CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (9 page)

"I had a buddy in Vietnam once," he said, "we called Boots. He had these big goddamned feet, size sixteen or something. He said he'd been called that ever since he was a kid and he got lost in North Michigan, up in the thumb--that's a spit of land that heads up toward the Canadian border--anyway, he was up there with his old man ice fishing one winter."

"Yeah? Bet that was cold. I've never been up north."

Cruise, a good storyteller who added facial expressions, sounds, and gestures, shivered and shook himself all over.

"Cold wasn't the word for it, Boots said. He was sent to look for firewood and a blizzard came up. He was lost, couldn't find the camp, and he was trying to follow his footprints--had big feet even back then. But the snow blew so hard, it was wiping out the trail. He was just lucky to stumble back in his old man's arms to miss freezing to death. From then on his family called him Boots.

"So me and Boots, we get caught in the middle of an enemy attack in 'Nam. Our whole platoon gets scattered. Guys were falling all around us. We took off together in one direction and we outsmart the Cong, but we lose our platoon leader."

"Geez."

Cruise paused to eat a handful of Cheetos. The sound of the crunching coming through his jaws to his ears reminded him of walking on little sticks, trying to be quiet. "It was real bad. All we had were our rifles and side arms. We didn't have any food or a radio, not even a map or a compass. But we knew there was going to be a chopper rescue lift forty miles to the west in four days. We started heading that way. It was the only choice we had. No way could we ever find the base, far as we'd been out on maneuvers."

"Did you have to go four days without food?"

"More or less. We ate roots and shit, but we threw up most of it, just couldn't keep it down. We had to drink from stagnant ponds, rice paddies, muddy little streams, anywhere we could find water. I was a kid then, eighteen, and Boots was older than me. I was tired, pessimistic about our chances of making it. I kept complaining and wanting to stop to rest. But there were Cong every-fucking-where.

"Boots kept telling me I could make it, we could make it, we just had to have heart, we had to have faith.

"Then to keep me going, he'd tell me stories..."

"Kind of like you tell me, huh?" Molly asked.

"Well, sort of except the stories Boots told were all about how he made it out of the blizzard just because he kept going. Then about being a Boy Scout and wandering off from the troop when camping and falling off a mountain path. Broke his leg. He was lying there on the edge of a cliff, just a kid, and he told me how he had to last out until they found him. I knew these were true stories because Boots was that kind of guy. A regular, gold-plated hero. The best soldier I'd ever known.

"So I kept going, slogging through the jungle like a dazed bull, just putting one foot in front of the other. You couldn't let a guy like Boots down."

"Looks like you made it to the airlift."

Cruise glanced over at her and smiled as if to say, That's quite evident.

He continued, "On the third day of the trek I was hanging back again and Boots danced off a little way in front of me trying to get me to change my attitude, cheer me up, trying to keep me entertained so I wouldn't think about being hungry, thirsty, scared to death we'd be hit by sniper fire."

Cruise thoughtfully chewed a couple of Cheetos.
Crunching sounds. Little sticks underfoot.
When he didn't pick up the thread of his story right away, Molly asked, "He was ahead of you and...?"

"Hit a trip mine. Blew him backward through the air."

"Damn."

"Well, we knew we were in dangerous territory. It could have happened to me or to both of us. I ran to him and his legs were gone."

Molly turned her head to the side window, grimacing.

"I held on to him and the last words he said were, 'The cocksuckers got me, didn't they? But you can make it, Cruise. Don't give up now.' I buried him there in the jungle the best I could. Had to dig a spot with my knife and my hands. I remember crying the whole time like a baby. Without Boots I didn't really believe I had any chance of reaching the landing site. I think I was doing most of my crying for myself. He'd pulled me through three days of absolute hell, the hours pure terror, and without him I lost much of my purpose. I just staggered out of there, heading toward where the sun set, not much hope left."

'"That was an awful war, wasn't it?" Molly asked.

"Piece of shit war. A war where men were used for cannon fodder and rifle practice. That's what all wars are. I guarantee you I'd never have volunteered--we had a draft then, you know. Anyway, I slogged on, so tired I thought I'd fall down, then I stopped to drink water from a little pool and when I looked in the water I thought I saw Boots behind me, laughing. He was saying, 'Keep going, Cruise! Don't stop yet.'

