Caught in the Devil's Sheets (11 page)

“Yeah.” I discard my phone back in my bag.

“Want me to drive?” he asks before choosing a side to get in on.

“No, I’m good till dark,” I say, unhooking the keys from my purse chain.

“Okay.”

“Thanks again for breakfast,” I say as we get back on the interstate headed for New Mexico.

“My pleasure,” he says politely. Then it’s quiet again. Odin fishes through my CD case and pulls out the Best of Pantera. “I can play this whole album,” he boasts.

“I’d love to hear it,” I say impressed. By the end track, Odin is sleeping off his steak and eggs sprawled out in the passenger seat.

Another hour and we finally have made our way into New Mexico

“Welcome to New Mexico,” I say cheerfully as Odin stirs awake.

“Thanks.”

“Can I ask you something?” I warm him up to the line of privacy I’m about to breech.

“Shoot.”

“Why doesn’t Rick like you?”

“He’s a Mosley, I’m Team Harting.” Odin tries to explain, using club relations.

“Why does he think you’re dangerous?” I ask more specifically.

“He’s probably just associating whatever he knows about my father with me. That’s why I left Louisiana. I didn’t want to be associated with my old man,” he says, making me even more curious about the man his dad was.

“You want to tell me more about your dad?” I ask on the off chance that he just needs a little coaxing.

“No. I really don’t,” he says shaking his head, and I regret asking.

“Okay.” I drop it, but on the inside I’m dying to know. It’s getting dark, and we pass very few cars on the truckers’ route to Texas. We weave through the canyons of New Mexico, cruising at about 80 miles an hour.

Odin screams the F-word! I take in a quick sudden gust of air, gasping in terror as a giant deer jumps into the middle of the road. I don’t even have time to slam on my breaks before I hit him. I try to swerve, but we are going too fast. I flip the Sedan several times before crashing into the cement guardrail and landing on all four tires.

My heart is racing. I immediately open my eyes to see Odin bracing himself and staring wide-eyed back at me.

“Are you okay?” he asks before I can.

“I’m fine, are you okay?” Odin nods, then unhooks his seatbelt. The car is mangled and he has to force his door open.

I try to do the same, but my door won’t budge. In the distance I can see headlights. Odin hurries to pull me out the passenger side of the car. The headlights turn out to be a trucker, who stops when he sees us climbing out of our crumpled car. He steps out in a hurry, already on his phone with highway patrol. Odin and I quickly cast a nervous glance at each other. I duck back inside and grab the keys out of the ignition. The trucker is giving highway patrol our mile marker, then he hangs up the phone.

“You fellas alright?” he asks in a Southern accent.

“We’re fine, but the car took a bit of a beat down,” Odin carries on light conversation with the trucker while I try to unlock the trunk.

“Highway patrol will be about 10 minutes. Y’all got lucky. Sometimes it can take them up to half hour to respond in these parts.”

“You don’t say.” Odin looks behind him to see how I am coming along.

I shoot him a panicked glance. The trunk is jammed shut, it won’t open! I shake my head at him.

The trucker is still going on about how many accidents he’s witnessed due to deer and drowsy driving.

Odin excuses himself. “Keep him talking,” he says to me quietly, taking over.

I walk around and stand so that I am facing Odin, and the trucker has his back turned to the sedan. I’m still very shook up, but I try to breathe through my panic. I try to carry on conversation with him, but each minute Odin pries at the trunk with no luck, anxiety builds inside me.

I watch as Odin climbs back in the passenger seat, and he opens the compartment in the back seat that leads to the trunk. There’s no way those suitcases are going to fit through that little cubby. I watch as Odin heaves the decoy bags out, and tosses them quickly aside. I can tell he is in a panic, and so am I. Police will be here any minute. If he doesn’t get those bags out, we are going to prison. Even if he does get those bags out, there is a good chance we are going to jail tonight. I smile at the trucker, keeping Odin in my side vision. He has his foot on the seat and he is heaving with all his might, shoving his hands into the cubby, frantically trying to pull out the suitcases. To my amazement, he pulls one free. I keep looking down the road to spot cop lights, and I pray to God to buy me some time.

