The Trade
They were about twenty miles out when the engine began to stammer and steam and finally cease. The two sat for a moment grumbling in silence until the one behind the wheel got out. He stepped down onto the cracked pavement with the far-off glint of the city amidst the gray hills and dust and clouds like a rippled cloth overlay. Near them a highway overpass cast a shadow from a muted sun that palled just out of their range and when he lifted the brown hood he saw it as a hollow gate to separate the city from where they ventured. The wastelands. Tremendous swaths of vacated ruins and nomadic cadres repopulating a wild and transformed country where even the illusion of law had no homestead. The other man who rode shotgun had his head propped up on his knuckles and his forearm braced on the open window sill. The black jacket he wore like a second skin opposing his light shirt and pale complexion. Monochromatic save the shock of hair and even formal in as much as the road would allow. He brought his head back up and from his coat pocket lifted a metal canister and took a brown, thin cigar and put it to his lips and lit it. He puffed and he held the lighter. A kanji symbol known only to him was etched in ivory sharp against the black paint. He paused and turned and looked in the back to the woman bound and sitting. He paused again to give brief concession to her and leaned back to his smoke. She said nothing.
"What's the damage?" The smoking man said.
The other man slammed the hood down and paced to the passenger side wiping his hands with a handkerchief.
"I said what's the damage."
"There's a busted hose leading to the radiator. Completely drained of fluid."
"That's not good."
"We don't have a spare part. No fluid either."
"Oil and gas, yeah. Not antifreeze."
"Didn't think to bring it."
"So we sit. Figures."
He pocketed the kerchief and eyed behind him and studied about the area. The quiet shale terrain spoiled by memories of people, of mass influxes and blocked traffic. Bygone headaches now longing remembrances of time slipped through the cracks. No signs of anything moving nor anyone to kick up the dust. A hill vantage point hung to their right and a smoothed plateau squared on the left. Open, obvious. But unassuming. They sat halted in the road. "Won't be too long. How is she?"
"Still hasn't said nothing."
He went to the rear of the vehicle and opened the back hatch door, one hand on the skeletal ladder bolted and bent. A bulbous and rectangular camper in a shade of brown flat and average like a toppled paper bag. Tires a slight too small for the chassis. The ceiling was raised on its backside and accommodated a ruddy storage quarter tacked with shelves and a cushioned seating fixture that could unfurl itself into a lean bed. There she sat. She glanced to him when he opened it up and when he spoke she gazed back to the interior from which she shifted. "Are you comfortable, miss?" He said.
She shook her head.
"You're, um..." He put a hand on his hip, a wrist encased in a bracelet made from tied and wound paracord. "Our employer was adamant about the cuffs. Wasn't us. You'll need them for the exchange but if you want we can take em off for now. No problem."
She brought her hands to her forehead and swept the bangs from the sweat. "Don't bother", she said. By this day, the third that they had her, these were the first words she'd spoken. She'd been as a stone to them, blank and hunched. Led around between by word, asking no questions or answering with anything more than the occasional grunt. They hadn't even learned her name in that time, though they knew her background and her family. What she was worth. They'd taken after her care as best they could, inexperienced as they were. Treating her much the same you would a near catatonic. Making sure she had proper sustenance and allotted time to bathe and to sleep. Always she was close by, their eyes never far from where she loped and the places they had prepared for her. But not once was there the inkling of escape, attempted or thought of. It seemed enough to them that her custody was of little importance to her, that she had an indifference going alongside any other facet of her life. This unreadable enigma. The smoking man left the van and the two paused and gawked at each other. "Well okay then", he said.
She came out of the vehicle and sat on the floorboard with her legs dangling. "Can I have some water?", she asked. One took a water bottle from a cooler they had stashed and opened it and handed it to her. She drank from it and they stood aside the van for a while in a comfortable interim, the three of them. She could see their weapons stowed away in the cabinet spaces and the grips of the pistols they wore resting horizontal on their belts. She was next to the black tubing of the arms and the tools and the cases of ammunition telling of what they were and what they could do. Yet in those long drives and treks she found a modicum of safety with them, relative though it was. On her own volition she ran and with her back against the wall she was tucked away from her pursuers and shielded by protectors. Reluctant and unfamiliar to be sure but there was no malice to their actions, their hands. The men closer than friends, deeper even than brothers. They spoke in a covenant of money and work in thin, desperate lands and their lives as chattel for grubby and particular tasks, what they were good at. Without escape from their lots they chose to stride on and make tomorrow from the dirt and the metal, all that there was.
