by Don Winslow
“You ever ride on one of these babies before?” Tim asks.
The kid’s so blown away he just shakes his head.
“Well, you’re about to.”
“Cool.”
“Way cool.”
If we get lucky, Tim thinks. If the bikers behind us fuck up and try to be heroes. Don’t do what they should do.
What they should do when they see the truck is lay back, radio ahead and let the rest of the boys close in. What I’m hoping they do is try to get up the promotion list by checking it out themselves.
“You have to be real quiet,” Tim whispers as he plops the kid onto the seat.
“Okaaay,” the kid says, struggling to say it through his giggles.
“No, real quiet.”
“Okay.”
Because Tim’s heard the bikes sputter to a stop. Figures the boys have seen the truck crashed off the road and are deciding what the fuck they’re supposed to do now.
C’mon, boys, Tim thinks. Come be heroes.
He hears their boots crunching on the gravel. Slowly.
Come on, Tim’s thinking. Closer.
So close now he can hear them lock and load.
“Hold on,” Tim mutters.
He feels the kid’s arms tighten around his waist
He guns the throttle and they come flying out the back of the truck. Land and bounce and the kid almost loses it but holds on. Tim steers the bike off the road into the arroyo and off they go, full fucking throttle. The boys are scrambling back for their own bikes, and it’s like chase city out there on the desert.
These boys are good, Tim thinks, because it isn’t long before they’re on his tail in the arroyo, catching up to him. They’re whooping it up like vaqueros, having just a wonderful time out there, probably figuring that they’ll get beside him and have a little rodeo, and in fact one of them pulls alongside then jumps up out of the arroyo so he’s riding along about head-high with Tim while the other guy pushes from behind, and the humvee is coming up fast on the other side.
Tim wrenches the handlebars and skids to a stop, then throttles it and heads back the other way, straight at the boy behind him, who chickens out and crashes his bike into the side of the arroyo.
But a few seconds later it’s the same game only in the opposite direction, and now the first guy is riding beside Tim on his left side and the other guy has about caught up from behind.
Fuck it, Tim thinks, and he jumps the bike out the right side of the arroyo back up to the desert floor. The guy behind follows him up so Tim spins the bike again and zooms straight at the arroyo this time, hollers “Hold on!” and jumps the bike over the fucking thing just as the other biker’s jumping it the other way.
Tim figures the kid’s about had it, going to freak, but he can hear the kid giggling like crazy, giggling, so Tim keeps on gunning the bike and he’s jazzing it straight ahead now, dodging rocks and cactus and mesquite bushes, and the boys are zooming in behind him.
Tim spots one huge mother of a sand dune off to his left and figures What the hell, we’re going to lose anyway, and heads straight for it. He stops for a second at the base of the thing and asks, “Are you okay?” like it makes any difference anyway.
“I’m fine!” the kid says.
“We’re going up this thing,” Tim says, pointing to the sand dune. “Cool!”
Yeah, cool, Tim thinks, until we lose momentum and flip over backward, or tip sideways and roll back down it, or just plain can’t make it up and get caught by our playmates, but he guns the throttle and up they go.
Climbing steeper and steeper, the back wheel trying to slide out but Tim just won’t fucking let it. The motor screaming, the boys coming up behind, sounds like they’re having problems of their own, and Tim about flips the bike five times but he makes it to the top, stops and watches the boys coming up behind him.
Real cute, too, because they’ve spread out to cut him off on the top of the dune. So Tim figures fuck you and just heads right back down again, not on the wussy side but just straight down the dune, like it’s almost skydiving on a motorcycle and if the boys don’t want to lose him they have to do the same.
The kid’s giggling like a crazy little motherfucker and the bike is falling out of the night sky like falling off the earth on a big pile of sand and the boys aren’t whooping anymore, they’re just pissing their pants, because it is steep, and sure enough the first bike coming down loses it. Poor bastard just flips that thing end over end and it must be a wicked spill because he doesn’t get up.
