Half World: A Novel

by O'Connor, Scott

  He said, “Squires send you?”

  No answer. He could see another figure out at the edge of the light, pacing. The girl, long-haired and thin.

  The mustached kid said, “You’re after Richard Ashby.”

  “Is that his name?”

  “He said they would send someone.”

  “He was right.”

  The muscles in their faces jumped as they watched Jimmy, the bones in their gun hands twitching. He couldn’t see their eyes but figured they were on something high decibel.

  The kid licked the bottom of his mustache. “The girl he’s with.”

  “What about her?”

  “You can have Ashby.”

  “We’re making a deal here?”

  “We can shoot you right now.”

  “My guess is you already would’ve done that.”

  Jimmy waited, watched them twitch, fingers on their triggers.

  “The girl doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. “Whatever you do with her is none of my business.”

  The kid licked his mustache, nodded. “There it is, then.”

  “There it is,” Jimmy said.

  He needed to shift on the seat, relieve some of the pressure in his groin, but he resisted the urge. The kids watched him and finally the taller kid sniffed hard. Jimmy wasn’t sure if this was a signal to the short kid or if he just didn’t want to reach up to wipe his nose but at the sound they backed away from the car, shrinking in Jimmy’s line of sight and then gone, just the sound of their shoes on the gravel road. Jimmy pulled himself up by the steering wheel and picked up his gun and watched the three kids jump across the grassy ditch and up into the empty lot. He shook his sleeping hand, trying to get some feeling back, then got out of the car, leaving the door open behind him, crossing the road and stepping down one side of the ditch, up the other, and then out across the lot, the kids maybe halfway to the road on the other side, stopping to light cigarettes with their backs still to Jimmy, his left hand still dead. The kids walking again, Jimmy gaining ground, watching their backs as he followed. He was breathing hard already but still gaining, backlit by the harsh white streetlight. His shadow grew, stretching out across the lot and when the head of his shadow passed underfoot of the kids the girl saw it and turned and Jimmy fired, hitting the short kid in the back and then the tall kid turned and fired wildly into the light and Jimmy fired again and hit him in the chest, banking on the guess that the girl was unarmed or slow to her weapon and he was right and so he shot her in the chest, now no more than twenty feet away. Couldn’t be more exposed in the floodlit empty lot, so he shot them each one more time on the ground, the crack of the gun echoing in the cold air.

  Their station wagon was parked on the far road. He opened the backpacks they’d left, found a bunch of Denver Dan’s science-fiction books, some ammunition, baggies of pills. Was about to toss it all back into the car when he came across a brown paper bundle, something wrapped inside. He spun it loose and Henry March’s ledger fell into his hands.

  He stood for a moment, holding the book. He didn’t open it. He didn’t need to open it. He’d seen it so often in his dreams. What this book contained. What these kids knew. What the bum knew, maybe. What March’s daughter knew.

  Sixteen years of nightmares. He was shaking. He’d lost most of the strength in his arms and hands. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt fear like this. All because of a little book. This thing’s existence. This man’s existence. What had he been doing, all this time up on the mountain? Not waiting. Hiding.

  Jimmy dropped the ledger back into the car. He pulled a couple of sweatshirts from the seat and tied them together. Unscrewed the gas cap, fed one of the sweatshirt’s arms down into the tank. He found a lighter in the glove box and held the flame under the far end of the sweatshirt until it caught. Sixteen years. He stood and watched the flame until he was sure it was strong enough to travel and then he crossed the lot again, past the three kids lying in the grass.

  2

  They entered one of the coastal towns that Gael had told Hannah was on the bus route. She counted on a calendar in her head, how much time had passed since she’d last known the date. It was Tuesday; tomorrow would be Wednesday, the day Gael had told her that the white ghost rode up to his father’s ranch.

