Desert Crossing

by Elise Broach

  “No, I guess not. But it happened quickly.”

  “After the bump, did your brother brake?”

  “Yes, he braked. Yes.”

  “And stopped the car?”

  “No, he thought it was an animal. A coyote.”

  “Did he say why he thought that?”

  “I guess that’s what he thought he saw.”

  “But you didn’t see a coyote.”

  I shook my head. “But I looked back, afterwards, and I saw something in the road.”

  The cop turned toward me, interested. “What did you see?”

  “It was dark, there was too much rain. I don’t know.”

  “Well, did it look like an animal?”

  “It could have been an animal.”

  “And it was in the road?”

  I thought of the dark, spasming thing in the road, that injured, dying thing. I couldn’t look at him. I tightened my fingers around the bracelet, and the sharp edges of the charms cut into my palm. “It was trying to get off the road.”

  “So it was moving?”

  “Yes…”

  “Upright? Or—?”

  “No. Sort of crawling, close to the ground.”

  “So what you hit was still alive?”

  I thought of her lying there, with her beautiful curving arm and her dark hair like a halo. I heard Jamie’s voice: But it was a coyote.

  “I guess,” I whispered.

  “What did you do at that point?”

  “I told Jamie and Kit. I said I saw something move, and we talked about going back, and Kit thought if it was a wild animal there was nothing we could do.”

  The cop paused, holding his pen over the page. “Did you or your brother, or the other passenger, discuss that what you saw in the road might be a person?”

  “No!” My throat ached. I sucked in my breath and clenched my fist around the bracelet. It hurt, but I was glad it hurt. “No. We never thought that. If we’d thought that, we would have stopped right away.”

  He was writing again, quick, certain words, even though everything I said was so unsure. He glanced over at me. “Miss Martinez, do you need to take a break for a few minutes?”

  I shook my head.

  “Tell me what happened next.”

  “We turned around. We went back, and when we got to the place, we found her there.”

  “And it was raining this entire time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “We … we saw right away that she was dead.”

  “How did you know she was dead?”

  I chewed on my lip, hesitating. “We could tell. Her eyes were open. She wasn’t moving or breathing or anything.”

  “Did you attempt to perform any kind of resuscitation on the victim?”

  It was the first time anyone had called her that. I looked at him. If she was the victim, what were we?

  “No. She was dead. But we tried to call 911. We couldn’t get a signal on the cell phone.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  I told him the rest, quickly, without stopping for air. Now that we’d gotten to the part where she was dead, nothing else really mattered. I told him how I’d thrown up, how we drove to Beth’s to get help, how Jamie stayed behind. It seemed important to tell him that Jamie stayed behind. Like that was the one thing we’d done right.

  He listened and wrote. Then a stuffy silence filled the car. I watched his face while he checked over his notes. I could draw it, I was thinking, the sharp line of his jaw. But I didn’t know what it meant. Was he mad? Did he believe me?

  People’s faces were like that when you first started drawing them: geometrical, abstract. They became less familiar the longer you looked at them, segmenting into shapes like a puzzle, impossible to solve.

  Finally he said, “All right, Miss Martinez, I think that’s it. You must be pretty worn out.” For the first time, he looked at me, really looked at me. He had nice eyes, crinkly at the corners. If I’d seen him playing baseball or walking his dog, I never would have thought he was a cop. He didn’t seem like a person who spent his life around criminals and dead people.

  I looked at the clock. It was almost midnight.

  7

  When I got back to Beth’s truck, she was leaning against the hood talking to the sheriff. He was shaking his head.

  “We have to take him back to the station. The mother’s been contacted. The other one and the girl can go, but not the driver.”

  I craned around, panicking. Where was Jamie? They were going to take him away.

  The cop put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s procedure. He’s eighteen?”

  I nodded mutely. Jamie and Kit were standing near one of the police cars. Kit was watching me, his eyes worried, but Jamie just stared at the ground. He kicked the dirt with his sneaker, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. I walked toward them.

  I heard Beth ask the sheriff, “Where will they go?”

  “Well, there’s the motel in Kilmore, but that’s pretty far for tonight. And we have to impound the vehicle. I could bring them back to the detention center. But…”

  I turned back and Beth frowned, coiling the length of her hair. She sighed. “They can stay at my house, I guess. If it’s only for the night. But do you have to get their car now? It’s so late.”

  “Yeah. I’ll send somebody to tow it. You can go on to bed.” He gestured to me. “Miss Martinez? I’ll have the station find out from your mother how she’d like us to handle things tonight.”

  I looked at Jamie. “What about my brother? I want to stay with him.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “I’m sorry, he needs to come with us.”

  This time Jamie raised his eyes, wide and worried. I could feel a sharpness in the back of my throat, and I was afraid I might burst into tears. “Can’t we all stay together? Please?” I asked.

  But the sheriff was already walking away, the heavy holster banging against his leg.

  “What about our dad?” I asked Beth. “He’s expecting us in Phoenix tomorrow night. Our spring break is only a week.”

  She came toward us, and her voice was gentler than before. “I don’t think you guys are going anywhere any time soon.”

