Send Down the Rain(4)
The first two times she’d tried to escape had not gone well. It took her nearly a month to be able to take a deep breath. The third time he almost killed her while the two children watched. Had it been just her, she’d have closed her eyes and let Diego welcome her home, but the terror in her children’s eyes proved too much. So she pulled herself off the floor and yielded. Even now her left eye was still blurry from the impact.
Juan Pedro didn’t like her children. He didn’t like any children. As long as they weren’t much trouble or expense he would let her keep them around, but Catalina knew time was running short. In his world, evil people bought children, and she suspected that Juan Pedro had already collected the deposit.
Diego was ten. Cropped jet-black hair. Black-rimmed glasses with lenses on the thick side. Square jaw. The gentleness in his eyes favored his father. He sat cross-legged in the back seat, a coverless Louis L’Amour paperback in his hand, silently biting his bottom lip, about to pee in his pants. In public he called Juan Pedro Papa. In private, he didn’t call him at all.
Gabriela was seven. Long black hair hanging in matted knots below her shoulders. Her skin was dirty; it’d been three weeks since she’d had a bath, and she had a rash she didn’t want to talk about. She sat on her heels, silently biting her top lip and about to scratch her skin off.
In addition to the shiny pistol just below his belly button, Juan Pedro kept a revolver at the base of his back. A third handgun was taped below the front seat, a fourth wedged up behind the dash. Two shotguns lay across the floorboard of the back seat, and three automatic weapons were stashed beneath the kids’ seat. Behind them, the bed of the truck had been built with a false floor containing several thousand rounds of ammunition and cash. While Juan Pedro was hated and wanted by many, he was not stupid, and if he was going out, it would be in a blaze of glory.
The temperature hovered in the thirties. Catalina stared out the window as the freezing rain stuck to the windshield. They had driven through the night. And the night before. There would be no harvest in this weather, but she dared not state the obvious. Juan Pedro had been sent either to pick up or drop off. Their life had become a series of aimless destinations.
She placed her hand gently on his forearm and whispered, “Juan, the kids no have clothes for this.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, then at the back seat, where Gabriela had started to shiver. He cranked the engine, flicked his cigarette butt out the window, and dropped the stick into drive. Catalina whispered again. “Diego has to go.”
Juan Pedro glanced in the rearview in disapproval. He believed the boy to be soft, so he was toughening him up a bit. He eased into Spruce Pine and pulled over at the Blue Ridge Thrift Store. He slid a roll of hundreds from his front pocket and thumbed through the wad until he found a twenty. He handed it to Catalina and nodded toward the door. When she motioned for the kids to follow, he extended his arm and shook his head once. The kids didn’t move.
Catalina quickly found two matching used men’s down jackets and two pairs of ladies’ fleece sweat pants. They were too big and too long, but the kids could roll them up. She laid the bundle quietly on the counter, and the clerk, whose name tag identified her as Myrtle, rang up the order.
“Twenty-nine dollars and ninety-six cents.”
With her back turned to the truck, and with motions that could not be seen from the sidewalk, Catalina slid seven dollars from just inside the waistline of her underwear, unfolded it, and without a word offered Myrtle twenty-seven dollars. Myrtle looked over the rim of her reading glasses and eyed Catalina for the first time. She did not look impressed. She tapped her teeth with a pencil, then glanced at the idling truck where the red glow of the single cigarette pulsated just above the steering wheel. Then she noticed the kids. She raised an eyebrow, scratched her scalp hidden beneath a beehive, then busily mashed several buttons.
“Sorry, darling, been a long day. Numbers are running together.” She counted the twenty-seven dollars, reached inside the cash drawer, and gently slid a crisp ten-dollar bill back across the counter. While she took her time folding and bagging the clothes, Catalina rolled the ten into the size of a toothpick and slid it back into the waistband of her frayed underwear. When she had finished, Myrtle handed her the bag and said, “Sweet thing, you need anything else, you holler now.”
When Catalina returned to the car, she found Diego trembling, a tear cascading down his cheek. She pleaded, “Juan . . . please?”
Juan Pedro snatched the bag of clothes, filtered through it, then tossed it into the back seat, where the kids did not touch it. He motioned to Catalina, who sat down and quietly closed the door. Juan Pedro waited for a car to pass and then pulled slowly out onto the highway. He was cautious. No need to spin the tires and speed off. Those inside the truck knew he was a bad hombre. There was nothing to be gained by reconvincing them. Those outside the truck didn’t need to know it. Least not yet. One of the reasons he had survived as long as he had on this side was his cunning. His ability to not think rashly. He was a master at looking the part of the tired, poor migrant worker.
Juan Pedro had four cell phones, one of which contained the map that held his attention. He drove west on 19E out of Micaville and turned south on Highway 80 in front of the post office heading toward Busick. The small two-lane mountain road wound out of town, past the elementary school and the mattress spring plant. Juan Pedro saw the police officer sitting in his car alongside the road, but paid him no visible attention. He smiled slightly to himself as they drove by, his right hand sliding to his waistband. His left rear taillight was burned out, but he had a pretty good idea that the police officer liked being dry and warm. He tapped the fake ivory grips of his automatic. If the cop wanted to make it an issue, he’d get all the discussion he could handle. And then some.