by Gregory Ashe
“It sounds like it takes a lot of time,” Ammon said.
“It can, but that depends on a lot of factors. You can do all of this in fifteen minutes if you’re in the right setting. Or it can take weeks or months. Eventually, they’ve got the scent of money—you’ve laid down just enough bait about who you are, about something big about to go down. If you’re lucky, they come right out and ask if they can get in on it, and that’s when you try to turn them down. It makes them want it even more badly. If you’re not lucky, you have to fake an emergency. In this case, the story about a DEA bust and an unprotected shipment of drugs. Sometimes the marks jump in because they like feeling like the savior. Sometimes, you have to make it look like you’re going under and they can take advantage of your moment of weakness; some people only slip up when they think they’ve got a chance to cut your throat. I think we can guess where Tanner falls.”
“Jeez,” Tean said. “And you think I’m dark.”
“Once Kristine and Nathaniel had Tanner on the hook, they must have been hoping he’d slip up. Drop his guard. But then shit went sideways with Blake and Jager, and Tanner went berserk and went into hiding, and now they have to wait for him to pop his head up again when the delivery is supposed to happen.”
“But why?” Ammon said. “You still haven’t answered that part. Why not just put a knife in his back, drag him out into the desert, and leave him for somebody to find in fifteen years?”
“Because.” Jem’s jaw cracked. “Because when someone hurts you like that, you don’t want to kill them. You want to do it to them. You want to do it a hundred times worse to them. It’s not about smushing them out like a bug. It’s about power. It’s about getting back the power they took from you.” The A/C from the vents was a hiss of white noise in Jem’s ears. He worked his jaw from side to side; it popped one, two, three times, and the sound made him think of juniper branches exploding in a blaze. “And it’s about humiliating them, debasing them, the way they did to you. It’s not just about killing Tanner. It’s about showing they’re smarter than he is, tricking him, and then it’s about taking their time with him, making him pay. That’s what Nathaniel wants. That’s why we found those handcuffs under Kristine’s bed. Tanner didn’t put them there to blackmail Kristine; Kristine and Nathaniel put them there for Tanner so they could . . .” It was hard to swallow. “Get even. And record the whole thing. They would have wanted it to go on for days. For weeks. Months. You don’t ever want it to end because it’s the only way to feel better.” He cleared his throat. “But time is limited, so a recording is the next best thing.”
A stronger blast of wind hit the truck, forcing the truck onto the rumble strip again. Jem swore, jerked the wheel, and overcorrected. A Mack truck’s horn blared. He yanked the wheel again and brought them back into their lane.
Tean’s hand came to rest on his arm. Jem shook him off, his gaze still fixed on the road.
“Scientifically,” Tean said, turning so that he was speaking into the dead space ahead of them, “revenge is biologically programmed into us because it’s evolutionarily advantageous. They’ve done studies, and even fantasizing about revenge triggers the brain’s reward centers, primarily with the release of dopamine. It’s a mechanism for ensuring survival; revenge means making sure that the costs of acting against someone outweigh the gains. It’s nonspecific, in fact. Other mammals display revenge behaviors—elephants, apes, chimpanzees. Some fish and snakes show this retaliatory behavior. Birds. Crows are so smart and have such high visual acuity that they can connect imposed costs with a specific human face; they can recognize individual humans who have done them wrong, and they’ll try to retaliate, as Jem learned firsthand.”
“Really fascinating stuff,” Ammon said. “Too bad revenge means the total breakdown of law and order. The whole reason we have a civil society, laws, a justice system, all of it, is to keep the world from descending into tribal eye-for-an-eye bullshit.”
“I’m not saying it’s the right course of action. I’m saying it’s biological, it’s functional in terms of group and individual evolutionary advantages, and it’s also something that we can understand at a personal level. I sympathize with Nathaniel. There are people who have hurt me, and I’ve wanted to hurt them back twice as badly.”
“But you didn’t.”
Tean’s mouth thinned into a line.
