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Captured

They caught me in the Chisos Mountains in the old Big Bend National Park, one of the few remote places left in these United States.  I'd been on the run for several years, popping back and forth across the narrow ribbon of Rio Grande near Boquillas, Mexico.  But I was tired, my back was killing me, and I was hanging out a lot in the mountains near the South Rim grubbing for food, relieving myself in an old solar compost toilet the Forest Service had put in over a decade ago, and just generally wishing I could will myself to die before they came for me.

They came in the middle of the night while I was sound asleep in my tent.  At first I thought it was one of the black bears that had migrated across the river from the Sierra del Carmen Mountains, but when I heard whispering I knew my time had come.  It was a SWAT team from the BookForce, and they handcuffed me, confiscated my life savings, and marched me down the trail right then and there, the lead marshall lighting the way with the torch strapped to his forehead.

By morning I was in the courthouse in Alpine, standing before a magistrate of the Lit Commission, listening to him read off the list of charges against me:

One count of failure to have a blog.

One count of failure to post daily on said blog.

One count of failure to have at least 100 Followers on said blog.

Six counts of failure to have Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin, OurDiary, and PeoplesHistory accounts.

(And the more serious charges):

One count of failure to write a book.

One count of failure to pay the Federal Book Creation Fee of $30,000.

After listing the charges, the magistrate pronounced me "Guilty," and the baliff ushered me into a holding cell until I could be transported to El Paso the following morning.

Free Again

The van crashed about a mile east of the Border Patrol station near Sierra Blanca.  I don't know what happened since I was sitting in the celled-off section in the far back with a black hood over my head.  I just felt the van lurch left then right before tipping far right and careening into the desert off the highway.  Although the full weight of my body thudded into the grated bars in front of me, miraculously, I wasn't hurt.  My first thought was to pull the hood off my head, but try doing that with your hands cuffed together to the belt around your waist.  Somehow, though, I was able to crane my neck down just enough to hook the edge of the fabric with my thumb, and drawing my head back turtle-like I slipped out of the hood.

I saw right away that the two BookForce marshalls were dead--or, at least, knocked cold--and the force of the impact had loosened the bars between us so that I could crawl into the front compartment and search for the keys that would set me free.  I found them in the pocket of the passenger-side marshall, and with little trouble opened the cuffs and the belt.  I figured I had just enough time to change shirts with the marshall behind the wheel, who was closer to me in size, but that turned out to be harder than getting out of bondage.  Still, I managed to unbutton his pale-blue dress shirt, get it off of him and put it on myself in what seemed like under a minute.  It was easier to get him into my shirt--a white tee with one of those round, red circles with a diagonal line through it, the universal symbol for a BookForce prisoner--and I was just crawling out the driver-side window when a Good Samaritan pulled up.

He was a friendly-looking guy with an expression of genuine concern on his dough-boy face, and without thinking I said, "The best thing you can do for me is drive ahead to the Border Patrol station and tell them about the accident.  Tell them two BookForce marshalls are escorting a prisoner--but I think my partner and the fugitive are both dead."

On hearing the word "dead" he made a beeline back to his ruby-colored Crown Vic and peeled out onto the highway.  I immediately headed north into the desert, not turning around to look until I had traveled at least a mile.  From a slight rise in the flat plane of parched land I saw that a few other cars had stopped near the overturned van.  Then I got going again, and it didn't seem like I took a breath of air until I was headed up Sunset Road in Sierra Blanca.

Spotted Duck

Before I'd gone too far north on Sunset I saw a sheriff's squad car up ahead of me, so I turned west onto Farm to Market Road 1111 until it intersected with Cavendar Street, and I cut down that way until I ran smack into the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department.  That's when I did a sudden about-face and went into the nearest establishment, an eatery that had a big white sign with hand-painted red letters over the front door:  MEL'S SEEFOOD DINER.

