Borders of the Heart

by Chris Fabry

  Maybe life was as simple as that. Just look up. Don’t ask questions. Don’t try to feel. Place yourself in the hands of whoever or whatever fashioned all of that. It was all predetermined. One death simply fertilized the ground for another man’s soybeans. One choice meant nothing in the span of eternity.

  Or maybe the choice did matter. Maybe the choice was whether or not to love and, in doing so, trusting whatever hands you placed yourself in when there was no money-back guarantee. There was no guarantee of any kind as far as he could tell, except that your heart was going to break and spill out in the end. All the things he could have done, all the things he forgot to do, all the things he didn’t do pressed down on his chest until he had to stand to breathe again.

  He picked up the rope and snaked it down the well. It was close to reaching but not close enough. Would the ratty thing even hold the weight of the satchel? He walked to the truck and rummaged in the back until he found a toolbox and inside what looked like a pick with a small handle. It was sharp and curved on the end; what Win had used it for he couldn’t imagine. He also found a bungee cord that looked long enough to reach, and he returned to the well, tied the tool and the cord to the end of the rope, and let it down.

  It took him twenty minutes to determine the bungee cord wasn’t working. The satchel had landed on its top amid the branches, and every time he got the hook in the side of the satchel to turn it, it came loose. He pulled the rope up, untied the bungee cord, and thought for a minute. Then he pulled off his boots and slipped off his jeans, tying them to the rope and running the sharp end of the pick through a thick patch near his cuff, and let the whole thing down. The first time he hooked the satchel with the pick, it moved and he let out a yelp. But instead of pulling it up, he nearly dropped it to the bottom. Carefully he swung the rope with one hand and held the flashlight with the other and tried to focus on that pinpoint where the handle and hook would meet. After several tries and sweat drops cascading, he had the satchel near the top of the well. He grabbed the handle and pulled it over the edge as if he had landed a prize bass at a fishing contest. He sat in the dust and cradled what felt more like a suitcase. It had a good weight to it.

  He fiddled with the lock but knew the combination would take him years to figure, so he took the sharp end of the hook and began to pry, cursing and banging when it wouldn’t budge. He even tried making a hole in the leather, but that was futile.

  He left his jeans and stepped into his boots to take the case back to the truck, where he found a hacksaw blade and a handle. Careful not to break the blade, he sawed the lock.

  Just as the pin snapped, headlights shone on the path behind him in the valley and his stomach fell. He was okay being caught. It would be a relief in a way. But how was he going to explain how he had found a suitcase full of money, if that’s what it was? Or drugs? He pulled back the latch quickly and opened the case. Pieces of a gun and a scope. A really expensive gun. Shiny, like it had never been used. No cash. No drugs. Just the gun and several shells that looked big enough to bring down a rhino at full gallop. What in the world had he gotten himself into?

  He threw the case in the truck and started it, keeping the lights off and pulling farther up the hill around the rock outcropping leading to a butte at the end of the property. The tractor trail wound another half mile through the back country toward the Mexican border. He got out and watched the scene from the outcropping. Just him in his boxers and boots, a sorry sight. In the distance he heard the lowing of cattle but he couldn’t see them. He wished he’d had the presence of mind to untie his pants and put them on, but he hadn’t planned on visitors.

  The car below parked near where he had, close to the fence, and in the darkness he saw two figures step out and head toward the well with something glowing. The first one held the light in front of him and the next one followed as they walked toward the well. Straight to it, like drawn by a magnet. Maybe they were police with night vision goggles.

  The two made it to the well and shone their light inside. The car didn’t look like a cruiser—he could tell that. It also didn’t appear to be Border Patrol. They would have dogs with them.

  “Who are these guys?” he whispered. “Whoever you are, leave my pants and wallet alone.”

  One of the men went back to the car and zigzagged through the mesquite and cactus to the well. Perfectly silent, J. D. heard them speaking Spanish, but it was nothing he could make out. Something flashed and flames flickered beside the well, and they dropped the burning thing inside. Fire in the desert was not good this time of year.

