It Came From Del Rio: Part One of the Bunnyhead Chronicles by Stephen Graham Jones Page A
Authors: Stephen Graham Jones
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around my right foot, and then heard the coyotes fighting over it behind me. I threw them the other one as well.
In the tied-off sleeve with the canisters, I still had Refugio’s number, folded smaller and smaller. If I made it through this, I had suspicions I might be calling ahead, yeah. To give him his cut of the next job. Everything he’d earned.
Like it was a big cork, then, the sun just bobbed up the way it does down here, so that — what it’s like is that the night, all of that darkness out across everything, it all seeps toward you, gathers in your shadow.
You don’t believe me, come stand down here all alone sometime.
For ten minutes, then — I was calling this my night’s sleep — I studied the ridgelines, waiting for that lens flash I knew was either going to be Refugio or whoever he’d alerted that there was somebody trying to cross this pasture.
There was nothing, though. Just the buzzards, back, patient.
I counted the canisters again and trudged on, finally realized that the texture of the rut under my raw feet had changed. There were little ridges, left behind from truck tires. That they were still standing meant this had been Refugio.
He’d taken this way out? Doubled back after he’d coasted down the hill toward Del Rio in a sputtering truck? I studied the pasture some more, finally shrugged. Had to keep moving.
At lunch, what would have been lunch but was instead a second bottle of spit-in water, I found what Refugio had left me: an old leather bandoleer. The kind Pancho Villa wore across his chest, for cartridges. Except this one was military-issue, from a surplus store probably. And not fitted for fingerlong rimfire cartridges, but the kind of grenades you shot from under the barrel of your rifle, if your rifle’s fitted-out right.
They were the perfect size for the canisters.
I snugged each of them in along with pieces of the sleeve to make sure the fit was tight. For an accidental moment, I almost thanked Refugio in my head. Except that I hated him.
An hour later, I found the place he’d turned off into the scrub. I studied where he might have been going for too long, probably, but finally just shook my head no, kept to my ruts.
Thirty minutes later, though, shaking my head no, that this was stupid, I cut across to intercept his tracks. Because, if he’d left me what I was wearing now, then maybe he’d left some water or my boots or something farther on. Like, at my camp.
The hot skin in my cheek was an ulcer now.
I flipped the buzzards off and wove myself deeper into the pasture, trying to watch the ground and the horizon both, one for cactus or broken bottles, the other for windshields or horsemen. I cut across Refugio’s tire tracks a quarter mile out, followed them around a rise to my camp.
The netting was still there, half-hanging from the black bush. No boots, though, but two bottles of water, an envelope fluttering under one of them. I unfolded the yellow piece of paper inside.
There were no words, just a sticker peeled off a glass bottle Refugio probably had in his glove compartment: the skull and crossbones that meant poison. Under it, the word strychnine.
It was what the ranchers would dust a calf with, if they’d had to put it down. It wouldn’t kill all the coyotes who ate from it, but it’d kill a few of them anyway.
I squatted down, studied each bottle before I swirled the water up, to check for particulate matter drifting down. There was no difference, though. In smell, either. Not to me, at least. But one of them was bad, I knew. Not both, just one.
I shook my head, stood too fast. Refugio was probably watching from somewhere. Had maybe even called in sick for this.
In the clear, flat spot where he’d first dumped the canisters were all my silver nitrate sticks. They were stuck in the ground now by the handle. From directly above, they formed two eyes and a smile. The dirt under them was balled up in a splatter pattern I knew, too. Refugio had stuck
In the tied-off sleeve with the canisters, I still had Refugio’s number, folded smaller and smaller. If I made it through this, I had suspicions I might be calling ahead, yeah. To give him his cut of the next job. Everything he’d earned.
Like it was a big cork, then, the sun just bobbed up the way it does down here, so that — what it’s like is that the night, all of that darkness out across everything, it all seeps toward you, gathers in your shadow.
You don’t believe me, come stand down here all alone sometime.
For ten minutes, then — I was calling this my night’s sleep — I studied the ridgelines, waiting for that lens flash I knew was either going to be Refugio or whoever he’d alerted that there was somebody trying to cross this pasture.
There was nothing, though. Just the buzzards, back, patient.
I counted the canisters again and trudged on, finally realized that the texture of the rut under my raw feet had changed. There were little ridges, left behind from truck tires. That they were still standing meant this had been Refugio.
He’d taken this way out? Doubled back after he’d coasted down the hill toward Del Rio in a sputtering truck? I studied the pasture some more, finally shrugged. Had to keep moving.
At lunch, what would have been lunch but was instead a second bottle of spit-in water, I found what Refugio had left me: an old leather bandoleer. The kind Pancho Villa wore across his chest, for cartridges. Except this one was military-issue, from a surplus store probably. And not fitted for fingerlong rimfire cartridges, but the kind of grenades you shot from under the barrel of your rifle, if your rifle’s fitted-out right.
They were the perfect size for the canisters.
I snugged each of them in along with pieces of the sleeve to make sure the fit was tight. For an accidental moment, I almost thanked Refugio in my head. Except that I hated him.
An hour later, I found the place he’d turned off into the scrub. I studied where he might have been going for too long, probably, but finally just shook my head no, kept to my ruts.
Thirty minutes later, though, shaking my head no, that this was stupid, I cut across to intercept his tracks. Because, if he’d left me what I was wearing now, then maybe he’d left some water or my boots or something farther on. Like, at my camp.
The hot skin in my cheek was an ulcer now.
I flipped the buzzards off and wove myself deeper into the pasture, trying to watch the ground and the horizon both, one for cactus or broken bottles, the other for windshields or horsemen. I cut across Refugio’s tire tracks a quarter mile out, followed them around a rise to my camp.
The netting was still there, half-hanging from the black bush. No boots, though, but two bottles of water, an envelope fluttering under one of them. I unfolded the yellow piece of paper inside.
There were no words, just a sticker peeled off a glass bottle Refugio probably had in his glove compartment: the skull and crossbones that meant poison. Under it, the word strychnine.
It was what the ranchers would dust a calf with, if they’d had to put it down. It wouldn’t kill all the coyotes who ate from it, but it’d kill a few of them anyway.
I squatted down, studied each bottle before I swirled the water up, to check for particulate matter drifting down. There was no difference, though. In smell, either. Not to me, at least. But one of them was bad, I knew. Not both, just one.
I shook my head, stood too fast. Refugio was probably watching from somewhere. Had maybe even called in sick for this.
In the clear, flat spot where he’d first dumped the canisters were all my silver nitrate sticks. They were stuck in the ground now by the handle. From directly above, they formed two eyes and a smile. The dirt under them was balled up in a splatter pattern I knew, too. Refugio had stuck
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