Authors: Robert Stallman
He studied the maps for an hour, planning his routes, deciding to try the north side, the Sandias first because there was a smaller area to cover, in terms of road miles, anyway. He got a sandwich and ate a can of cold beans, packed up the maps in the car in a rush, slowed for a minute as he thought he ought to take more time so he could stay out there longer and not have to come home, but found himself rushing, taking only a light jacket and a couple of apples, jumping into the little Model-A and starting it up before he realized he was panting with haste. As he backed out, he caught sight of the sleek black Ford police car with the red light on top parked in front of the Ochoas' house half a block down the street. An officer in the car was obviously waiting for someone who had gone into the house. Instead of turning right, a course that would take him past the police car, he turned left to take the long way back to Rio Grande by way of Gabaldon road. As he chugged slowly down the street, he looked back through his dust to see someone coming out of the Ochoa house and getting into the police car. He thought briefly of going back to see what they wanted, if it was his favorite detective, which he did not doubt, but instead he put the car in second and raced forward, around the last turn to Rio Grande Boulevard. There, instead of turning right towards town, he went on across the pavement and eased into the little dirt street beside a tiny adobe house where he was hidden from the street. He got out of the car and stood against the side of the house watching across Rio Grande. In about thirty seconds he saw the black Ford, with its red light flashing, come to a skidding halt at Rio Grande, the two men inside motioning at each other until finally the car turned right down Rio Grande, the red light flipping and the siren raising its crescendo. Barry recognized the thin man in the cowboy hat sitting on the passenger's side. His favorite detective was trying to tell him something, evidently, something so important they were chasing after him to tell it. He looked down to see a little black haired girl in a filthy dress standing at the door of the adobe hut looking at him.
"Thank you," Barry said, raising his battered old hat, "
Mil gracias, nina, para usar su
, ah, driveway," he finished lamely, grinning.
She rewarded him with a pert little smile and disappeared back into the hut.
Instead of driving downtown and taking Central east, Barry turned north and drove out into Almeda, then back along Fourth Street to a dirt road that angled out toward Juan Tabo in the foothills. He took this little desert track for ten miles or more, getting almost to the first foothills before turning back south and heading for U.S. 66. He would do the job without the damn detectives on his neck, he thought. After all, he was not aware they were after him, officially.
It was a long pull across the east mesa to 66, and when he got there, he was already five or six miles outside of town, the highway looking like any western desert highway, a couple of Navajo women sitting under their little square brush shelter with their rugs hanging on poles, brilliant in the sunshine. He stopped at the last gas station before entering the Canyon to get filled up with all the liquids the little car would hold. He was about to drive off after paying the attendant when it occurred to him that he had not been out this far checking the stations. It might be silly, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.
The station manager looked at the design Barry drew of the Lowden Plumbing symbol and nodded. He was a small, alert looking man with curly black hair and an eastern accent.
"That one I remember, sure thing. I thought it was funny, a new La Salle you know, an expensive buggy like that, and a plumbing shop sign on the door. It made me think, now an undertaker, maybe, but a plumber?" He looked up at Barry and laughed. "Who would call a plumber that rode around in a new La Salle?"
"Do you recall anything about the people in the car, how many, what they looked like?" Barry's mouth was dry, his feet moving as if he were a fighter in the ring.
"Sure thing, say, I got a good memory when I see things unusual. I remember that guy, big guy with Clyde Beatty boots on. After they got back in the car, he hit that woman right in the kisser. I saw that. And her a good looker too, real knockout of a babe. I was watching her, you can betcha. Some cookie, I was thinking, and they had this cute little girl with black hair just like her mother's. Say, she was a real Garbo, and that guy slugs her." He stopped, looking at Barry's face and stepping back a pace. "I didn't mean to make you mad, mister, but you asked, and like I say, I got a good memory."
