Wear Your Home Like a Scar, page 7
Gimp lifted another pallet with the forklift and backed up and, for a moment, Carl’s heart pounded. Then Gimp drove away, and Carl lit another cigarette. He started reading down the manifest, checking that each item on the pallet corresponded to the number on the sheet, trying to be thorough but also not waste time.
He had his meeting in a couple hours, and he knew Betty would be expecting him later.
Back to TOC
Rose of My Heart
His name was Ross but I called him Rose. I never thought to ask if he minded.
There were a lot of things I never thought to ask, things I should’ve before letting him hitch a ride on my train:
Will a bad person go to Hell?
Can you load a revolver with one hand?
Do you know how to drive a stick?
Do you plan to abscond with my money and leave me shit out of luck?
But now, with the barrel of a Remington .29 nestled between my lips, I really wish I’d asked.
“You got any idea who you fucked with, puta?” the man says.
I’d shake my head but it might chip my teeth.
“No, you don’t. You don’t even know that you don’t know. What we do to people like you, gringa, we chop them in five pieces and leave them in the zócalo. Then hide the head to make people wonder.” He’s missing a finger. The remaining knuckles read LA REGLA—“the rule”—the ink more green than black. “You got till sunup to bring me my shit. It’s not in my hands by then, I kill you and your güero both.”
Guess I’ll get the chance to ask Rose in person.
Assuming I can find him.
I met Rose two weeks ago, at a roadhouse called The Painted Horse outside Amarillo. I was day-drinking mescal, the hang-dog Indian bartender keeping my glass full as long as I kept the bills coming. I asked him how he braided his hair so nice but he ignored me. At that point I was still pretty flush after hitting a check-cashing stand in Lawton, Oklahoma, four days earlier.
Rose sat two stools over, shuffling a deck of cards, ropes of muscle turning on his forearms, his thick blond hair curling out from beneath a Stetson. I was drunk enough to wonder what else he could do with those hands.
“You going to deal me in?” I said.
“I would, but it’d be impolite to take money from a lady.” He pushed the brim of his hat up with his index finger.
“You think I can’t play cards?”
“On the contrary. You could probably take a man’s wallet, watch, clothes, and car, then have him borrow money to buy you dinner afterward.” He gave me a big smile and I ground against the stool a little when I got a look at that jaw. “But I never lose.”
“How about you drink with me instead?”
“I’m Ross,” he said, holding out a hand. His forearms were covered in rose tattoos, all of them different styles—from traditional to jailhouse—and all of them terrible.
“Valerie,” I told him. That wasn’t my name.
“Pleasure’s all mine.”
“I like the way you talk.”
Forty minutes later, I fell back against the vinyl back seat of my Cutlass, wrapping up my hair in a bun on top of my head to cool my neck.
“You learn that on shore leave?” I said between gasps.
“Nah.” He lit a smoke, handed it to me then lit another for himself. “Catholic school.”
I made the sign of the cross. “I might fall in love with you, you make a habit of that.”
He held his cigarette between his teeth while he buckled his belt. “Was that a nun joke?”
After our cigarettes were finished, he held the back door open so I could climb out. I stretched my arms above my head, bent backwards and felt the Texas sun bake my skin.
“I’m going to wager you don’t have a job,” I said.
“Should I take offense to that?”
I shrugged. “The men I like generally don’t.”
I kicked the store’s front door so hard the top hinge buckled. Scared the shit out of the poor girl sitting at the counter. Rose came in beside me, blond hairs still curling out behind the gorilla mask he wore.
“This is going to be real easy, girlie,” I said. “You open the safe, put the money in my bag, then go back to reading sex tips in Cosmo. Got me?”
Her lips trembled like she was trying to think of a reason to protest. I cocked the hammer on my revolver. That made the decision for her.
Most times, that’s really all you need. People dream about being a hero, jumping over the counter and beating the hell out of the mean ol’ robbers. But when the moment comes, they realize it’s bad enough they’re a pretty girl working in a fertilizer supply store, and getting shot in the face over that just ain’t worth it.
She grabbed handfuls of banded bills from the safe and dropped them on the counter. Rose swiped them into a gym bag, never dropping one, while watching for any farm trucks pulling in. Every motion was fluid, like he’d done this a hundred times already, and that thought made me pause as much as it made my blood thrum.
“That’s it,” the girl said. “That’s all we have.”
Her tone said that was the truth.
“I told you this could be easy.” I stepped backward, heading toward the door without taking my eyes off her, expecting Rose to fall in line. But he rushed toward her and, for a second, a horror struck inside me, thinking he was going to kill the poor girl. Then he yanked the phone from the wall.
“Don’t want any calls,” he said to me as we cleared the front door.
He tossed the phone in the trunk next to the bag of money and we pulled out of the parking lot like the hounds of hell were gaining on us.
That night, sitting on a lumpy mattress at the Thunderbird Motel in Lubbock, legs crisscrossed and my skin flushed and tacky with sweat, I asked Rose how many places he’d robbed.
“None, why?”
“’Cause you took to that one like a fish to water.” I picked through my lo mein, putting all the chicken to one side.
