“I don’t have anyplace to go.”
“It’s all right,” Ben says. “You can be here.”
He pulls her into his arms and holds her.
266
They come to the border.
(Yeah, well, everyone does, sooner or later.)
“Don’t be an asshole,” John says.
A little late for fatherly advice, Chon thinks, but he knows what John means. If there was a moment to make a break for it, this would be it-start yelling at the checkpoint, staffed with heavily armed Border Patrol agents, and there’s not a damn thing John or the two thugs could do about it.
“Your buddy Ben is still alive,” John says. “Get stupid here and he won’t be.”
That’s my dad, Chon thinks.
A real Boy Scout.
Always prepared.
267
O says, “It turns out that Patterson isn’t my father.”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, it gets better.” She takes a pull on the joint, holds in the smoke, and exhales with, “My real father was a guy called-you’re going to love this-‘Doc Halliday,’ and-get ready for it-he killed himself while I was baking in the oven.”
“Jesus, O, that’s terri-”
Then he does the math.
His parents said that Halliday committed suicide in 1981, but O couldn’t have been born until “What’s your birthday?”
“August twenty-eighth, why?”
“What year?”
“1986. Ben-”
But he’s already punching the phone.
268
The BP agent asks them why they’re going to Mexico.
“Boys’ night out,” John says.
“Don’t come back with anything,” the agent advises.
“We won’t,” John says.
After they pass through the checkpoint, Chon hears John mumble, “The end of America.”
269
Dennis picks up the phone.
“What do you want?”
“Have you ever heard of a guy named Doc Halliday?” Ben asks.
“I’m a DEA agent,” Dennis answers. “Have baseball players heard of Babe Ruth? Have gunfighters heard of Wyatt Earp? Of course I’ve heard of Halliday. Why?”
Ben tells him.
270
Looong drive down through Tijuana.
Short on conversation.
What’s there to talk about, really?
Old memories?
Good times?
Chon is more focused on something his father said back at the house. I can’t do what you’re asking me to do. I don’t mean I “won’t,” I mean I can’t.
Why not, Pops?
271
Down the old highway into Baja.
Past Rosarito, Ensenada, the old surfers’ run.
South into the empty country.
Moonlit night.
Sagebrush and the eyes of coyotes glowing green in the headlights.
They could do it anywhere here, Chon thinks, by the side of the road in any ditch.
A seminal fuck and a terminal shot.
Two bursts in the back of the head
The Lord giveth and He taketh away
The old Bill Cosby joke-“I brought you into this world, and I can damn well take you out of it.”
You just disappear and that’s all.
The crows take your eyes and the peasants take your shoes and commend your soul to God, but who can say with any certainty that crows don’t pray over carrion flesh? They are the smartest of birds; perhaps sensitivity comes with intelligence, maybe they feel for the dead that sustain them.
He’s trained for this moment, of course.
Escape and Evade School, a name so redolent with irony it makes him want to weep. The second they open the door to take him out his muscle memory will take over, but he knows that he’s still weak from his wounds, freshly injured by his fight with Crowe-his chances are bad, but he’ll take the chance-the opportunity-to bring more meat with him to the crows.
I can damn well take you with me.
The car turns off the highway onto a dirt road, and Chon feels his muscles stiffen and forces them to relax.
The old man has a gun, which will be mine in the half second it takes to grab it. Shoot the gunman through the back of the seat, then the driver, then John.
