The Scared Stiff

41

When my passenger awoke, I almost didn’t notice in time. The darkness was nearly total. True, there was moonlight and there was starlight, but my truck’s headlights, while necessary, ruined my night vision to the point where I couldn’t see much of anything except what the headlights showed me. So when the guy in the truck bed came to and started creeping toward me, I almost missed it.

Thank God for gold teeth. I suppose he was grimacing, not smiling, but for whatever reason his mouth was open, and a tiny ray of the not-so-good dashboard lights bounced off that gold tombstone and into my eye, and when I looked in the mirror, there he was, a darker shape against the countryside, on all fours, halfway to my broken window.

It worked once, it’ll work twice. I stood on the brakes again, and over the squealing of the truck’s already bald tires there came the satisfying thump of a cousin’s head crashing into metal, with a reverberation I could feel all through the seat.

Instead of driving on, I kept braking, more gently, until I stopped the truck right there, on the road. It was almost eleven at night, and most people in this part of the country tended to stay home after sundown, even though there haven’t been verified reports of bandits along this stretch of road for months.

I got out of the truck, leaving its engine coughing along in that dispirited camel-on-a-bad-day manner, and went first to the rear of the truck to open the tailgate, which turned out to be done not by the manufacturer’s original method but by untwisting two lengths of wire. Then I climbed up into the truck, grabbed the cousin by the ankles, and dragged him backward. I eased him to the ground, somewhat more gently than they’d all done for me, though not that much more gently, and kicked him into the roadside ditch, so he wouldn’t startle any stray motorists.

So much for him. I got my green vinyl bag out of the bed to put on the passenger seat beside me for safekeeping, left the tailgate down rather than go through that wire-twisting process again, and drove on.

But where to? My first thought had been to return to Casa Montana Mojoca, but I knew the ferry didn’t run between midnight and 6 A.M., and I would never get there by midnight. Also, I’d been through a lot, and I looked it, and I just didn’t see myself walking through that lobby in the morning looking like the only survivor of the Alamo.

Besides, this whole horrible experience was supposed to be nearly over. Next week, Lola would get the money and fly to Guerrera and we could start the process of getting out of here and back to our lives. So the hell with it. I would go back to Sabanon, back to Mamá and Papá’s house, and I would start to be Felicio now, and the only reason I’m not speaking is because I’m a cranky guy, and by this point I am a cranky guy.

Also, Arturo could tell the surviving cousins — I certainly hoped I’d wasted some of them — that if they ever bothered me again I would announce publicly who I really was and that I was still alive, and there would go their share of the millions and millions of dollars.

Enough is enough. I’m driving straight home.

And then I ran out of gas.

Twelve thirty-seven in the morning it was, by my invaluable Rolex, so I was still at least an hour and a half by vehicle from Marona, plus another eighty-five miles to San Cristobal and another hundred miles beyond that on to Sabanon.

This country could use some more direct roads.

The engine had coughed and sputtered three or four times before it gave up the ghost completely and rolled to a stop on the weedy verge. I’d been worried about how much gas might be left in the tank, but of course that gauge was one of the many things in the truck which didn’t work, and in any case it wouldn’t have mattered, because I hadn’t passed any gas stations or anything else that was open at this hour along a road rumored to be the haunt of bandits.

Bandits? I’m 250 miles from Mamá and Papá’s house, as the crow does not fly. I look a mess, and I don’t have any money. I don’t need bandits to be in trouble.

So I changed my plan. I would walk through the night. After sunup, I would try to hitch a ride as far as Casa Montana Mojoca. I would clean myself up as best I could before I got there, changing into fresh clothes from the vinyl bag, and when I reached the hotel I’d call Arturo and ask him to come get me.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all I had, so I started walking, vinyl bag over one shoulder, truck looking after me with a mournful expression that didn’t bother me at all. You ran out of gas, not me.

So I trudged along, tired and sore but at least free and alive. Moonlight gave me enough illumination to make my way. All I asked was that I not run into any of those alleged bandits.