Wear Your Home Like a Scar, page 12
The boy’s silence set Lester’s head spinning.
He touched Ruth’s hand. “You two need to run. Now. Fast as you can. Get help.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“You can’t stay. And I can’t go.”
Ruth opened her mouth to argue but snapped it shut then kissed him hard on the mouth. She called out to her son and they ran.
Lester tipped his head back to watch their silhouettes disappear into the night then trained his eyes on the moon. The stars poked holes in the black sky, the moon casting a silvery highlight on the surrounding rocks. A coyote bayed somewhere in the desert. He closed his eyes to focus his hearing, trying to determine how far away it was. In the silence, he could faintly make out the soft echo of his brother’s voice at the bottom of the quarry. Another coyote answered, this one significantly closer than the first.
“You hear that, Jacob?” he called out. “You always wanted to fill daddy’s shoes so bad?”
Jacob said something that was lost to the rocks.
“Sounds like they’ll oblige you.”
The coyote bayed again, closer now.
Back to TOC
Only the Vultures Will See Me Hang
The last thing Charlie Pruitt said before Butch took the door was, “You fuck this one up, I’ll shoot you myself.”
Butch nodded. “Mom always said you were the practical one.” Then he pulled the red bandana over his mouth and shouldered the door open.
The clerk behind the counter didn’t move, just kept his eyes on the sports section of the Kansas City Star, rereading the account of Don Larsen’s gem in the Series. Not that it mattered too much which team won the crown; if it wasn’t his Athletics, he didn’t rightly care. Still, a perfect game in the World Series was a thing to behold. He’d turned to page four when the column bulged. Folding down the edge showed him nothing but the barrel of a gun.
Butch motioned to the cash register with his Mauser and dropped a canvas bag on the counter. “I think you understand how this goes.”
Charlie kept watch at the door, black bandana covering his mouth and a finger wrapped around the trigger. He hated wearing these bandanas because he could smell his own breath in them, but it was better than offering up his portrait to a nimble-minded clerk who had a way with pencil and paper. Hell, it wasn’t really that bad. Definitely not like some of the huts he’d cleared before razing during his tour over in the islands. Shit, piss, blood, vomit. A pile of human decay beside a bassinet. How those animals could live like that wasn’t something he was sure he ever wanted to understand, but the bomb fixed a lot of their problems. Fixed them up in a flash.
Problems, though, that’s what the clerk was having with his register. He’d told his old man that the drawer kept sticking but his old man wasn’t willing to put out the money to get a new one. Put some elbow grease in it, he’d said. That was the problem with kids today, he’d said. The clerk’s shaking hands didn’t help in working the busted machine open, either. He’d heard stories about men like these two before, but they were usually from his old man and the story ended with the robber swallowing Dad’s Remington 31. That was all they’d been, though: stories. Now, with this bandana-man tracing his outline with a pistol and his hands shaking like after he saw Miss Monroe in that scene in The Seven Year Itch, he wished his old man would stop telling the story. And the whole time, the man with the red bandana kept pointing his gun and going on in that dirty Okie drawl about how Brooklyn definitely couldn’t win the Series now. Damn vagrants, the clerk thought as the register finally dinged open.
“I’ll take a cup of joe when you’re done,” Butch said, pointing at the coffee pot. ‘I’d pour it myself but I don’t want to take away your livelihood.’
Charlie coughed into his hand, stared at Butch like he was saying, What’d I tell you outside?
“Make it sweet and blonde, the way I like my trim.”
The clerk couldn’t see him smiling behind that bandana, but he could sure hear it. He scooped money from the till and dumped it in their bag. The canvas was the color of a bruised olive, the stains ranging from deep red to black. As he gave away the money they needed to pay the bank this month, the man with the black bandana strode across the room. The clerk couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it didn’t sound pleasant.
“I’ve got this under control,” Butch said.
