Troy had no intention of pulling over somewhere before they reached Presidio. Even a drive-through would pose an unacceptable level of risk. But five miles before the highway, a state trooper passed them headed the other way. The girl saw it, too. The cruiser’s lights were not flashing but it was headed somewhere in a hurry, bounding on its shocks, growing rapidly smaller before receding into nothingness in less than fifteen seconds.
When they crossed beneath the interstate and slowed to a halt on the other side, Troy remained at the stop signs for an unusually long time with no cars coming. The roar of trucks on the highway built and died away from both sides in a sprung rhythm. Instead of going through the intersection to continue south on the farm road Troy turned right on the federally maintained highway frontage and eventually took a small paved road that angled under the highway, continuing past an alarming number of structures and vehicles until they entered the outskirts of the town of Balmorhea. Without being told to, Martha got down and hid herself. Troy seemed to know where he was going once they got onto the gridded streets. He took several right turns past trailer houses and tiny stuccoed houses before driving twice around a shabby low-slung motel. The motel was constructed from painted cinder block and attached to a chain-link-fenced courtyard with a swimming pool that seemed against all odds to be full of water.
He stopped at the corner before pulling into the motel’s parking lot. He turned partway toward the girl hidden below the backseat.
“We’re going to get you something to eat now. But I want you to stay down there and cover yourself up all the way with that coat and be quiet until we come get you. Can you do that?”
Nov. 5, 1972
I didn’t feel Bill Ray’s death for months. I hadn’t seen him in such a long time that it didn’t change anything in the short term, even though it changed everything forever. After it hit me I started to picture grief as a snake endlessly circling a rock, trying to find a way to get inside. It would slither around and around it and suddenly it would spring and bite at the rock and the pain would be unbearable. At first the snake would try furiously to get in, over and over. As time went by it would try less often, but when it did the pain would be the same, maybe worse because the memory of how horrible it was had faded in the intervals. In this setup, it might seem as if it was the snake that felt the pain. But I always thought of it as the rock, which couldn’t be broken or moved. The snake was just life. The rock was me and unchangeable fact.
I remember the last time I talked to Bill Ray on the phone, though the passage of time has worn down the memory, distorting it more with each month. Now it seems to me as if I had been aware during the call that the heart attack was imminent and I had somehow been able to reach him in the final days of his life by dialing a nonexistent number to a black telephone at the bottom of a cave a thousand miles below the surface of the earth, where he had fled to elude the angel of death.
This makes it all the more strange to recall the content of the conversation, which was as brief as most. It revolved around the weather, a little inconsequential town news, his recent engine troubles—the actual subject, unspoken, as always, being the careful avoidance by both father and son of the question of what I was up to (stealing cars), how I was supporting myself (same), and when I planned to pay a visit home (no time soon, for reasons having to do with the former). The memory of that conversation has a parallel in a recurrent dream I’m having now, a dream in which I accidentally discover a means of speaking to my already dead father by phone. It’s always a particular telephone in a diner booth at a truck stop on Interstate 10 near Fort Stockton, a real place where I sometimes eat and use the pay showers.
In the dream, I sit in the booth and order a cup of coffee and wait, sometimes only minutes, but sometimes hours into the night, staring at the maroon handset attached to the wall above the tabletop, next to a miniature jukebox. In reality, this is the kind of phone that can’t receive incoming calls and is used only to place orders. But eventually, the phone rings and his voice is on the other end. He sounds happy and relaxed, maybe a little sleepy. He speaks in hushed tones, as if he’s being careful not to be overheard. I take it from this that he’s not allowed to say anything about where he is or what it’s like, so the calls have to be circumscribed, filled with everyday chitchat, him changing the subject anytime the conversation wanders too close to anything. But it wouldn’t have mattered to me if we were talking about lawncare. In the dream, I lived for these calls, something I knew no other human being in history had been able to receive.
*
Troy knocked as much of the dried dirt as he could off his suit and checked into the room while Harlan stood near him in the tiny motel vestibule, furnished with a folding chair, a dusty aloe vera plant, and a small television set on top of a wire shelf. Troy had prepared a story for the proprietor, a short, shiny-faced Hispanic man, but the man showed no interest in where they had come from or where they were going. He had obviously looked outside and seen the gleaming old Ford sitting in the parking lot but he didn’t remark on it. Though Troy didn’t intend to stay all of one night, he paid sixteen dollars for two and took the room key, connected to an absurdly large plastic fob. Inside the room he extracted a flimsy piece of metal from the lining of his wallet and, inserting it into the knob of the door to the adjoining room, popped the lock and then went in and put the chain on the front door and closed the curtains all the way.
“Go back to the office and ask him something,” Troy said. “Keep yourself between him and the window for a minute.”
“What do you want me to ask him?”
“Ask him how long the rooms have smelled like this.”
Troy cracked the door and looked out at the car and the road.
“I’m kidding. Don’t get on his bad side. And don’t try to make small talk. Just ask for extra towels. That’ll take him long enough.”
