Ruin by Joe Kilgore
Proud American trucker Earl Bishop takes on a new cattle hauling contract that is destined to change his life.
Heat waves shimmied atop the asphalt ribbon like minnows darting in a pond. Outside the temperature topped a hundred, but inside the Kenworth W990, seventy-two degrees kept Earl cool as that proverbial cucumber you hear so much about. For certain men, there's something special about guiding a five hundred horse power engine over barren blacktop for mile after mile of endless highway. Earl Bishop was one of those men. Long haul truck driving was the apex of his ambitions since he was old enough to have any. And sure, it had taken a number of starts and stops for him to reach his goal. From farm worker to construction crew, oilfield roustabout to roughneck, spot welder to pipe fitter, Earl kept enough meat on the bone and money in the bank to eventually make a down payment on the eighteen-wheeler he had always wanted, and now he was living his dream.
No longer tied down to the same place day in and day out, or the same people giving him orders left and right, he was independent, a free-lancer. He took the jobs he wanted to take and made the hauls he wanted to make in his candy apple red, long hood beauty he had dubbed Mable. She was indeed the girl of his dreams. Not the only girl, mind you, but while others might be able to offer what Mable had in a fridge, microwave oven, counter space, and a bed, those gals couldn't come close to torque steering, adaptive cruise control, collision mitigation and fifteen-inch digital display. Sure, there were a lot of women Earl knew in a lot of places. He was a six-foot, dark-haired, hard-abs guy who did not avoid the opposite sex. But in this, the thirty-ninth year of his birth, there was only one female he had totally committed himself to and that was the forty thousand pound diesel-burning, road-eating, Mable.
The Soaring R Travel Center was one of Earl's favorite truck stops. In addition to decent food and clean showers, fuel costs were reasonable, waitresses were friendly, and it was easy to conduct business there in booths that offered privacy as well as leg room. One such commerce meeting was scheduled that morning for 11am. Earl arrived at ten-thirty in his regular business attire; starched white shirt with pearl snaps, dust colored leather sport coat, Levi jeans, Nocona boots, and a Buck Tan Stetson Broken Bow felt cowboy hat he removed the minute he sat down. He had his laptop with him and went through the news, Mable's latest maintenance reports, and two cups of coffee before Ignacio Constantine arrived.
Constantine was a representative of Vargas Ranchero. At six hundred thousand acres and over one hundred thousand head of cattle, it was one of the largest ranches in Mexico. The outskirts of its acreage in Chihuahua were only two hundred miles from El Paso, making it a frequent exporter of livestock to the US. As such, the enterprise was constantly employing both trucking firms and independent contractors to move its four-legged product. Earl wasn't enamored with hauling cattle. It was often a difficult and sometimes dangerous job. But making a connection with Vargas Ranchero could connect him to a frequently lucrative income stream, and that he was enamored with.
A large man came through the front door. Earl saw him enter and speak to the cashier. The same cashier Earl had asked to be on the lookout for a Mr. Constantine. He watched the cashier turn her head and point toward his booth. The man nodded and headed his way. When he got to the booth, Earl couldn't help but notice a scar that ran from the man's right ear, over to the side of his mouth, and down his chin. It was unpleasant. The kind of scar one doesn't ask about. With Earl sitting at the booth and the man standing beside it, he looked even more immense than he was. Earl guessed him at six-five, three hundred plus. The truck driver rose so the difference in size wouldn't seem so ludicrous. Standing didn't help.
"Mr. Constantine?"
"Yes. You are Earl Bishop?
"I am. Just call me, Earl. Everyone else does."
"That is your red Kenworth outside?"
"It is. I call her Mable."
"Impressive looking vehicle."
"Well, thank you. I'm kinda partial to her."
"May I sit?"
"Of course, Mr. Constantine. Where are my manners? Please, have a seat. Would you like a cup of coffee, or something else?"
"No. I think we'll just get to it, if you don't mind."
"Don't mind at all. Like a business man who gets down to business."
"Good. As I said on the phone, I represent Vargas Ranchero and..."
Constantine went on to explain their use of trucks for transporting livestock. Before he had gone only a sentence or two, Earl asked him if anything in particular made him initiate the call. The big man responded that he had heard Earl's name mentioned by others in the trucking business around El Paso and all the mentions were positive. Earl tried a self-effacing quip about his reputation preceding him, but it either sailed by Constantine entirely or the big man found it insufficiently funny enough to warrant a response. The conversation continued with Constantine telling him that Vargas Ranchero had a certain way of doing business and if Earl would like to participate, then he'd need to agree to follow their standard operating procedures. Earl said he' be more than happy to listen to what the ranch's S O P was.
The scarred giant told him that they used their own Wilson lightweight, corrosion-resistant, aluminum trailers. The one for Earl's haul would be a fifty-seven foot long, one hundred inch wide, fourteen foot high, Silverstar. Earl was familiar with the brand. It was top of the line. He particularly liked Wilsons' construction with thick siding to cause less damage to the cattle and large oval air slots for more continuous air flow. They were also easy to clean out, which particularly appealed to Earl. After going over the contract, which paid almost five dollars more per loaded mile than the average livestock haul, Earl signed and the two men shook hands.
The next day, Earl got up before the sun to start his trek to Hermosillo, Mexico, where he'd pick up the cattle he'd be bringing back to the States. It was a little over three hundred miles from El Paso and he wanted to be there no later than noon. Earl had spent the previous afternoon making sure Mable was in tip-top shape. He wanted his first run for the Mexican ranching operation to go off without a hitch. By the time the sun had made its presence known, Earl was whipping through a seemingly never-ending expanse of sky, far horizon, and flat earth dotted here and there with yuccas and their white, bell-shaped flowers. At times, it felt like an unknown planet just waiting to be explored, until Earl decided to bring things back down to earth by tuning his sound system to the download he had made of Johnny Cash's greatest hits. Earl may have been a modern trucker but he was absolutely old school when it came to country music.
A half-hour from his destination, Earl realized he was getting close. Not because of what he saw, but rather what he smelled. Methane gas and carbon dioxide hovered in the air like an unseen noxious mushroom cloud. Folks new to it often had to turn away. Not Earl. When it came to cattle hauling, in his recent past, he had been there, done that, and gotten the T-shirt. A few minutes later he was pulling off the main highway and onto a dirt and gravel road. At a gate crossing he showed his copy of the contract to the guard and was passed through. Three hundred yards later he was pulling up in front of holding pens. A man dressed in khaki shirt and pants and holding a clipboard walked up to the driver's side door of Earl's rig.
"I'm Sanchez. You here for the Constantine load?"
"Ah, yeah. The one from Vargas Ranchero, got the papers here," he said as he handed them down to the man.
Sanchez took a quick look, handed them back to Earl and said, "Follow me."
Mable inched along after the man as he walked fifty yards to a giant shed. Just on the other side of it was a trailer Earl recognized as a Silverstar, with bovines on board. Earl turned off the engine and stepped down from the cab.
"Already loaded, huh? I'm used to overseeing that myself."
"We're on a schedule, here, got a lot to do. Can't wait for every driver to take his own sweet time," Sanchez said.
"Understood," Earl responded reluctantly. "Still, I'd like to make sure everything's copacetic. At least do a walk-around, you know."
"We do this day in and day out," Sanchez said.
"I'm sure you do," Earl began, already starting to move around the outside of the trailer looking for anything that didn't seem right. "But when I pull out, I'm responsible. So I'll just give it a once-over."
Sanchez joined him as Earl started his own inspection.
"Anything in those lower panels," Earl asked, referring to the horizontal aluminum boxes between the spread axels.
"Tools and clean-up gear," Sanchez answered.
"Locked down?"
"I said we do this every day."
"What about that bullnose cabinet up front?"
"Blankets. Gear. Everything's fastened. Nothing's going to move around on you."
"Nothing but the cattle, right? How many head?"
"It's on the manifest."
"Want me to read it myself, or just save time and tell me?"
"Thirty-five. Total weight, just under forty-eight thousand."
Once they circled the trailer, Earl said, "Would have liked to oversee the loading."
"You said that, already. Now are you taking these cattle to El Paso or do I need to call and get another driver?"
"No. You got a driver, right here. I'll hook up once I get something to eat, okay?"
Pointing to the left of them, Sanchez said, "Commissary's over there. I'll have a couple of guys meet you here in half an hour."
"Okay, Earl said, "Thanks for your help." Then he couldn't help himself. "And for your pleasant attitude."
"Kiss my ass," Sanchez muttered as he walked away, "fucking prima donna."
The best cattle transport is less than good. As the big eighteen-wheeler barreled down the highway, the creatures bawled and cried and stretched their heads toward the oval slats trying to get more air. A couple had gone down already, collapsing among the urine and fecal piles due to heat, stress, and fear. Sometimes, one or two might even die. The ones who go down are often so mentally stressed they'd rather lie there in the cow shit than get up and struggle for space and air.
As Earl and Mable rumbled down the highway, any cars that came up on them unknowingly, got a wash of acrid odor they'd race away from as quickly as possible. At least it isn't winter, Earl thought, don't have to worry about the damned cows freezing to the side of the trailer and having to pry them off with crowbars. People seldom think of what's involved in having that hamburger at McDonald's or that ribeye at their favorite steak house. If they did, they might not be as dismissive of those sanctimonious vegans.
Constantine had told Earl that upon re-entry into the US, he should ask for Texas Border Patrol Officer, Wesley Johnson, who had monitored Vargas Ranchero's transport operations for years. So he wasn't too concerned when the Customs Official at Juarez told him to take his rig out of line and move it to the area that was dedicated to special inspections. At the site, he pulled into the designated area and stepped down from the cab to speak with the attending inspector.
"Is Officer Johnson, here today? Wesley Johnson? I was told to ask for him."
"You were? And just who told you that?"
"Mr. Constantine. He's a rep for Vargas Ranchero. Said Johnson handles all their inspections."
"Said that, did he?"
"Yes, he -"
"Have your transport documents, license, and identification with you?"
"Sure," Earl said, pulling out his wallet. "Documents in the cab, I'll jump up and -"
"No. You wait here." Then motioning to two other uniformed inspectors, he yelled, "Carl, documents in the cab. Bring em' over, please."
Carl did as he was instructed and brought the papers. Earl didn't like the way the inspector looked as he perused them. "If I could just touch base with Officer Johnson, I'm sure -"
"That won't be possible," the Inspector said. "Officer's Johnson is no longer with the department."
