All the Beautiful Sinners (3 page)

And then Jim Doe saw it, over the padded shoulder of Benjamin’s coveralls: the dome light of Benjamin’s truck glowing on. The cab was milling with people, three at least. And there were more shapes muttering in the bed. In Texas. Where they’d chased all the Indians out a century ago, and killed all their horses just to make it stick, then sent the great-grandsons sons of the cavalrymen out a century later, to collect the bones on the weekends, sell them in town by the truckload, for soap to wash themselves with.

“Ben,” Jim Doe said, no breath. “You don’t—Terra. It’s not what you thi—”

Benjamin pushed forward, choking off the rest.

“
Don’t
you
goddamn
tell
me
what
I
think
,” he said, his lips not involved at all.

Jim Doe made himself breathe, breathe, but still: his hand found the butt of his gun.

“Listen, you’re assaulting a—” he started, then Agnes cut him off.

She was standing beside Benjamin, holding the screen door open with her hip. Gentry’s quail gun was nestled behind Benjamin’s ear. A Browning 16 gauge.

“
Ben
,” she said. “Go home.”

Benjamin stared at Jim Doe for long moments, then finally let him slide down the wall.

“Agnes,” he said. “You of all people—”

“Ben,” Agnes said. “I’m saving your worthless life here. For Magritte.”

She hadn’t taken the gun off him yet.

When Jim Doe slid the leather catch off his hammer, Agnes shook her head no.

“You too,” she said. “Inside.”

Jim Doe looked out into the darkness, at the truck, the men waiting for him, all the dry, abandoned places they knew where nobody would ever look, and then he backed inside.

Agnes came in when Ben’s truck was gone.

She was crying. Finally.

She went to the cigar box Gentry had always kept on the shelf, by the outdated encyclopedias Sarah and Lisa had plagiarized for all their book reports. She brought it to the table. There was seventeen hundred dollars in it, in an envelope with her name on it, an envelope she was using again, now.

She held it out across the table for Jim Doe.

“Take it,” she said. “You’re right. The only way they’ll . . . not be like that is if you catch him. And you know if Bill and Walter find him, God. Tom would have wanted him to stand trial, Joe. James.”

“I’ll pay it back,” Jim Doe said.

Agnes smiled.

“No you won’t,” she said. “Just come back alive. For Tom.”

Jim Doe looked back at her once, not saying anything, then pushed the door open onto the night, stepped out into it.

He was throwing up in the ditch now. Amos. The half-digested pills rolling in the dust like punctured ticks, spilling his blood. He was screaming too, a thin line of snot connecting him to the ground, trying to pull him in, under. He raised his head, held his hands over his eyes, but the yellow jacket was there, burned into the backside of his lids. The man in it was holding a long metal pole.

He set a fire in the ditch with the lighter from his dashboard, and he
drove
. Maybe the fire would slow the fireman down. Maybe all of Kansas would burn. He poured his Nyquil out the vent window and it clung to the side glass for as long as it could, beading thick against the felt weather-stripping and finally clumping over, into the void behind him. Texas. Oklahoma. Kansas.

What was the metal pole
for
? He’d never had a metal
pole
before.

He had to find a drugstore. This far gone, even straight morphine would do. He would shoot it into his tearduct if he had to, then let the numbness spread out from there. It would be the opposite of crying.

He drove, and drove, and then on one of the turns on 156 the front passenger side tire went for the second time in two states and that was almost it, he was almost over, but then the road on the passenger side of the car banked up for him suddenly, so the car could lean against it instead of shooting off into the ditch, the telephone poles, the fences. Something always saved him.

But the spare. He couldn’t get it—the children were lying on it. It would interrupt them to open the trunk. To see him frantic like this. It would scare them.

So he drove on the rim again, one side of the car hooked over onto the grass shoulder, where it was softer. Where the rim would last, maybe. He had to hang onto the left side of the steering wheel with both hands, to keep the car straight. It was foolish. He started laughing and turned the stereo up, the mechanized hum of another world.

A mile marker folded under the car, scraped the oil pan, tore out the belly of the muffler.

It didn’t matter.

The handcuffs. He had to get the handcuffs off first. He could do it with a paper clip, he knew, but to get it into the lock he’d have to hold it in his teeth, and the sound of metal on enamel, it would bleed out his ear, and the blood would collect in the dead space over his collarbone and congeal there, and then everyone would know who he was, what he’d done.

The dry heads of the grass were silk rubbing against the rough Chevrolet frame.

He thought about leaving the car in low then running ahead, holding the chain of the handcuffs in the path of the rim he was pushing. The rim’s edge was sharp and raw and hot by now. He’d have to tie the steering wheel over with a rag. And set the accelerator somehow. And then pull his arm out before the rim rolled to his shoulder. And then catch the car.

He drove.

