Lights Out

The headlight beams reached the branch, snow-covered now, blending with the track. It wasn’t going to work, Eddie thought. But then the horn honked and the wheels locked. The truck went into a skid, sliding along the track, the rear end swinging around. It struck the branch sideways and came to a stop.

The passenger door opened and Julio stepped out, wearing a ski jacket and a tuque with a tassel dangling from the top.

“What the fuck?” he said, walking into the headlight glare. “It’s a goddamn tree.”

“Move it,” called the driver from the cab.

“Sure,” said Julio, switching to Spanish, “move it.” He approached the branch, grabbed a small stem, tugged. His feet slipped out from under him and he fell hard on his back. Eddie heard the driver laugh.

“Fuck you,” said Julio.

“Watch your language,” the driver told him.

Julio got up, muttering to himself in Spanish. Eddie caught only one word: “chiropractor.”

Julio reached into the tangle again, pulled. The branch shifted a few inches. The driver came down from the cab to help him. Someone else got out too. A much smaller figure, who hopped down, landed lightly: Gaucho. He wore a cowboy hat, vest, chaps, a gun belt.

“Are we going to be late?” he asked.

“Don’t worry,” the driver answered.

Gaucho stood in front of the truck, watched Julio and the driver drag the branch to the side. The cleaved end passed right by his feet. Eddie could see the marks of the blade, straight, gleaming, unnatural. Gaucho stared at them. Then he bent down, picked up a handful of snow, tried to make a snowball, failed.

“How come I can’t make a snowball?”

“Too dry,” said the driver. “Let’s go.”

“Snow,” said Julio, as they got back in the cab. “This country. I wish I was going with the kid.”

“Stop whining,” said the driver. “You’re making more money in a month than your father made in his life.”

“My father was an idiot.”

The doors slammed shut. The driver straightened the wheels, inched forward, the tires spinning in the snow. Squealing conveniently, Eddie thought, as he came out of the woods, got his hands on the edge of the cargo floor that protruded beyond the slatted sides, and pulled himself up. As the truck picked up speed, he climbed over and down into the cargo space.

He got on his hands and knees, crawled along the floor. The chicken cages were gone. There was no cargo but the canvas bags, about a dozen, piled against the rear of the cab, and a small suitcase nearby. In the light reflected off the falling snow, Eddie could see the Mickey Mouse decal glued to its side.

He rose, picking up one of the canvas bags. Over the top of the cab he saw the bridge, snow-covered and deserted. He dropped the canvas bag over the side, picked up another, dropped it out too, and then the rest. He counted them: eleven.

The truck slowed as it came to the bridge. Eddie crawled to the back, climbed over, jumped down. He lost his balance, fell, rolled to the side of the track, the covered blade of the ax digging into his back. Other than that, everything was perfect. So far so good-punch line to a joke he didn’t know. Jack could tell him on the way back.

The truck kept going. It rolled across the bridge, making a loud creaking sound, then went around a bend. For a few moments its taillights blinked through the trees; then they vanished. Eddie rose, ran to the stream, down the bank, under the bridge.

He heard a footstep behind him, felt something hard prod his back. “Don’t move,” Jack said.

“For Christ’s sake.”

“Sorry. I thought they’d got you. That honking.”

“They’re not going to honk us to death. And I said no guns.”

“That didn’t seem prudent,” Jack replied. “How many?”

There was no point arguing. “Eleven,” Eddie said. “We don’t have room for them all.”

“I’m a good packer,” Jack said, strapping on one of the backpacks. Taking the other, he wheeled one of the bikes up the bank.

Eddie unhooked the ax from his belt, unclipped the blade cover. He felt for the notch in the downstream bridge support, then stood back and chopped at the remaining core. In six swings he was through. The bridge made a creaking sound.

Eddie wheeled the other bike up the bank, onto the track. Jack was kneeling there, transferring banded wads of cash from a canvas bag into one of the backpacks.

“Just throw the whole bag in,” Eddie said, taking the other backpack and sticking the ax inside.

“Can’t fit as much in that way, bro,” Jack said. “Should have brought bigger packs.”

“How many have you done?”

“This is the first.”

Eddie looked down the track, saw the dark forms of the bags lying here and there like boulders. “Hurry,” he said.

“How much time have we got?”

Eddie glanced up, saw no lightening of the sky, heard no engine from above. At the airstrip, they would sit in the shelter of the cab until they heard the plane. That was when Julio would climb into the back and see the Mickey Mouse suitcase lying there all by itself. “Just hurry,” Eddie said.