“Like hell.” Charlie tried to scratch his cheek but the damn bandana was in his way like always. “In and out. That’s our way. What’d I tell you outside?”
Butch cocked his gun and pointed it at his own face. “Go ’head, if you’re needing to. But I need some coffee before we set out again. Didn’t get good sleep last night.”
“Then stop dreaming.” Charlie placed a palm on Butch’s gun, lowered it, then turned and pointed his M1911 at the clerk. “We’ll be leaving now.”
The clerk nodded, his lips quivering and making his words shake. “Do you still want coffee?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Charlie turned to face Butch the way a shadow chases a sundial. “We’ll be going now.”
“I told you I’m tired. I need some coffee before we ride, unless you want me to crash my bike.”
Butch leaned back against the wooden service counter, which was fortunate for him because Charlie rotated through the punch the way his CO taught him back in Luzon—some spittoon of an island in the Philippines he couldn’t find unless he had a compass pointed at hell—and knocked Butch clear off his feet, the counter being the only thing that held him up. Charlie grabbed him under the armpits and hoisted him to standing, whispering, “No details and no wasted time means no jail time,” then pushed him toward the front door, grabbing the canvas bag on the way.
Standing before the clerk, Charlie extended his hand, let the metal barrel rest on the end of the kid’s nose. “What’s your name, son?”
“Tim.”
“You think about calling for help, Tim, I’ll know.”
Tim shook his head.
“You do, I’ll string you up by your ankles and bleed you out from the throat.”
He pushed the door open and stepped right into Butch’s back, and before he could open his mouth, he heard a slurred voice yelling to put their hands up. Charlie stepped once around Butch, took a knee and put three bullets into the deputy’s car. Shattered glass fell to the ground, a small dust-storm in front of the rushing hole in the front left tire. The deputy shouted but his voice was muffled, ducked into the front seat like he was.
Charlie pushed Butch toward their bikes. He slipped his arms through the bag’s straps and threw a leg over the Indian he’d inherited from his daddy, then looked over at Butch. “This is why we don’t stay for coffee.”
Butch rubbed his jaw beneath the bandana. “See you there.”
The bikes’ tires threw rocks behind them, and left a cloud of dust to drift over the dirt parking lot.
Charlie didn’t believe that Korea was actually a war and so he felt he had no point of comparison with Butch. Butch said that The War to End All Wars was spread over two continents, and though his older brother’s men did their country a great service, they weren’t surrounded by water on three sides. All that death had been distilled into one small country full of farmers and villages and peasants riding animals. It’s not the amount of blood spilled, Butch thought, it’s the thickness of that blood, how hard it is to wash from your face. Charlie couldn’t tell him that yes, he did understand being trapped by water. Those long months in the Philippines, watching the kamikazes fall on them like damned stars, smelling the burning gas and flesh, picking up a tree branch to clear away some jungle and not realizing it was a charred arm until the wedding band flashed in the sunlight, they came to him in quiet moments, in loud moments, in dark and light and no matter if his eyes were open or shut, they came to him. So no, Charlie couldn’t tell his younger brother he understood being trapped by water because he couldn’t tell him anything about that island at all.
But both of them could agree they’d slept beneath too many open moons and wouldn’t spend a night without a roof over their heads and a mattress beneath their bodies.
They arrived at the motel separately, Charlie at dusk and his brother a good forty minutes after the sun disappeared. Butch had veered east once they got out of Bonner Springs, in the off-chance the deputy had a buddy within radio-distance. Before every job, they decided which direction they were heading. Once that was settled, the rest was easy: Third town on the highway, third motel in the town. When they started robbing, Charlie’d wanted to go farther away. That was easy when they were working back east, but out here, the fifth town might not have been until the next state, and who knew if that one would even have six motels. West had seemed the best direction, and they planned to go that way until they reached Arizona, then tack back across the country before touching the coast. They’d spent too much time near the water and wanted to keep their feet dry.
