She was up to something, something bad, but he didn’t care. Someone else was up to something, too. He noticed it when Dale Holt pulled up in Caleb Ross’s truck, without Caleb. Duane sat around for another hour at the far edge of the fire light, not once seeing Caleb with the other kids. Curious, agitated, gnawing his lips, he walked up to Holt and finally asked him about it, leaving the other boys around him to scatter into the dark. Holt was nervous, looked so much like his dead older brother that Duane had to look twice to make sure it wasn’t him. Holt smelled like weed, beer; stammering over every word, even Hello, sir. Duane wanted to grab him by the throat and scream into his face, eat out his goddamn eyes, because he had to admit he was barely in control of himself anymore, but forced a smile anyway that was probably twice as terrifying, and eased the scared boy along by telling him he knew that Holt and Ross weren’t really friends—hell, everyone knew Caleb Ross didn’t have friends.
So why the fuck was he out and about in Caleb’s truck? And by God, he’d get an answer one way or another. Holt did come clean eventually, nearly pissing himself, admitting Caleb had paid him a few hundred dollars to drive the truck around a bit and keep his mouth shut about it—then leave it parked a few streets over from the Hi n Lo.
Duane mapped it in his head, saw a street lined with poplars, and knew exactly where it was and what it meant. He didn’t even have to ask Holt where Caleb might have gone. He thanked the boy, told Holt that was all just fine and dandy—and that he’d better keep his hole shut and start running, fast, unless he wanted Duane to cut out his fucking tongue with a fucking knife. Not before reminding him not to get too close to the bonfire, so he wouldn’t get burned.
• • •
After that he drove over to Mancha’s, found Eddie Corazon, pointed his gun right into Eddie’s face and shoved him into his truck in front of an audience yelling, Hey, you can’t do that, he ain’t done nothin’, all in thick accents. He took him to the beaner’s trailer, where he pistol-whipped him until Eddie gave up his stash. He kept it hidden in tinfoil in his freezer. Duane didn’t care anymore, felt so sick he couldn’t stand, so he took it all.
And then for one long moment he was back . . . walking among his daddy’s fields, a boy but all done up in his deputy’s uniform, carrying his grandaddy’s Smith & Wesson and shooting his cows all over again. Except now they had human faces, all of Murfee kneeling in the grass, staring at him, calling his name. Even his favorite, Big Boss, wearing the face of the Judge . . .
He may have left Eddie Corazon dead too, didn’t stick around to check. There sure was a lot of blood on the floor.
17
CALEB
He’d gotten a pretty decent head start to El Paso by skipping out of the last period of school, so even with driving all the way up there in Anne Hart’s car, he was on his way back to Murfee before the bonfire was really going. More or less about the same time Anne and his father were halfway to Terlingua.
His phone had lit up most of the drive back, though—calls and messages from Chris that he ignored, let go. He wanted more than anything to see Amé, make sure she understood the note he’d given her at school, and before heading up to the house he stopped at her place, but she wasn’t around; his own texts and calls to her were still unanswered. He knew she wouldn’t have gone to the bonfire, but couldn’t guess where she might be.
When he asked her mother where she was, using all the Spanish that he remembered, she said nothing and pushed him away from the door, back into the darkness and away from her light, and shut it in his face.
He drove around Murfee a little more, up Main Street, toward Archer-Ross. He drove out to the Hi n Lo, counted people coming and going for a bit. Saw John Snowden, the dentist, walk out with a small bag and get in his car, where his wife was waiting. In the brief moment they were illuminated by the car’s dome light, he bent forward, kissing her as if he’d been gone a long time, to a place far away. Caleb left them like that, circled his hometown once, twice, and then he was done.
He dropped off Anne’s car like they’d agreed—a couple of streets over from her house but close enough for her to walk to it—and turned for home. He walked fast, past so many darkened houses. By the time he got to his street at the edge of town, he was running, trying not to cry.
