The Far Empty

by J. Todd Scott

  She was stone dead. Had to be, right until the car burned and the first oily flames had touched her cooling body. Until somehow, someway, the fire brought that girl back to life.

  He’d thought about visiting the burned girl in the hospital, to stare at her and try to puzzle out how she’d died and come back. Not back like his daddy, who was little more than a shit-eating grin and whispers and shadows and old songs in his head—“Tall Men Riding” had been Jamison’s favorite, so Duane heard that all the time now. But back for real, alive, or damn near so. He just didn’t understand how it was possible. He for damn sure didn’t see that coming. It was a long drive out to the Cut, way down by the water, and he would’ve sworn she was dead the whole time.

  What he wanted to do—needed to do—was talk to the Judge: admit that he fucked up and share some of their secrets again, just like ole times. But the Judge was wary; not too close, not too far away, either. He was keeping his own eye on Duane but not wanting to be seen with him. Duane really thought they’d been through far too much together to behave like that now. Those things he could remember anyway, since so much was burned away like the fire itself from that night; embers through his fingers. That girl hadn’t been just another Chava or Rudy Ray or Delgado, another beaner no one gave two shits about. She wasn’t some nameless wetback in Nikes running through the desert—she’d been a goddamn federal agent. Two of them, in fact, right here in Murfee. Where their blood still remained, staining everything. Blood he’d spilled, and dragging them to the river hadn’t changed that.

  He hadn’t been in his right mind when he’d done it, but that wasn’t going to make a difference to the Judge. Hell, after all, Duane hadn’t been right in a long time, didn’t even know what that was anymore, since he’d been going wrong for so long. And now he’d left behind a real bloody mess, one the Judge would need to clean up, since he couldn’t risk the stink of it leading right to his goddamn door. That meant starting with Duane Dupree, and that’s why the Judge was keeping his distance—he’d already looked into Duane’s eyes and saw their newfound glow. The Judge was afraid if he stood close enough, Duane would see inside his head, all his goddamn killing thoughts.

  • • •

  Melissa asked a lot about Chris, about his job. Did he like it? Duane had no fucking idea.

  “I reckon so . . . never heard him complain, not to me anyway. He keeps to himself mostly.”

  “Yeah, I know. Always has. It’s his way. Too many books. He’s always reading inside his head. Just more . . . lately.” Her back was to him, straightening glassware, but he knew her attention was on him all the same. She was fishing, he just didn’t know for what. Maybe she didn’t, either.

  “Sumthin’ troublin’ him?” He flicked ash on the floor. “He’s still not all twisted about that little dustup at Mancha’s, is he?”

  A shrug. “No, it’s not that. I don’t think so, anyway. He talked about it a little. He’s just distracted. Coming back here, seeing all these people he used to know. Hell, I don’t know. Thought it might have to do with work. He was going on for a bit about that body he found outside of town, but not so much anymore.”

  Duane raised his eyebrows, chuckled. “That thing? At Matty’s place? Hell, darlin’, ain’t nobody distracted over that.” He waved the thought away. “Not the first dead wetback we’ve found around here. Not the last.” He was about to tell her about a picked-over mess he found last year near the Triple R, still wearing brand-new Nikes, but thought better of it. It was a helluva story, funny, but she wasn’t looking for a laugh.

  “Nothing else he’s working on then?”

  Duane pretended to think, looking for faces in their cigarette smoke; working his tooth, mouth full of blood. He could have spit it all out into his glass; probably fill it up, too. He was going to dig it out, probably leave a big damn hole in his head, but at least some of the pain would go with it. Maybe that hole would finally release other things too, all the horrible ghosts and shadows and his daddy’s songs. “Not that I can say, not so much.” He slid over another Lucky Strike, edged forward, like they were sharing secrets.

  “You want that I keep an eye on him?”

  Mel shook her head, dismissing his offer fast. “Thanks, no . . .” But he knew she wanted to say more, so he went back to waiting, swirling the last of the ice in his glass. Still too goddamn much of it.