Harlan walked to the office and as soon as he was inside, Troy went to the coupe and opened the passenger door and took out his bag and pulled the coat off the girl and told her to get out in a hurry and say nothing. He kept the bag in his left hand and his body between the girl and the end of the motel where the office sat, guiding her toward the open room door. She was unsteady on her feet and looked scared now and tried to resist going in with him but he pulled her inside and kept pulling until he had her in the adjoining room.
“This is your own room, by yourself. If you can be quiet in here, I’m going to get you something to eat.”
She stood just past the threshold of the darkened room, not committing to being inside it.
“I don’t want to stay here,” she said. “I want you to keep driving.”
“That makes two of us. We won’t be spending the night. I just need some time to take care of something.”
“I don’t want a room. I want to sleep in the car.”
“You can’t stay in the car. We’re going to have a different car now. Go sit down on the bed and be quiet and I’ll get you some food. Don’t turn on the TV. If anybody knocks on the outside door, don’t say a word, and don’t move. You understand me? If you help us everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to get you as close to El Paso as we can.”
He pulled the door shut between them and looked for the first time at the room, which was even worse than he had expected—two low-slung pine singles, thin sagging mattresses without box springs; television bolted to the wall; sink, disconcertingly flesh colored, inside the room itself, alongside a dresser-desk combo; paint peeling off the bottommost cinder blocks because of some descending damp that lent the whole room a digestive odor; cheap framed print on the wall depicting a cowboy on a bucking horse, from whose ass a previous guest had scrawled a cartoon cloud of flatulence shooting out.
Troy waited for Harlan to return and then went out and found the breezeway with the ice and vending machines. The change machine worked and he fed several bills into it and put the change into the Coke machine and the snack machine, punching buttons a
t random until he had an armful of chocolate bars and brightly colored bags. He carried these the long way around, to get a look at the few cars parked along the motel’s perimeter. He passed the pool and could hear voices inside but couldn’t see who was swimming because of the green and white fiberglass slats woven into the chain link.
When he got back to the room, he threw some of the food down on the desk for him and Harlan and knocked on the door to give the girl the rest and the Coke. She parted the door a crack and looked at the cellophane-wrapped offerings in Troy’s hands and took them wordlessly one by one and closed the door again.
“You stay with her—I’m going to scout around,” Troy said.
“The old man in the front knows something. He was giving me a shit-eating grin while I stood there.”
“He must have seen the girl, that’s all. Let him think we’ve got ourselves a girl. It won’t be the first time he’s seen it.”
“What if she starts making noise?”
“She won’t—she wants to get as far away as she can, too. But don’t leave the room. The less people see of us the better.”
Troy left his jacket in the room. He went to the Coke machine and got a bottle of Sprite and walked over to the swimming pool and opened the gate and went in. At the deep end of the pool were three blond-headed boys who looked almost identical and seemed very close in age, all maybe under the age of ten or eleven, and a man with a blond crew cut who was indisputably their father, standing in the shallow end clutching a volleyball tightly in both hands, watching the boys perform what seemed like carefully rehearsed acrobatics off the diving board.
The man glanced quickly in Troy’s direction as he came through the gate but didn’t acknowledge him. He was focused intently on the boys’ successive flips and dives, directing their order and complexity by shifting the volleyball up and down and to the sides in some kind of private semaphore.
“All right, let’s do the full gainer again. I want those tucks tight this time. I’m talking to you, Mark.”
One of the boys, Troy couldn’t tell which, said “Yes, sir” and the three lined up by height, the tallest first, at the step of the low diving board and went down it one after another in quick succession, springing out high over the water and hurling themselves in a knot of elbows and knees and torso muscle back toward the diving board, coming over the top of the flip and straightening out their bodies so that they entered the water noiselessly, somehow almost slowly. They did it with so little effort they seemed like dolphins.
The man stood watching after they finished and didn’t say anything, holding the volleyball in front of him with his arms straightened.
Then he yelled: “Mark!”
The middle-size blond boy, a little chunkier than the other two, climbed silently out of the pool by himself and walked over to the step of the springboard and stopped and stared at the concrete and seemed to hold his breath. He didn’t look out to meet the eyes watching him stand there. Then he quickly mounted the board and went down it and performed the gainer again. To Troy’s eyes there was no difference between it and the one he had done before, but this time he was allowed to join his brothers treading water at the midpoint of the pool and the man watched them all for a minute before yelling, “Okay, fiver.” The three boys climbed languorously out of the water and went to the metal patio table where their towels were and sat down, their bodies raked by the golden afternoon sunlight in a way that made them look slightly unreal, like Roman statues. They didn’t speak a word to each other, staring out at the road.
The man, whose hair and upper body were completely dry, remained in the pool in the shallow end, in water up to his middle thighs. He was tan and at first glance appeared as fit as his boys. He had meaty forearms and pectorals that made wing shapes from his sternum to his armpits, but below this was a body belonging to another man; a gut like a gourd cantilevered over the waistband of his tight blue trunks and pale haunches hanging from the sides of his backbone. He seemed to register Troy’s presence now. He looked in his direction and began popping the volleyball off the inside crook of his elbow, snapping his arm straight so quickly that the ball flew a remarkable distance into the air directly above him and came down into his other hand without his having to look to catch it, like a circus trick. After a couple minutes of not missing a pop or a catch, he waded to the side of the pool and picked up a pack of cigarettes lying on the brick rim and lit one and rested his arm on top of the volleyball.
