A Colorado Tale and the Ten-Thousand-Dollar Plan

Three teenage boys set out on their own vacation and get more than they bargained for.

A Colorado Tale and the Ten-Thousand-Dollar Plan

BelAir

 

 

 

 

Kevin knew when he first entered the bar that he had seen the lonely old flag in the Red Sox hat before, but nothing came into mind, even when he took the stool next to him. The man glanced at him once, when he ordered, and then away. It didn’t matter. In a bar you thought you’d seen just about everyone somewhere a time or two before, and sometimes they ended up becoming your best buddy by the completion of the night anyway.

A Red Sox game was being blasted from the corner radio because the two televisions in the place only received two channels, and both were dishing out either news or back-to-back soap operas. Mostly news. It had been that way as long as Kevin could remember.

The radio broadcast brought his attention back to the man beside him. He was staring at his beer glass (three-fourths air), and only raised his head to look around when a commercial took the game’s place, as if he was seeing something Kevin could not in the glass. Screw the television.

"Why isn’t it on the TV?" Kevin asked. Something was gnawing at him and was going to ravish him alive until he found what he was looking for.

The man turned to him, eyebrows raised. "Pardon?"

"The game." He thumbed toward one of the widescreens above the bar.

"Bad reception this way, I guess."

"Or they’re too tight to get satellite."

The man smiled weakly. "Yeah, or that."

Okay. So the guy was friendly, didn’t mind talking. Some men Kevin witnessed and their interactions proved they were here strictly to be here, for the sake of drinking and letting loose for a while. Kevin himself would have been one of these tonight, he thought, if he would have gone without seeing the man in the Red Sox hat.

And, the hat . . . Something was off kilter about it when he had turned to Kevin. Something different that registered in his mind and was ravaged by subconsciousness the next.

When the man looked at him again he saw the red B sewn into the middle of the dark blue hat wasn’t in the middle; it leaned slightly toward the right.

"You like the Sox?" the man asked. Kevin was able to spy a little of his deep-crested face before he returned to his glass.

"I’m not a big baseball fan myself, but they’re not bad . . . How’d you come across a hat like that, if you don’t mind me asking?"

"Pardon?"

"The B—"

"Yeah, that." He grinned at his glass. It appeared exhausted on his face, never changing his eyes. "The company accidently made the B crooked, so I got it half-off." He took a drink, and Kevin helped himself to his own. It had come without his notice.

"Well, you take a bargain when you can get it," Kevin agreed.

"Right."

He was fumbling along before the game could return.

"And how did you end up liking a team almost clear across the country?"

"Same way anybody picks a team to like—when they’re good."

Kevin nodded.

The game came back on for what was most of another inning, and the two men were silent.

Kevin glanced around the room during this in search of more familiar faces. The bar was partly empty because of the week night, but out of the men and women who were wasting their

evening there (a younger couple—college kids—at the end of the stools, a heavy woman he took for the bar’s owner over at a corner table, among others), none of them triggered anything knew in his mind. And was that surprising? He hadn’t been back in a long, long time.

It was the Red Sox man who spoke again. His team was on top of the Dodgers by four at the bottom of the sixth with a timeout, sparing him a little time.

"I think I know you." He was eyeing Kevin, trying for a friendly grin that never quite made it.

"Yeah, I think you do." He offered his hand. "Kevin Danery."

Something changed in his eyes. "Well, damn, I should know you. You’re Martin’s son." And he added quickly: "God rest his soul. He’s up there with my daughter. Good man. I’m sorry." He shook his hand. It was cold from touching his glass.

"That’s all right," was all Kevin could manage. He still didn’t know what to say when they told him that. And, really, it wasn’t all right. Each time it was like a sucker-punch to the face when you were turning around, thinking you were covered.

Who? My dad? Dead? Oh, no, you’re mistaken."Rick Lawson. You probably don’t know me by name. I helped out your dad sometimes."

 

"I thought I recognized your face." Kevin said. That was all he remembered him by; the man was right about that. "Still living around here?"

"Oh, no, no," shaking his head. "Jackie—my wife Jackie and I found us a home outside Cortez years ago. Probably when you was not even in junior high school," he said.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. We still love it."

Just to keep the conversational ball rolling and because the game had went to commercials, Kevin added: "I’ve got a buddy I think lives there. Somewhere around there, anyway."

"Name?"

"You probably don’t remember Travis Silverstein, do you?"

Rick Lawson paused in thought for a moment, looking over Kevin’s face but not seeing it. Kevin noticed the long bags under his eyes as he did. Then something clicked into place.

"You know, I think I do. You guys running around together when you were younger. I think I do."

"And Malcolm Brennaport." Kevin nodded to show the man’s recollection was correct. "We were teens of the eighties if there ever were."

Mr. Lawson finished his beer off and signaled for another, reminding him of his own at his elbow. It was forgotten again in their conversation, and that was more than surprising, considering the frame of mind in which he had come. He discovered a faint smile on the man’s lips when he looked back. For a second he thought maybe for the Budweiser, until it remained, unchanged, as he focused on Kevin. Perhaps he was slightly drunk.