“You didn’t, Tean. Am I right?”
“We’re getting off topic.”
“Answer my question.”
“No, I didn’t, Ammon.”
“No, you didn’t. Because you’re a good person. You chose to take the high road. If it had been significant enough, you might have gone for legal compensation, but you didn’t take matters into your own hands.”
“Who was Nathaniel supposed to go to?” Jem said. “The cops? You’re a joke. All you do is scratch each other’s backs. You get away with murder—look at McEneany.”
“Yeah,” Ammon said. “There are some bad guys. But you don’t know what it’s like: the stress, the uncertainty, never knowing if someone’s going to put a bullet in you when you turn your back on them. It gets in your head.”
“Boo hoo,” Jem said. “Tell that to Antonio. Oh, you can’t. McEneany murdered him and walked away from it.”
“And yeah, sometimes cops get away with bad things. McEneany isn’t going to be one of them; you can bet your ass that the FBI will rip the sheriff’s department apart looking for anybody who helped McEneany get away with this shit, because you can bet he wasn’t working alone. But the point is that revenge isn’t the answer. Vendettas aren’t the answer. Legal recourse, law and justice. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“Nathaniel didn’t have that option,” Tean said. “Years had passed since Tanner had hurt him. He’d been failed by the system before, failed by the people who should have helped him and protected him and kept him safe. He made decisions while suffering from the shock of another life-threatening assault, and—”
“Do you think revenge is right?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“I’m asking you. Teancum Leon, who thinks he’s so fucking moral because he’s an existentialist and he gets to sulk and wallow and pretend his life is meaningless. Do you think revenge is ok?”
“Is that really how you think of me?”
“Is it moral?”
“Is that what you’ve thought of me all these years?”
“Answer me.”
“No.” Tean’s narrow shoulders were drawn up. “No, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. And it doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize with it.”
“You’re just saying this to make your boyfriend feel better,” Ammon said. “And it’s pretty fucking amusing watching you twist yourself into knots so you can tell him what he wants to hear without compromising your precious moral integrity.”
“Talk to him like that again,” Jem said. “Talk to him like that one more fucking time, and I’ll pull this truck over and murder you. And that has nothing to do with revenge, motherfucker.”
“Jem, please let me handle this.” Tean turned at the waist to face Ammon. Tufts of wild dark hair stuck up along the back of his head, which Jem wanted to flatten, and the tension visible in his shoulders made Jem want to squeeze his nape and promise him it would be ok. But he couldn’t do any of that. Not right then. “I didn’t realize you thought so little of me.”
“Grow up, Tean.”
“I’m very sorry that I hurt you, Ammon. That’s not—”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
Tean let a beat pass. “That’s not what I wanted. What I ever wanted. I’m always going to love you. And I’m going to want what’s best for you. And when we’ve both had some time, I’d like to be your friend and be a part of your life in a way that’s healthy for both of us. But I held on to you for a long time, Ammon, waiting and hoping that somehow you could make my life perfect. That’s very c
ommon for gay men. Did you know that? They tend to hold on to their first relationship much longer than is healthy because they’ve often lost so much in the process of coming out.”
Ammon was staring straight ahead, the muscles in his jaw standing out.
“Holding on to you, that wasn’t fair to either of us,” Tean said quietly. “And it wasn’t a good way to live for either of us, and we both did things we shouldn’t have. I’m sorry for my part in that.” On a hill ahead of them, in the shade of a squat cedar, a bony horse whipped its head around. “This is for the best.”
“Yeah. Well.” His voice was thick, and his jaw moved soundlessly a few times. “I’m a sex addict, Teancum. Let’s not pretend it was anything else.” He covered his eyes. He was frozen, lacquered where the sun touched the side of his face.
“Ammon—”
“Leave him alone,” Jem said.
Tean looked over his shoulder, his face twisted with indecision.
“Leave him alone right now. You’re only making it harder for him.”