"But..."
"These papers... Mr. Bishop... these are the only transport documents you have?"
"Yes. Mr. Constantine said they were what I needed to show -"
"These papers are fraudulent, Mr. Bishop. I'm going to ask you to step over here."
The Inspector waved his arm and another officer joined them. "Wayne, please secure Mr. Bishop, if you will."
"Hands behind your back," Wayne said, as he pulled out a twist tie and fastened Earl's hands behind him.
"What the hell is this? I haven't done anything. Where's Officer Johnson?"
"He's a guest of the state. Currently awaiting trial," the Inspector told Earl as he pulled his radio from his belt and spoke into it. "Bradley, need you and Vernon now, with sidearms. The big red Kenworth in the holding area."
Turning to the officer who had just secured Earl, he said, "Wayne, you stay here with Bishop." Then he walked toward the two armed officers he had just summoned. As they talked, Earl tried to figure out what the hell was happening.
"Hey, this is some kind of mistake," Earl began. "I don't know what's going on, but..."
Even though Wayne was standing behind Earl and keeping a hand on his shoulder, he wasn't paying attention to anything his charge had to say. He was transfixed on his three cohorts approaching the trailer.
With Bradley and Vernon standing behind him, their weapons drawn and raised, the Inspector pulled a long length of metal from his utility belt, wedged it between the lock and the flat of the panel box, and jerked it violently. The lock flew off. The panel dropped down. Inside, motionless, was the scrunched up body of a man. The Inspector cautiously put his hands to the man's neck as the two officers backing him up stood ready. A shake of his head from left to right told all what they needed to know.
"Jesus," Earl couldn't help but mutter. "Jesus."
The other lower panel box was checked in the same manner and this time the result was worse. A young woman and a small child. Both dead.
Earl thought he was going to be sick, but just as the burn was rising in his throat, a clang erupted from the bull nose panel that stalled the bile's exit. The vertical aluminum enclosure had been kicked open from the inside and a young man burst out and into the middle of the hoof-to-horn beef who shoved and bumped and stomped the floor of their prison on wheels. He looked around frantically for any way he could find to escape, but there was no path to freedom. Not for him, or the cattle, or the trucker who had to brought them all to their reckoning.
Earl would have had to sell Mable to come up with the money for a professional law firm to represent him. He chose not to do that and instead put his trust in the public defender who was assigned to his case. Weeks went by as he awaited trial. Weeks spent giving Earl a preview of what his life would be like if things didn't go his way. County jail isn't state lockup. But neither is it far from it. At first, Earl believed incarceration might not be as bad as he thought. It didn't take long to relieve him of that notion. The loss of freedom - the ability to do what he wanted, when he wanted - went first. That was hard enough to take. Perhaps even worse, was the loss of privacy. Earl had never thought that much about it, until privacy didn't exist anymore. The rows of multiple shower heads, the long line of commodes, the total inability to get away from others in similar plights, it all left him feeling subhuman. Among those being held, there was no attempt at courtesy, and certainly not friendliness or camaraderie. There was only the desire among each individual to spend their waking hours someplace other than where they were.
Earl filled a lot of his time with thoughts of revenge. Retribution delivered without mercy to that bastard, Constantine, who was responsible for setting him up. And maybe that Sanchez fellow too. He must have been in on it. When Earl wasn't wallowing in hate for the scarred giant or the khakied Mexican, he couldn't shake the images of those bodies in the trailer panels. Human beings inhaling toxic methane, suffocating and dying simply because they wanted a shot at a better life. Their promise of America had turned into hell on earth. Earl hoped they went quickly, but somehow he knew they hadn't.
The young attorney defending Earl believed his story. He thought Constantine and maybe Sanchez too were connected to one of the cartels, and he did everything he could to make a jury believe it. They didn't. Aided no doubt by his and Earl's inability to come up with anyone who could or would corroborate Constantine's existence. The cashier who sent him to Earl's table no longer worked at the truck stop and couldn't be found. It had been a busy day at the Flying R and the waitress simply had no memory of the big guy or Earl. Then there was the jury's own personal exasperations with the virtual inundation of migrants into their local community. It should have played no part in their deliberations. But who's to say it didn't. Certainly not the judge who accepted their guilty verdict to murder in the second degree. The jurist did say that he believed there was no premeditated intent to commit murder, so some degree of leniency would be applied. Texas leniency. Earl received a sentence of no less than twenty and no more than sixty years in the state penitentiary.
The weather was as morose as Earl's mood the day he was to be transferred from county lockup to the state pen. It has been raining since the night before with continued thunderstorms forecast. Earl had barely slept. Twenty years minimum before a chance of parole. It felt as if a weight had descended upon him he could not lift, an anvil of depression he couldn't slide out from under. He walked with his head up to the back of the van that would take him to his high-walled dungeon for the next two decades of his life. He wanted to see things he'd have no way of seeing for such a long time. And he bet they wouldn't be the same anyway, when, or if he ever got out.
Constant precipitation had filled the ditches and the run-off reservoirs around El Paso. As the transportation van made its way toward the outskirts of the city, it started to rain even harder. Malone, the driver, had to turn his windshield wipers to full speed even though he was moving along the freeway at less than forty-five miles per hour. Progress was getting extremely hazardous. It was almost impossible to see the vehicle in front of you... unless they hit their brakes activating red tail lights... which you were on top of before you knew it. Cramer, the officer riding shotgun, was using his sleeve to keep condensation off the inside of the windshield. Defrost was functioning with far less capacity than it should. Earl, alone in the back of the van, hands and ankles cuffed, heard the occasional crack of thunder and the continual pounding rain but was unable to actually see the deluge coming down. What did it matter, he thought to himself. What did any of it matter. Where he was going, weather was unimportant. Wet, dry, hot, or cold, one day would be no better than the rest.
Afraid he'd run into a car in front of him, or get whacked by one behind, Malone made a snap decision to get off the freeway at the upcoming exit. Cramer, still trying to provide visual help, had undone his seat belt to give him better access to the windshield. Virtually on top of the exit sign now, Malone cut the steering wheel to the right and veered toward the access road. Both men were trying so hard to see what was in front of them, that neither saw the Goodwill Charities trailer truck rolling down the access road they were turning onto.
The impact was crushing. It sent the prison van into a tumble. Malone's air bag exploded in his face and literally knocked him unconscious. Cramer, unrestrained, went flying through the windshield he had been trying to clean. Earl, in the back of the van, flipped ass over elbow and bounced about the back of the vehicle like a ball bearing in a pinball machine. The Goodwill truck went into a skid and slid down the frontage road a good fifty yards. Then the trailer it was pulling began to jackknife. Groaning like a dying dinosaur in slow motion, it slid off the road, down the side of an arroyo and came to rest in a gully. The force of its impact knocked the trailer's back doors open and spilled its collected charitable contents all over hell and gone.
When the van finally stopped rolling, Earl came to rest against the back side of the cab. He immediately felt like he'd been swung at and pummeled with a bucket of rocks. There was a sharp pain in his hand where he had tried unsuccessfully to block his fall. His right elbow was bleeding from the sparring it had done with the sides of the van. The moment he made any kind of movement at all he felt a piercing ache in his ribcage. The only things that seemed to be unmolested were his head and feet. He used the former to try and compose himself, ascertain his situation and make a plan. The latter began to execute it.
Lying on his back, Earl used his feet to kick free the severely damaged metallic screen separating front from back. Since his hands and feet were still cuffed and connected, each kick jerked him violently and sent shockwaves of pain into his ribs. But he suffered each hurt as stoically as he could in order to gain access to the cab. Once there, he saw Malone, unconscious, behind the now flaccid air bag and the steering wheel. Looking for any sign of keys on his utility belt, he saw none. The other guard, Cramer, must have them, Earl assumed. Staring at the gaping hole in the windshield surrounded by bloody glass shards, Earl came to a quick conclusion about where he would be. With considerable agony, he banged his right side against the passenger door to knock it open. Then he dropped into the still pounding rain and saw Cramer thirty feet in front of the van. Limping forward as fast as his pain would allow, he got to the body, bent over and saw pieces of windshield protruding from Cramer's neck. Earl immediately decided that nothing could be done for him, but he could do something for himself. He reached down and took the set of keys from the dead man's belt.
Fumbling momentarily for one that looked right, then embarking on a bit of trial and error, Earl managed to find the right key and freed himself from his metal restraints. As he knelt there, rain still coming in torrents, he racked his brain for what to do. He could tell he wasn't that far from the freeway, so he knew it wouldn't be long before someone came over to see if they could help or at least call 911 to report an accident. As he scanned the area, he caught sight of the overturned Goodwill truck with hard and soft goods spilled about like refuse in a landfill. A thought jumped into his head and he tried to quickly bounce up. The pain shot through his ribs again, but he knew what he must do. Making his way to the big truck as quickly as he could, he checked the cab. Nobody there. The driver must have gone for help. That left him even less time. He limped to the back of the truck and started looking around. Among the bassinets and stereo systems and hopelessly outdated floor lamps, clothes were strewn as well. Earl started pulling off the jail jumpsuit he was wearing as quickly as he could while searching for things to replace it. The clothes on the ground were soaked, but he spotted three large garbage bags lying near one another on the back side of the trailer. Getting to them and grabbing one as quickly as he could, he immediately realized the contents inside them were soft. Dragging them to where he couldn't be seen from the road, he began tearing the first one open. Fuck! Bedding. The second one made his heart jump. Clothes! Until he started pulling them out and realized they were nothing but skirts and dresses. Please, he uttered to himself as he ripped into the third bag. Bingo! Men's clothes. The first pair of pants he came to, he pulled out of the bag and put them on. Not a perfect fit but good enough. He'd just throw the bag over his shoulder and take off until he could find some place to get out of the rain and figure out what to do. Earl was about to make a break for the tree line near the site of the accident when it hit him. "Shit," he said out loud. Then pausing for less than a second, he put the bag down and raced back toward Officer Cramer, wincing as he ran. Once there, he hesitated for an instant, then quickly took both hands and pushed him over so the dead man was face down. He saw the bulge in his back pocket, reached in and grabbed the wallet. Earl opened it quickly and saw the bills. He pulled the cash out then put the wallet back in the dead man's pocket. As he hustled back to the bag of clothes, he counted the money. A hundred and sixty three dollars. Because of the deluge, it would have been impossible for anyone to tell, but tears mingled with raindrops as he pocketed the bills, picked up the bag and headed away from the carnage. As far away as possible.
