BAD TRIP SOUTH (21 page)

Heddy had drunk about a quart of Mr. Jim and she was out, cold as a tombstone. Crow knew she would be, counted on it. He quietly rose from bed, dressed, and stuffed the majority of the money from the heavy Hefty bag into his leather satchel. Then he let himself out the motel door while Heddy snored in a blubbery drunken sleep that left spit bubbles forming between her open lips.

He drove to an office supply store and bought a large manila mailer full of bubble plastic. In the car again he took the money from his satchel and got most of it into the mailer. He sealed the envelope and addressed it to himself at:

CRAIG WALKER

DUPRAVADO HOTEL

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS

Heddy didn’t know he’d already made reservations for them and that he’d told the manager he would be expecting a package they could hold for him until he got there.

Heddy would never know about the money.

It’s not that he didn’t love Heddy, hell, he loved her enough--or he thought he did and wasn’t that the same thing? Squirreling away the money was just what you did when you had made a promise to yourself that you’d never again in this lifetime spend years behind bars in a goddamn maximum security prison. It’s just what you did when all your life the people you trusted fucked you over. You didn’t look out for Number One, no one did, even Heddy could understand that.

No matter how long Heddy was his old lady, there was no way in hell she’d ever know he had the haul stashed away for when they might need it.

He bought a book of stamps at a convenience store, stamped the package and dropped it in a blue mailbox on the street before picking up coffee and Egg MacMuffins to take back to Heddy.

Then Mama shook me and she was calling my name, repeating it. “Emily. Emily! What’s wrong? Emily!”

When I blinked, the van was back and I was back. I didn’t want to look at Crow because if I looked at him, he’d know I knew, he’d understand some way that I knew where the money was and how he’d cheated and lied to Heddy.

“
Mama? I’m okay. I’m okay.”

“
She have a seizure or what? What the hell’s wrong with her? I never seen a kid act like that.” Crow sounded wound tight.

Heddy said from the driver’s seat, “If she throws up, I’ll dump her out on the road.”

Mama hugged me close to her bosom and I wanted to cry, but that would just make things worse.

“
What happened to you?” She asked.

Daddy was concerned too. He was twisted around in the seat, looking worried.

“
I don’t know, Mama, I...”

“
You wouldn’t speak to me. You just sat there with your head all loose and rolling around, but your eyes were open. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“
See what you’re doing to my family?” Daddy asked. “She probably needs a doctor. You’re scaring her to death.”

“
I’m...I’m all right. I’m really all right.”

She’s probably hysterical because her father betrayed us
,
Mama thought.

I didn’t want to hear anyone’s thoughts anymore. I pulled away from my mother and sat up straight. I breathed real deep and then held my breath for a couple of seconds. I thought about school and doing my lessons. I thought about history and the Battle of Shiloh, something we had been studying at the end of the school year. I thought about computers and wondered if I’d ever get one like some of the kids in my class had in their rooms at home. I thought about the blanket I had when I was little, how soft and yellow it was, covered all over with little white ducks, how I hugged it against me in bed at night and felt safe and warm.

For the next hour all I thought about was me and stuff about my life and memories of my past. That squeezed out Crow and Mama so that I wasn’t a tuning fork picking up their stray thoughts.

But I couldn’t help wondering if we’d be with Crow and Heddy when they got to Brownsville. If they ever got to Brownsville so they could cross over to Matamoras. And what would happen when Heddy found out a big thick manila package packed with money was waiting there at the check-in for her boyfriend.

#

THAT night everyone was subdued and silent, even Crow, who didn’t touch his bag to hunt down a high. Heddy watched him tie the family and pull the covers over them as if tucking in his own children.

When Crow was in the shower, Heddy sat down on the bed next to Jay and said quietly, “You really did save us back at that fish camp. If it hadn’t been for you I don’t think we would have walked away alive.”

Jay turned on his side toward her and away from his wife, who lay on her side facing the other direction, smiled a little.

Heddy let her hand rest on his shoulder. She dragged it down his arm, squeezed his elbow, and then slid her hand down over his chest. She felt his intake of breath and how he stiffened.

“
I think I really do like you,” she said.

Carrie began to turn onto her back. “You stay where you are. I’m not talking to you.” Carrie halted and she too got stiff.

Heddy glanced at the closed bathroom door, heard the shower running. She then leaned down to Jay and kissed him full on the lips. When she moved back a little she saw his eyes open on her. She saw in those eyes what she wanted to see.

“
We need to talk,” she said. “Later.”

She stood from the bed and left him there, slightly bewildered and, she hoped, excited by what she’d done. All night she thought of him, even in her dreams. She’d wake from them, breathing heavy and feeling like touching herself. She’d fall asleep again, thinking of him in the other bed, so close yet so far.

Surely Crow could see she was getting stuck on the guy. They didn’t have to talk about this. It was just something that happened. Just because Jay was a cop didn’t mean she couldn’t get hot for him.

And anyway, he’d saved their lives. He wasn’t much of a cop, not much of one at all.

She thought he wanted her too. She would bet all the money Crow said they didn’t have on it.

#

THE next day on the road, not far from Choke Canyon Lake, outside of Tilden, Texas on Route 16, the van began to sway from a low rear tire.

Heddy stood sweating over Jay as he changed it. She told the woman and kid to stay inside the vehicle, give her no trouble. Crow wandered off from the road, peering across the empty, low hilly landscape with a hand up to his eyes to block the sun.