Butch walked into the motel room and found Charlie stubbing out a cigarette then lighting another. There had to have been a dozen butts in the blue glass ashtray.
“That was foolish, back there.” Charlie didn’t look up when he spoke.
“Everything was fine.” Butch shrugged off his leather jacket. “Didn’t even fall asleep on the road.”
“Little things like that are going to get us a reservation in the gas chamber.”
Butch plopped down on the bed. The springs squeaked. He pulled off his boots, placed the Mauser inside the right one. “No one’s catching me, brother. Only the vultures will see me hang.”
A cloud of smoke leaked from Charlie’s lips. He rubbed his brow then rose with a deep sigh, walking across the worn carpet to the map splayed out on the desk. “Next job in on the edge of the desert. Might get your wish if you keep that up.”
“I worked my way through more firefights over there than any of these hillbillies can manage. You just worry about yourself.”
Charlie looked up from the map. “I am.”
“How much did we pull?” Butch said, already walking over to the bag, spreading it open with his fingers. He paused in confusion, then yanked it off the bed and tore it open. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“That is the rest of it.”
“We got shot at for twenty-four lousy dollars?” Butch dropped the bag to the floor. “How far’s the next job?”
“More’n a hundred miles.” Charlie crushed another cigarette, lit a new one, stared at his brother from the top of his eyes.
“How the hell are we supposed to get a hundred miles on twenty-four dollars?”
“Don’t forget we have to pay the girl for this room.”
Butch let out a long, hard breath. “Guess that means we need to go to work early.”
“Guess so,” Charlie said, then went back to his bed but didn’t lie down. Couldn’t really lie down anyway. His body screamed for some rest but his brain couldn’t see fit to cooperate.
Butch, though, his eyelids were already twitching. Didn’t even take his shirt off before giving up. It was a skill learned in the service, coveted in the service, and possibly the reason he’d adjusted to civilian life as well as he had, being able to sleep. Rather, as well as he ever had. Besides being well-insulated from snipers, driving a Sherman through the hills had its advantages in that during the downtime, he already had a place to sleep lined up.
Pacing the edge of the room, Charlie put one foot in front of the other. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. For a throbbing second, he was back on night watch, letting the men of his platoon catch a few. Letting his ears relax to the rhythm of the jungle, determining the difference between a bird landing on a branch and a child’s foot landing on a twig. He’d never been sure if the night watch was punishment or a blessing, allowing his mind to focus on jungle sounds instead of flashburn images.
The platoon had been clearing a village, making sure there were no civilians before they brought out the gasoline and cigarettes. Charlie held watch with his grease gun, scouring the tree line for any incomings while the other men went from hut to hut. He’d heard a woman screaming, and as he spun saw his CO backpedal out of a hut, a Filipino woman banging her fists on his chest. Charlie’d called out for her to lower her arms, to step away calmly, indicating with his gun where to move. She continued, and as Charlie took sight to fire a warning shot, he saw a thin ghostly girl step out of the doorway, a stuffed rabbit clutched in her stained hand. Seeing a white girl was odd, but Christian missionaries had been in the islands for years. The part that froze Charlie was the girl’s eyes, something he could describe only as shocking blue, the same color as his daughter’s. Like she’d stolen his daughter’s soul and brought it to this hellish place just to remind him of what he was missing at home.
It wasn’t until he began to lower his gun that he realized the zipping sound he’d heard wasn’t his life being sucked out through his feet, but two grenades flying past. They bounced once then all he saw was white.
When his eyes cleared, he couldn’t tell which limbs belonged to which man. A leg lay beside him, ribbons of flesh draped across the jungle floor. He set the blade of his field knife between his teeth, bit down, and dislodged the chunk of wood sticking out of his leg. He tore off a length of the pants to wrap around his own calf and staunch the bleeding. Later in the hospital tent, he remembered thinking it looked like the grip of a baseball bat when a pitcher cuffed a batter and the bat shattered. Holding the wood in his hand, he leaned back to take a long breath and saw the girl with the rabbit slinking along the tree line, his daughter’s eyes six thousand miles from home, staring at him as they receded into the dark of the jungle. He grabbed the M1911 lying on the ground, peeled back the fingers of his CO and dropped the dead man’s severed hand, then started searching for his daughter’s soul.