But his eyes were sober. Oh yes, that much was apparent. They were blue, saddened gemstones watching him beneath the Red Sox bill.

"I like reminiscing. Seems like the only thing I do."

"And me, too."

This last went unheard when Kevin’s voice slipped under the radio’s racket—Ramirez catching what was thought to be a Dodger’s home run. Meanwhile, Kevin picked through one of the blue dishes atop the counter for a cashew.

"Yeah." Mr. Lawson put down most of his glass in what looked to Kevin like two swallows. He wiped his mouth with one arm. "So what’ve you been doing? Where’re you living?"

"Outside of Asheville. North Carolina."

He raised his eyebrows. "What got you out there, son?"

"Work. Machine operating."

Nodded. "Beautiful state."

"Not as beautiful as here."

"You’ve got that right. But I’ve seen it’s ugliness, too."

Mr. Lawson finished his beer. Kevin didn’t know what brought on this sudden binge (and while he himself was still on his first, one-fourth emptied). Maybe he’s been eating the peanuts when I wasn’t looking. Made him thirsty.There was a break between both men while the radio rose to another clamor—he wasn’t sure what was going on now, neither of them were, actually—before Mr. Lawson ordered another. When the bartender came, another stranger face in a familiar land, Kevin handed him a five to cover it and pocketed the change. Mr. Lawson nodded thanks.

 

"Jackie and I went to Carolina a long time ago. We stopped traveling for good some time after that." Another sip. "How’s the crime down thata way?"

"There’s crime everywhere."

"Yes, that’s true. Even home."

"Even home," Kevin Danery agreed and drank. "There was this one time when Mac and Travis and me went up Denver way. That’s when I, uh . . . learned about that."

Kevin was hooked on his glass now. Mr. Lawson was silent, maybe listening to him, maybe the game. He didn’t know which.

Though when he raised his gaze to the mirror, Mr. Lawson was watching him, waiting for him to go on. He raised his eyebrows. And?

"Well, we went into a Mexican restaurant in Cortez one night just because Travis’s parents were gone and my mom was still at work. You know teenage boys aren’t going to cook."

Two men, farmers, most likely, left the stools down from him and headed for the door. He followed them to the woman smoking in the corner, who met his eyes and wandered away.

"Mac and me were turning eighteen and Travis was nineteen. This was in the summer of ‘86. Like I said before, we were rebels of the eighties if there ever were. Def Leppard. Black Sabbath and AC/DC. Back then when gas was eighty-something cents a gallon, and we thought that was expensive." He smiled and took a drink of his beer. Mr. Lawson did the same.

Kevin, who was really never much of a storyteller, searched for where to pick up and uncovered an echo of words which were only kept deep in the back chamber of his mind, bouncing off its sodden walls and, as everyone was familiar with at least once or twice, hitting the door instead and freeing itself into the open again.

" ‘Man, I feel like the summer’s slipped past us, and it’s enough to break my heart.’

"That’s what Mac said. This was while we were waiting on our food. Complete silence and then he says that. Travis agreed with him but didn’t look at us. Travis was like that most of the summer, and as much as Mac and me tried to help him, we couldn’t. He lost his grandfather to cancer at sixty-three. We figured time was what he needed, but it wasn’t."

Mr. Lawson nodded.

"But Mac said it again. ‘It’s slipped past us, guys,’ he said. I looked at him, and I believed him. It did slip past us, like summers always do for teenagers, but ours had reason to go even faster, with Travis having to watch a proud man go through what his grandfather had to go through, and me, with my parent’s separation and all of that. Seemed like the whole summer was spent on sorrow.

"Anyway, I was still looking at Mac, and he was looking at me.

" ‘Well, what do you want us to do about it?’ I asked him.

"He looked at Travis, and there was this weird excitement in his eyes. We were a wild bunch and always doing things to get that look in his eyes, but this time . . . I don’t know, it looked different to me.

" ‘What about going up to Denver and Boulder for a while before school starts up again,’ he said. ‘Well, I mean, we don’t have to stick there. But just see what’s farther north.’ "

Kevin paused, took a drink.

"It may be hard to believe that we’d never been anywhere out of Dove City, I know. We went to Cortex and the town around sometimes, but that was usually it. We were country boys, born and raised. Except for our music.

" ‘And all of us have the money to do this?’ I asked him.

" ‘Well, you all just got paid last week, didn’t you? So did I. Throw in our cash together—you aren’t going to do anything better with it—and, yeah, we’ve got plenty,’ he said.

"So I kind of thought it over for a while, even though I didn’t need to. I couldn’t tell if Travis thought it was a good idea or not."

Kevin emptied his beer and ordered another, this time covered by the man next to him. Mr. Lawson seemed to be solely interested in his story, or perhaps he was listening to the game, now in the bottom of the eighth, Sox still on top. Either way it didn’t matter.

And, by the smoothness of his narration and how strongly he could pull these events to mind, one would not suspect this was the first time he had spoken of it, and Kevin wondered why the story plagued him so now, and to be told to this man.

Still didn’t matter.

