Excerpt: La Cucaracha

The snow was dry and blowing in hypnotizing patterns on the frozen asphalt. Everything was painted in shades of grey: the sky, the buildings, the concrete on ramp, the light poles, the trash, the wires. The headlights of on coming trucks or cars floated in the grey blue haze of blowing snow. The man on the side of the on ramp was a bundle of denim, leather and a duct tape patched down jacket. He knelt on the asphalt rubbing his gloved hands together and pressing them between his thighs. The snow stung his nose and eyes, the only skin exposed. His beard was catching dry crystals. He stood up and stomped his heavy work boots to wake up his frozen feet. His jeans felt frozen against his thighs. The caramel colored down jacket was dark at the cuffs and along the zipper. He pulled the collar up against his ears.

He heard the signature putting of a Volkswagen’s engine and turned to see headlights. The van was crunching slowly up the on ramp and Clayton Gage waved a hand and gestured with his thumb hopefully. The van passed and then slowed as the road leveled. The man lurched toward the van with his leather shoulder bag and pulled at the handle. It took two hard pulls and then he jumped in and the door banged shut.

“Thanks man,” Clayton rubbed his gloved hands on his thighs.

“I’m headed towards Phoenix. That suit you?”

“Perfect. ‘preciate you pickin me up.”

“Rough day for travel. I've got a thermos of coffee right at your feet there. Help yourself”

“That’ll work” Clayton sighed. He poured a cap full of black coffee and held it in his gloved hand. “I can help with gas and pick up supper for your trouble”

The driver raised his eyebrows. “That’ll work” and smiled.

Before the van’s headlights had given Clayton hope of being rescued from the freezing wind of the on ramp, he had wondered briefly if this was how he would end up. That his body would be found on the I-40 on ramp leading from the Albuquerque airport to points West. It was impulse that led him to start walking from the rental car return desk toward the freeway and not the Frontier Airlines terminal where a plane was waiting with two seats that would ultimately not be filled.

Clayton realized his plans had derailed when he opened his leather shoulder bag to get the cash to pay for the rental car and the zippered holster was not in the pocket. He had kept his walking around cash, a bundle of folded fifties, in holster. He knew then that he’d left the holster in the boot bag stuffed into his favorite kangaroo leather boots that were now probably in police custody. He tensed and felt an ice hot surge in his stomach. The fear and anger blended in his bloodstream and almost without thinking, and with no plan, he headed for the freeway on ramp.

The intensity of the cold didn’t register at first, his face was pinched in rage and his determination to be swallowing into an anonymous westbound vehicle pushed him up the sidewalk and over the guardrail. Snow was not yet accumulating and no ice had formed so he was able to walk up the ramp easily, but he didn’t want to call attention to himself and alert the cops so he stayed on the top of the ramp and waited. Standing with his back to the wind and his grey felt hat pulled low on his forehead his pulse began to slow and the cold concrete began to leach the warmth from his body through the souls of his boots.

Clayton had become distracted by counting the cash for his partner, Ben, for the third time and he was worried about missing the flight. The gun was his favorite, lovely with a pearl handle. Clayton had meant to put it into the lining of the suitcase they were checking, but now it remained in the kangaroo leather boots. He’d had them custom made in San Antonio and they were beauties. He refused to check them in baggage and always put them in his carry on. Now both were gone forever and he was freezing his ass off on the side of the I-40.

The landscape west of Albuquerque could be called beautiful by some, in a painting or photographed at dawn or dusk. Looking out the snow smeared windshield one couldn’t tell if it were noon or twilight. There was nothing but grey blue and no edges to anything. The van had a CB and an 8 track player. The driver was partial to the Doobie Brothers which did not improve the man’s mood.

“You mind if I brouse your tape library?” the man asked, trying to sound curious not judgmental.