The bus swayed and bumped along the pockmarked road like a drunk staggering home. One who had made the trek many times, but gained no advantage through repetition. Earl sat in the back. At each stop more peasants would get off than on. Eventually there was only Earl and the driver. This wasn't the first bus he had ridden since changing into semi dry clothes beneath the freeway overpass and using the dark of night plus the cover of foliage to cross unseen into Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Over the next day and a half, he kept changing transport to providers willing to accept money without asking for identification. Those who did took him farther away from big cities, prying eyes, and Mexican police more likely to help American authorities find missing fugitives. With each bus he boarded, he simply purchased a ticket to the end of the line. Doing so left civilization farther and farther behind him.
When exhaustion finally overtook him, Earl stretched out on the long rear seat of the bus and fell into sleep deep as coma. He was dreaming of a brunette putting her hand on his butt as they two-stepped across a honky-tonk dance floor when he came to and realized it was actually the driver checking his back pockets for anything beyond the fare. Earl quickly pushed his hand away and began to sit up.
"Vamanos, gringo. Time to go."
"Where are we," Earl asked.
"Tumba de Dios. I turn around here."
"Is there another bus?"
"Not til' I return. One week."
Earl got to his feet, slowly walked to the front of the bus, then stepped off. As he did, the driver who had followed him to make sure he would exit, dropped back into his seat, put the vehicle in gear and rumbled forward, giving Earl his first full view of Tumba de Dios. He couldn't help thinking that it resembled its rough translation, Tomb of God.
The hamlet looked like a motley combination of unpaved streets that muddied and flooded when the weather was bad, and whose weeds were chewed to the nub by goats when dry. Skinny roosters, that had managed to survive murderous cockfights, ambled past the adobe buildings, their missing feathers and scarred necks held high as if they were the town's leading citizens. A pig could be heard grunting close by, though it remained unseen. Frightened perhaps at too soon becoming bacon or chorizo. A malnourished dog, its ribcage protruding behind a torn and flea bitten coat, scuttled its way in and out of alleys looking for scraps, or snakes, or rats to assuage obvious hunger. But fowl and fur weren't the only inhabitants of this remote village. A wizened old man, sans shoes, sat in a fraying lawn chair smoking tobacco and paper fixings, and letting the ashes on the end extend to the length of a pinky finger. A fat man walked down the center of the road, talking to himself, and beating one fist into an open palm, seeming to grow more agitated as he strode. In the second floor window of a two-story building, a woman sat and sipped dingy white liquid from a highball glass. She was naked from the waist up, her pendulous breasts hanging limp in the breezeless afternoon. It was impossible to know if she was resting or advertising.
I've reached the right place, Earl said to himself. No one would look for me here.
Multiple bus rides behind him, Earl still had seventy-five dollars of the money he pinched from officer Cramer's corpse. He looked across what passed for a street and saw the building where he'd spend a bit more cash. The building with CANTINA scratched on the wall.
Inside, the atmosphere was similar to what he had seen before he entered. One man sat completely slumped over a table for two. Face down, reedy fingers on both his hands were still wrapped around the bottle of Tequila he had been consuming. Across the room, two men silently played cards. Earl took them for locals. They looked like part of the furniture, brown, haggard, lifeless. Behind the bar, a thin man sat on a stool and scanned an ancient copy of Hustler. Earl wondered for a moment what century that had come from. Then he stepped over, put his foot on the rail, his elbows on the bar, and asked, "Got any cold beer? Cerveza frio?"
The barkeep looked up at him, said nothing, then went back to his magazine. Earl was about to try again when a man approached him from the corner. A man he hadn't noticed when he walked in.
"Do I detect a fellow American?" the man asked, in a decidedly British accent.
"Could be," Earl answered. "Who's asking?"
"I am. Sanford Featherstonehaugh. Proud citizen of the United States of America."
"You don't sound American."
"A predicament I simply have to live with. My parents were English. Naturalized Americans, they were. Never been able to shake the sound I grew up with. You can call me Sandy, if you like. And your name is...?"
Earl paused before responding. "Ah... Smith. John Smith."
"Really? One tends to meet a lot of Smiths around here. Many Johns as well."
"Common name, I guess," Earl said.
"Indeed."
Motioning to the seemingly disinterested bartender, Earl said, "So, Sandy, does this guy speak English or Spanish, or what?"
"A little of both on occasion. When he chooses. Which is infrequently. I heard you inquire about a cold beer?"
"That's right."
"There is none. When there is some, it sells out pretty quickly. But the beer truck hasn't come this week. And as for cold, well, to paraphrase the celebrated Eugene O'Neill, the ice man seldom ever cometh."
"He could have told me that."
"Yes, well, he's much more amenable after you buy something. That way he knows you're not just here to get out of the rain."
"It isn't raining."
"It will be. Usually later in the afternoon. So, getting back to where we started. How would you like to buy a fellow American a drink? I seemed to have arrived without my wallet."
"Really?" Earl said, his tone sarcastic enough to show he didn't believe him, but not so sarcastic that it put the man off.
"Silly of me, I know, but these things happen."
"And I guess it's Tequila that you want?"
"That would be fine... though I prefer Mezcal... and if you're particularly short of funds, a Pulque will do."
"Uno Tequila, Uno Mezcal," Earl said to the bartender, who actually got off his duff, set a couple of shot glasses in front of the two patrons, then poured the requested drinks, saying, "Gracias. Salud!"
"Cheers," Sandy offered. Earl nodded and both men drank.
"How much?" Earl asked.
The bartender answered, "Medio dolar."
Turning to Sandy, Earl asked, "For each?"
"For both," Sandy responded.
"Leave the bottles," Earl told the bartender.
"Dejar las botellas," Sandy translated.
The barkeep did as asked. Then returned to his skin mag.
An hour passed with both men drinking and Earl mostly listening. Unasked, Sandy gave a verbal autobiography of his life and times. From his college expulsion for getting caught screwing the dean's daughter in the faculty rec room, to his roller coaster software public offering that peaked at a ridiculous high but then never came out of its abysmal low, to his mercurial venture into bitcoins, offshore accounts, and financial prestidigitation that the authorities labeled money laundering. The last of which necessitated a vanishing act, currently being performed in Tumba de Dios. When asked for specifics of his reason for being in what Sandy described as "this wretched hell hole," Earl demurred and simply said, "Things didn't go as planned."
The two spent as much money as Earl was willing to piss away. When he decided to stop doing so, Sandy put him onto where he might find lodging. Turned out it was the building where Earl had earlier seen the half-naked women in the window. And yes, she had been advertising.
Earl paid a week's rent in advance for a first-floor room. It consisted of a dirt floor, an army surplus cot, one small table with accompanying chair, no running-water, no bathroom, and no electricity, which meant only candles for nighttime light. The creek was close by to provide water for humans' basic needs. Nature's call could be answered in the surrounding jungle. Toilet paper, along with canned foods and fruit from the near environs could be purchased at the tiny bodega two buildings down. The cantina sold the only hot meal available, a concoction similar to stew with unrecognizable meat and even more suspect vegetables. Dubbed the daily special, it was offered in lieu of a menu and came with no substitutions.
It didn't take long for Earl to fall into the rhythms and routines of the other outcasts he occasionally ran into in the destitute village. Nameless men with bearded faces, and unlike Sandy, identities they had no wish to share. Most were poverty stricken Mexicans, salted with a fatalistic European, a uniquely unfriendly Canadian, a disillusioned Amish runaway, and a septuagenarian ex Peace Corp volunteer. Regardless of their outward personas, among them all was an undiscussed despair, a cloak of ennui that attached itself to them like moss. Over the days that turned into weeks, then lengthened into months, Earl was to learn Tumba de Dios was more than a hostel for the down and out. It was a place where regret, ambition, logic, and eventually hope, came to atrophy like the withered limbs of cripples.
Once every other week or so, a truck would pull into the hamlet looking for day laborers to help on the oil rig. It meant pesos by sundown and therefore attracted most of the relatively abled bodied men. Earl, having worked in the oil fields stateside, had become a regular in the back of the open-topped deuce and a half's forty-minute journey; a wind-whipped, kidney-bouncing, limb-slapping trek over bad roads and worse jungle. When they arrived, the men were put to work lifting pipe, toting sacks of drilling mud, mixing cement, and more. Hard, back-breaking work that had each individual sore and exhausted by the end of the day. Days that always ended in the cantina before each man would return to his particular unbarred cell.
Earl and Sandy sat at one of the tables, a half-empty bottle of Mezcal between them. More than enough to make Sandy share what he was thinking.
"I saw it today."
"Saw what," Earl asked.
"The box. The box they keep the payroll in."
"How'd you do that?"
"Had to take one of those storage racks up to the line shack for their water cooler."
"So?"
"Thinking of pinching it."
"The water cooler?"
"No, mate. The bloody payroll."
"Hey," Earl cautioned, "put that out of your head. Got a feeling they deal with robbery a lot differently down here."
"Only if you get caught. I don't intend to."
"Got a master plan, huh?"
Sandy responded, "Matter of fact, I do. Noticed that each time, after the crew is paid and sitting around waiting for the lorry to take us back... the paymaster comes out of the shack and heads for the latrines. Bowels must be on auto pilot."
"And you plan to just go in when he goes out and then ride back here with a box of cash under your arm?
"No. I'll leave the box. Just stuff the cash under my clothes. They hang on me like a circus clown anyway. No one will notice."
"What about the paymaster? When he comes back."
"Never gets back before the lorry leaves. Even if he does, won't go back in the paybox. No reason to. Won't even give it a thought until end of the next day. By then, I'll be long gone. With a full day's lead via Cortez's bus run."
"Bus only comes on Fridays."
"So?"
"So how do you know they'll need day labor on a Thursday," Earl asked. "They show up randomly. Came today. It's Monday."
"We ever been out there on a Thursday?"
"Probably. Been out so many times... I mean, who keeps up?"
"Exactly. So that means, one day they'll show up here on a Thursday morning."
"And you'll be ready? On any given Thursday?"
"I'm ready now, my friend. And I'll stay ready until any Thursday comes along."