"While we were sitting there discussing the trip, I noticed this guy at the table across from us. He was talking on his cellphone—what looked like cordless house phones now . . . well, you know—and he was going on and on. I think the only time he paused was to talk to the waiters working there. Nobody I knew could speak Spanish, but this guy could, and fluently. Some of the waiters were crowded around his table, and they were grinning and talking low to him in Spanish. I looked over at Mac in front of me, and the only thing he said was ‘drug deals.’ That had Travis grinning for probably the first time that day.

"When they returned to their job, he returned to his cell phone. He was griping to somebody about a woman. How she dropped out of beautician school after the money he gave her because she decided she didn’t want to do it anymore, and how all she wanted to do was run here and there and how she could be anywhere while he was working, and this guy looked expensive: expensive watch, expensive hair, and probably an expensive chest the ladies could croon over under his shirt, and like you and me know, those weren’t the kind of people you saw around town. She was out doing her own things, spending his money, ‘and God knows what else,’ he said. We just sat there and listened to him.

"Then our food came, and we ate. None of us saying a word. When we were done, Mac’s like, ‘Well, what will it be? School starts in less than two weeks, and I’d like to know by then.’

"More waiters came to talk to the guy, and then they left. I looked over at Travis and asked him what he thought. He shrugged. ‘Sounds all right,’ he said.

"It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go. You bet I did, but somebody’s got to put up the rational front, even if I’d already decided the second he mentioned it.

" ‘All right. Sounds good,’ I said.

"And we knew it wouldn’t matter to our parents, up, down, or sideways. Hell, they were never home half the time. Just honest country people, making an honest country living. You know how that goes.

"We left the next morning. Like I said, parents were fine with it, as long as we were back in time for school." He chuckled. "Still had our senior year to finish. This was Travis’s second year around.

"So we packed some clothes and money and met at Mac’s house and used his dad’s Oldsmobile—"

"That shows how much they didn’t care, son. Loaning your car to a couple of teenage boys."

Kevin smirked. "Exactly."

"So we went on our way. Stopped for gas and filled her up before. Now there’d be no way somebody could afford running the way we did, and let alone the gas guzzlers we drove. But we could, and we did. We weren’t bound for just Denver or Boulder, like Mac said. Just anywhere we wanted to go, as long as we still had money for gas.

"It took us half the day to get to Pueblo. We slept in the car the first night at a rest stop outside of town. I was sprawled across the backseats, Travis with his feet kicked up on the dash, and Mac was stretched over the front of the car using the windshield as a backrest. It just felt good to be free and away from home and work.

"In the morning we grabbed something to eat at one of the diners in town, filled up on gas. Mac got us a room at a hotel in Colorado Springs, and that’s where we headed to. He drove most of the time because he was better in traffic and all of that, and it was his dad’s car.

"I think we got into town around two or three, sometime later in the afternoon, anyway, and we checked into the motel. Then we grabbed something to eat and just drove around and saw what there was to see."

Kevin waved at the bartender to cover Mr. Lawson for another.

"It’s funny, you know. How easily a woman can travel because there will always be stores and shopping centers everywhere you go, but with men . . . It takes a different kind of man to just go somewhere for the ride, just to see what’s out there. And that’s what kind of guys we were. A bunch of free spirits. I always say I would of been a hippie if that was my time era, but I was late by twenty years."

This got Mr. Lawson to smile.

"That night we hit up on a casino in town. The Bronco, if I remember right. Travis tried himself at the blackjack tables and lost something around two-hundred, I think. Mac and me stuck to the slots where it wasn’t so crowded. I won fifty and Mac got somewhere close.

"We left around closing, which would of been in the early hours of the morning, and grabbed some beers at a convenience store, and we went back to our motel.

"The next morning we left around two because we didn’t wake up until noon, and we still had to grab a bite to eat. We headed for Denver. The drive, the entire trip . . . just as beautiful as home. Especially when we got up around Estes and Boulder. You’ve probably been up that way, haven’t you?"

To Kevin’s surprise, he really did have an audience, even now when the game was falling on the ninth inning in a close run.

"A few times when I was a younger guy like yourself."

"Yeah." Kevin drank. "Well, we made it into Denver sometime that evening and checked into a Motel 6 and did the same thing. Drove around and saw the city. We ended up stopping at a nightclub in downtown Denver. We danced with some pretty gals and got loaded, and I think Mac might of even got pulled into a back room by one of the dancers, or some woman, at least, but when we asked him in the morning his face turned red and all he did was shake his head and smile. From there we went onto a bar across the street and put down a few more drinks. The next thing I can remember is waking up in our motel room sick as dog. All of us were.

"I don’t remember much about that day, either, but I think we stayed pretty close to our room. At least until we were feeling okay, and that wasn’t until the morning after that." Kevin laughed. "The room smelled like stale beer and vomit when we left. Just like we got it."

He picked a few more cashews out of the dish on the bar. "Oh, and I forgot to mention what we had in the back of the car: Mac’s rifles. Two or three of them. His dad forgot to take them out after they came home from hunting the weekend before. Seemed too good to be true. You know, the rifles left there so we could hunt, but after our Hardy-Boys adventure daydream cleared, and we thought about it, we realized it was, because the only things we could hunt were what we could cook right there on the spot. Somebody passing through ended up lifting them out of our car one night, too, and deer hunting was still in illegal season, and on somebody’s property is always illegal, even though back then a lot of the area around Estes wasn’t anything, just wild land. Our menu was fish and whatever small mammals that we weren’t tempted to try.

