Black Helicopters (11 page)

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.”