And Jeremy had answered, I can come home when the good guys win.
“Don’t make me kill an innocent person,” says Jeremy, but there is no begging in it. A Marine does not beg. A Marine gets the job done, and then he can go home.
Gunny tells him that he doesn’t have to kill anyone today. What he has to do is get a car, and if that means taking a person out in the desert two or three miles from a road, giving them a bottle of water and directions in which to go and making them walk in the cool of the evening, then what is the problem with that?
“You make it sound so easy,” Jeremy remarks.
Gunny says that the sooner he gets this task done, the safer he will be and he will not be trapped in this place with those blue shoes on the floor.
Jeremy doesn’t move; he’s not sure he heard what he thought he heard.
Gunny asks to be forgiven. He says he meant to say blue sheets.
Neither of them say anything more for a while after that.
Jeremy knows that Gunny is right. There’s not much use in arguing with Gunny. If he wants to get out of here, he needs a car and he needs to go to a place where cars are parked.
Like that stripmall up the road.
He picks up the gun. He stands up and puts the gun in between his flesh and the waist of his jeans, under the shirt’s flagging tail. He needs to get this done in a hurry, but it occurs to him that he should leave his pickup hidden right where it is. He will need time to transfer his gear from the truck to whatever car he can jack. So with the Triple-T cap on his head and the .45 automatic under his shirt he leaves the house through the back door and sets out, walking around the house to the street and then along the street toward the stripmall.
A few cars pass him, but not many. This could go very, very bad. Or very good. Or it might not happen at all. Maybe when he gets to that stripmall, he’ll decide to buy a burrito and go back to his hide. He walks not briskly, but he doesn’t amble either. He is a man with a purpose, but to anyone passing by it wouldn’t look very important.
When he reaches the parking lot there are ten cars in it, most in front of the drugstore. They look to be grandpa cars. Sedans with lots of room and old American gas guzzlers, except for one white Honda Accord. As Jeremy stops and pretends to examine the sole of his right shoe, a man and woman in their fifties come out of the drug store. The woman is carrying a bag and the man has his arm around her shoulders; he looks toward Jeremy and nods, his eyes cautious. Jeremy nods back and moves on as if he’s heading for Mexican food, and the couple get into a silver Buick and lock their doors before the engine starts. Jeremy pauses at the door of the Mexican joint as the car pulls away.
Maybe he will get a burrito after all, he decides, because his heart is beating hard and he thinks he needs to sit down in some air-conditioning.
As he starts to go in, a woman with shoulder-length gray hair emerges carrying a brown paper bag. He waits for her to pass. The interior of the Mexican place is dark, nothing much to see in there but an old dude walking back through a swinging door into a kitchen. Then Jeremy sees that the woman is heading toward the Honda. She is well-dressed, crisp like someone who works in a bank or a real estate office. She is wearing sunglasses, and has the strap of a dark blue leather handbag around one shoulder. A red-white-and-blue scarf is tied around her throat. A real Grandmother America.
She is not very much overweight and has a young walk. She probably has young legs under her turquoise-colored pants suit. Jeremy decides she’s the kind of woman who could walk herself out of the desert.
She is unlocking the driver’s door when Jeremy comes up beside her and says in an easy, nonthreatening voice, “Excuse me, ma’am. Ask you something?”
She is startled just a little bit, and when she turns her face to him Jeremy sees a slight quiver of her pale pink lips that means she doesn’t know whether to be afraid or not. He quickly says, “I’m lost, can you help me?”
“Lost?” she asks. She has the throaty voice of a lifetime cigarette smoker. Maybe she’s in her middle sixties, with a sharp chin and deep lines bracketing her mouth. Lots of worry lines across her forehead. “What’re you looking for?”
“LaPaz Estates,” he answers, and instantly—instantly—he knows this is something he should not have said.
“Well…it’s—” She glances in that direction, and then Jeremy takes the gun out and holds it just south of her takeout food, and he says, “I’ll shoot you if you scream. Get in the car.” And he’s had to say this as if he really means it, because she must obey him before somebody else comes out to the lot.
She trembles all over. Her mouth is slightly open. Her teeth are also gray. “Put that bag in the car, down on the floor,” he tells her. “Get behind the wheel. Do it now.” She doesn’t move; maybe she can’t move. “Ma’am,” Jeremy says, the sweat crawling on his neck, “I’m not going to hurt you. I want your car.” She starts to give him the keys. “No, you’re going to drive and I’ll let you out up the road.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” she says in a smoky gasp.
“I’m going to let you out up the road,” Jeremy repeats, and he says, “Go on, now, be a good girl. Unlock the other side. If you touch that horn, I’ll get very upset. Okay?”
“Please don’t hurt me,” she says again. “I’m going to my sister’s.” She unlocks the passenger door and puts the paper bag on the floorboard as Jeremy quickly walks around to the other side, keeping his eyes on her. She gets in and he gets in, and neither of her trembling hands touches the horn. She is being a very good girl.
Jeremy closes the door, and when he feels her suddenly tense up as if she’s decided she needs to make a break for it, he says calmly, “Just do what I tell you.” He keeps the gun down low, so she can see it from the corner of her eye. “Start the engine and drive.”
“Alright,” she says, and something catches in her throat. “I will.”
Just then a heavy-set woman comes out of the consignment shop carrying a red table lamp with a shade that appears to be decorated with Indian symbols. Jeremy’s captive turns her head toward this other woman, who has paused to pick up a shopper’s newspaper from a wire rack.
“Start the engine and drive,” Jeremy repeats, and now he aims the gun at her side.
Grandmother America does as she’s told. The other woman with her red lamp and her shopper’s paper walks past the Accord, and continues on to her Ford Taurus a few spaces away.
“Which way do you want me to go?” Grandmother America asks, and now it sounds as if she can barely get the words squeezed out.
Jeremy realizes he’s made a big mistake. A big omission. He has forgotten something very important. He could grind his teeth down over this one.
He has forgotten to bring a bottle of water for her to drink in the desert.
He can’t just put her out somewhere nearby. Can’t put her out on one of these streets. So he decides he has to go get a bottle of water for her, so nobody can ever say he was a bad guy.
“Turn left,” he tells her.
Then, about a mile further on, at the stand of mesquite trees and the rock wall with the tarnished brass letters: “Turn right.”
He directs her to his street and his house. He directs her to pull the Accord up alongside the house where its blinding sunlit whiteness can be hidden. And then he tells her they need to go inside because he’s going to get her a bottle of water before he sets her free out in the desert.
“Alright,” she says, in that weak old smoky voice. “I’m going to my sister’s, she’s waiting for me.”