“Yep.”
“Where is this Fort Stockton?”
“’Bout two hundred fifty miles west along Interstate 10.”
“How much is that in kilometers?”
“A hair less than three and a half hours, if we stick to the speed limit. Which we will. Staties are pretty hard-nosed along this stretch. You don’t, like, have a metric system for time, do you?”
“Three and a half—nom d’un chien!”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s so far!”
“Well, those’re the cards we got dealt, so they’re the ones we play.”
“Why Fort Stockton? Is it a major city?”
“It’s not even as wide a spot in the road as scenic Kerrville.”
“Then why are they there?”
“Billy’s been up to his little rainbow games again. I get the impression Mindy-Lou isn’t feeling any too cut out for a life of crime—leastways, not with a screwup like him. But needs must when the Devil drives.”
“Where did you get a phrase like that?”
“Read it in a book.”
“American cowboys read?”
“This one does. My mom never had much truck with my reading anything but schoolbooks and the Bible. Said it was a waste of time. My mom loves me, but, truth to tell, she’s wrong about a lot of things.”
I took a breath. “All the latest contributor to the Billy-Mindy-Lou Follow Your Dreams to Hollywood Tour had in her billfold was enough money for two bus tickets to Fort Stockton. Luckily for everybody concerned that’s so penny-ante the cops just laugh at you if you report it. So we’re still clear.”
“Non.”
“What’s that mean?”
“They must eat. Is this girl not supposed to be a genius? Why did she run off with a con man?”
“Used his ace on her. Just blinked his pretty blue eyes at her. Genius means she’s smart, not that she’s got any common sense. I learned from playing D&D that Intelligence and Wisdom are so not the same thing.”
“You are a nerd?”
“What? West Texas cowboys can’t be nerds? I’m what you call a Millennial, lady. I’m a child of the age.”
“I’m Millennial too,” she said, “and I don’t think either of us is what people think of when they hear that word. And you are full of surprises.”
“Hey. I’m just some guy. Not that complicated.”
“Then how did you get mixed up in this?”
“Girl lives in Modesto, but she got family here. Us Latinos got big families. Tend to be spread pretty far apart. Her auntie plays bingo with my abuela—my grandmother. She said the family was going nuts because their daughter lit out from the band contest last night. They were willing to pay to get her back—real quiet like.”
“Why did you say yes?”
“Other than the fact nobody says no to my grandma?” My granny is a mean old Mexican lady—she was born in Zacatecas, though she speaks English like any other West Texas shitkicker—who cusses like a rap star, smokes big cigars, and is maybe the smartest person I know. “Well, I lost my sort-of-semi-promising career as a bull rider after a bull and I had a little disagreement about which way my spine should curve.”
“You are crippled? You seemed to move pretty briskly in that alley back there.”
“And I’m paying for it now. I get around fine. I just don’t dare take another ride on fifteen hundred pounds of fired-up Brahma, ’less I’m eager to ride a Rascal Scooter forever after that. Lost some of my riding friends when I left the circuit. Said I didn’t have the grit to be a pro bull rider if I wasn’t willing to risk a little thing like becoming paraplegic for my career. They’re right, I reckon. So I needed a job. I don’t want to lie around leeching off mi familia. And, just between you and me and the fine vintage vinyl upholstery, ranching work is starting to bore the backside off me.”
“You are not as dumb as you look.”
“That’s a less common reaction to me. So how about you? How did a nice girl from the Congo wind up in West Texas with a broke-down old rodeo cowboy?”
“You are not old,” she said. “You are younger than I, probably. I am a refugee from the … troubles in West Africa.”
“The People’s Paradise thing?”
She shuddered. I mean, like, it was like a big old hand grabbed her shoulder and shook her whole bony frame.
“Okay, no point dredging up any more bad memories,” I told her. “Sorry. So after you left, what?”
“A family in Montreal adopted me and brought me over. Through a UN program. Not what you might think—they were a lovely older couple. They treated me very well.”
“So what happened?”
“Winter. I took as much of it as I could, broke across the border, and headed south to Miami. I was looking for warmth. I found that, anyway.”
