What Immortal Hand

by Johnny Worthen

  In the morning, Craig wakes him and he feels like he hasn’t slept at all. His body is tense, his sheets damp with perspiration. His head is a piston. Light chases away the nightmare images from his dreams; demons, and a sea of blood, fangs and severed limbs, headless bodies. Dead all around.

  “Who’s Clayton?” asks Craig.

  Michael rubs his eyes into fireworks. “Name’s familiar,” he says.

  “There’s a letter slipped under the door for him.”

  “Oh? Let me see it.”

  Craig is showered and dressed. His gym shoes are by the door, a used pool towel beside them. He’s been up for hours; already got his workout in. Michael takes the envelope and tears it open. He blinks it into focus and reads the altered convention schedule with Clayton’s talk to immediately follow lunch in the Reno Room.

  “What time is it?” asks Michael.

  “Ten. In the morning,” says Craig.

  “We should hit the road.”

  “Where to? My car’s not done.”

  “Ely.”

  “Why? That place is nothing.”

  Michael wonders if he were as slow as Craig at recognizing leads when he started this job. No. He was never this dense. “The truck stop he stayed at after Reno,” he explains. “You said he overnighted at one. He picked up the amps from the stereo company late in the afternoon. He was there for a while.”

  “The rest stop? They were interviewed. They have record of him. Video even, but so what?”

  “I’d like to know if he was alone. No one knew to look for a girl with him.”

  “It would have come up.”

  “I’m sure they were playing it coy. Lowe isn’t allowed passengers. Wait. There’s a tape? I want to see it. We should talk to some folks. It’s something to do. You have a better idea?”

  “Stake out his family,” Craig says. “Wait for him to contact them.”

  “We don’t have that kind of time or resources. Plus, they’re in Texas. We’re supposed to be in Idaho.”

  “Okay. Let’s go to Idaho. We should do that.”

  “I have to see the girl,” he says perhaps a bit too forcefully. “Ely’s on the way.”

  “Ely isn’t on the way to anywhere.”

  “Wrong. Ely may not be a destination, but it’s definitely on the way to places.”

  “By the way, how are we going to divvy up the reward?”

  “Aren’t you an optimist? That’s the spirit.”

  Michael staggers into the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror. He has patriotic eyes; red white and blue. He’s had binge hangovers that left him feeling better than this.

  “Did I drink last night?”

  “Not with me. So what? Sixty-forty? That’s good money.”

  “Try eighty-twenty out of my eighty-five. But don’t get your hopes up. It’s a long-shot anyone will ever claim it.”

  Craig mumbles something about Roy, but it’s drowned out in the rush of the water from the shower. Michael closes the door and bathes.

  “So who’s Clayton?” Craig asks when he comes out. He’s holding the letter.

  “My alias.”

  “You teach Affirmative Thinking and Goal Management?”

  “Oh, yeah. My specialty. Pack up. We gotta go.”

  Craig stares at him coolly.

  Michael ignores him and dresses. When he’s zipping up his bag, Craig says, “Where do you live? When not on the road, where’s your house?”

  “Houses are overrated.” Michael opens the door and looks down the corridor both ways. “I’m leaving. And I’m taking the car. If you want to stay and pretend to be Mr. Clayton, more power to you. Good luck with the seminar. Remember to mention God.”

  “Don’t you blaspheme.”

  Michael laughs. “You’re too much.”

  “You stole this room, didn’t you?”

  “Not just me.”

  Craig’s eyes grow large.

  “I’ll give it back,” Michael says. “Hell, I’m trying to. Come on already. Or do you want to pay four-hundred dollars for the use of their elliptical?”

  Craig hesitates.

  Michael gives up and heads down the hall without another word.

  As the elevator doors are closing, Craig rushes in. He plays up being out of breath from the sprint to the elevator, snorting and sighing to give vent to his disapproval and frustration.