Soon enough a pillar of dust spiraled from the west and the trembling of a motorcade circled in. She saw it first and appeared to recoil within herself the closer they came. Three off-road wagons like a phalanx rode on the flat and when they stopped the spear tip opened and woman exited and walked alone to the arena between her cavalcade and them to negotiate like a chieftain. "I'll stay with the girl", the smoking man said. The other man readied himself and met her wide on the plain. A hard standing woman, hair pulled back in a ponytail and tan wrinkles lining her squinted eyes. A few of her cohorts came out after her and stayed back carrying rifles and shotguns visibly in their hands but she was not armed.
"This isn't the place", she said.
"I know. Had car problems."
She audibly sighed. "Ain't good to be doing this so close to town. Have to make it fast, you hear?"
He nodded.
"Which one are you?"
"One what?"
"I was told there was two men. I have their names. So which one are you?"
"Vincent."
"So the other's Roy."
"That's right."
She surveyed the man. His widow's peak, glasses with odd yellow lenses. He stood a good ten feet from her. Of African descent. The vest he wore was like the maimed torso of a military jumpsuit, the arms shorn off and the waist hemmed. Beneath the army green and hooped zipper was a salmon colored shirt that with his bluejeans gave him a vibrancy his partner lacked. Something akin to resilience in his posture and his thumbs in his pockets. Simple brown boots and a scabbard clipped to his thigh harboring a knife and the pistol sheathed on his right hip.
A distance away the girl cowered next to the man, both observing the exchange at the line and hearing muffled speech. "Not them", the girl said.
"What?", the man said.
"I don't want to go with them."
"That's the deal. You for the money. You knew about this."
"Not them. They're not with my father."
"You sure about that?"
"I know that woman. They're lying to you."
"Better be sure."
"You have to stop this." She looked him dead set in the eyes. "They'll kill me."
"They'll kill us."
"Please. Do it now." Real fear and knowing in her face, the first time he'd seen it clearly.
He cursed and left her and went to his partner and called his name. The woman had a knapsack of money in her hand and demeanor of agitation when he came. The men whispered to themselves and bickered in hushed tones while she waited. When Vincent addressed her again his confidence had faltered and he stammered as he began to speak. "There's, uh. Been a complication."
"How's that?" The woman pried.
"We have reason to think you don't work for the girl's father."
"She tell you this?"
He didn't respond.
"She's just trying to get out of it. She's playing you, you must know that. Doesn't want to go back to her daddy."
"Just need some proof is all."
"Excuse me?"
"So we can finish the trade."
"How do you expect me to do that, hmm? Conjure him up from thin air? You talked to us and you agreed to the terms. Here's your prize." She threw the sack to the ground in front of him. "Give us the girl now. I won't hear another word of it." Her gunmen lingered far behind each shoulder like poor angelic sentries.
He took the bag from the ground and considered its weight in his grip. He opened it and thumbed the cash bundles, enough there at a glance. He turned and gave it to Roy. "Go and get her."
"I don't know."
"Get her. If we don't they'll kill us and take her anyway."
He looked to the horizon and muted sun descending, making its getaway into the earth. A warmth from it stretched across the plain and gave them all a darkened crimson glow to the proceeding. A little cheshire grin stove in his face and he took the satchel and made the walk to the van. She whimpered almost imperceptibly to herself as he put the bag in the back and shut the hatch door but what trouble was there quickly went back inside her and she stood up straight and austere at him. He apologized more than once like a gentleman and she nodded, the most console she'd give. When he handed her over the woman cut her restraints and reared her to the cavalcade without so much as a closing gesture and the both of them locked within the head jeep from which she emerged and all the engines revved alive again and hesitated with the lights off and the windows blackened like phantom cruisers undead on the plain.