Odin manages to spring the other bag free, and the trucker helps us to quickly pile our bags on the side of the road just as I see red and blue lights light up down the way. My heart begins racing.

Odin leans over to whisper in my ear. “If we go to jail tonight, I was driving, and you are just my poor, naive girlfriend who had no fucking clue I was bringing drugs to Texas. They won’t believe you, but it will hold up in court later. Don’t say anything else. Do you understand me?”

I hate to let him take the heat like that, but as the officers step out of their car, my heart is in my throat and I nod in agreement to his plan. The trucker leaves us, wishing Odin and I good luck before heading on. The cops don’t separate Odin and I, as Odin tells them how the deer jumped out of nowhere. It’s obvious, as deer remains lay scattered all over the pavement. I note the names of the police officers as they stand in front of us, with the spotlight from their car lighting up the scene of the accident. One is Gomez and the other is Parker. Parker walks down the road a ways and finds the head with two giant antlers.

“Whew,” he whistles, catching Gomez’s attention. “Jose, get a look at the size of this thing!” Parker holds the head up by the antlers.

“Lucky y’all are okay. We see this all the time. Folks have died over a deer half that size. Best be saying an extra prayer tonight,” Gomez advices.

“Oh, I always do!” I bluff the role of a God-fearing Christian girl. Three years of Christian School is finally coming in handy.

Gomez, who looks to be in his late 50’s with salt and pepper hair, smiles at me with a wink. Odin hands him all the rental car paperwork.

Gomez informs us that since it’s a rental, the rental company will redeem the incident report. We decline getting checked out at the hospital, insisting that we are just fine. They offer to give Odin and I a ride to the nearest motel. We eye each other speculatively, but we don’t have much of an option.

Gomez and Parker help Odin load all the bags, including the two gray suitcases full of pot and cocaine into the truck of the police cruiser. Then Odin and I get into the back seat. The police chat us up the entire way to the motel, which is about 15 miles down the road. My heart races the entire time, but Odin keeps a cool attitude and I struggle to do the same.

Once we are safely in the lobby of the Super 8 Motel with all our bags, and the cops have left, I finally let out a sigh of relief. We are still in a full state of shock as we drag our bags to the front desk and book a room for two. The Super 8 is only two stories, and we are on the lower level in a room that faces the parking lot. Odin slides the key in the door and opens it for me. I heave my bags through and instantly throw myself onto the bed, still completely stunned.

Odin puts the suitcases in the closet, shutting the door behind him. Then he plops down on the bed right next to me. We stare up at the ceiling a moment, then Odin starts to laugh. His beaming humor is contagious and I burst out in laughter right along with him. I laugh so hard my stomach hurts and I hold it tightly, unable to stop.

“Jesus Christ!” he barely manages to blurt out.

“I know right!” I can hardly contain myself, tears of laughter streaming down my cheek as I giggle uncontrollably.

He rolls over and hugs me, and because of the fact that we just totaled a car, lived, and managed to escape life in prison, I hug him back.

The next morning I feel sore from the crash. Odin gets us a rental car from Enterprise that is dropped off to the motel. We finish our way into Texas, which is only a six hour drive.

Chuck’s Chevy SUV is parked out front. Odin gets out of the car to knock, and Crystal answers. It’s chilly out and Odin gets my bags for me and brings them inside the house. The guest room here still isn’t ready for visitors, and I suspect they’re growing pot in there, not doing renovations

Chuck tells us that T-Dawg, the guy he told us about last time, is ready to meet with us next weekend if we can make it happen.

Odin tells him we’ll talk it over with Felix when we get home. We are able to get all of our sales done Saturday night and decide to go ahead and hit the road. Odin drives, and I sleep through the night. I haven’t been keeping track, but it seems like Odin is able to function on less sleep than I am.

Now that there’s nothing but money in the car, it’s a much less shady ride home. I’m going to have one hell of a bill to pay to replace that rental car I totaled. I will have to go on like three more runs to cover that chunk out of my savings, but I try to stay positive, and just be happy that I’m alive and not wearing an orange jumpsuit!