“And then?”
She shrugged. “I was here illegally. I had no real skills. I will not become a prostitute. So I make use of my ‘wild talent’ to get by.”
“You do crimes for a record label?”
“Let’s say I am a person whom one calls when one needs results.”
Bubbles and the Band Trip
Part 9
GOD’S WEENIES HAD STRENGTHENED their ranks, Michelle saw with dismay as she stepped outside the hotel into the cool morning air. They looked to be perhaps seventy-five to a hundred strong now.
But across the street, there was now a group of twenty jokers carrying signs saying, Jokers Aren’t Monsters, Jokers Are People Too, and Protect Jokers from Hate.
Jinkies, Michelle thought. How could this situation possibly go wrong?
The Mob was clustered together, running the gauntlet from the hotel to the auditorium. A couple of God’s Weenies broke off from the main group—a woman with stringy blond hair (Michelle wondered how she could be in the group coiffed like that) and a teenage boy with a raging case of cystic acne started following the band, yelling at them. Two of the joker protesters broke off from their group and caught up with the two GWs and began shouting back.
“Go on,” Michelle told the band. “I’ll catch up later.”
One of the jokers was tall and looked like an apple tree from The Wizard of Oz. And it looked as pissed off, too. It pulled an apple off its branch, then threw it hard at the back of the teenage boy, clipping his ear.
The other joker was short and squat and wore overalls. Warty tumors grew from his neck, arms, and face. Michelle assumed he had them all over, as his overalls looked lumpy. Snot-yellow, viscous fluid dripped from the tumors and he smelled like four-day-old chicken left in the sun. He ran toward the GWs. As he got close, he stopped, then shook like a dog. Ropy fluid flew through the air. It landed all over the two GWs, making them shriek.
Michelle ran over to the four of them. “Knock this shit off. Right. Now!” A bubble was already in her hand.
“Yeah!” the tumor joker said. “You leave those kids alone.”
“Spawn of Satan!” yelled the stringy-haired woman. She looked down at her clothes and looked like she was about to puke. The pimply-faced boy had much the same expression on his face. They turned and ran back toward the group of God’s Weenies, leaving Michelle alone with the jokers.
“Oh, shut up,” Michelle said wearily as she backed away from the tumor joker. His smell could gag a maggot. “You’re all idiots.”
“But we’re here to help you,” the tree joker said. “I don’t understand.”
“Because the more people running around being upset and angry, the more stupid is in the mix and the more likely someone is to get hurt,” Michelle said with no small amount of annoyance. Why was everyone being such a pain in her ass? She knew she was going to hate this whole chaperone thing, but she hadn’t expected it to be this bad.
“She’s an ace. She doesn’t understand,” said tumor joker.
“No, well, I am an ace, but this is a wild card thing. They’re afraid of all of us. Especially aces. You think they can intimidate me? Of cours
e not. They’re scared I’ll do something like this.…” Two bubbles few from her hand and hit both the jokers square in the chest. Well, one square in the trunk. The bubbles were heavy, but she didn’t make them too hard. Just enough to get their attention.
“Ow!” they said in unison. “Why did you do that?”
“To stop you from being idiots! Someone is probably recording this and it’s going to end up all over social media. And I don’t care because have you seen the search hits on ‘Bubbles, video’? Now you two—and all the rest of the jokers here—you’re vulnerable.”
“We can stick up for ourselves,” said the tumor joker. “You can’t stop us, and you have no idea what it’s like to be a joker. We have to fight for everything. And they still hate us.”
Michelle gave him a Joker, please look that was one degree worse than a side-eye. And she suddenly found herself giving no fucks at all about either God’s Weenies or the jokers.
“Please don’t pull that crap on me, it makes my ass tired. Now I’m going to hear my daughter—my joker daughter—play bass in her jazz band.”
She pivoted and started back to catch up with the band.
The Modesto Melody Makers had been scheduled to lead off the performances on Thursday, but there was a problem, as Michelle discovered when they arrived at Tobin. Mindy-Lou Gutiérrez was still missing.
