THREE

  We ducked behind the Airstream and ran south on the narrow strip of ground between the back of the trailer and the lip of the wash. The Airstream provided cover and so did Gil Pappas’s trailer next d
oor.

  From the narrow space between the two, we had a straight-on view across Main Street to Angel’s trailer. The flames thumped like horses on a dirt track as they spread across the roof, devouring it. The back portion by the propane tanks had already collapsed.

  “If he’s alive in there, he doesn’t have much time,” I said.

  “Big if.”

  “Where the hell’s Rincon?”

  “Watching. Itching to take a shot.”

  A window to the left of Angel’s front door exploded, throwing out a thick plume of smoke. A few seconds later, the window on the right blew, the heat rolling over us in a wave.

  “I can’t just watch this,” I said. “We need to get to that trailer.”

  Cash said, “I got an idea. I’ll double back and cross the street down by your place. If I can get behind the trailers on the other side, we might shake him loose. You okay by yourself?”

  “Go, go, go!”

  He went back the way we’d come, emerging on the far side of the Airstream. He barely made two steps across Main Street when three shots ripped through the rain.

  Bap! Bap! Bap!

  They came from somewhere to my right. Close by, same side of the street.

  Past Pappas’s trailer stood a cluster of paloverde trees. I leaned out and looked in that direction and saw nothing. Cash hollered for me to get back and cooked off four rounds toward the trees, the white lick of his muzzle flashing in the dark.

  When I looked again, Rincon was sprinting across the south end of Main Street. He disappeared into the desert behind Charlie O’Shea’s trailer.

  Cash ran down the street in pursuit. “Let’s get him!”

  “We have to get Angel!”

  “He’s dead in there! We go in there and we’re dead too!”

  Cash was right. The trailer was fully involved.

  We ran into the desert where we last saw Rincon. Beyond the glow of the flames, it was too dark to see much, and the rain made it hard to hear. Cash held a closed fist over his shoulder recon style and dropped to his haunches behind some brush.

  He whispered, “We’re close behind. If we keep going, we walk right into him.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Force multiply. You move left, I move right, and we flank him. If I hear shooting, I’ll come running, and you do the same.”

  Cash ran into the soggy gloom, darting from saguaro to saguaro, shrub to shrub, and I did the same.

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  Twenty minutes of scouting the desert yielded nothing. The rain had eased considerably, making it easier to see and maneuver. But I had no contact with Rincon, and based on the silence from Cash’s AR, neither did he.

  Rincon might’ve heard Bolt screaming and, calculating the odds against two guns, took off to plan another run later.

  Sloshing through water and mud, I made it out to the county road. At my Double Wide sign, I turned down the entrance road, and halfway along, near where Bolt lay, I spotted something black on the ground.

  Closer in, I saw Chico. He wasn’t moving, and his red tongue curled out the corner of his mouth, bunching grotesquely in the dirt. Feeling the fur along his ribs, my hand came back bloody. A wound in his side had penetrated his heart, killing him.

  That explained the yelp I’d heard when I opened the Airstream door, and the blood on Bolt’s knife.

  Rincon’s plan was to blow up Angel’s trailer. The explosion would draw me out of the Airstream, and with Bolt on my left and Rincon on my right, they’d shoot me down. Chico’s barking alerted me to the trouble and forced Bolt to act early to shut him up, saving my life.

  I marched over to Bolt, still moaning under the fallen cactus.

  “You killed my dog, Eddie! Tell me you killed my dog!”

  “What do I care about a dog? I’m bleeding to death, Stark! You shot me!” I pressed the Glock against his temple. “Tell me what you did to my dog!”

  “It’s a dog! I’m shot!”

  “Tell me what you did!”

  The fire continued to burn. The desert glowed red all around it. Gunshots echoed far out in the desert. I recognized the sound of Cash’s AR, and then three quick reports from Rincon’s pistol: Bap! Bap! Bap!

  Then the AR returning fire, a deeper, more powerful sound: Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Bolt said, “Your friend’s all alone, Stark! And he ain’t coming back! And you’re next! Today’s the day you die!”

  I pushed the Glock harder against his temple, my finger tight around the trigger. A hiccup and he was lion food.

  “I’m telling you to shoot!” Bolt gritted his teeth and blew snot. “Go ahead and shoot! You ain’t got the hair!”

  From Angel’s trailer came a piercing metallic screech, like a castle door opening after a thousand years. Flames painted the sky above it amid the sounds of wood and metal straining and twisting as one corner of the trailer collapsed.

  The sudden weight shift sent the whole thing thudding to the ground. Sparks mushroomed, met the rain, and became smoke.

  “Shoot me, Stark!” Bolt yelled. “Go ahead!”

