Badlands (15 page)

“They got something there, that ranch,” said Madelaine. “FBI, cops, they can’t go there, they don’t know what. They are stuck. You go there it is illegal, you pull some bullshit, blow everything up, it is fine for them. But them Host, they are not fools, Du Pré, they will be waiting you, somebody.”

Du Pré nodded.

“I don’t get these feelings so much,” said Madelaine. “I do, you pay some attention.”

Du Pré looked down at his hands.

A year after they had started loving each other, Madelaine and Du Pré had gone up to Canada, on a long driving trip to see relatives. One distant cousin of Du Pré’s had built an airplane from a kit, and he had flown it for several hundred hours. He offered to take Du Pré up in it and Du Pré agreed.

Madelaine wouldn’t let Du Pré go, and she told the pilot the next time he flew it he would die.

Du Pré’s distant cousin laughed at her, called her a foolish woman, and he got in his plane right then and he took off. He was a hundred feet up in the air when the fuel tank exploded.

“OK,” said Du Pré, “maybe I go later.”

Madelaine nodded.

The door opened and a middle-aged couple came in, pale and shaking, and the man seated his wife and then he came to the bar.

“Two brandies,” he said, “if we might”

Madelaine found a couple of snifters and she put shots of brandy in them and the man paid and then he took the big glasses to the table where his wife was sitting.

She was staring off in the distance, and she did not seem to notice when the man set the glass in front of her. He touched her shoulder very gently.

She burst into tears, and she crumpled.

“Why?” she said. “They wouldn’t even let us see them.”

“Them,” said Madelaine, “they are the parents, that woman kill herself, came to see the grandkids.”

Du Pré nodded.

“They stop here this morning?” said Du Pré.

Madelaine shook her head.

“H
E IS SOME GOOD,”
said Bassman. He lightly tapped the young man on the shoulder with his fist. The young man blushed and looked down at the floor.

It was Friday night. Bassman had driven down from Turtle Mountain with the young accordion player. If you mixed up Bassman and a burlap blonde you might come up with the fella.

“Good,” said Du Pré.

The young man held his accordion tightly.

“He is my son,” said Bassman.

The boy blushed again.

“I am sitting, my house,” said Bassman, “knock at my door. I think what is this, the police again. I open the door. Young Jean-Baptiste, he is standing there. He look at me. He say, ‘My mama tell me, you gonna play that damn music all the time, you go find that worthless bastard of a father of yours. Here is the money, get a bus ticket.’ So I say, ‘Play something.’ So he play and it is very good mostly. So I say, ‘Which one is your mama?’ He say, ‘Marcie.’ I say that is nice, which one of them, there were two.”

Du Pré roared.

“Him say, ‘Non, Papa, there were three. I am the one from the one had that big turquoise Cadillac.’ So I say, ‘Oh, her it is, yes, and I pray she is doing very well a long way, Turtle Mountain.’ He say, ‘She say, “Tell that fat prick, hope his dick has rotted off.”’ I say, ‘Yah, her I remember real good, she stab me once.’ He say, ‘Look, maybe we play some good music, not talk of your women problems which are not mine.’ So I say, ‘You come on in, have a joint, we see about things.’”

Du Pré and the young man were laughing so hard that people turned to look at them.

“Good you are here,” said Du Pré. “You maybe keep Bassman out of some trouble.”

Jean-Baptiste shook his head.

“Me,” he said, “I just want, play that good music, get in trouble like my papa.”

“That is my boy,” said Bassman, beaming.

Bassman grinned and went out the back door to find a quiet place to smoke his weed.

“My mama,” said Jean-Baptiste, “she say I am a pret’ good musician and she feel sorry for all the girls, but she still love Bassman. First time I see him is two days ago, I show up at his house. He tell me he is a real good bass player but not a good father. I tell him we see about that. He is a great guy.”

Du Pré nodded.

“Funny,” said Jean-Baptiste, “it is like he expects me, be mad at him and I am not.”

Du Pré nodded and he rolled a smoke.

“Bassman got a big heart,” said Du Pré, “and he play music that is him. He knows you are his son don’t want to fuck up.”

“He does not,” said Jean-Baptiste. “Fuck up would be say, me, I do not know what you are talking about, slam the door in my face.”

