Mules:: A Novel Read online

  Contents

  copyright

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  TWENTY EIGHT

  TWENT NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY ONE

  THITY TWO

  THIRTY THREE

  THIRTY FOUR

  THIRTY FIVE

  THIRTY SIX

  THIRTY SEVEN

  THIRTY EIGHT

  THIRTY NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY ONE

  FORTY TWO

  FORTY THREE

  FORTY FOUR

  FORTY FIVE

  FORTY SIX

  FORTY SEVEN

  FORTY EIGHT

  FORTY NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY ONE

  FIFTY TWO

  FIFTY THREE

  FIFTY FOUR

  FIFTY FIVE

  FIFTY SIX

  FIFTY SEVEN

  FIFTY EIGHT

  FIFTY NINE

  SIXTY

  EPILOGUE

  Also by Jarred Martin

  copyright

  MULES

  A NOVEL

  BY

  JARRED MARTIN

  © 2015 by Jarred Martin

  ONE

  They were 13 hours out of Gainesville, about to cross over into Texas from the Louisiana side. They had left Florida that morning and rode I-10 across the south. The plan was to stay in Galveston overnight and follow the coast into Mexico the next day.

  For two girls on spring break the road should have been a destination in itself: a winding path through adventure, a trail fraught with peril and excitement. So far it was just another banal trudge on fatigued asphalt, an obstacle between them and some half-formed idea of paradise .

  They were looking for something new; something they had never experienced, and they had convinced themselves that whatever it was they sought could not be contained within the boundaries of a country that had grown so viciously ordinary. And so they would leave it behind. The next day’s sun would dawn over a strange and uncharted land, and they would be there to see it.

  Neesha’s phone buzzed for what seemed like the five-hundredth time that day and the screen lit up in the console cup holder between her and Els. Els prayed silently to herself that Neesha wouldn’t pick it up: every time she did she would bring the phone inches away from her face to read the text, ignoring the road until the little red Jetta drifted to the shoulder and rubber vibrated against the rumble strips with a sound like all four tires blowing out and rolling flat at eighty-miles-an-hour.

  Els shut her eyes and gripped the sides of the seat, digging her nails into the upholstery.

  Neesha ignored the text and let out a derisive sigh at Els’ twee little dread. She definitely didn’t need the theatrics. And if Els didn’t like her driving, Neesha had made it clear that she was free to take the wheel at any time. Not that she would. Els seemed to lack most of the rudimentary skills necessary for a young person’s existence, the least of them being a driver’s license.

  Neesha barely knew the dull, irritatingly shy girl riding next to her. She sighed again, this time to herself, and wished that Janna was with them.

  Janna had been Neesha’s roommate back at the University of Florida from freshman year into their current junior year. The two students and Els- Els didn’t attend the university but was Janna’s friend from the brick oven pizza place where they both worked- had planned the trip eight weeks earlier, mapping the route and booking the hotels in advance to avoid the spring break price-gouging. Neesha didn’t mind sharing her vacation with an almost total stranger because she had assumed Janna would be there to act as a sort of social buffer and facilitate some kind of congeniality between them. But Janna had left school two days before the break to fly back home, citing some family emergency: something about her junkie brother OD’ing or committing suicide or needing an intervention or something.

  So the two of them went ahead without her. Els had continued with the trip because she wouldn’t be able to get her money back for the hotel and gas cards and restaurant Groupons- she had spent a small fortune on them, and besides, she had been looking forward to this trip for months and had taken time off work

  Neesha wasn’t worried about the money. Her family was well-off. Her father was an investment banker, and her mother was one of the co-founders of a wildly successfully tech company, but she wasn’t going to hang around the empty campus for two weeks doing nothing while literally every one of her friends- except Janna of course- was having the time of their young lives. She couldn’t even go home because when her mother and father had forbidden her planned excursion out of the country, she lied and told them she would go to Fort Lauderdale like she had the past two years.

  The drive had been mind-numbingly brutal. Neesha had made several attempts at conversation at which Els smiled, nodded occasionally and made monosyllabic comments when appropriate, but volunteered virtually nothing. Neesha was beginning to think that Els was one of those Aspberger people who only get by by mimicking social cues they learn from other people they never fully grasp themselves. After half a day in the car the only thing Neesha knew about her passenger was that she was from Montana, - “did they change the population sign when you left?” Neesha had joked- and that she moved to Florida last year after her dad died. She was evasive when prompted for further information about her father, or life in Montana, too soon maybe? Her taste In music was baffling. Els didn’t know who Nicki Minaj or Lil Wayne were, and she preferred staticy light jazz stations and ones that played Journey, Queen, and something called Styx that Els seemed to be embarrassingly familiar with.

