The Final Country (33 page)

“He don’t wake up,” the housekeeper kept moaning. “He don’t wake up.”

“Where the hell is everybody?”

“The bulls,” she muttered, “the bulls are in the road. The men round them up…”

“Probably a case of raging pneumonia,” I said to Molly, “but maybe he’s had a stroke, too. I’m going to call a chopper. Get some blankets.”

The old man was still alive and, according to the paramedics, stabilized as the chopper took off from the front yard half an hour later. Even his color was better as soon as they got an oxygen mask on him. The distraught housekeeper fell back on the household routine. Before Molly and I could leave, we had to sit down to huge plates of
huevos rancheros
and eat just to keep the old woman from bursting into tears.

So by the time we got back to the barn to pack for the trip to Montana, we were yawning so hard our jaws cracked. We were stretched out on the cot in our clothes and almost asleep when the rounds started punching through the Caddy. First, I heard the pops and tinkle of glass as a headlight was shot out, then the following echoes of the rifle’s fire. Then the flat slaps as the shooter ran half a dozen rounds into the body of the Caddy. The sniper hadn’t bothered with a suppressor this time and had brought a larger bore assault rifle. It sounded larger, maybe an M-14 or an AK. I found a crack to peer through. A dark van was parked to block the road on a rise just out of pistol range, semi-automatic gunfire pouring out of the dark interior through the open side door. They had probably cut the fences so Tom Ben and hands would have their hands full horsing his bulls out of the highway.

“Some son of a bitch is shooting holes in my Cadillac,” I said. “And if we go outside, he’s gonna shoot holes in us,” I said, unlocking the foot locker. I grabbed the Mini 14, stuck it through the crack in the main door, and ran a clip through it. Mostly the rounds just raised dust, but a couple smacked into the side of the van. It backed off a hundred yards or so, then the firing began again. I turned to Molly. “Grab whatever you can carry,” I said. “It’s time to run.” I gathered the cash, the fake ID, the cocaine, and a bagful of clips and stuffed them into my war bag when the rounds started punching through the metal walls about waist-high, moving back and forth, steady searching fire.

No time for explanations now. I grabbed Molly’s arm, pulled her down to the floor, then dragged her out of the corn crib over to the large drain in the center of the barn, jerked off the iron grate, and stuffed her inside. The drain would give us a little cover. I went in right behind her. It was just large enough for us to slither through the old milk and cowshit, while round after round punched through the tin walls, ricocheted off the concrete floor, whirring like shrapnel until they slammed into a stall or one of the opposite walls. We bellied our way out to the abandoned drain pit behind the barn, where we rested for a few moments, then dashed for the safety of a dry wash. I leaned over the side of the wash with the Mini 14, but the black van remained hidden, pumping rounds into the barn.

“What the hell’s going on?” she asked breathlessly.

“I guess whoever’s been trying to kill me has decided that they don’t have to be subtle anymore,” I said, and she managed a wry, smudged smile, and didn’t complain as we trudged up a muddy path out of the wash, then ran toward the safety of a low rise just beyond.

Without the sun and no real sense of the lay of the ranch land, I just assumed that the wind and rain came from the northwest, so we marched straight into it as best we could across the broken terrain. We only paused for short rests and to take down electric fences in our way. In the second or third pasture, we came across an idle D-9 Cat with a root plow attached to it. I bent the barrel of the Mini 14 prying the padlock off the toolbox, then discarded it. I picked out a large screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and a roll of duct tape, then used the pliers to steal the battery.

“Okay,” she said, “I gotta ask. Where the hell are we going?”

“You’ll never guess,” I said, tucked the battery under my arm, then led the way into the storm. Neither of us looked behind us at the soft explosion and the plume of smoke that had to be my Cadillac burning to the ground.

“Goddammit, I loved that car,” I said. “I’m gonna have the hide and hair off somebody’s ass for that little deal.”

“It’s just a car,” Molly said.

“You got to be kidding,” I said. “That was my last permanent address.”

She chuckled a moment, then we moved on silently into the brisk wind.