There were two Hispanic men drinking coffee at the front counter, the other side of which was a young woman with dishwater blonde hair and two volleyball breasts that were putting a serious strain on a solitary button at the neckline of her sage-colored waitress uniform.  When I walked past she looked at me like I was a dessert she hadn't tasted in years, her mouth hanging open to reveal a plump, pink lump of tongue glistening with saliva.  I slipped into a booth at the end of the diner across from the bathroom door, lifting my butt over a swatch of mummified duct tape that had been used to suture a split in the red vinyl seat.  The menu I removed from the holder next to the small jukebox was ancient, the paper severely yellowed beneath its plastic binder.  I knew I couldn't order anything because I had no money, but when the waitress jetted over and said, "What can I get YOU this fine morning, hun?" I said, "Coffee."

While I waited I examined the old black-and-white photo in a beat-up metal frame hanging on the wall next to me, a picture of a large man standing behind the diner counter, the word "SEELION" stencilled across his white t-shirt.  A moment later the older version of this same man emerged from the kitchen through a swinging door, sat on a high seat behind a computer monitor, and stared at it with interest, not reading, I hoped, any breaking-news reports about an escaped prisoner.  But when the waitress delivered my coffee, Mr. SEELION was right behind her, and just as soon as she returned to her station back of the counter, he smiled and sat down across from me.

"Now, you look like man with a story to tell," he said.

"Why's that?"

"People on the run usually do."

"What makes you think I'm on the run?"

He raised slightly out of his seat and pulled his t-shirt up enough to reveal the handle of the pistol tucked into his waistband.  "Let's you and I go into the back room, sport."

"Can I finish my coffee?" I said, taking a quick sip of the stuff, which had the unmistakable flavor of cardboard.

He just nodded with his head toward the back room.

It was a storeroom with an old green radiator against the far wall.  He took a length of sisal rope, tied my hands behind my back, and secured me to the radiator.  Afterwards, he said, "I ain't got nothing against you, Mister, but the reward is 100,000 clams, and I need the bread."

He left to return to the diner, presumably to call the authorities.  I was trying to wriggle my hands out of the spiky sisal, and paying the price for my efforts, all the while examining the rear door that had huge gaps all around that let beacons of daylight in.  Suddenly, the door swung open wide, and the blonde waitress burst in holding a large kitchen knife, which she used to cut the sisal away from the radiator.  Grabbing my hands, she said, "Come on, hun, we're making tracks."

An old red Chevy pickup waited for us, rumbling like it had no muffler.  She hopped behind the wheel, saying, "Hurry it up."  I'd barely got my ass in before she took off up a back alley and then onto Cavender toward Sunset.  There must have been a big question mark on my face when I looked at her because she said, "I've been meaning to get away from that prick for years, and now seemed as good a time as any."

She took Sunset back to the freeway, turning east toward Van Horn.  "They'll think we're making for El Paso because that's where my sister, Ginny, lives," she said, "but we're heading to Marfa.  Ever seen the Marfa Lights, hun?"

The Ghost Lights

As it turned out, I had seen the Marfa Lights, way back on wife #2 when we were tooling through the Big Bend country, staying at a rinky-dink motel in Alpine, from where we had driven over to Marfa at sunset to find out for ourselves what those mystery lights were all about.  We parked in the lot near the viewing area, where about ten other people had already gathered for the spectacle.  In truth, I didn't expect to see any lights, but just after the sun disappeared north of the Chinati Mountains, there they were, the damnedest things I'd ever seen, looking like distant car headlights, but red and blue and pale yellow, and sometimes moving in concert with one another, but at other times turning white and shooting into the air like some kind of jet-propelled flood lamps.

Turns out some people were sure they were reflections of car lights, but records predating the invention of the automobile detailed accounts of the phenomenon, which folks back then called the "ghost lights."  Some people said they must be reflections of campfires, but if you ever saw campfires moving around like that I'd have to say you were on some kind of hallucinogen.  Some people thought the lights were nothing more than static electricity or swamp gas, both theories failing to take into account the erratic movements.  #2 and I left the area the next morning, confounded about those damned mystery lights.  Over the years I'd simply forgot about them.