  In the lobby, Craig doesn’t object when Michael takes a detour around the convention hallways and keeps far from the reception desk.

  Their walk to the car is circuitous and long. When they get there, Michael flops into the front seat and opens the door for Craig.

  He gets in and slams it shut. He doesn’t look at Michael, but stares straight ahead.

  Michael has made a criminal of Craig McCallister and they both know it.

  Chapter Nine

  “How can you mean homes are overrated?” Craig asks.

  They were two hours out of Reno and these were the first words spoken between them since they left the Peppermill. They’d stopped once for gas at the city limits. Michael had filled the car, bought a coffee and a box of donuts. He put the box on the seat between them. It was the closest thing Craig would get to an apology.

  “You want that last donut?” Michael says in reply.

  “Go ahead,” Craig says.

  Michael does.

  “So why no home?”

  “They’re not for everyone, you know.”

  “Was your divorce that bad?”

  “No.” The last donut is as good as the first. Sweet and soft. Michael smiles as he chews and speaks through luscious crumbs, “My dislike of home was a cause, not an effect of my divorce.”

  “Did you have a bad home growing up? Is that it?”

  “I had a good one. And some bad ones. I’m a product of Child Services. I went through foster families and even a stint in state custody. The last family I stayed with was great though.”

  “That explains it.”

  “No, Craig, it doesn’t. You’re coming from the belief that the way you see the world is the right one. Or at least the way it should be for everyone. I’m one of those different strokes guys. One man’s poison and all that.”

  Craig watches him with a pained sympathetic expression. It’s a look Michael’s seen before, this is a scene he’s played before. Confessing. Exposing. Telling enough of one thing, so he doesn’t say something else.

  “Not everyone is cut out to stay in the same place,” he says, “let alone make a home. I know I’m in the minority, especially in this culture, but I think sitting put in the same place, seeing the same people, the same walls, rooms, and roads is crazy. I can’t believe anyone would want it.”

  “You can’t believe anyone would want security and stability?”

  “You can have those things without planting yourself.”

  Craig thinks about it for moment and says, “How? Traveling salesman? Five-state investigator like you? I don’t see how you can make a good life for yourself doing that.”

  “Now you’re insulting me.”

  “I don’t mean to,” he says. “But really, tell me how, in America, you can make a life—a good life—a long-term secure life, on the road? You can’t. You need connections and networks to survive. You need neighbors and banks, family and friends. You need infrastructure.”

  The landscape flies by as if mocking Craig’s theory.

  He went on nonetheless. “You need to be part of the place and if you have no base, nowhere to, say, pay taxes from, you’re a bum. A hobo. You’re not part of anything. Every person you meet is temporary. There’s no future in that. There’s a reason towns were invented.”

  “What about nomadic peoples?”

  “Do they live long lives? Do they have such success that they can pass an inheritance down to their kids?”

  “They say every human being on the planet has some DNA from Genghis Khan. How’s that?”

  “That’s just stupid. You’re comparing mod
ern America to a bunch of nomadic goat riders.”

  “Why not?”

  “They were poor.”

  “They didn’t think so.”

  “Then they were wrong. They were the kind of people who left the old and infirm on the steppes for tigers to eat. Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t think there are tigers in Mongolia.”

  “Burma then.”

  “Everyone dies.”

  “So your life goal is to move to Mongolia? You’ll have to. I don’t see any caravans around here, no nomadic bands of reindeer herders, tiger hunters, or Huns of any make or model. Man, you’re too much.”

  “Tigers wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “Oswald, this is the most you’ve said to me since I met you. I think I know why you’ve been so quiet. You’re nuts.”

  “I’d love to die by tigers. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Hell no. I’ll die surrounded by my loved ones at a ripe old age. And thanks to modern medicine, I can. Good luck finding tigers.”

  “If you loved tigers, it would be the same.”

  “You are truly lost, Oswald.”

  He shrugs. “I need to keep my mouth shut.”

