The Unit (16 page)

“Well, I’ve made a few bad deals in my time, but I guess I can play along. The question I want to ask is, what do I get out of it?”

“The boys struck gold. That last group they ambushed was carrying gold coins.”

The old man’s eyes go hard.

“How much?”

“Enough to set you up just fine if you were to get, say, half the take.”

The old man snorts.

“So you want me to believe you’re gonna rescue your daughter, steal the gold, and then meet up with me in Sacramento and give me a fortune? You see a dunce cap on my head?”

Jerry points the cowboy revolver at Bill Senior’s groin.

“Care to see what’s behind door number two?”

The old man holds out his hand and Jerry shakes it. Jerry speaks over his shoulder to me.

“Don’t trust him.”

“Don’t worry.”

“But first things first. You’re going for a walk,” Jerry says.

The old man looks at Jerry as if he’s only curious. Jerry picks up Scott’s .22 rifle. I see the silencer Jerry told me about. He puts it to the old man’s temple.

“Nod if you plan to go peacefully. If you don’t nod, there’s only one other choice, and I’ll do it right now.”

The old man nods. Jerry marches him outside and points him toward the highway. He moves his hand to point out a northerly direction and then points to a small creek.

“I’ll have you in my scope the whole time. Make tracks in the grass. Clear tracks that lead to the interstate. Walk the stream back.”

“Think they’ll buy it?”

“I only want them to wonder. If they spend any time looking for you, it’ll be time they don’t spend hunting us.”

“I bet you miss watching reality shows on television.”

“Shut up and walk.”

The old man shrugs and ambles off and we watch him. The overcast is thinner and the moon gives a wan light. Jerry sits to adjust the sling of the rifle. He makes it very tight and then he crosses his legs and snaps his body into line behind the scope. He tracks the old man every step of the way. The muzzle of the rifle doesn’t waver and I have no doubt that Jerry will shoot without hesitation if the old man tries to run.

It’s a weird scene, husband and wife watching quietly, the husband using an invisible string to control this old boar as he circles. Remote control, the line of the bullet untraced, but heavy with promise. Bill Senior walks through the alpine grass without looking back. He isn’t in very good shape, but he doesn’t mutter or curse us. He’s lived a long time, and longevity isn’t something that happens by accident. I watch him make his controlled circuit, and when he reaches his most distant point, I don’t see him as an enemy anymore, but only an old man staggering in the wilderness. I see him as an alter ego to my own father, who didn’t make it to old age. I see Jerry himself in some distant time, gray hair lifting and fluttering in the wind. A man is about to step onto the road. He’ll turn and signal that everything is okay, but he turns and it’s only Old Bill. He stands on the road and gives us the finger, then he steps into the creek and lets our invisible bullet-string reel him back to us.

Scott is sleeping on his bed of hay. Away in a manger, no pillow for his head. I should’ve fed him before he fell asleep. Well, we’ll have a snack later.

We enter the hangar, all of us walking together. We leave the door open to let the moonlight dribble in. I sit down with Scotty and the old man while Jerry loads the plane with the barest necessities. The shotgun and ammunition. Bill Senior’s cowboy revolver. Ponchos. That’s it. Jerry tells me to take the food, but I take only a package of crackers and a pouch of peanut butter. I tell him we’ll only need an in-flight snack, at the most. He smiles at me, and I hate myself because I love him so much now, just when I’m most likely to lose him, and maybe that’s
why
I love him now.

Jerry and Bill Senior open the hangar door as wide as it will go and push the little airplane outside. Bill Senior is talkative.

“I was gonna sneak off soon enough, anyway. I always meant to leave at night. Can’t risk letting them shoot me down, now, can I? You think
cars
attract bullets, try flying in a low and slow
airplane
.”

I tell him to shut up. He says, Is that any way to treat your savior? I tell him that God is my savior. In God and my shotgun do I trust. And then he’s quiet.