  I thought of Sam in his cell, waiting, praying for help in his trial, wasting from that murderous drug. He needed me. I couldn’t do it.

  I stood up and, not wanting to be provoked by Ed Bolt’s face, turned away. But he blabbered on about his bleeding leg until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I drove my foot down on his knee with everything I had.

  It made the same loud snapping sound a turkey leg makes when you break it in half. It was the least I could do. Bolt’s leg looked like it was on backward. He cranked his mouth wide open and wailed.

  The gunfire in the desert had stopped, which meant either Cash or Rincon had prevailed. I ran down the entrance road in the direction of their gunfight. A few steps along, I pulled up short. Just ahead, Roscoe Rincon was dragging Opal down the steps of the Airstream, his left arm wrapped around her neck, the machete in hand.

  He walked toward me. I pulled the Glock from the holster, held it wide of my hip, and walked toward him. He was smiling.

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  Rincon stopped ten feet from me. “You have a gun, friend. You think you can shoot me?” He grinned and cackled. “Here I am!”

  His head loomed over Opal’s right shoulder. He fought to hold her up as she struggled beneath him. The kicking looked to be reflex. Fear had stolen her senses, turned her legs to rubber. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream.

  Angel’s trailer smoked over my shoulder. A few fire pockets crackled and snapped, and those sounds worked in concert with Bolt’s operatic moaning.

  “She’s got nothing to do with this, Rincon. Let her go.”

  “Throw the gun away, Stark.”

  “She’s done nothing to you.”

  Rincon’s black hair lay flat from the rain. Tattoos covered his left arm. He wore a black T-shirt and baggy jeans, both drenched. He had a pistol strapped to his left hip, the same rig he wore the night of our encounter on Paradise Mountain.

  He gave me more of his grim smile. “Throw the gun away or watch her die. Do it now!”

  If I tossed the gun, he could kill Opal with the machete and draw his pistol and kill me before I could retrieve the Glock. I had Bolt’s knife in my pocket, but that required a few extra seconds and closer proximity.

  “She has nothing to do with this, Rincon. What do you want with her?”

  “I want you, Stark. You have a bill to pay.”

  I stepped closer to him. The moment became crystalline and slow moving. My mouth was dry, and I couldn’t swallow. I felt cold.

  I said, “Let her go and it’ll be just the two of us, you and me. We’ll settle this.”

  He grinned and glared over Opal’s shoulder. “I’ll let you go down like a man. Rolando Molina died like a man. You’ll be reunited with your friend, Stark. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “You murdered him. You’re a coward, Rincon.”

  “All you can do is save this girl, Stark. That’s the
only honor you’ll have tonight. Angel’s dead and your gunhand’s dead in the desert. There’s nothing else for you.”

  Cash was dead. Hearing that was like getting hit with a hammer. No, no, no, no, no. I felt sick, the bile rising into my throat. I swallowed it back and anger took over.

  I took another step forward. “Let her go, you goddamned coward.”

  Rincon’s grin vanished and his face became a stone. Those red flecks gleamed like embers in the corner of his eyes. His arm tightened under Opal’s chin, and with his free hand, he grabbed her hair and jerked her head back to expose her throat.

  “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t do it! I’m tossing the gun! Look!” I threw it away. “I’ve done what you asked. Now let her go.”

  “You’re a fool, Stark. What do you care about a damned Indian for?”

  “She’s a teenager, Rincon. Her name is Opal Sanchez. Don’t hurt her.”

  The sound of her name seemed to jolt Opal. She stopped struggling under Rincon’s arm and looked at me, recognition coming into her face. “Mr. Whip?” The voice was pleading and childlike. She said nothing more.

  “I don’t care what her name is,” Rincon said. “She’s going to die with you, Stark.” His face twisted. The muscles in his fore-arms tightened as he hardened his grip on the machete.

  A rifle shot boomed, and a bullet struck Rincon in the right thigh. He bellowed. His body jerked and his leg buckled, his torso bending in the same direction.

  I looked to my left, and there was Cashmere Miller, fifty feet away, on his knees in the firing position. Blood soaked his muscle shirt. He dropped the AR and collapsed in the mud.

  Opal had crumpled to her knees with her face in her hands. Rincon cried in agony as he groped at the ground for balance with his right hand, the machete still in his left.

  Putting most of his weight on his good leg, he pulled himself up and raised the machete behind his head, his face knotted with rage. With an open-mouthed roar, he took three lurching steps toward me.

  I drew Ed Bolt’s knife from my pocket, flicked the thumb stud to release the blade, and threw it with all the strength I had. It stuck in the center of Rincon’s chest, a perfect strike. His face contorted and he sagged, dropping the machete.