  In the silhouette of the flames the two men hovered over the scene. Then a click and automatic gunfire echoed through the valley as one of the men fired into the hole. What he was shooting at, J. D. couldn’t tell, but he instinctively ducked and kept his face in the dust.

  The two walked back to the car, turned around as best they could in the ruts and humps of the path, and rolled away, dust floating toward the night sky.

  J. D. watched them drive out of sight and watched some more, thinking he might see the police meet them. He checked his watch. It was a long time to sunup and he had a choice. Several of them. Instead of mapping out his whole life from that point, he decided to take the next step, which was to get his pants.

  He drove down the arroyo and searched in the dirt for his jeans. When he looked in the well, he saw the charred mass still smoldering. Great. His wallet was gone and with it his credit cards and the little cash he had. At least he had gas in the Suburban. The ring was gone too, and he felt a pang of remorse. Something about the ring had made him feel like a little part of Maria was still with him.

  He pulled the rope up but the end of it had burned through. As he dropped it on the ground, he stepped on something and shone the light down to see a round object with a hole in it. The ring had either fallen out when he took off his pants or the men had found it and tossed it away. He was going to shove it in his pocket but realized he had none, so he wedged it on his little finger but it would only go to the knuckle. He held the flashlight over the well to see what they had shot at but smoke and branches blocked the view.

  He started the Suburban and checked the gas gauge. Something told him to drive straight toward any police car he could find. Men with automatic weapons weren’t to be trifled with. He had no ID, no cash, no credit cards, no pants, and more importantly, no hope.

  He put a hand on the steering wheel and stared at the ring. No, he couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t live with the questions. He couldn’t live with giving up again.

  He had no idea how he would find her, but he had to try. Before others did.

  14

  THE CLOCK SHOWED just after midnight when Muerte awoke to the ringing phone.

  “We located her,” the man on the other end said.

  He couldn’t remember the man’s name. Think. Pablo. Yes, that was it. “Where, Pablo?”

  “We followed the tracking device to an abandoned well in the desert.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have her head?”

  Hesitation. And as soon as he heard it, he knew she was alive.

  “We couldn’t see to the bottom of the well, but we sprayed it with more bullets than you can imagine. She could not have survived.”

  “Did you see her body?”

  “No, we could not. It was too deep. But we think someone must have disposed of her there. At any rate, she is dead.”

  “What about the satchel?” Muerte said.

  “It was not there. However, we did find a man’s wallet.”

  When he heard the name, he turned on a light and located the truck registration. John David Jessup.

  “Excellent,” Muerte said. “Bring me the wallet.”

  “Where would you like us to bring it?”

  He told them, then tossed the phone on the bed and opened his computer. He typed in the man’s name and came up with an electrical contractor, a Facebook listing, a dental offic
e in Rhode Island, and a musician. He typed in the name and Arizona and came up with the musician, a man in Mesa who sold sports memorabilia, and an attorney whose name wasn’t even close.

  He clicked the musician and followed a link to a Nashville newspaper article about the rise of J. D. Jessup. There was a picture of the man, along with his wife. Muerte could tell he was trying to look like the rugged outdoor type but that it was a sham. He had probably spent his early years inside, practicing piano and obeying his mother. Another photo showed the wife in a hospital gown, sitting in a wheelchair trying to smile, her face wan and thin.

  Muerte noted the date of the article, a year and a half old, and looked hard at the man. Could he be helping Maria? And how much could he know about her? Had she conspired with him before she came into the country?

  Muerte paced the room, thinking, planning. He picked up the phone and dialed another number, then hung up when the voice mail message sounded. Almost immediately the phone rang.

  “I have something urgent I need you to research.” He gave the woman Jessup’s name and what he knew. “I want to know everything about him. Why is he in Arizona? Where does he live? What kind of soda does he drink? And as soon as the sun rises, contact our friend with the Zetas in town. I need their help in another matter.”