"Want to get away that bad, huh?"
"Have to, lad. Been here a lot longer than you. Nerves are fraying at the end like sliced cable. Been having hallucinations. Seeing myself eaten from the inside out. Got a bit of the clap, or worse. Afraid to find out. Had enough, you know?"
"Beginning to. Think there'll be enough cash?"
"There'll be plenty to get out of this hole. And more. Come with me, why don't you?"
Earl didn't have an answer ready. Or a place to go.
Sandy continued. "However, if you left at the same time I did, they might think you were in on it. Wouldn't want a miscarriage of justice, now would we?"
What a question, Earl thought.
"I could always send for you later. Once I was settled. Once it had all blown over. Better that way, I think. And by then, you'll be wanting to get out of here too. That's for sure."
Again, Earl didn't respond. He just refilled each of their glasses, and wondered if Sandy was serious, or just high again on Mezcal.
It was almost a month before the day labor truck showed up on a Thursday morning. When the men gathered to board, Earl wasn't with them. He had spent the night sick as a dog. Whom... he may have eaten. The more he threw up during the night, the more he wondered if the cur he hadn't seen for a while had been put in the cantina's stew he consumed earlier. Unlikely, he figured, but not totally out of the realm of possibility. Either way, his lack of sleep, tortured stomach, and foul mood meant he was definitely not going to the rig. Such was his plight that it didn't even occur to him that this was a Thursday. He spent the day trying to catch up on the sleep he had missed the night before, sweating when he was awake, and still wrestling with the occasional dry heave.
After sundown, the truck full of men returned. Sandy wasn't with them. Earl didn't give it much thought until the big breasted whore returned half the money he was giving her for the imitation passion that had just passed between them.
"What's this for," he asked.
"Only half on Thursday. Discount day. Slow business. Everyone know that."
"I didn't know it. If I had, I would have waited for a lot more Thursdays."
"When you here, you can never wait. No matter the day."
Then it clicked in. Jesus, Earl thought. Thursday. That was the day... but he was probably talking through the bottom of a glass, that's all. Better go see.
He left and went directly to Sandy's hovel. No one there. He immediately went to the cantina and buttonholed guys that had been out that day. Yes, Sandy was aboard in the morning, they said. Worked like the rest during the day. But when they left, nobody remembered seeing him in the truck. Didn't they wonder, Earl asked. Didn't they bother to see why he wasn't there? The answers came in different languages, but they all translated the same. "No. Who gives a fuck, man."
Earl stayed in the cantina until it closed, assuming Sandy would eventually show up. He didn't. So Earl went back to Sandy's place. Still no one there. He was exhausted. So he returned to his room and immediately collapsed onto the cot. The sickness, the sex, and the drink... it had taken its toll. Earl was immediately comatose. Then his dreams started to gyrate in and out of each other. Mable on the road, him behind the wheel. The woman and the child found in the panel box. The officer binding his hands behind his back until he realized it wasn't the officer, it was someone in his room pulling his hands and awakening him.
"Earl. Earl."
Reaching up and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes, Earl groggily gained consciousness. "Sandy? What's... what's going on? Where have you been? Did you do it?"
"I did, old man. I pulled it off. Well, sort of."
"What do you mean," Earl asked, at the same time his vision cleared enough to see that Sandy was filthy. Dirt from head to shoes. Red welts and scratches on his hands and face. "What happened?"
"Had to dash for it, mate. Bloody paymaster didn't think he had enough toilet paper and came back for more. Had to bash him with a paper weight and take a runner. Been jungle jumping all night."
"What time is it?"
"Not sure. Three, four."
"Why'd you come back here?"
"Reverse psychology, you know. Figured they'd figure the last place I would come would be back here. So that's where I've come. Was just going to stay out of sight till the bus arrives, midday."
"Was?"
"Smarter than I thought they were. They've come here looking for me. Doing a grid search I think."
"Jesus... then why'd you come here?"
"Had to. Had to let you know where the cash is. Don't worry. They won't think you're involved. They know you didn't go to the rig today."
Earl was trying as hard as he could to make sense of it all, but his physical exhaustion and Sandy's manic pace was making it difficult.
"Listen, listen to me," Sandy demanded. "I've buried it. Buried it in the latrine behind my place and to the right about twenty-five yards. You'll see where some earth's been turned over. Left a rock on top of it as a landmark for you."
"What do you mean, for me?"
"It's yours, mate. I'm done for. They'll have me by sunrise for sure. But don't worry. Won't tell em' a thing. Tell em' I lost it crossing the river in the bloody jungle."
"But you can't," Earl began, "they'll -"
Their conversation skipped a beat when the adobe walls couldn't keep the sound at bay. Heavy vehicles arriving. Brakes screeching to a stop in the gravel. Engines being killed. The sound of voices. Male voices, barking orders.
"Take the money after they've gone," Sandy said. "Take it with you on the bus and get the hell out of here while you still can. Nothing for you here, mate. Nothing for any of us. Just a stopover, you know... sort of like life."
With that, Sandy was on his feet and out the door before Earl could stagger out of bed. He continued to hear the voices. Rising in intensity now. Yelling, they were. Yelling at one another, or at someone else. More voices. Then another sound. The worst sound. A gunshot. Then the voices stopped. Until Earl heard one say, "Over there." Followed by the noise of running feet, trampling through the mud and muck.
For a moment, Earl considered throwing his pants on and racing out to help Sandy. But how could he? He had no weapon. He was obviously outnumbered. Certainly no one else in the village would join him. There was nothing he could do, he told himself. Why run out into a violent night and maybe wind up injured, or even killed. It wasn't like he encouraged Sandy to steal the money. And he certainly didn't ask him to leave it for him. What was he supposed to do? What was anyone supposed to do when someone takes it upon himself to commit a crime. My brother's keeper? What sort of sentimental claptrap is that. You're your own keeper and that's all you are. Trying to be anything else is stupid, dumb, for suckers, Earl kept telling himself... as both eyes blinked back tears. Was he weeping for his friend, he wondered. Or was he pitying himself, and what he had become.
When he awoke this time, the sun was barely peeking over the horizon. It was that time of early morning when salmon skies begin to light the day. Somehow he had managed to fall back to sleep. He had no memory of the searchers leaving. Certainly nothing like the chaos of their arrival. And now all was quiet. Even the cocks were silent, in fear or indifference, he didn't know which. But he did know he had to relieve himself, as he did every morning. So he slipped on his trousers and went outside.
As he aimed his spray at an unlucky bush, coolness clamped around him like a soothing balm. With the release of his water came a feeling of lightness, an instant of euphoria as he realized no one would be tying him to Sandy's folly. Then his thinking cap was jerked back as he remembered Sandy going over what he had done with the stolen money. Before he knew it, Earl was on his way to Sandy's.
One shack was very much like another in Tumba de Dios, and Earl had been there before. He didn't have to knock because Sandy's door was partially open, the part that was partial to hanging on by its last hinge. It had been kicked open, busted up, and left abused, as had the rest of Sandy's place. Books and papers raked off shelves, clothes pulled out and thrown down, hotplate turned over. They had looked but not found, Earl bet, remembering where Sandy told him that he'd hidden the money.
He walked through the disarray of Sandy's stuff to the back door. When he went outside, he knew he was in the right place. He could smell it. Turning to the right, as he had been advised, Earl took about twenty-something strides before he came upon what Sandy had called his landmark - a rock atop freshly turned-up earth. Looking around, to make sure no one else was up and watching him at this hour, he didn't think to go inside and look for Sandy's spade to work with. His only thought was to do what he had come to do as quickly as possible. So Earl dropped to his knees and began to sift through the mud and dirt and sand and grit with his hands. His palms, fingers, and nails digging away until he came to something softer and squishier than the topsoil over it. He had reached Sandy's stash covered in his friend's shit. Earl peeled the crap away with both hands revealing numerous paper bills. Pesos, Dollars, even some Euros among the purloined payroll profits. The thought of leaving it there never entered his mind. It had been left for him. He had found it. He dug through human feces to get it and he certainly wasn't going to leave it to chance, or for some animal to root up and eat, or for some other asshole to find. But he was going to take it to the river first and wash it and himself as best he could. Perhaps forgetting that sorrow seldom washes off.
Around the bend, where the river flowed shallow enough for a grown man to wade into up to his waist, Earl found more than he was looking for. There was a secluded spot behind a boulder where he could clean both his body and the cash. But there was something else as well. Something that chilled him far worse than the cold water. Dangling from the protruding limb of a giant Montezuma cypress tree was Sandy. They had hanged him and left his dead body there for others to see. To his shirt they had pinned a crudely lettered sign that simply read THIEF. Earl stared into the open eyes of his former friend for close to a minute. He couldn't look away. Then, he dunked his own head in the water and hurried to do what he had come to do. Now, he couldn't get away from there quickly enough.
Cortez's bus usually arrived for its turnaround near one pm. Earl stood outside the bodega where it always stopped. He wore the one floppy suit he had pulled from the Goodwill bag so many month's ago. Stuffed in virtually every pocket were the bills from the payroll. A combination of currency that came to a total of five hundred and thirty-seven dollars, and sixty-eight cents. A meager stake in the real world. A king's ransom in Tumba de Dios. Earl had said goodbye to no one. What was the point? The only one who might have cared in the least was hanging from a tree near the river. He had gathered no belongings from his room. Nothing he had acquired since he'd been there was anything other than detritus. He had left no forwarding address because he didn't have one, and gave no thought to the remaining inhabitants. Not the sullen barkeep, the oil rig roustabouts, not even the whore in the window. It was almost as if he had never been there at all. Never run away to the end of the world to escape what shameless villains, or misguided jurors, or perhaps fate, had tried to do to him. His mind, if it wandered anywhere, drifted back to Mable, and their time roaring over endless blacktop toward a far horizon. Earl knew he didn't have enough to get his own rig again. Anyway, it would be dangerous to go back into the same profession from which he went missing. Whatever he did, it would be hard to get started, and to live under constant fear of the law's radar. To constantly be waiting for a knock at his door, or bootheels to kick it in, the thought gave him pause. Of course, the alternative seemed worse. To turn himself in. To go to prison. To live a life of internment for decades. That was no option. But come what may, Earl was ready to start anew. He had been given the opportunity by a man so disillusioned with his purgatory that he had sinned to escape it. The cost? His life. Perhaps his soul. But he had to try, didn't he? He simply couldn't have left it all to chance. Still.