Fifteen miles per hour, bits of hot rubber slinging themselves up onto the hood in defeat, or surrender. Once a big truck honked at him the whole time it was passing. He stared after it, trying to memorize the mural that had been on the side. For future reference. For standing next to that particular driver at a long row of urinals, the wall before them not yet splattered with blood and grey matter, the more particular shades of regret.

The next town was two miles away. Kalvesta. It was on the way to Lydia. Lydia was where he was going. He’d forgotten for a while—driving north and east, fast, away from Texas,
any
way—but now he remembered again: Lydia.

Then, like the tire wasn’t bad enough, pushing it through the tall grass and soft earth spun the water pump out, the bearing in there reeling silver angel hair out against the race.

He could hear it, feel all the heat building up in the engine.

Two miles.

The Impala limped into town on three tires, favoring the tender steel rim. He nosed it into a service station, pulled the hood open from under the dash. Steam billowed up into the sky. He still had the handcuffs on.

Before anything else—the station attendant approaching, shielding himself from the steam with a small, red rag—he had to protect the children. He did. He turned into a white person so as not to attract attention—
White
—all his hair telescoping into his scalp, pressing on his brain so that he had to set his teeth against it, hard, then broke the round key off in the trunk lock, using both hands because of the six-inch chain between his wrists. He had his shirt hanging from the chain, wrapped in his hands. Like he’d used it to twist the radiator cap off a few minutes ago.

He followed the side of the car around to the open hood. The station attendant was trying to see through the steam. He looked up, the brim of his dingy brown hat framing his eyes. They were blue. The stitching on his shirt read TAYLOR.

“I’d say she’s one hot bitch, yep,” Taylor said, pushing his hat back on his head to see under the hood better.

“You don’t know me,” Amos croaked, shaking his head no, please. “I’m White.”

And now Taylor was studying him, it felt like.

There was only one thing to do.

Amos reached under the hood and placed his bare palm against the radiator cap. The skin sizzled, curling back from the heat, and he fell to his knees, mouth open in a scream, just no sound.

“
Holy
—” Taylor said, didn’t get to finish because the water was pressuring out from under the cap. It was like a sprinkler head now. In hell.

Amos backed off, holding his hand—his
hands
, chained together—close to his stomach, staring his eyes wide.

Taylor dove for the water hose, pointing Amos inside, to the garage. Something about a first-aid kit on the wall.

Amos turned, stumbled into the cool, dank air of the garage, and stood among the tools. His hand didn’t hurt anymore, never had. Not really, not him. He became Indian again and slowly removed the Def Leppard shirt from the chain of the handcuffs and straightened it on the hood of a Cutlass. It was his favorite shirt, the one concert he’d ever been to.

The chain he set on a vise. The vise was welded to a three-inch pipe, the pipe set in concrete poured into an old seventeen-inch Ford wheel. There were probably bolt cutters here somewhere, a torch even, but the vise would work. He took a slag hammer by the very end of the handle, to make the most of the six inches of motion he had, then fixed the chain in the vise and tried to hit it with the hammer, missed, came down on the table instead, throwing sparks.

Right next to the vise was a bench grinder, with a foot pedal. Amos smiled. He wasn’t White. He held the leading edge of the slag hammer under the grinder until it was shiny sharp, a flat point, then worked it between one of the links of the chain, started twisting, passing the handle of the hammer from one hand to the other. After three revolutions, the chain snapped; his hands fell free. And then he looked at the hammer, past it to Taylor, the Impala.

Kalvesta. This was Kalvesta.

Maybe they wouldn’t mind if he stayed here an hour or two.

The old man was standing in front of the convenience store. It was six o’clock maybe. The fluorescents under the awning made the late, light snow look whiter than it was. The tires of Jim Doe’s Bronco crunched it down. He’d been in four-wheel drive for miles, now, the gas gauge diving. He’d been so alone in his lane that he hadn’t even had to pull over to lock the hubs. He’d just done it in the road. This was Kansas.

The old man looked up out of his pea coat collar at Jim Doe. The old man was Indian. Jim Doe nodded. His deputy jacket wasn’t thick enough for the wind. Opening the glass door, he lowered his head into the old snow whipping around the corner, but his hat was still in Texas and he got a face full of hair instead. His own. The tip ends bit into his eyes. The old man was still watching him.

“What town is this?” Jim Doe called out.

The old man looked around.

“Glove,” he said. Maybe. Or
dove
. Like the bird. His voice was clipped, from the reservation.

“What?” Jim Doe asked.

Love
?

The old man pointed at the sign above the store. Between gusts of white it read GOVE QUICKSTOP.

Jim Doe nodded at the old man again, in thanks, and stepped in. Gove. It was up towards 70, on the map. Just west of Trego Center, where nobody’d seen the longhair either. There was no trail, just miles and miles of blacktop spooling out over the prairie.