They watched side by side until the plumes of their trail markers had followed and disappeared with them down the slope to the frontier and they ceded back to their own trusted ship. Within a day's time it had been repaired by an old mechanic friend who gave them a discount and they were back sleeping in working wheels and hotel rooms along the outer hovels of the city, nothing to do but stretch the money and chase more of it. That afternoon they rose and saw through the windshield a shuttle burst into the air and away from the planet, its hot and blue tail inflamed on jet fuel and ingenuity. Vincent put the key in the ignition and did not turn it. Instead his fingers took the necklace he wore of paired dog tags and rubbed them. "You believed her?" He said.
"Who?"
"You know who."
"Yeah, I did." He had taken a flask and was drinking a cutting brew.
"Had no reason to."
"Maybe not. But I did."
"Why?"
"Doesn't matter now."
"Well you seemed pretty convinced. We could've made a mistake."
"It's over. We're paid, we're alive, and we're square."
"I don't think so."
Roy stared at him with a seething draw in his face, his reddened eyes. "It's done. Why are you talking like this?"
"I don't have a mind to let her die like that."
"Sure you do." He swigged and looked out the window. "She wanted out of the deal, simple as that."
"You said you believed her."
"There wasn't... Wasn't any options. Said so yourself."
"Bottom line is we didn't do our job."
"Then you shoulda said something before. Cause it's too late now so shut up about it and lets go."
He turned the ignition key ."You're right."
"About time."
"No. There wasn't a choice, you're right. But there is now."
"And what's that."
"We track them down and we get her back."
"You're crazy."
"Little more lively than waiting around for the next job don't you think."
"I've had enough of this. It's useless. I know you've already made up your mind." He corked the flask and pocketed it with his hands and slumped in the jacket and the seat.
"So did you. Just don't know it yet."
With the night sinking on antiquated billboards and long-dead streetlights they were there trundling along the banks of high, uncut grass and on the pavement of the roads melting into the foliage and the dirt. Freckled lights of the city swaying away in the rearview mirrors like jewels in a hazing dusk. They bickered like spouses but it was contained in their vessel and hidden from the world and they never turned back. Steering in shifts in the wilderness. A little dark matchbox on the midnight horizon and beyond, following tire tracks and maps and their memory and searching with its eyes the mark of where the prize would be. An awaiting reward of exorbitant riches to be coveted and sought after. But their true chase was of a greater pursuit widened night and day across the fathoms. Something unsaid between them akin to hope and honor, the drive for the rarest commodities there were.
"What's the damage?" The smoking man said.
The other man slammed the hood down and paced to the passenger side wiping his hands with a handkerchief.
"I said what's the damage."
"There's a busted hose leading to the radiator. Completely drained of fluid."
"That's not good."
"We don't have a spare part. No fluid either."
"Oil and gas, yeah. Not antifreeze."
"Didn't think to bring it."
"So we sit. Figures."
He pocketed the kerchief and eyed behind him and studied about the area. The quiet shale terrain spoiled by memories of people, of mass influxes and blocked traffic. Bygone headaches now longing remembrances of time slipped through the cracks. No signs of anything moving nor anyone to kick up the dust. A hill vantage point hung to their right and a smoothed plateau squared on the left. Open, obvious. But unassuming. They sat halted in the road. "Won't be too long. How is she?"
"Still hasn't said nothing."
He went to the rear of the vehicle and opened the back hatch door, one hand on the skeletal ladder bolted and bent. A bulbous and rectangular camper in a shade of brown flat and average like a toppled paper bag. Tires a slight too small for the chassis. The ceiling was raised on its backside and accommodated a ruddy storage quarter tacked with shelves and a cushioned seating fixture that could unfurl itself into a lean bed. There she sat. She glanced to him when he opened it up and when he spoke she gazed back to the interior from which she shifted. "Are you comfortable, miss?" He said.
She shook her head.
