Coyote, page 16
“There, there, sweetie. It will be okay.” She hoped she was right.
A car pulled up and screeched to a stop, but she didn’t dare peek outside. She waited and listened, then sniffed the air, but all she could smell was rank urine and fetid vomit. A car door slammed and footfalls exploded on the asphalt. The front door of the store squealed, followed by ominous bells jingling.
She hugged Nadie tighter and matched her breathing to her sister’s. As one being, she concentrated their life force on willing David Knight to find them. Closing her eyes, she gathered energy from the universe. Hoping her ancestors were right, she whispered incantations to the Sun and the Moon, and then let out a slow controlled breath through her nose. The bells jingled again, more footfalls, and a car door. If that was David Knight, he must have given up on them. He was leaving.
Kimi took a gamble and heaved open the twisted metal door. With her good hand locked around Nadie’s wrist, she pulled her sister out of the bathroom and into the menacing glow of the streetlight. With its tinted glass, she couldn’t see inside the black sedan. She hoped the driver was David Knight. Whoever it was, she lunged at the passenger door and pounded on the window.
The dark glass withdrew to reveal Big Mack’s vindictive grimace. “Get in,” he yelled. “You girls belong to me and no hotshot Texan do-gooder is going to change that. Get in now, or Hurit is dead.”
Chapter 31
Jessica screamed at the top of her lungs, “You’re insane! Stop! No! Please, Tommy,” as her captor dragged her toward the fierce machine.
“I’ll call ya flour after I’s put ya through the mill.” Tommy cackled as he hauled her across the floor. She doubled over and dug her bare feet into the sawdust to make it harder for him to drag her.
He’d almost toppled her onto a conveyer belt when the overhead lights died a slow death. She crouched on the floor, trembling.
Tommy yelled, “What the hell!” just as the machinery whizzed to a gentle whorl and then fell silent. Tommy’s groping hands were dangerously close to Jessica’s head, but she didn’t dare move or he’d find her for sure.
She listened to the equipment winding down and hoped the person who’d stopped it was there to help her. She wanted to yell, but she was afraid the lunatic might throw her onto the dying conveyer belt and she’d travel through the lasers and saws, only now in excruciatingly slow motion.
Jessica heard a scuffle nearby. Tommy bumped into her in the dark and fell on top of her. With both fists, she propelled him off and then scurried on all fours in the other direction. She came to a dead stop when she crashed head first into something very hard.
The lights flipped on. She was crumpled up against a metal cabinet that housed the control console. Dazed, she glanced up and thought she saw Cannon Silverton pushing buttons.
She nearly cried with joy.
“Untie her,” a familiar female voice said, “and I’ll finish off this little creep.” She looked around in time to see Lolita’s kick send Tommy flying onto the conveyer belt. She covered her eyes with the crook of her arm.
Cannon tugged on the twine around her wrists, but he was just making it tighter.
“Ouch! That hurts.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Got a penknife or some clippers or something?” he shouted at Lolita.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Lolita shot back. She reached into her boot and pulled out a switchblade. “Here, will this do?” She tossed it.
Cannon reached out as it sailed by and hit the floor. He picked it up, and turning it over in his palms, carried it back to where Jessica was lying.
“Wow, how do you work this thing?” Bill was admiring the ivory-handled instrument.
“Jesus, can’t you do anything?” Lolita stomped over, snatched the knife from his hands, and with a couple of deft slices, freed her friend. “Are you okay?” she asked Jessica.
“Yeah, I—”
“Holy crap, you’re naked!” Cannon exclaimed.
“Give me a break and shut it,” Lolita said. “Take this rope and go tie up that crazyass sawyer. Then call the police. I’m taking Jessica home.”
“Shouldn’t you wait for the police?” Cannon stammered. “They’ll want a statement, and—”
“You wait for the police. I’m taking her home,” Lolita said, and Jessica had never been more grateful that her friend was such a badass.