"I jumped and turned around, but he wasn't there, of course. I guess I was getting punch drunk from fatigue and no food. I was seeing things. But later in the day I saw him again. Just ahead of me, clowning, smiling, telling me I could make it if I'd keep trying.

"By that time I knew I had to be hallucinating, but I was talking to him, cursing him for dying on me, telling him to get the fuck out of my way."

Cruise folded the top of the Cheetos bag and handed it to Molly. Couldn't stand the sound anymore. She took it as if in a trance and held it in her lap careful not to crinkle the bag or make any noise.

"Well, I walked all night because every time I'd fall down and try to sleep, there was Boots's ghost urging me to get up, to keep walking. It was terrifying. He just wouldn't stop coming around. By the next morning I was totally out of my head, talking to Boots just like he was at my side. I came to a grassy field and fell down. I must have passed out. Then the next thing I hear are chopper blades chumming the air and making the ground shake, and Boots right next to me coming to his feet, yelling for me to hurry, we're gonna be rescued. 'RESCUE,' he screamed, 'We made it, Cruise, we made it!'

"I don't know how I got to my feet, but next thing I knew I was running and out of this field comes a dozen other guys, all of us heading for that chopper fluttering down out of the morning sun like a huge green glittering horsefly. I see Boots ahead of me, climbing up with the other men, and I get on board with him. But when I turn around, he's not there, he's nowhere to be seen. I started hauling on the rescue team, asking them what happened to Boots, and they can see, I guess, I'm outta my head. They lift off and I look out the open side door..."

"Boots is on the ground, you see him?"

"Yeah. Waving good-bye. Like his mission was to get me rescued and he was ready to really lie down and stay dead now."

"Wow. That's some ghost story," Molly said.

Cruise turned to her and this time he wasn't smiling. "It wasn't a ghost story." His voice was ominous in its warning. "It's the truth. Boots got me home. I owe him my life."

"Well, sure..."

"He's the best guy I ever knew. He didn't deserve to die that way and end up in a nameless, rotten jungle grave."

"Well, of course not.."

"You don't understand. You weren't even born yet. It was a stinking, sadistic war and we didn't even win it, even with guys like Boots on our side. We fucking gave up. Something Boots never did. Even after death."

Molly felt a wave of intensity in the dark car that came off Cruise like invisible heat. She had never heard him cuss so much before. He scared her into silence.

"Open me a Coke, will you?"

Molly lifted the Igloo cooler's top and took out a bottle. She uncapped it and handed it to him. It was lukewarm.

"My dad was in Vietnam," she said carefully. "But he never talked about it."

"I shouldn't have either." He upended the Coke and drank several swallows. "Talking about Boots gets me depressed."

He glanced at Molly and saw she looked nerved up, on standby for any sort of emergency action. "It's all right," he said, changing his tone of voice so that it wasn't so hard and unrelenting. "That's one story I shouldn't have told you. I hate thinking about Boots over there in Vietnam. I never could tell them where he was buried. I handed over his dog tags and tried to forget about him. I don't think I'll ever forget, though."

Molly watched the road ahead without comment.

Cruise tried to turn his attention to his driving. They were passing through land where uniformly flat-topped mountains stood off to the right and left of the freeway. They

were a hundred seventy miles east of El Paso and he had not mentioned going down into Mexico to Molly. If she didn't want to, he'd make her, so it didn't make any difference to tell her his plans.

They passed a small hill where a diorama was set up.

Cruise pointed to it. "Out here in the middle of nowhere," he said.

"What is it?"

"A diorama. That's what the sign says. I guess it means some kind of stationary play. See the crosses and the figures? Supposed to represent the crucifixion."

"Oh. I don't know much about religion. Dad never made me go to church or anything."

"More's the pity. Everyone needs to start off with a little religion. Especially if you're going to give it up."

"Have you given it up?"

"Long time ago." He had an image of his father beating his brothers and sisters. Crucifixion in the home. Diorama come to life. All the bleeding Jesuses. Where was God when anyone needed Him? Nowhere. That was the point.

The highway began to cut through the Apache Mountains. The sides of the cut-throughs were pale, sparkling in the starlight. The mountains were made of shell or limestone, Cruise decided, although he knew he didn't know shit about geology. For all he knew they were made of diamond dust and Kryptonite. Up the mountainsides were black dots of shrubs that hugged the dry land like scabs on a dog.

