Sayulita

A crime fiction story about what motivates us to do the things we shouldn't.

Photo by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash

In honor of her first felony offense, Deanna Lou Hartley decided to purchase a full pack of cigarettes. Normally she just bummed from Sharlene or Jaqcui at the local Gas’N’Sip where she worked the three-to-eleven shift. Tonight, she knew that she’d need her own as she waited for Bobby Ray. Lighting her next smoke off the coal of the previous one as Hank Williams, Sr. warbled through the scratchy car radio, she worked her way through half a pack of Marlboro Lights. The killed butts were drowned in the dregs of a once-full, plastic 32 ounce cup of Mountain Dew that sat in the cup holder.

A blanket of clouds lay over the now-darkened Tennessee hills, blocking out both starlight and moonlight. The lack of moonlight had confused the crickets and bullfrogs who normally animated the night with their conversations, comings and goings. The small bend in Highway 116 was as quiet as the tomb.

Brushy Mountain State Prison was a familiar destination for Deanna Lou. On her previous twelve visits, she drove through the imposing front gate manned by humorless guards just looking for a reason to wield their unforgiving shotguns. There was no trip through the main gate tonight for Deanna Lou. Tonight, she shuddered to think of those guards and their shotguns. When Bobby Ray had first gone to Brushy, part of her died. Tonight, there was the prospect of resurrection, a focus that allowed her to push past her pounding heart and the tremble in her fingertips.

Sayulita, she thought, shakily lighting yet another cigarette from the dying ember of the one before it. That’s all that matters now. Even the name of the town sounded musical and exotic to her. Sayulita. A sandy beach. Palm trees. The vastness of the Pacific stretched out before her. Sunsets that would break your heart.

Sayulita. A reason. A mantra.

Once upon a time, all the talk had sounded good to Deanna Lou at the time, even if she didn’t know what it meant right then. Bobby Ray kept talking about “getting his money right” so they could get out of South Nashville and really start to live. Lord amercy, the boy could talk. Mama wasn’t impressed. She routinely took her oxygen mask off long enough to tell Deanna Lou that Bobby Ray was bad news. That Daddy, God rest his soul, would have never approved of him. Mama meant well and she was sure that when Daddy looked down, he was shaking his head. They just couldn’t see that walls of their shitty little duplex on Faulkner Drive were closing in on Deanna Lou every day. Threatening to swallow her up forever without so much as a burp. When Bobby Ray shared his dreams with her it was as easy to sip on them as Tennessee whiskey and she could see a place beyond those walls. She had decided that those homicide detectives didn’t need to know all that though.

Deanna Lou had told those homicide detectives that she didn’t know anything about Bobby Ray’s plan before he’d plunged into it like destiny. And that was true for as far as went. She hadn’t known that Bobby Ray’s plan to make it big also involved the money in Fathead Tuggle’s pockets. She knew Fathead sold meth, but everyone in South Nashville knew that. And, like everyone in South Nashville, she assumed that Fathead carried a gun when he was slinging. Everyone but Bobby Ray, apparently.

How could he have been so stupid with everything? Absolutely everything.

At the trial, Bobby Ray’s public defender had tried to tell the jury that Bobby Ray didn’t have premeditation when he pulled the trigger of the beat up .38 revolver that had once belonged to Bobby Ray’s grandaddy. That he’d only been defending hisself when that bullet went right into Fathead Tuggle’s shriveled-up heart. Far from robbery, Bobby Ray only wanted to recover money that Fathead had previously taken from him, the earnest, young, and bespectacled lawyer had urgently argued. But even Deanna Lou never believed that story, so she knew there wasn’t much chance that twelve citizens would either.

When the jury said “guilty” and the judge sentenced Robert Rayburn Hathaway to life in the Tennessee Department of Corrections, well sir, that old judge had sentenced Deanna Lou to life in prison just as well.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Bobby Ray had told her in his first call from prison after the verdict. “I’m gonna get us out of this.”

“How?” Her voice was a wail.

“You’ll see. You know I always got a plan.”