  Kit sucked in his breath. “Aw, come on, it was an accident. They can’t charge us with anything. Well, the beer, yeah, but we weren’t drunk—it wasn’t our fault. I mean, if somebody walks straight in front of your car, at night, is it your fault? That doesn’t make sense.”

  I could see Jamie ball his hand against his thigh. “Stop saying that. I didn’t hit that girl. I keep telling you. What I hit, it wasn’t a person.”

  “Okay, okay,” Kit said quickly. “Relax. I’m just saying that’s what the cops think. And even if it was the girl, there wasn’t time to brake or swerve or anything. I told them that. There was nothing you could do.”

  “It was an animal,” Jamie said. “It was a coyote.”

  Beth put her hand on Jamie’s arm. There were tiny flecks of green paint on her knuckles. “Don’t think about it anymore. Whatever happened, you can’t change it now.”

  Jamie stared at her fingers. He didn’t say anything.

  She let go abruptly and motioned to Kit and me. “As long as it’s okay with your mother, you can come back to my house.”

  “But Jamie—”

  “He has to go with the police,” she said, walking back toward her truck.

  I turned to Jamie. He was watching me, his face strained.

  “I want all of us to stay together,” I said again.

  Jamie shook his head. “It’s going to be okay, Luce. You guys go.”

  “But—”

  “Go.”

  I touched his hand, but he wasn’t looking at me. The two cops were within earshot now, listening to us, waiting. I followed Beth to the truck.

  A few minutes later, Kit opened the passenger door and slid onto the seat next to me. He leaned his face close to my ear
. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “This is just the normal stuff they do. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “How do you know?” I whispered back, staring through the wet windshield at Jamie. “How do you know what stuff they do? Are they arresting him? Is he going to jail?” I could feel the tears running down my cheeks. I hoped it was too dark for Kit to see.

  “No, Luce! Jeez. Cut it out.”

  The sheriff came to Kit’s side, resting his hand on the door. “You’re all set,” he said. “Miss Martinez, your mother wants you to call as soon as you get to Ms. Osway’s house.”

  I rubbed my wet cheeks and nodded, not looking at him. He slammed the door shut, and it was like a gate closing, with us on one side and Jamie on the other. The two cops were leading him toward one of their cars. As he walked away, I could see the angles of his shoulder blades jutting through his wet shirt, as thin and fragile as wings.

  8

  The truck jolted onto Beth’s road, and a minute later we were at the house. The dogs were inside, leaping at the windows and barking in frantic bursts.

  “Oh, for chrissake,” Beth said. “Get your bags from the car,” she said to us, then climbed out, shouting, “Settle down!”

  When she opened the door, the dogs jumped all over us, thrusting their cold noses against our legs. Beth shoved them away. “No, Oscar! Toronto, down!”

  Kit and I stood in the entry, not sure what to do. “I have a spare bed,” Beth said to me. “You can sleep there.” She turned to Kit. ‘I’ll get some blankets for you. The study has a pretty thick rug.”

  Kit was staring at the half-painted metal thing in the living room. “What is that?” he asked.

  “A piece I’m working on.”

  “Yeah? Like a sculpture?” He walked over to it and started to put his hand on one of the pipes.

  “Don’t touch it,” Beth said. “It’s still wet.”

  “What’s it made of?”

  “Metal. Car parts. Things I found.”

  Kit grinned. “Looks like junk,” he said.

  Which was exactly what I’d expect him to say. He sounded almost back to normal.

  “It is junk,” Beth replied, calmly.

  Kit walked around it. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “It’s a commission. It’ll be installed at the Albuquerque airport this fall.”

  “You’re kidding me. Somebody’s paying you for that?”

  Beth disappeared down the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “Quite a lot of money, actually.”

  She came back with blankets and pillows spilling over her arms. “I know it’s late, but is there anyone you should call? Your parents?”

  Kit swung his duffel over his shoulder and shook his head quickly. “Mine are away. I’ll try to call them tomorrow.”

  Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming need to hear my mom’s voice, her safe, steady voice, reminding me to put sunscreen on the back of my neck and to help Jamie read the map. “I have to call my mom,” I said. I thought of Jamie.

  “The reception’s not great here,” Beth said. “Use the portable in the bedroom.”

  “I have a phone card,” I said quickly.

  She glanced at me. “Don’t worry about it.”

  The spare bedroom was a tiny room with a double bed that took up almost all the floor space. The walls were painted dark blue, and one large bare window framed the desert night. It would be like sleeping up in the sky. Yesterday, I would have liked that, the floating freedom of it. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  “If you get cold,” Beth said from the doorway, “there’s an extra blanket under the bed.”

  I pushed the door partway closed while I changed. The bracelet clinked when my jacket hit the floor. I fished it out, dangling it in the light. But then I heard Kit in the hallway, so I quickly slipped it into the pocket of my backpack and dug out the phone card instead.