  Els wasn’t entirely useless as a companion, though. She had proven herself surprisingly adapt at mechanical tasks, knowing her way around nuts and bolts. A few hours previous, when they were rolling through Alabama, they had to stop due to a flat tire- Neesha had been checking her voicemail and plowed into a steel belt from a piece of 18-wheeler tread that had been lying in the middle of the road. While Neesha was looking up tow services and cursing the motherfucking redneck truck driver that had ruined their trip, Els had deftly jacked the car up and replaced the tire. Neesha had been momentarily impressed, but her enthusiasm wained as soon as they started up again and Els once again resumed her asocial non-speaking roll. Definitely an Aspberger person, Neesha concluded.

  By nine-thirty that night they were on the Gulf Freeway out of Texas City, driving over the bay and approaching Galveston. The narrow island was lit up like a carnival and the light reflected in the water stretched over the bay until it vanished in shimmering points. Neesha relaxed. She hit the down button for the windows and inhaled the briny current drifting in off the night air, feeling pleasantly unfettered, as if they had crossed some significant threshold in their journey.

  Els immediately pressed her finger down on the button to let her window come back up, “It’s cold,” she said, giving Neesha an apologetic look.

  Neesha sighed through her nose .

  When they had entered the city proper, Neesha handed Els her phone- unsurprisingly, Els didn’t have one of her own, “Who would call?” She shrugged when Neesha questioned her- and asked her
to look up the directions to the hotel.

  She fumbled with the phone for a long time, furrowing her brow and pecking at the screen like someone who had just been handed a time machine or matter transporter: a piece of esoteric science-fiction technology. But she figured it out eventually. “It says we need to get on Gannet and follow that down to 21157. It’s called the Beach Front Inn, but it didn’t look like it was near the water.”

  Neesha put the phone back in the cup holder. “I don’t really care as long as it’s got a pool.” She merged into the far left lane and turned onto Gannet at a four-way stop. They drove down until the traffic petered out and the storefronts and property started to look grim and unmanaged; a seemingly bad part of town with tagged stop signs and flickering or entirely dead streetlights.

  Neesha picked her phone back up. “What was the address? Did we pass it? This doesn’t look right.”

  Els looked out both sides of the window trying to find a marked address. “I don’t think- LOOK OUT!” she screamed.

  Neesha came down hard on the brakes, the tires squealed as they came to an abrupt halt.

  In front of them, standing in the middle of the street, only inches away from the front bumper, were four rough-looking men in their early twenties. They were carrying tall boys of Miller Lite and one of them was bare-chested, holding his T-shirt up to his face. Neesha could see blood, bright red in the headlight, soaking into the white cotton, no doubt a wound acquired in some post-adolescent exhibition of his own masculinity.

  One of them, skinny with a shaved head, threw his arms up. “Watch where you’re going, bitch!”

  They started to walk away and Neesha called out to them from her open window, “Ever heard of a crosswalk, you fucking assholes?”

  One of them turned and grabbed his crotch, “Fuck you, nigger cunt!”

  Els turned her head away and looked down at the floorboard.

  “Go suck the shit out of mother’s dick, you pack of redneck fuckwads! Hope I didn’t make you late for your fucking Klan meeting!” Neesha screamed at them as she drove away, satisfied that she got the last word in.

  She looked over at Els who seemed visibly shaken. “Are you alright?” she asked.

  Els nodded, and Neesha continued to drive.

  “At least we won’t be homesick,” said Neesha after a while. “They got the same kind of assholes here that they got in Florida.”

  Els suddenly burst out laughing. She put a hand over her mouth, trying to stop herself.

  “What?” said Neesha. “What the fuck’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” said Els between spasms of giggles.

  Neesha gave her a sidelong glance as she cracked up again.

  “You told him to suck his mother’s thing.” Els giggled again, trying to catch her breath. “What does that even mean?”

  “Oh, fuck you,” said Neesha. “I didn’t hear you come up with anything better.” She smiled for the first time that day as they drove on.

  TWO

  The Beach Front Inn was an ugly, one-story roach motel made up of sloppily painted cinder blocks that horseshoed around a parking blacktop with a little office out front. And it was, as Els had suspected, nowhere near the water. Neesha groaned in disgust as they pulled in.

  “Holy shit, this places looks fucking nasty.” Neesha groaned again. “Who booked the rooms? There’s bedbugs in there, I just know it. Dirty sheets, cigarette burns on the pillow cases. Scabies.”

  Els was silent. She had booked the room. It was the cheapest motel in Galveston and it was still barely within her price-range.

  “It probably won’t be so bad when we get in there,” said Els. “They have to keep them really clean. It’s like a public health thing. It’s the law.”

  Neesha wrinkled her nose, sniffing the air. “Oh my God, I can smell it.”

  “What?” said Els, seriously.

  “It smells like herpes and dead hookers. Can’t you smell it? This place is like an elephant graveyard for cracked-out hookers. They come here to die. There’s going to be one stuffed in the mattress, maybe one in the bathroom. The sign out front should say Free HBO and dead hookers.”

  They both got out of the car and walked toward the office. Halfway there they saw that five or six of the rooms in the central row had burned down. It looked like a black gap of rotten teeth in an already shitty smile.

  “How quaint,” said Neesha, as they walked across the parking lot.