Cortez's bus arrived at one-thirty. The Mexican purchased what he wanted from the bodega, waited another fifteen minutes, then started back up the road that would eventually lead to civilization. He made the trip alone. Earl heard the bus pull out from his chair in the cantina, where a bottle of Mezcal and a shot glass stood on the table in front of him. Maybe next week, he said to himself. Or the next.
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No longer tied down to the same place day in and day out, or the same people giving him orders left and right, he was independent, a free-lancer. He took the jobs he wanted to take and made the hauls he wanted to make in his candy apple red, long hood beauty he had dubbed Mable. She was indeed the girl of his dreams. Not the only girl, mind you, but while others might be able to offer what Mable had in a fridge, microwave oven, counter space, and a bed, those gals couldn't come close to torque steering, adaptive cruise control, collision mitigation and fifteen-inch digital display. Sure, there were a lot of women Earl knew in a lot of places. He was a six-foot, dark-haired, hard-abs guy who did not avoid the opposite sex. But in this, the thirty-ninth year of his birth, there was only one female he had totally committed himself to and that was the forty thousand pound diesel-burning, road-eating, Mable.
The Soaring R Travel Center was one of Earl's favorite truck stops. In addition to decent food and clean showers, fuel costs were reasonable, waitresses were friendly, and it was easy to conduct business there in booths that offered privacy as well as leg room. One such commerce meeting was scheduled that morning for 11am. Earl arrived at ten-thirty in his regular business attire; starched white shirt with pearl snaps, dust colored leather sport coat, Levi jeans, Nocona boots, and a Buck Tan Stetson Broken Bow felt cowboy hat he removed the minute he sat down. He had his laptop with him and went through the news, Mable's latest maintenance reports, and two cups of coffee before Ignacio Constantine arrived.
Constantine was a representative of Vargas Ranchero. At six hundred thousand acres and over one hundred thousand head of cattle, it was one of the largest ranches in Mexico. The outskirts of its acreage in Chihuahua were only two hundred miles from El Paso, making it a frequent exporter of livestock to the US. As such, the enterprise was constantly employing both trucking firms and independent contractors to move its four-legged product. Earl wasn't enamored with hauling cattle. It was often a difficult and sometimes dangerous job. But making a connection with Vargas Ranchero could connect him to a frequently lucrative income stream, and that he was enamored with.
A large man came through the front door. Earl saw him enter and speak to the cashier. The same cashier Earl had asked to be on the lookout for a Mr. Constantine. He watched the cashier turn her head and point toward his booth. The man nodded and headed his way. When he got to the booth, Earl couldn't help but notice a scar that ran from the man's right ear, over to the side of his mouth, and down his chin. It was unpleasant. The kind of scar one doesn't ask about. With Earl sitting at the booth and the man standing beside it, he looked even more immense than he was. Earl guessed him at six-five, three hundred plus. The truck driver rose so the difference in size wouldn't seem so ludicrous. Standing didn't help.
"Mr. Constantine?"
"Yes. You are Earl Bishop?
"I am. Just call me, Earl. Everyone else does."
"That is your red Kenworth outside?"
"It is. I call her Mable."
"Impressive looking vehicle."
"Well, thank you. I'm kinda partial to her."
"May I sit?"
"Of course, Mr. Constantine. Where are my manners? Please, have a seat. Would you like a cup of coffee, or something else?"
"No. I think we'll just get to it, if you don't mind."
"Don't mind at all. Like a business man who gets down to business."
"Good. As I said on the phone, I represent Vargas Ranchero and..."
Constantine went on to explain their use of trucks for transporting livestock. Before he had gone only a sentence or two, Earl asked him if anything in particular made him initiate the call. The big man responded that he had heard Earl's name mentioned by others in the trucking business around El Paso and all the mentions were positive. Earl tried a self-effacing quip about his reputation preceding him, but it either sailed by Constantine entirely or the big man found it insufficiently funny enough to warrant a response. The conversation continued with Constantine telling him that Vargas Ranchero had a certain way of doing business and if Earl would like to participate, then he'd need to agree to follow their standard operating procedures. Earl said he' be more than happy to listen to what the ranch's S O P was.
The scarred giant told him that they used their own Wilson lightweight, corrosion-resistant, aluminum trailers. The one for Earl's haul would be a fifty-seven foot long, one hundred inch wide, fourteen foot high, Silverstar. Earl was familiar with the brand. It was top of the line. He particularly liked Wilsons' construction with thick siding to cause less damage to the cattle and large oval air slots for more continuous air flow. They were also easy to clean out, which particularly appealed to Earl. After going over the contract, which paid almost five dollars more per loaded mile than the average livestock haul, Earl signed and the two men shook hands.
The next day, Earl got up before the sun to start his trek to Hermosillo, Mexico, where he'd pick up the cattle he'd be bringing back to the States. It was a little over three hundred miles from El Paso and he wanted to be there no later than noon. Earl had spent the previous afternoon making sure Mable was in tip-top shape. He wanted his first run for the Mexican ranching operation to go off without a hitch. By the time the sun had made its presence known, Earl was whipping through a seemingly never-ending expanse of sky, far horizon, and flat earth dotted here and there with yuccas and their white, bell-shaped flowers. At times, it felt like an unknown planet just waiting to be explored, until Earl decided to bring things back down to earth by tuning his sound system to the download he had made of Johnny Cash's greatest hits. Earl may have been a modern trucker but he was absolutely old school when it came to country music.
A half-hour from his destination, Earl realized he was getting close. Not because of what he saw, but rather what he smelled. Methane gas and carbon dioxide hovered in the air like an unseen noxious mushroom cloud. Folks new to it often had to turn away. Not Earl. When it came to cattle hauling, in his recent past, he had been there, done that, and gotten the T-shirt. A few minutes later he was pulling off the main highway and onto a dirt and gravel road. At a gate crossing he showed his copy of the contract to the guard and was passed through. Three hundred yards later he was pulling up in front of holding pens. A man dressed in khaki shirt and pants and holding a clipboard walked up to the driver's side door of Earl's rig.
"I'm Sanchez. You here for the Constantine load?"
"Ah, yeah. The one from Vargas Ranchero, got the papers here," he said as he handed them down to the man.
Sanchez took a quick look, handed them back to Earl and said, "Follow me."
Mable inched along after the man as he walked fifty yards to a giant shed. Just on the other side of it was a trailer Earl recognized as a Silverstar, with bovines on board. Earl turned off the engine and stepped down from the cab.
"Already loaded, huh? I'm used to overseeing that myself."
"We're on a schedule, here, got a lot to do. Can't wait for every driver to take his own sweet time," Sanchez said.
"Understood," Earl responded reluctantly. "Still, I'd like to make sure everything's copacetic. At least do a walk-around, you know."
"We do this day in and day out," Sanchez said.
"I'm sure you do," Earl began, already starting to move around the outside of the trailer looking for anything that didn't seem right. "But when I pull out, I'm responsible. So I'll just give it a once-over."
Sanchez joined him as Earl started his own inspection.
"Anything in those lower panels," Earl asked, referring to the horizontal aluminum boxes between the spread axels.
"Tools and clean-up gear," Sanchez answered.
"Locked down?"
"I said we do this every day."
"What about that bullnose cabinet up front?"
"Blankets. Gear. Everything's fastened. Nothing's going to move around on you."
"Nothing but the cattle, right? How many head?"
"It's on the manifest."
"Want me to read it myself, or just save time and tell me?"
"Thirty-five. Total weight, just under forty-eight thousand."
Once they circled the trailer, Earl said, "Would have liked to oversee the loading."
"You said that, already. Now are you taking these cattle to El Paso or do I need to call and get another driver?"
"No. You got a driver, right here. I'll hook up once I get something to eat, okay?"
Pointing to the left of them, Sanchez said, "Commissary's over there. I'll have a couple of guys meet you here in half an hour."
"Okay, Earl said, "Thanks for your help." Then he couldn't help himself. "And for your pleasant attitude."
"Kiss my ass," Sanchez muttered as he walked away, "fucking prima donna."
The best cattle transport is less than good. As the big eighteen-wheeler barreled down the highway, the creatures bawled and cried and stretched their heads toward the oval slats trying to get more air. A couple had gone down already, collapsing among the urine and fecal piles due to heat, stress, and fear. Sometimes, one or two might even die. The ones who go down are often so mentally stressed they'd rather lie there in the cow shit than get up and struggle for space and air.
As Earl and Mable rumbled down the highway, any cars that came up on them unknowingly, got a wash of acrid odor they'd race away from as quickly as possible. At least it isn't winter, Earl thought, don't have to worry about the damned cows freezing to the side of the trailer and having to pry them off with crowbars. People seldom think of what's involved in having that hamburger at McDonald's or that ribeye at their favorite steak house. If they did, they might not be as dismissive of those sanctimonious vegans.
Constantine had told Earl that upon re-entry into the US, he should ask for Texas Border Patrol Officer, Wesley Johnson, who had monitored Vargas Ranchero's transport operations for years. So he wasn't too concerned when the Customs Official at Juarez told him to take his rig out of line and move it to the area that was dedicated to special inspections. At the site, he pulled into the designated area and stepped down from the cab to speak with the attending inspector.
"Is Officer Johnson, here today? Wesley Johnson? I was told to ask for him."
"You were? And just who told you that?"
"Mr. Constantine. He's a rep for Vargas Ranchero. Said Johnson handles all their inspections."
"Said that, did he?"
"Yes, he -"
"Have your transport documents, license, and identification with you?"
"Sure," Earl said, pulling out his wallet. "Documents in the cab, I'll jump up and -"
"No. You wait here." Then motioning to two other uniformed inspectors, he yelled, "Carl, documents in the cab. Bring em' over, please."
Carl did as he was instructed and brought the papers. Earl didn't like the way the inspector looked as he perused them. "If I could just touch base with Officer Johnson, I'm sure -"
"That won't be possible," the Inspector said. "Officer's Johnson is no longer with the department."
"But..."
"These papers... Mr. Bishop... these are the only transport documents you have?"
"Yes. Mr. Constantine said they were what I needed to show -"
"These papers are fraudulent, Mr. Bishop. I'm going to ask you to step over here."
The Inspector waved his arm and another officer joined them. "Wayne, please secure Mr. Bishop, if you will."