  The woman had sounded groggy, but when he mentioned the Zetas, she snapped awake. “Is everything going as planned?”

  “Not quite. Maria escaped. She had the weapon.”

  The woman cursed.

  “I am offering one million dollars, US currency, for the person who locates her and can bring her to me. Spread that word to the Zetas and beyond.”

  “One million?”

  “Yes. One million if she is found alive. Or one million if her body is brought to me. I also must locate the package she was carrying. It’s imperative that I find it quickly.”

  The woman typed furiously, sounding nervous as they talked, as if she would be the next person with a bounty on her head. She wasn’t far off in that estimation, though Muerte tried to calm her.

  When he hung up, he felt satisfied, accomplished. It wasn’t pleasant to admit the girl had slipped through his fingers, but it was the truth. He would call Sanchez as soon as the sun was up. He would say that Maria had run into the desert and was hiding. It was only a question of who would find her first. He would again promise his absolute allegiance to the family and assure the man his daughter would return. Only Muerte knew her body would be in a different condition than when she left her father’s house.

  Before he went back to bed, he used the phone app that tracked the girl and saw it was static as the two had said. In the desert. If it changed, he would see it when he awakened.

  15

  J. D. SEARCHED THE SUBURBAN for loose change, but Maria had taken most of it when she used the pay phone. He found a couple of quarters in the glove box and some change in the ashtray and the rest in the cup holder and under the driver’s seat. He counted out $3.60 to his name.

  If he’d had a towel or an oily rag, he would have girded himself with it, but finding none, he walked into the Walmart on Speedway and Kolb wearing his boots and boxers and T-shirt. A newspaper headline screamed, “Benson Doctor Murdered.” There was no greeter at this time of night, but a woman in a blue shirt and khakis sat next to the exit using a nail file and looking over her glasses at him.

  “Welcome to Walmart,” she said across the carts, glancing at his thin shorts.

  He pulled his T-shirt down a bit and kept going. The woman probably saw all kinds overnight, people in various stages of dress and undress. From the look of those gathered at the checkout, he blended well with the crowd, but he still felt naked in the fluorescent light.

  To the right, past the customer service desk and the McDonald’s, was the sports paraphernalia, the Arizona Wildcats shirts and hats. Baseball caps and shot glasses. He found what he was looking for on a rack marked Clearance. Shorts and T-shirts had been marked down several times and were actually in his price range. He found a pair of gray sweatpants for $2.97. He stepped into them, holding tight to the change in his left hand as he tried to get his boots through the elastic at the bottom of the pant legs. He kicked off both boots and tried again. When he had the sweats on, he took Maria’s ring off and shoved it into a pocket.

  At the checkout he grabbed a Snickers bar and snapped the tag off the sweats and handed both to a woman old enough to be his mother. She scanned the tag and tossed it in a plastic trash can, blipped the candy, and told him the total, then reached out to steady herself with a sun-splotched arm. He placed every cent he had in her hand, having to flick off a few pennies that were held by the sweat and grime, and she looked at them like he had given her a handful of mouse droppings.

  “Having a rough night?” she said without looking up.

  “You could say that.”

  She separated out the quarters, followed by the dimes and nickels, then spread the pennies out and took them by fives.

  A man came up behind him holding a box of caramel popcorn and a diabetes test kit, which seemed a killer combination. He wore a tattered T-shirt with a skull on it and a dirty cap over stringy hair. A look as vacant as the parking lot. Someone had pulled the plug on the gene pool and it felt like he and this man were swirling down the drain.

  The woman handed him four pennies. J. D. set them by the credit card reader and said to the man, “Help yourself.”

  He ate the candy in three bites and tossed the wrapper in the backseat of the Suburban. Only in America could you clothe and feed yourself with stray money from an ashtray. And make phone calls.