"You're, um..." He put a hand on his hip, a wrist encased in a bracelet made from tied and wound paracord. "Our employer was adamant about the cuffs. Wasn't us. You'll need them for the exchange but if you want we can take em off for now. No problem."
She brought her hands to her forehead and swept the bangs from the sweat. "Don't bother", she said. By this day, the third that they had her, these were the first words she'd spoken. She'd been as a stone to them, blank and hunched. Led around between by word, asking no questions or answering with anything more than the occasional grunt. They hadn't even learned her name in that time, though they knew her background and her family. What she was worth. They'd taken after her care as best they could, inexperienced as they were. Treating her much the same you would a near catatonic. Making sure she had proper sustenance and allotted time to bathe and to sleep. Always she was close by, their eyes never far from where she loped and the places they had prepared for her. But not once was there the inkling of escape, attempted or thought of. It seemed enough to them that her custody was of little importance to her, that she had an indifference going alongside any other facet of her life. This unreadable enigma. The smoking man left the van and the two paused and gawked at each other. "Well okay then", he said.
She came out of the vehicle and sat on the floorboard with her legs dangling. "Can I have some water?", she asked. One took a water bottle from a cooler they had stashed and opened it and handed it to her. She drank from it and they stood aside the van for a while in a comfortable interim, the three of them. She could see their weapons stowed away in the cabinet spaces and the grips of the pistols they wore resting horizontal on their belts. She was next to the black tubing of the arms and the tools and the cases of ammunition telling of what they were and what they could do. Yet in those long drives and treks she found a modicum of safety with them, relative though it was. On her own volition she ran and with her back against the wall she was tucked away from her pursuers and shielded by protectors. Reluctant and unfamiliar to be sure but there was no malice to their actions, their hands. The men closer than friends, deeper even than brothers. They spoke in a covenant of money and work in thin, desperate lands and their lives as chattel for grubby and particular tasks, what they were good at. Without escape from their lots they chose to stride on and make tomorrow from the dirt and the metal, all that there was.
Soon enough a pillar of dust spiraled from the west and the trembling of a motorcade circled in. She saw it first and appeared to recoil within herself the closer they came. Three off-road wagons like a phalanx rode on the flat and when they stopped the spear tip opened and woman exited and walked alone to the arena between her cavalcade and them to negotiate like a chieftain. "I'll stay with the girl", the smoking man said. The other man readied himself and met her wide on the plain. A hard standing woman, hair pulled back in a ponytail and tan wrinkles lining her squinted eyes. A few of her cohorts came out after her and stayed back carrying rifles and shotguns visibly in their hands but she was not armed.
"This isn't the place", she said.
"I know. Had car problems."
She audibly sighed. "Ain't good to be doing this so close to town. Have to make it fast, you hear?"
He nodded.
"Which one are you?"
"One what?"
"I was told there was two men. I have their names. So which one are you?"
"Vincent."
"So the other's Roy."
"That's right."
She surveyed the man. His widow's peak, glasses with odd yellow lenses. He stood a good ten feet from her. Of African descent. The vest he wore was like the maimed torso of a military jumpsuit, the arms shorn off and the waist hemmed. Beneath the army green and hooped zipper was a salmon colored shirt that with his bluejeans gave him a vibrancy his partner lacked. Something akin to resilience in his posture and his thumbs in his pockets. Simple brown boots and a scabbard clipped to his thigh harboring a knife and the pistol sheathed on his right hip.
A distance away the girl cowered next to the man, both observing the exchange at the line and hearing muffled speech. "Not them", the girl said.
"What?", the man said.
"I don't want to go with them."
"That's the deal. You for the money. You knew about this."
"Not them. They're not with my father."
"You sure about that?"
"I know that woman. They're lying to you."
"Better be sure."
"You have to stop this." She looked him dead set in the eyes. "They'll kill me."
"They'll kill us."
"Please. Do it now." Real fear and knowing in her face, the first time he'd seen it clearly.
He cursed and left her and went to his partner and called his name. The woman had a knapsack of money in her hand and demeanor of agitation when he came. The men whispered to themselves and bickered in hushed tones while she waited. When Vincent addressed her again his confidence had faltered and he stammered as he began to speak. "There's, uh. Been a complication."