  “I guess this explains your contempt of the law. Boy, are you in the wrong line of work.”

  “Are you referring to the hotel?”

  “You know I am. I ought to turn you in for theft.”

  “Really? You’d turn in your partner?”

  “Well. No. I didn’t. I said I ought to.”

  “Relax, Craig. You got a good night’s sleep, a workout and a tale to tell. You’re welcome.”

  Craig huffs once and goes back to sulking. Michael lights a cigarette and contemplates tigers. In the shapes of the passing landscape he imagines hot orange stripes and musk-lathered breath of free hunting cats following piquant pheromones of fearful prey.

  Poulson’s Truck Stop covers two full acres off northbound 93. It has thirty-four covered pumps for gasoline and sixteen for diesel, with enough driveway spacing to use them all. Michael can’t believe they’d ever been needed all at once. Highway 93 is important in its own out-of-the-way way, but it’s no freeway. Still, the convenience of a full-service truck stop makes it an attractive detour for long-haul truckers who appreciate good cheap food, easy gassing and space to park and sleep, with the promise of a shower the next morning. Michael has spent many nights in such places.

  Craig is the first out of the car. He arches his back like a bow and Michael hears his vertebrae crack like popcorn. He grabs his head with both hands and twists his neck. The popping is louder than his back.

  Michael catches his breath.

  The sun is low on the horizon. It blinded Michael in his mirrors for the last hour of the drive so badly that he finally turned them away. Nothing to see behind him anyway.

  “There’s a managing director named Robert Poulson we need to talk to,” Craig says pushing against a wall to stretch his calves. “He’s the name on the report.”

  “His name is Robert Poulson,” Michael repeats.

  “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

  They enter the convenience store part of the building, the part few tourists see beyond. The bathrooms—guaranteed clean—are to the right. To the left are four yellow tables and a Subway sandwich shop. A bored teenager wipes the counter and ducks behind the sneeze guard to avoid eye contact with the newcomers. A hallway marked Trucker’s Lounge is blocked off by wooden swinging doors that wouldn’t have been amiss on the set of a 50s western.

  Michael admires the supplies of medicines and machine parts, good deals on motor oil and GPS systems for a place so far from competition. After a while he approaches the large register island. He snakes past a rack of Nevada shot glasses, collectible thimbles, commemorative spoons, and the suddenly popular barrel of polished rocks he’s seen in every cowboy tourist piss-stop between Helena and Barstow. They have a stand of baseball caps, green air fresheners by the gross, and a wall of audio books, thrillers mostly.

  When he emerges from the racks, he sees a black man eyeing him wearily from behind the counter. His dark skin has a timeless quality of tanned leather. His short-cropped hair is gray at the temples. His eyes are red and tired. Michael can’t guess at his age.

  He looks hard at Michael as he walks up as if measuring him against the furniture.

  “How can I help you, Jim?” he asks rubbing his chin.

  “Hello,” he says. “I’m Michael. Michael Oswald. I’m investigating a missing truck and driver who passed through here a month or so ago. Are you Robert Poulson?”

  “I am,” he says.

  Michael smells smoke. “Then you’ve already been talked to about this?”

  “About the trucker? Lowe was his name?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “That’s old news now ain’t it?”

  The arrival of two state troopers is announced by an electric door chime.

  Michael sees two squad cars parked on either side of his Merc.

  Craig melts into the beef jerky aisle.

  “He hasn’t been found yet,” Michael says.

  “So nobody got the bounty?”

  “You know about that, do you?”

  He smiles and nods but watches the police.

  “Do you still have surveillance tape of when he was here? I can get the date if you don’t remember what it was.”

  “I kept it.” He pulls a pack of gum from a display, opens it and takes a piece. He doesn’t offer Michael one.

  “May I see it?”

  “You gonna buy something?”

  “You got beds here?”

  “Bunks.”

  “Two?”