“Her parents hired someone to look for her,” the Modesto band leader said, “but we don’t know how long it will take. We need a postponement. Maybe we could go last.…”
Dr. Smith frowned. “We’re all very worried about Mindy-Lou, of course, but it would not be fair to the other bands to rearrange the entire schedule without notice. Modesto goes on in the next five minutes, or you will have to withdraw.”
Michelle and the Mob watched as the Melody Makers huddled together. Some of the girls were crying softly—whether from concern or nerves was unclear. Jillian, the girl who had quarreled with Mindy-Lou at the mixer, stood rigid with her hand clenched around her alto sax, eyes blazing. “I knew she was going to screw this up for us,” Jillian said furiously.
“What do you want to do?” Dr. Smith asked them.
“We’ll go on,” the Modesto director told them. “You’re already warmed up, kids. We’re a damn fine band, Mindy-Lou or not. Let’s go out there and do ourselves proud.”
Michelle watched as the Melody Makers filed past the Mob. Tears and noses were wiped on the backs of hands. Basilio looked like he was about to cry.
Their performance was a train wreck.
Even Michelle could tell that Modesto wasn’t at the same level without their star player. Or maybe they were just so demoralized by her absence that it threw them off their game.
“Oh. My. God,” Adesina whispered. “It’s … it’s…”
“Awful,” Marissa finished.
“Bad,” Antonia said with a hush.
“The worst,” Peter continued.
“So not good,” Sean added.
“Badosity,” Yerodin said softly. “Hella bad. Badarific.”
“Shush,” Michelle told them all.
The performance seemed to go on forever. When it was over, the Modesto band stood to take their bows, to anemic applause from the audience. They filed backstage looking shell-shocked.
Michelle’s heart went out to them. Several years’ work for all the Modesto musicians to get into the competition had likely been laid to waste.
“I feel guilty going on after them,” Adesina said. “It seems really … unfair.”
The rest of the Mob nodded in agreement.
The Secret Life of Rubberband
Part 7
THE AUDITORIUM FILLED FAST Thursday morning. Fortunately Jan, who didn’t sleep, had saved Robin a seat. “Christ,” he said, lowering himself by degrees. “I’m tired.”
“Coffee?” Jan offered him her cup.
“Don’t mind if I do.” His fingers brushed her glove as he took the cup, and the mild jolt, at least, helped. So did the cup’s contents, though not the way he intended. “What the hell is this stuff?”
“Coffee.”
“Did you use all the sugar in the Starbucks, or just most of it?”
“Supposedly black coffee is part of a vast culinary conspiracy to hide the bitter taste of the brainwashing agents added to franchise coffee, pursuant to FDA Secret Regulation 7732-Apple. You can read all about it here.” She passed him a pamphlet. He passed her back the coffee cup. “Sugar denatures the chemicals. Plus, it’s delicious.”
Onstage, the Jokertown Mob busied about their instruments. The Detonators waited in the wings. Robin glimpsed Vicky arguing with her band’s bassist. “Your niece looks happy.”
“Killer kid. She’ll be okay.” Jan removed the lid of her cup to get at the last of the vaguely coffee-soaked sugar mash at the bottom. “Care to bet on the outcome?”
“I’m flat broke. I’d have to borrow money from you to bet.”
“I can handle that. Hundred bucks says my niece takes your kids for a ride.”
Robin grinned. “You’re on.”
Adesina plugged in the bass. The amp crackled. At the drums, Antonia, ungloved, flourished drumsticks through the forest of her hands.
Robin and Jan shook hands.
And the bands played on.
Dust and the Darkness
Part 2
THE MOMENT WE GOT off the highway in Fort Stockton, she said, “Wait! Turn right here!” I did. It took us between a Motel 6 and some kind of redbrick office building thing. “Stop here!”
I did. “What’s up? You sound like it’s mighty urgent.”
“It is. You seem like a sweet boy. So I am very sorry.”
“For—”
She puked Darkness right in my face.
I tried to weave out of it, but my dang shoulder harness trapped me. It’s amazing how hard it is to keep track of even simple, everyday things when ace-powered blackness suddenly blots out your vision. I’d just tripped the belt release when I heard my door open and felt hot air wash over my left side.