“Usually snow this late?” Jim Doe asked the girl behind the counter.

She didn’t even look up from her magazine. “Weird year,” she said. “Like last one, y’know?”

The girl popped her gum to show she was done talking.

Jim Doe looked out at the old man, still standing there. The Bronco was idling, its exhaust curling up past the tailgate, the snow falling on the hood turning into individual droplets of water. But it kept falling there anyway.

“Who’s he?” he asked the clerk.

She still wasn’t looking up. “Who?” she said.

Jim Doe stared at her.

“Coffee’s there,” she pointed. At the side of the store, just past the fountain drinks. Her nail was perfect red. Joe followed it, poured one cup, then another, pressed the lids down onto the white foam lips.

At the checkout counter he asked if they got many out-of-towners this time of year.

The girl finally looked up at him. Just her eyes.

“You,” she said.

Jim Doe took out one of the flyers he’d made, unrolled it on the counter for her.

“Him?” he asked.

The girl looked down at the grainy face: the longhair looking back, into Gentry’s dash camera.

“This a joke?” the girl said.

“It’s not me,” Jim Doe said. He’d had to say it in Montezuma and in Jetmore and in Bazine already. He knew he should have gone to Oklahoma, too. That’s where everybody else was, working with the tribal police, stopping every blue Impala with an Indian driver, and hitting the barbershops too. Because maybe he’d changed his appearance. Become Jim Doe, to hide.

The girl was smiling now. “He supposed to have come through here or something?” she asked.

“Nebraska plates,” Jim Doe said.

“You’re from Texas,” the girl said.

Jim Doe nodded.

“But you’re Indian,” she said.

“Blackfeet, yeah.”

She laughed some. “Let me see your hands,” she said.

Jim Doe did, unsure, keeping his elbows close to his ribs. She pulled his hands the rest of the way across the counter, turned one over then the other. Shrugged.

“Yeah,” she said. “One of my boyfriends was from Browning. It’s something about the fingers with you Piegan”—she rolled her eyes when she said it, like she’d been trained to say it like that,
pay
-gun—“how they look at certain angles.”

Jim Doe looked at them, his hands.

“What are you doing down here, though?” she asked. “Long way from Montana, cowboy. Yeah?”

Jim Doe flattened the copy of the face on the counter.

“This isn’t about Montana,” he told her. “It’s about Texas. Listen, just—have you seen him?”

She looked down. Shook her head no.

“I should have xeroxed his hands, right?” Jim Doe said, refolding the flyer.

She rang up his coffee and he held both cups close to his stomach and opened the door with his back, nodding bye to the girl at the last possible instant. He was glad to have the coffee in his hands, too. Because she would have been looking at them.

In the parking lot, the old man was standing there, switching from foot to foot.

Jim Doe tried walking to his truck. He could feel the old man watching him, measuring his steps. Finally he turned to him.

The old man was smiling.

Gove. Somebody should have warned him about this Gove.

He offered one of the cups to the old man, already shuffling across the parking lot, taking it in both hands. The steam from the coffee caressed the old man’s face. He said something in some kind of Indian to Jim Doe.

“No problem,” Jim Doe said, lifting his cup—you’re welcome.

The old man looked over at the idling Bronco.

“Where you going?” he said. In English.

Jim Doe lifted his cup to his mouth.

“You?” he asked.

One side of the old man’s mouth hooked up into a smile. “North,” he said. “Home.”

Jim Doe looked north.

“Sorry,” he said to the old man.

The old man shrugged, raised his cup in thanks for the coffee.

Alone in his truck, Jim Doe sat there taking small, hot sips.

The old man was just standing by the ice machine again. Waiting for Jim Doe to go south. The way he had to have seen the Bronco just come from.

The girl was reading her magazine.

Jim Doe backed out, slid to a slow, drifting stop, and crawled the Bronco to the front of the parking lot.

He’d already
been
south, was the thing.

He shook his head, said to himself what the hell, clipping the words in his head, and reached over for the passenger side door handle. The wind opened it, flung it as far as the hinge went, but the old man didn’t step in. Jim Doe looked in the rearview mirror—empty?—so he turned around, to look through the back glass. Nothing.

“Old Indian trick,” he said to himself, smiling—it was an Eastwood line, maybe—then popped first gear to close the door, and had to slam the brakes before he could even get the clutch back down.

The old man was standing right in front of him. Still holding his coffee.

The truck was dead, the headlights paler for it.

“That face you’re looking for,” the old man said from the passenger seat, two miles closer to 70. “He’s Indian, enit?”

Jim Doe nodded. “My brother,” he said, half a joke.

The old man looked hard at the shotgun locked in place between them, aimed up at the sky, then raised his cup, took a long drink.

“Only one place to be if you’re Indian tonight,” he said, and winked at Jim Doe. “Put your ear to the ground, man, you can hear it.”