  “I can do that.”

  “I’m going to buy something.”

  Michael feels more than he sees the policeman sidle up behind him. Craig is nowhere to be found. He turns slowly to face them.

  “Perez, this is Michael. Michael Oswald,” says Poulson to the trooper. “He’s checking into that missing truck.”

  “Still?”

  “Yeah.”

  The other trooper comes over with a cup of coffee and a chocolate donut. His name tag says, Sergeant Galloway.

  “Hey Poulson,” says Galloway lifting his cup. “Some road fuel today.”

  “It’s on the house,” Poulson says.

  The senior cop doesn’t look surprised, nor especially grateful.

  “93 is the most dangerous highway in the country,” Perez says. “You’re not going to find that truck.”

  “What do you think happened to him?”

  “Bermuda Triangle,” says Poulson.

  “Maybe,” says Galloway. “There’re aliens and such in Nevada. We’re not far from Area 51.” The sergeant takes a big gulp of his coffee and then heads back to the pot for a refill.

  “Isn’t the Extraterrestrial Highway 375?” says Michael. “South and west.”

  “Yes. It connects to 93 at Crystal Springs.”

  “I’m going on the assumption that it was hijacked,” Michael says but the mention of Crystal Springs distracts him. His forgets to blink. His eyes dry and Perez blurs at the edges.

  “The other investigators thought the driver did it,” says Perez. “Figured he was long gone to Mexico.”

  “What? Yeah. You talk to lots of other investigators?” Michael asks. Back to business.

  A tick of a grin perks the corner of Poulson’s mouth. He answers for the cop. “At first there were a bunch. We had least two or three a day it seemed. Then it trailed off. You’re the first in a week. Is it that big a deal?”

  “A man’s life—”

  “Doesn’t get this kind of attention,” Perez completes Michael’s sentence.

  “No,” says Michael. “It’s the cargo. That’s what it’s about. The company posted a bounty.”

  “Can’t get regular work, eh?” Perez smiles.

  “Who wants it?”

  “We’re not kidding about 93,” says Galloway returning with fresh unpa
id-for coffee. “Really. Look it up. More deaths and accidents on this road than any other in the country. By whatever metric you use, length, popularity, speed—whatever, Highway 93 is the most dangerous. We’re pulling bodies out of wrecks all the time. People go missing like there’ve driven off the end of the world. If the population knew how dangerous this highway was, they’d shut it down.”

  “You should write for the tourist board,” Michael says.

  “Don’t get smart,” says Galloway.

  “Where you coming from?” asks Perez.

  Michael blinks to clear his vision and to see the trooper plainly. “My office is in Utah. I’m just back from Reno now. I’m retracing the route Lowe took before he went missing.”

  “That’s the wrong way around isn’t it?” says Galloway blowing over his cup. “Shouldn’t you start where the trail ended? In Vegas?”

  “Been there. I’m playing a hunch. As you mentioned, the ground has been pretty picked over.”

  “By better detectives than you,” Galloway says.

  “Yeah,” says Michael. Then turning to Poulson, “Can I see that tape?”

  “It’s not much. We don’t have cameras in the back, only the front and the store.”

  “He comes in,” says Perez, “Buys a couple of sandwiches and goes out. Next morning he comes back, showers and buys a couple of breakfast burritos. That’s all you’ll see. I’ve watched it a dozen times.”

  “Still, can I see it?”

  “I got no problem with that. You’ll be paying cash or credit for the bunks?”

  “Craig,” he calls. “Bring your plastic up here.”

  Craig skulks out from behind a DVD display. He watches the floor as if it’s mined. If he could look guiltier, Michael doesn’t know how.

  Galloway is already halfway to the door however, another unpaid-for donut in his mouth.

  Perez lingers at the counter studying the scratch and win lottery tickets beneath the glass. “Jake or Jan been around?” he asks Poulson.

  “Ain’t seen ’em.”