  He watched the gas gauge float and the dashboard get brighter as he curved his way toward the mountains away from the city. On Old Spanish Trail he passed saguaros and a restaurant—The Bone-In. A coyote crossed the road and loped into a pasture near a sign with a cow on the front and the words Open Range.

  His eyes were heavy and stinging and he felt himself drifting, so he finally stuck his head out the window as he roller-coastered along the road’s undulations.

  He spotted an ominous brown sign: Fire Danger Extreme. The word Extreme had a red background, which made it seem more apocalyptic. This was a constant through the summer. If weeds didn’t choke the crops, grasshoppers would. Or the wind. Or a drought would dry everything to chaff, or they’d get too much rain and the flooding would take the plants, roots and all. And if not that, fire could ravage the land and smoke would linger along the mountains like dry hope. There was very little belief that a man could actually raise a crop and make a living at farming, but for whatever reason the people who lived close to the ground kept doing it as if they had no other choice.

  Past the sign a hill took him down toward a wash and cool air swept over him—just for a second, but it was a hint of something to come, a ray of hope in the heat. On that two-lane country road he felt there was something new on the horizon.

  She came to him as sweet and real as summer sweat, her hair blocking the sun as beams of light shone through golden strands and sutures. Laughing at the power she had over him, at the life she could call forth or leave sleeping, she kissed his chest, warm and supple lips and freckles, the blinding whiteness of her teeth, dark eyebrows, and the hairline tracking the borders of her face. A continent of love.

  She moved closer to his lips, his cheek, and rose, a golden shadow. You sleep enough for two lifetimes, she said.

  That voice, close to his ear, soft as a cloud and fluttering like a tiny bird feathering into the wind. Her breath on his skin, in his mouth. Breathing in, he took it like a whispered kiss from God.

  This was what he missed in sleep. This was why he cursed the hot nights with the metal fan, keeping him from her, wrestling with exhaustion, with himself. This was where he wanted to be and no act of will could take him. It was only in surrender that he found her, but surrender was the most difficult. Surrender was submission to the truth.

  He reached to touch her again, but she was up,
sitting beside him, turned away. Her spine was a series of mountains rising and falling, her skin tight over the range. Too tight and stretched thin, like a drum’s.

  It’s time to get up, she said. It’s time to sing.

  It’s time to sleep, he said. The songs are gone. None are left.

  She shook her head and the long-flowing hair reminded him of an old folk tune, the color in the morning when we rise.

  There are always more songs, she said. She tapped on his chest and then splayed her hand out, and he felt the coolness where warmth should have been. Trapped but waiting.

  His heart swelled and his breath came more quickly; then his body relaxed, some portal opened, and there was washing like a tide.

  Surrender. Bright surrender.

  Down by the shores of time and sorrow.

  Quickly fading, love’s awaiting, bones and blood called forth.

  I sleep with dead reckoning of sunken ships and whaling vessels slipping through the undertow.

  I wander at night along the beach of memory.

  And I wait.

  She is my school. My penitentiary.

  The prison I’m locked inside. I will never escape.

  I never want to escape.

  Words came disjointed and in cascading succession as the night sang to him, crickets and frogs joining the chorus like an orchestra, antiphonal waves of sound and heat rolling across the landscape. Rolling toward him.

  Wake up, she said. It’s time.

  And he did.

  16

  J. D. OPENED HIS EYES and stared at the crack in the steering column and then at the open windows to his left and right. Where was he? How had he gotten here? He looked through the mud-splattered windshield at the barn and the playground and it came back. The drive south and the men at the well. He looked at his sweats and felt the remnants of chocolate and peanuts.

  There’s always a song, he thought, and he looked for something to write on or with but could find neither. Surrender. Time and sorrow. Words that stuck from the dream. But what was the use? He would never be able to recall them from the subconscious, where the music played in spite of him. There was something there, something coming to life if he was thinking of lyrics. But these were shadows, black-and-white images on a wall of memory moving and playing with some fire that had been left smoldering.