Send Down the Rain(12)
I stood and let the fire warm my back. “There’s a bus station in Spruce Pine. I can put you on the late afternoon to Asheville. From there you can get a ticket most anywhere.”
She nodded. Again without looking.
I spoke softly. “You don’t have to pay me. Not with money or anything else.” I don’t know whether she believed me or not, but the look in her eyes told me she was struggling with the idea.
7
By the time we got down the mountain, through Busick and the Carolina Hemlocks, through Micaville and into Spruce Pine, it was almost two o’clock. I checked the schedule and saw that the bus to Asheville didn’t leave until five. I bought three tickets and only then realized that the aroma of the burger joint next door had caught the kids’ attention.
The girl backed up when I spoke to her. “You hungry?”
She didn’t answer.
I pointed at the neon marquee. “Cheeseburger?”
She looked up at her mom, who nodded, and the little girl nodded, though still not smiling.
“You like French fries?”
Another glance at her mom, followed by a nod.
“Single or double?”
She looked confused.
I held out my hand, barely separating my thumb and index finger. “One patty, or . . .” I widened the gap between the fingers. “Two.”
She held up one hand and two and a half fingers. Seeing the one finger stuck in the half position, she reached up with her other hand and folded it back down, extending a perfect peace sign.
The restaurant was a grease pit, but the food was hot and the kids needed calories. We ordered, and because making small talk had never been my strength, we waited in silence. Given a few minutes, I checked my blood sugar, calculated, and injected two units of insulin into the fat of my stomach. The three of them watched me with curiosity but said nothing.
A television hung above the counter. The local news was just starting. The underlying soundtrack suggested a breaking news story. The news anchor behind the desk started his monologue.
“An explosion at what authorities are calling a methamphetamine cookshack rocked the small town of Celo last night, mixed with several minutes of automatic gunfire.” The anchor turned his attention to a second reporter standing in front of the Burnsville Emergency Room. “Frank Porter reports. Frank, tell us about it.”
“That’s right, John. It began with a routine traffic stop and turned into what authorities are calling a gang-related drug war. Last night around six p.m. a Yancey County deputy attempted a routine traffic stop. The driver, attempting to escape, ran over one deputy and the spike strip the police had stretched across the road. Unable to drive on four flat tires, he exited the vehicle and opened fire on the other two deputies. He then returned to the metal cookshack disguised as a utility barn where he was joined by at least ten men armed with automatic weapons. When more than a dozen officers responded to the ‘Shots fired—officer down’ call for help, they were met with a barrage of bullets. No one really knows what caused the explosion, but eight men inside were killed, and four sustained critical injuries from burns to gunshot wounds. And in what authorities are calling the most bizarre aspect of the entire night, deputies stumbled upon the mangled body of a man named Juan Pedro Santana Perez—a known Mexican drug runner with over thirty arrests and just as many deportations. Mr. Perez was declared dead at the scene. Medics who attended him say he died of blunt force trauma with multiple broken bones in his extremities and skull.”
John interrupted. “Frank, can they put any of these pieces together?”
Frank shook his head. “They won’t comment officially, but they believe Mr. Perez was not injured in the explosion. He was found unresponsive, zip-tied, and lying in the back of a patrol vehicle with several weapons and a backpack full of both drugs and cash. He was wanted in several states but”—Frank thumbed over his shoulder—“not anymore.”
While my ears had been trained on the TV, my eyes had been watching the three of them. When the show broke for commercial, the little girl spoke first. “What’s your name?”
“Joseph. But most folks call me Jo-Jo.”
The woman had not looked at me. She was staring at the three tickets, with a narrowed space between her eyes where a wrinkle had creased the skin. Her statement in the cabin, He has friends, came to mind. I doubted a guy like that had a single friend in this whole world, but he might have some loyal lieutenants bucking for promotion by honoring his memory. And if they were so inclined, they’d check the buses. This didn’t set well with me.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The woman placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Gabriela.” Then the boy. “Diego.” Finally she touched herself in the chest. “Catalina.”
I pointed at Gabriela. “And how old are you?”
Gabriela held up both hands and a total of six fingers. “Seven.”
I reached across the table and gently raised one more finger.
She smiled.
I looked to Diego. “And you?”
He held up both hands, and all his fingers, and smiled.
When our burgers arrived, Diego pulled the six-inch butcher’s knife out of its sheath, which now hung on a loop on his belt, and used it to cut his sister’s burger in half. Then his mother’s. Then his. Once finished, he carefully cleaned the knife and returned it to its sheath.