After scrubbing furiously at his eyes, Tean nodded. Jem slid an arm around him, and Tean scooted closer, resting his head on Jem’s shoulder. They drove that way for hours, Tean’s tears hot where they fell on the thin poly-cotton of Jem’s tee.
The sun moved behind them. They left the blackened valley behind them. The rock walls took on bands of color: gray-green, brown, pink, red. Fins and spines of sandstone corkscrewed in seemingly impossible ways. They passed redrock goblins, huge stone heads balanced on tiny bodies. Stone needles rose toward the sky. A bridge crossed a dry wash, where a sign hand-lettered with oil paint read: QUIKSAND!!!! Prickly pear, pinyon pine, juniper. Sage—a million kinds of sage that Tean probably would have known the names of. A slickrock path snaking up a bluff. A dugway crumbling on its north face. In places, the exposed rock was covered with something black, as though kids had gotten wild with the spray paint.
“Desert varnish,” Tean whispered.
Jem smiled and squeezed him closer.
They were half an hour outside Moab when a cruiser appeared in the rearview mirror, lights flashing. It must have been going well over a hundred because it gained rapidly on them. When it was close enough, they could hear the sirens.
“What the hell did you do?” Ammon said scratchily. He wiped his face, smearing the salt tracks there, and looked around. “Jesus. How fast were you going?”
“I wasn’t speeding.”
“What the fuck did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“He’s passing us,” Tean said. “He doesn’t even care about us.”
“What kind of shit are we walking into?” Ammon said.
As the cruiser drew even with them, though, it slowed. It kept pace for five seconds before Jem glanced over. STATE TROOPER was printed above the wheel wells—easy enough for Jem to read those words—and the Utah Highway Patrol logo, with the state beehive, marked the front door panel. Officer Haggerty shot them a quick look. Jem raised a hand in greeting. Haggerty smiled.
Then he cut hard to the right, clipping the Ford’s rear wheel, and sending them spinning off the highway.
37
Jem’s surprise only lasted half a second, but it was long enough for him to lose control of the truck completely. Haggerty was determined and a fuck-ton bolder than Jem would have guessed. He drove hard into the side of the Ford, keeping contact until the truck went off the road. The shriek of metal, which had been the only sound that Jem could hear, ended abruptly. Jem had just long enough to feel strangely relieved. He pulled hard on the steering wheel, trying to keep the truck on the shoulder. Then the first tire went out over empty air. Haggerty hit the truck again with another crunch and squeal. There was a loud pop—the tire, Jem guessed—and the smell of burning rubber. Then the truck was rolling, and Jem had a long enough to think, Oh shit, before the first impact.
Glass shattering. Metal crumpling. Shouting. The sudden suspension of gravity. Then impact, the seat belt biting into Jem’s neck. Then it all happened again. And again.
When the truck came to a stop, Jem was hanging upside down. Every inch of him hurt. The world spun, settled, spun again. Blood ran along the side of his face, hot, stinging when it got into his eye. He fumbled with the seat belt, realized he’d done something stupid, and fell. He landed badly, on his shoulder and neck, driving a spike of pain to the base of his skull. The weight of his body drove some of the pebbles of tempered glass into bare skin, but he barely felt them. The smell of gasoline made him lightheaded.
Tean groaned.
Jem got onto his knees, twisting to inspect the other man. Tean’s seat belt had held, and now the doc hung suspended from his seat, the belt cutting into his thighs and shoulder as it kept him from falling. His glasses were gone, and he looked like he was trying to focus.
“Are you ok?” Jem asked, his hands moving to the seat belt clip. “Can you understand me? Did you hit your head?”
Tean tried to nod and then must have understood the ridiculousness of it. “Yes, I’m fine.” He tried to turn. “Ammon?”