His wife never could get used to the pacing when he got home, of Charlie trying to stamp out the aura of that girl. She’d hear the clicking all night long, like some grandfather clock carved just to drive her mad. It could’ve been one of the clocks he used to sell at Carver’s Furniture in town before the war, the ones she had sold while he was touring the Pacific, the ones she continued selling after he got back because her math was better and her personality both relaxed women and attracted men. Losing the job only pushed him further away from her, pushed him closer to his bottles, pushed his arm back farther when it swung at her. It happened only once, but as she spun around, her mouth kissing the edge of the kitchen table, he heard a muted shriek and turned to see his daughter Ruthie standing in the doorway, her stuffed Velveteen Rabbit clutched in her hand, her shocking blue eyes staring at her mother’s mouth, now dripping red. Charlie removed himself from the house the next day. He hoped she would not end up like him, growing up without a father, but thought she’d be better off that way.
Butch’s voice startled him. He turned and saw Butch sitting up in bed, smoking a cigarette.
“Try to close your eyes for ten minutes.” He pointed at the window, sunlight streaming around the edges of the wool curtains. “We’ve got to get going shortly.”
Deputy Lindsey Ryan stretched out his back and crooked leg when he stepped from the car into the gravel parking lot of Levin’s Diner. Ten hours of driving in a Buick would wreak havoc on a man’s back. He’d have rather had his patrol car, but Tim’s old man wasn’t the world’s most astute businessman and had neither a spare tire nor a patch kit in the garage. Ryan had to call his wife at home and get her to bring their car to the gas station, baby and all, then take her home before setting out to track down those two motorbiking sons of bitches. Figured now was a good time to get some eggs and coffee, refuel his tank before setting out again.
He tipped his hat to his Uncle Edgar sitting at the counter, then waved to the waitress and shuffled over to the back booth, loping his bent leg onto the bench. He set his wide-brim on the table by his hands as she came over.
“Two eggs, over easy, two sausages and some toast, if you don’t mind. I like my coffee hot and full, darling.” He nodded. “Obliged.”
The woman dinged the bell behind the wooden counter. A little head peeked eyes over the booth’s edge, stared at Ryan. They reminded him of pictures he’d seen in Life magazine after the war, of the brilliant blue water around the islands where men fought. He twisted his lips up and she giggled. Her mother told her not to bother the nice man and her face disappeared.
“I hope I don’t need to say it,” Charlie said. “That we’ve reached an understanding.”
“You get the crowd. I get the register.” Butch pulled the red bandana over his mouth, cocked his Mauser. “We’ll be staring at cacti before you know it.”
“Let’s make sure we do this job first.”
Only three of the eight booths inside were full. One man sat at the counter shoveling oatmeal in his mouth. When the woman leaning into the kitchen turned around, her trembling lips shattered the welcoming smile.
“Hello, darling,” Butch said. “We’re only here a minute so let’s keep this friendly, okay?”
Charlie swept the room with his pistol, watching for anyone who was feeling brave. The man in the back booth watched them with a dumbfounded intensity. Charlie cocked the pistol, let the click of metal on metal ring out.
The canvas bag landed with a thud on the counter. Butch nodded at the bag then sidled up to the oatmeal man, pointed at the purple scar that ran from the man’s temple down under his jawline, and let out a little laugh. “You tell her the pot roast was dry or she catch you with the neighbor woman?”
The man cleared his throat, grumbled, “Kaiser’s bayonet. Didn’t see him coming.”
Charlie called out, “An understanding, right?”
Butch extended his arm and shook hands with the scarred man. “You’re a good man and a hero.”