“Smoke?” he said, holding out the pack toward Troy.
“No, thank you, I’m trying to quit,” Troy said. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees in a gesture of friendliness toward the man and the boys.
“I hear that,” the man said.
“Don’t mind us if you want to take a dip. I’ll keep these boys out of your way.”
Troy shook his head, finishing a sip of the Sprite. “I’m just passing through on business. I didn’t even bring a pair of trunks with me.”
“That’s a shame, nice day like this. They say a cold snap’s coming.”
Troy looked out past him to the sunset.
“You and your boys out here on vacation?”
The man kept the cigarette in his mouth and waded back to the middle of the pool. “Just a little R&R.”
“They sure can swim. You must have started them early.”
“Well, I’m a coach. JV football and track. They’re a lot better on land than they are in the water. You should see these boys with a pigskin in their hands. Say hello to this man—Matt, Mark, Luke.”
Troy looked in the direction of the boys, who looked collectively back at him without saying hello.
“Where’s John?”
The man looked at Troy for a second before laughing.
“That’s a good one. I never thought of that. That’d sure round it out, wouldn’t it? But I don’t think we’ll get to that fourth one.”
Troy wondered what had brought them to a motel like this on a Sunday evening during the school year. He didn’t have to ask whether there was a wife, a mother, who was back in the room because he knew there wasn’t.
After sitting for a while watching the man smoke, Troy asked: “Did you see that polished-up Ford jalopy in the parking lot? I wonder who’s driving that baby. She looks damned near new.”
“I saw that pull in,” the man said. “I’m glad she ain’t mine. I wouldn’t have the heart to put the key in the ignition. I’d have to moon over her in the garage and weep.”
Taking another drink of his Sprite and looking out across the water Troy asked, “What are y’all driving?”—knowing it would sound like a strange question but hoping it came off casually.
“Us? Nothing to weep over, except when it breaks down. That big yellow Biscayne out front, the one that needs a paint job. But it gets us where we’re going. And it’s roomy enough the boys can pound on each other in the back without getting any blood on me. Ain’t that right?”
One of the boys, the smallest one, either Matthew or Luke—Troy wasn’t sure of the Gospel order—seemed to take this as authorization and doubled up his fist and punched the middle one, Mark, the pudgier one, the weak diver, viciously in the stomach. Mark was caught by surprise and doubled over at the blow. Before another fist landed, the biggest brother grabbed the one who had thrown the punch and squeezed his head beneath his armpit until he seemed unable to breathe and started making screeching noises, flailing helplessly at his attacker’s ribs.
Wading in the boys’ direction with the cigarette dangling from his mouth, the man yelled, “Luke, if I have to come over there, you and me both are gonna end up in the hospital—you to get a boot out of your ass and me to get my boot back!”
Luke said “Haw!” and snorted but didn’t seem to want to cross his father so he let his brother go after giving him a parting punch to the top of the head. Mark, still hunched over from the fist to the stomach, glared murderously at both of them and relocated to a metal patio chair further away.
/> Troy acted as if none of this had happened, which was how he assumed most strangers interacted with this family.
He asked: “Can you tell me anything about the café hitched to this place?”
“There’s better joints around but why bother when you can walk, right? Besides, being Meskins, they do a good number with enchiladas.”
“Do they?”
“Yessir. Good and greasy. But good. That’s where we’ll be tonight.”
Troy finished his bottle and stood up and smoothed the front of his pants.
“You leaving so quick? Why don’t you stay for a little while and let me put these boys through some paces for you before we lose the daylight.” The man looked Troy in the eye now, as if they had established some kind of simpatico. He took up his post in the middle of the pool again with the volleyball in both hands.
“I’d love to see that, I really would,” said Troy, “but I have a little business to attend to.”
“Suit yourself. Man’s got to work,” the man said, and put two fingers to his mouth and whistled to get the attention of his sons, who had fallen silent and motionless again. “You’re going to miss a good show.”
“I bet I am,” Troy said. He looked over at the boys, who had stood up and, without being told to, arranged themselves instinctively in height order again. As they made their way back to the diving board under their father’s gaze, Troy walked to the gate and looked down at the gold number painted on the big key fob sitting atop their towels.
Raising his voice to address the boys for the first time, Troy said: “You boys keep up the good work! And pay attention to your daddy here. He knows what he’s doing.”
He walked directly to room number 14, located providentially in the back of the motel, where there was no space for a parking lot but only a covered sidewalk and a gravel strip between the doors and a pine-board fence. He popped the lock and let himself in and found the key to the Biscayne in the man’s right front pants pocket and rolled it off the ring. He still had the key to the Nova they had left behind. He took it off the key ring he had in his own pocket and put it on the man’s ring and put that ring back in the pants and laid them carefully across the bed the way he had found them.
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