Black Helicopters

by Blythe Woolston

  I can smell his smell and feel him, there, close but not touching.

  “You got a one-track mind, kid.” And then his big hand slides down my shoulder and onto my chest. He pinches me there, he grabs me with all of his fingers, and it hurts. When I try to stand, the chair with wheels falls over, and I fall with it. Captain Nichols grabs my hair and the back of my neck. He drags me up and bends me over the desk beside the computer.

  There is a picture of a black helicopter on the screen.

  His other hand pushes my pants down.

  “We need to talk about the rent,” says Captain Nichols. “You owe me some rent.” He pushes his thumb, wide and thick as a hammer handle into me. It hurts. I stay very still. Captain Nichols leans over me and says, “I make one call. That’s all it takes. I make one call, and the other kid is dead. I say he’s dirty, and they will shoot him down. Nobody will ever find him. Nobody will know. Except you. You’ll know. You’ll know you did it.” His thumb is out of my body. “So this is the deal. This ain’t no charity outfit. You pay the rent; there’s no trouble. You say one word, you try anything, and both of you will be dead. But he’ll be dead first. And you’ll know it.”

  I pay the rent.

  After I pay the rent, I have to watch the movies. That is part of paying the rent. I have to see her, the girl with white hair and the wide-apart eyes, the girl with that body, pay the rent.

  She holds the gun by her cheek. She kisses the gun. She puts the gun in her mouth. She puts the gun inside her down there. She pulls the trigger, but there is no bullet. She pulls the trigger, but there is no bullet. She puts the gun in deeper, deeper and faster.

  I have to be brave enough to see this, to be this. I have to see what the world will see when they look at her, when they look at me.

  That is what I see her do. The girl with the white hair. The girl with my body.

  “Hey, Corbin, do you know about whale sharks?” I say. I read a book about a man called Thor Heyerdahl who built a raft and met a whale shark. Whale sharks are grotesque, inert, and stupid according to that Thor. I’d like to hear Corbin’s opinion.

  Corbin doesn’t answer.

  “Hey, Corbin, Corbin Sharktooth,” I say, but Corbin just curls his head between his knees. He won’t even look at me.

  “He’s scared, Valley. You scared him.”

  “You don’t need to be scared,” I say. “The helicopter is gone. It didn’t see us.”

  “He’s not afraid of the helicopter. He’s afraid of you.”

  Eric’s words set Corbin off crying, “I want to go home! I want to go home! I want to be home.” He just says that over and over. It is really tiresome.

  Nobody answers. Not me, not Eric, not the helicopter shark. His voice just shrinks smaller and smaller and he curls himself around the dog. He might still be saying the words, but they are lost now, soaked up like snot and tears in the fat dog’s fur.

  “Having Corbin with us, it isn’t going to make things easier. Trust me, he never stops.” Eric is looking at me, not the road, and the car drifts a little until it hits the rough edge and the tires make the rumbling sound that’s supposed to wake up sleeping drivers. Eric corrects. Some miles slip by in the empty outside.

  “Let him go, Valley. We could just leave him behind when we stop for gas. We’re going to have to stop for gas soon. Please, Valley. He’s my brother.”

  “Pull over,” I say.

  “Here?”

  “Next ramp.”

  “We’re, like, nowhere.”

  He’s right. There’s no ranch lights for miles. “Next ramp. Just do it,” I say.

  It comes sooner than I expect. There’s a road. It probably goes somewhere. There are mailboxes. That means someone lives here. When I look close I can see a pinpoint of light way out there, where the road is going. There might be other places closer the other way, but there’s no telling. The light I can see is the only sure thing.

  “Give me the keys,” I say. “Now, get him up and get him outside.”

  “Here?”

  “This is where we are. You put him out. You get back in. We leave. That’s the deal.”

  When Eric opens the door, the wind claws its way in. It’s blowing hard enough to make the yield sign at the bottom of the on-ramp rattle against the metal post.

  Eric opens the back door and the fat dog hops out. It’s all the same to a dog.

