They moved instead to the kitchen where they mixed punch and cut key limes for the moonlighting school teacher who would be tending bar. He wanted to practice his cocktails and they agreed to be his judges. Before long they were happy, chattering guinea pigs.
“Donnie said you needed a break. What’s going on?”
“A bunch of different things. It’s a busy time.”
“He’s got a big soft spot for you.” Terri’s frown seemed to be working out the reason. Meg wasn’t sure how she had earned his attention. It was as if one day Donnie had walked up and introduced himself as a long-lost uncle.
God, Terri didn’t think something was going on...
A lime rolled under Meg’s paring knife. The blade snicked the pad of her thumb, drawing blood.
“This is probably enough limes.” Terri examined the wound. She wetted a tea towel for Meg and went in search of a bandage.
Meg dropped the knife into the sink and put pressure on the cut. A dull summer house knife meets a round fruit in a tipsy moment. Now the hand holding the towel reacquaints itself with the bloodied one. Easy to blame the neglected blade or the tough rind, but her wound resulted from losing awareness. Was that the purpose of pain, to bring us back to ourselves? Was the purpose of inattention to escape our pain?
The kitchen clock read twelve forty. It had to be later. The second hand ticked against the seventeen and did not advance. She heard its faint buzz now, like a fly tapping the windowpane. She ran cold water over her thumb. The cut didn’t hurt any more but the idea of the laceration opening its tiny mouth turned her stomach.
Terri returned with a Band-Aid tin. “Let’s see. Good and clean. All I found for disinfectant was horse liniment so we’ll forget that.”
Meg dabbed away the trace of blood. Terri sized the dressing and peeled the tabs back from the adhesive. The sudden discomfort Meg had sensed in Terri couldn’t be about Meg’s relationship with Donnie. It had to be about Helen. People were still apologizing to her for holding back years ago. Others offered belated sympathy only to probe for the awful details or to recount their own painful stories. Terri secured the strip and allowed her touch to linger. She had no reason to feel embarrassed. Meg had always figured Donnie’s sympathy was fifty-one percent Terri’s.
“You can say it. It’s been a long time now. It’s okay.”
Terri patted Meg’s hand before releasing it. “Why do we hesitate to say the most important things?” She rinsed the cutting boards and left the towel to soak.
“I’ve kept this to myself because I didn’t feel I should be the one to tell you. Donnie volunteered on the county search and rescue team when he was younger. He was in the thick of it—mounted, technical and water patrol—almost every week. Most of the time they’d find a lost person or save some fool who was in over his head. Even when somebody didn’t make it, there was this moment of hope going out the door. But knowing you’re on a retrieval, that’s hard.”
A car pulled up in the yard. From the voices and the dog’s excited yips, the Barclay son Chase’s family. Terri’s eyes moved to the window. “Hard knowing they were young and full of whatever got them in dutch. One summer he’d pulled two kids out of the cauldron at Black Rocks, one at the Potholes, and then in October he got the call to Cold Shivers. Are you sure this is okay?”
Meg squeezed herself. This was headed beyond what she had expected. She nodded.
“Donnie was belaying the team going down into the canyon. Helen came up in the sling to him and he lifted her out by himself. He told me, she felt so light, as if she was part of the air, and if I didn’t hang on she’d keep on floating up. Imagine, her body rising out of his arms. He felt something he can’t describe in any way that makes sense to him. So he passes it on to you. Peace or protection or whatever it is, I’m sure that’s what he wants you to feel.”
And Helen. This is what Helen wants me to know.
Conversations around the bonfire had drifted into well-worn territory. Meg was toeing the happy edge of inebriation. They all were when Chase Barclay announced a demonstration of his new spud cannon. He’d built a more high-tech version of the one he and Donnie had made together years ago. A shoot-off! shouted one of his buddies—all like Chase, young men who were mulled versions of their fathers. Meg had never seen a potato launched, so she joined their festive stroll to the bluff above the barn. The stars had reasserted cool dominion over the post-fireworks sky. Simultaneously close and untouchable, they made earth’s gravity seem a giddy accident. A shower of potato projectiles from this happy place seemed a necessary and proper counterweight to the cosmos. Yes, we know we’re nothing, but watch—this’ll be cool.