"And, well, after we stayed out there, it was all over.

Mr. Lawson ordered him another beer, and for that he was grateful.

"We packed up and went into Boulder for some real food and maybe a place to sleep. We weren’t really low on cash, but we were getting there. I can’t remember the name of the diner, just like I can’t remember the other ones we ate at, or what day it was. I should, though. Everything else’s locked into my memory."

Kevin took a long swallow from his beer.

"Food never tasted so good. So good we were complimenting the short-orders over greasy maid-rites and fries. We were scarfing it like hounds . . . This was when the diner was closing up that night, and we were the only customers left. We didn’t get into town exactly early because Mac got us lost when were leaving, and after we’d woke up and packed up, we had to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind.

"Yeah, the food tasted great, and I can’t remember whose idea it was and I don’t know what it matters. One of us thought a few beers would taste even better to wash it down with. So maybe we were at a bar. I don’t know."

Something had weakened in Kevin’s voice. Perhaps he was only speaking lower so as not to be overheard.

"We were half-crocked when we came out of the bar and saw the first shock of night—that the Oldsmobile had been broken into—and so our reactions weren’t as immediate or as severe as they would of been normally. And otherwise they probably would of been rational.

"We stopped dead when we saw the car. All of its windows were busted out completely, and when we checked it out we knew one thing for sure: it’d been done over by amateurs. All of the wiring was pulled down below the steering wheel and slashed in a hot-wire attempt. Of course it wouldn’t start. And by then, the people at the bar or restaurant or whatever were finished closing up and were gone."

"They didn’t see nobody?"

"No. Nobody, or at least none we know of; we did park on the end of the lot away from the building but who would of expected something like that?

"That’s when Mac turned to us. I still remember that drunken grin. Heck, all of us were drunk.

" ‘I think we’ve got time for one more adventure. What do you think, Kev?’ he asked me. Right then and there any rational person would of ran. But I couldn’t.

" ‘What’s that?’ I asked him.

"He pointed to the supermarket parking-lot across the street. A Wal-Mart, I think.

" ‘You know nobody’s going to help out-of-towners this time of night, don’t you?’ he asked me. Travis, who was just as shot in the backseat, if not worse, well, he didn’t have any input.

"By then I knew what he had on his mind, drunk or not. The worse thing is it didn’t sound like a half-bad idea. I knew Mac could hot-wire a car and do it right. Learned from his uncle. And quick. We’d lifted a few before, so, you know, this wasn’t that different.

"The next thing I can remember is Mac pulling out of the Wal-mart parking-lot, I’m in the backseat, and Travis’s hitting his shoulder and congratulating him from the passenger."

The game had ended by now. Sox won by two. Now some sportscasters had taken over to discuss the evening’s events.

Kevin emptied the rest of his glass. He refused Mr. Lawson’s offer for another, as much as he needed it. He had to get this out. Alcohol only crippled his words.

"We didn’t have any kind of plan after that. We didn’t have any more of a plan than we did when we first started out, or what we were going to do about the Oldsmobile. The only thing I can remember after leaving the parking-lot was watching the centerline race under our tires, my face out into the wind because of a certain funny smell the car had, and yelling into the freedom I’d always wanted to experience . . .

"We woke up on the side of highway 550 the next morning, headed South in the direction of home. It was a wonder we were headed the right way. We didn’t have any idea where Mac’s dad’s car went. Ours had been hotwired. We could see that much. After that we got out and looked at the car and made sure there wasn’t any more damage on it, which there wasn’t, and

then searched for something inside that could link us to its owner. There wasn’t even a title in it, though. The whole car was spotless, like it was brand new . . . except that weird smell. When

we realized how bad it was something dropped in all of our stomachs, because the only place we hadn’t looked in was the trunk.

"Mac was the one to do it, since he could see we weren’t, you know, hurrying to it, or anything. Plus, having a hangover out of this world didn’t help. Travis and me followed him around to the trunk, but, the thing was, we didn’t have a key." Kevin hesitated. "I think I was thankful for that. All of us were. The smell was worse back there.

"Then the only thing we could do was get back in the Cadillac and see if we could find something to open it with at one of the gas stations along the road. And, who knew. Maybe it’s just bad groceries or a spoiled animal, I kept telling myself. I was getting the worst of it. The very worst of it in the backseat . . . But people do that sometimes, especially if they’ve been up around the mountains and sporting illegal game, you know. Throw animals in their trunk and take them home."

Mr. Lawson nodded when he saw the young man’s pleading eyes turn up to him. They seemed partly satisfied with this, at least, and returned to their former place. He was thankful.

"So we kept driving. Travis and Mac were leaning close to their windows but not me." He made an uncanny chuckle. "My window was stuck or jammed or something. I could of moved to the other, but it’d been knocked out and was sealed off with cardboard and plastic. I tried to tear through it, but behind the first layer of plastic was cardboard, and then that was sealed on the other side by more plastic. I got it out toward the bottom, anyway, and that got me some kind of relief.