“He would not do that, you,” said Du Pré. “He is nervous, he will get over it.”

“Me, too,” said Jean-Baptiste. “I gotta play with you here tonight. Gabriel Du Pré, I got all your tapes, listen to them, listen to my father on them. I don’t know I am good enough.”

“I don’t know,” said Du Pré, “
we
are good enough. Tapes are perfect but we are not. Bassman, me, we play so long we know what the other is thinking. You get lost, stop, you find the music, start. There is all that we do.”

Jean-Baptiste nodded.

“I go and find my papa,” he said. He went out the back door.

The Toussaint Saloon was packed with people and Madelaine and Susan Klein were shoving beers and drinks over the bartop. They worked like demons on Fridays when there was music, serving prime rib, fish, and steaks from five until eight and then clearing the dinner things away so the music could start at nine-thirty.

Du Pré went to the end of the bar where his glass was and reached over and got the bourbon and poured a dram in his glass. He put the bottle back in the rack, dipped up some ice with his hand, and put it in the glass, and then he walked out the back door. It was light yet and only Venus shone in the sky.

Bassman and his son were standing off near some Siberian elms, passing a joint the size of a panetela back and forth.

Du Pré rubbed his hands. They hurt.

The arthritis just like Catfoot had, he is my age now, Du Pré thought, getting old.

Du Pré rolled a smoke and then he lit it and yawned.

He looked over at Bassman and his son.

Jean-Baptiste was pointing to the south.

Du Pré looked up.

Venus was moving and now it had some red in the lights, too.

Du Pré turned to look straight at it.

It moved fast, but not as fast as an airplane.

The lights got closer and Du Pré could hear jet engines.

“Du Pré,” shouted Harvey. “Come on! Come on!” He waved as he ran.

Du Pré drained his drink and set the glass on the front boardwalk of the saloon as he passed.

Harvey and Ripper were across the road moving out to the little airstrip. There was some breeze and the windsock flapped.

Du Pré caught up to them.

They were both wearing flak jackets and carrying machine pistols.

“Got my extras,” said Ripper. “Ten.”

“Check,” said Harvey.

The lights were fairly close now.

It was a helicopter with jet engines on it.

The pilot slowed and stopped and then he came straight down and doors opened in the side. Du Pré and Harvey and Ripper ran for them and they got in and pulled the doors to and the helicopter rose and turned and the jet engines screamed and they headed south and west.

“You got a gun?” said Harvey.

Du Pré shook his head.

“Good,” said Harvey. “I’d a had to take it away from you. Throw it out.”

“What is this?” said Du Pré.

“An hour ago,” said Harvey, “McPhie, that big Highway Patrolman, was sitting on the side of the road. Two vehicles passed him, one of ’em had a taillight out.

“Ordinarily he would have let it go, but it was a slow night, and he thought he’d give ’em a warning ticket. So off he goes, gumball machine flashing. The van and the truck pull over, which makes McPhie a little nervous, because he’s only after the truck. He is about to get out and do the long walk up there when some little voice says, this is no good. So he flicks on his loudspeaker and he orders everyone out of the vehicles.”

Harvey adjusted a strap on his flak jacket.

“McPhie did three tours in Nam and he has real sensitive antennae. Nobody moves up there. He hadn’t switched his engine off. He puts the car in reverse and punches it and shoots back. Good thing, too, because right then the rear door of the truck flies up and a whole lotta lead is coming his way. He hunkers down and keeps backing up at seventy, right over the hill. He stops and hollers into the radio. There’s a bunch of rocks near the road so he grabs all the guns he’s got and he makes a dash and gets there just as the van comes over the hill, guns outta every window.”

Du Pré nodded. “They shoot the shit outta his cruiser and then they get out. McPhie was a grunt and he knows cover. He’s got his portable radio. He describes the shooters. He tells the dispatcher where he is exactly. He has time for a couple of crossword puzzles before the people shooting go to the car, which is pretty holed up. They’re all women. They aren’t soldiers or they would have rushed it right off. Now they know he’s got away, so he stands up for a moment and sends off some buckshot and then he ducks down.”

“It is them?” said Du Pré.

Harvey looked at him.

“Has to be,” he said. “Pidgeon always said the shooters who killed the seven guys were women. Who the hell else could it be?”