Donnie stayed behind.
Chase showed off his design to appreciative huffs and anticipatory gurgles from the boys. Forward observers were dispatched to measure the landings. They marched off into the field counting their steps aloud and dropping crushed beer cans as markers. Unsteady flashlight beams played over the irregular ground, carving silhouettes that vanished and reappeared. Voices yipped and mixed with laughter. Finally, signals of readiness wagged from the target zone. Chase filled the original gun’s combustion chamber with hair spray. He raised the barrel and a confederate recorded its elevation by angling his arm in parallel. An orange flame chuffed from the muzzle. Cries from the barn were picked up in the field as the spotters ran to the point of impact and called out the distance. After the beams wavered back to show the target range boundaries, Chase aligned the new gun to his friend’s mock-Nazi salute. A stun gun spark ignited the metered propane. This time Meg was ready for the concussion. A much louder bang slapped the air. Judging by lights jittering away from them, it sent the projectile half again as far. The profane cries of discovery confirmed it. Chase invited his pals to fire the new launcher and after the first round was completed, he offered the women a turn. The older model, with its shorter range and hair spray propellant, now qualified as the girl gun.
Meg stepped forward and seized the longer tube. Murmurs of male approval. One of Chase’s buddies stepped forward, a lean cowboy-type she’d noticed at the lower party. Smarter than he dared let on in this company, she thought. Justin.
“Let me do your spud,” he said, and forced it into the tube. Curls of brown peel stripped and fell at her feet.
On her shoulder the apparatus felt lighter than she expected, the plastic warm, the propane bottle cool. She found the trigger button and contemplated a new target. Only a man would build a weapon and then devote his creativity to making it more lethal. More and more and more. She swung the barrel upward and found Venus. Was it necessary to aim? The recoil made her lose track of the tuber’s flight. It didn’t matter. The joke was between her and the planet.
“Nice shot.” Justin said it so only she heard. Or maybe so he could put his warm breath in her ear.
The manboys tired of going for distance and went for velocity at impact. A sheet of plywood splintered. Full beer cans exploded. The ice-filled styrofoam cooler blew to bits. They were setting up a discarded microwave oven when Meg decided to slip away. Justin offered to walk her back through the dark. His fingers rested on the curve of her spine, lightly, as if he were mentally composing a message before typing it. Or perhaps this was how cowboys judged a woman’s age.
“I know the way,” she said, pointing to the house strung with chili pepper Christmas lights. “Straight downhill.”
“It’s not the direction, it’s the footing,” he said. “I’m a certified cattle trail guide, get you down with no cowpie action, guaranteed.”
He grinned and awaited her reply, his thumbs hooked behind a belt with a rodeo buckle the size of a cheese grater. Justin hadn’t yet said enough to get through her filters but she took his arm. “Chase seemed quite pleased with himself,” she said.
“Oh, he’s pumped.” Justin’s tone left a but unspoken.
“They seem to play it as a friendly competition.”
“I’ve known Chase and his dad my whole life.” Justin
steered her around a brown pat in the grass. “I bet Donnie has a load of PVC pipe delivered tomorrow—along with a tank of hydrogen or something. At some point the old bulls have to let it go.”
They were halfway down the hill. Justin inclined her toward the meadow. It had been a while, as in years. Not that there weren’t opportunities. Her abstinent state was less a commitment than a reluctance. She’d had her fill of life turning in an instant.
“Did you win that buckle or did you buy it?” she said.
He stopped to judge whether it was a kiss-off or a come-on. The grin again. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
The New-Year-like euphoria of the night. The stars. Waking to frost on the grass. A terrible idea and yet she might fall for it if she stayed any longer.
“My car’s over that way,” she said and moved away from the edge.
Is this what Brian was reaching for with that last damn poem from Tuba City?
Would it be wrong for me to miss you
Your heartbeat on my chest
Just one and once
Just once and one?
