“What are you doing?” Virgil asked suddenly.
“I’m cleaning you up.”
“Why?”
“Because you fell.”
“Where?”
“Are you okay?”
“I need more water.”
Curtis drank some himself. When he was done, he was still thirsty. His eyes stung. He could feel his tongue drying already. He wanted more, but he gave it to Virgil.
“How much more do we have?” Virgil asked, realizing the bottle was empty.
“Not much. We need to be careful.”
“How much further?”
“Until we can bury the money?” Curtis asked.
“Until we can stop,” said Virgil.
“Drink some more water,” said Curtis.
“Why?”
“Because we can’t stop.”
“I feel sick.”
“The sun does that to you.”
“It’s not just the sun. I’ve been in the desert. Something is wrong with me.”
“Nothing is wrong with you. You’re the strongest man I’ve ever met. Keep walking.”
Virgil was leaning on the bundle of money, but Curtis pulled him to his feet. He felt heavy and weighted. Curtis put the loop around him.
“Who told you that woman was a doctor?” Virgil asked.
“Rodrigo.”
“Who is Rodrigo?”
“Someone we met.”
“Was I there?”
“You were sleeping.”
Virgil thought about it and then agreed. That made sense.
“Go that way,” Curtis said, pointing. Virgil started his slow walk. Curtis threw the rope around his shoulder and started grinding his way forward.
The load was heavier this time.
***
The boy didn’t need much preparation. He had his pack and he had his rifle. Strauss had given him two bottles of water.
“Do you have food?” Strauss asked.
The boy said yes. He had dried meat in his bag. He wanted to go.
“You need to remember, these are dangerous men. They are the police.”
“I know,” said the boy.
“They killed more men than your father. They killed the old man at the house. They killed a man in jail. He was an especially dangerous man.”
The boy simply nodded.
“If you engage them, you can’t let them live. You can’t let them get close to you. From a distance, you have the advantage with this rifle. Up close, they will kill you. Skill has nothing to do with it.”
The boy’s face was the same stoic expression of readiness. If the gravity had sunk in, he didn’t show it. This was a serious boy. Strauss went back to the truck.
“We need to be moving,” said Eduardo.
“I need to see your phone.”
“What for?” asked Eduardo as he handed it to Strauss.
Strauss walked over to the boy and handed him the phone. He lit it up and showed his number to the boy, then gave him the phone.
“If you can kill them or wound them, do it. If you can’t, you need to call me. If they kill you, they will get away. Not just from Mexico and from us, but they will get away with killing your father.”
The boy took the phone and said nothing. Finally, when he realized that Strauss was done, he turned and walked into the desert, following the trail in the sand.
When he climbed into the truck, Eduardo was annoyed.
“The boy is a danger to all of us,” he said. “It might be easier this way.”
“Not for him,” said Strauss, and he put the truck in drive.
***
They pushed until dusk, when Curtis realized the sun was going down and they wouldn’t see where they were going. He pushed on blindly. The load had shifted as the day wore on, with more and more of the weight falling on Curtis’ narrow shoulders. But the money kept moving.
Virgil moved like a zombie. He dragged himself forward, one step at a time. Curtis looked over to him, and his eyes were closed.
“Hey,” said Virgil, suddenly, without prompting. His voice was dreamy.
“What?” Curtis asked. He felt the ropes biting into him.
“Remember that time we got that innocent guy killed at that ranch in Monterrey?”
It wasn’t getting lighter.
“Yeah. I remember.”
“I deserved to get shot.”
“No, you didn’t. It just happened.”
“I killed that guy in Boston too.”
“You had to do that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That doesn’t matter. He’s dead. I have to pay for it.”
“We didn’t kill him.”
“We did. As sure as I killed that guy in Boston, I killed him too.”
“Stop thinking like that.”
“When are we going to stop?”
“When we are safe. When we can bury the money.”
“When will that be?”
“We’ll find a landmark. Something we’ll know. We can find it again. We’ll bury the money when we find it.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s nothing but flat desert out here.”
“I can’t see. Do you still have your flashlight?”
“Yeah.”
“I need some light.”
Curtis clicked the light on to see Virgil with his hand inside his shirt. He was reaching right where his wound was, right where he had been shot. He took it out and held it up to the light.
There was blood on his fingers.
***
The boy wanted to run, but he had been taught never to run in the desert. It was too hot. Water was limited. Walk slow. Be patient. Never rush.
So he walked. Strauss and the other men thought he was a tracker. There were two deep sets of footprints that occasionally disappeared under a wide gouge in the earth. The gouge never disappeared. It pushed on and on. Any fool could find it.
They had something with them. The boy didn’t know what it was. He had watched them take it out of the old man’s shack. His father had told him to avoid the old man. He seemed harmless and hapless. He fiddled about in the yard all day. The boy had listened, but he didn’t know why.