Lolita gently helped Jessica stand up. When she saw Jessica’s scratched and bruised naked body, she said, “Jesus Christ, did that pervert—”
“No, he just tied me up, but he would have turned me into a few board feet of lumber if you hadn’t shown up. I think he’s lost his mind.”
“Before you go, I need to tell you something, Jesse.”
“Not now,” Lolita barked. “I need to get her out of here.”
“But there’s something important eating away at me, and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, if I don’t… Jesse, I…I,” he stammered.
Jessica put her hand on his arm. “I know. Cannon, you’re like a brother. I’ll always consider you part of my family.”
Bill’s face fell as he repeated her words, “Brother, family…”
“Let’s get you home, sweetie.” Lolita steadied her friend and led her outside. “Oh dear. We can’t have you riding on the back of my bike like that.” She unlocked the travel trunk on her Harley Superlow and pulled out black leather bell-bottom chaps and a matching vest. “Put these on.”
Jessica did as she was told. “I look like a gay cowboy pinup with my bare arse hanging out.”
“Better than nothing. Anyway, won’t be the first time. Let’s go.” Lolita swung her lanky leg over the shiny red fender and sat down. “Get on.”
Heads turned from Main Street to High Street as they drove through the streets of Whitefish. One nail takes out another. And soon Jessica forgot about her bare bottom. Instead, she dreaded showing Lolita the hole where her mother lived and where she’d grown up. Sure, the surrounding scenery was stunning, but the trailer park itself showed its age.
Except for a couple new singlewides and a shiny retro Airstream, all of the mobile homes were flaking and sagging. Lolita’s family was practically Russian royalty. The only “royalty” in Jessica’s family was her mom, who’d been the Flathead County Rodeo queen. That’s where her mom and dad met. He was riding bucking broncos and she was riding on the rodeo float.
As they drove through her hometown, Jessica imagined seeing it for the first time through her friend’s eyes. Its cute wooden façades with second-story balconies, and brick buildings with decorative awnings, made the historic district more like a movie set than a real town. Just five miles away, any time of year, Alpine Vista Trailer Park was a royal dump.
When they pulled into the driveway, Jessica’s mom was sitting on the porch, cat in lap, drink in hand, and cigarette in mouth. When she saw them, she stopped petting the cat and put her hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the sun. She just stared as Lolita and Jessica got off the motorcycle and staggered across the lawn to the porch. A glint of recognition finally crossed her face.
“Oh my god. Jesse, what happened to you?” she asked in alarm.
“I got bucked off a horse.”
“You what?” Her mom raised one eyebrow. “Where? The Raunchy Rodeo? Come inside. You girls look like you could use a drink.”
Chapter 32
Heart still racing from their failed escape, Kimi was only half-listening to the rich white pup whining about how his plan to rescue her went wrong. She glared at him across the tiny airstream table and then glanced over at her sister. Curled up in a fetal position, shivering, Nadie was asleep nearby on the filthy mattress in the rear of the trailer.
Kimi removed the black leather jacket she’d worn every minute since her guardian angel gave it to her, then climbed over a strung-out girl sleeping on the floor and gently placed the coat over the top of her sister. Once again, thanks to David Knight’s stupid plan, she and her sister were prisoners in the claustrophobic airstream, now lurching down the winding highway behind that dirty dog Mack’s truck.
“We’re going to need to get her to a treatment center or clinic or something. Poor little blossom’s hooked on drugs,” Kimi said. “Auntie Madge’ll sort her out if we ever get free.”
“Auntie Madge?” David asked from across the table, interrupting his own soliloquy on his “heroic” rescue attempt.
“Madge Blackthorn, tribal police chief and surrogate mother.”
“Mother?”
“Never mind.” Kimi crossed her arms over her chest and huffed. “We’re lucky you didn’t get us all killed.” Secretly, she was glad he was there.
“How could such a sweet girl get mixed up with such bad people?” David asked. “A teenage drug addict. It’s terrible.”