Oddly enough, I didn't really get a chance to see them again this time.  That's because Dolly, my new waitress friend, did something that purely distracted me.  Just as soon as we had parked at the far side of the viewing area lot, she said, "I been aching all day to get my hands on you."  She grabbed my ears like they were protruding handles on a jug and jammed my face smack dab into the middle of her ample cleavage, shimmying her shoulders as if she were being electrocuted, nearly slapping me silly with her heaving breasts.  Immediately afterward she went deep-sea fishing, doing things to me that no woman had done before, things that literally caused my eyes to cross, making any chance of seeing the Marfa Lights impossible.  As if that weren't bad enough, she climbed on me like a cowgirl mounting a mechanical bull, a ride that lasted long after the last group of mystery lights viewers had driven out of there.

When it was over, I passed out, waking later when the truck stopped in front of an old adobe house that looked blue in the light of a full moon.

"This is my friend Mindy's house," Dolly said.

I trailed her to the front, and after she knocked we waited two whole minutes before the door opened a crack.  Mindy shrieked.  "Well, I'll be goddamned," she said.  "What are you doing down here, Dolly Girl?"

"My friend and I are on the lam, looking for a place to spend the night."

"You two get your asses in here right now."

As soon as we were in, and Mindy had shut the door behind us, she turned to me, cocked her head, furrowed her brow, and said, "Now where have I seen that dark handsome face before?"

There were beers all around, but I couldn't keep my eyes open, so Mindy showed me into a spare room and told me to get some shuteye.  I laid down on the bed right away.  For one brief moment I could hear them catching up, and there was something reassuring about listening to their voices.  Then I crashed.

Nabbed Again

A while later I was awakened by what sounded like gas leaking sporadically from a broken pipe.  It took me a few seconds to realize it was whispering, and it came from the living room.  The door to the small bedroom I occupied was slightly ajar, and I crept silently to the crack and cautiously peered out.  Mindy and Dolly were each facing me, sitting behind a laptop computer whose monitor light bathed their faces in a ghoulish glow.  Their mouths were hanging open in shock, and I wondered briefly if they were viewing porn, perhaps marveling at a man with an equine endowment.

Soon they were whispering again, and I could just barely make out the words Mindy was mouthing.  "Two hundred thousand smackers is no chump change," she said.  "That's a hundred grand each."

"We gotta do what we gotta do," Dolly said.  "It's the right thing."

I was certain what they had to do involved me, so I turned slowly, and silently crossed back to the lone window at the rear of the room.  It had one of those crank locks midway down the center frame, and I quietly turned it to the open position.  It was going to be a tight fit, but I was pretty sure I could squeeze through.  I had just begun to slide the window to the left along its track when the door behind me flew open.  I turned to find Mindy pointing an old shotgun directly at my chest.

"Don't make me use this thing, Darlin'," she said.  "I don't want to, but I will."

To Dolly, who stood right beside her, I said, "I thought you wanted to help me."

"I did, hun, but this is too good a deal to pass up."

Mindy told her to go get rope from the utility room, and when Dolly came back with it she tied my hands behind my back, using the long excess end to secure my ankles with a crude knot.

Mindy gestured for Dolly to come take the shotgun so she could make a call, which she did from the land-line phone in the room.

"Sheriff Buford?" Mindy said.  "Oh, hi, Roy, this is Mindy Dawson.  I got a little present for you over to my place, which is going to make you a very famous man."

Mindy took the shotgun back from Dolly and continued to target me with it.

I said, "I'm toast if your trigger finger suddenly gets twitchy.  Could you point it at the floor?"

"Ain't taking no chances with you, Darlin'," she said, "not after you cleverly escaped from those marshalls.  By the way, you might like to know they ain't dead."

"I'm glad to hear it, but I didn't do anything to them.  They crashed that van all on their own."

