Virgil was going to die in this desert. Curtis knew that. He also understood that there was no use in accepting it or lying around getting sicker waiting for it to happen. Waiting for the sun or the heat to wear them down, or for the boy to surprise them with a gunshot to the face. Hiding behind that huge pile of money, they were dying.
Walking off in different directions, they had a chance. One of them might live. Waiting where they were, they both would die.
Virgil had been in his right mind when they parted. His handshake was weak, where it never had been before.
“I’ll see you in America,” Virgil said. He meant it to sound confident, but it sounded like a question. Virgil was too tired and too beaten to smile, so Curtis did it for him.
“Of course you will,” Curtis said. “Where else would I be?”
He hoped it made sense to Virgil. He hoped that everything he said had made sense to Virgil, that it had sunk in, or that he had been in a healthy enough place to retain it.
“Which way are you going?” Curtis asked. Virgil pointed north. “That way,” he said.
“In the morning, keep the sun on your right. In the afternoon, keep the sun on your left.”
Curtis thought of saying good luck, but didn’t. He pulled Virgil’s dark shirt over his head. It had been run through with sweat and blood and sickness. Virgil had on Curtis’ yellow Hawaiian shirt, with little hula girls all over it. He couldn’t work the buttons and he was exposed.
Curtis picked up the ropes and slung them over his shoulders and tried not to think of the bullet that he would never hear. He lashed the ropes tight and held the shotgun like a cane. He had a doubt, but he erased it. He was dressed as Virgil, so he must think as Virgil. Virgil never second guessed himself.
The first step from stand still was the toughest, and he said a tiny prayer as he pushed.
Please let the boy believe it.
Chapter Fourteen
Virgil – Nuevo Leon, MX
Virgil woke up and realized that he had fallen asleep. He didn’t know for how long. The sun was still out and about. It wasn’t a new day.
He had the empty water bottle with him. His tongue was huge, to the point where he tried to spit it out of his mouth. He felt like he had eaten sand.
He walked. The sun was on his left. He would find someone soon. He thought he used to know the Spanish word for water. He could ask for water in Spanish and he could call someone an asshole in Spanish. He hoped he would remember the word if he met a person on the road. It would be terrible if he just couldn’t remember the word for water. It would be worse if he accidentally called them assholes. He laughed.
Virgil took inventory of himself. His skin tingled. From time to time, there would be an intense itch, and he had to scratch it. There was no negotiating with the itch. It would be impossible to ignore. It had to be scratched right then and hard. After the scratch, there was a fleeting moment of relief. Then the pain brought him to his knees.
It felt like he had torn his skin apart. The pain wasn’t just on the surface, but it burrowed into his face, layer after layer ripping and screaming. Virgil squeezed his eyes shut. He cradled his head and laid his arms in the dirt until it subsided. When it was over, he knew he should have had tears in his eyes, but his eyes were dry.
He searched himself. He had a gun. He left that alone. His pockets were full. He pulled out a handful of money. There was a paper strap around the middle to hold it together. One stack fell to the ground. He reached in and found more, and then more in the other pocket. He had one in the shirt pocket too.
He tried to do the math, but his head was pounding. Math was Curtis’ job. He had a memory of Curtis telling him to lie still and pulling bills out of the big blue tarp. He didn’t remember Curtis giving him money. He hadn’t felt it, but he was feeling less and less from his body. He had an itch, though, on his forehead. He scratched it and the pain brought him to his knees.
He woke up and found the money all around him. He found a stack of bills in his underwear. He didn’t know why it was in his underwear, but he put it back, in case it served a purpose he couldn’t remember. He found another one in his sock. He left that where it was. He still had his gun, so he got to his feet, found the sun on his right, and walked. He walked, and the sun sank lower and the sky grew dark and still, he kept walking.
He walked and realized that he had no idea where to keep the moon. The sun was to his right in the morning and his left in the afternoon. Curtis made no mention of the moon. He thought about lying down, but he knew that lying down meant never getting up. So he walked.
At midnight, his left leg stopped working. At first, it wouldn’t complete a full gait. Then it was half a gait. Before long, he was dragging it.
Virgil thought about the marines. They had taken leave in Hawaii and he ended up in Kauai, floating peacefully at the base of a waterfall surrounded by jungle. There had been water everywhere then.
When the sun came up, he had the presence of mind to be horrified by how his skin looked. It was thin and papery. It was coming off in flakes. The skin below it looked worse. This was no sunburn, he thought. He was glad the sun was up again. He didn’t know why it was on his left when it was supposed to be on his right in the morning, so he turned around and kept walking.
His head pounded, but he found that it was almost tolerable if he set his foot down in the same rhythm as the throb of pain. That consolidated the hurt. He dragged on like that, his right leg barely helping, his left knee aching, and a strange sound coming from his hip.
One time, in the marines, he had eaten a bunny’s eyeball. They had marched them up a mountain and when they said they would pick them up, after they had rationed and eaten all their food, the instructors said, “See you next week.” So they found their own food and he found a bunny. They’d made him eat the eye ball cold.
He had walked off that mountain. He was skinny and he was hungry, but he was alive. Lost in the desert, Virgil made himself walk a little further.