“Are you really such an idiot? Have you lived your whole life in a protective bubble? Evil isn’t always ugly. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it draws us close and whispers into our ears as a lover might.” Out of the trailer window, she watched trees passing, shadowy creatures threatening her from the dark of night. She trembled and gazed over at her sleeping sister.
“I guess you’re right. Evil is sometimes beautiful.” David sighed. “Look at my big brother Richard. The clinking of coins is his siren song.”
“And I suppose you’re different?” Kimi smirked.
“Well, it’s true I’ve had a comfortable life. And lots of opportunities, most of them I’ve wasted. At least that’s what my brother says. He thinks I’m worthless, that I only want to play and have fun.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“What?”
“Just want to have fun?” Kimi rolled her eyes.
“What’s wrong with fun? You have something against enjoying life?” His tone of voice changed. “Maybe we’d better just focus on finding a way out of this tin can.”
“What? You’re going to jump out of a moving vehicle at sixty miles an hour, Mr. Superhero? For you everything’s a game, isn’t it? Life is about more than amusing yourself, Mr. Knight.”
“What’s the point of living if you can’t enjoy life?”
“Making the world a better place, for one thing. Helping others. Working for justice. Keeping your loved-ones safe. Things you wouldn’t understand. Not everyone gets to have fun, Mr. Knight. For some of us, life is full of pain while others profit from our suffering.”
“Look, I’m just trying to get through the day like everyone else, okay.”
“When you don’t know what you’re living for, you don’t care how you live from one day to the next. You’re happy the day has passed and the night has come, you’ve had your fun, and in your sleep you bury the tedious question of what you lived for that day and what you’re going to live for tomorrow.”
David folded his arms across his chest and didn’t respond.
“I don’t suppose you read Russian literature or any literature for that matter,” she said.
They sat in silence, facing each other across the tiny foldup table, as three sweaty teenage girls, spent and strung out on drugs, slept fitfully on the nasty foldout bed.
“Cat’s Cradle,” David said out of the blue. “Does that count?”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Kimi asked.
“Does Cat’s Cradle count as literature? I read that. And in high school I read To Kill a Mockingbird. Well, it was assigned and I was supposed to read it.”
“Good for you, Mr. High and Mighty. You can read. There are plenty of people who can’t read. If you can and you don’t, you might as well be illiterate.”
“I can read and I can add too. Actually, I’m pretty good at math. That was my major at the University of Texas. I admit, I mostly read sports magazines. I’m also a pretty good surfer. I’m not a total loser.”
“Just a total snake.” Kimi sneered. “Whatever you read, it’s what you take away that matters. You have to know how to look.”
“I mostly look at the pictures,” he said with a chuckle.
“Figures.”
The trailer jolted to a full stop. Doors slammed in unison. Kimi’s pulse quickened when she heard Big Mack talking to someone outside, and she strained to hear what they were saying, but the voices receded.
Crunching gravel signaled someone approaching, then the trailer door flew open, and Kimi was staring straight into Big Mack’s grizzly-sized chest as he brandished a tire iron. Sailing into the trailer, he pulled David to his feet, whacked him across the knees with the iron, and then dragged him out the door by his preppy collar.
“You sonofabitch!” Big Mack pushed the yuppie down into the dirt and raised the tire iron. “I’m going to smash your brains in. That’s what you get for messin’ with me.”
All the girls were awake now, watching through the greasy side window of the trailer. Kimi jumped up, rushed out the door, and mounted the gorilla’s back. “Stop it!” she shouted. “You’re killing him!”
Out of nowhere, a wiry weasel with a bandage on one ear and jagged homemade orange flames tattooed all the way up his sinewy forearms grabbed Kimi around the waist, and then yanked her off of Big Mack. He was dragging her back toward the trailer when the crack of a shotgun firing cut through the thick night air. The thin man dropped Kimi on the cold ground just outside the threshold to the trailer, and then stared out into the darkness. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
Big Mack ignored the shot, seized his heavy metal bar in both hands and was about to bring it down on the defenseless rich boy, when a familiar voice shouted, “Put your blessed hands up or I’ll blow your bleeping head off.”
