Free It Came From Del Rio: Part One of the Bunnyhead Chronicles by Stephen Graham Jones

probably have to do, and a ring was always something I was going to buy her after the next job, so who knows. Her family might not even have any idea about me, or Laurie. To them I might just be an accomplice, the one who got away.
    When Lem came through that first year, heading for Argentina or some perfect place without extradition, I’d asked him about her.
    “You think I went and saw her in the hospital, man?” he’d said, laughing in spite of how shot up he was.
    I’d stared at him for a long moment then. As far as I knew, she’d died in that first hail of bullets. But they’d kept her alive for a while. She never would have said my name to them, I know. It wasn’t even a question. What is a question is if she ever woke up, looked around for me.
    In the papers I never could find in Mexico back then, I know her cause of death would have been gunshot wounds. That was one way to look at it. The other way was a lot more romantic.
    But she would have wanted it like I did it, I’m pretty sure. Better that I run for at least a few years with Laurie than stand there in cuffs and leg irons and watch her die, Laurie in the custody of the state forever. Tanya wouldn’t have wanted her to grow up like that. To follow in Tanya’s own footsteps, pretty much. Have no choice but to.
    The facts of us are that we met in the parking lot of a Safeway. I lay under her truck and tapped the starter with the tie-rod handle of a hammer I’d welded, and then she bought me a drive-through milkshake as thanks, and if there’s any other way to fall in love, I don’t know about it.
    At the time of our last bank job together, I was twenty-eight and she was twenty-seven, and Laurie was almost four.
    Sometimes still, walking along the shaded lee of a brick building, I’ll remember holding Tanya’s hand, as if I could possibly guide her around all the trash on the sidewalk, and I’ll apologize to her, for losing Laurie like I have.
    But she can’t see me like this, either, Laurie.
    If she’s anything like her mom, I mean, she wouldn’t care, and would hug me and hold my hand and not leave for hours, even when I begged her to. And if she’s like me inside, I don’t know. Hopefully she’s not.
    If it matters, Larkin just died, I’m pretty sure. There was nothing ugly about it. It was just like a lamp, turning off. You’d think there’d be something different about the eyes, but, in the first few minutes anyway, there’s not really. I know because he’s my third, now.
    Instead of listening to any of the noises his body’s about to start making, I just turned the radio in my ears up. All the songs are new to me. It’s a new world I live in now.
    Except some of us still remember the things that came before. The old gods. I’ve become one of them, I think.
    Or something.

    That next morning, an hour into the day maybe, I woke to a man on horseback slapping my water with the tips of his reins.
    He was Mexican, a cowboy, a ranch hand. Just watching me, his expression somehow both bored and amused.
    “You’re alive,” he said in Spanish.
    I stood, the water rushing down me, the green spinach clinging.
    “I wouldn’t have known you were there,” he said, patting his horse on the neck, “except my boy here wouldn’t drink from the bowl.”
    The trough. I looked past him. About fifty yards out was a wall of cattle, come in for their morning drink but stopped because I was there, polluting their water.
    They had that good of noses? Or, really: I smelled that bad?
    “I’m not dead,” I said.
    “I know,” the cowboy said, in English, like he was showing off. “And you’re not Mexican, either.”
    I shrugged like he had me then, yeah. And understood that this was why the situation was funny to him. It was a reversal — the white guy was the wet. Dripping, even.
    “You just out for a swim, yeah?” he said, his horse prancing around sideways from me.
    I stared at the cattle for a measured handful of seconds.
    “What are you