"You've given me a lot of help," Barry said, his voice sounding dry and choked. He reached in his pocket, found a five dollar-bill and handed it to the manager who pushed it back, and when Barry insisted, took the bill and then stuffed it back in Barry's shirt pocket.
"You keep your money. You going after that bum?"
"Right. The woman is my wife."
"Whoee," the manager said, taking a couple of short choppy swings. "You need some help?" He held out a greasy but impressive fist.
"Thanks, but I can handle it," Barry said, feeling his jaw unclench into a smile.
But he felt less able to handle the search part of it as the day wore on and he ran down one sideroad after the other and found not a trace of his quarry. By two in the afternoon he had worked up the Sandia Crest road to the point at which the road turns to go down the north side and the little twisting set of ruts goes on upward toward the crest itself. He knew there were no shelters up the crest road, and thought there were none on the north side, but wasn't sure.
He got out at the turnoff, stretching his legs, walking to the lookout point where the east slope dropped away and he could see far across the dark miles of pines to the Santa Fe Range, blue with distance. There was the Cerrillos road, the lost little village of Madrid, the long road winding for miles to join 85 north almost at Santa Fe. If I had wings, he thought, and turned inward to the Beast who he felt with him every moment now.
"How about it? Make us a bird and fly over it all?"
Extremely unsafe, even if I could, and I have never tried.
"Why not?"
One chance shot from someone out target shooting, and we are dead.
"Oh yeah, never thought of that."
Birds are very vulnerable, and our lives are tied to whatever shape we are in.
"Skip it."
He suddenly had the feeling that he was getting colder instead of warmer in this search and got back into the steaming little car and swung around in a hail of dirt and stones, spinning tires to make it go back down the long road to U.S. 66 again. Getting down off the mountain, he chugged across 66 and onto the gravel of Route 10 south, the only passable road into the Manzano slopes. It was gravel but washboarded in many places and very dusty as he passed through the low part of the canyon, working slowly higher, the trees getting a firmer hold in the soil until pinons and cedars and dwarf pines scattered out over the landscape. He had been watching for sideroads, knowing it was too soon, that Mina had said "in the big trees," when he caught sight of something brown lying caught in a bush beside the road. He skidded to a stop, leaped from the car and ran back, thinking
it's just an old boot, someone's lost shirt, an old glove.
He clawed it out of the bush. Bruno the Bear, dusty but safe at last. He looked the bear over, felt the Beast wanting to come out to sniff it but said no, they must be getting on, and ran back to the car, jumping into the seat and starting up the engine. He sat for a moment while the little car idled and popped, his stomach feeling strange, as if he were about to go on stage before a large audience and had not learned his lines. This was the way. They went this way. He was getting close! He pulled the gear shift back into first and sat another moment. What was up this road? A couple of little Mexican villages, farms, ranches, sideroads up into the high country, seems like there were cabins of some kind up there. Should he wait, go back for the police, now with evidence that would bring them along with him? But what if they just said he had picked up the bear somewhere at home and wanted to lead them on a wild goose chase. He would have to do without the police. He was lifting his foot on the clutch when a hard sounding voice said close to his left ear, "Just you reach over there and turn that key off."
Barry jerked in surprise and looked left, directly into the muzzle of a large black revolver. Behind the revolver stood a brown uniformed New Mexico State Policeman. He looked very serious. Barry reached over carefully and turned the key off. The little car's popping idle died with a small backfire.
"I suppose I'm not double parked or something?"
"Get out of there slowly," the policeman said, backing into the middle of the gravel road. "My partner is to your left covering you with a scattergun, so go nice and easy."
Barry got out of the car, hands raised over his head in what he supposed was the approved fashion, thinking,
well, I wanted the cops and sure enough here they are.
He said, "I was thinking about getting hold of you guys. The people you want are up on top of this mountain, I'm pretty sure."
"You're the guy we want," the cop said. "Turn around, spread your legs, hands high."
Barry did as he was directed, thinking,
that goddammed detective, that peanut brained gumshoe. Sonofabitch.