Du Pré nodded.

“We’re there,” said a voice on the intercom.

The helicopter descended rapidly and then it jerked and roared and rose again.

“Shit,” said the pilot, “we got hit.”

They waited.

“Just some dents,” said the pilot. “Everything’s fine. But I think I will set you fellers down a little farther away from the festivities.”

“Har de har har,” said Ripper.

D
U
P
RÉ AND
H
ARVEY
hunkered down behind a county sheriff’s cruiser, and they stared at the two vehicles in the barrow pit. The truck and the van were pulled together, front ends on the rise beyond the deepest portion of the drainage ditch.

There were forty men ringing the two vehicles, all pointing rifles and all with their eyes clapped to telescopic sights. Half of them were sheriff’s deputies and half were local people.

“Nothing for a half-hour,” said the deputy behind the next car over. “They shot and we shot back. Quite a little firefight. Then it died away and I ain’t seen nobody move in there.”

“Anybody get a count?” said Harvey.

“Yeah,” said the deputy. “McPhie said there was eleven of ’em. Said that was what he saw, hell, there could be more in that truck.”

The high rectangular box of the truck was spackled with bullet holes.

“We need an armored car,” said Harvey.

“Wal,” said the deputy, “few minutes of Bender’ll be here with his Cat. It’s a D-9. We figure we can hide behind the blade and get good and close.”

Du Pré laughed.

“Hilarity,” said Harvey. “How nice.”

“They are all dead,” said Du Pré. “You come on now.”

He stood and walked up to the macadam and strode down toward the vehicles.

Ripper fell in behind him and then trotted to catch up.

Harvey stood.

Du Pré got close to the truck and went down into the barrow pit.

There were four bodies there, all women, all shot in the head. Du Pré opened the cab of the truck.

Two more.

Ripper danced up to the van and looked down and then he got down on his knees and hands.

He slid open the van’s side door.

A woman’s body fell halfway out.

She had been blond, and perhaps pretty, but the top of her head was gone and blood and brains dripped from her hollowed skull.

Men came.

“My God,” said one. “This is hell.”

Harvey was up in the truck box.

He looked around, pointing a flashlight.

“Get an ambulance,” he screamed. “Hurry the fuck up.”

“Nothin’ to do but wait for the coroner,” said a deputy.

“Where is Larry anyway?”

Ripper leaped into the back of the truck to help Harvey.

Du Pré moved away from the back of the truck. There were a lot of people coming, curious.

An ambulance came up, fast.

The two attendants jumped out, dressed in jeans and boots and the bright shirts of cowboys. They got a wheeled stretcher from the back of their van and brought it to the truck.

The two ambulance attendants got in, both with medical kits.

“’Bout everybody in the county over fifteen’s an EMT,” said a deputy. “No way we can afford a hospital.”

Harvey leaped from the back of the truck and ran down the road to the helicopter. He stuck his head in the door and then pulled away. The helicopter engines wound up and the jet turbines whined and the helicopter moved slowly up the blacktop and stopped fifty feet from the truck.

The stretcher was slid to the end of the truck bed and the attendants grabbed it and ran toward the helicopter.

Ripper was right behind. He dropped his vest and machine pistol at Du Pré’s feet. The stretcher was slid into the helicopter and Ripper got in and slammed the sliding door. The helicopter’s engines screamed and the rotors began to whirl. It rose up five hundred feet and then the pilot kicked in the jets and he headed toward Billings. The aircraft was over the horizon in no time.

Du Pré turned and saw McPhie and Harvey and a tall heavy man talking.

County sheriff.

Du Pré knew him. An odd name. Grotbo. One of the Hunkies who had come here to homestead.

Du Pré walked over to them.

“’Lo, Gabe,” said Sheriff Grotbo. “You vouch for this feller?” He nodded at Harvey.

Du Pré shook his head.

“Federal prick,” he said.

McPhie and Grotbo and Harvey all laughed.

“You OK?” said Du Pré to McPhie.

McPhie nodded.

“Scared shitless,” he said, “but I been that some in my life. Jesus, these people. One shootin’ herself is enough, but eleven of ’em?”

“Twelve,” said Harvey. “One’s still alive, though.”

“I can’t figure,” said McPhie, “what they think they’re doin’.”