  Dickie didn’t want to stay at another hostel, they were too open and crowded, so they drove the streets away from the town center, into long rows of stucco houses, close-set, electrical wires running between them along the low roofs. Some of the houses with dogs chained in the front lots, some with kids playing. Everything beige and orange and brown. Hannah saw a sign in a window that said Cuarto, a Spanish word she knew, so she told Dickie to stop the car. A young woman answered the door. There was an older woman working in the kitchen beyond and three children, a boy and two girls. The woman spoke some English, for which Hannah was grateful.

  When she started back toward Dickie there was an unfamiliar car there, a green Plymouth hatchback, and it took Hannah a moment to remember that they had abandoned the pickup, that this was their current vehicle.

  She got back into the car, closed the door.

  “They’d rather rent it for a month,” she said. “A week, at least.”

  “Tell her we’ll pay for a week.”

  Hannah didn’t say anything and then Dickie said, “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to bring something to them.”

  “We won’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “We won’t be here long enough.” He took his eyes from the mirror, watched her until she turned to him.

  “Give her the money,” he said. “Trust me.”

  * * *

  They lay in bed, whispering. There was a light behind the house and it shone through the curtains, leaving dim strips of white across the floor, the bed. They could hear one of the women out in the kitchen, the older woman probably, Inés. Clatter of pots on the stove. The others were asleep, Inés’s daughter Esmeralda and Esmeralda’s children, Ramón and Eva and Luz.

  “If it’s him,” Dickie said, “he’ll recognize you.”

  “He hasn’t seen me in sixteen years.”

  “You’re his daughter.”

  “So I stay here, with the women and children.”

  “Hannah, please.”

  It was the first time since they’d left Los Angeles that he’d said her name. They’d come up with other names and had used them checking in to the motel, the hostel, but they’d never said them aloud. They’d spoken to each other for days without names.

  “If it’s him?” she said.

  “Then I’ll take you to him.”

  “And then what?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  * * *

  They were up before the sun and Dickie left out the back, crossing the small dirt lot toward the neighbor’s yard. Hannah went out into the kitchen and found Inés washing dishes, looking out the window over the sink, watching Dickie climb her fence.

  She had breakfast with the children at the kitchen table. Fresh tortillas with beans and eggs and chorizo. Inés didn’t look at Hannah. She worked at the stove, the sink, chopping vegetables on the counter. Esmeralda came into the kitchen with a glass of milk in her hand and a textbook under one arm, kissed the children, checked the progress on their plates, left again to study in the front room.

  Hannah sat on the bed with the book she’d found in Bert’s car. The photograph of her father was there. She’d brought it with her and kept it in the pages of the western. She tried to imagine Dickie moving through the town, riding the bus, looking for an older iteration of the man in the picture. That morning while he was getting dressed, he’d looked at her in the mirror over the dresser and said that he was sorry. She’d asked him what he was sorry for and he’d simply lifted his hands, as if that was the answer to
the question. Everything.

  The children were playing in the backyard. Hannah parted the curtains, watched for a while. Then she got her camera and went through the back door into the bright morning sun. The girls were kicking a soccer ball and Ramón was riding a purple tricycle. Inés sat on the steps, smoking a cigarette, pushing ash from her apron. Hannah sat beside her and after a while she asked if she could take pictures of the children. Inés nodded and Hannah stood and moved along the fence line, snapping the shutter, and then the children noticed and started mugging for the camera, stretching their mouths with their fingers and sticking out their tongues. Hannah moved in, got down on her knees, encouraging them. Ramón came over and wanted to hold the camera, so she helped him with its weight and he turned it on his grandmother and said, ¡Diga whiskey! and Inés frowned and waved him off. The girls posed on the tricycle. Hannah stepped away to light her own cigarette, her back to the fence. The children waved and called to her in singsong and she smiled and gestured to the cigarette, patience, patience, but then Luz ran out and grabbed her by the leg, so Hannah stubbed the cigarette on the bottom of her shoe and allowed herself to be pulled back into the yard, into the laughter and ringing of the tricycle bell.