When he got inside he took the Ruger out of the gun locker, loading it with the stolen shells he’d recovered two days earlier from his hiding place down by the creek. He wiped and cleaned it till it shined, checked his work twice, and slipped it beneath his bed to wait.
18
AMERICA
She sat in Pilar’s car near the edge of the Comanche lot, where she’d sat with Dupree before. She had the engine off and the radio on, listening to a Mexican station from over the border. There was no music, just words; a fútbol game somewhere over there, but for her, still so much closer than the school bonfire. She’d never gone to it, didn’t even know where it was.
Máximo had kept begging her to be patient, tener paciencia. He was in no rush and she couldn’t figure out why. Maybe he was in no hurry to get back over the river, but over here, she needed it done now. He just wanted to look at her and hold her hand and tell her it already was.
She’d sent Dupree a picture of her own for once, one she’d snapped in her bedroom, but he hadn’t answered her. Not yet. She had never taken a picture of herself like that, and wondered what Caleb would have thought of it, or Máximo. Máximo had wanted Dupree way out here, away from Murfee and everyone, but she didn’t tell him about the picture she’d made to draw him out of town. Draw him to her. She’d stared at it a long time before sending it, afraid to let it go, wondering if it even looked like her, because the girl in the photo was so different. Someone she didn’t recognize, because she never looked at herself anymore, avoiding even the mirror in her bathroom, since Duane Dupree. Wondering if this was how Caleb and Máximo saw her, wondering if she was pretty. Before deciding that sí, the girl in the picture was, very much so.
She was about to give up when he finally called, said he would come. But his voice sounded strange, lost, like each word burned or there were other voices speaking for him. He giggled, whispered things so that she knew he was high, drogado, as high as she’d ever heard him. She wasn’t sure if that made him more or less dangerous, but at least he was coming. She texted Máximo, let him know Dupree was on his way. She wished she could be more like Máximo, who acted like he had all the time in the world. Like he wanted more time. And maybe he did. He never talked about what waited for him back across the river, what waited for them both.
Caleb had given her a note at school before disappearing during his last period. Once she had it in her hand, felt it, she’d realized it wasn’t a paper note at all, so she went into the bathroom, stood in the stall with the door shut, to look at it alone. She’d unfolded it and it was the picture he’d taken down from her wall, when he’d last been in her bedroom. That magazine cutout of a city skyline along a beach, once glossy but now faded. The picture with the numbers she’d written down on the back, including Dupree’s, over a year ago. So many times before she’d looked at that picture and wondered if the colors were real—the blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean. A blue so bright and the pale white of those tall buildings the same white of the coldest desert moon, taller than any she had ever seen with her own eyes. She’d played a game with herself, picking out a window in one of those buildings as her own, the highest point, imagining herself living there, staring out that window, looking back at herself, waving goodbye. Caleb had written a few words right across her window, as if he’d known which one it was all along.
Dupree’s truck pulled in, slow, pinning her beneath his headlights. He sat like that for a long time, the rumble of his engine carrying low across the gravel lot. But he didn’t pull forward or shut off the truck, just smoked his cigarettes. He was watching, waiting, wary—as if he knew there was trouble, as if he c
ould smell it. She tried to will him over to her, make him cross that distance, and when that didn’t work she got so frustrated she almost got out of Pilar’s car and walked right over, even though she didn’t want to be that close to his truck. It was an open hole, ready to swallow her up. If she got too close, he’d make her disappear for good. If she didn’t know any better, she thought she caught Dupree’s eyes glowing red in the truck’s cab, but it was only the flare of his matches, the tip of his cigarette burning bright with each breath. Minutes passed. There was the flicker and flash of the luminous screen of his phone as he took a call or a picture, maybe both. A puta phone call.
Ten paciencia.
Ten paciencia.