  “Anybody ever come around asking for him at work?” She finally looked at him, sideways. Her own eyes glowed, just too much to drink, but he wondered if she could see into his, which flamed for different reasons. He saw it all then, clear, as if written above her in the Christmas lights—her fears of Chris stepping out on her. That’s what this whole talk was about, what the whole night had been about. Duane didn’t really peg Cherry for the type, even with him talking up the new teacher, but he played along.

  “Anybody particular?”

  “No, just anyone. At all.”

  He pushed his glass forward, spread his fingers on the table. He let her misery drag, let her chew her lip. She was embarrassed for asking and worried, afraid, of what he might say.

  “Well now, not so that I’ve seen, not down at work, anyway. But he does keep to himself. You said that yourself. Not sure what he’s up to when he’s not there, and he ain’t there all the time. I can’t imagine what might be keepin’ him from home, though. If you was waitin’ for me, darlin’, I sure wouldn’t be dilly-dallyin’ around anywhere or with anyone.” He winked, letting her know he was being funny, or not.

  “That’s sweet, Duane. It’s not exactly like that . . .”

  He shrugged his shoulders, like he’d said his piece and there was nothing more to add. “No, darlin’, I’m sure it ain’t.”

  She stared, silent, a long time, before going back to her glasses, back to her own thoughts. She’d wiped the glasses down so much they shined like diamonds, gleaming against the dark wood, but Duane knew she still hadn’t wiped away everything that was bothering her.

  “There is one other thing . . .” Melissa was still talking.

  “And what might that be . . . darlin’?”

  She stuck her hands in her jeans, steadying herself. Her eyes were bright, new diamonds like the glasses had been, still lit by the booze.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing, just weird. Chris was watching a video the other night, at the house. It looked like something from work . . .”

  8

  MELISSA

  It’d been a royal fucking mistake to talk to Duane Dupree.

  It had been the whiskey talking, the anger. Mel sat in her car outside Earlys, smoking, sobering up. Her breath turned the cold car hot with Jack Daniel’s. Only her third or fourth day of work and she’d drunk her whole way through it, Duane watching it all. If Chris didn’t figure it out on his own the minute she walked through the door, Duane might tell him . . . or not. It was hard to say with the chief deputy, who’d spent most of the night grinning at her with that awful smile—maybe the only one he had—smoking Lucky Strikes and downing one Dr Pepper after another. The thought of all that sugar, that cold, dark, sweetness wrapped in smoke, made her sick.

  For the most part, she’d kept the bottle at bay. There had been moments, here and there, but not many, and not in a while. Not until tonight, in front of Duane. This place really brought out the fucking worst in her. Before tonight, she’d already gone through the inside of Chris’s truck and his phone; had even driven around once or twice to put real eyes on him, when she finally thought to go back to their computer, the one on his dad’s old desk in their bedroom. She started with his e-mails, then went through the browser history; next just started poking around, when she finally found a file she didn’t recognize, hidden away. He must have forgotten it, abandoned it, that night she woke up late and caught him staring at the computer screen.

  It hadn’t made much sense, but after describing it to Duane, he’d explained i
t easy enough. It was a video file: footage from the dashboard camera in Chris’s truck. A traffic stop where nothing much really happened, just Chris talking to one or two people in a big SUV, and that was all. It was at night and hadn’t meant anything to her, and whatever interest it held for Chris also remained a mystery. But if that damn schoolteacher had been in the SUV, it hadn’t been clear enough to pick her out.

  At least that part wasn’t a mystery anymore. Following Chris around, Mel had caught him running into that woman from the carnival again, Murfee’s new English teacher, and finding out about her hadn’t been that hard. She was from Austin, supposedly had history, which was the town’s polite way of saying she’d gotten into some sort of trouble. But Mel didn’t care about any of that; she had plenty of history of her own. What she did care about was how each time she saw Chris and the teacher together she had to relive that goddamn look on his face, the one he’d shared with the teacher at the carnival beneath the lights—the one that was no longer special or reserved for her.