"None of us were talking, either, and that was funny because there was so much to ask. Like where was Mac’s dad’s car and how were we going to get it back and what’d even happened to it and what about all of our stuff? And the thing was, we thought if we went to the police for help, we were the criminals of the situation. We stole it, and none of us were looking for help until we found out what was in the trunk, too.

"Oh, and I forgot to tell you what I noticed about the Cadillac, how it was a dusty or rusted red color. Like an old red. Like blood as it’s drying . . .

"Maybe the new air helped us think a little, because we finally got some kind of plan: we’d dump it. We’d dump it somewhere and then try to hitchhike back to Boulder and find the Oldsmobile and take it to a body shop, get it checked out, the expenses, maybe even call home and tell him what happened, because what if we got to a gas station and got the trunk open and something was in there we didn’t have any business about and it was too late because somebody saw us? Plus, the Cadillac could of already been on watch with the police, and we wouldn’t of known. Actually, that’s exactly what it was.

"We saw the first police cruiser after Vail. That’s where we were the closest to when we woke up. Between Vail and Avon. We were looking for a more out-of-the-way area to get rid of the car, and we knew it had to be soon because the road was growing between us and Boulder. Then Mac looked into his rear-view mirror and the first thing he did was start pressing the

accelerator out of panic. All of us were panicking, and that’s all there was to it. I think maybe if we wouldn’t of had that and maybe thought things over, the whole thing would of been over before it really started. But we didn’t, and then Mac was hitting eighty and gripping the steering wheel so tight I thought he was going to break it off. We already knew from the start it was us the cop was after. He started gaining on us, and when the other lane was clear he sped up next to us, stayed there for a while, motioning for us to pull over, and then he pulled in front of us and slammed on his brakes. For a second I thought Mac was going to slow, or he was just going to blow right through it, but he didn’t. Mac jerked the wheel to the left, and we moved into the other lane, but the cop was on our tail again, going ninety or more, and these were, well, you know, big hills and sharp turns.

"We came into Eagle a little after that, and on the other side of town, waiting for us, was a roadblock of police cruisers and the cop still following us."

Kevin closed his eyes, shook his head.

"I still don’t know how Mac did it. They even had their pistols on us, and Mac, he saw all of it—all of us did because I remember this begging look Travis gave him, but Mac didn’t see that, of course—but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t going to slow. We could see that, too. Mac pulled the wheel right toward the flattest shoulder when we were at the bottom of another hill and took them on, shooting at us and all. We dived off of the shoulder, and we were driving along the base of it through this field. When we made enough distance as we could make, before the field started to slope up, Mac floored it to get up the shoulder and onto the highway. He almost lost control of it right then, almost dived right back off on the left shoulder, but he got us straight. The cops were running for their cruisers. Mac had to do close to ninety to get them farther back, and we ended up turning off on one of the country roads we saw to loose them."

Kevin Danery didn’t know how well, how free, he felt to have an audience, to unleash the burden. For a moment, with the remnants of these feelings still pulsing through his body, he was pleased to see Rick Lawson was losing almost complete interest in his drink, and then the pleasure, satisfaction, freedom, were lost and forgotten as something darker stole into his heart again.

"We ended up taking some country road after Eagle and pulled over a few miles out there on a wooded gravel road. Mac was the first to get out, then Travis, but I sat there for a little while, thinking, stunned, I don’t know, and then that stink started to creep back into the backseat with me and I got out. They were standing at the back of the Cadillac. At first they were silent, looking around the area. When I came and joined them—" A grim smile showed on Kevin’s lips. "When I came and joined them I was almost stumbling because my knees were so weak. I held onto the car so they couldn’t tell, but for some reason, I didn’t like touching it and feeling how hot it was, like it was some kind of animal that was going to wake up from a fever dream. I think when my hand slid over the trunk I took it off completely.

"The first thing anybody said was if this was the place to dump it. It sure as hell wasn’t me because I was too busy listening. It sounded like something was stirring somewhere. I thought an animal in some underbrush or something, until Mac and Travis turned toward the Cadillac’s trunk. They’d heard it, too. It sounded like . . . sounded like something moving or turning over." He shrugged and shook his head. "The car didn’t move, so we fell back into discussion. It must of been Mac that asked us if that was where we should dump it because I think Travis was the one who answered him. He nodded, and both of them looked at me, and that was when we heard the thud against the trunk. It was loud. Loud enough so we knew it was coming from the trunk. All of us were standing there and stunned into silence. We were watching to see if something would happen again, and sure enough it did: two thuds against the trunk, and this time we saw them because the top of the trunk lifted a couple of centimeters with the blows, and then Mac pushed through us, running to the trunk.

" ‘Holy s**t, somebody’s in the trunk!’ he yelled, and he started prying at it and then I went to try to help.

"It was almost like the thuds didn’t come again after we touched the car.

