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

after one o’clock, he swung back around to the stock tank to pick me up. He was in a truck now, a different one than I’d seen.
    “Thought you said lunch,” I said, climbing in my side.
    “Everybody’s there at lunch,” he said back, grinding us into gear. His saddle was in the back of the truck, the skirt sweated all the way through. On the dash was an old bag of sunflower seeds. I didn’t ask if I could have them, just started eating, shells and all.
    “How far out are we?” I asked.
    “What, you a squirrel, too?” he said, leaning over the wheel the way guys do when they’re getting paid by the hour. In addition to my being a mule.
    “How far to the house?” I said, trying to chew everything I’d stuffed into my mouth.
    “Thirty minutes,” he said, nodding north and east. “Why? You on medicine or something?”
    “Just getting my bearings.”
    He laughed to himself about me and pulled some old clothes from behind the seat. I took them and asked the question with my eyes.
    “Nobody’s going to see you,” he said. “But just in case.”
    I changed as he drove, buttoned the shirt over the warm bandoleer. The boots even fit.
    “They’re on sale this week,” the hand said. “Hundred even.”
    “Deal of the year,” I said, trying to flex my toes.
    “So what are those, really?” he said, about the canisters.
    “Late,” I said, and then we were there, nosed up to the back porch of a long, narrow bunkhouse. The hand looked to me, to the bunkhouse, then ferreted the keys out of the ignition.
    “I’m going to the house,” he said. “It’ll probably be better if you’re not here when I get back.” He was talking Spanish again.
    I looked all around.
    He directed me back down the road we’d come in on. “Over to the north’s a draw. It leads down to the pens. Nobody’s there right now.”
    I nodded, understood what he was saying: that that was the place to stay, until whoever I was calling came.
    “How far?” I said.
    “Not even a mile.”
    “I need to dial anything special to get out?” I said, hooking my chin to the idea of the bunkhouse phone.
    He shook his head no, added, “And don’t take anything.”
    “You know where I’ll be.”
    “Exactly.”
    With that he tipped his hat and backed away, leaned into the walk-up to the main house to report on whatever he’d been doing all morning. I watched him until he was gone but didn’t chance stepping around the bunkhouse to follow him all the way. Because I didn’t want to get spotted, yeah, but more because I had maybe eight hours left to deliver the canisters.
    I shook my head no as I dialed the numbers, then leaned against the wall the phone was on, stared all the way down it. The light gave out before the room ended. This was a bunkhouse for thirty cowboys, but there were only six beds in use. The other way, behind me, was an added-in kitchen, from after the rancher’s wife quit cooking for everybody, probably.
    On the stove was a pan one of the other hands had boiled noodles in for lunch. Half of them were still there, cold. I pulled the pan to me, starting fingering the noodles in, and then Manuel was on the line, waiting for me to say something. It was the only number I had memorized, beside my own: the pharmacy.
    “Hey,” I said. “It’s me.”
    He laughed about this. I could see him sitting on his stool in the stockroom.
    “Refill?” he said.
    “Yeah,” I told him, “but later. Listen, though, first. Just let me finish. I’ve got a proposition for you.”
    On his end, Manuel was just breathing. Which is to say listening.
    “I’ve got some money stashed up in Piedras Negras to pay for this. But it has to happen now. Ten minutes ago, really. Yesterday’d be better, even.”
    “How much?” Manuel said, with me already.
    “Fifteen.”
    “Make it twenty.”
    “You don’t even know what it is yet.”
    “Just on principle.”
    I swallowed a mouthful of noodles, said, “You’ve still got those cousins in