  • • •

  Duane had said it probably wasn’t a big deal, couldn’t begin to guess why Chris had kept the video or brought it home—it wasn’t like he was breaking any rules—but didn’t ask a ton of questions about it, either. Instead he’d gone out of his way not to ask much about it, telling her all about how he turned that damn camera off in his own truck because it felt like a big ole eye spying and prying on him and he didn’t like that, nicely salting the guilt she already felt about shadowing Chris. In the end, the only thing he did ask, like it was just an afterthought, was if she remembered the time and date stamp on the video. A string of white numbers in one corner—left or right, Duane couldn’t remember which—but all the video shot by those cameras was tagged that way. Duane suggested if he knew the date, he might be able to figure out what Chris had been up to that day, where he’d been . . . who he’d seen.

  He didn’t come out and say the teacher’s name, though; he didn’t have to. And then pulling on his coat, he’d smiled, and she’d had the craziest thought there was blood spotting his teeth.

  • • •

  In all the best ways, Chris wasn’t and never would be like any of the other men she had been with. He had strength, a center, unlike any man she’d ever known. But men could still act like little boys sometimes, and she’d learned long ago there was natural weakness in all unhappy boys that made them fuck up perfectly good things. But Chris had become her center; had been for long enough now that she wasn’t willing to let Murfee or anyone else in it take him away from her. Not yet, not without a fight. And definitely not another woman, not Anne Hart.

  And that’s what had her chasing him around Murfee, searching through his things—that’s what’d brought her to their computer in the first place, watching and rewatching the strange video Chris had taken from work. Then revealing it, like a fool, to Duane Dupree.

  Because she had known exactly what the chief deputy was talking about: that date and the time glowing bright on the video—the early-morning hours after the carnival. But with Dupree staring at her, waiting, grinning skull-like behind closed lips, she’d hesitated, before flat-out lying that she didn’t remember anything like that at all. He’d winked, unconvinced, but had left it with “Of course ya don’t, darlin’,” only reminding her that if she ever happened to look at it again to let him know. Or better yet, maybe he’d just swing by anyway and take a look at it directly, to see what ole Chris was up to.

  Then he’d written his personal cell on a napkin, folded it for her. After that he’d walked her out to the car, waited while she got in, and bent down to peer at her through the glass—leaving his breath against it and a palm print from a hard tap goodbye—before disappearing into the night. She could still see that print there now, smeared, a stain on the glass reminding her of a bloody paw. She didn’t feel sober enough to drive, and couldn’t shake the awful feeling she’d made a real mistake by talking up that damn video to Duane. It had all been in his eyes, the way he’d stared at her, unblinking—his eyes not quite matching the rest of his face, like they were too big and not part of the original design. She still couldn’t quite see the entire shape of her mistake, only its outline, but it was enough. And there’d been no damn need to reveal it anyway: she’d already pretty much made up her mind the video had nothing to do with Chris and the new English teacher.

  But . . . but . . . it might have something to do with those two agents murdered near Valentine that was all over the news. Not that Chris had ever said anything about it to her, even though she’d read the paper and heard it mentioned a few times around Earlys and the Hi n Lo. They’d been burned in a big SUV, not much different from the one in Chris’s video. Not much different at all. The fact that Duane hadn’t raised the coincidence gnawed at her; the fact that she couldn’t talk to Chris about it without revealing her sneaking around only gave it sharper teeth. For once, she wanted to be mad, needed it—prayed for her old anger and any good reason to be flat-out furious, even though she knew there really wasn’t one. Because anger was better, safer.

  Because tonight, right now, she felt afraid, and that was a whole lot worse.

  9

  AMERICA

  He wouldn’t let it go, the thing she didn’t want to hear, so he told her all about his papa, El Juez.

  Everything. He told her about a dog named Shep and about a long night on a mountain. He told her they were all in danger. He told her all the things El Juez had done, all the things he could and would do. He told her it was her brother murdered and buried at Indian Bluffs, and if they could prove that, they might be able to put both their dead to rest and really fly away.

  Pájaros para siempre. Birds forever.