"Tell it to the judge," Mindy said.

Dolly said, "I feel bad, hun--really I do--because I like you.  But look at it our way.  For a hundred grand we can write three more books each.  Then maybe we can get some of the recognition we deserve."

"You deserve recognition?"

"Damn right," Dolly said, defiantly.  "Everybody does."

Mindy said, "You're wasting your breath on him.  He doesn't even want to write a book."

Suddenly the small bedroom was pierced by a pulsating red beam, coming through the window, presumably, from the turret lights atop the sheriff's car.

Nemesis

Roy Buford was the kind of man I always instantly hate, a cocksure attitude made evident by the angular cock of his head, a perennial half-smile meant to signal malevolent intent.  He made sure the handcuffs were clamped painfully tight on my wrists, and after fastening them made a point of yanking them upwards behind my back, causing my shoulders to experience shooting pain.  Outside at the cruiser he slammed my body into the rear passenger door, told me to spread my legs, and then kicked at each of my feet, forcing them further apart, which resulted in a lightning-bolt spasm of pain in my groin ligaments.

"Any weapons, scum?" he said, reaching around to grab my penis and testicles in a bear-sized right paw, squeezing hard until my eyes watered and a groan escaped my lips.

When he spun me around I saw that the two women were there, both looking at each other with a worried expression.

Buford said to them, "You did the right thing here.  There should be no problem collecting that reward money.  Of course, to make sure you get it I could put in a good word.  Only cost you fifteen grand each.  That'd give me the thirty thousand I need to write my next book:  They Call Me Sheriff: The Roy Buford Story.  What do you say--sound like a good deal?"

I could see Dolly and Mindy knew they had no choice.  They both nodded almost imperceptibly.

When he forced me into the rear passenger seat of the cruiser he made certain I whacked the left side of my noggin against the door frame.  As soon as he went around the vehicle and crawled in behind the steering wheel, he said, "You know, you're the kind of puke that purely makes me sick.  You think you're better than everyone else, don't you?--that you don't have to play by the rules.  Everybody else is trying to do the right thing, to get by as best they can, but you want to live life free from the restrictions that govern all law-abiding citizens.  There's nothing I'd like better than to put a plug square in the middle of your forehead.  So please--PLEASE--try to make an escape."

I looked briefly at the evil pair of eyes staring at me in the rearview mirror then turned away.

The BookForce marshals were waiting for me at the Brewster County lock-up in Alpine, and I was immediately escorted to a cell, where I'd spend the night until appearing before the Lit Commission magistrate in the morning.

While I lay on the bunk, recalling the events of the past few days, it seemed like the life I'd been living in the Chisos Mountains was nothing more than a dim recollection of the distant past.



The magistrate was the same one I'd faced before, a sober judge whose thin, gaunt face bore an expression whose message was clear:  you've really stepped in shit this time.  After reviewing the laptop computer monitor in front of him for an indeterminably long time, he said, "You are to be remanded to the U.S. federal agententiary at Ciudad Juarez, Texas.  I hereby sentence you to two years of 'hard writing' in solitary confinement.  Your only human contact will be with a personal tutor assigned to insure compliance. You are now required to produce two books during your incarceration.  Any and all profits from said books will go directly to the State for a period of two years after your release from custody.  Additionally, you will pay a $10,000 fine to compensate for the amount missing from the $60,000 needed to cover the Federal Book Creation Fee for two volumes."

When he finished he looked up at me with watery blue eyes, each nearly obscured by an unruly forest of graying eyebrow hair.  "Any questions?" he said.

I just shook my head.

He said, "The best advice I can give to you, sir, is to do your time with dignity, write the books required of you, and try to turn your life around when you're discharged from the penal facility."

Afterward I was escorted by BookForce marshals out the rear door of the courtroom, ushered into the celled-off section of a white van, forced to sit on an uncomfortable bench seat where my head was covered with a black hood made of heavy wool.