"Nothing on him," the cop said, backing up again. "Hands behind you," he said.
Out of the corner of his eye Barry could see the other cop as a shape standing beside the police car as he felt the cold metal of the handcuffs snap around his wrists. "OK, Mr. Golden, get in the car," the policeman said, sounding more relaxed.
Barry ducked down and settled into the back seat beside the other officer who had apparently put the shotgun somewhere in the front. There was heavy wire mesh between the back and front seat areas.
"You guys want to tell me what this is about," Barry said mildly, watching the two young men, aware of the impatient Beast just under the surface.
"We got a bulletin to pick you up. Albuquerque City Police want to see you. That's all we know." The first cop came back to Barry's side of the car. The back door of the '37 Ford sedan was still open, and the cop leaned over Barry for a moment as his partner handed him the keys. It was not a wise thing for an experienced cop to do, but perhaps this young man was not very experienced.
I shift.
A metallic snap and the cuffs are broken. I grasp both men, one by the front of the neck, the other by the shoulder. I pull them quickly together so their heads meet in front of me with a sound like a well-hit baseball. The man beside me is unconscious at once, but the other one groans and fumbles at his holster. I press in on his neck, not hard enough to break the windpipe, and after a minute he passes out also. It is very exposed here and although I have not seen a car pass since I stopped, it is possible at any moment. I take some time to find how the hood of the car opens, pull up the hood, grab a bunch of wires off the hot engine, jerk them away like vines from a tree and chew them into little pieces, spitting them out in the road. Terrible taste. But now the car should be disabled for a while. I fall to all fours and begin trotting toward the trees, but it strikes me that I am wasting time. A car can go faster than I can run. As an afterthought I turn back to the police car, take the pistols from the two young men and the shotgun from the front seat. I bend the barrels of all of the guns so they will not shoot and toss them away into the weeds. At the door of the Model-A I call Barry back. I shift.
The car started at once and Barry spun a little gravel getting on up the road, hoping to get out of sight before the police woke up.
Now I've done it good
, he thought, running the little car up to thirty-five in second gear.
Wow, not only resisting arrest, but attacking two state cops, ruining three state weapons
- and at this he grinned, thinking of what they would say when they found their precious guns twisted out of shape -
and chewing up their spark plug wires. I'll be public enemy number one by tonight.
The little Mexican-Indian town of Chilili was nothing but a loose handful of run down adobe houses with chili pepper strings hanging from the vigas, a cantina, a church and a general store along the dusty street and a sign outside of town that said "Tajique, ---- miles." The miles part of the sign had been shot away with deer rifles, but it might have said fifteen miles or maybe twenty-five. He kept on Route 10 as it wound back down from the foothills into the plains, the road straightening out in the ranch and farm country. The farther he got from the mountains, which were now behind him, the more he felt he was going the wrong direction. But he had seen no sideroads at all that a car could get over. He pushed away the feeling and drove on at top speed, forty-five for the little car, leaving a rooster tail of dust along the gravel road. There were two sideroads at Tajique, each of which he followed toward the mountains until they petered out at ranch houses, nothing but little run down adobe buildings with corrugated iron roofs.
At Torreon, the sign said "Manzano, 6." It was growing dusky now on the east side of the mountains, the sun half hidden behind the Manzano range, and he had not found a road that would take him back into the big tree area. At this rate he would be out of the high country and into the flat land around Mountainaire, he thought hopelessly. It was a desolate region, few cars passing in either direction. One pickup with Indian children hanging out of it had passed as he approached Tajique, but between the little villages it seemed humans had disappeared from the earth. Torreon was a village indistinguishable from the others except for its larger church and a rather delicate little graveyard with a low adobe wall around it. He saw a Navajo walking along the road and stopped to ask him about sideroads. It turned out the man spoke good English and knew the area.
"There is the Abo road, but it does not go up the mountain. The only road is that one," and he pointed to a set of double ruts that wound out into the scrub cedars behind the church.