  Corbin looks up at his brother and squints. His glasses are crooked on his face. He must have pushed them around while he was getting the tears out of his eyes.

  “Valley, we can’t leave him here,” says Eric. “It’s too cold for him. He’s too little.”

  “He stays here or he stays with us. You decide. It’s your brother.”

  Corbin still hasn’t said anything.

  “Get it done. Point him in the right direction. Just do it. And get back in here.”

  Eric the Boneless leans over his little brother and leads him to the edge of the road. He points down, into the barrow pit, down by a barbwire fence. Then he gets back behind the wheel and shuts the door. He doesn’t look at me. He just slouches over and rests his head on the steering wheel. His shoulders are shaking up and I can hear him breathing, sucking gulps of air through his teeth. He is crying. We don’t have time for this shit. I reach over and poke him with the keys. He puts them in the ignition and starts the engine.

  “Turn around and go back the way we came,” I say. “Turn all the way around and go the other way on the interstate. We need to backtrack a little. We can’t be where they look.”

  Eric doesn’t say anything, but he does what I tell him.

  Behind us, distance is making Corbin tiny as a mouse. Then the car turns, and he disappears. It’s like he isn’t there at all.

  “Some people’s coming. While they’re here, you stay out of sight,” says the Captain.

  “I’ll stay in the bus.”

  “No, not the bus. Too many windows in there, and it’s too near the house. You take a sleeping bag and go on into the trailers. You stay there until they go.”

  “Can I use the kerosene lantern? It’s going to be cold.”

  “Shit no. Want to burn the place down? Them trailers are flammable. No fire. No flashlight either. If there’s any light, somebody might get curious. Might see you. That happens, I’ll just pretend you’re some squatter. I’ll give you to them and have them get rid of you. They’d do me that favor.”

  I’ve never been in the trailers that make the front wall of barricade around the Captain’s place. He said KEEP OUT, those are his property. So I kept out. He goes in there whenever he wants, just like he goes in me whenever he wants. His property.

  Some places, between one trailer and the next, there’s stacks of old washing machines and refrigerators, but mostly, one trailer is right up next to another, overlapping so the back door of one trailer hooks up with the front door of the next. It’s a snake made of aluminum houses, and I’m stepping into its mouth. I will have to live in its guts until the visitors go away.

  I’m just a pawn. If I don’t march along one step at a time, my knight, my brother, my abalu, will be lost. The game will be lost. I have to be brave enough to see this, to know this.

  I open a door and crawl into the trailer like the Captain says. The roof is caved in over the kitchen. Maybe a tree fell on it when it was someplace where trees grow. Maybe the snow gathered slow and crushing, winters and winters ago. It might make a good barricade, but it gives less shelter than a clump of sagebrush. The wind whips right through, and when it touches me, it steals my heat. This is not the place to stay. I gather up my sleeping bag and crawl along the floor, keeping low. I don’t want the Captain to have any reason to complain. I will not be seen.

  If it were not so cold, if the wind didn’t scrape through the windows, there might still be a smell left behind by those people who lived in this shell once.

  I see the visitors park their trucks by the Captain’s house. I am motionless as a rabbit while they
get out and go into the house. I’m a rabbit with clothes on. I hop from one trailer to the next, always careful, slow and careful, always watching. I stay careful, but moving a little helps me stay warm, or at least not feel how cold I am.

  The cold has frozen the air solid.

  There are mouse turds everywhere.

  In this sink there is dirt, a broken flowerpot.

  Electrical wires dangle out of the ceiling.

  This trailer is packed with boxes and bags and heaps.

  Here is a couch where I could sleep, but the smell of packrat pee is strong enough to stab through the icy air.

  It is getting dark. It won’t be safe to go forward in the dark. There is broken glass sometimes, nails sticking up, ragged, jagged, rusting metal.

  Here, I can look out a bathroom window and see the cars passing on the highway. Even if a driver looked, I would not be seen. I am a small eye in an ugly place that no one wants to see.

  I am invisible.