* * *

Several hours later, convinced that the van hadn’t followed us, we crossed the final ridge. The rain eased into a light mist, but the wind and scudding clouds didn’t relent. Down in a shallow hollow, the catch pond gleamed like a dull silver dollar, the line shack leaning beside it.

The tires could have used some air, the Cat’s battery had to be duct taped into place, but it was a classic short box GMC V-6 four-wheel-drive, the keys were in the ignition, and the engine nearly fired on the first try. It didn’t take too long, though, until the tough little V-6 ran fairly smoothly. While I cleaned up as best I could in the shallow pond, Molly turned the heater on high and disposed of the spiderwebs and dirt dauber nests in the cab of the pickup. While I dried out in the blowing heater vents, Molly went to the pond to clean up.

I had just washed the mud and cowshit off my clothes with wet rags, but as I watched through the broken door of the line shack, Molly took off her clothes and waded into the pond. Standing thigh-deep in the chill wind and water as she washed her clothes, her skin darkened into a coppery, ebony shine I would have never seen without that ashen light, and when I stood naked on the edge of the pond, she raised her nose into the wind as if she could smell me coming. Her nipples were as hard as ice cubes, but inside she was as warm and soft as the ashes of a cooking fire. As I stood anchored in the soft mud of the bottom of the pond, my toes curled like talons, her long legs locked around my hips, one arm around my neck, the other pounding on my shoulders, her head back, neck arched into a quivering cord of muscle, her teeth gleaming in the feral Texas light.

Once we were back in the pickup, dressed and drying out, I removed the butterfly bandages and cleaned the faint wound, and Molly smiled and asked me, “Two questions, old man? What the hell was that about?”

“Just about as much fun as old men get to have, lady.”

“And how the hell did you know how to find this place?”

“Tom Ben told me where it was when he told me about you,” I said. “He thought the truck was too fine a piece of machinery to bury in the pond. And we had a little luck.”

“A little luck?”

“It’s Sunday.”

“I’m sorry, but what the hell’s that got to do with it?”

“I don’t believe that bulldozer driver would have let me have his battery,” I said. “But it was his day off.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Somebody got it in here,” I said, “so we can get it out. A little air in the tires, a little gas in the tank, and a couple of stolen license plates, then we’re goin’ to Montan’ to throw the hoolihan.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“Either some kind of cowboy party or a double-looped rope. Nobody seems to be exactly sure.”

“I vote for the cowboy party part,” she said. “But you’re going to have to do something about that hat.”

“Now I’ve got a couple of questions for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Where’d you get this truck?”

“It was waiting in the airport parking lot,” she said. “Keys over the visor, directions to the old man’s place in the glove box. I’d done all my research before I left Vegas — law school was at least good for something.”

“What did you do with the option you got Tom Ben to sign?” I asked.

She laughed, kissed me on the cheek, then whispered in my ear.

I had to laugh, then asked, “You still have it?”

“Nope,” she said. “When I finally got back to Vegas, I gave it to Jimmy Fish, but I think it stunk too much to do anybody any good.”

“Just the rumor of it made a lot of people uncomfortable,” I said.

“They weren’t the only ones,” she said, then laughed again.

* * *

We picked up a set of stolen plates off a closed used car lot in Junction, then swapped again in Del Rio, driving straight through all the way to El Paso, where we checked into the El Camino downtown as Mr. & Mrs. Hardy P. Malvern the next afternoon. I left Molly lolling in a bubble bath while I drove across the border and parked around the corner from the Kentucky Club, leaving the keys in the truck, then had two margaritas at the Kentucky Club, and assumed the classic pickup had disappeared before I crossed the murky, shallow waters of the Rio Bravo del Norte. I called Carver D on the scrambled cell phone, asked him to check out the expired plates and the VIN on the pickup, then woke Molly long enough for room service Mexican food, and to send our clothes out to be cleaned, then we made love and slept the sleep of the newly alive until they returned our clothes the next morning. Then we took a cab to the airport where Hardy P. Malvern rented a Jeep Cherokee, and we headed north to Montana.