She yanked me out onto the hot asphalt on my back. “Ouch!”
“Sorry. You’ll get your car back, too. Eventually.”
My vision cleared in time to watch the back end of my RAV4 dwindle down the street and hang a sudden left. Without a signal.
“Shoot,” I said, slowly picking myself up. My muscles hurt more than the vertebrae, at least. I rubbed my lower back. “I need to wash Baby something awful.”
Yes, I named my troca after Dr. Tachyon’s spaceship. Yes, I really am a cowboy nerd.
All three of ’em were standing in the middle of a motel room that was precisely as crappy as you’d expect a motel called the Hide-a-Way in the nether reaches of Fort Stockton to be, talking loudly, when I walked in the open front door.
“Knock knock,” I said. Then, to the striking girl who was towering over me from several feet away, not, “Really? Pigtails?”—though I surely was thinking it—but, “I’m Jesse. I’m the one who talked to you on the phone.”
“How the fuck did you get here?” Candace said.
“Uber.” La Familia Gutiérrez was running up quite the expense total. Well, I didn’t ask them for the job.
“Who—” Billy started.
“He answered that, dumbass,” Mindy-Lou snapped. Ooh, trouble in Paradise.
But nothing compared to what came in through the big black hole that suddenly appeared in the water-stained wallpaper.
I already said I was no Sherlock. Looks like I’m not an action hero either. These two dudes came strolling in, right through the wall, one a weedy little runt in overalls with a shock of dirty-looking hair, the other being what looked for all the world like a human crossed with a hound dog, with the lovely parts of neither. The weedy one had him on a leash. The doggy one looked us over with sad, bloodshot brown eyes sunk in saggy folds like a bloodhound’s, and drooled down his slack lower lip.
And me? I stood there staring like somebody had sneaked in
and superglued my boot soles to the scary brown-like carpet.
“We’ll take it from here, Darkness,” the guy on two legs said in a Louisiana drawl as the hole vanished behind them. “Looks like you lose.”
The piteous joker guy, who seemed to be wearing ratty gym shorts, for which I was powerfully grateful, pulled rubbery lips back from a mouthful of yellow teeth whose disturbingly human appearance was only made worse by prominent fangs.
His baby blues practically bugging out of his head, Billy Rainbow started pointing at the dog-man and gibbering. “What is that?” seemed to be the essence of what he was trying to get across. Candace just stood there looking cool as always. “Buck and Blood. Eh, bien. So our boss double-crossed me and farmed the contract out to you. What makes you think he won’t do the same to you?”
“’Cause we win,” the one I took for Buck said, with the air of a man who’s discovered an irrefutable argument. “We bring him back the goods.”
“Are you talking about me?” Mindy-Lou demanded. “Because if you are, that’s, like, totes demeaning.”
“You cochons haven’t won, as you Americans say, dick,” Candace said. And suddenly, where the two interlopers stood, was one irregular blob of Darkness.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “They are dumb but danger—”
With a savage snarl the dog-man came flying out of the black cloud and hit her with his palms. His weight knocked her right over. I heard her head bounce off the edge of the writing desk with one leg shimmed up by splints of wood. Then she landed on her back beneath the high wall mount where a TV that was older than me was shackled as massively as if it would’ve brought more than five bucks at a pawnshop.
The standing man was laughing nasty-like. “Ol’ Blood, he don’t need to see you to strike. He can smell your brown sugar just fine!”
Candace had to be groggy from the head crack, but was gamely fending those scary-toothed canine jaws from her face, while managing not to let the joker get a tooth lock on her arms. I reached out with my mind for a handful of dust.
It’s like groping with my own physical hand, best I can describe it. Housekeeping here was the sort where they charge you extra if you want the sheets changed before you take the room, and we were in way southwest Texas, which meant dust should not be in short supply. But for some reason it took me a spell to feel some. Then I ran my mind over it—that sounds way creepier than it is, but let’s keep moving—and managed to scoop a pinch off the bedspread and stain-mottled pillowcase.
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