He called out, “Yeah?”
No answer at first. Then: “Hello?” It was a man’s voice, unfamiliar.
Godo tensed. “Who’s there?”
A preliminary bout of throat-clearing. “I’m a friend of Faustino’s. Drove his rig up from the port. Parked it out front. Got his keys here.”
Godo stepped past the door toward the window, edged back the curtain. He was a knobby squint of a man with large hands, a reddish mustache too big for his face, ears poking out from under a graying mop of windblown hair. He wore a mechanic’s one-piece coverall, stained at the knees from oil, other smeary markings here and there.
Godo reached around to the small of his back, tucked the.357 into his pants, covered it with his shirt and opened the door. The man seemed taken aback by the sight of his face.
Extending one of his outsize hands. “Name’s McBee. You Faustino’s son?”
The question reminded Godo that Happy of all people had appeared out of the blue that morning. Or was he making that up? A drugged-up dream, a figment of his bleak mind-no, he thought, it happened, we fought. But Christ, we always fought. Suddenly he remembered his hand and glancing down he saw it, same pitted red scars as on his face, locked in the fierce pumping grip of this stranger. McBee. Chafing calluses coarsened the man’s palm.
Godo said, “Not son. Nephew, sort of.”
McBee seemed content with this information, delayed though it was. He took his hand back, dug around in what appeared to be a bottomless pocket, then produced Tío Faustino’s key chain. “I can leave these with you?”
“Sure.” Godo shook his head to clear away the Percocet muck. McBee dropped the keys into his hand. From somewhere in the trailer park, a woman’s voice could be heard: “¡Oye, nalgón, no me jodas!” Listen, fat ass, don’t fuck with me.
McBee broke the spell. “Any way I could bum a ride to the bus station? Gotta get back to Oakland. Can’t waste the whole day, losing money as it is.”
Godo caught a hint of dutiful poor-me in his tone, the only snag in the man’s act so far. “I don’t have a car, sorry. My aunt took it to work.”
The news seemed to baffle McBee. He dog-scratched his ear. “Point me the right direction at least?”
Godo snapped out of his stupor. “Sorry. I’ll walk you, how’s that?” He thumbed the door lock plunger, searched for Tío Faustino’s keys, found them in his hand, reminded himself not to forget about the pistol nudging his ass crack, then stepped out onto the doorstep. “Follow me.”
McBee blanched, stepping back to make way. “You sure?”
“I’m positive. Get the blood moving. You coming?”
He shortly regretted not donning a jacket but then shook off the cold, faulting himself for wanting snivel gear. During the invasion he’d slept shivering in shallow ranger graves, wet from rain or choking from windblown dust, hoping not to get run over by a tank in the night, clutching his weapon, happy as a drunk come payday. Jesus, he thought, how soft you get and so fast. He fought against the hobbling pain breaking through the Percocet, willing himself forward. McBee kept pace behind, patient despite the crippled speed and mercifully short on conversation.
Near the trailer-park gate Godo spotted Tío Faustino’s Freightliner cab and felt a misty want, picturing his uncle, wondering when he might see him again. Strange, how girlish the moods sometimes. The truck’s engine was ticking from its cool-down and he caught a whiff of diesel, the scent sending him back instantly to the cramped confines of his Humvee, packed into the backseat with the rations and water cans, the ammo and thermite grenades, C-4, claymore mines, the bale of concertina wire and cammie nets, bolt cutters, map books, chemlites, a pickax and sledgehammer-Chavous in the opposite seat; Mobley in the turret manning the Mark 19, his ass a fart’s breadth away from Godo’s face; Gunny Benedict in front with his maps; Pimentel at the wheel, bitch-slapping the radio, screaming at the static. They were pealing toward Al Gharraf, preparing to take fire.
“You all right?”
Godo snapped his head toward the sound.
“You stopped walking,” the man said. McBee. He sounded concerned. Maybe frightened.
Godo said, “Sorry.”
“Listen, if this is too much, I’m serious, just point me in the right-”
“I’m fine. Come on.”
At the gate Godo swung south and they marched along the gravel roadbed toward the center of town where the transit center was located. The wind was sharper here, keening off the mudflats and the grass-lined river, but now Godo embraced it, letting the cold meld with the throbbing ache in his leg. His gooseflesh cheered him and his pitted skin blushed from the stinging air. Beyond the wetlands the Mayacamas range lurked in the drizzle. Stunning, he thought, miraculous, resisting an urge to cry out: Get some!
With the engaging monotony of one step begging the next, time fell into its crazy hole again. He lost all track. Ten minutes? Twenty? Maybe this means I’m finally in the moment, he thought merrily, buoyed on pheromones, but then he noticed, just up the roadbed, near the edge of the commercial district, an arch-backed dog rummaging in some Dumpster overfill. He stopped, feeling his lungs constrict. Shortly, the frame confused him, a line of towering dusty palms, a sagging concrete wall, a roadside bag of trash, then impulse threw him to the ground, locked up in a fetal curl, burying his head in his arms. Seconds warped around his brain as he waited out the blast. Rather than the dust-scattering concussion he was expecting, though, he felt instead a gentle prodding kick to the sole of his shoe.
“Listen, I don’t mean to keep bringing this up-”
Godo’s eyes shot open. The light was gray, not ocher, the air wet and cold, not parched.
“-but if you need help, or I should get you to a doctor-”
Godo scrambled to his knees in a panic, combed the grass with his hands, searching out the spider device-two batteries, the curving wires, the unspent shell.
“-you gotta let me know, okay? Otherwise I’d just as soon-”
Jerking his head up, Godo fixed the man in his eye. McBee. Hillbilly stock, grip like a pipe wrench.
“-not impose on you. I’ll just head on downtown here, if this is the way.”
A station wagon had pulled to the curb a little ways on. A broad-faced man in a ball cap stared back over his shoulder at them.
To McBee, Godo said, “Don’t look at me that way.”
McBee took a clumsy step backward. “I didn’t mean-”
“Who the fuck are you, look at me like that? I served for you, asshole.”
McBee put up his hands, another step back, quicker. “Look-”
“Fuck you, white trash.”
McBee dropped his hands, now clenched into fists. His crabbed eyes turned fiery. “You go ahead and wallow around on the ground there, piggy. Go on. I did your uncle a favor, I lost half a day’s pay for the privilege. I’m done being nice.” He spat, then stormed off.
Godo struggled to his feet, bellowing, “I don’t owe you, honk. I paid. I paid big.” Turning toward the man in the station wagon, he reached to the small of his back, gripped the gun, and held it up above his head. “You feelin’ me here, Elmer?” The fat-faced man jumped in his seat, threw his car in gear and sped away, tailpipe belching smoke. A Latina dragging a pigtailed child on the far side of the street stopped to stare until her eyes met Godo’s, at which point she scooped up the toddler and hightailed off. Godo glanced over his shoulder, trying to get a better look at the skulking dog. But there was none. The palms remained, the listing wall, the Dumpster dripping trash bags. No dog.
God help me, he thought.
He put the gun away, then began plodding home. Within twenty steps the fluidity of time failed him, the seconds like daggers, every footfall an ordeal. The pain in his leg shot down into his heel and up into his spine and he gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, closed his eyes, walked.