"We kept prying anyway, and Travis joined us and we pried harder. Mac was screaming

at whatever was in that trunk to hold on and that we’d get help, and he ran around to the driver’s door and yelled at us and threw it open and jumped in. Travis and me were just following orders by then, had no idea where Mac was planning on ‘getting help’ or anything, but we trusted him as long as we were in our catatonic states. Travis was worse than me, though," Kevin added. "Took longer for him to come back. I came back as soon as the phone rang in the backseat. We were almost to the end of the gravel road when it happened. Mac turned around to me.

" ‘What the f**k is that?’ he screamed over the wind and the rocks slashing at our tires. I could only stutter something. I looked down and saw a black antenna poking out under the driver’s seat. I grabbed it and laid it on the driver’s seat next to me and just looked at it. This was when cell phones didn’t have assigned ringtones or caller ID or any of that. I’m surprised we could hear it at all over the Cadillac, and I wondered how many times it’d rand before that, and if I should even answer it, and then Mac yells, ‘F*****g pick it up!’ No explanation why

should or what I’d say, but I was just following orders, and I started to reach for it, but Travis stopped me.

" ‘No.’

"That was all he said. I looked at him. He was watching the gravel road unwind in front of us, not looking at anything but that.

"Mac stopped in the middle of the road and turned around and told me to answer it. I didn’t want to, though, so I gave it to him." Another humorless smile. "He just looked at it, too, when he had a hold of it. Travis was still looking out of the window. And it was funny because we’d seen this whole thing before, you know, in the movies—somebody lifts car, finds phone, phone rings, does he answer it or not? Seen it a thousand times . . . But we didn’t do it like they did. We answered it, sure, but Travis was the one to grab it out of Mac’s hand. He must of been developing some kind of plan the whole time we sat there, and we didn’t even know it. He pressed the answer button and said ‘yeah?’ and he’d dropped his voice to match the act he

was getting ready to put on. We could hear an even deeper voice mumbling on the other end, but we couldn’t make out what they were saying. I couldn’t, at least.

" ‘Who’s this?’ Travis asked them, and maybe he thought this was the wrong move to make or they’d hang up because he went on without waiting for an answer. ‘Look,’ he said,

‘I don’t know who this is, but I know what you’ve got in the trunk.’

"There wasn’t anything on the other end during this. Then he says:

" ‘If you want it back, I’ll give it back, but I’m going to have to get something out of this. Ten-thousand and I won’t have to say anything to anybody.’

"There was more silence, and then that mutter.

" ‘All right,’ Travis said. ‘Where?’

"They gave him an address.

" ‘No,’ he said. ‘Public place.’

"More muttering.

" ‘No. I pull around the back for you. Okay. Leave the money, and I leave the car, and we won’t have to see each other.’

"Both ends paused, and then Travis said ‘fifteen minutes’ and hung up.

"The man he talked to was defiantly Mexican, he said, and there was more than one. We were going back to the motel in Eagle. Like he said, pick up the money, leave the car. They, whoever they were, they were going to check into of the rooms around back.

"I was surprised at the huge difference between his voice when he was telling us this and how he’d been on the phone. On the phone there wasn’t even a sign of uncertainty in his voice. I don’t think even Mac could of pulled that off like he did.

"I was the, as always, was the first one to ask questions.

" ‘And we get away in what? On foot?’

" ‘In a police cruiser,’ Travis said to me.

"My first thought was what? Probably Mac’s, too, but Travis explained before we could ask.

"I’m going to call the cops and tell them everything and have them follow,’ he told us. And that was the right thing to do. All of us knew that and wanted that, but the thing was, did we thing we were safe just because the police would be following us? Who said whoever was waiting for us at that motel wasn’t going to pull out a gun and shoot all three of us the second we pulled into the parking lot? Hell, they probably figured they’d be caught with what they’d already done, anyway. And what if they didn’t have ten-thousand, or any money on them, to trade? There was nothing that was keeping us safe when we got into Eagle. "We sat there for a while, not talking. Just thinking these things over until something else came up. Mac purposed it: dumping the Cadillac right there anyway, to hell with the plan. We’d dump the Cadillac here, he said, call the police like we should of before, give them directions to us. That would cut out all of those risks we’d be taking.

"So we came together and saw how it looked. Didn’t have a lot of time to be sitting there, either, and we knew it. Travis told them fifteen minutes, and if the time it took us to get there was much over that, whoever was waiting for us would start to get suspicious. And it gave them more time to plan.

"Anyway, by calling the police and telling them everything that happened and having them meet us there instead, who said they were going to believe a few teenage boys, either? All of us were somewhere around eighteen and we were more than capable of whatever was in the trunk.

"So then we’ll give them the motel they were going to meet us at. We’ll give them the motel and the ten-thousand plan we made so they can see for themselves. It sounded reasonable, so that’s what we did. Travis called the police out of Edwards. We were closer to Gypsum—we where somewhere between there and Glenwood Springs—but the motel, the targeted area, was in Eagle. Travis called and told them everything, from our discussion over dinner back home to where we were standing now. They were going to send somebody to investigate the motel in Eagle, and they were actually leaving while Travis was still on the phone with one of the chiefs. That was how quick it was, and probably because of something he told Travis, a rumored homicide and the search for a missing woman around the Boulder–Denver area. But that doesn’t mean the two were connected, of course. Murders happen in big cities, and anything could of been in that trunk. All of us knew that.