"Hands behind your back," Wayne said, as he pulled out a twist tie and fastened Earl's hands behind him.
"What the hell is this? I haven't done anything. Where's Officer Johnson?"
"He's a guest of the state. Currently awaiting trial," the Inspector told Earl as he pulled his radio from his belt and spoke into it. "Bradley, need you and Vernon now, with sidearms. The big red Kenworth in the holding area."
Turning to the officer who had just secured Earl, he said, "Wayne, you stay here with Bishop." Then he walked toward the two armed officers he had just summoned. As they talked, Earl tried to figure out what the hell was happening.
"Hey, this is some kind of mistake," Earl began. "I don't know what's going on, but..."
Even though Wayne was standing behind Earl and keeping a hand on his shoulder, he wasn't paying attention to anything his charge had to say. He was transfixed on his three cohorts approaching the trailer.
With Bradley and Vernon standing behind him, their weapons drawn and raised, the Inspector pulled a long length of metal from his utility belt, wedged it between the lock and the flat of the panel box, and jerked it violently. The lock flew off. The panel dropped down. Inside, motionless, was the scrunched up body of a man. The Inspector cautiously put his hands to the man's neck as the two officers backing him up stood ready. A shake of his head from left to right told all what they needed to know.
"Jesus," Earl couldn't help but mutter. "Jesus."
The other lower panel box was checked in the same manner and this time the result was worse. A young woman and a small child. Both dead.
Earl thought he was going to be sick, but just as the burn was rising in his throat, a clang erupted from the bull nose panel that stalled the bile's exit. The vertical aluminum enclosure had been kicked open from the inside and a young man burst out and into the middle of the hoof-to-horn beef who shoved and bumped and stomped the floor of their prison on wheels. He looked around frantically for any way he could find to escape, but there was no path to freedom. Not for him, or the cattle, or the trucker who had to brought them all to their reckoning.
Earl would have had to sell Mable to come up with the money for a professional law firm to represent him. He chose not to do that and instead put his trust in the public defender who was assigned to his case. Weeks went by as he awaited trial. Weeks spent giving Earl a preview of what his life would be like if things didn't go his way. County jail isn't state lockup. But neither is it far from it. At first, Earl believed incarceration might not be as bad as he thought. It didn't take long to relieve him of that notion. The loss of freedom - the ability to do what he wanted, when he wanted - went first. That was hard enough to take. Perhaps even worse, was the loss of privacy. Earl had never thought that much about it, until privacy didn't exist anymore. The rows of multiple shower heads, the long line of commodes, the total inability to get away from others in similar plights, it all left him feeling subhuman. Among those being held, there was no attempt at courtesy, and certainly not friendliness or camaraderie. There was only the desire among each individual to spend their waking hours someplace other than where they were.
Earl filled a lot of his time with thoughts of revenge. Retribution delivered without mercy to that bastard, Constantine, who was responsible for setting him up. And maybe that Sanchez fellow too. He must have been in on it. When Earl wasn't wallowing in hate for the scarred giant or the khakied Mexican, he couldn't shake the images of those bodies in the trailer panels. Human beings inhaling toxic methane, suffocating and dying simply because they wanted a shot at a better life. Their promise of America had turned into hell on earth. Earl hoped they went quickly, but somehow he knew they hadn't.
The young attorney defending Earl believed his story. He thought Constantine and maybe Sanchez too were connected to one of the cartels, and he did everything he could to make a jury believe it. They didn't. Aided no doubt by his and Earl's inability to come up with anyone who could or would corroborate Constantine's existence. The cashier who sent him to Earl's table no longer worked at the truck stop and couldn't be found. It had been a busy day at the Flying R and the waitress simply had no memory of the big guy or Earl. Then there was the jury's own personal exasperations with the virtual inundation of migrants into their local community. It should have played no part in their deliberations. But who's to say it didn't. Certainly not the judge who accepted their guilty verdict to murder in the second degree. The jurist did say that he believed there was no premeditated intent to commit murder, so some degree of leniency would be applied. Texas leniency. Earl received a sentence of no less than twenty and no more than sixty years in the state penitentiary.
The weather was as morose as Earl's mood the day he was to be transferred from county lockup to the state pen. It has been raining since the night before with continued thunderstorms forecast. Earl had barely slept. Twenty years minimum before a chance of parole. It felt as if a weight had descended upon him he could not lift, an anvil of depression he couldn't slide out from under. He walked with his head up to the back of the van that would take him to his high-walled dungeon for the next two decades of his life. He wanted to see things he'd have no way of seeing for such a long time. And he bet they wouldn't be the same anyway, when, or if he ever got out.
Constant precipitation had filled the ditches and the run-off reservoirs around El Paso. As the transportation van made its way toward the outskirts of the city, it started to rain even harder. Malone, the driver, had to turn his windshield wipers to full speed even though he was moving along the freeway at less than forty-five miles per hour. Progress was getting extremely hazardous. It was almost impossible to see the vehicle in front of you... unless they hit their brakes activating red tail lights... which you were on top of before you knew it. Cramer, the officer riding shotgun, was using his sleeve to keep condensation off the inside of the windshield. Defrost was functioning with far less capacity than it should. Earl, alone in the back of the van, hands and ankles cuffed, heard the occasional crack of thunder and the continual pounding rain but was unable to actually see the deluge coming down. What did it matter, he thought to himself. What did any of it matter. Where he was going, weather was unimportant. Wet, dry, hot, or cold, one day would be no better than the rest.
Afraid he'd run into a car in front of him, or get whacked by one behind, Malone made a snap decision to get off the freeway at the upcoming exit. Cramer, still trying to provide visual help, had undone his seat belt to give him better access to the windshield. Virtually on top of the exit sign now, Malone cut the steering wheel to the right and veered toward the access road. Both men were trying so hard to see what was in front of them, that neither saw the Goodwill Charities trailer truck rolling down the access road they were turning onto.
The impact was crushing. It sent the prison van into a tumble. Malone's air bag exploded in his face and literally knocked him unconscious. Cramer, unrestrained, went flying through the windshield he had been trying to clean. Earl, in the back of the van, flipped ass over elbow and bounced about the back of the vehicle like a ball bearing in a pinball machine. The Goodwill truck went into a skid and slid down the frontage road a good fifty yards. Then the trailer it was pulling began to jackknife. Groaning like a dying dinosaur in slow motion, it slid off the road, down the side of an arroyo and came to rest in a gully. The force of its impact knocked the trailer's back doors open and spilled its collected charitable contents all over hell and gone.
When the van finally stopped rolling, Earl came to rest against the back side of the cab. He immediately felt like he'd been swung at and pummeled with a bucket of rocks. There was a sharp pain in his hand where he had tried unsuccessfully to block his fall. His right elbow was bleeding from the sparring it had done with the sides of the van. The moment he made any kind of movement at all he felt a piercing ache in his ribcage. The only things that seemed to be unmolested were his head and feet. He used the former to try and compose himself, ascertain his situation and make a plan. The latter began to execute it.
Lying on his back, Earl used his feet to kick free the severely damaged metallic screen separating front from back. Since his hands and feet were still cuffed and connected, each kick jerked him violently and sent shockwaves of pain into his ribs. But he suffered each hurt as stoically as he could in order to gain access to the cab. Once there, he saw Malone, unconscious, behind the now flaccid air bag and the steering wheel. Looking for any sign of keys on his utility belt, he saw none. The other guard, Cramer, must have them, Earl assumed. Staring at the gaping hole in the windshield surrounded by bloody glass shards, Earl came to a quick conclusion about where he would be. With considerable agony, he banged his right side against the passenger door to knock it open. Then he dropped into the still pounding rain and saw Cramer thirty feet in front of the van. Limping forward as fast as his pain would allow, he got to the body, bent over and saw pieces of windshield protruding from Cramer's neck. Earl immediately decided that nothing could be done for him, but he could do something for himself. He reached down and took the set of keys from the dead man's belt.
Fumbling momentarily for one that looked right, then embarking on a bit of trial and error, Earl managed to find the right key and freed himself from his metal restraints. As he knelt there, rain still coming in torrents, he racked his brain for what to do. He could tell he wasn't that far from the freeway, so he knew it wouldn't be long before someone came over to see if they could help or at least call 911 to report an accident. As he scanned the area, he caught sight of the overturned Goodwill truck with hard and soft goods spilled about like refuse in a landfill. A thought jumped into his head and he tried to quickly bounce up. The pain shot through his ribs again, but he knew what he must do. Making his way to the big truck as quickly as he could, he checked the cab. Nobody there. The driver must have gone for help. That left him even less time. He limped to the back of the truck and started looking around. Among the bassinets and stereo systems and hopelessly outdated floor lamps, clothes were strewn as well. Earl started pulling off the jail jumpsuit he was wearing as quickly as he could while searching for things to replace it. The clothes on the ground were soaked, but he spotted three large garbage bags lying near one another on the back side of the trailer. Getting to them and grabbing one as quickly as he could, he immediately realized the contents inside them were soft. Dragging them to where he couldn't be seen from the road, he began tearing the first one open. Fuck! Bedding. The second one made his heart jump. Clothes! Until he started pulling them out and realized they were nothing but skirts and dresses. Please, he uttered to himself as he ripped into the third bag. Bingo! Men's clothes. The first pair of pants he came to, he pulled out of the bag and put them on. Not a perfect fit but good enough. He'd just throw the bag over his shoulder and take off until he could find some place to get out of the rain and figure out what to do. Earl was about to make a break for the tree line near the site of the accident when it hit him. "Shit," he said out loud. Then pausing for less than a second, he put the bag down and raced back toward Officer Cramer, wincing as he ran. Once there, he hesitated for an instant, then quickly took both hands and pushed him over so the dead man was face down. He saw the bulge in his back pocket, reached in and grabbed the wallet. Earl opened it quickly and saw the bills. He pulled the cash out then put the wallet back in the dead man's pocket. As he hustled back to the bag of clothes, he counted the money. A hundred and sixty three dollars. Because of the deluge, it would have been impossible for anyone to tell, but tears mingled with raindrops as he pocketed the bills, picked up the bag and headed away from the carnage. As far away as possible.