“Something wrong with the food?” Rose stuffed half an eggroll in his mouth. Fried bits fell from his lips, landing on his bare thighs.
“I’m vegetarian.”
He looked at me like I was speaking another language.
“I don’t eat meat.”
“But it’s chicken.”
“Yeah?”
He considered that a minute. “You rob banks but you won’t eat meat?”
“I like animals,” I said. “Don’t care so much for people.”
“Oh.” He devoured the other half. “Well I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
I started to say I told you that when we ordered but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. I stabbed my chopsticks into the container of noodles. “You telling me the truth?”
“About being sorry or robbing stores?”
We toured west and central Texas, hitting another farm chemical supplier in Odessa, then places in Barstow, Fort Stockton, and Dryden—none of which proved to be worth the effort, as the drought had brought most farming to a halt—before hopping on Route 90 and tracing the Mexican border. In Comstock, I ate some bad enchiladas and spent most of my time hugging the toilet. Rose would fill up a washcloth with ice from the machine and hold it against my neck, slicking my hair back off my face. It was about the sweetest damn thing anyone had ever done for me.
It took two days for me to find my feet again. By that time, the cash that had been flowing at the Painted Horse was down to a pathetic dribble. I reckoned we had three days before we were broke again.
I sipped at a warm Lone Star, hunched over a map spread out on the chipped laminate table.
“I say we head north toward Fort Worth, then pick up 35 toward Oklahoma. Might be a little slower, but it’s better than doubling back and risking hitting an APB.”
Rose pulled a cheese-and-peanut-butter cracker from the plastic sleeve.
“Let’s go south.”
I considered it a minute, before shaking my head. “I’ve always had good luck in Oklahoma. We need something to go our way.”
“I used to have friends down this way.” His finger circled Laredo and Corpus Christi. “Lots of money to be made.”
“We talking about the same kind of money?”
“The green kind?” He turned on that smile that made my knees go to water.
Something in my head said Oklahoma was the way, but then he hooked his finger inside the waist of my jeans and started tracing my hipbone. “You ever swam in the Gulf of Mexico? Prettiest place you ever seen. Don’t even have to wear anything, the water’s so warm.”
His finger went farther down and slipped inside.
South it was.
We stopped for gas outside of Del Rio, not far from the Mexican border. He went to grab something from the market across the street while I filled up.
The pump clicked off, but Rose still wasn’t back. I parked on the side of the squat cinderblock building, scanning the sidewalks for Rose. A twist of black smoke threaded through the cloudless sky, coming from somewhere in Ciudad Acuña. All the problems they’d been having over there, I was surprised the whole damn city wasn’t on fire. It was the same in most of the border towns. Laredo. Tijuana. El Paso. Anywhere there was space to fight for, cartels were fighting for it. That had pushed a lot of the crews into Texas, sparking off a whole new round of fighting with the local operations. That was part of the reason I stayed away from drugs—too much violence. The other part was growing up seeing what heroin did to my mother. I stuck to good ol’ armed robbery.
“Elote?” someone said.
I jumped back and cocked my fist, ready to spread a nose across a face, when I saw Rose standing next to me holding two ears of grilled corn.
“I thought you might want to eat.”
I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I smelled the food. “Scared the shit out of me.”
“Got something for us.” He grabbed my arm and walked half-a-block down. Still chomping on the corn, he nodded across the street. “Let’s get the masks and get paid.”
A short man with a thick mustache stood behind a small grill, turning food with a pair of metal tongs. The sign had prices in dollars and pesos.
“We’re going to hold up a street vendor?” I shook my head. “I think you misunderstood something.”
He set his hand on my chin and pointed my head to the left.
“A bar?” I felt my body sink. “Hell no. There’s a reason I stick to small, inconspicuous places. No one I come across in a farm supply store has a shotgun under the counter.” I pointed at the bar—which was sketchy anyway. “Those guys definitely do.”
“I checked it out, darlin’. Nothing but a couple drunks sleeping and some field hands that aren’t going to risk getting shot over a few thousand pesos. That’s like, less than a dollar. Be out before they know what to say.”
“That fast?”
“Moving fast and silent is in my blood. My grandfather is Comanche.”
I hated the idea of hitting a place like that, but we weren’t far from sleeping in the car.
“In and out in less than a minute,” he said. “Don’t even bother with the people. Grab what’s in the register and beat feet. It’ll get us two days south and we can find some better places there.”
I finished off the elote and, like it was a sign from God, my stomach unleashed a primal growl. The corn had only made me realize how long it’d been since I’d had a full meal.
“Fuck it,” I said, tossing the gnarled cob into a trashcan.
We parked on the side on the road, then grabbed the masks and guns. Outside the door, Rose kissed me, bit my bottom lip so hard I tasted blood.
“Ladies first,” he said.
I kicked the door in and started doing my thing, yelling and flipping over tables. I figured, bigger job, bigger front. The drunks never woke and the field hands just cowered.