Tim reaches the bottom and starts racing for nowhere with the other bike behind him and that fucking humvee out there somewhere and Tim realizes he just can’t beat this other biker, the guy’s too good. And has a rifle, a beautiful M-16 strapped over his back. Looks like some German in an old movie but the guy is one good rider and this isn’t going to work out.
So I gotta do something else, Tim thinks, and the sand dune bit’s maybe bought me a little space to do it. So he heads for a stretch of thick bush, mesquite and smoke tree and all that shit, and finds a little corridor through it and guns like hell. Hears the other guy pick up on his throttle and knows the guy’s scared of losing him in the brush.
Tim lays the bike down in the brush. Grabs the kid and sets him down under a mesquite and says, “Stay here and be quiet.”
Doesn’t wait for any argument but grabs the shovel, unscrews it, flaps the blade open and waits beside the bush. Times it, steps out, swings that little shovel and smacks it right into the guy’s face. Guy’s like out even before he tumbles backward off the bike.
Tim takes the M-16, straps it over his own back, picks up the kid and gets back on the bike. Steers her back onto the open desert to make some time. Making time like crazy, things looking pretty good, and then he looks back and sees that fucking humvee coming up behind.
Knows he isn’t going to take it out with any shovel. Maybe, maybe could lay the bike down and shoot the humvee’s tires out, but they might freak and start shooting back and there’s the kid to think about.
So he just tries to outrun it, knows it’s a loser game because the humvee doesn’t have to catch him, just maintain contact until daylight, until the reinforcements come, but he can at least make that a race.
So he’s cruising, racing through the night, the humvee racing behind him, closing in, real close now, but Tim’s making a run for it and then the world just disappears.
Tim screams, “Shiiiiiiiiitttt!” because he’s just run out of desert. The whole world like just ends at the knife edge of this huge fucking canyon, like a three-hundred-foot straight drop, and Tim about tears the damn handlebars off he turns so hard, and hits the brakes and lays the bike into a wicked skid. He figures they’re both dead, the front wheel’s dangling off the edge of the world and he’s afraid to move and the humvee just keeps going, just flies off the edge and there’s like silence for a few seconds, then boom and the sky’s glowing orange.
The kid isn’t giggling.
He’s crying.
“Are you okay?”
“My leg hurts.”
Tim disentangles himself from the bike, carefully lifts the boy up and sets him down again. He gets the flashlight from the back, rolls the boy’s pants leg up and sees blood. It’s mostly scrapes, nothing seems broken, and the boy is just sniffling now.
“I’m okay,” the boy says.
“You’re a brave boy.”
Kid smiles.
Tim takes the stuff from the back of the bike. He shoves the map into his pocket, rolls up the blanket and ties it around his waist, takes out the bottles of Evian. Hands one to the kid.
“I’ll bet I can drink this before you can,” Tim says.
The kid takes the bet and starts to guzzle. Times it so the kid just beats him. Then Tim refills the water bottles.
“You want to play a game?” Tim asks.
“Sure. What?”
“You know what a Marine is?”
“Some kind of soldier, rig
ht?”
“Don’t ever say that again, kid,” Tim warns. “A Marine is not a soldier. Those are Army pukes. A Marine is the toughest, roughest, finest fighting man the world has ever seen. You wanna play Marine?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. We’re gonna play Marine for the next couple of days and we’re going to be on a secret hike. We can’t let the other guys find us. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“You up to it?”
“I’m up to it.”
“There’s going to be a lot of walking.”
“Okay.”
Tim pushes the bike off the edge of the cliff, down to where the orange glow is fading into a blood red.
“Let’s go,” he says.
He can make out the silhouette of the mountains to the west. He figures if they can make it over those mountains they’ll be home free. So they start walking.