Jerry and Old Bill fiddle with the airplane and I have time to sit and think. God, don’t let Jerry be killed. They have to be ready for him, but let him slip through, Lord, and come out the other side whole and with what he went to get. Let him bring our Melanie back to us. Keep him strong if there’s a fight, but please, Lord, don’t let it come to that. One of our children is half blind and the other is kidnapped. Probably raped. I’ve been shot, and that’s neither here nor there, but please help Jerry make things right. The ledger must be balanced, Lord. I don’t claim to know the mysteries of Your plans and intentions and calculations, but don’t let this injustice stand. Let Jerry kill these servants of Satan. I can’t believe You won’t set this wickedness straight. So thank You, Lord, in advance.

Someone is watching me. I can feel it. Most of the boys are getting ready to go out on a raid. It doesn’t take a genius to know they’ll be going after Dad and Mom and Scotty. But I’ve been telling everyone about how rich my family is, and how good deeds won’t go unrewarded, wink-wink, so maybe they won’t be so quick to kill them.

Little Donnie is one of the boys that were ordered to stay behind. He has a fire going, and he’s roasting three rabbits he shot with his slingshot. Two older boys are with him. One of them is taking shots of liquor and spitting them into the fire and making it flame up. There’s no kindness or hospitality in the other boys, that I can tell, but Donnie is there. I hope he stays kind and decent, because he has more power over me now that the others are gone.

The roasting rabbits smell very good. I hope Donnie will share. I’m wrapped in the old fur coat he gave me, and every once in a while the oldest boy comes over and takes a sniff of me and says pee-you and laughs. I admit to myself that I want to see him dead. Forgiveness is divine, but I’m not.

The mean boy keeps me in his field of vision when he walks back to the fire, but I feel something else, too. It feels like there’s someone behind the shadows. I know Dad will come for me soon. There isn’t any reason on earth to feel optimistic about how things will turn out, but I do.

Mom and Dad start talking again and I’m wrapped in my sleeping bag with my poncho pulled up over me. I’m listening to the sound of their voices. They’re disagreeing about something, but they’re working it out like they usually do. They’re keeping their voices so low that I can’t hear the words, but I think I can pick out the curving tones of disagreement, suggestion, consideration, and then agreement. Two voices, one low and one high, the conflict gradually turning into a duet.

I don’t know how they do it. It’s freaking amazing, really. Most all of my friends’ parents are divorced, and I feel like a lucky freak sometimes, to still be on my original set of parents. I wonder how they can stay limber enough to do all the bending it takes to stay married. I wonder if there’s a difference between compromise and just not caring enough to fight. Between being a good person and being a flimsy one. But the power each of them has is somehow balanced out in their relationship. Dad is strong as hell and quick to act, but Mom is better with words, and she’s a clever lady, so Dad knows that by sharing power, they’re both better off.

I start to wonder if I’ll ever meet a girl who wants to fight
with
me instead of
against
me. But I’m stretched out under the stars in time of war, listening to the voices of my parents, so I manage to keep my mind off of girls for once. I drift off, then I’m younger and riding in a car at night with friends. I’m sitting alone in the backseat of a car. We’re driving through a place near Gramma’s house in Portland. I’m with friends. I don’t know which friends they are. All I can see are the backs of their heads, but I know they’re my friends. The sky is dark and low. It’s drizzling and the streets are shiny. We’re driving up a hill on this dark, quiet road. I’ve just made some kind of philosophical or political point about the place we’re passing through. What I’d said was deep and serious and we’re quiet as we approach a place of lights. They’re security lights, because the stores are all closed. The first store is a gun shop and it’s all lit up inside and out, and it somehow serves as exhibit A for the point I just made.

I’m happy that I’d been so right, so damned right about something, and I look into the store, with its lit-up rifles and shotguns, rows and rows of them. My eyes are drawn to the guns because we need firepower. But then I notice shapes standing around outside the store—animals standing like Christmas trees at a charity lot. Stuffed animals, but they used to be real. Deer and elk, their fake eyes glittering in the night. It’s very weird, and I know it will get even weirder. The next shop is also a lit-up gun store and it’s bigger than the first one, and there are more animals out front, but they’re all bears. Stuffed black and brown bears standing on their hind legs like they’d just gone out for a smoke break. They’re lined across the storefront, forming a sort of pocket that you couldn’t help entering as you approach the store.