Máximo had wanted her to stay in Pilar’s car, do exactly what he’d told her, exactly how he had told her to do it. He was worried about the ayudante springing his own trap, but with Dupree alone, only feet away, smoking without a care in the world, it was so hard. She held her breath, but didn’t know if she could hold it much longer. Her window was down and through gritted teeth she could smell cigarette smoke, Dupree’s skin. The same smell that had been trapped in her clothes and her room for what felt like forever. What happened next wouldn’t make it go away, not at first, but it was a start. A start she could live with, that she would have to.
Ten paciencia.
She took her eyes off of Dupree, taken for a moment by the stars. Wondering if they were the same ones she had watched from her bedroom window the night she’d dreamed of Rodolfo, after Caleb had come to her. Maybe they’d been following her all along, right up to this moment, watching down on her, without judgment. She knew she loved the stars here, the way they hung above the mountains, shined across the desert, glittered high over the town. She hoped they’d be the same everywhere, that they would always follow her, no matter where she went, but wasn’t sure, a part of her understanding that it was possible to see real stars only in a place like this, far from big city lights. That’s when she truly understood the stars weren’t just scattered points, but were so many and so close they could light the sky with a fierce radiance, bright enough to read by. At times close enough to reach up and grab, so bright they hurt. So hot any one of them would burn to touch. She had been Rodolfo’s estrella. All he’d asked of her was to glow for him—to wait for him, to guide him. But he never found his way back to her, because she had become lost, too. She’d been all alone, needing a light of her own to show her the way.
When she was gone, she’d miss the stars here. She was still looking up, searching for her star, when her phone buzzed, a text from across the parking lot. Not from Máximo . . . finally, Dupree. But just another picture . . .
. . . of a man’s face up close, eyes bruised and open. Out of focus and gone away, and there was dirt in them . . . in his hair. There was blood too, on his pale lips, spotting his cheeks like tears. Everything else was blackness. It was a picture of a starless night, a shuttered room—of nothing at all; a square of dark like the deepest well or a grave in the desert or a hole to nowhere.
And Duane Dupree had taken a picture of her dead brother deep down in that hole, staring upward at the last thing he ever saw.
Then she was out of the car, running toward him, screaming. But before she got there, Dupree gunned the engine on his truck, pulled it in a wide circle, and with a wave of his hand was gone.
She had thrown her phone and its horrible last picture after him, crying too hard to stop, when Máximo walked up from where he’d been hiding in the dark. All of his patience, all of his worry and caution, and he’d waited too fucking long. Instead he put his arms around her, holding her close, still holding Rodolfo’s gun.
19
CALEB
His father got home late, poured himself a glass of whiskey, and sat in the kitchen by himself. Caleb tracked the steady clink of the glass on the wood, a drinking rhythm. From his bedroom window the sky had long gone blue to purple; above that, a deeper darkness and the lonely burn of brighter, distant things. Some of them moved left to right—planes or satellites passing far overhead.
His father finally came up the stairs and his weight moved past Caleb’s bedroom, stopping only long enough to peer in, where Caleb lay sideways on his bed, asleep, still wearing his earbuds. But there was no music in them, no sound, and Caleb wasn’t asleep. He listened to his own heartbeat and the sound of his father standing at his door, watching him; holding his breath, because of his damaged ear from the night on the mountain. Finally, faintly, catching the echoes of his father walking down to his own room. Caleb said his mother’s name three times and reached down under his bed for the Ruger.
In his mother’s mirror, his father moved, shapeless. Caleb thought he might take a shower, but instead he just pulled off his boots, lying down on the bed, unsteady. He was drinking downstairs for a while; too long, too much, and he’d probably had a few during his dinner with Anne. His father’s reflection reclined and came to rest, motionless, hands across his chest. Caleb waited and tried not to breathe, tried not to cry anymore, as his father turned into one shadow among many, threatening to disappear altogether.