"We waited." Kevin nodded. Something was changing in his eyes, not that Mr. Lawson could realize it past his own distraction. Kevin stared at the bottles of liquor lined on the bar’s shelves and nodded again. "We waited a long time for them . . . standing around in silence. They called us once to confirm where we were, and we gave them as good of directions as possible under the circumstances. This was about fifteen minutes after we’d hung up with them before. They updated us, too; they had two police cruisers, eight officers, coming into the Eagle area at that very moment. See, the two were suppose to line up: they would get here and talk to us and open the trunk after we were gone and after they had found the suspects waiting at the motel and we’d be safe and snug in the backseat of a cruiser on our way to the police station to discuss matters further and/or call our parents and all of that. But the two were off. They were having a hard time finding the road we’d turned on. Man, when satellite technology would have been handy back then.

"The next time they called they were moving away from us, and with the kind of reception you had back then, you know, they were cutting in and out and they were barely understandable. What we did get was they found our men, they needed back up, and they trusted us enough to wait there while they sent somebody to us. That was the last call we got from them.

"Nobody came, and a half an hour passed, on top of the last fifteen minutes. We were starting to panic, and when the time moved onto an hour, we did panic. Nothing from anybody, so we called the Edward’s station, told them who we were, all of that, but they said as long as nobody was hurt or in immediate danger, we’d have to wait for the minute."

Kevin caught something out of the corner of his eye and turned. Mr. Lawson was nodding, and he could see from the man’s eyes that he was remembering the piddly headline belonging to one corner of the Dove weekly: "Hold up at Eagle," where five police officers had

been caught under fire before reaching their "destined area" in the town of Eagle. Cause of conflict unknown.

"The three of us hadn’t heard any other sounds from the Cadillac’s trunk, so we didn’t mention anything to the woman we were talking to, because, in that respect, we knew it was too late."

"From what I heard, it was," Mr. Lawson said.

Kevin nodded. "There was a lot of things said, all of it probably not true, but nobody knew who was involved, even the police. We slipped out under their noses before they even knew it. Hardly anybody heard about it down here, either. That’s good. The thing about living in a state so far spread out is that people don’t find a way of knowing the things you don’t want them to.

"The next phone call we received came about ten–fifteen minutes later, but it wasn’t from the police. It was from the man Travis had talked to. He answered it, since he’d been the one talking to everyone else, and that was good. I can’t tell you everything that was said because of this, except what I know: he said they were moving. We were to meet them at a roadside park outside of Glenwood Springs.

"There wasn’t anything said about police.

"We were tired, and we just wanted this to be over.

"There were lots of things passing through our minds on the drive to Glenwood, as you would imagine. The most of what I was feeling was fear, of course, and guilt. Guilt because we were giving evidence back to the criminals it belonged to, evidence that could of put a family’s mind at ease, and maybe if we would of even acted faster, it wouldn’t of been evidence. That was the worst, especially in the weeks after.

"There was more than one suggestion brought up during that ride, the same ideas turned over and over: let’s take it to the next police station in the next town—no, because what if we’re not believed and accused of their crime? Okay, let’s just drop it off and get out of town—no our fingerprints are all over the place; at least giving it back it would be hid with our fingerprints on it. What if we did drop it off or say hell with it and dump it and they came looking for us? From what we’d already been through we knew these men weren’t half-bad at what they were doing, and probably capable of a lot of things, or anything.

"Analyzing all of this, the next thing all of us knew we were watching the green sign reading five miles to Glenwood Springs pass us on the shoulder.

"You can’t even imagine the fear in that car. It was filling the car up from the three of us like the stink coming from the trunk.

"We passed the first roadside park with all of our hearts beating at the walls of our throats. It was empty, so we went on. We were looking for a tan-colored van.

"It was parked on the gravel lot of the next park. The entire place was empty except for that one vehicle, so we knew it had to be it. Travis had already sorted this out with the man on the phone before. The money would be on one of the picnic tables. Seven-thousand. They

didn’t have ten. He would pick it up and leave the car and leave the park and all of this would be forgotten.

"Their van was sitting on the other side facing the grassy area that made the middle of the park where the picnic tables were. We pulled in on the gravel lot closest to the highway and turned off the car, so both vehicles faced each other across the park. This was it. I knew Travis was just as scared (well, even worse) because I watched his hand shake on the steering wheel as he was getting out. Travis shut his door, paused to look at the van, and started toward the middle picnic table. That was the last I saw of Travis because Mac and me ducked together in the backseat in case they saw us and thought we were cops or something . . . And I don’t know how Travis could walk. I don’t know how he could walk and get out there like he did . . .