The plan had taken a year or so to form. At first, Deanna Lou had not wanted to hear about it. Bobby Ray wouldn’t talk about it on the phone, anyhow. “You know them fuckers is listenin’, baby,” he told her, his voice still sugary despite the vulgarity. When he first told her how he had scoped out a gap in the walls, they were seated across from each other on a visitation day. He had leaned in, and she could feel his breath on her face. Saw that familiar glint in his hazel eyes. This time, though, hearing his words had made Deanna Lou start to shake. She knew that the leering guard, the one who also looked at her ample chest and undressed her with his eyes, was listening to them. She knew that was only a matter of time before they swooped in with their shotguns and blue uniforms and carried her off to her own prison cell.

But that hadn’t happened.

In fact, the more Bobby Ray talked to her about his plan, the more it made sense. Bobby Ray had killed a meth dealer. Taken him out of commission. Weren’t the cops trying to do the same thing? Did it seem fair that a man should do life in prison for putting down a bottom feeder like Fathead Tuggle? Now the law didn’t see it that way, but the law was never built for folks like Bobby Ray and Deanna Lou. And they both knew it. If they wanted the life that everybody else got, they’d have to make their own law.

Aider and abetter. That’s what she was gonna be. What she maybe even was already, as she sat in the hills outside Brushy Mountain State Prison, with her car idling. Waiting for him. Aider and abetter. But Bobby Ray wasn’t too worried about it.

“Hell, baby, if worse comes to worse, you’s just an aider and abetter,” he had told her. Like it was nothing. After he’d said that, Deanna Lou looked the term up on the internet while things were slow at the Gas’N’Sip one night. To assist another person in the commission of a crime by words or conduct actively, knowingly, and intentionally. A felony. Punishable by six years in prison.

It sounds, Deanna Lou thought, worse than it actually is. Right?

Bobby Ray burst out of the underbrush so violently that she yelped in fear. He was still in his prison blues and dashed to the passenger side of her Toyota Corolla. He tried the door handle. It was locked.

“Goddam it, open up, Deanna Lou!” His voice, a harsh whisper.

“Sorry!” She pushed the button to pop the door locks and Bobby Ray slid into the passenger seat.

“Go, baby go!” His voice was alight with excitement. She dropped the Corolla into gear and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The small sedan lurched forward into the night, picking up speed along the deserted stretch of rural highway. Neither of them said anything for several minutes, intensity thrumming between them like the current of a rapid. Deanna Lou waited, her breathing shallow, for the burst of blue lights, the sound of sirens, and the unmistakable whocta-whocta of a police helicopter. But the night remained still and dark. The only thing she could see were her own headlights illuminating the road to freedom.

Sayulita.

It was Bobby Ray who had found the tiny town along the Pacific Ocean. God only knew how. She guessed they had internet in prison, but she didn’t know for sure. However he had found it, Bobby Ray shared the discovery of their paradise with her like a scruffy Magellan. In defiance of the cold gray walls that surrounded their visitation, his eyes sparkled like when she had first met him.

“I’m gonna get me a boat, baby. Do some chartering for sailfish out on them waters,” Bobby Ray had grinned. Deanna Lou had never been on a charter boat before, but she was pretty sure that Bobby Ray hadn’t either. Deanna Lou played along, telling him she was only going to wear the tiniest bikini she could find and learn how to make shrimp empanadas. Crazy talk.

Now that she was driving away from Brushy Mountain State Prison in the middle of the night, the feel of sun on her skin, and the aroma of shrimp empanadas blazing in a pan didn’t seem so terribly far away. Maybe Bobby Ray would get his boat. Or work on one at least. They could find a little hacienda not far from the beach. They’d have a little girl whose hair, blond like her granny’s, would bleach in the Mexican sun. Or a little boy who’d brown up like a biscuit as he fished with his daddy in the cool blue of the Pacific. Or both.

Sayulita.

“Goddam I love you, Deanna Lou.” Bobby Ray’s voice was husky with emotion, and he reached up and stroked her auburn hair with a meaty hand.

“I love you too, baby,” she murmured, turning her head to kiss his hand. Bobby Ray let out a rebel yell which was impossibly loud inside her little car, but she had to laugh in spite of herself. In spite of everything.

They were several miles outside of Fort Payne, Alabama on I-59 when Deanna Lou saw the first police car. It was an Alabama Highway Patrol car, and it was gaining on her little Corolla.

“Baby?”

“I see it,” Bobby Ray growled. “Goddam Smokey. Just be cool, honey.”