The earth was brown and rust. As a wind came up, Cruise saw tumbleweeds rolling side by side in the roadside ditch. Outside of Stanton, Texas, a welcome sign read
HOME OF 3OOO FRIENDLY PEOPLE AND A FEW OLD SOREHEADS.

Molly had read it too. She chuckled and mumbled, "Soreheads. Cool beans."

Cruise thought about the Apaches who roamed this land on horseback, following buffalo herds. Now semis prowled the roads going east and west. Some of the mountains in view had sheared-off tops, some few were pointed skyward like huge thrusting breasts of earth awaiting a touch from the hand of a giant. Cruise wondered if a glacier had come through and lopped off some of the mountaintops and bypassed others. There seemed no

other explanation for the two distinct shapes. If they were made from volcanic action, then it meant some volcanoes erupted, others didn't. He wished sometimes he knew more about things, about the world. There were great chunks of information lost to him because of his lack of formal schooling. To hell with it. He knew all he needed to know.

The freeway began to rise up through the mountains. Plains stretched out behind them. Long lazy clouds streaked the night sky blowing to the south, strobe-lit when the moonlight hit them, moving fast. As he drove off the prairie into the Apaches, the four lanes were bounded on one side by telephone poles, sentinels of civilization that cut through West Texas carrying thousands of voices. Cruise noticed the names of the exits for the few cities that tried to survive out here in the blistering southwest: Van Horn, Kent, Boracho Station, Plateau, Michigan Flat, Allamore, Hot Wells. Before they reached El Paso they'd pass Sierra Blanca.

"There's a couple of pumpkin trucks," Cruise said, pointing to the oncoming lanes.

"Pumpkin trucks?"

"Truckers' lingo for those orange trucks owned by Schneider. If you see a semi that hauls cars stacked on two levels, they're called parking lots. If one truck is hauling two trailers, that's piggy-backing."

"Truckers have their own language, don't they?"

Cruise said, "Rest areas--they're called pickle parks because that's where four-wheelers stop for picnics. You hear a trucker saying he's looking for a pickle park, now you know what he means. He wants to pull over and rest awhile. Although the pickle parks are also used for two truckers who want to...get better acquainted..."

Molly decided to ignore that. "What's some of the other stuff they say?"

"They call prostitutes Lot Lizards. That other girl at the truck stop in Mobile, remember her?"

Molly nodded her head.

"She was a Lot Lizard. Truckers call them that behind their backs, of course. I suppose it comes from Lounge Lizards. Some guys have a sticker on their side windows that shows a lizard inside a circle with a line drawn through it. That means they're not in the market.

When they want sex, they talk to them nice, and call them baby dolls. Or commercial company. The girls don't seem to mind that."

Molly laughed. "That's good," she said. "That's what they are, all right."

"We'll stop at the next truck stop for a few minutes, stretch our legs. I'll turn on the CB, let you hear them talk."

"Okay."

"You're having a good time?" He glanced at her.

"Better than I ever had in school," she said.

"Good, that's good. I want you to enjoy yourself."

He passed by two truck stops that were deserted, dark, windblown. Cracked windows, broken doors, rusting fuel pumps. "Guess they couldn't make it out here in the desert and hills."

When he saw a billboard for Love's Truck Stop, he took the exit. "Appropriate name, isn't it? You'd think it was, but most of the Love stops are just convenience stores with a little fast-food eating area. Never much going on at them. Not much love happening."

"I could stand to walk around a little anyway."

"I've got to get a fill-up too." He pulled into the brightly lit truck stop with the big yellow Love's sign. He filled the tank while Molly waited inside the car. "Go ahead, I'll catch up with you in a minute," he said, switching on the CB to static. "Here's a twenty for the gas. Pay them for me, will you?"

He circled to the back and parked a little ways from five trucks lined up on the tarmac. He watched Molly cross to the convenience store while he adjusted the radio. He listened for the sound of a Lot Lizard, offering her wares on the CB. No such luck. The truckers were alone, beefing about California runs and the need to get loads there on time. Cruise flicked off the CB and got out of the car. He breathed deeply of cool, dry air that cleared his sinuses and dried his mucus membranes. Ever since they'd left San Antonio, his nose had been drying up like laundry hung in the hot sun. It made it almost painful to breathe