The Scared Stiff (23 page)

No interior light. Of course not. This was a no-frills truck. On the other hand, I still couldn't see if the goddamn key was in the goddamn ignition. I leaned into the truck, feeling around the steering column, the dashboard… the key. There it was, in the ignition. Dangling from it by a little chain was a key-ring decoration shaped like a sombrero. How nice.

Quickly I slid up behind the wheel. I didn't even bother to shut the door; acceleration would do that. I put in the clutch and ground the accelerator.

Pandemonium in the house. They came
barreling
out of there. The engine coughed into life, sounding as though it would prefer death. But I would not; I shoved the gearshift into first, ground gears like mad, and the truck jolted forward just as the first of them got to the right side door. He clung to the door, he got his arm inside, he was trying to climb in the open window.

Where were the goddamn lights? I was driving in the dark, no idea what was out in front of me, hand pawing all over the dashboard, turning on the windshield wipers — then
huzzah!
Light!

I was on a dirt road, flanked by scrubland featuring broad-trunked, wide-leaved trees, with shacks spaced here and there among them. Such a tree was just up ahead to the right. I steered for it, pointing at it, yelling, "You're gonna
die!"

The guy half through the window looked out his side of the windshield, yelled, and decided not to try to live without his bottom half. He shoved himself backward and disappeared from the window; I swerved to avoid the tree. Looking in the truck's only mirror, its interior one, I saw that my recent passenger did not avoid the tree; his momentum kept him rolling along the dusty ground until he smacked straight into it. He stayed there, arms around the tree, kissing it, and moved no more.

The others were moving, though. They'd given up chasing the truck on foot, which did not mean they'd given up chasing the truck. Engines roared back there, and here came two more pickups and one motorcycle.

A wider road was up ahead. Which way was which? I had no idea. I hung a left because it was easier to make the wider turn without slowing down.

Still no electricity anywhere in this neighborhood, still just kerosene lamps and candles making small warm glows in the darkness. No other traffic either, except me and my retinue. The other two pickup trucks were as beat up as this one, but the motorcycle was faster. I could not stay ahead of him, he was catching up, he was trying to pass me, I was swerving left and right to keep him from coming around me.

I didn't know which one he was, but he had a machete, and he was using it like a polo player, trying to swing it at my tires. I veered this way, veered that way, and he was constantly there, trying to disable me by destroying my tires.

So I did the only thing I could. I veered right, and he angled left behind me. I veered left, he angled right behind me, and I
stood
on the brake.

The truck squealed to a near stop. The motorcycle didn't. It crashed into the back of the pickup and went I knew not where, while its driver flipped up over his handlebars, over my tailgate, and crashed into the bed of the pickup.

That must have hurt. True, the tarp and my ex-bag were there to cushion the fall, but they couldn't have helped much. In any case, he just lay there, spread-eagled on his back, and didn't move, which was fine by me.

Past him, in the mirror, in the headlights of the oncoming pickups, I could see the motorcycle still on its wheels, weaving drunkenly this way and that in the road. The first of the pursuing pickups tried to avoid it and therefore hit a tree instead. The second pickup juked like a basketball player around everything, motorcycle, first pickup, trees, whatever, and kept coming — but farther back.

There was more darkness around me now, fewer of those warm little lights. I was on a reasonably good blacktop road, and I appeared to have chosen the right direction. Tapitepe is a border town, abutting both Venezuela and Brazil, and clearly I'd been in the outskirts, so my choices would be either to go toward the border, which would mean I'd first have to pass through the center of town, or to go northward, back toward Marona. Since the town was petering out along here, I was northbound.

So was that pursuing pickup truck, of course, but he was still well back. And my passenger seemed to be asleep, which was nice for him.

That other pickup truck was apparently in even worse condition than the one I'd stolen, which was why this was the one they chose for cross-country voyages. Whatever the reason, every time I looked in the mirror those slightly wall-eyed headlights were a little farther behind, and at last, one time that I looked, there was nothing back there but night.