After a few minutes the kid looks exhausted and Tim decides they can make better time if he carries him. He picks him up and sets him on his shoulders. The kid’s no heavier than a fully loaded field pack.
“What’s your name?” Tim asks, because he’s forgotten again.
“Kit,” the kid answers. “What’s yours?”
“Call me Bobby,” Tim says.
He sets a strong pace. He wants to be as close as he can to those mountains before the sun comes up.
15.
Brian Cervier is pissed.
And worried—sphincter-gripping scared—because he had Bobby Z and let him get loose.
“Find him,” he tells Johnson.
Johnson’s standing there in the parlor, hat in his hand from old-fashioned manners, not from respect. The hat band leaves a red welt on his forehead where his receding hair is going to gray. He stares at Brian. Johnson doesn’t say it but his look says it for him. The look says Listen you fat queer, it’s a big goddamn desert out there.
Brian reads the look—even the faggot part—and answers the unspoken words.
“Bobby’s a surfer-boy dope peddler,” Brian says. “He’s soft. He doesn’t know the desert. Won’t be no day at the beach.”
“He did himself pretty good last night,” Johnson says. Johnson’s seen the bodies already. Seen the wreckage.
“The sun’s not out at night,” Brian snaps.
Johnson just smiles. He figures he knew that already.
“Ain’t all that hot this time of year,” he says.
“It’s still the desert!” Brian screeches.
Fat Boy wouldn’t know the desert from his dessert, Johnson thinks. Fat Boy lives in the desert and hates the sun. Wears them big hats and old-lady dresses all the time and hides from the sun. Stays inside most of the day watching those movies. Black-and-white desert movies. That’s what Fat Boy knows about the desert.
“I’ll catch him,” Johnson says. Not because it’s the desert and not because the man is soft, but because the man is dragging along a kid. And that ain’t gonna get it.
“Woman must have told him,” Johnson says.
“No shit?” Brian asks.
Johnson figures he’s had enough of Fat Boy’s sarcastic crap so he says, “Don Huertero’s gonna be one unhappy hidalgo.”
And watches Brian’s skin crawl. A visible shimmer across the white fatty flesh. Like a shadow racing across the sand flats.
Brian’s just terrified of Don Huertero.
“Find him,” Brian whines.
“I got two of the boys tracking now,” Johnson says. “And I’m goin’ into town to pick up Rojas.”
“Rojas is probably drunk.”
“Probably,” Johnson says.
Drunk or sober, Johnson thinks, Rojas could track a fly across eighty acres of shit.
“What about the woman?” Johnson asks.
“I’ll take care of the woman,” Brian says.
Johnson’s smile says Well, that’ll be a first. But otherwise he keeps his mouth shut and just puts his hat back on his head.
“I need him alive,” Brian says.
Johnson already knows this but thinks it’s too bad. Hard to catch a man like that, especially if the man knows you ain’t going to risk shooting him from a range. And you could bring a man down from a long ways away in the desert. Long flat country with no wind blowing. But catching him, putting your arm on him and haulin’ him back like some wild spring calf, that’s a different story altogether.
“What about the little boy?” Johnson asks.
“What about the little boy?”
“You want him alive, too?”
“I don’t want him at all,” Brian says.
Johnson knows better but doesn’t say anything.
“I won’t kill a kid,” says Johnson.
Brian shrugs. “Rojas will.”
Rojas will, Johnson muses. Rojas’d kill anything.
Brian watches Johnson’s lanky frame duck under the Arab doorway and Brian hates the big cowboy. Just fucking detests the Gary Cooper act and if he didn’t need Johnson to run the place he’d fire his ass pronto. But he does need him and there’s trouble ahead just sure-as-shit so it’s no time for any major personnel changes.
Another time, though, and Brian is looking forward to kicking Johnson’s ass clear off the ranch. Fantasizes about Johnson ending his days as some broken-down drunk in the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego. Pictures the cowboy eating his beans off some hot plate in an SRO hotel with the smell of recent urine and imminent death un-washable from the walls.