“
You want to go to Mexico with me?” Heddy asked Jay in a low voice so Crow couldn’t hear. She’d been thinking about it all night. This was the right thing to do. This was what she wanted almost more than she wanted the money. The only lovers she’d ever been with were cons, ex-cons, losers, and junkies. She’d never had a straight up boyfriend, a guy who didn’t mangle the language, didn’t speak street lingo, didn’t want to jump her in broad daylight in the back of a hot car or up against the wall in some alleyway.

He looked up at her, squinting against the sunlight. He had great eyes, she thought. Dark brown, deep, strong and sure of what they wanted out of life. His shirt was off and his back was going from soft pink to blistering red even as she watched. He had good shoulders, if too white and tender. They were square and muscled. He was in good shape, a much better specimen of man than Crow could ever hope to be. She caught herself dreaming--even as she stood staring at his shoulders--about the night she got him hard and rode him right into heaven. She wanted that again. Over and over, every day, every night. She couldn’t remember ever wanting somebody that bad. Certainly not Crow.

“
Is that an offer?” He glanced over at where Crow had moved further into the barrenness that bracketed the farm highway.

“
It depends on how much you like being a cop.”

“
I never liked it. I never fucking liked it.”

She smiled her half smile then put her hand over her mouth to conceal it. “I thought as much. Big as you are, good as you move, there were a couple of times you could have taken Crow out and you didn’t. There’s something on your mind.”

He turned back to the chore of screwing off lug nuts from the wheel. “You might be right.”

“
You wouldn’t miss your wife and kid?”

“
I’d...” he paused turning a lug nut and wiped sweat from his brow. “I’d miss Emily.”

“
Even though you’d miss her, you could leave?”

“
I think so.”

“
Think you could help us disappear once we get across the border?”

“
I could probably do that. I know some tricks.” Again he glanced at Crow, wandering away from the road. “What about him?”

Heddy made a little dismissive sound in the back of her throat. “He doesn’t like you, but he does what I say.”

“
Are you sure about that? Even when it comes to me? I never heard of a threesome that lasted.”

“
I’m sure. It’ll last as long as I want it to.”

“
I’ve got to tell you something...”

“
Yeah?”

“
He took the money.”

Heddy frowned hard at Crow’s receding back. “I know,” she said. “I’ve already figured that out.”

“
You know what he did with it?”

“
Not yet. I’ll find out.”

“
You’ll need it. Living’s not free, even south of the border. Especially when you don’t want to be noticed.”

“
We’ll all need it. Don’t worry, let me handle Crow.”

Jay finished taking off the last lug nut and worked the flat tire off. He stood up, leaning the tire against the van’s fender. “You don’t hurt Carrie or Em. You don’t do that. If you do that, I’ll do whatever I have to do to take
both
of you out. I promise it.”

Heddy looked into his eyes. A flirty smile slipped across her lips and away again. “I’ll let them go.”

“
You better mean it.”

Heddy pushed out her breasts, arching her back. “I hate useless women, but I’ll let ‘em go. In return, you help me make Crow hand over the rest of the stash.”

Now he grinned, sweat trickling into his eyes, stinging them, making him squint like a Clint Eastwood character. “I can do that,” he said and turned to put on the spare. “To tell you the truth, I’d like nothing better.”

#

HOW was I going to tell my mother? Heddy made us stay in the stifling hot van while Daddy changed the tire, but Heddy didn’t know I could peek in on her thoughts anytime I wanted to. I peeked and my heart felt like a rubber ball someone was squeezing. I gasped. Mama took hold of both my hands and said, “What’s wrong, Em? Are you sick again?”

How was I going to tell her? I couldn’t do it. She had wanted to leave him, but for him to leave her--this way--was something I couldn’t tell her about.

I tried to imagine what life would be without Daddy--totally without him, as if he had died. If we’d left him in North Carolina at least I would have seen him once in a while. Mama would have worked out visiting arrangements. It wouldn’t have been like he stopped being my daddy.

But this way, with him willing to change his whole life, giving up the law to go off with Heddy--well, I’d never see him again. Ever. I knew that. One day Heddy would probably kill him. One day when she was tired of him or mad. Or one day Crow would do it, behind Heddy’s back, and he’d call it an accident. Or the Mexican police would find them and put them all in a dark prison for the rest of their lives.

It made me so sad that I wanted to crawl under some covers on a bed and never come out. I knew now what Mama felt like when she’d been hit for doing nothing wrong. I just wanted to be very quiet, not move, not do anything, not eat, not talk, and not know what people thought. I wanted to be still like a fish that lives in black caves deep in the sea, never seeing the sunlight at all.

I put my head down on the seat and told Mama I was tired. I shut my eyes and tried to dream. If I could just dream, I wouldn’t know anything about all this. I wouldn’t know about all the killing and all the dead people. Or about Daddy and how he’d changed, how he’d let the bad moon loony come into his head and stay there, spreading evil.

I might have been ready for it if I’d ever tried to listen to Daddy’s thoughts. But I’d been too busy linking up, against my will most times, with Crow and Heddy. I thought I knew what my daddy believed and what he would do if given the chance. He was a policeman! Even when he’d helped Heddy and Crow with the two killers sent to collect the money, it didn’t occur to me that it meant what it really meant. That he wanted to be an outlaw--he was saving the outlaws so he could be one too. The only way to be an outlaw, the only opportunity he’d ever been granted was on this trip with two deadly stone crazy murderers.