I smiled a very shaky smile, full of hairy rope. I'd got away.

When my passenger awoke, I almost didn't notice in time. The darkness was nearly total. True, there was moonlight and there was starlight, but my truck's headlights, while necessary, ruined my night vision to the point where I couldn't see much of anything except what the headlights showed me. So when the guy in the truck bed came to and started creeping toward me, I almost missed it.

Thank God for gold teeth. I suppose he was grimacing, not smiling, but for whatever reason his mouth was open, and a tiny ray of the not-so-good dashboard lights bounced off that gold tombstone and into my eye, and when I looked in the mirror, there he was, a darker shape against the countryside, on all fours, halfway to my broken window.

It worked once, it'll work twice. I stood on the brakes again, and over the squealing of the truck's already bald tires there came the satisfying thump of a cousin's head crashing into metal, with a reverberation I could feel all through the seat.

Instead of driving on, I kept braking, more gently, until I stopped the truck right there, on the road. It was almost eleven at night, and most people in this part of the country tended to stay home after sundown, even though there haven't been verified reports of bandits along this stretch of road for months.

I got out of the truck, leaving its engine coughing along in that dispirited camel-on-a-bad-day manner, and went first to the rear of the truck to open the tailgate, which turned out to be done not by the manufacturer's original method but by untwisting two lengths of wire. Then I climbed up into the truck, grabbed the cousin by the ankles, and dragged him backward. I eased him to the ground, somewhat more gently than they'd all done for me, though not
that
much more gently, and kicked him into the roadside ditch, so he wouldn't startle any stray motorists.

So much for him. I got my green vinyl bag out of the bed to put on the passenger seat beside me for safekeeping, left the tailgate down rather than go through that wire-twisting process again, and drove on.

But where to? My first thought had been to return to Casa Montana Mojoca, but I knew the ferry didn't run between midnight and 6 A.M., and I would never get there by midnight. Also, I'd been through a lot, and I looked it, and I just didn't see myself walking through that lobby in the morning looking like the only survivor of the Alamo.

Besides, this whole horrible experience was supposed to be nearly over. Next week, Lola would get the money and fly to Guerrera and we could start the process of getting out of here and back to our lives. So the hell with it. I would go back to Sabanon, back to Mamá and Papá's house, and I would start to be Felicio
now,
and the only reason I'm not speaking is because I'm a cranky guy, and by this point I
am
a cranky guy.

Also, Arturo could tell the surviving cousins — I certainly hoped I'd wasted some of them — that if they ever bothered me again I would announce
publicly
who I really was and that I was still alive, and there would go their share of the millions and millions of dollars.

Enough is enough. I'm driving straight home.

And then I ran out of gas.

Twelve thirty-seven in the morning it was, by my invaluable Rolex, so I was still at least an hour and a half by vehicle from Marona, plus another eighty-five miles to San Cristobal and another hundred miles beyond that on to Sabanon.

This country could use some more direct roads.

The engine had coughed and sputtered three or four times before it gave up the ghost completely and rolled to a stop on the weedy verge. I'd been worried about how much gas might be left in the tank, but of course that gauge was one of the many things in the truck which didn't work, and in any case it wouldn't have mattered, because I hadn't passed any gas stations or anything else that was open at this hour along a road rumored to be the haunt of bandits.

Bandits? I'm 250 miles from Mamá and Papá's house, as the crow does
not
fly. I look a mess, and I don't have any money. I don't need bandits to be in trouble.

So I changed my plan. I would walk through the night. After sunup, I would try to hitch a ride as far as Casa Montana Mojoca. I would clean myself up as best I could before I got there, changing into fresh clothes from the vinyl bag, and when I reached the hotel I'd call Arturo and ask him to come get me.

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was all I had, so I started walking, vinyl bag over one shoulder, truck looking after me with a mournful expression that didn't bother me at all.
You
ran out of gas, not me.