Fucking cowboy.
For another time, though.
As the young Milanese boy is now edging his way into the room, spying with almond eyes to see if the temper tantrum is done.
“Not now,” Brian snaps, and the boy disappears from the doorway. Brian can hear his footsteps padding quickly down the hallway.
Later, but not now, Brian thinks.
Now he has to deal with his dear old friend Elizabeth, who got him into this trouble.
The cunt.
16.
Brian comes into Elizabeth’s room and sits down in the big wicker chair and looks at her.
She’s sitting up in the bed, her right wrist and left ankle cuffed to the bedposts. She delicately crosses her right leg, as if her nudity would mean anything to him, but doesn’t bother to cover her breasts.
Brian can appreciate her body on a purely intellectual level. It is firm and well toned, and Brian can appreciate the hard work, the gym time he won’t do himself but insists upon in his young men. For a moment he idly wonders whether, if turned on her stomach …
“You’ve ruined the weekend,” he says.
“May I have some clothes, please, Bri?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve always found that naked people are easier to talk to. Something about vulnerability, I suppose.”
“I feel pretty vulnerable.”
“Well, girl, you should.”
They look at each for a few seconds, then Brian sighs. “Love is a fucked-up thing, isn’t it?”
“You got that right, Bri.”
“You told him.”
“Told him what?”
“Come on.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bri.”
“Something to do with Bobby, maybe?”
“Well, I figured that.”
“I’ve always liked you, Elizabeth,” Brian said. “Admired you, even.”
“It’s mutual, Brian.”
“Haven’t I treated you well?” he asks.
“Very well.”
“Given you a place to stay?” he asks.
She nods.
“And then you do this to me?” he whispers. “Betray me? Put my business in jeopardy? My life in danger?”
She starts to lie again but sees he’s not going to believe her, so she goes the other way. “Love’s a fucked-up thing, isn’t it, Bri?”
“Don’t I know it, girl?” he sighs. “Don’t I know it?”
This hangs in the air until he asks, “Where’s he headed?”<
br />
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth answers. “Honestly.”
“I believe you,” Brian says. “Trouble is, Don Huertero won’t.”
“No?”
“No. Although it would be more convincing if I at least made an effort to get it out of you.”
“I understand.”
“Oh, good,” he says, oozing up from the chair. He slips his belt from the loops and wraps the tongue end around his hand. The buckle hangs loose and ready.
“Not my face, okay, Bri?” she asks, her voice breaking. “Just not my face?”
He shrugs and starts in, asking Where’s he headed only lethargically. He doesn’t think to ask why Bobby Z took the boy.
17.
The boy is asleep on Tim’s back. Tim’s hefting him piggyback style and can feel the weight of the boy’s sleeping head on his shoulder. The boy is easier to carry this way, dead weight like a pack. And Tim carried heavier in the war, in that other desert.
But in that other desert they were delivering cheeseburgers and corn on the cob, pink lemonade and chocolate ice cream. Ice cream in the damn desert, Tim thinks, which is when he was sure they were going to win, when old Uncle started to bring them chocolate ice cream in the desert.
Not here. Here he knows he can expect no help from Uncle Sam—just the reverse, come to think of it—so he keeps the pace up and heads toward the mountains he can just start to see to the west.
Head toward the mountains, Tim thinks. Isn’t that some sort of beer commercial? Head toward the mountains of some kind of beer. But he can’t let himself think about beer just now, as good as it sounds, because there ain’t gonna be no beer and there ain’t gonna be no ice cream, either. At least not until they get out of this desert.
If they get out of this desert.
Anyway, Tim thinks, if he didn’t have the kid he’d be jogging, pounding it out like at Pendleton or Twentynine Palms, and making good time. Beat his pursuers to the high ground and give ’em the AMF, adiós, motherfuckers. Vaya con Dios.