  “Oh my God,” said Els. “I hope nobody died.”

  Neesha snorted, “Probably the best thing that could happen to someone who slept here is they die in a fire. At least that way they won’t have to live with the pubic lice they got from the sheets.”

  “That’s sort of harsh.” Els wished Neesha would stop complaining about the motel. It was making her feel bad, like she was personally responsible for the place not meeting her expectations.

  They got to the office and Neesha opened the door. Before they entered, she looked at Els and said, “The first thing I’m doing when I get in the room is covering the bed with toilet seat protectors.”

  Inside the office there was an overwhelming smell of some foreign, unidentifiable food; spicy and pungent, and not at all pleasant to their Western sensibilities.

  They approached the front desk. There was a string of some weird dried peppers or something hanging over it like Christmas decorations. Neesha saw a puddle of something yellow just starting to drip down the counter, but no little bell to ring.

  “Hell-o-oo,” Neesha called out.

  A couple of minutes later a Middle-Eastern man in a red polo shirt greeted them. “Yes, hello. How may I help you tonight?”

  “We’re checking in.”

  “You want a room? How long? How many days?”

  “We have a reservation. It’s under-” she looked at Els.

  “St Claire,” said Els.

  Neesha at that moment realized that she hadn’t known Els’ last name. She also realized that Els had booked the hotel herself and started to feel a little terrible about shitting on it so much, but not as terrible as she would feel waking up with pubic lice.

  The hotel manager slid a single key across the table. Not a plastic credit card with a bar code like Neesha expected, but an actual key with a small plastic tab with their room number on it.

  Neesha put the key in her pocket.

  “Don’t lose it,” the manager said. “You lose it, and I charge you for a new lock. So don’t lose it,” he repeated.

  Neesha patted her pocket, “I’ll guard it with my life.”

  The manager gave her a look. “Checkout is at eleven. No smoking in the room.”

  Neesha pointed out the side window to the charred abscess where the rooms had burned down. “Must be a new policy, huh?”

  The manager stared at her blankly, unamused.

  “Thank you, so much,” Els said to him, gently grabbing onto Neesha’s arm and tugging her toward the door.

  “Wait. One more thing,” Neesha said, stopping the manager. “Where’s the pool?”

  The manager pulled his lips back in a cold smile. “It’s just around back. You won’t miss it. Don’t dive in, though. It’s not as deep as it looks.”

  Neesha winked at him as they exited the office. “You’re fabulous, honey. Don’t ever change.”

  They got in the car and drove across the parking lot to their room.

  Els sat back in the passenger seat with her arms folded across her chest. “Why did you have to do that?”

  “Do what?” asked Neesha.

  “Eff with that guy like that. He was only trying to do his job.”

  Neesha parked the car in front of the room, hit the trunk unlock button and they got out.”Oh, fuck that guy. He makes a living by lying to naive college kids about his shitty motel.” They went around to the trunk and pulled their bags out. “The Beach Front fucking Inn. The Burned Down Crackwhore Inn is more like it. People like that don’t deserve politeness. Seriously, girl, you don’t ha
ve to be little-miss-sunshine and smile while dudes like that are fucking you. The world is full of asshole men like that, taking advantage of people. It probably makes him feel powerful or something, tricking rubes into staying at his shitty motel. He could run a nicer place, but he doesn’t want to.” She put the key in the lock and turned it.

  They stepped inside. “You don’t know all that. He was just doing his job,” Els repeated.

  They sat their bags down and Neesha flipped on the light switch. The room was ugly. Stained, dark yellow carpet clashing with pastel green and pink walls. There was cheap flatscreen mounted overhead with a thick black cable wire disappearing into a crude hole bored into the wall, a low dresser with deep gouges in the veneer, a table that didn’t match. Cinder block walls made it look like the inside of a prison cell.

  “Look at this place,” said Neesha. “None of the furniture matches, the bedspreads look like they were bought in the ‘80s, the room smells like smoke. I can’t believe you’re taking that guy’s side.”

  “I’m sorry” Els murmured. She sniffed as she started to cry. “I booked the room. It’s my fault. It was the only one I could afford.” Her face felt hot, and tears streamed from her eyes. “I shouldn’t have come. I ruined the trip. I messed everything up, and you don’t even like me. I can tell that you don’t. I shouldn’t have even come.”

  Neesha came across the room and put her arms around her. “No, sweetie, I’m glad you came,” she said, semi-truthfully. “You changed the tire, remember? I couldn’t have done that. I would probably still be in backwoods Alabama without you. And this place isn’t so bad, really. I was exaggerating. Besides, we’ll only have to spend a few hours here before we leave tomorrow.” She wiped the tears from Els’ face and started to rock her back and forth gently. “I’ll tell you what: we’ll have a nice dinner, on me. We’ll hit up the liquor store, get some drank. We’ll come back here and sit in the pool, just soak and relax. How does that sound? Do you wanna do that?”

  Els sniffed again, and looked up at Neesha. “Really? You’re not mad at me?”