Read Online It Came From Del Rio: Part One of the Bunnyhead Chronicles by Stephen Graham Jones - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Stephen Graham Jones
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just for the ritual of it, opened it to walk through, then shut it behind me. On top of it I balanced the stump of the silver nitrate stick I’d been chewing on all afternoon, so that it would fall onto the boots of whoever opened it next.
Usually, I’d never leave any sign that I’d been in a place.
Now, though, I don’t know. You get sentimental with your trash when you’re not so sure you’ve got a lot more to leave. For that brief, what-the-hell instant when the cowboy or pumper or whoever was looking down at this out-of-place stick, I’d be alive again.
Twenty minutes into the new pasture, of course, I wanted to go back for the stick, because it was a sign of defeat. But in two days, it might all come down to forty minutes. I let the stick stay, pushed on, left Refugio’s empty bottle broken against a rock.
Soon enough the only thing warm on me was my back and shoulders and neck, and the canisters. Their metal casing had soaked up the heat of the day, was giving it back to me now. I counted them with my fingers as I walked. With the client rep dead now, each one of them was worth nearly thirteen thousand dollars.
That would buy me boots for the rest of my life.
For a few steps then I walked backwards, to make sure my coyote escorts were still with me, skulking through the bushes and bear grass. They were. I saluted them with two fingers, shook my head with something like wonder, or disgust — was there a difference anymore? — then turned around, tried to make all the time I could on bloody feet and no calories.
By dawn I’d covered eight miles, I guessed, and was breathing hard.
This time I couldn’t sit down, though. I was to the point that, if I stopped, even to lean on something, I was probably going to fall asleep, be dead to the world for twelve hours. Which would take care of the rest of my life as well.
So I stumbled on, no fenceposts anymore, sucking more sticks than I knew I should, and a few hours into it tried cracking a cactus open for the juice, but just got spines. I ate the meat of it anyway. It was damp, stringy, tasted green. I ate another then, and another, and didn’t throw them up for maybe twenty minutes.
It was hard to stand again after that. I tried to talk myself up, forward. It worked for a while, until I started hearing something else under my voice. It wasn’t me.
Over the next rise, cows were lowing about something.
I swallowed, which hurt, and stepped from the road, crept to the rise, and lay down to look over. There were maybe sixty head. They were eating sweetcake probably left by the rancher I’d seen. The way they were milling around, they’d just found it, too. After making sure the rancher wasn’t around, I waded into the shit-smeared rumps, reached into the cake for the chunks of molasses I knew were going to be there.
As a kid, I’d seen dogs rush the steers in their pens to get the molasses. Now I understood.
When the cows tried to nose in with their heavy heads, I beat on them with the side of my fist like a chimpanzee, and kept eating. It was sugar instead of meat, yeah, when meat was what I really needed — something marbled white with fat — but even with a two-by-four, I doubt I could have brought one of those cows down that night. And if I’d tried for one of the calves, the mommas would have hooked me under the ribs, flung me over her back, into the herd.
Now, of course, it’s different.
I just look at them and they flare their nostrils and back away. Like everything else. This was before I died, though. When I still could die.
I ate the cake until I couldn’t eat anymore, and then I stood, nodded once to the cows, and went on down the road. I threw it all up an hour later, and cried, I think, stringing my stomach juices away from my mouth, out of my nose. And then I counted the canisters, wiped my eyes, took off again, for Uvalde.
Tonight would be the night the coyotes had been waiting for, I knew.
Dusk came this time while I
Usually, I’d never leave any sign that I’d been in a place.
Now, though, I don’t know. You get sentimental with your trash when you’re not so sure you’ve got a lot more to leave. For that brief, what-the-hell instant when the cowboy or pumper or whoever was looking down at this out-of-place stick, I’d be alive again.
Twenty minutes into the new pasture, of course, I wanted to go back for the stick, because it was a sign of defeat. But in two days, it might all come down to forty minutes. I let the stick stay, pushed on, left Refugio’s empty bottle broken against a rock.
Soon enough the only thing warm on me was my back and shoulders and neck, and the canisters. Their metal casing had soaked up the heat of the day, was giving it back to me now. I counted them with my fingers as I walked. With the client rep dead now, each one of them was worth nearly thirteen thousand dollars.
That would buy me boots for the rest of my life.
For a few steps then I walked backwards, to make sure my coyote escorts were still with me, skulking through the bushes and bear grass. They were. I saluted them with two fingers, shook my head with something like wonder, or disgust — was there a difference anymore? — then turned around, tried to make all the time I could on bloody feet and no calories.
By dawn I’d covered eight miles, I guessed, and was breathing hard.
This time I couldn’t sit down, though. I was to the point that, if I stopped, even to lean on something, I was probably going to fall asleep, be dead to the world for twelve hours. Which would take care of the rest of my life as well.
So I stumbled on, no fenceposts anymore, sucking more sticks than I knew I should, and a few hours into it tried cracking a cactus open for the juice, but just got spines. I ate the meat of it anyway. It was damp, stringy, tasted green. I ate another then, and another, and didn’t throw them up for maybe twenty minutes.
It was hard to stand again after that. I tried to talk myself up, forward. It worked for a while, until I started hearing something else under my voice. It wasn’t me.
Over the next rise, cows were lowing about something.
I swallowed, which hurt, and stepped from the road, crept to the rise, and lay down to look over. There were maybe sixty head. They were eating sweetcake probably left by the rancher I’d seen. The way they were milling around, they’d just found it, too. After making sure the rancher wasn’t around, I waded into the shit-smeared rumps, reached into the cake for the chunks of molasses I knew were going to be there.
As a kid, I’d seen dogs rush the steers in their pens to get the molasses. Now I understood.
When the cows tried to nose in with their heavy heads, I beat on them with the side of my fist like a chimpanzee, and kept eating. It was sugar instead of meat, yeah, when meat was what I really needed — something marbled white with fat — but even with a two-by-four, I doubt I could have brought one of those cows down that night. And if I’d tried for one of the calves, the mommas would have hooked me under the ribs, flung me over her back, into the herd.
Now, of course, it’s different.
I just look at them and they flare their nostrils and back away. Like everything else. This was before I died, though. When I still could die.
I ate the cake until I couldn’t eat anymore, and then I stood, nodded once to the cows, and went on down the road. I threw it all up an hour later, and cried, I think, stringing my stomach juices away from my mouth, out of my nose. And then I counted the canisters, wiped my eyes, took off again, for Uvalde.
Tonight would be the night the coyotes had been waiting for, I knew.
Dusk came this time while I
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