Or draw a sandy line and then
Erase it with our hands
Just one and once
Just once and one?
And trace again the path, the edge, the leaking sun
The chance that comes
Just one and once
Just once and done?
She had thought Erase it with our hands was about sex or regret, but maybe he was asking about a different it. There were so many from that night.
It was the tryst at Cold Shivers Point.
It was Brian’s instinctive swing, surprising them all when Neulan tried to charge through the gap between him and the edge.
It was a dazed Neulan kneeling, his shoulder dipped, his left hand curled like a question mark, his right groping for his glasses.
It was Meg’s gratification at Neulan’s blood trickling from one nostril and streaming from his crown, around his ear and soaking his shirt collar dark crimson.
It was both men heaving as if trying to recover from a sprint. Breathing, breathing slower, her breath joining in a triangle of stress. All three of them waiting for some way to resolve this impasse. For heads to clear. For the breath to form words.
And now as she drove closer to Cold Shivers Point, it became the forever disturbance of the place. She pulled over, she told herself, to make certain she was sober for the twisting drive down Monument Road. Just to take in the air. But she got out of the car and walked the short path to the overlook.
She had only imagined Helen falling. Now Donnie’s story brought back another time, when Neulan was the one who had expected to rise.
“Scheisse! That hurt,” Neulan said, his glasses replaced cockeyed.
She wanted to laugh. At his bewilderment. That a killer wouldn’t say shit in front of a woman.
“We didn’t come to hurt you,” she said. “We came for the truth.” True enough, but now that she saw his blood she could not deny her satisfaction.
Neulan stared as if he hadn’t heard. He fastened on the path to the parking lot past Brian, who crouched with the bat cocked for another swing.
She pressed: “You asked me to forgive your silence about Helen. All right, if you want forgiveness, now’s the time to confess.”
Neulan straightened his glasses. His head panned slowly as if on a swivel. His gaze passed over Meg and fixed on the distant valley floor, glowing like an aquarium in a darkened room.
“Here we are, on the pinnacle above the holy city,” he said.
“Cut the crap,” Brian said. “Did you push her?”
Neulan said, “Push who?”
Still denying and deflecting. She bored in. “I want to know what happened with Helen that day.”
“I told you, she was daring me. Skipping, dancing on the rim.” He mimicked her moves awkwardly.
“You think this is a joke?” Brian said. “I could bunt you into eternity right now.”
Neulan’s mouth twisted. “I’m fairly certain a bunt is not called for in this situation.” He brushed his arms, wiped an X across his chest and pulled his unbloodied ear in an exaggerated manner. “That’s the sign for go ahead and try it and see what happens.”
Brian was an athlete, not an overmatched girl. Yet Meg saw that even one-handed, Neulan had a tall man’s reach and leverage, a zealot’s certainty. The cliff edge trapped him, but it could be used to his advantage, too. His piety and performer’s craft masked his arrogance and cunning.
“That’s how it worked, didn’t it? Never the same place twice but you always brought them to the brink somewhere.”
“To Him. I led them to God.”
“You used God and music to win their trust so you could seduce them.” Neulan had always chosen his victims carefully. Getting what he desired confirmed his glory and invincibility. Under the guise of accepting souls, he took lives as if they had been offered to him.
He shook his head violently. “They were pure and I left them pure. They were ready!”
His later victims were churchly but Helen wasn’t pure. She had no interest in being saved. She had only larked through the motions with Neulan’s church youth group, hoping for the inspiration to capture a Joan of Arc audition. Helen’s faith was in herself, her passion was living, her soul was a creative force. He must have found her intensity bewildering as well as seductive.
“What about you, Neulan. Are you ready to meet your maker?” Brian’s grip on the bat handle tightened, his knuckles, rows of tiny white skulls.
“He can’t be,” Meg said. “He’s a murderer.”
Neulan spit in disgust. “Their lives were not taken. They were returned to the Creator.” His long arms swept the space around him. He lifted his face and tracked across the sky. “Those who accept his forgiveness shall have everlasting life.”
