From my imagination, any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Thanks to Karen B for her help.
*****
Fate is a cruel bitch. It is mindless, heartless, and it just happens to you. You can't stop it from happening. You don't even know it is going to happen until it is over and done. Sometimes it takes years to happen. Looking back you understand how it happened and when it happened, but you are clueless at the time it is happening. After it has happened, the only thing you can do is try to keep it from destroying you.
I was sitting in a little café in Big Lake, Texas. I think the coffee I was drinking had acid in it. It was so strong I thought I could use it as fuel in my old pickup setting outside. I really didn't care as I was just doing my time in hell on earth.
I looked like a bum, but I wasn't. I had a couple of million in a bank in the Cayman Islands. I had on clothes that I bought at Goodwill. My jeans were ragged and dirty looking. I had on a western shirt with snaps instead of buttons that was well worn on the cuffs, sleeves, and the collar. Some of the snaps were missing. I had a worn coat that came down just above my knees. My boots were new but looked well-worn on purpose. I had on a crushed cowboy hat that had lost its shape on top of a head full of long hair down to my shoulders and a ragged, unkempt beard. My hair was purposely grayish to disguise my age. I used makeup to make my eyes look like dark bags were under them. A makeup pencil made the lines on my face look deeper. I was 31 and probably looked 60. My clothes were about 3 sizes too big to make me look skinny and hungry. I had a .357 magnum in a shoulder holster under my left arm. I had a Glock 26 in my large right coat pocket. I had a ragged billfold with about $30 dollars in it for show when I paid for stuff. I had a little over $20,000 in zip lock bags around the element in my air cleaner under the hood of my truck. I had about a $2000 in small bills under the floor mat under the back seat in my truck. I had my real ID and all my important papers double bagged underneath my truck battery, which was bolted down.
There were people after me, but they weren't law enforcement. They were worse. A certain corporate big wig wanted me gone, as in forever. He and I used to be besties, but he took my wife and my daughter. I took the corporation's future when I left with all the plans, blueprints and documentation of future products and my patents of the past. We started out after college as a team, and we were going to get rich. He was the marketing, salesman, PR man, and I was the research and product development guy. We went gangbusters for eight years. We were both rolling in the green, but then he wanted it all. I found out nearly too late. He already had my wife and daughter under his influence, and nearly had the company when I woke up and gutted the R&D department and closed all my bank accounts and my corporate accounts and disappeared. All my money was in accounts in the Cayman Islands. All the paperwork was buried on a ranch south of Sonora, Texas.
The ranch was owned by Roberto Valencia. He was just Val to me. We had become friends when I was in college and had car trouble in the wrong area of town. I got treed by some bad boys, and Val showed up and bailed me out. I never forgot him or him me. He was just a good guy that never had a break. I kept in touch with him. When I started rolling in the dough, I tried to remember my friends. I gave/loaned him the money to buy the ranch he always wanted. He didn't want to raise his kids in the barrio. There was no connection between him and me that anyone knew. He was the first one I thought of when I needed a hiding place for my R&D documentation. He called the ranch Val-Hom. Most people thought it referred to Valencia home. But it was short for Valencia-Hombre. He insisted I was half owner even though nothing was on paper or legal.
I paid my tab and left the restaurant walking toward my old truck. It was like me, disguised. It looked like it hadn't been washed in years, and it hadn't. The tires were dirty but if you looked close, you could tell they were new. One front fender was damaged. It had tinted windows, but the glass was dirty on the outside. It was hard to see inside. The inside was immaculate, and the running gear was in perfect shape. But it just looked like a dogged out old pickup owned by some bum.
A gust of cold wind hit me. It cut me to the bone. There was nothing between me and the arctic north but a few barbwire fences in the Texas panhandle, western Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. That is an exaggeration, but it felt like that with the wind chill probably at zero. I got in my truck, started it up and turned on the heater. I shivered in my coat, glad that I had one. I could remember when I didn't.
Nobody paid attention to me unless I did something stupid that brought attention to me. I never sat very long in one place. Sometimes I would park in a Walmart parking lot behind some RV so it would look like my pickup was a runaround Junker for the RV owners, and I would spend the night and move on early the next morning.
I was going to south Texas and hang out a while. So I called Val to tell him I was going through Sonora later today. I never went to his ranch after putting my stuff there. I took no chances that I might tip off where the documents were. I never knew how close my pursuers were. Six months ago, they shot up a motel room I had recently vacated in Hobbs, NM. I always parked my vehicle away from where I actually was. I got this uneasy feeling as I was about to go to bed. I got my stuff and went out the back. I walked to my pickup, drove to a truck stop, and parked among the trucks for the night. The next morning it was all over the local news how unknown assailants had shot up a motel room. I never figured out how they found me. I camped in a national park near Carlsbad, NM for a month. I staked my truck out away from where I camped, but no one ever paid attention to it.
Laura answered the phone. "Hey lady, is that bandito around?"
"Teddy, he is out back working with a horse. Hang on. I'll send one of the kids to get him."
I heard her calling one of the kids and giving them instructions.
"How have you been?"
"OK. I'm going to go through Sonora this afternoon or tonight. I thought he might meet me."
"Amigo, you can always come by. I know how you like my cooking."
"You have no idea how much I want to Laura, but it is too risky."
I heard noise of Val coming in the house and Laura giving him the phone.
"Hey Hombre, are you calling me?"
He always mimicked the Mexican in an old Paul Newman movie we both liked.
"Amigo, I'm coming through Sonora later and thought we might meet. I haven't seen you in a while. It will be quick. I got hackles on my neck. When I get them, I have to keep moving."
I heard Laura talking to him about something.
"Laura is making some tamales for you. How many you want?"
"Tell her I love her and two dozen if possible. Has she got a sister? One of these days I'm going to be looking for a good woman that can make tamales."
"Yes, she has a beautiful sister that was going to college at Hardin-Simmons, but she is in Mexico right now taking care of the abuelos. She will be back in school in January. Hang on a sec. Laura wants to talk to you."
"Teddy, I love you to death. You have done so much for Bobby and me, but I don't want you around my little sister until you got all this stuff behind you."
"Laura, I was just kidding. Your sister would run the other way if she ever saw me. You have nothing to worry about."