Then he’d heard the screams from the big house. His father heard them too. The boy had leaped to the window to see where they had come from, but felt his father’s hand on his shoulder, pulling him back. His father shut the window.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know,” said his father. The boy thought he did know.
“She might need help.”
“We will mind our own business.” He said it so firmly that the boy laid down on his bedding and shut his eyes. He didn’t shut his ears though. Soon, he heard more.
The boy had a question. He waited some time before he asked it.
“You told me one time that if we found someone who had been hurt that we had a duty to help him.”
“That was in the mountains.”
“Why not here?”
“Because it is different here.”
“Why?”
“It just is.”
He was twelve then. He was thirteen now. He had tried to tell himself that “it just is” was good enough. There were days in the mountains when it was. There were nights when he heard screams when it wasn’t.
He wanted to sprint across the desert and catch up to them. There was the man in the yellow shirt. He had taken him for a fool the first time, and it had almost cost the boy dearly. The other man, the dangerous looking one, was the one the boy sought. He had hit him at least once. He would be slowing them both.
When the sun was low enough that it filled his eyes and he couldn’t see anything else, he lay down on the ground until it disappeared. When it was dark, he felt the cold creeping in, so he took off all of his clothes. He opened his pack and dressed in thermals. Then he put on his clothes again, and after that, the rain poncho.
Then he cleaned his gun.
He t
hought about his father. He loved him desperately. His father had been his whole world. He put his whole world out of his mind.
He focused on the men he was hunting. He’d had the man who had killed his father in his sights. He had shot him and wounded him but not killed him. He knew what he had done wrong. He had been crying.
Never again, thought the boy.
The desert had dried his eyes and dried his pores. He was ready. He slept, though just a little. He wanted to see the sun rise. Today was the day that he would find the man who killed his father.
Chapter Thirteen
Strauss – Nuevo Leon, MX
“We have one of them,” said Ordo.
They found them in a field at the end of an unmarked road a quarter mile past a dying gas station. The white and red lamps from their cars were impossible to miss. Four men stood in a field with the light to their backs.
“Take a look,” said Ordo. There was a man in the dirt at his feet. He was face down and there was blood on his back, on his shirt, and on his pants. He had been wearing a backpack. It had been opened and rifled through, its contents had been dumped and were now blowing about.
Ordo’s men were well armed. One had a shotgun slung over his shoulders. The other wore sunglasses and cradled an AK-47.
“He got the American,” Ordo said.
“Roll him,” said Strauss.
One of Ordo’s men grabbed an arm and turned the body over roughly.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Eduardo.
“Is this one of them?”
The man on the ground had a large ragged hole in his chest. A round had gone through his body and burst out from the other side.
“How old do you think this man is?” Strauss asked Ordo.
“I know how old he is now.”
The man on the ground had thin, wispy facial hair. It was a weak attempt at a beard. His hair was blond and tied back into a tiny bun. He wore shorts and layers of shirts. He had hiking boots on his feet. He had a gauge in each of his earlobes.
“Did you hear me say that we were looking for two police officers from America?”
“I told my men to find Americans walking out of the desert.”
“They did a great job.”
Strauss picked up the backpack and looked at what had been left inside of it. There was blood on the pack. There were two bullet holes on each side. Strauss found a copy of Moby Dick. A bullet had gone through that too. He dropped it.
“So it’s not one of them. We keep looking,” said Ordo, glancing at Eduardo.
“Look at this, you idiot,” said Strauss. He held a small red book in his hand.
“What is that?” Ordo did not reach for it.
“It’s a passport. From Holland. He’s Dutch. Did you bother to look at what was in the bag?”
“My men don’t read so good,” said Ordo.
“Or think so good.”
Ordo shrugged.
“He ran from them.”
“I wonder why.”
“What more do you want?” asked Ordo.
“What I want is a man with a little common sense who can follow simple directions,” said Strauss. He started toward the car.
“Hey,” said a voice from behind them. When Strauss turned, he saw that Ordo’s man was no longer cradling his AK. Now it was in his hands.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” the man asked.
Strauss said nothing back to him.
“You’re a cop, right?” the man asked.
He held the rifle loosely, but it was pointed at Strauss’s lower body. He made a few slow steps to his right. Behind him, Ordo was enjoying himself.
“Do you know what I don’t like about cops?” the man asked. He was moving closer. Strauss didn’t answer.
“All my life, I seen cops do things that I do too. Except they put me in jail for it. They give me a beating for it. They look down on me for it.”
“I think we’re in for a first tonight, boys,” said Ordo.
“It’s that cops think they’re better than everybody else,” said the man.
He flipped the sunglasses off of his face and let them rest on his head. The rest of him was still and controlled, but his eyes were pure rage.
“Except you’re not,” said the man. He was a few feet away and inching closer. He brought the rifle up and used it to cross the distance. When the barrel touched Strauss’s belly, he stopped.
“I’ve never heard a cop beg for his life,” called out Ordo.