“If it’s so great up there, why are you waiting down here?” Meg said.
Neulan’s fierce gaze swept over her, then his eyes rolled back and he began to sing in round, bursting notes: “Spirit of the living God, fall a-fresh on me.”
She had never been in the presence of such a voice, enormous yet beseeching. The sound swelled as from the bottom of an ancient well.
Spirit of the living God, fall a-fresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Me-me-me-me-me. The canyon reverberated with Neulan’s voice doubling and redoubling, an antiphon of reinforcements.
“Listen to the angels,” he said.
“It’s an echo, asshole,” Brian said.
Meg pressed him. “You aren’t ready. The truth is, you’re afraid God isn’t there for you—that He’ll forsake you because of what you’ve done.”
Neulan bowed his head and brought his hands to his chest, one fisted, one clawed and broken. Then he straightened, his good hand opened and he raised it above his head and spoke in an exaggerated, movie-God voice. “Away from me, Satan, with your false citations.”
She moved as close as she dared. “We’re still here, still waiting. Scripture doesn’t work for you now, does it? No verse to comfort you.”
Melt me, mold me…
“No path to salvation...”
fill me, use me.
“…for the unrepentant murderer.”
Neulan closed his eyes. He crossed his arms over his chest and began to tilt toward the canyon. Meg had done that pose in teacher training. The trust exercise—the me turning the self over to unseen arms.
Spirit of the living God, fall a-fresh on me.
Neulan leaned back and back and back, his body a question mark poised between fear and gravity, life and its end. The three of them on the rock bound by the interrogative. A thundering in her ears as she too experienced the ecstasy of his release.
Headlights swept through her car, just as they had that night when Meg and Brian’s panic and indecision suddenly resolved into action. If Neulan’s vehicle was found in the parking area, they thought,
his body would soon be found, and, hearing the news, that driver might recall a red Jetta also there. Neulan had left the keys in the Jeep’s ignition, his preparation for a fast escape. Brian ripped open the door, wiped the bat on his shirt and flung it across the front seat. Follow me, he said, and she compounded their mistake into a conspiracy. The two cars snaked down Monument Road, bearing Meg and Brian toward their eventual uncoupling.
She always felt Neulan here more than Helen. His wickedness sent shockwaves through time and space. Her grave reverberated with the bass of this evil. Good’s treble could hardly be heard.
Do you have any friends, family or other people in your life out of convenience or necessity, but you do not like their company?
—Vulnerability Index Prescreen for Single Adults
Wesley’s camp sat on a wooded island reachable from Las Colonias by hopscotching across a shallow ford. A pair of worn jungle boots marked a path that led through an irrigated vegetable garden to a concealed clearing. Five campsites tucked around its rim. Two contained dome tents; another had a homemade tipi fashioned from tarps, duct tape and bubble wrap. Wesley had framed a rectangular hut with shipping pallets sheathed in salvaged doors and plywood. The spot next to Wesley was open. Long extension cords snaked around the clearing, supplying power from a liquid propane generator. A central fire pit had been fashioned from rock and car bumpers with a legless Weber and a steel catwalk step used for a cooking grate. Deeper into the brush, a patio chair with a plastic bucket underneath the cut-out seat served as a latrine. Isaac had visited other camps that had the feel of semi-permanent settlements, but nothing as neat or organized as this. Wesley’s little village was just over a mile from downtown.
“Peace and quiet. Clean camp. That includes substances, too. Don’t steal. That’s it as far as rules go.” Wesley pointed around the circle. “Meet the family. John’s recovering from heroin, relapsed, got kicked out of his halfway house, now he’s trying to get back in the program. Don’t worry about those purple puncture marks. It’s Russian olive arm. He’s doubled up with Gravy. That kid’s a little testy, but he killed his best friend drunk driving, so who wouldn’t be? Doug got laid off as a seismic shooter for Halliburton. Don’t mind if he ignores you, he’s half-deaf. Terrell’s got the tipi. He’s happy he just got off probation. We’re all getting over something.”
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