Caleb was paralyzed, knowing he was waiting too damn long. He hadn’t planned on shooting a sleeping man, but he would. Then he was in motion from where he crouched in the hallway. The gun heavy, so goddamn heavy, he thought it would pull him through the floor. He’d never held anything with such weight, such importance—all the years between them and all the years that would never be—and he struggled as he burst into his father’s bedroom, the muzzle leading him more than he wanted.
He glanced up quick enough to see the bed was now empty, nothing reflected in the mirror. His father had disappeared, faded away right in front of him as he tried not to shoot himself in the leg. The gun’s impossible weight threatened to bend him in half, leaving him kneeling on the floor, as if he were praying. His finger slipped on the trigger when he fired blind, shooting out his own reflection and anything that hid within it.
He never heard his father, never saw him, when he was struck hard and sharp across the mouth, tasting blood.
20
THE JUDGE
The room was full of sudden rage, the one bullet shattering the old mirror. It rang like a church bell. And then the boy lay sprawled on the floor covered in broken glass, the rifle a handspan away. The Judge marveled at the gun, as if he couldn’t imagine such a thing, while he fought for his balance and shook the muzzle blast free from his eyes.
He’d gotten up to take a piss and was coming out of the bathroom when Caleb stumbled into his room, yelling. But he saw the rifle first and hit Caleb as hard as he could across the mouth, surprising him. Still, the boy was not half as surprised as he was. He wasn’t angry or particularly scared, either. He’d had too much to drink, and it had nearly cost him, but getting up to piss it all away had probably saved his life.
He thought about just kicking the gun clear, but instead bent over, picked it up, checking to make sure it was still loaded. It was. He leaned against the dresser, steadied himself, and then pointed the Ruger at the crown of his son’s head.
“Damn, boy, goddamn.” He had to say it loud, since they were both still half deaf from the gun’s blast. But Caleb looked up, heard him clear enough, his eyes dark. He had a cut on his cheek from the mirror glass and blood crawling down his face, mixing with what was already running from his mouth.
“I know what you did,” Caleb breathed.
“Is that the truth now?” He raised the gun to make his point, took a step back, opening distance between them. “What exactly would that be?”
“You’re not going to kill me, not here. Not like this.” Caleb pulled himself up, and he could see now just how tall the boy had grown; still thin, but tall, nearly his own height. He couldn’t remember when Caleb had gotten big, maybe because his son was always hunched over, disappearing into his clothes, or maybe because he hadn’t been paying enough
attention. Or he saw only what Caleb had showed him.
“Don’t test my patience, boy. You’d be surprised what I am capable of.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t. I’m not surprised at a goddamn thing.” Caleb touched his mouth, leaving blood on his fingers. He wiped them on the bedcover. “There’s not a thing about you that surprises me anymore. Once I really understood that, I wasn’t scared of you anymore, either. It made picking up that gun a lot easier. I had to do it, no choice. You are my business to handle, always have been. It was in my blood all along.” He held up a stained hand. “I am my father’s son.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You killed my mother, you fucking monster, and Rudy Reynosa. Tried to kill Chris Cherry, and God only knows what else you’ve done. No one in this town knows what you’re capable of, but I do. I’ve known all along. I believe it all.”
“Your whore of a mother ran off.” The Judge ignored the rest of it.
“Don’t you talk about her like that, don’t you dare say that. You don’t get to do that anymore.”
He lowered the gun, his old Ruger that he hadn’t shot in years. He couldn’t imagine why Caleb had chosen that one, when there were a dozen others that would have done the job better. And he was tired, as tired as he’d ever been. “You were going to kill me over her? She left us . . . left us both.”
“She wouldn’t have done that. She never would have left me with you.”
“Are you so sure? Do you really believe that? I don’t think so. You didn’t know your mother half as well as you want to pretend.” Doubt flickered in Caleb’s eyes. “Ah, but you suspect, don’t you? You’ve suspected all along. I can see that you do. What sort of mother leaves her son behind? But what sort of son were you, that she was willing to do it?”
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