  He wanted to bring all their suspicions to Cherry, the deputy, but was too nervous to approach him. Instead, they’d go through Ms. Hart. He knew the two of them saw each other and talked. He wouldn’t say how, but she guessed he’d been following the teacher around. He used to do that with her too, thinking she never saw him, but she always did. Murfee wasn’t an easy place to sneak around, and he wasn’t that good at it. They sat on a bench under red oaks bent sideways by the wind, planted in a line between the school and the football stadium. All the trees and the scattered benches beneath them had been donated by former students and local families and clubs, each with a small plate with the donor’s name. On their bench, that name had been scratched off long ago, so it had become their “place,” if they had a place, and if she let him believe they were a “they”—una pareja.

  Caleb said they were hiding in plain sight—who would ever pay attention to two students sharing cigarettes on a bench outside the school? He never said what it was they were hiding from.

  “Well?”

  She sucked in smoke, counted tree branches above her head. He got in close, one leg curled beneath him and leaning forward like he did when he wanted to be serious, and he always wanted her to see him as serious. That was also when his eyes were best, when they were green and blue at the same time—bright, both young and old. Amé had never met Caleb’s mama, not formally, just saw her around school, around town, before she was gone. But those were all her eyes, had to be.

  “Try to remember, Amé, anything, anything at all.”

  He’d been at this for days, getting her to think back to growing up with Rodolfo, searching for something, anything, they could give to Deputy Cherry: a clue, a bit of Rodolfo’s past that might prove once and for all that the bundle of huesos the deputy had found could be no one but her brother. But Rodolfo had been nine years older. There was so much she couldn’t remember, so much about him she didn’t know. Just like there was so much about her mama and papa and their lives over the river she didn’t know, cousins and aunts and uncles who were nothing more than stories and names: Margarita and Luciana and Juan José and a mysterious Fox Uno, whom her mama did not speak of often and seemed truly scared of.

  She
’d seen enough TV—the same detective shows Caleb kept going on about now—to know that real life rarely worked that way. She didn’t believe there were answers about her brother in any papers or reports Deputy Cherry might have.

  “No lo sé. I don’t remember anything. Not now. Not ever.”

  Caleb slumped, looked past her. “Dammit.”

  • • •

  However, she did think more and more about Rodolfo’s phone—picking it up, choosing one of its stored numbers. The person who answered it would not care about reports or papers; would not need them to help her do something about Rodolfo or Duane Dupree. But she always stopped herself. Using the phone was as dangerous as pulling the trigger on Rodolfo’s gun; she’d have no more control over what happened next than catching a fired bullet. Still, she found it in her hand more and more often, not remembering how it got there. It had a life of its own, crawling into her fingers as she slept, beating, almost like a heart. She didn’t want to be angry, but couldn’t understand how Caleb made it all seem like a game, so easy.

  “First, you knew it was your mama. You wanted me to believe it, too. Now you know it is Rodolfo. You don’t make sense. You want all these horrible things and you don’t even know why.”

  He threw his hands up, frustrated, almost angry. “And you don’t? You don’t want to know? You don’t want to do anything about it . . . to stop him?”

  She pointed at the air. “Him? Your papa? Is that what all this is about? Or is it about you?” She laughed, bitter. “Do I want to know where my brother is? Sí. But do I want it to be that thing out in the desert? No, no lo hago. No more than I wanted it to be your mama. Don’t you see, we get nothing by being right? It makes nothing better.” There was no easy way to explain how she needed her brother to still be alive—to be free, to have escaped and gotten away from all of this for someplace safer, far from here, forever. In her sueños, her dreams, again—fewer now, but she still had them—she could almost see him there; clear, bright, waving to her, urging her to find such a place for herself. A place like the cities Caleb had promised her, or the paper beaches taped to her bedroom walls. That’s what she had to believe, had to tell herself, even if it was all no more real or true than Caleb’s TV shows. Murfee was her real life. Duane Dupree was real life. A gun and a cellphone and money under her bed were real. It was her vida and she hated it and there was nothing easy or good about any of it. Maybe it was worthless to hope or dream for better things, but as long as she believed Rodolfo was free, she could also hold tight to the idea, the hope, that on some other distant day she could be, too. It might be nothing, but what else did she have? It might have to be enough. She was stronger than her brother, always had been, but she was still too afraid to let that last dream of Rodolfo go. Too afraid it’d mean also letting go of her last small handful of hope . . . her last dreams.