“They left me,”
“Your leg, uh? Some friends they are. Well, you come down, we give you a ri
de to OJ, how does that sound?”
“Because you are such good men, you do this.”
“But of course. We have daughters, nieces your age, and we say to each other, What kind of men would we be, leaving a girl in the desert?”
“And you two angels, are from Outlaw Road?”
The taller one, with the full beard, held his arms out, palms up. “God is everywhere,” He smiled. “Now, come on down.”
“I’ll walk.”
“No, no you won’t. If we have to come after you, we will not be so nice. Come down, everyone here is your friend.”
Anda turned and limped higher up the hill.
“Bitch!” said the bearded man. “Let’s get her.”
“You left the truck running.”
“It’s all right, this won’t take long, we’ll have her back quick.” They started after her, running up the hill and slipping a lot in their cowboy boots.
Anda let them get closer, but kept a good distance from them. She observed how they moved and how hard they were working. Anda stopped at the top of the hill for a moment while out of their sight to study the terrain. She could hear the two men coming, and she moved to the far edge to wait. When the men reached the crest, Anda limped and slowly started down the far side.
The men panted as drops of sweat left muddy lines on their faces. They hurried after her. She was halfway down when they reached the edge. “Damn!” said the bearded one as they started downhill. Anda reached the bottom and limped across the flats and small washes toward another, smaller hill.
The short man said, “Stop, girlie! Stop right now! I’m going to be mad if you make me go farther!”
“Shut up, you’re making her go faster!”
“Hurry up, then!”
Anda limped even more as she climbed the second hill, allowing the men to close within a hundred yards. She staggered and fell near the top, and crawled over the crest on her hands and knees.
“We have her now. She’s used up,” Said the bearded man. They both accelerated to a fast trot.
“We’ll make her pay for this, before we take her back. ”
“If we find some shade, yeah.”
Anda peeked over the ridge to check on the approaching men, and decided it was time. They could not see her while she was below the rim. She stood, dusted her palms off on her dress, and sprinted to a flat-bottomed ravine that cut down the hill and merged into a large arroyo. She raced along it, following the curved draw that bent like a banana, back the way she had come.
She emerged at a large concrete culvert that passed under the road. It was ten feet in front of the idling red pickup. She climbed out and walked to the red pickup. Anda opened the driver’s door and turned the wheel so it angled toward the culvert, then pulled the gearshift to D. The pickup lurched forward until the front wheels dropped off and the truck slid nose first into the wash. It crunched when the grill hit the sand, but the motor kept running. The truckbed stood straight up in the air, with the frame resting on the upper part of the culvert. One rear wheel turned as the motor rumbled and the fan blade tick-tick-ticked against the back of the radiator.
Anda was satisfied. She started down the road at a ground-eating trot, eager to put distance between her and the two men still climbing hills. She was alert to every small thing around her, the same way a deer is aware of nearby wolves. She touched her stomach and told her child they would survive, that she would get them through this never-ending misery of a nightmare.
Each time she saw faint dust on the horizon, Anda left the road and hid until the vehicle passed. After the fifth one, she decided following the road was too dangerous. She climbed a low hill and scanned to the horizon, then started across the desert in a roundabout route across the roughest terrain she could see. It would be hard but would take her toward Ojinaga over ground no one would want to cross.
She hadn’t gone five miles when she saw the tiniest bit of green near the base of one of the ridges.
***
Bobby called Hunter but got the answering machine. He left a quick message, then drove out of town, his stomach dancing a little with butterflies because of where he was going.
Outlaw Road was busy when Bobby got there. Lots of people were moving on the street for this early. A wrecker was ahead of him, towing a red pickup with a crushed front end. Two dusty, surly looking men rode in the bed as it was towed. One of them took off his boot and checked the sole of his foot. Bobby saw a number of small-time drug traffickers talking together, and others looking a little too bright-eyed after a full night’s work.