"The first mistake was ours. We missed Travis’s instructions beforehand about getting out when he was passing the car, and we were going to join him and slip out of the roadside park and down the highway. This park was good because when we slipped out they wouldn’t be able to see us past the line of trees surrounding it. But we moved too early, while Travis was still coming toward the Cadillac. He was between the picnic table and the car, money in his back pocket, and we both reached for our doorhandle, and opened our doors slowly. I put one foot out, then the other, all of this in slow motion, and then pushed myself out and stood. If Mac and me were smart we would of at least raised our hands, something, to show we weren’t cops and we weren’t armed, but we just wanted out of the park and out of the situation, and they didn’t know any better, or so we thought, and the first shots rang out. At first there was the sound of the two front doors flying open, and then three shots. We started to run. More shots fired, and we heard the sliding doors on both sides of the van roll open on their tracks and that’s when we knew we were in trouble. Mac went down. We were spread out, running toward the highway, and Travis was in the lead. He started to turn back to help Mac, but I yelled for him to go. If the men in the van—they were just dark-skinned figured in the distance, peeking around

the sides of the van—if they didn’t get we weren’t cops at the start, they should of then, but I was forgetting something. We weren’t cops, but all three of us were witnesses. And thieves. "But right then Mac was down and screaming. He was shot in the back of the thigh. The next thing I knew Travis was down, too, just when he was starting to run back to us. I went to reach for Mac’s hand to pull him, but he pushed me away.

" ‘I can walk!’ he screamed. Somehow he did. In all of that he managed to stand and start limping toward the highway again.

"Travis was worse. He was hit below the stomach and clipped a few times on the legs. The whole time while I was helping him stand they were still firing, and by then I was scared out of my mind and panicking, but I kept thinking, at least Mac made it. I don’t know if we will make it, probably not, I think, but at least one of us is out of here. I was clipped more than once, I know, while I was half-dragging Travis’s weight with me, and maybe the adrenalin and fear kept me from feeling most of it until later. I could feel his blood soaking through my shirt. I wondered once during all of this why the traffic had to be so slow on the interstate. It was like it stopped in that one quick moment so we could play our little game.

"They saw us make it onto the highway and started their van up. We heard it roaring down the gravel drive while we were trying to wave down passing cars. Either the three of us didn’t look frantic enough or nobody saw the blood on our clothes because nothing stopped—maybe that’s why nothing stopped—and then one of us was yelling that it was turning onto the interstate after us. When we saw it we started running toward the trees at the side of the road for protection before more shots rang out. It was like we had to stumble along at the bottom of that hill forever when we were down it, it really was. I just can’t believe I was the only one who wasn’t touched . . . Hell, I can’t believe we got out as lucky as we did.

"We went as far as we could until a place where it was flatter and then we climbed to the interstate. I knew Travis wasn’t going to make it. That was decided right then. Mac was bad—any gunshot wound is bad—but he wasn’t anything like Travis.

"We ended up catching a ride with a college kid back to Gypsum. Hunting accident, I said. He got us to the hospital and checked us in. Mac had one gunshot wound to the thigh like I said, with nothing but torn muscle and a fractured fibula to pay for. Travis had a few wounds where he’d been clipped and a bullet lodged in his pelvic bone. I got cleaned up and had to stay for a while so they could watch my wounds, too. Everyday some nurse would come bouncing in my room like she was going to give me a release form instead of swab the clips out on me until I was screaming uncle. Travis’s mom and dad weren’t too happy to have to come all of the way to Gypsum for his surgery, but they did. We explained everything, and I did the same with my parents over the phone. Hell of a hunting trip. My fine for trespassing and ‘illegally hunting’ came out of my paycheck every month I worked after that, and I helped Mac with towing fee. None of it came out of the seven-grand Travis had. It fell out of his pocket when we were in the woods, or so he said. I don’t blame him for getting rid of it. In some way it was like a reminder of what we’d done.

"Travis’s parents drove us home after he was released two weeks later. Even when I was out I spent most of my time there for Mac and Travis, to keep them company—I had plenty of time waiting for me back home to think other things over. They were only bedridden for a while, though.

"The police lost touch with us. We were never questioned, and they never found the red Cadillac. The closest I came to finding any truth about what happened was in the old newspaper prints my dad kept around the house.

"But the worst was the guilt and how we had to protect our lie. Could you imagine what people, our parents, what they would of said if we tried to tell them what happened or why we were so quiet that first week? And the guilt made you want to tell even more, so somebody could comfort you and tell you you didn’t have a choice and it wasn’t your fault that some family somewhere was still looking for somebody they loved. It made you want to tell . . .

"My father was the only man I ever told. This was about six years after, and he kept my secret with him until the day he died . . ."

Both men fell silent.

A large, balding man rose from the table where the woman still sat and told them he was closing in five. Kevin nodded. He disappeared into a back room.

Kevin turned to Mr. Lawson, as he hadn’t for a long while.

"The worst part is not knowing what we could of helped solve, or whose questions we would of answered and whose mind, you know, we could of put at ease."

The older man didn’t look at him, only the bottles of whiskeys on the highest shelf level from them. His voice was distant and weak.

" . . . tan van . . ."

"Mr. Lawson?"

He snapped back to Kevin. There were tears in his eyes, and a change, sorrow and disturbance deeper than what had come to settle in his eyes when Kevin took a seat next to him at the beginning of the night. He tried to smile to show his gratitude.

"Now you do, son. Now you do."

 

 

 

Author's Note

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