  Would Jamie have talked to our mom by now? From the police station? I shuddered, thinking of him in a cell. Alone. I wondered what he’d told her. At home, whenever he ratted on me for something, he’d give up everything, each incriminating detail doled out with perfect timing, to maximize her outrage. I usually did the same thing to him. But this was different. Whatever it was, we were in it together. I thought of when we were little, when we broke the gutter jumping off the garage roof, or when we stuck a deck of playing cards in the fan to make confetti. I was pretty sure he’d tell our mom a short version, just enough for her to make sense of it.

  But who could really make sense of it?

  I cracked the window, and a cold shaft of air blew over me. Shivering, I crawled under the covers and lifted the phone from its cradle next to the bed, punching in numbers, following the string of tinny instructions.

  “Hello?” She picked up on the first ring.

  I pulled the phone under the blanket and pressed it against my face. “Mom?”

  “Lucy! Lucy.”

  Her voice was ragged with worry. As soon as I heard it, I could feel years collapsing. I tried to talk, but the words caught in my throat. “Mom…”

  “Oh, honey.”

  I could see the exact look on her face, the crumpling mix of love and fear that always made me feel so much worse than whatever it was I’d done to myself. I couldn’t stand it.

  I scrunched my eyes shut and tried to make my voice normal. “It’s okay, Mom. Everything’s okay.”

  “Lucy,” she said. “I can’t believe this happened!”

  “I know. But don’t worry. We’re all fine.”

  “How’s Jamie? I just talked to him and he seemed … He didn’t sound like himself. And where are you? Some stranger’s house? I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

  I thought about Beth. “It’s safe,” I said. “The police know her. She lives near the highway and it was the first house we came to, where we went after the accident. She’s … she’s trying to help us.”

  I heard the sound of tires in the yard, and an orange light danced across the wall of the room. The dogs started barking again. There were voices, Beth’s and someone else’s, low and blending.

  “What’s that?” my mom asked sharply. “What’s that noise?”

  “The tow truck,” I said. “They’re taking our car.”

  My mom sighed. “I just can’t believe you’re down there on your own. You shouldn’t be by yourselves, dealing with this.” She was quiet for a minute, then her voice was firm. “I’ll call your father. He’ll come get you. He just has to.”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew that wouldn’t happen.

  “Lucy, have you talked to him?”

  “No, but I will, Mom.”

  “Okay, honey. Well, it’s late. You should go to sleep. You must be exhausted.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t want to hang up. “Mom?”

  “What, honey?”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl. I wanted to tell her about the girl’s wide, staring eyes, about the way her arm arced over her head. But I thought of my mom alone in her house, worrying about us, and I didn’t say anything.

  “Good night, honey. And Lucy?”

  “Yes?” I waited, hopeful.

  “This isn’t on somebody else’s phone bill, is it? Did you use the phone card?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I used the card.”

  “Good. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay.” I tightened my fingers around the phone. “Mom?”

  “What, honey?”

  The silence crackled over the line, and I could feel myself beating uselessly against it, like a moth in a jar.

  “Mom, do you think you could … could you stay on the phone for a while?”

  I heard her rustling out of bed, moving into the kitchen. Her voice got louder and closer as she pressed the phone against her shoulder. “Sure, honey. I can’t sleep anyway. You try to relax. I’ll pay some bills.”

  I curled on my side and switched off the light. In the darkness, I listened to the soft sounds of her tear
ing envelopes and shuffling papers, the distant scratching of her pen. After a while, she said, “Lucy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you okay now? I don’t want you to use up the whole phone card. Can you sleep?”

  “I guess.”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, honey. Okay?”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  I slid my arm out from the warm cave of the covers and set the phone back in its cradle. The window seemed too close and too big, filling the room with whatever was outside. I stared into the blackness, thinking about the girl. Maybe she was out there somewhere, floating around in that cold, planetary silence.

  9

  I woke up in the dark, shaking. There was someone in the room with me.

  I grabbed the sheets against my chest and then saw it was the dog—the black one, Oscar. He’d nudged the door open and was standing there watching me, his tongue hanging out in an easy pant. He clicked across the floor and jumped onto the bed, flopping noisily next to my face. His breath pulsed over me, warm and stale. I put one hand on his head and stroked the silky fur between his ears, slowly, until my heart stopped racing.

  I’d been dreaming about her. In the dream, we were driving through rain, that terrible rain, but we saw her this time. She was right in front of us, and Jamie tried to brake. She stretched out her arms. Her eyes were huge and frightened, and she was saying something. In the dream, we braked forever. But we hit her anyway.

  I lay there petting the dog until he fell asleep. The sky outside the window began to lighten. Quietly, I climbed out of bed and unzipped the pocket of my backpack. I found the charm bracelet and hooked a finger around it, lifting it up to the window. It gleamed in the thready pink light.

  I hadn’t had a chance to really look at it before. There were four silver charms: a heart like the one on my bracelet at home, an hourglass, a horseshoe, and a treasure chest. When I flicked the treasure chest with my finger, the lid opened, and there were tiny glittering jewels inside—just colored glass, but pretty: red, green, purple. I thought of the girl choosing it from a rack in a store, liking the surprise of it.