  3

  The streets were nearly empty and so he walked exposed toward the center of town. A warm morning after all that cold. He kept looking back at Inés and Esmeralda’s house until he turned a corner and it disappeared from sight. He’d given Hannah the gun, for all the good it would do. He tried not to think about her needing to use it. He would be gone a day, or most of a day, and these would be the riskiest hours of the whole thing.

  He found an open carnicería. The butcher was hacking at something on the counter above the display case. When Dickie entered the butcher glanced up. His face was flushed with exertion, like he’d already been working for hours.

  “Buenos días.”

  “English?” Dickie said.

  “Yes.”

  “What can you tell me about the bus that goes north from here?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Where does it pick up?”

  “In the plaza across the street.”

  “When?”

  The man checked a clock on the wall behind Dickie. “Sometime in the next hour.”

  “When does it come back?”

  “It makes a circle.” The butcher drew one in the air with a red-stained finger. “It carries through the towns and then up to the ranchos in the north, dropping off workers. It comes through again at the end of the day, picking up workers, then back down to the towns for the night.”

  Dickie nodded at a carton of cigarettes on the counter and the butcher wiped his hands on his apron, handed a pack over, took the money Dickie held out.

  The butcher said, “You have a job up there?”

  Dickie lit a cigarette, nodded.

  “You can take the bus or if you want to pay more for a faster ride there are trucks that will take you.”

  “Who rides the bus?”

  “Whoever can’t afford the trucks. Maids in the ranch houses, men who work in the fields, who do odd jobs.”

  “Americans?”

  The butcher smiled. “We are all Americans.”

  “North Americans?”

  “Some.”

  “Are they here long?”

  “A few weeks. Then they are gone and someone else comes and works for a few weeks.” The butcher scratched at his chin with his forearm, his hands stretched away from his face. “They are running from your war.”

  The butcher resumed hacking. There was a table by the window, so Dickie sat and watched the plaza on the other side of the street. A church stood at the far end, its doors open, a few elderly women hobbling inside for morning Mass. There was a small tile fountain in the center of the plaza. It looked like it had been dry for some time. Wires had been strung between the stucco buildings on either side, a few faded fiesta decorations hanging limp in the early heat.

  There were a few men in straw hats sitting on the edge of the fountain. Another came. Another. And then an American, Dickie’s age, maybe a little younger. Same haircut, same build. More Mexicans, a couple of women carrying large canvas bags. An older man, walking slowly, shielding his face against the sun. Dickie sat forward but when the man turned Dickie could see that he was Mexican as well. Another American kid arrived, curly-haired, a backpack slung over one shoulder.

  Earlier that morning, as he’d dressed in the bedroom, he’d apologized to Hannah. He knew that she’d assume it was for all that had happened, and he’d had to stop himself from saying more. He was sorry for the lie, another lie, that is what he’d meant. She wouldn’t meet her father. She couldn’t. Walter and the Sons were here, somewhere, the bald man was here, and Dickie was going to lead them all, he was the Pied Piper, running south, heading straight to the ghost. He would trade Henry March for Hannah. He was sorry, but it wasn’t even a choice.

  Dickie checked the clock and stepped out of the carnicería, walked across the street to the plaza and the fountain. He sat beside one of the women with the bags, drawing quick looks from the other American kids, sizing him up. Dickie kept his eyes on the street, smoked his cigarette.

  Another older man entered the plaza, holding an empty shopping bag that folded in the breeze. He walked to the fountain and leaned in, pulling coins from the dry tile and setting them into his bag. The others made room for him as he shuffled along the edge. When he’d circled the fountain he twisted the bag closed and walked off toward the other end of the plaza.

  There was a squeak of breaks and a long pneumatic sigh and then the bus appeared. Everyone stood. The bus looked like an American school bus that had been painted pink. There were faces in the windows and Dickie looked for an old white man. He waited in line and stepped up onto the bus and handed his money to the driver. The seats about half full. Another look at the faces before him. He found an empty seat toward the back and sat against the window. The bus started again, rolled away from the plaza.