But we don’t approach it. We keep driving in that slow kind of way that gets you places in real life, but doesn’t get you anywhere in rainy dreams. We pass another gun store, and another and another, but they keep getting smaller, with fewer interesting animals, and it’s like shopping for a good place to buy a Christmas tree, because people always pass the best lots in search of something better, before they admit that the best is behind them.

We keep driving, and after a while I stop being so freaked out. The sky lets go of the danger it was holding, and then it’s just another soft Oregon night. The car picks up speed and takes us away from there. I’m with my friends in some strange Oregon place that probably never existed. We stay quiet as we drive up the long hill. We leave the gun shops behind us, and I’m getting the start of a feeling that might be something like hope.

I swear it’s getting colder than I can ever remember it being. I almost wish I hadn’t taken a bath, because the oil and scum on my skin kept me warmer. I was thinking about getting one of the guys to give me a haircut, but I’m glad I didn’t, because the long hair keeps my neck warm. We’re all growing our hair out now, and we’re starting to look like what we are. I try to think of the words people use for guys like us, words that aren’t really insults. Pirates, cutthroats, outlaws, and killers. Thinking about those words makes me happy. I’m clean and I have a new set of clothes that don’t have any bullet holes in them, jeans and a flannel shirt and just about the last clean socks inside a hundred miles. We’ll need to set up a laundry soon, and that gives me an idea and an excuse to visit the girl.

One of the alcoholics is coming out of the shack when I get there. He’s a skinny dude with bad teeth. We call him Chivas because that’s his favorite scotch. I had to start rationing the booze, and he’s shaky. He stands with his back to me and it takes him a few tries to get the door closed, then he turns and sees me and it’s a strange time. He looks proud and happy, but he also looks kind of afraid. We act like two dudes who just found out they were about to rob the same liquor store. I say, “Nice night, isn’t it?” and he says, “Sure is.” He stands there like his brain just ran out his ears. I give him some room and he walks away with his hands in his pockets, whistling.

I go inside and close the door behind me. It’s too cold not to. I tell the girl that we’ll try to take her people alive, but it sounds like bullshit, even to me.

We push my birdie to the north end of the runway and turn it into the wind. The bitch wakes up her scarface brat and walks him to my airplane and they climb aboard. It’s my airplane and so who could blame me for being upset about it? They’re sitting in the back seats now, and I’m supposed to be their chauffeur? What if I tell ’em to go to hell? Tell ’em I’m not flying today? No. That bastard daddy would shoot me, sure as shit. But will the bitch shoot me when we’re flying at five thousand feet?

So off we go. For now, anyhow, I’ll go with the flow. I’ve given the bird a pre-flight inspection every day for the last two weeks, but I give it another one. We’re playing for all the marbles this time, so I don’t rush it. We get strapped in. I turn on the master bus and I only have ten volts in the battery, but I think it’s enough. The bastard is standing at the wing spar with his rifle unslung. He’s traded his silenced .22 for an AR-15 and he looks like he was born holding that rifle.

I get everything set to go. I tell them
all aboard
and then
last call for alcohol
, but my passengers are crying. They’re crying, but it’s that stupid, half-happy crying that weak people do, and I don’t want to hear that shit, so I crank the engine over and she fires right off. The bastard backs away. He moves so I can’t nail him with the prop, but I’m still a good target for him. I don’t have all day to check everything, so I let her warm up just enough to get the temp needle up off its stop, and then I stand on the brakes and push the throttle forward. I work the flight controls, and the cables move like they’re lubed with KY Jelly, which some of them are, God bless personal lubricants. The power is fine, too. The little bird shakes and strains at her brakes, and I’ve always loved that feeling. It’s like foreplay with a hot young babe. I let her shake for a while, then I let up on the brakes and let her do what she wants to do, and we roll out and rotate and we slip the surly bonds, as they say. I keep the throttle nailed until we’re flying at eighty knots, then I pull it back a notch. My eyes aren’t what they used to be and I could use some more light, but the altimeter is working and I know the elevations around here for any distance and direction that this little girl can fly.