“In a minute. Hold still.” Jem depressed the seat belt’s release, but the clip didn’t come free. A wave of nausea was flooding him, and he breathed through his mouth as he yanked on the belt. “God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God—”
The clip slid free, and Tean fell. He tried to catch himself, but mostly he landed on Jem, flattening the two of them against the cab’s ceiling. By the time Jem got them sorted out, the nausea was worse, and he had to close his eyes and swallow against the urge to be sick. Sweat stung as it broke out across his face and chest.
“Jem?”
He nodded.
“Jem, I can’t see anything.”
The wave crested, and more sweat broke out, hot little spats of it like grease burns. Then Jem was ok, or close enough. He opened his eyes, found the twisted, taped-together frames, and pressed them into Tean’s hand. Outside the truck, boots clapped against the hard-baked soil.
“Shit,” Jem whispered. “He’s here, and he’s going to kill us if we don’t get away from here. We’ve got to try to run.”
“Ammon’s not moving.”
A quick glance confirmed that Tean was right: Ammon still hung upside down, his eyes closed. A starburst in the passenger window showed where his head had hit the glass, and as Jem watched, blood dripped from the other side of Ammon’s head.
“Get him out of the belt,” Jem said.
“We can’t carry him.”
“Do you want to leave him?”
Tean bit his lip as he shoved the glasses into place.
“I didn’t think so. Get him out of the belt. We’ve got to take care of things one at a time.”
The sound of footsteps was louder. Jem reached past Tean, his hand following Ammon’s waistband until he touched the leather holster. He unsnapped the pistol there, fumbled, and recovered. Then Jem tried the handle on the driver door. The latch released, and when he pushed there was only a moment of resistance before the door opened. It scraped across the hardpan, raising tiny whorls of dust. Jem had to crab out of the cramped space.
He had only a heartbeat to try to adjust his gaze to the intense brightness of the afternoon sun. Then a boot caught the side of his head, and the world scrambled. Instinct made him keep moving, long years of living when being cornered, being trapped, meant bad things would happen. So instead of collapsing and trying to retreat into the Ford’s cab, he stumbled clear of the truck. The kick had messed up his horizon, though. The blue sky tilted precariously. He landed on hands and knees, the pistol slipping in his grip. His finger ached where the trigger guard twisted the knuckle.
The next kick caught him in the same spot Jager had gotten him, and the world exploded. It was all white fire—huge, shifting billows of it. When he came back, his eyes were watering with the blueness of the sky, and the pistol was gone.
“Stay down,” Haggerty said. “Yo
u’re cute, and I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have to.”
Blue, blue, blue. Jem could barely keep his eyes open, the sky was so blue. When his lids drifted down, the relative darkness was a mercy.
“Good boy.”
Jem opened his eyes; the light made them water, so he let his head roll. He stared at a huge barrel cactus. He was thirsty, he realized. In a movie, once, he’d seen a guy lop off the top of a cactus and drink out of it. Now its shape reminded him of a camel’s hump. He wondered if that was science, if there was an explanation for why camels and cacti both stored water in humps; Tean would know. He reached into the pocket where he kept the paracord with its hex nut, the barrette with the sharpened clip, the tube sock.
Haggerty made an annoyed noise. The kick caught Jem in the ribs, and he felt something snap in his chest. The force of it propelled Jem onto his side. He managed to drag out the barrette. The next kick caught him in the back, driving the breath from his lungs and forcing him onto his stomach. Strong hands caught his wrists, and then metal closed around them. Haggerty pried the barrette from his hand. It clicked softly when it hit the ground twenty yards away.
“Now, hold still so I don’t have to seriously fuck you up.”
The sound of the gunshot hammered against Jem’s ears. He flinched. He felt Haggerty move, heard the trooper stand and spin.
“Get away from him,” Tean said shakily. “I’ll kill you if you don’t get away from him.”
The air was still. Jem’s ragged breathing was the only thing he could hear, and every breath stoked the fire inside his chest. Broken ribs at the minimum.
Then Haggerty took a step.
“No,” Tean said. “Over there. I said over there.”
“I heard you,” Haggerty said, his steps still moving toward the sound of Tean’s voice.