But that bartender—six-foot-eleven, skin so dark his teeth looked like stars, thick Pancho Villa mustache drooping over his mouth—he looked insulted. And angry. I forgot what I was doing. Rose kept up his end, slamming stuff and making a lot of noise to show we weren’t fucking around. He tossed the bag onto the bar.
The bartender looked at him for what seemed like ages, then said something in Spanish. Rose flinched slightly, then trained his revolver on the bartender. After a minute, the bartender unlocked the safe. “Your funeral, pinche güero.”
Something passed behind Rose’s eyes. On the surface, it looked like they were smiling, but not in a happy way. Not like it should’ve been when the job was within reach. This was deeper, darker, covered in blood and filled with screams.
Rose said, “The spirit of Buffalo Hump says burn in hell.”
Then he shot the bartender in the face.
Everything moved incredibly slow but hyper-fast at the same time. Rose vaulting the bar. Us busting out of the door. We were on the highway, then in a motel room somewhere in southwest Texas. It could’ve been anywhere and it could’ve been nowhere.
I couldn’t feel my body. Everything inside me was vibrating with the sound of that gunshot.
Then Rose dumped the bag on the bed.
There were so many bills they tumbled off the side. And not the stacks I was used to seeing—dirty ones and crumpled fives. These were twenties. Fifties. Some hundreds. More money than I’d ever seen in my life.
“Where did this come from?”
“The bar, darlin’.” He said it with something like a laugh.
I pushed the money around, like I was making sure it was real, when my hands hit something buried underneath. I swatted stacks aside, and sitting on the floral bedspread were two thick rectangles wrapped in black plastic, gray duct tape holding it closed.
“Rose, what is—” The room tilted and at the same time contracted, like the walls were breathing. “I need air.”
I slapped open the door and started walking. No destination, I just needed the sun to scorch my skin, something to ground me.
So I walked. I remember looking down at the sidewalk when I left the motel—to avoid eye contact with anyone. I had no shadow and thought that was some kind of sign.
I knew what those packages were. I had no contact with anyone in that world, but still: I knew what those were. But knowing and possessing were massively different.
What the hell was I going to do? Leave without Rose? My money, car keys, and few possessions were in the room. Join him? No way was I was getting into the drug game. Existing on small stick-up gigs wasn’t the most consistent way to live but it had worked for the last ten years. And besides: I didn’t want to leave Rose. It was lonely out on the road, every motel the same, each room empty when I walked in. I liked watching Rose sleep. I liked smelling coffee when I walked out of the shower. That he fucked like a choirboy twice a day didn’t hurt either.
So where did that leave me?
“To do what I do.” I startled as I realized I said it out loud. A woman walking her dog stopped to look at me. I’d have to do the same thing I did every job. Make them obey.
By the time I got to the motel, I was drenched with sweat and starving. I was going to go inside, lay down the law, then make Rose take me out for tamales.
And as my knuckles rapped against the door, my eyes looking out at the parking lot, I remembered thinking, Where the hell is my Cutlass?
Then the door flew open. It was not Rose.
The big brown man motions for his men to leave. He stops when he gets to the door.
“You’re lucky Osiel called me. I don’t kill women. My abuela raised me different. But all these pinches malditos, they’re savages. They fuck you then kill you then maybe fuck you again. ¿Entiendes?”
“I understand.” My voice quivers. I tell myself to buck the fuck up. “If it means anything, I left as soon as I saw the drugs. I don’t cotton to that.”
He stares at me for a long minute and his eyes are absolutely terrifying.
“It don’t.” He points the gun at me. “You find your güero. Find my shit. Find your way north. You’re banned from Texas.”
I stand in the middle of the room after they leave, my legs trembling, willing myself not to puke on the carpet. Then the trembling from fear becomes trembling from rage. That motherfucker ripped me off. Stole from me. I told him I didn’t want to go south and he talked me into it. I told him I didn’t want to hit the bar and he talked me into it.
But why? I start pacing the room, blood pounding in my fists. Before I realize what I’m doing, I feel a crunch against my knuckles. My arm is sticking through the cheap bathroom door, halfway to my elbow. I definitely need to leave here, like ten minutes ago.
I’m stuffing the card the man wrote his number on into my purse, lying on the carpet, when a glimmer catches my eye. I snatch it up, cup it in my palm. A matchbook with The Painted Horse in gold lettering.
And it all hits me. Rose being sure the bar was fine, assuring me his grandfather was Comanche, the way he handled himself all the time, all that spirit of Buffalo Hump horseshit. That motherfucker knew he was going to hit that bar the first time we robbed a place. It wasn’t a one-off: it was revenge for something that happened long before I met Rose. And it almost got me killed.
Goddamn, you are stupid, woman. Mescal and a good dick’ll do that to you, I suppose.
At least I know where I’m headed now.
I step inside the Painted Horse. Light streams through the windows, catching the motes of dust. There’s a man behind the bartender, a gringo younger than me.
Like last time, the place is mostly empty. One man sitting in the corner, eating a plate of rice and beans with a beer to the side.
And sitting at the bar, shuffling those same cards, is my Rose.
I straddle the stool next to him and order a mescal. “Most expensive you got, and make it a double.” I hook my thumb at Rose. “He’s paying.”