The bus swayed and bumped along the pockmarked road like a drunk staggering home. One who had made the trek many times, but gained no advantage through repetition. Earl sat in the back. At each stop more peasants would get off than on. Eventually there was only Earl and the driver. This wasn't the first bus he had ridden since changing into semi dry clothes beneath the freeway overpass and using the dark of night plus the cover of foliage to cross unseen into Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Over the next day and a half, he kept changing transport to providers willing to accept money without asking for identification. Those who did took him farther away from big cities, prying eyes, and Mexican police more likely to help American authorities find missing fugitives. With each bus he boarded, he simply purchased a ticket to the end of the line. Doing so left civilization farther and farther behind him.
When exhaustion finally overtook him, Earl stretched out on the long rear seat of the bus and fell into sleep deep as coma. He was dreaming of a brunette putting her hand on his butt as they two-stepped across a honky-tonk dance floor when he came to and realized it was actually the driver checking his back pockets for anything beyond the fare. Earl quickly pushed his hand away and began to sit up.
"Vamanos, gringo. Time to go."
"Where are we," Earl asked.
"Tumba de Dios. I turn around here."
"Is there another bus?"
"Not til' I return. One week."
Earl got to his feet, slowly walked to the front of the bus, then stepped off. As he did, the driver who had followed him to make sure he would exit, dropped back into his seat, put the vehicle in gear and rumbled forward, giving Earl his first full view of Tumba de Dios. He couldn't help thinking that it resembled its rough translation, Tomb of God.
The hamlet looked like a motley combination of unpaved streets that muddied and flooded when the weather was bad, and whose weeds were chewed to the nub by goats when dry. Skinny roosters, that had managed to survive murderous cockfights, ambled past the adobe buildings, their missing feathers and scarred necks held high as if they were the town's leading citizens. A pig could be heard grunting close by, though it remained unseen. Frightened perhaps at too soon becoming bacon or chorizo. A malnourished dog, its ribcage protruding behind a torn and flea bitten coat, scuttled its way in and out of alleys looking for scraps, or snakes, or rats to assuage obvious hunger. But fowl and fur weren't the only inhabitants of this remote village. A wizened old man, sans shoes, sat in a fraying lawn chair smoking tobacco and paper fixings, and letting the ashes on the end extend to the length of a pinky finger. A fat man walked down the center of the road, talking to himself, and beating one fist into an open palm, seeming to grow more agitated as he strode. In the second floor window of a two-story building, a woman sat and sipped dingy white liquid from a highball glass. She was naked from the waist up, her pendulous breasts hanging limp in the breezeless afternoon. It was impossible to know if she was resting or advertising.
I've reached the right place, Earl said to himself. No one would look for me here.
Multiple bus rides behind him, Earl still had seventy-five dollars of the money he pinched from officer Cramer's corpse. He looked across what passed for a street and saw the building where he'd spend a bit more cash. The building with CANTINA scratched on the wall.
Inside, the atmosphere was similar to what he had seen before he entered. One man sat completely slumped over a table for two. Face down, reedy fingers on both his hands were still wrapped around the bottle of Tequila he had been consuming. Across the room, two men silently played cards. Earl took them for locals. They looked like part of the furniture, brown, haggard, lifeless. Behind the bar, a thin man sat on a stool and scanned an ancient copy of Hustler. Earl wondered for a moment what century that had come from. Then he stepped over, put his foot on the rail, his elbows on the bar, and asked, "Got any cold beer? Cerveza frio?"
The barkeep looked up at him, said nothing, then went back to his magazine. Earl was about to try again when a man approached him from the corner. A man he hadn't noticed when he walked in.
"Do I detect a fellow American?" the man asked, in a decidedly British accent.
"Could be," Earl answered. "Who's asking?"
"I am. Sanford Featherstonehaugh. Proud citizen of the United States of America."
"You don't sound American."
"A predicament I simply have to live with. My parents were English. Naturalized Americans, they were. Never been able to shake the sound I grew up with. You can call me Sandy, if you like. And your name is...?"
Earl paused before responding. "Ah... Smith. John Smith."
"Really? One tends to meet a lot of Smiths around here. Many Johns as well."
"Common name, I guess," Earl said.
"Indeed."
Motioning to the seemingly disinterested bartender, Earl said, "So, Sandy, does this guy speak English or Spanish, or what?"
"A little of both on occasion. When he chooses. Which is infrequently. I heard you inquire about a cold beer?"
"That's right."
"There is none. When there is some, it sells out pretty quickly. But the beer truck hasn't come this week. And as for cold, well, to paraphrase the celebrated Eugene O'Neill, the ice man seldom ever cometh."
"He could have told me that."
"Yes, well, he's much more amenable after you buy something. That way he knows you're not just here to get out of the rain."
"It isn't raining."
"It will be. Usually later in the afternoon. So, getting back to where we started. How would you like to buy a fellow American a drink? I seemed to have arrived without my wallet."
"Really?" Earl said, his tone sarcastic enough to show he didn't believe him, but not so sarcastic that it put the man off.
"Silly of me, I know, but these things happen."
"And I guess it's Tequila that you want?"
"That would be fine... though I prefer Mezcal... and if you're particularly short of funds, a Pulque will do."
"Uno Tequila, Uno Mezcal," Earl said to the bartender, who actually got off his duff, set a couple of shot glasses in front of the two patrons, then poured the requested drinks, saying, "Gracias. Salud!"
"Cheers," Sandy offered. Earl nodded and both men drank.
"How much?" Earl asked.
The bartender answered, "Medio dolar."
Turning to Sandy, Earl asked, "For each?"
"For both," Sandy responded.
"Leave the bottles," Earl told the bartender.
"Dejar las botellas," Sandy translated.
The barkeep did as asked. Then returned to his skin mag.
An hour passed with both men drinking and Earl mostly listening. Unasked, Sandy gave a verbal autobiography of his life and times. From his college expulsion for getting caught screwing the dean's daughter in the faculty rec room, to his roller coaster software public offering that peaked at a ridiculous high but then never came out of its abysmal low, to his mercurial venture into bitcoins, offshore accounts, and financial prestidigitation that the authorities labeled money laundering. The last of which necessitated a vanishing act, currently being performed in Tumba de Dios. When asked for specifics of his reason for being in what Sandy described as "this wretched hell hole," Earl demurred and simply said, "Things didn't go as planned."
The two spent as much money as Earl was willing to piss away. When he decided to stop doing so, Sandy put him onto where he might find lodging. Turned out it was the building where Earl had earlier seen the half-naked women in the window. And yes, she had been advertising.
Earl paid a week's rent in advance for a first-floor room. It consisted of a dirt floor, an army surplus cot, one small table with accompanying chair, no running-water, no bathroom, and no electricity, which meant only candles for nighttime light. The creek was close by to provide water for humans' basic needs. Nature's call could be answered in the surrounding jungle. Toilet paper, along with canned foods and fruit from the near environs could be purchased at the tiny bodega two buildings down. The cantina sold the only hot meal available, a concoction similar to stew with unrecognizable meat and even more suspect vegetables. Dubbed the daily special, it was offered in lieu of a menu and came with no substitutions.
It didn't take long for Earl to fall into the rhythms and routines of the other outcasts he occasionally ran into in the destitute village. Nameless men with bearded faces, and unlike Sandy, identities they had no wish to share. Most were poverty stricken Mexicans, salted with a fatalistic European, a uniquely unfriendly Canadian, a disillusioned Amish runaway, and a septuagenarian ex Peace Corp volunteer. Regardless of their outward personas, among them all was an undiscussed despair, a cloak of ennui that attached itself to them like moss. Over the days that turned into weeks, then lengthened into months, Earl was to learn Tumba de Dios was more than a hostel for the down and out. It was a place where regret, ambition, logic, and eventually hope, came to atrophy like the withered limbs of cripples.
Once every other week or so, a truck would pull into the hamlet looking for day laborers to help on the oil rig. It meant pesos by sundown and therefore attracted most of the relatively abled bodied men. Earl, having worked in the oil fields stateside, had become a regular in the back of the open-topped deuce and a half's forty-minute journey; a wind-whipped, kidney-bouncing, limb-slapping trek over bad roads and worse jungle. When they arrived, the men were put to work lifting pipe, toting sacks of drilling mud, mixing cement, and more. Hard, back-breaking work that had each individual sore and exhausted by the end of the day. Days that always ended in the cantina before each man would return to his particular unbarred cell.
Earl and Sandy sat at one of the tables, a half-empty bottle of Mezcal between them. More than enough to make Sandy share what he was thinking.
"I saw it today."
"Saw what," Earl asked.
"The box. The box they keep the payroll in."
"How'd you do that?"
"Had to take one of those storage racks up to the line shack for their water cooler."
"So?"
"Thinking of pinching it."
"The water cooler?"
"No, mate. The bloody payroll."
"Hey," Earl cautioned, "put that out of your head. Got a feeling they deal with robbery a lot differently down here."
"Only if you get caught. I don't intend to."
"Got a master plan, huh?"
Sandy responded, "Matter of fact, I do. Noticed that each time, after the crew is paid and sitting around waiting for the lorry to take us back... the paymaster comes out of the shack and heads for the latrines. Bowels must be on auto pilot."
"And you plan to just go in when he goes out and then ride back here with a box of cash under your arm?
"No. I'll leave the box. Just stuff the cash under my clothes. They hang on me like a circus clown anyway. No one will notice."
"What about the paymaster? When he comes back."
"Never gets back before the lorry leaves. Even if he does, won't go back in the paybox. No reason to. Won't even give it a thought until end of the next day. By then, I'll be long gone. With a full day's lead via Cortez's bus run."
"Bus only comes on Fridays."
"So?"
"So how do you know they'll need day labor on a Thursday," Earl asked. "They show up randomly. Came today. It's Monday."
"We ever been out there on a Thursday?"
"Probably. Been out so many times... I mean, who keeps up?"
"Exactly. So that means, one day they'll show up here on a Thursday morning."
"And you'll be ready? On any given Thursday?"
"I'm ready now, my friend. And I'll stay ready until any Thursday comes along."
"Want to get away that bad, huh?"
"Have to, lad. Been here a lot longer than you. Nerves are fraying at the end like sliced cable. Been having hallucinations. Seeing myself eaten from the inside out. Got a bit of the clap, or worse. Afraid to find out. Had enough, you know?"
"Beginning to. Think there'll be enough cash?"
"There'll be plenty to get out of this hole. And more. Come with me, why don't you?"
Earl didn't have an answer ready. Or a place to go.