“Auntie Madge!” Kimi exclaimed.
Madge stood with her feet hip distance apart, pointing the shotgun at the dirty dog, just three yards away.
Mack stood up and raised the tire iron over his head again. “You’re not going to shoot me, Grandma?” he asked with a sinister chuckle.
Auntie Madge pumped her shotgun. The sound of the barrel sliding and snapping into place stopped him in his tracks.
“Don’t make me use this, mister, because believe me, I will,” Auntie Madge said.
The gorilla held the tire iron over his head and charged ahead. “I don’t think so, Grandma.”
Crawling on all fours, David heaved himself at the monster pimp from behind and rammed his legs. Mack swung at him with the iron, sending the yuppie crumbling to the ground, and then the dirty dog raised the bar above his head and lunged at Auntie Madge.
Another explosive boom ripped across the valley. Big Mack flew backward, bounced off the trailer, and landed on his back. The bull had a hole the size of a watermelon in his stomach where he’d been gut shot.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, mister.”
“Auntie Madge, I’m so glad to see you.” Kimi ran to her and embraced her.
“Me too, princess. Who’s your friend?” she asked, pointing to David with the nose of the shotgun.
“That’s David Knight, one of the criminals who’s destroying our land. Maybe you should arrest him.”
David sat up and propped his head in his hands. “She’s just joking….I hope.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Auntie Madge said. “Better watch out or she’ll be riggin’ your car with explosives. She’s a regular little terror, she is.” She squeezed Kimi around the waist, and then ambled over and extended her hand to help David. “Can you stand?”
He stood up and wiped blood from his face. “Nothing broken. Mostly my ego that’s bruised.”
“I like him.” Auntie Madge turned to Kimi. “You should snap him up.”
“Oil barons and thieves are not my type.” Kimi smiled.
“Well, you can’t blame your old auntie for tryin’. I want a tribe of grandbabies, and before you get yourself killed or I’m too old to enjoy ’em.”
“Auntie, forget about match-making. Nadie’s inside having withdrawals and we’ve got to get her to the hospital now.”
“Nadie’s here? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Auntie Madge marched past her and boarded the trailer, with Kimi following close behind. The girls were inside, huddled together, whimpering and moaning. One of them had vomited in front of the entrance.
“Let’s get them back to my place,” Auntie Madge said. She’d taken the last batch of girls to her house, where she had her “good for nothing” son, Rowdy, taking care of them. Rowdy was trained as a nurse by the army, but preferred “sitting around in his blessed underwear” playing video games and making “that cow manure he calls art.” Rowdy created a cobbled together “sculpture” of local wild animals—a buffalo, an eagle, and an elk—made entirely out of used car parts. Auntie Madge had convinced Dr. Hightower from Blackfeet Community Hospital to check on the girls daily, even though the doctor insisted on “feeding them more blasted drugs than the blessed drug pushers.”
“Oh no!” Kimi exclaimed. Someone had bolted the door from the outside. “It’s that dirty weasel.”
“Jesus Christ ala mode, I thought he’d run away,” Auntie Madge said, and then she planted herself in front of the door, pumped the shotgun, and fired. “Time to meet your maker, butt-wipe.”
The blast blew a crater through the metal door. Kimi could see the weasel lying in a bloody heap next to the trailer. Good. She reached through the hole and unlocked the door from the other side.
Auntie Madge called the local authorities from Sidney to come out and load up what was left of the “blessed dirty dogs.” When they arrived, she explained what happened to a couple of very suspicious yokel deputies.
“Evening officers. I warned the good for nothings, but the blasted dirty dogs made me blow their guts out their a-holes. Believe me, they had it comin’. They were threatening me and my little princess here with deadly force.”
One of the redneck officers said, “the little Injun crack whores should go back to the reservation where they belong,” as his partner lined the girls up against the trailer and cuffed them all.
