“I suggest you fellas mount up and git. I don’t want you in my county any longer. You understand what I’m saying? If you’re still here when I come back this way, I’m going to impound your motorcycles and lock you up again. We clear?”
The two outlaws didn’t say anything, just turned and headed for the pecan trees.
Franklin swung the two aluminum gates inward while Homer went back for the car. After a minute, he heard the deep popping noise of the two Harleys cranking up in the woods as Homer drove through and came to a stop. He climbed inside and they continued up the drive to the ranch house proper.
Homer was staring straight ahead, driving as fast as he could over the uneven ground. He spoke to Franklin without looking at him.
“You recall seeing those fires at Yellowstone on the TV, Sheriff? Burning out of control? Threatening all those little tinderbox towns.”
“Yeah. I remember that.”
“Sometimes I feel like the border is one long tinderbox. Like Prairie is nothing but a tiny oasis in the middle of a dried up pine forest. It’s baking hot day after day and folks are walking around knee deep in pine needles. Bone dry. And everybody on Main Street is striking matches.”
“Some folks think those big fires are natural remedies, Homer. Just nature taking care of itself.”
Homer looked at him. “I have a real hard time believing that, Sheriff.”
“Well, you better slow down, son, there’s the ranch house right over there.”
There were four or five pickups pulled up outside the house. Homer hit the brakes and they got out and knocked on the front door. They waited a minute but nobody came and so they walked around the side of the house and down to the dried up river bed about five hundred yards away.
There was a big live oak tree standing at the bend on the other side of what used to be the river. It had been dead for years, but still had a lot of its lower limbs. Even from a distance you could see that somebody had looped three ropes over the lowest and biggest branch and tied a noose at the end of each one.
“Looks like we’re just in time,” Franklin said to Homer.
The men were standing at the base of the tree and Franklin could make out three small boys on the ground. They were sitting with their backs to each other, probably all tied together at the wrists. The local men, and one woman, were standing in a circle, just looking down at the boys.
“No need for you here, Sheriff,” Ed Parks said, stepping forward as the two lawmen crossed the dusty riverbed.
Franklin said, “Good afternoon, Ed. Boys. You, too, Miz Brotherwood. I hear these kids broke into your house last night.”
“That’s right they did,” Sadie Brotherwood said. “I caught ’em red-handed trying to steal my whisky.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Dixon said, brushing past two of the men and squatting in the dirt beside the boys. Their sun-blackened skin was bloody in places and their mouths were crusted with salt. Their black eyes were glazed with fear and exhaustion.
“Police? No need of calling anybody,” Parks said. “Waste of taxpayers’ money. We call the police every time we catch a bunch of these pollos, you wouldn’t have time to hand out parking tickets. No, we like to take care of this business ourselves out here. I told these boys we didn’t need no grass cut either. Hell, they’re just tonks. I reckon that’s why they’re here, brought in by coyotes and looking to cut grass up in Houston.”
“Goddamn pollos ain’t hardly human anyhow,” Mrs. Brotherwood said. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about.”
Franklin looked for some sign of grief in the widow’s eyes but only saw hard-bitten hatred and the dull gleam of self-righteousness. He un-screwed the cap from the canteen he’d brought and held it to the lips of the first boy. After the boy had drunk some water, he moved to the next one and repeated the process. The last boy, the smallest, was too weak to lift his head and drink.
“He’s mighty thirsty, Ed,” Franklin said. “You didn’t give them any water?”
“Why waste good water?”
“Que pasa hombre?” Franklin said to the oldest of the three after he’d gulped down some water. “Where are you from?”
“Nuevo Laredo,” the boy said, his voice a parched whisper.
“How many of you come across?”
“We were fourteen. We walked until we fell. My brothers and I, we are the last ones.”
“What is your name?”
“Reymundo.”
“And your brothers?”
“Jorge and Manuelito.”
Franklin stood up and looked at Parks and Sadie Brotherwood.
“All right, then. Here’s what we’re going to do. Mrs. Brotherwood, I’d like you to apologize to Mr. Parks here for bringing him all the way out for nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” she said, “It was three more wetbacks needed a good hanging.”
“Ed, you and the boys go on home. Homer and I will see these children get medical attention and then we’ll turn them over to the Border Patrol.”
“I’m gonna tell you something, Sheriff. I’ll go. But its people like you are going to ruin this great country. There are already more of them than us down here in West Texas. Hell, whole towns of ’em without a single white inhabitant. Not one! You want to give them the whole state? Is that your idea of right and wrong? Goddamn it, I don’t understand you anymore. I thought you were one of us. Hell, I voted for you in the last election. Now I ain’t so sure who the hell you are, Franklin.”
“I’m the law, Ed. That’s all. Now go on home.”
“The law. You think these three here give a flying fuck about you and your laws? Hell, they each paid their coyotes five thousand yankee dollars for the privilege of breaking your damn law. That’s the problem, ain’t it? It’s the damn law that’s going to ruin everything, you don’t start enforcing it for real. Come on, boys, let’s get the hell out of here before I puke on somebody’s badge.”
“Sheriff?” Homer said. He was sitting in the dirt beside the smallest boy, Manuelito, who seemed to have fallen asleep in the deputy’s lap.
“What is it?”
“This one here just died.”
26
DRY TORTUGAS
I got it!” Luis said.
“Got what?” Stoke asked.
“I finally figured out the whole anchor thing.”
“Yeah? Good,” Stoke replied, his mind somewhere else, namely his current life expectancy if he didn’t get his arm stitched up soon. “Tell me quick.”
Luis said, “Wait, yeah, I think this will definitely work.”
“Tell me what you got, Luis.”
Luis thought about it another second and then his face brightened. “What I’m thinking, hey, we just leave the anchor here. See? I crawl forward through the cabin up into the bow locker and untie the bitter end of the anchor line. Then we just let the line run out of the boat when we back down and get the hell out of here.”
Stoke just looked at him.
“You see? Fuck the anchor, man, we come back and get it later. Or, not!”
“That’s a very good plan, Luis. Seriously. If we were leaving right now. But we’re not, see? We didn’t come all the way out here to leave that gunrunner alive over there on that island. Who is he? Where’d he come from? Where was he flying home to? We’ve got something big down there in the deep and we need to know who’s dealing these weapons. And, dead or alive, I need to get a look at that shooter in the bushes, okay? And, in the unlikely event