***
The coughing slowed him. He didn’t know when it started, but he had been thinking of the waterfall in Kauai and watching a bunny when he realized he was on his knees, coughing uncontrollably. Virgil couldn’t breathe. His lungs wouldn’t accept any air. He sank further to the ground, his eyes bulging from his head, until a tiny pinprick of air filtered into his chest. More air followed. When he could, he breathed like a greedy man. He put his head down, and when he lifted it, the sun was in the sky. He stood up and walked.
He discovered trash. At first, it was just wrappers. Dirty wisps of paper with rotten food flittered about him. There was a bag on the ground. It had been torn open by animals or people.
Virgil tried to bend but couldn’t. Instead, he walked into the bag until more and more fell from it and all of the trash was on the desert floor.
Virgil looked at what he had. He saw greasy bags and empty cans and pieces of drywall. There was broken glass, wood shards, and Mexican shingles. Virgil was moving on when he saw a familiar flash of red.
The very sight filled him with hope. It felt like a warm hug that had been lost in time and finally delivered when he needed it most.
There in the pile, coated in white dust, with the red metal flare standing out from the rest, stood a twelve ounce can of Coca-Cola.
His back blazed with pain as he bent and grabbed for it. He could feel it swirling around at the bottom. Virgil put it to his lips and poured. He couldn’t taste anything. He just felt the desperate overwhelming sense of relief as the mouthful of delicious wetness flooded into him. It was one mouthful. It was warm and it was all sugar. It was wonderful.
He passed a burned-out shell of a car. He found a house and stumbled through the front door. It was just walls. There was no roof. Virgil walked right on through to the other side. The sun was sinking again. He saw a pile of burnt tires. He wondered what they were doing this far out in the desert. The thought confused him so much that he barely noticed the two Mexicans.
>
They sat on milk crates. There was a soot covered barrel in front of them, but no fire. He remembered that he knew two words in Spanish, but he couldn’t remember what they were.
“Assholes,” said Virgil as friendly as he could manage, and meaning nothing by it. The two said nothing. They stared back, dumbfounded. Virgil stumbled by without stopping.
Virgil’s lungs were tight. They felt shriveled. He took a breath and the same vicious dry cough attacked him. There was no way to stop it. It not only squeezed his throat, but forced a finger into it. It could have been his tongue. Virgil couldn’t see. He was gagging. He fell to his knees. He felt his stomach contract. He felt his eyes go dark.
***
He came to with his forehead in the dirt. Virgil didn’t know how long he had been gone. He knew the next fit would kill him. He knew staying here would kill him. He picked his head up and saw Jefe standing before him, leaning against a large black truck.
“Someone called the police,” claimed Jefe. “Said a deranged white man just walked out of the desert. Thought I’d come by, see if it was anyone I knew.”
Virgil didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to make of the big man. He put his good foot forward, slowly, held it in place with both hands, and then leaned into it. He pulled himself to his feet.
“How in the world are you still alive?” Jefe asked.
“I don’t know,” said Virgil.
The big man smiled. Then he spit. He had so much fluid in his body that he could let big gushing mouthfuls fall to the floor and seep into the sand. Virgil marveled.
“You look thirsty,” said Jefe, in his lazy way. “Let me get you some water.”
He turned to reach into the truck.
“Do you have any Coca-Cola?” Virgil asked.
“Coca-Cola?” asked a bemused Jefe. “I think I do.”
Jefe came back with a huge Styrofoam cup with a straw poking out of the top of it. Virgil could hear the ice sloshing around inside. Jefe gently put the straw to his lips.
“Easy now,” he said. “Go slow.”
Virgil did. He had a mouthful and let it ease into his system. He felt the sweet liquid wet his mouth and throat with nothing more than a trickle. He could actually feel it make its way to his stomach. He felt his dry insides tingle with life. It felt like every cell in his body had lifted its head. He thought he could drink this forever when he heard the loud slurping sound coming from the cup.
“All gone,” said Jefe. He tried to take the cup away, but Virgil began to raise his arms to take it from him.
“Slow down now,” Jefe said. He took an ice cube from the cup and slipped it into Virgil’s mouth. “Let it melt,” he said.
The feeling was amazing. Virgil felt so good that he believed he could lay down and die. Jefe was laughing.
“What?” Virgil asked.
“How long have you gone without water?”
“A couple days, I think.”
“Where were you?”
“By the blue bundle with Curtis. When the boy found us.”
“What boy?” Jefe demanded.
“The boy who has been trying to kill me.”
“Why would some boy want to kill you?”
“He thinks I killed his father.”
“What is this boy’s name?”
“Never got it.”
“Where is he now?”
“Following Curtis.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why?”
“Do you want more ice?”
Virgil realized that the cube in his mouth had melted into a sliver. He very much wanted more ice.
“Then I ask the questions,” said Jefe, fishing more out of the cup. “Where did this boy come from?”
“He just found us.”
“Wandering around in the desert?”
“Yeah.”
“And he hunted you down?”
“He shot me.”
“Where?”
Virgil pulled his shirt up to his neck.
“Jesus God,” said Jefe. “Who stitched you up?”