  I spread my sleeping bag in the bathtub. I’m out of the wind. When cars go by, I might have little moments of light.

  I am not alone.

  There is water in the sink. There is a mouse swimming in the water. Or, there was water in the sink, and there was a mouse swimming, but now both of them are frozen. Time has stopped. The clock has wound down. The little mouse claws that went tick, tick, tick are stopped. In the last dim light I can see them, there in the ice.

  I take off my mitten and touch the mouse on its little dead head. It died with its eyes open. I can touch its little frozen eye. It’s a small eye in an ugly place, and I’m the only one to see.

  I wish I could lie down and sleep. The weight on my shoulders is dragging me down, pushing my bones into each other, crushing my meat. The vest straps rasp my skin, and the raw places sting. It wasn’t made to be worn so long. I was supposed to be done by now.

  “Valley? Shouldn’t we turn around? You said we needed to backtrack, but how long should we go the wrong way?”

  “There isn’t any wrong way.”

  I let that soak in.

  “The bombs were meant to work together,” I say. “First me, in the crowd. Then the truck, later, when everyone rushes to help. The Beaver Trap was never the plan. That was Dolph’s stupidity. Dolph blew it.” I smile at my own joke. “My plan was perfect, but I hadn’t figured on Dolph. But you play chess; you know how it is. Sometimes a boneheaded move happens and everything changes: all the moves you had imagined ahead — useless. Except everything doesn’t change; if the game is still on you still play it to win. You make the next move. This vest is my move. If it turns out I just blow you and me up in the middle of the interstate, that’s the way it is. But we can do better,” I say. “We can do better. Right now we are just waiting for the opportunity to do better.”

  “Got a big job,” says Bo. “Two days to the pickup, then more than that to the drop.”

  My stomach aches and cringes up inside me. Inside me. Captain Nichols’s thumb, thick and filthy, I can see it wrapped around his beer can.

  “You come too, this time, Valley,” says Bo. “The customer wants a girl. That’s part of the deal.”

  Why? Why? Why does the customer want a girl? I do not want to stay here with Captain Nichols, but why would the customer want a girl? This is not good.

  “You’re doing good, kid,” Captain Nichols says to Bo. “You’re getting a reputation for being dependable. You’re earning.” Then he looks at me and says, “You’re paying the rent. Get back fast. I’ve got another job lined up for you. Big money. Easy money.”

  Bo smiles. He is doing good. Jobs are coming steady now.

  “I wish you could share the driving,” says Bo. “We could cut the time that way. Make more trips in the long run.”

  Bo is very keyed in to the job thing, now.

  “When we get back, I’ll ask the Captain the best place to get you a license. You should think about a name. You kind of need to use a name that’s like your real name so it’s easy to respond when people say it. So I’m Joe, Joe Muller. That’s so if we call each other our real names in front of people, it won’t seem that weird. They probably won’t even hear it.”

  I know all this. Da said it when Bo got his license. It costs money to get a good one, but a good one is worth it. It’s worth paying money for one from the DMV — looks real because it is real — but you have to have a connection inside to skip the proof of identity crap.

  I asked Da if I would have one, too, some day. Da said he would teach me in a few years, but no need for a license, not for me. A person only needs a license if they are going out into the world to drive on the highways. That isn’t my part. Even if the job isn’t part of the windup, the world outside is not a place for me. I have my Mabby’s looks. I’m noticeable. The last thing a person wants is that kind of attention.

  But now I’m in the outside world. I don’t go in any stores. I wear sunglasses. I keep my sweatshirt hood on my head. Even then, I feel people looking at me when we need gas or food. I don’t know how to make them stop. I never get out of the truck unless there is no choice.

  I’m the navigator. We are getting close to the pick-up zone. It would be easy to take a wrong turn and miss the contact. That would not be good. Bo says he really appreciates the help.

  We arrive at the place first. It makes us a little nervous, maybe we did take a wrong turn, maybe the directions were wrong, maybe the whole thing is messed up. I don’t say any of the things I’m thinking. Finally, though, we can see dust kicked up by a vehicle coming our way.