  The white ghost came aboard in the next town over. He was tall and thin, carried a cardboard suitcase in one hand, a battered camera tripod in the other. The legs of the tripod were bound tight with twine. He pressed its feet to the floor as he walked down the aisle to an open seat. He wore a loose shirt and linen pants, both almost white. A straw hat, the brim low and straight across his forehead. His face was roughened and browned by the sun, cracked to long wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He wore glasses with dark lenses clipped onto the frames.

  Dickie had no doubt it was Henry March, what was left of Henry March. He recognized him from Hannah’s photograph, despite the toll of years and sun.

  March made no show of it but he had seen every face in every seat before him, quickly, even Dickie’s before Dickie could look away. Dickie knew men whose eyes moved that way. His own eyes moved that way.

  March sat in an empty seat in the middle of the bus and the rest of the passengers from the plaza got on and the bus started again. They moved through the last coastal town and picked up a few more riders, then turned north on the dirt road, the bus bumping along, up through the low hills that ringed the towns, then into flat, barren country. The harvest was over for the year. The work on the ranchos at this point probably maintenance, cleanup, preparation. Men smoked on the bus, leaned across the aisle to share cigarettes or talk. March faced forward, or out the window, and when he turned toward the glass Dickie could see him in the narrow strait between seat backs. He thought of whispering the name up the thin passageway to the face at the other end to see what reaction those words would provoke.

  There were small wooden signs every few miles, signaling dirt roads that led back to the ranchos. At each sign, the bus pulled over and let off a rider or two, Dickie watching the man or woman walking down a path through the brown stumps of a harvested field in the bus’s wake of dust.
At the third stop March stood and walked to the front of the bus, got off alone. Dickie watched him through the back window, March walking with his suitcase and tripod toward a large ranch house in the distance.

  Finally, only the curly-haired American and Dickie remained on the bus. The driver approached another wooden sign, slowing, and the American kid stood, looked at Dickie in the seat behind him, asked for a cigarette. Then he gestured out the window to the rancho across the field and asked if Dickie was looking for work. Dickie said that he just needed to get out of the town for a while and the kid nodded like he understood. He thanked Dickie for the smoke and walked to the front, waiting for the bus to stop and open its doors.

  4

  He followed them to a residential area north of town. They stopped in front of a house with a sign in the window and Jimmy watched from the next street down. The March girl spoke with someone at the door and then she went back to the hatchback and talked with Ashby and then got out again with a backpack and went inside the house. Ashby drove away, probably to dump the car. Jimmy waited and a while later Ashby returned on foot, looking over his shoulder before quickly entering the house.

  Jimmy spent most of the day in the Ford, moving streets every few hours, watching the house. The windows of the car were streaked with bird shit and dead bugs. He’d started drinking the firewater early and by nightfall he’d finished off the bottle and the next thing he knew he was waking to the sun pouring through the windshield, his body splayed across the front seat, bladder and head pounding. Stupid old fool. He got out of the car in a panic and pissed in the weeds. Pure alcohol, smelled like. Felt like liquid glass. He hitched up his pants and crouched, watching the house two streets over. There was no movement. His watch had gone dead but by the sun it looked to be midmorning. He got the gun from the car and shoved it into his waistband and walked, sweating from the top of his sunburned head, his mouth dry, legs stiff and slow.

  There were some kids playing in the backyard and then he saw the March girl standing by the fence, taking pictures of them. No sign of Ashby. He watched for a while longer and when there was still no sign he walked down to the house, knocked on the front door. An old woman answered, smelling of a fresh cigarette. Jimmy told her he was a police officer, an American. He knew jackshit in the way of Spanish. Americano, he said, which he then thought might be a drink. I’m here to see the woman, he said. The American woman. I have news about her friend. Her amigo. Christ, he sounded like a fucking comedy routine.