Sandy continued. "However, if you left at the same time I did, they might think you were in on it. Wouldn't want a miscarriage of justice, now would we?"
What a question, Earl thought.
"I could always send for you later. Once I was settled. Once it had all blown over. Better that way, I think. And by then, you'll be wanting to get out of here too. That's for sure."
Again, Earl didn't respond. He just refilled each of their glasses, and wondered if Sandy was serious, or just high again on Mezcal.
It was almost a month before the day labor truck showed up on a Thursday morning. When the men gathered to board, Earl wasn't with them. He had spent the night sick as a dog. Whom... he may have eaten. The more he threw up during the night, the more he wondered if the cur he hadn't seen for a while had been put in the cantina's stew he consumed earlier. Unlikely, he figured, but not totally out of the realm of possibility. Either way, his lack of sleep, tortured stomach, and foul mood meant he was definitely not going to the rig. Such was his plight that it didn't even occur to him that this was a Thursday. He spent the day trying to catch up on the sleep he had missed the night before, sweating when he was awake, and still wrestling with the occasional dry heave.
After sundown, the truck full of men returned. Sandy wasn't with them. Earl didn't give it much thought until the big breasted whore returned half the money he was giving her for the imitation passion that had just passed between them.
"What's this for," he asked.
"Only half on Thursday. Discount day. Slow business. Everyone know that."
"I didn't know it. If I had, I would have waited for a lot more Thursdays."
"When you here, you can never wait. No matter the day."
Then it clicked in. Jesus, Earl thought. Thursday. That was the day... but he was probably talking through the bottom of a glass, that's all. Better go see.
He left and went directly to Sandy's hovel. No one there. He immediately went to the cantina and buttonholed guys that had been out that day. Yes, Sandy was aboard in the morning, they said. Worked like the rest during the day. But when they left, nobody remembered seeing him in the truck. Didn't they wonder, Earl asked. Didn't they bother to see why he wasn't there? The answers came in different languages, but they all translated the same. "No. Who gives a fuck, man."
Earl stayed in the cantina until it closed, assuming Sandy would eventually show up. He didn't. So Earl went back to Sandy's place. Still no one there. He was exhausted. So he returned to his room and immediately collapsed onto the cot. The sickness, the sex, and the drink... it had taken its toll. Earl was immediately comatose. Then his dreams started to gyrate in and out of each other. Mable on the road, him behind the wheel. The woman and the child found in the panel box. The officer binding his hands behind his back until he realized it wasn't the officer, it was someone in his room pulling his hands and awakening him.
"Earl. Earl."
Reaching up and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes, Earl groggily gained consciousness. "Sandy? What's... what's going on? Where have you been? Did you do it?"
"I did, old man. I pulled it off. Well, sort of."
"What do you mean," Earl asked, at the same time his vision cleared enough to see that Sandy was filthy. Dirt from head to shoes. Red welts and scratches on his hands and face. "What happened?"
"Had to dash for it, mate. Bloody paymaster didn't think he had enough toilet paper and came back for more. Had to bash him with a paper weight and take a runner. Been jungle jumping all night."
"What time is it?"
"Not sure. Three, four."
"Why'd you come back here?"
"Reverse psychology, you know. Figured they'd figure the last place I would come would be back here. So that's where I've come. Was just going to stay out of sight till the bus arrives, midday."
"Was?"
"Smarter than I thought they were. They've come here looking for me. Doing a grid search I think."
"Jesus... then why'd you come here?"
"Had to. Had to let you know where the cash is. Don't worry. They won't think you're involved. They know you didn't go to the rig today."
Earl was trying as hard as he could to make sense of it all, but his physical exhaustion and Sandy's manic pace was making it difficult.
"Listen, listen to me," Sandy demanded. "I've buried it. Buried it in the latrine behind my place and to the right about twenty-five yards. You'll see where some earth's been turned over. Left a rock on top of it as a landmark for you."
"What do you mean, for me?"
"It's yours, mate. I'm done for. They'll have me by sunrise for sure. But don't worry. Won't tell em' a thing. Tell em' I lost it crossing the river in the bloody jungle."
"But you can't," Earl began, "they'll -"
Their conversation skipped a beat when the adobe walls couldn't keep the sound at bay. Heavy vehicles arriving. Brakes screeching to a stop in the gravel. Engines being killed. The sound of voices. Male voices, barking orders.
"Take the money after they've gone," Sandy said. "Take it with you on the bus and get the hell out of here while you still can. Nothing for you here, mate. Nothing for any of us. Just a stopover, you know... sort of like life."
With that, Sandy was on his feet and out the door before Earl could stagger out of bed. He continued to hear the voices. Rising in intensity now. Yelling, they were. Yelling at one another, or at someone else. More voices. Then another sound. The worst sound. A gunshot. Then the voices stopped. Until Earl heard one say, "Over there." Followed by the noise of running feet, trampling through the mud and muck.
For a moment, Earl considered throwing his pants on and racing out to help Sandy. But how could he? He had no weapon. He was obviously outnumbered. Certainly no one else in the village would join him. There was nothing he could do, he told himself. Why run out into a violent night and maybe wind up injured, or even killed. It wasn't like he encouraged Sandy to steal the money. And he certainly didn't ask him to leave it for him. What was he supposed to do? What was anyone supposed to do when someone takes it upon himself to commit a crime. My brother's keeper? What sort of sentimental claptrap is that. You're your own keeper and that's all you are. Trying to be anything else is stupid, dumb, for suckers, Earl kept telling himself... as both eyes blinked back tears. Was he weeping for his friend, he wondered. Or was he pitying himself, and what he had become.
When he awoke this time, the sun was barely peeking over the horizon. It was that time of early morning when salmon skies begin to light the day. Somehow he had managed to fall back to sleep. He had no memory of the searchers leaving. Certainly nothing like the chaos of their arrival. And now all was quiet. Even the cocks were silent, in fear or indifference, he didn't know which. But he did know he had to relieve himself, as he did every morning. So he slipped on his trousers and went outside.
As he aimed his spray at an unlucky bush, coolness clamped around him like a soothing balm. With the release of his water came a feeling of lightness, an instant of euphoria as he realized no one would be tying him to Sandy's folly. Then his thinking cap was jerked back as he remembered Sandy going over what he had done with the stolen money. Before he knew it, Earl was on his way to Sandy's.
One shack was very much like another in Tumba de Dios, and Earl had been there before. He didn't have to knock because Sandy's door was partially open, the part that was partial to hanging on by its last hinge. It had been kicked open, busted up, and left abused, as had the rest of Sandy's place. Books and papers raked off shelves, clothes pulled out and thrown down, hotplate turned over. They had looked but not found, Earl bet, remembering where Sandy told him that he'd hidden the money.
He walked through the disarray of Sandy's stuff to the back door. When he went outside, he knew he was in the right place. He could smell it. Turning to the right, as he had been advised, Earl took about twenty-something strides before he came upon what Sandy had called his landmark - a rock atop freshly turned-up earth. Looking around, to make sure no one else was up and watching him at this hour, he didn't think to go inside and look for Sandy's spade to work with. His only thought was to do what he had come to do as quickly as possible. So Earl dropped to his knees and began to sift through the mud and dirt and sand and grit with his hands. His palms, fingers, and nails digging away until he came to something softer and squishier than the topsoil over it. He had reached Sandy's stash covered in his friend's shit. Earl peeled the crap away with both hands revealing numerous paper bills. Pesos, Dollars, even some Euros among the purloined payroll profits. The thought of leaving it there never entered his mind. It had been left for him. He had found it. He dug through human feces to get it and he certainly wasn't going to leave it to chance, or for some animal to root up and eat, or for some other asshole to find. But he was going to take it to the river first and wash it and himself as best he could. Perhaps forgetting that sorrow seldom washes off.
Around the bend, where the river flowed shallow enough for a grown man to wade into up to his waist, Earl found more than he was looking for. There was a secluded spot behind a boulder where he could clean both his body and the cash. But there was something else as well. Something that chilled him far worse than the cold water. Dangling from the protruding limb of a giant Montezuma cypress tree was Sandy. They had hanged him and left his dead body there for others to see. To his shirt they had pinned a crudely lettered sign that simply read THIEF. Earl stared into the open eyes of his former friend for close to a minute. He couldn't look away. Then, he dunked his own head in the water and hurried to do what he had come to do. Now, he couldn't get away from there quickly enough.
Cortez's bus usually arrived for its turnaround near one pm. Earl stood outside the bodega where it always stopped. He wore the one floppy suit he had pulled from the Goodwill bag so many month's ago. Stuffed in virtually every pocket were the bills from the payroll. A combination of currency that came to a total of five hundred and thirty-seven dollars, and sixty-eight cents. A meager stake in the real world. A king's ransom in Tumba de Dios. Earl had said goodbye to no one. What was the point? The only one who might have cared in the least was hanging from a tree near the river. He had gathered no belongings from his room. Nothing he had acquired since he'd been there was anything other than detritus. He had left no forwarding address because he didn't have one, and gave no thought to the remaining inhabitants. Not the sullen barkeep, the oil rig roustabouts, not even the whore in the window. It was almost as if he had never been there at all. Never run away to the end of the world to escape what shameless villains, or misguided jurors, or perhaps fate, had tried to do to him. His mind, if it wandered anywhere, drifted back to Mable, and their time roaring over endless blacktop toward a far horizon. Earl knew he didn't have enough to get his own rig again. Anyway, it would be dangerous to go back into the same profession from which he went missing. Whatever he did, it would be hard to get started, and to live under constant fear of the law's radar. To constantly be waiting for a knock at his door, or bootheels to kick it in, the thought gave him pause. Of course, the alternative seemed worse. To turn himself in. To go to prison. To live a life of internment for decades. That was no option. But come what may, Earl was ready to start anew. He had been given the opportunity by a man so disillusioned with his purgatory that he had sinned to escape it. The cost? His life. Perhaps his soul. But he had to try, didn't he? He simply couldn't have left it all to chance. Still.
Cortez's bus arrived at one-thirty. The Mexican purchased what he wanted from the bodega, waited another fifteen minutes, then started back up the road that would eventually lead to civilization. He made the trip alone. Earl heard the bus pull out from his chair in the cantina, where a bottle of Mezcal and a shot glass stood on the table in front of him. Maybe next week, he said to himself. Or the next.
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