So I trudged along, tired and sore but at least free and alive. Moonlight gave me enough illumination to make my way. All I asked was that I not run into any of those alleged bandits.

No. What I ran into was worse than bandits.

I became aware of light from behind me and looked over my shoulder, and here they came, a set of extremely bright headlights barreling toward me through the night.

No. Not at night. I didn't want a lift at night, didn't want to meet anyone at night. It could be the cousins again, it could be somebody worse, it could be somebody who would tangle my stories and my identities even more than they already were. In the morning I'd be happy to thumb a ride, when I can see who my driver will be, but not now.

So I immediately ran off the road to hide in the thick shrubbery along its side, hoping I'd been too far away to be seen by whoever was in that car. Just let them zoom on by, okay?

I crouched down, and the dark roadway out in front of me got lighter and lighter, swept by the washed-out white light from high-beam headlights, and then the vehicle behind it appeared, moving very slowly, more slowly, more slowly… stopped. In front of me.

I hunkered down. They'd seen movement, far away. It was an animal, that's all; it was a deer, or whatever they have in Guerrera instead of deer; it was nothing, drive on.

A spotlight switched on. It was mounted on a swivel at the left side of the car, by the driver. He angled it across the car body to shine along the right verge, where I was hidden.

I hunkered lower and lower. I wasn't breathing. The light moved this way, it moved that way, it moved this way. It stopped.

Pointed at me.

A voice called to me to come out, in Spanish.

I didn't move. In the first place, I was afraid to move. And in the second place, I didn't know which way to move. Toward them? Away from them into the jungle behind me? Who were these people, that they had a spotlight like that mounted on their car?

The voice called a second time. There was a brief silence while no response was forthcoming, and then the rear door on this side opened and somebody stepped out.

A light had clicked on in the inside of the door when he'd opened it, and he left it open, standing beside it, so I could see his tan lace-up shoes and the bottoms of his light-gray trouser legs. Above that he was a kind of silhouette.

He called something. This was a different voice, so the first caller must have been the driver. He waited, called something else, and then reached inside his jacket and came out with a pistol.

Oh, my God. I could see the light bounce off its gleaming blackness as he pointed it in my direction. Did bandits drive cars like that, with searchlights like that? Well, what else would they do with their loot?

For a third time, the man standing over there called to me, and for the third time I didn't respond, so he took a shot at me. I heard, or thought I heard, the bullet slice through greenery above my head.

"All right!" I yelled. "All right!"

And I jumped up and stumbled through the undergrowth out to the road, hands in the air, the straps of my vinyl bag around my upper right arm.

The man sounded surprised. "An American?"

"Yes, yes," I said. "Hi, there. American. Hi. Yes, that's me."

"Put your arms down," he said, sounding insulted, as though I were making fun of him.

So I put my arms down, and stepped up onto the blacktop in front of him, and it was Rafael Rafez.

Oh, no. I didn't need this. Fervently wishing my mustache was still a removable fake, long since removed, I said, "I didn't know who you were," to explain my hiding. But then I realized what I'd said implied I now
did
know who he was, so I quickly added, "But now I see you're all right."

"Do you," he said. He was looking me up and down, and I knew what I looked like. He put his pistol away. "I must admit," he said, "I am confused. I don't expect to see a person such as you here so late at night."

"Neither do I," I said. "I'm staying at Casa Montana Mojoca. I have a rental car, I wanted to drive to Tapitepe, see it, see the border. I took too long, and it was after dark when I started back."

He nodded, not quite unsympathetic. "And?"

"I was driving along," I said, "and there was a pickup truck beside the road."

He looked interested. "Yes?"

"There was a man, he had a withered arm," I said, implicating Cousin Luis, "he flagged me down, something was wrong with the truck."

"And you stopped," he said, deadpan.

"I thought, it's only one man, he's got that bad arm, it's safe to stop, but
then
—"