"How's that?" The woman pried.
"We have reason to think you don't work for the girl's father."
"She tell you this?"
He didn't respond.
"She's just trying to get out of it. She's playing you, you must know that. Doesn't want to go back to her daddy."
"Just need some proof is all."
"Excuse me?"
"So we can finish the trade."
"How do you expect me to do that, hmm? Conjure him up from thin air? You talked to us and you agreed to the terms. Here's your prize." She threw the sack to the ground in front of him. "Give us the girl now. I won't hear another word of it." Her gunmen lingered far behind each shoulder like poor angelic sentries.
He took the bag from the ground and considered its weight in his grip. He opened it and thumbed the cash bundles, enough there at a glance. He turned and gave it to Roy. "Go and get her."
"I don't know."
"Get her. If we don't they'll kill us and take her anyway."
He looked to the horizon and muted sun descending, making its getaway into the earth. A warmth from it stretched across the plain and gave them all a darkened crimson glow to the proceeding. A little cheshire grin stove in his face and he took the satchel and made the walk to the van. She whimpered almost imperceptibly to herself as he put the bag in the back and shut the hatch door but what trouble was there quickly went back inside her and she stood up straight and austere at him. He apologized more than once like a gentleman and she nodded, the most console she'd give. When he handed her over the woman cut her restraints and reared her to the cavalcade without so much as a closing gesture and the both of them locked within the head jeep from which she emerged and all the engines revved alive again and hesitated with the lights off and the windows blackened like phantom cruisers undead on the plain.
They watched side by side until the plumes of their trail markers had followed and disappeared with them down the slope to the frontier and they ceded back to their own trusted ship. Within a day's time it had been repaired by an old mechanic friend who gave them a discount and they were back sleeping in working wheels and hotel rooms along the outer hovels of the city, nothing to do but stretch the money and chase more of it. That afternoon they rose and saw through the windshield a shuttle burst into the air and away from the planet, its hot and blue tail inflamed on jet fuel and ingenuity. Vincent put the key in the ignition and did not turn it. Instead his fingers took the necklace he wore of paired dog tags and rubbed them. "You believed her?" He said.
"Who?"
"You know who."
"Yeah, I did." He had taken a flask and was drinking a cutting brew.
"Had no reason to."
"Maybe not. But I did."
"Why?"
"Doesn't matter now."
"Well you seemed pretty convinced. We could've made a mistake."
"It's over. We're paid, we're alive, and we're square."
"I don't think so."
Roy stared at him with a seething draw in his face, his reddened eyes. "It's done. Why are you talking like this?"
"I don't have a mind to let her die like that."
"Sure you do." He swigged and looked out the window. "She wanted out of the deal, simple as that."
"You said you believed her."
"There wasn't... Wasn't any options. Said so yourself."
"Bottom line is we didn't do our job."
"Then you shoulda said something before. Cause it's too late now so shut up about it and lets go."
He turned the ignition key ."You're right."
"About time."
"No. There wasn't a choice, you're right. But there is now."
"And what's that."
"We track them down and we get her back."
"You're crazy."
"Little more lively than waiting around for the next job don't you think."
"I've had enough of this. It's useless. I know you've already made up your mind." He corked the flask and pocketed it with his hands and slumped in the jacket and the seat.
"So did you. Just don't know it yet."
With the night sinking on antiquated billboards and long-dead streetlights they were there trundling along the banks of high, uncut grass and on the pavement of the roads melting into the foliage and the dirt. Freckled lights of the city swaying away in the rearview mirrors like jewels in a hazing dusk. They bickered like spouses but it was contained in their vessel and hidden from the world and they never turned back. Steering in shifts in the wilderness. A little dark matchbox on the midnight horizon and beyond, following tire tracks and maps and their memory and searching with its eyes the mark of where the prize would be. An awaiting reward of exorbitant riches to be coveted and sought after. But their true chase was of a greater pursuit widened night and day across the fathoms. Something unsaid between them akin to hope and honor, the drive for the rarest commodities there were.
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