Around 8:00AM we stop at a gas station to switch places. I have a message from Rick saying that Jaime is awake. There’s a million and one questions I’d like to ask via text, but I have to wait until I get home. Odin is asleep within minutes of me taking the wheel. I try hard not to, but I can’t escape dwelling on all the things that are not going my way right now. I’m sick of running. While I enjoy having Odin’s company and it is nice to be away from home, I am exhausted from being on the road. I need to figure out what’s next for me, with or without Jaime.

I wonder what his condition is and what happened to him exactly. I find myself speeding, a little anxious to get home and find out, but I quickly catch myself.

The rest of the trip is quiet. Odin sleeps a good portion through my daylight drive. There is a lot running through my mind. Jaime must be okay or Rick would have said more. What’s up with Jaime and Sergio? Will Jaime go to jail? Will we stay together? Aside from all these issues lingering in my head, the one that’s really bothering me right now is Billy.

It’s been a very long time since I told anyone about him. I still wonder why he hasn’t called or written me. It breaks my heart. I miss him so much. I miss having someone to talk to about everything, someone who isn’t involved. I miss his eight page letters about nothing in particular, keeping me distracted from all the things going on around me.

I remember the three times I’d made it out to see him in prison. The first time I had expected to be separated by glass, talking through a phone or something. I was surprised when I got there and we were sitting face to face at a picnic table inside a room with other picnic tables and visiting inmates. We hugged when I saw him, then we sat and talked for the length of a three-hour visit. He mentioned how differently things would be if he had never shot Mr. Church. I told him for the first time to his face that I was thankful that he did, even though it cost us our future of ever being together. To be honest, I was never really interested in a future with Billy. It wasn’t until he shot Church that I really fell in love. I’d promised him if we got away, I would be with him forever.

I thought he’d be way less understanding of me dating Ryan and marrying Jaime, but he said that him being locked up shouldn’t have to define the rest of my life. Truth is, we had always left some underlying, unstated pretense that no matter where we ended up, we’d always be in each other’s hearts. It was as though we’ve been holding hands through our whole life.

But now, for whatever reason, he just cut me out. Did he get to feeling differently about me being married? Has he started blaming me for his 25 to life sentence? It was my biggest fear, though Billy promised that day would never come.
Has it?

My heart sinks and tears threaten, but I promised myself months ago that I had cried my last tear over Billy. Maybe I should go see him. The thought occurred to me a few months ago, but I figured if he didn’t want to talk to me, the only way to save my dignity was to not go see him. Maybe I should suck it up and go.
What if he won’t see me?
That would crush me right now. Emotionally I am so unstable, though I play the cool and collective housewife role exceptionally well.

Ever since things got serious with Jaime, I have been on an emotional rollercoaster, one that has taken me all over this country on a heart-dropping, adrenaline-pumping joyride, and now it has come crashing down on me. I always thought Billy would be here to help me find my way again, to walk me through the chaos. I thought for sure he’d always be there for me to go to and find some peace of mind and be able to look at things from a new perspective. But he’s not and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I cast a glance over at Odin, who is asleep with his head against his window. He looks peaceful and stoic. He’s my one small light in my otherwise dreary world. My one distraction from just how shitty I have let everything get. Right now, he’s the only one who cares enough about me to even hold my hand. A rush of old bottled-up emotions about no one caring come rushing through my head like a tidal wave, flooding me with sadness.

I need a bowl! I pull off at the side of the road in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona. It’s about 3pm, since we gained an hour in New Mexico. Odin stirs to life as the rental comes to a stop on the gravel. I have a clear shot of the road as far as the eye can see in front and in back of me. It’s the perfect place to stop.

“Pit stop?” Odin asks rubbing his eyes.

“Sort of,” I say, and I get into my purple suitcase and pull out a small baby sock. Inside I keep my pocket size pipe, a poker, a lighter, and a small stash of pot. I sit on the back bumper to catch some air, aware that Odin probably thinks I’m peeing. But the smell of my smoke cues him, and he gets out of the car and comes around to the back bumper, squatting down to my level.

“You didn’t say it was that kind of pit stop,” he says, keeping the mood light.