NIGHT CRUISING (9 page)

Tweaked one tiny
pink-brown nipple. Covered her breast softly. Moved gently down over
her abdomen past the elastic waist of her bikini panties...

Hell and damnation.

That wasn't all that
much fun either. Made her start panting like a bitch in heat so
anybody would know what she was thinking if they walked by her.

Raging fucking
hormones.

And they said only guys
got horny. Boy, were they wrong! If she didn't get this stuff out of
her brain, she'd wind up trying to throw herself all over poor
Cruise, and what would that look like, huh?

He probably didn't even
like her. She was too young. Looked thirteen, fourteen, he said.
Probably too skinny. No boobs. Hardly any hips. She was just a
hitchhiker he was taking along to keep him awake while he drove
nights. He wouldn't touch her if she begged for it.

The sun dipped through
low-lying clouds. The colors over the land smeared unevenly and
darkened.

Molly watched the car
door on the Chrysler for Cruise.

Wake up
.

The cowboy of the long
legs sauntered out the cafe door chewing a toothpick. He never even
glanced her way. Molly watched his tight little butt as he circled
the building to the back lot where his rig was parked. She sighed to
see him go. He'd had thick black curly hair and dark eyes. She would
have to dream of him tonight. It was as close as she was going to get
to heaven this century.

#

Mark Killany thought
he'd lost Molly's trail for good. He had overslept in Beaumont,
cradling the phone receiver on his chest after the wake-up call.
Cursing himself upon waking, he hurried from the Holiday Inn to his
car, his shirt trailing out the back of his pants. He had needed to
shave again, but there hadn't been time. He ran a hand over his
grizzled chin now, frowning at how he was slowly losing all control
over events in his life. He wasn't exercising, he wasn't shaving
enough, his clothes needed an iron run over them.

He crossed the Old and
Lost Rivers and thought how apt the name was to his state of mind. If
his mind wasn't old and lost, he didn't know what was.

He stopped along the
way between Beaumont and Houston, showing Molly's picture. No one had
seen her.

He kept losing time
exiting the freeway, parking, walking around to question service
station employees. He had known he was handicapped from the outset,
that she'd be ahead of him and gaining ground west each time he chose
to stop. But he'd optimistically thought he could find a clearer
trail.

Trail! He had a wisp. A
promise. Not a trail.

Now it was late
afternoon, the sun setting in a blaze at his back. He was somewhere
between San Antonio and El Paso on Interstate l0, out in the center
of the tumbleweed desert, and he hadn't once found a person who had
seen his daughter.

A vibration in the rear
of his car that he'd noticed earlier, but didn't want to stop to
check, now turned to a walloping sound. A flat. Of all the damned
luck...

He pulled over into the
emergency lane and stopped just as the tire went so flat he could
hear the car running on the metal rim. Big eighteen-wheelers whooshed
past, their wind hot and full of stink. The displaced air from them
rocked his car on its wheels.

Mark carefully exited
the car, eyes squinted against the ball of fire to the west. He
circled to the rear right tire and stooped to inspect it. Shredded.
Metal strands showing through the flaps. When was the last time he'd
bought tires? he wondered. Sloppy. Not at all like him.

He must hurry.

He popped the trunk,
took out the spare and the tools required to change the tire. He
sweated during the time-consuming ordeal, threw the ripped tire into
the trunk, and wiped his hands on a red rag he kept there.

Now it was nearly dark.
Telephone poles marched down his side of the freeway leading straight
through the desert. On the other side of the rusted barbed-wire fence
he could see nothing but sand and mesquite trees and cacti. He
supposed the wire fence was meant to confine cattle, but where were
they? West Texas made him feel exposed and insignificant. The sooner
he got out of here, the better.

God, he was tired. He
was used to hard work, but not to the toll stationary sitting and
driving took on his muscles. The strain showed in his face shadowed
with the day-old beard. His blue eyes were dim as swamp water, his
mouth set between twin age lines cut deep into the flesh. Haggard
wouldn't even get near to describing the way he was beginning to
look.

Once on the road again,
he sped toward the steel-gray horizon. How in hell did he think he
could find her? The blue Chrysler could easily be in New Mexico by
now. For all he knew her ride, the guy with the long hair and beard,
could have taken her another route and done anything to her,
anything. He could have murdered her and left her body for the
buzzards and the sandstorms.

This thought so
frightened him he edged the speedometer needle past seventy to
eighty, eighty-five, racing toward nowhere, lost in West Texas, sure
he was now on a mission doomed to failure. First he'd overslept, then
lost time on the exits, and now the flat made him lose more precious
time.

"Molly, God,
Molly, where are you?" he mumbled into the thickening clot of
darkness overtaking the car's interior.

Got to find her
,
he thought, a fierceness entering into his attitude that hadn't been
there before. Clamping his hands tight on the steering wheel, he
drove furiously, bypassing even the speeding truckers who had less
reason to reach a destination than he.

A line of traffic
trailed him and eventually disappeared into the murk of night as
headlights began to sprinkle the oncoming lanes. It was crazy, what
he was doing, he admitted that much earlier in the trip. He was
always so obsessed with results, and this time he might not have any.
He could drive straight into the far Pacific Ocean and still never
reach his goal.

But that wouldn't stop
him.

Nothing could stop him
short of finding his girl.

#

Cruise drove at a
steady fifty-five miles an hour west across the Texas desert. He
periodically dipped a big hand into a bag of Cheetos, munching them
as he told Molly a story. He had eaten the
huevos rancheros
in
the White Elephant, but still felt hungry as a bear cub fed on
berries for a month.

"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."