“You won’t tonight either,” said Strauss.
He had understood that one day he would die, and for a long time, he had expected he would die badly. He had never imagined the how or the why, because he knew it wouldn’t much matter. He braced himself for what he knew was going to be an awful, excruciating blow. He hoped he would bleed fast.
“What do you have to say now?” the man asked.
Strauss racked his memory. He wanted to imagine himself breathing through Dulcinea’s hair, with her arms around his neck and a black and white movie playing in the background. He tried to imagine a time when he had been a child and happy.
He watched as the man let his finger slide off the guard and onto the trigger.
“They have three million dollars!” shouted Eduardo.
Strauss blinked. He thought he had been shot. Everyone turned.
“The Americans,” continued Eduardo. “They have three million dollars cash. That’s what they’re running with.”
Ordo pushed forward, moving the rifle aside and passing between Strauss and his would-be killer.
“How much did you say?”
“Three million.”
“Why didn’t you say this before?”
“Would you have told me?”
“I’m the one with all the guns.”
“And I’m the one with all the money,” said Eduardo.
Strauss himself wasn’t sure how Ordo would take that, especially since it had been said in front of his men. The gun was down, but pointing at his left knee. He didn’t even know if Guillermo was still out there.
“Wouldn’t you rather be the man with the money?”
Ordo’s face turned ugly. It turned uglier still when he smiled. His mouth was broad and happy.
“I want to be the man with the guns and the money,” he said, and he clapped Eduardo on the shoulder. Strauss felt blood rush through his body.
“I need this man,” said Eduardo, motioning to Strauss.
“What for? He is old and hasn’t done you much good.”
“I need his connections. We have other business together. Let him be. You and I have more important things to do.”
Ordo thought about it. Thinking hard seemed to take a physical effort. Lines of stress crisscrossed his face. Ordo looked at Strauss for a long time.
“Let him be,” he said. The man lowered his rifle. He did not lower his eyes.
“He knows how close he came,” said Ordo.
The Honda and the BMW tore up dirt as they drove out of the field. As Strauss watched the dust drift and settle, he could see the useless legs of the young hiker in the field.
“Thank you, Mister Mendes,” he said sincerely.
Eduardo was dusting himself off and straightening his clothes. “I did it for myself,” he said. “You’re the only civilized man left in Mexico.”
***
It was both more clear and yet much more dark in the desert. The sky was free of pollution, and the light of the moon traveled that much further. Curtis turned just in time to see Virgil projectile vomit into the air.
Virgil dropped to his knees, coughing. When he didn’t get up, Curtis pulled him to his feet.
“Do you feel better?” Curtis asked.
“No,” said Virgil.
“Know what’s good for a queasy stomach?”
“No,” said Virgil.
“Walking,” Curtis told him. He tried securing the ropes around his friend, but they just fell loose around
Virgil.
“Lean into it.”
“I am.”
He wasn’t. He was swaying in place. Virgil laughed. Then he winced, like the laugh hurt. Curtis saw the ropes tighten as his weight took hold. He patted Virgil on the back and told him he was doing a good job. Virgil grunted. The ropes rose high.
Then Virgil fell onto his face.
He was wrapped in the ropes, and as he tried to get up, he became tangled.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Virgil.
“That’s okay,” said Curtis. He brushed sand off of him. “Do you think you can walk on your own?”
“No,” he said. “I can help.”
“I know you can,” said Curtis. He picked up the shotgun. He cracked open the breach and took out two shells. He locked it up again. “I need you to carry this. Put your weight on it.”
“Like a cane?” said Virgil.
“Like a walking stick,” he said. He put it in his hands. Then, Curtis bent and picked up the ropes, all of them, and carefully, one at a time, slung them over his shoulders. The lower reaches of his mind once again began calculating the weight versus the dollar amount and attempting to find a figure. He took a deep breath and pushed.
He went nowhere.
The first step is the hardest, he said to himself. He saw Virgil stagger into the night. He pushed again and felt the money move behind him.
***
The ropes had torn into the skin on his chest, and Curtis was glad it was dark. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel a deep X of raw, burning flesh across his torso.
His back hurt more. His back and his thighs. He stopped to breathe at one point, and his thighs felt like they were exploding. He stretched and squatted, but it worsened. He started pulling again, and the pain was bearable. So he pulled some more.
His feet hurt for a while, but that pain blurred into a dull discomfort. Then they went numb.
What affected him most was the cold. Now that the sun was down, the heat was gone, and the cold had found the wet clothes. It had found the wet skin. The cold reached into his muscles and threatened to enter his bones. So he kept moving.
Curtis didn’t know how far he had walked. It was one arduous step at a time, with the brutal weight of the money and the unforgiving flat blandness of the land. He pushed all thoughts from his mind and tried to hypnotize himself. He focused on the sound of his footsteps, and the sound of the fortune being pulled through the sand. It was slow and steady and soft, and one day it would end.
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