Peter Heller - The Dog Stars

Wind shudders the windscreen, shakes the plane. Windier than I thought. Gusty. Flattening the short grass in the field, intermittent like a breeze through a crew cut. Purple asters in the ditch nodding. The side window is open, I rest my elbow. Smell of damp earth rich with rot and newness. Heady with memory as only smell can be. Still a tang of ancient manure from the mud feedlot back of the sheds. Everything unstable this time of year.

Turn to Jasper.

Welcome to Old Coke City. Another On Time Arrival and perfect landing brought to you by the flight crew at Mongrel Air. Please remain seated until the aircraft has come to a complete stop. Careful opening the overhead bin.

Jasper deigns one glance, disapproving, and continues staring straight ahead through the windshield, brow furrowed like any good copilot. He doesn’t appreciate joking while on the job. He knows we’re going to the truck so he watches the truck twenty yards ahead.

Then he growls. Short. A low huff that puffs the loose skin over his upper teeth.

Okay we are at a complete stop. There is no overhead bin. Don’t be a stickler. Jeez.

His growl lower now, continuous. Hackles standing, hair on the rough behind smoothed flat over tight skin. Eyes fixed on the back of the Coke trailer. My hair, the small hairs on the back of my own neck, prickle and stand. Follow his eyes. The white painted latch back of the trailer angles out from the faded red door. A strip of black shadow between the two. Doors. The right one ajar. Barely. The smell coming north to south down the road. To us.

Without taking eyes off the truck I reach across for the AR. It’s racked vertically, muzzle upwards in a bracket fixed to the front left side of Jasper’s seat. Next to it the machine pistol. Thumb the latch of the chrome strapping and lift out the rifle. Courtesy of Bangley.

Okay, boy. Good one.

Whispering now, no reason.

Okay, c’mon.

No use to tell him to stay in the plane. He never will. Not in these gigs. Don’t want him to sprain something jumping out. I unlatch my door. Two steps, wing strut to ground, half turn and gather him in one arm, the right, and lower him to the tarmac, his claws scrabbling for pavement.

Okay. Heel.

He knows. Has been through this before. Too many times.

We are sixty feet maybe fifty five. I fly with the rifle racked because it is too difficult to do in the air. Pull out the collapsable stock Bangley made me. Thumb the safety. Push the lever over, full auto to semi. The wind is light for a minute, warm in our faces, and rounded a little to the west carrying complex scents, earth, flower, even maybe salt. Of the sea. How far? Nine hundred miles at least. I listen. Just breeze catching in the whorl of my left ear. Jasper’s growl has not ceased. I step. Wait. Step again. A kestrel flies over right to left, not high, a stooping, cantered flight. Step again. We cover half the distance and stop. Crouch and then go to one knee. Low as possible without going prone. Prone is best but prone is hard to move fast. Like this, if they fire out of the trailer, I am confident they will shoot high.

Bark of my own voice startles me.

You are dead men.

Wind.

You are dead men. You try to shoot your way out you are definitely dead men.

Jasper’s growl. Sun warm on my left brow and cheek.

You are fish in a barrel. You hear me! You try to fight and this is your last minute on earth. Throw out your weapons come out. COME OUT! Hands where I can see them. If you do, do what I say I will not harm you. My word.

Wind. Sun. Bird. I am thinking, Do I mean that? No harm. I am not even sure. Whatever happens here I plan to live.

Three two one—OKAY YOU DIE!

I sight the iron sights. I know the last cases in the back are stacked to the roof. A third of the trailer emptied. Gives me enough angle not to shoot up the bottles and cans, probably. Two shots high—

No wait. A clank of steel, a scrape. Hand holding a crowbar snakes through the gap.

Steel bar, hand, forearm.

Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!

It drops. Hits the road with a clang.

STEP OUT, hands where I can see them.

They are big hands. Hair on the back dirty. Stuck through the gap they look like a thug trying to do a hand puppet show. Forearms in a blue ski jacket too short for his arms, greasy but new. Door pushed wider. Mallet head, wide blonde dreds, camo bush hat. Tangled beard. A huge man stepping down off the bumper, unwilling to turn his back.

There are two more.

Hoarse shout, the voice rolling through a half ton of gravel. Blinking back the sun.

A plane that runs. Where’d you get a plane that runs? Goddamn.

Shut the fuck up. Tell them. The same. Hands first.

Baseball bat, hands, arms in an oiled Australian duster, another Mongo stepping down. Long hair in a thick braid, eyes jittery: my face, the gun, the dog, the ditch. Wants to bolt. Jasper’s growl a step lower.

You ain’t got no bullets in that thing. World ran out of fucking bullets. Hear that Curtis? Calling back. Edging west. One step two.

Captain Pilot thinks he’s gonna shoot us. Eyes skittered: the gun to the ditch.

Woulda done it already. Yes he would. Likes to talk this one.

Me thinking: So far he’s been doing all the talking.

C’mon out Curtis. This is copasetic. Man’s kneeling at thirty feet, got a gun but no bullets.

Him the closest one now three feet from the partly open door. I sight with both eyes open. Always have. Advantages. I can see the door. I can feel the evening pulling taut like a twisting wire. Dreds calling my coordinates like a mortar man. Heat. The heat of pure anger climbing into my neck, pure and clean like a white gas. My finger on the smooth cold curve of the trigger.

Door swings. Open. A shadow. Edge pulling back like a curtain, light following, lighting, lit the man in motion, swinging the bow across and down. I fire. Twice. Arrow like a hole torn in air, angry thwip of a vacuum high and wide, the man blown back, bow clattering, the front wall of Cokes toppling and spilling. Silence. One Dr. Pepper rolls out hits the road.

The two on the road half crouched and frozen, arms in reflex covering their heads. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.

The can of Dr. Pepper has rolled over, rested against Pony Tail’s boot. A string of blood drips from trailer edge to the pavement where the can fell.

Look what you did. I am yelling. You fucking bonehead scum. Ruined it. Probably twenty cases of pop.

My chest, breath, vibrate with adrenalin and fury.

Killed your buddy too. Nice fucking try.

The men frozen, arms covering, crouched. This the last pathetic gesture before death. Fully expecting now to die. The gun already sighted on Dreds, finger already pressed on the trigger. Breathing hard. I hold there breathe. I will kill them.

Fuckers tried to kill me. For Coke. Well. For a not quite daily Coke. Twenty four in a case, once a month, I bring it back. The week going without—a contrived measure of want to make the next run a treat. For me and. To up my value with Bangley. Face it. Landing at the families’ place with the Sprite like a god.

One is whimpering, the blonde one. Not bothering to beg.

Have to kill them. Leave them and they will empty the truck, hide it all in the ditches, windbreaks, no more monthly treat. These few things. Few enough things to look forward to. Plus they tried to kill me.

Dreds kneels, covers his eyes with his huge hands just like a kid playing peekaboo and crying. Pony Tail squeezing his head with forearms watching me in naked terror, half wincing, quivers, bracing for the shot.

Get up.

Get it over with! Dreds screams.

Get up. I’m not going to kill you.

The words like liquid nitrogen. A moment of complete freeze.