* * *

It had been so long since I had been in Livingston that the last thing I expected was to see somebody I knew when we checked into the Murray Hotel two nights later. When I handed the night clerk, a woman who looked remarkably like Carol Channing’s little sister, enough cash for three nights, she looked at the Hardy P. Malvern name on the registration card, then glanced back up at me, saying “Don’t I know you, partner?”

“Never been here before, ma’am,” I lied, but she looked as if she didn’t believe me. I couldn’t remember when I last stood in front of her, but she almost remembered.

“I’ll need your license plate number,” she said, tapping the registration card with a long fingernail, “and some ID.”

“I thought Montana was supposed to be a neighborly place,” I said, then turned my back to the counter to dig into my billfold for Hardy’s driver’s license. In the reflection of the plate glass window, I looked like the survivor of a terrible car wreck that only my hat survived. Then I couldn’t remember the license plate number on the Jeep. We had driven straight through from El Paso, and my head was still ringing with road miles, my eyes blurred with the images of drifting snow, and my nose burning with the bitter cut of the coke. “Honey,” I said, “I’ve forgotten the plate number again. You want to check it for me?”

“Your driver’s license expires next month, sir,” the night clerk said suspiciously as she handed it back to me.

But Molly saved us. She touched my arm, smiled, then turned, walked through the front door on her high-heeled boots as steady as a schooner in a freshening breeze. I might look like death microwaved, but Molly was a lady.

“You better take care of it, Mr. Malvern,” the night clerk said, then smiled happily as she handed the license back to me.

“You don’t have a typewriter I can borrow?” I said.

“Be careful,” she said as she pulled a battered portable from under the desk. “It’s an antique. And supposedly haunted. If it starts cussing at you, throw a shot of Wild Turkey down its throat.”

When the rented Jeep was finally stuck in the lot, and the Macallan poured over ice, I sighed. The room was long and narrow, filled with comfortable old furniture. Outside, the Livingston wind, as cold as a developer’s heart and as hard as a crap shooter’s luck, roared down out of the Absarokas, throwing pellets of corn snow against the windows like a rattle of distant automatic gunfire. But we were safe and warm and home.

“We made it,” Molly said. “I can’t believe it.”

“At least we’re this far,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll make it the rest of the way.” On the endless trip I had told Molly everything I knew about what had happened to me. I had left out the part about her hypocrite of a natural father because I assumed that she didn’t need to know that. I had learned a long time before that my father had killed himself because he was in love with another woman and afraid to tell my mother. It wasn’t a decision I would have made, but it was a long time ago. It had to be better for Molly to think of her father as a tough little one-armed son of a bitch who would take me on with a bottle rather than tell me where she was. “But that won’t be the end,” I said. “I still have to go back to Texas.”

“Do what you have to,” she said, picking up my hand and holding it to her lips, “and we’ll work it out.”

I was back in Montana, right, but that wasn’t the only reason my heart sang like the wind. Molly’s blue eyes no longer looked like a false dawn but were shining with what I hoped was hope. Then I turned to the typewriter.

* * *

It took all the next morning to get some cold weather clothes — winter underwear, insulated coveralls, gloves, and pacs — and a set of chains for the Jeep. We were heading for dirt roads and the weather on this side of the Divide could change quicker than the price of wheat futures. I packed the remaining cocaine and weapons in my war bag, checked with Molly one more time, who sat in front of the dresser mirror trying to make her hair fit attractively under a Scotch plaid hat.

“I’m along for the ride, honey,” she said.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said.

Downstairs I stopped by the desk and returned the typewriter to a tall man with a dark beard, then hiked across the street to the dark, dingy bar where I had spent some time in the past.

The same ex-biker still stood behind the stick, waiting for something. He bounced down the bar toward me, and I held my finger up to my lips.

“Hell, it wouldn’t have mattered, man,” the bartender said. “I almost didn’t recognize you in that get-up. Where did you get that hat?”

“Ran over a cowboy outside Laramie.”

“That explains it,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Let me have a shot of schnapps and a cup of coffee,” I said, pulling an envelope out of the insulated Carhart’s. “Then I want you to hold this for a while. If I don’t show up in a few days, mail it.”

The bartender looked at the address. “He’s in fucking law school? Jesus, I thought he’d be in the slam by now.”