David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

They rounded a bend and came upon a clearing, banked by tire mounds twenty feet high. “Hats on,” Roy said from the front seat. He put out his cigarette in the dashboard ashtray. “Film at eleven.”

A sawbuck table sat at the far end of the clearing, silhouetted by the headlights. Roy got out and opened Frank’s door and led him to the table, sat him down. He handed Frank the flashlight needed to return the coded signal that had been arranged.

Removing a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, Roy tamped out two and offered Frank a smoke. Frank accepted the cigarette, then bent to the match Roy struck for them both, cupping it with his palm. Roy shook out the flame, smiled through smoke and looked at his watch.

“Not long now, bro. One more time, run it down for me.”

Frank recited the procedure again, this time being sure to use the term “killfire,” since Roy enjoyed it so much. The words came from a part of him he couldn’t quite locate. After a moment, he was not even sure he’d said anything, so he repeated himself. Roy nodded as he listened to both renditions, then put his hand on Frank’s shoulder.

“I’m proud of you,” Roy said. The tone lacked warmth. He was probing. “I mean that.”

“Thank you, Roy,” Frank said. “We’ve been through a lot together, you and me, that right?”

“Time’s nigh,” Roy said. Looking up, he saw the others removing their shotguns from the trunk of the Le Mans. He pointed to where he wanted them.

Frank said, “Roy, remember that construction site we picketed in Turlock? The one where the contractor came out with an old M-1 and said he was counting to ten?”

Roy turned around and looked down at Frank with a troubled expression. “Not the time to shoot the breeze, Frank.”

“I was just remembering, Roy.”

“You want to remember something, remember what you gotta do.”

“I will, Roy.”

“Don’t let me down.”

Roy fled beyond a wall of wreckage with the others. They were situated so as to be able to hit the Mexicans from every side at once, spraying the area so heavily with buckshot there’d be no risk of return fire. Shortly Frank found himself humming a pleasant tune: “Don’t Let Me Down.”

Above him, the clouds fled past, brightened by the moon. They were exquisite tonight, finely shaped, complex, like puffy, cavernous seashells. He found himself wanting to ascend, enter them, travel their interiors.

A car approached slowly from the edge of the compound. It was a Mercedes sedan, one of the older diesels. The engine pinged and chugged as the car edged forward. There were seven men inside, packed so tight they created one large multiheaded silhouette.

As the headlights went on and off, relaying the coded signal Cesar had chosen, Frank reached for the flashlight on the table beside his hand. Three, he thought. He was supposed to flash back three times. Three was the age Jesse had been when he’d died. And that was three years ago. If Jesse had been born the day he died, Frank thought, tonight might be the very night he got murdered all over again.

By the time his thoughts circled back to the signal he was supposed to provide, it was too late. The Mercedes slammed into reverse. Lyle Akers, sensing the setup had failed, cut off the car’s retreat and opened fire from behind. The Mercedes’s rear window shattered to the sound of screams and bloodcurdling Spanish as the brothers and cousins of Gaspar Arevalo threw open their doors and clawed across one another in the tight-packed car. One by one, amid raining gunfire, they dove or fell or got pushed to the dirt and found cover in the scrap heaps nearby.

Frank dove beneath the table, curling into a ball. The ground was cold and wet; he burrowed into it, thinking: Mudsuckers. Live bait. Looking up through his hands he watched as one of the Mexicans fled to the back of the Mercedes and struggled with the trunk, as though that was where they’d stored the serious weapons. He was gunned down fumbling with his keys. The others resorted to pistols, returning fire by moonlight and by the sound and muzzle flashes of their attackers’ guns.

The smoke-filled air crackled with the reports of pump guns and pistols and shortly Lyle lay on the ground, clutching his midriff and screaming. One of the Mexicans ran to claim Lyle’s shotgun from the ground beside him and finished him off. Ducking, the Mexican then ran to the side of the clearing and fired into a muddy swale barricaded with tires. A second Mexican came up behind, reached into the spot where the bullets had gone and retrieved a second shotgun glistening with blood. One of Roy’s men came up behind and opened fire at the Mexicans’ backs. The two men fell but not without landing one shot in their killer’s leg. The man toppled, struggled back to his feet, limped to the front of the Mercedes and poured four shotgun rounds into the body of another Mexican writhing there.

Frank closed his eyes and wrapped his arms about his head until finally, as suddenly as it had started, the gunfire died. The stench of cordite hung in the air. Opening his eyes, he watched a vast shapeless cloud of smoke settle slowly, brightened by moonlight and drifting down in patches toward the dirt. Screams came from various places. Frank could make out Hack’s voice and another wailing in Spanish.

The Lincoln roared into the clearing, Roy behind the wheel. He slammed the car into park, engine running, and ran toward the spot where Hack had fallen. He picked his brother up beneath the arms and tried to move him but Hack kicked, clutching his midriff and screaming. Roy, searching right and left through the acrid haze, called out for Snuff, cursing him, telling him to come help. Snuff staggered from his hiding place, tottered in the open air for a moment then hustled toward Roy. Grabbing Hack’s ankles, he helped carry him to the Lincoln where they laid him out, crazed, howling, in the backseat.

Roy turned back around, lurched to the front of the Mercedes where one of the Mexicans lay dead, tugged the man’s gun from his fingers, returned to Snuff and forced the weapon into his hands. Snuff did not respond. He just stood there watching Hack, thrashing in the backseat of the Lincoln, clutching his exposed viscera, trying to shove them back inside, his hands slopped in blood.

“You shoot the motherfucker,” Roy shouted, pointing at the sawbuck table. “You shoot him dead.”

Hack screamed, “God… Please, you can’t… Roy, hey, Jesus, ah please, God, no…”

Roy shoved Snuff toward the table then ran to where Lyle had fallen, leaving Snuff standing there alone, the gun in his hands. He looked down at it as though it might fly up of its own accord. Lifting his head, he gazed all around him through the stinging haze at the fallen men, some still writhing in the mud. He scuttled toward the table beneath which Frank still lay hiding but got no closer than ten yards before he raised the gun and opened fire, spraying the area in a berserk side-to-side motion. He was weeping. Frank felt the bullets connect with the table, the muddy grass nearby. Snuff dropped the gun where he stood and gripped his head, making a sound Frank had never heard before. Then Snuff staggered back sobbing to the Lincoln. He helped Roy lay Lyle’s body out in the trunk. They got into the car and Roy jammed it in gear, the wheels spun in the mud and the car swerved right and left as it dodged the Mercedes and vanished through the scrap yard gate.

Shortly one of Felix’s other gunmen appeared, the one with the wounded leg. He dragged himself out from his hiding place among the smoke-obscured tire mounds and, propped on one knee, called out and waved for his lone surviving friend. The Le Mans appeared. The driver got out, gathered up his wounded companion then dragged the dead one to the car and toppled the body into the backseat. A moment later they were gone, too.