“A lady.”
“A doctor?”
“No,” said Virgil. “I don’t think she was a doctor.”
“I don’t either,” said Jefe, looking at the wound.
The ice was pleasurably disintegrating in his mouth. He still couldn’t use his tongue. At the moment, he didn’t care. He realized that Jefe had been studying him for a long time.
“How long have you been a cop?” Jefe asked seriously.
“Years,” said Virgil.
“Why?” Jefe asked.
Virgil shrugged.
“It seemed like an adventure.”
Jefe smiled. It was not a happy smile.
“Back home, I was nothing. Down here, things were different. The rules were different. Here, I was educated. I was bigger than everyone. There was a market for a particular kind of violence.”
Jefe said as he put the last ice cube into Virgil’s mouth. “I came down here to see what I was made of.” Jefe looked at Virgil, and then off to the horizon, before looking back. “I found out,” he said.
Jefe reached into his shirt pocket and removed two small books. Virgil looked at it and saw that they were United States passports. One belonged to him. The other belonged to Curtis.
“What do you want for these?” a stunned Virgil asked the big man with tremendous appetites.
“I want you to go home,” said Jefe quietly.
Virgil put his passport into his front pocket. It didn’t fit, and took up the whole pocket. He could feel it. He wanted to be sure it was with him. He held up Curtis’ passport.
“What about—” Again, he didn’t finish. The words hung in the air unspoken.
“He won’t be needing it,” said Jefe.
Virgil tried to accept it stoically. He looked at the landscape around him. He was surprised how many homes he hadn’t noticed. He wondered how many people were watching from darkened windows.
“They caught up to him?” Virgil asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “They caught up to him.”
All Virgil wanted to do now was sleep. He started walking, but felt his vision narrow. There was wood in him that had propped him up for the last three days, and under the weight of this news, it had finally crumbled. Gruesome and unnerving as it was, he needed to know. He turned and saw Jefe still watching him.
“How did he die?”
“Walter Curtis?”
“Yeah,” said Virgil, as if that was all he had left. He was so tired.
“He died well,” said Jefe.
“What does that mean?” The shreds that were left of his memory were filled with images of beheadings and disembowelments. He needed sleep, but after he slept, he decided, he would drive into the desert and find Curtis, then bury whatever was left of him.
“What did they do to him?” he asked a final time.
“What did they do to him?” Jefe asked. When he repeated it, he stressed different words. In the haze of pain and sleeplessness, it sounded more like Jefe was asking what did he do to them.
***
Curtis watched his old friend as he turned from a man to a dark stumbling figure until finally he was nothing more than a black spot on the landscape. Then, he was gone.
He felt both heavy and light, but the part that felt light felt empowered. He paused, ran his hands across the straps, picked up the shotgun as if it were a cane he didn’t need, and heaved his body forward. The money came with him.
Curtis cut a pace he hadn’t achieved since he had first wrapped the ropes around his shoulders. He pushed one foot in front of the other and let the ropes dig. It hurt, and he relished it. He was glad it hurt. He walked harder so it hurt more. He told himself it was all downhill and that gravity was cheering for him. Eduardo Mendes was a clever little fancy pants. Eduardo Mendes couldn’t stop him. His thugs couldn’t stop him. That fat cop couldn’t stop him. This boy and his little gun couldn’t stop him. Mexico couldn’t
stop him.
He fell into the fearsome new rhythm and became hypnotized. All Curtis saw was the land falling before him. The bag tore through the sand. “Like a hot knife through butter,” he said aloud to no one at all. He realized that he wasn’t sweating, though he knew he should have been.
He heard the tear, but ignored it. The second tear was too long and too loud to ignore. Curtis stopped and felt the vice grip on his thighs. He vowed to keep moving. He marched in place. He had long since stopped caring about looking insane.
The ropes had torn through the blue plastic and left a jagged opening. Curtis shoved the money into the corners and pushed more away from the hole. His head began to tingle, and he remembered the boy. He watched for him, but saw only sand and heat and cash.
It had fallen out of the bag. He didn’t need to worry about being followed. He was leaving a trail of US Currency. He picked them up and stuffed them back in, then wrapped himself once more in the ropes. He noticed one stack of bills left on the ground, and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. He pushed on, and the bag slid right over it.
He marched the boy deeper and deeper into the desert, and at one point in the early afternoon, it occurred to Curtis that he wasn’t killing himself. He was killing the boy too.
He was thirsty. His whole body craved water. He could feel its demands. Curtis could feel himself going dry from the inside out. It remembered that he had almost drowned in fresh water as a boy, and he laughed. He had once had so much water that it almost killed him. Now he needed nothing more than fresh water, and he had none. He laughed as he went, and he never let go.
He saw the wasteland that lay in front of him. There was nothing here. There was no reason why any creature would exist in this place. It had been placed here to torment human beings. That was its only purpose.
He put his head down and drove on through the desert. He tried to think of home. When home became Virgil, he pushed those thoughts out as well. He let his thoughts overwhelm him and he dug his feet, one after another, through the sand and onward until one moment he happened to look up and saw a house.
South of Evil Page 27