We Ate the Road Like Vultures by Lynnette Lounsbury Page A

and into his own hands. The Mexican looked at him in terror, but kept the bags in his grasp. I thought Adolf might shoot the driver or at least threaten him, but he pulled out the long magazine clip and tossed it over one side of the truck and the gun over the other. He pulled my head back down and we lay on the bottom of the bumping tray waiting for whatever the next hour of our lives would bring.
    â€˜The gun?’ I tried to ask.
    â€˜They will shoot us if we are armed.’ Simple. We didn’t have to wait long, only a few flashbacks of my childhood and a list of the many things I still wanted to do before I die—having sex being close to the top of the list, imaginedying a virgin? Though a drink of water was also high on my list. Things to do before I die: Drink a glass of water in Mexico, spend four days purging it and then get the fuck out of the country.
    An almighty bang, a jolt and a swerving catapult into a group of shrubs ended our trip. The truck went sideways, tilting to send us sliding into the hard edge of the tray before it lost traction completely and landed on its side. I could feel the rocks and gravel through the metal which, moments ago, had been thick enough to stop a bullet and now seemed to be eroding beside my head. Bits of dry grass and dirt spun up around my eyes and I had to close them. The truck kept skidding and spinning on its side for what seemed longer than my life so far, until finally we hit the scrub with a jolt that flipped me out across the dirt which ripped into my jeans and skin and tangled my hair, and I cut my forehead open on a rock. Blood immediately dripped into my eyes and while I had stopped moving and there was no real pain anywhere inside my body, I couldn’t see anything at all and there was a burning stinging sensation on everypart of my exposed skin. I had a brief thought that this might teach Adolf to wear a T-shirt, and then I was jolted into a tight ball by the sound of gunfire only metres away. A single shot. Another. A third. Mexicans yelling in angry Spanish, that fluid garbled language full of curses and angst. Another shot. A scream of pain. I tried to wipe my eyes without drawing attention to myself. I was about ten metres from the truck and I was under a tiny covering of bush. I could see the police truck next to the overturned truck with its punctured tyres and spinning rims—flurries of cash, mostly American notes, fluttered around in the air like a Las Vegas heist film. I could see the Mexican from the back of the truck, half of him jutting out from underneath the fallen tray, his head somewhere underneath, his feet limp and lying apart. One foot was twisted around the wrong way and pointing upwards. I could see another body in the cabin, through the dust, slumped down near the ground. The other man, the driver I think, was being dragged by his long hair towards the police truck. One arm struggled, the other hung limp by his side, dripping blood that joined a long oozecoming from a large wound in his belly. It looked like a gunshot—clean, round and red with thick blood on his dirty white shirt. His struggling was feeble, and when two of the police started to kick him and beat him with the soft rubber sticks they carried, he moaned and moved but could barely resist. Soon he was still. Another man climbed out of the police truck and scanned the scene. He was youngish, maybe in his thirties, and big, but not in the soft fat way of most older Mexican men—like a fighter. He was not nearly as dark as the other policemen, more a creamy colour, strange for a policeman, most of the ones I had seen were well-cooked by the sun, where he seemed only slightly singed. He had those quick eyes that dart around and see everything, the ones that don’t just see but understand, and I knew he would spot me as soon as he turned this way. I tried to shove myself further under the scrubby brush and that was when I discovered that while I may not be