  Bo’s calm. He’s done this before. Maybe not here, with these customers, but close enough.

  A silver van pulls up with a young guy behind the wheel. A really old guy gets out of the passenger side. He and Bo shake. He hands Bo an envelope, then he slides open the side door of the van.

  Three pale blue dresses climb out, long skirts, big sleeves, loose at the waist. There are girls inside the dresses, like mice inside cups. Their little hand paws stick out here, and their little bright eyes peek out there. The old man goes from one to the next, putting his hands on their hair.

  The old guy gets into the van. The three dresses move to stand by our truck. The van pulls away.

  “Valley,” says Bo. “This is Daverleen, TheoAnne, and Teal. We are taking them to Canada.” Then he walks to the back of the truck and opens the back so they can climb into the shell. That’s where we carry the shipments, and this is the shipment we are hauling.

  Night comes, but we keep driving. My job is to keep Bo mostly awake. I’m supposed to do that by talking to him, but, really, I have nothing I can say. We listen to the radio. Sometimes Bo says, “You hear that what they said, Valley?”

  “Yeah, I heard,” I say, but I don’t say the rest of it, which is, “Why do you care, Bo? Why do you care what Those People say?”

  Hours later, Bo gives up and pulls into a rest stop. There is no one else there — no car-house mobile homes, no semis. He gets out and opens the back of the camper shell. The three girls are still sitting all in a row at the very back. They could have been stretched out all this time, rocking down the highway like babies in a cradle, but they didn’t take the opportunity.

  I can tell by the way they step when they touch the ground that their feet are full of pins and needles from being cramped up so long.

  The three of them trail off toward the brick bathroom building. Bo nods I should follow. It’s no hardship; I’m ready for a rest stop myself.

  Inside, all three are hidden behind the stall doors. They are whispering to each other. I don’t know why they need to whisper. I don’t care what they are saying. If they are planning to run, good luck to them. We are in the middle of nowhere, and those pioneer dresses and the bellies hid under them would have to be a drag on their speed. I suppose they could try to steal the truck, but they’d have to get the keys from Bo or hotwire it.

  I don’t know why I’m plotting their escape.

  I sit on the cold metal
seat of the toilet in my stall, and listen to them whisper, but I can’t really hear any of the words they say — until they begin to sing.

  Their voices echo and wind around each other like the songs of birds before dawn. Birds singing about rain and morning and all the other secrets in their little bird hearts.

  When they are finished, I watch them wash their hands in the trickle of cold water — all three of them at once, each touching the others’ hands. They never look at their reflections in the dull sheet of metal that serves as a mirror. They can look at each other, I guess, to see themselves.

  When we go outside, Bo is sprawled out on a picnic table. He needs the rest.

  “Do you want to walk around?” I ask the girls. “Stretch your legs?”

  They don’t answer, but they pace along the sidewalk that runs beside the parking lot. I trail after them and keep my eyes open for headlights on the horizon, but the world is as empty of people as it ought to be. The last stars blink out and the sky turns the color of cement and then begins to blue. The sun is still below the edge of the world. The fringes of the clouds flash bright and light streaks up.

  “Look,” says Teal, the littlest one, pointing at the clouds. “It’s the fingers of God.” Then the sun rises higher and the bands of light fade.

  Bo calls out, “Time to go.” He’s still sitting on the picnic table, stretching after his sleep, if he was able to sleep.

  The shipment is obedient, they walk to the back of the truck and crawl in, all the way to the back. Then they take their places, sitting there side-by-side, skirts tucked around their feet, just like they were before.

  “We’ll get you some breakfast in the next town,” says Bo. Then he shuts the tailgate and locks everything up tight. I wonder about those girls sitting there. As far as I can tell, they sleep sitting up like chickens.

  “Six meaty breakfast burritos, a couple of churros, three milks, and three coffees,” says Bo at the drive-through. When they hand the food over in paper bags, he turns to me and says, “Put the milk and three of the burritos in one bag. That’s for them. You can pass it through after we get out of town.”