“I’m cool.” Her voice was tremulous.

Maybe he’ll just pass us by, Deanna Lou thought. Maybe he’s going towards somewhere else. Someone else. The patrol car had accelerated until there were just a couple of car lengths between them. That’s when she saw the other one.

“Two of them, now!”

“Goddamit woman, I got eyes.”

When the fourth highway patrol car joined the formation, the lead car turned on its blue lights. A siren wailed behind them as they all hurtled down the interstate. Despite the overcast sky, the August morning was already hot. Humidity was wafting off the trees that lined the roadway, coating it all in an ethereal steam.

“Gas it! Go, go, go!” Bobby Ray’s voice was tight and urgent. Deanna Lou obeyed and slammed the accelerator to the floor again. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him unhook his seatbelt and half-crawl into the back seat. A feeling of dread welled up inside of her as she realized what he was doing.

“Don’t worry baby,” he said reassuringly, “I’m just gone try and keep ‘em back off of us.” The sound of rushing air tore into the car as Bobby Ray rolled the window down. That sound was then punctuated by the sharp crack of the first gunshot.

When he had first described the plan to her and had asked her to retrieve the gun from his brother Clint, she hadn’t wanted to do it. “It’s only for an emergency, baby,” he had told her then. “Also, we’ll need it for when we get South of the Border.” The gun had been wrapped in an old, black Bocephus t-shirt when Clint had first handed it to her. Even now, she could still feel the ugly heft in her hands. When Bobby Ray fired the second shot out of her car window, and then the third, she wished to God she had dropped the thing in the river right after Clint first gave it to her.

“They’re movin’ back!” Bobby Ray bellowed, his voice jubilant. He slid back into the passenger seat and rolled the window back up. The car, which had been overwhelmed with noise, was quiet again. Deanna Lou could still smell the odor of the shots, the gunpowder or whatever it was, over the musk of stale cigarette smoke.

The blockade was still about two miles away when they crested the small hill but, at the speed they were traveling, they’d be on it in no time. About a dozen police cars sat like impervious sentinels across the highway and Deanna Lou could see men swarming behind them. She could see the shotguns they carried.

“Go around it!” Bobby Ray screamed. Deanna Lou tried to turn the steering wheel to go around the blockade but, with the adrenaline pumping through her, she turned the wheel too sharply and the Corolla started to skid. The worn tires that she’d never been able to afford to change couldn’t find purchase on the hot asphalt. The skid blossomed into a full-blown spin out. She screamed as the car spun around, slamming both her feet on the brakes and making the spin even more violent. The car bounced powerfully as they rolled over something. Deanna Lou heard the screeching of metal on pavement and a sickly-sweet smell of melting, shredding rubber engulfed the car. The car drifted to a stop less than a football field away from the blockade.

“Sonsofbitches!”

“Bobby Ray, don’t!”

She was out of the car chasing after him before she even realized it, instantly perceiving that the gun in Bobby Ray’s hand would give the troopers all the cause they’d ever need. The dank humidity of the Alabama morning descended on her like a curtain, and she felt it prickle her skin momentarily. Then everything exploded.

Something sharp slapped her neck and knocked her to the ground but not before something else slammed into her chest.

Deanna Lou tried to move. Couldn’t. She was on her back, her eyes staring up at the sun. It had melted a jagged hole in the gray clouds above her, revealing the patch of bright blue sky behind them. Her neck felt warm and wet. When she strained to suck in a breath, it was ragged and watery. But her eyes were filled with sky, deep and limitless like she imagined the Pacific Ocean would be. She felt a hot breeze slide over her and somehow sensed the earthy grit of the sand under her feet. Her vision started to tunnel, clouding at the edges. But there was a small sailboat bobbing gently in the blue distance. A small boy and girl ran through the shade of a palm tree, sand kicking up behind their little feet, laughing as they drew near to her.

Sayulita. She was home.

Author’s Note: Brushy Mountain State Prison is a real place in Petros, Tennessee though it stopped housing inmates in 2009. Now, if you are so inclined, you can tour the prison, eat at Warden’s Table Restaurant, and sample the moonshine that is brewed nearby. Many inmates, including the assassin James Earl Ray, attempted to escape from Brushy in its over one hundred years of existence as a Tennessee prison. None succeeded.